Lies and Prophecy (23 page)

Samhain, the death of the old year and the birth of the new, the night when the veil between the mortal world and the Otherworld had traditionally been thinnest, and the spirits of the dead were free to walk once more. The legendary night when the Fair Folk rode, emerging from the hollow hills to mingle with humanity for a few short hours. No wonder it started then.

Julian caught sight of the sheet on Liesel's desk and, with a glance to her for permission, picked it up and began to read it.

“Ninety percent of that is probably worthless bullshit,” I admitted. “I'm just hoping for a few kernels of truth, so we won't be working completely blind.”

“Iron, yes,” he said, sounding distant. “Names. And glamour, I think. After that, I'm not certain.” Putting the list down, he frowned in thought. “I have a book, or rather several, on the Celtic lore. I can look at that later to see if anything sparks.”

“I hope it does,” I said soberly.

He nodded. “We need an edge. So far, we haven't even been thinking tactically; we've just been reacting. Myself included. We have to get past that, form some kind of strategy for dealing with this.”

It wasn't Julian the college student speaking. Standing next to Liesel's desk, the lamp throwing into relief the hollowness of his cheeks, he sounded more like a Guardian. “Who's this ‘we,' buddy?” I said lightly, trying to bring him down. Julian was in no shape to put himself back on the front lines. “The whole point of telling Grayson was to get this into the hands of the people with the training—and the authority—to deal with it.”

He shook his head, but not as if disagreeing with me. More rueful amusement. “I'm not hungry just yet,” Julian said, changing the subject. “Care to walk a bit?”

I was starving, but suspected that request wasn't as casual as it sounded. “Sure. Let me just grab my coat.” Knowing him, we'd be heading for the Arboretum to talk, snow and all.

It made me wonder, though, just what he didn't want Liesel to hear.

My shoulders tightened as the trees closed around us. Sure, this was a good place to avoid being overheard—by other students. “Are we safe out here?” I asked as we followed a path deeper into the Arboretum.

Julian nodded. “We'll be fine.”

How exactly did he draw that conclusion?
Trust him,
I told myself. At least we weren't going anywhere near the patch of riverbank we'd destroyed. Our footsteps crunched softly in the snow, leaving a trail anyone could follow. But the sidhe probably didn't need that kind of sign.

I exhaled and tried to calm my nerves. Julian had his hands in his pockets and was studying the path intently, not looking at me.

He'd brought me out here for a reason, but he seemed reluctant to get to it. My patience for tiptoeing around subjects, however, had grown thin lately. “What did you want to talk about?”

Julian shot me a startled look, then shrugged. The gesture looked false. “I wanted to ask you when you thought Falcon would be back. I … I need to speak to him.”

If that was all, I'd hock my tarot cards and take up a career as an accountant. “Bullshit, Julian. You have something to tell me. Delaying won't make it any easier.”

Julian ran both hands through his hair, looking pained. We'd stopped walking, and the setting of white snow and black trees around us made everything just the slightest bit unreal, as if this was one of the dreams I couldn't remember.

“It's … complicated,” he said. “I don't know if I can even explain it to you. There's so much you don't understand—”

“Try me,” I said, through my teeth. “Maybe I
will
understand. Unless what you really mean is that you're trying to protect me from something. If so—for gods' sakes, Julian, we've been over that. At the rate things are going, I'll find out sooner or later. And if it's bad, I'd rather hear it from you.”

“It's not bad,” Julian said. “It's just—gods.” He slapped the trunk of a tree, and as if that had opened a floodgate, the words began to rush out of him. “You don't know what it was like, Kim, talking to them, learning from them. Not a light bulb turning on—a light from the heavens coming down like a blessing, making everything clear. I know what I am, now. What all of us are. I had some clues, and the Seelie had others, and together they made answers.”

What he was? Julian was a wilder. But it was true, we didn't really know why they were born—what confluence of genetic and environmental factors produced children like that. I took a deep, steadying breath. “Julian,
please
, stop being vague. Let me know what you learned. Is there any reason I shouldn't know?”

He laughed, but not in mirth. The corners of his mouth twisted, as if he had tasted something bitter. “No, not really. You'll never look at me the same again … but it won't do you any lasting damage.”

For the briefest moment, I questioned my determination. The bond between us was still fragile. Could it survive whatever truth he carried? Or would this drive me off—did he
want
it to drive me off?

I banished that fear and said, “I'd rather deal with the truth than continue to believe in a lie.”

“Fine.” Julian went to a snow-covered rock and brushed it off. He gestured for me to sit, then cleared another one for himself. I settled down, feeling as though I ought to have brought something to take notes with. He seemed to be preparing to talk for quite a while. I folded my hands tightly in my lap, clutching my own fingers to keep from fidgeting.

“Sidhe blood is drawn back to the Otherworld,” Julian said. “It's the basic principle of contagious magic. The two places were once linked, and so a connection remains. That connection is what gives you your gifts, what allows you to work any magic at all. Without it, you'd have none of that. Magic is a natural ability of the sidhe, not of humans.”

That was a blunt way to put it, but he was right. Reading minds, lighting fires by will alone—that wasn't natural to our species. To the non-gifted, all bloods carried a slight tinge of the inhumanity that marked wilders so strongly.

So strongly. I bit my lip to keep from voicing the question I'd never had the gall to ask.

I might not have to. Julian said, “It isn't blood, of course—it's DNA, and Alexander Krauss figured out how to measure it. We talk about it like it's the percentage of your genetic makeup that comes from sidhe ancestors, but really it's the percentage that's activated, triggering gifts.”

“Out of the junk DNA.” I remembered high school biology.

“We've all had the test. You're, what, four tenths of a percent?” I nodded mutely. Ratings were not public knowledge, so either Julian had hacked some system to learn mine, or else he was capable of simply eyeballing it. “You're pretty high, then. Almost high enough to be in danger.”

In danger? From what? “The psi-sickness?”

“Yes and no.” Julian smiled, again mirthlessly. “It isn't a disease.”

My heart thudded in my chest. He knew what caused it? If so—if he could put a stop to it—his name would go down in history with the likes of Welton and Krauss. He'd be remembered as a hero.

“They've never found its cause because they've been looking in all the wrong places,” Julian said. “Bear with me here—I never learned much biology. Sidhe blood calls back to the Otherworld, right? If you've got enough of it, or the right control genes, or whatever, then the call's strong enough to cause manifestation and psychic gifts. But there's another, higher threshold—around five-tenths, though that number's not firm. If someone's percentage is that high … the call becomes stronger.”

My fingers were cramping from their death-grip on each other.

“Stronger by several orders of magnitude,” Julian said. “Strong enough that it actually pulls the person's spirit toward the Otherworld. One of two things happens at that point. Either they're strong enough to master it, and they live. Or they're not, and they die.”

Like a flash of lightning, I understood. “Wilders. And the psi-sickness.” Julian nodded, but the wheels were still turning in my head, not to be stopped until they reached the end. “But that doesn't make any sense. You're a wilder from birth, okay. But psi-sickness doesn't kill you until adolescence, until manifestation.”

“It kills you before you're even born. But the damage isn't seen until adolescence, when your blood tries to manifest, and instead tears you apart.”

I remembered my brother, the few times I'd been allowed to visit him, lying pale and sweating in a hospital room like a concrete bunker. The doctors' voices, reciting rote words designed to be as gentle as possible—as if there was any good way to tell parents that their child will die, and nothing can be done. My father's frustrated cursing. My mother's tears. And then I was hurried away, because Noah was slipping into another fit, laying about him with psychic gifts no one, especially not he, could begin to control.

“So what happens to wilders?” I asked in a dead voice.

“The same thing that happens to those who die, except that we survive it. In either case, our spirit is pulled partway between the mortal world and the Otherworld. And our genes change—a
lot.
”

An icy chill danced down my spine, but I couldn't swallow the question any longer. “Julian, what—”

“Twenty-nine.”

The world spun around me. I only dimly felt Julian's hand on my shoulder, holding me steady as I swayed on my seat.
Twenty-nine percent!

Julian, Noah, the wilders and everyone who'd died of psi-sickness—the impression of inhumanity we got from them right. Nearly a
third
of Julian's genes were magically active.

Nearly a third of him was sidhe.

More than fifty times my own rating. Dear gods, no wonder he made people's skin crawl; no wonder he was able to pull off things we considered impossible. I'd thought he was maybe two or three percent, but no. He was practically one of them.

“
Kim.
”

He'd called my name several times already. Blinking, I pushed my hair out of my face and looked up.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

It took a moment for the question to work its way through my numb mind. “Yeah. I'm fine.” What a lie. He was right; I'd never look at him the same again.

And he knew it. Julian looked down. “I'm sorry. I warned you it wouldn't be easy.”

His hand dropped from my shoulder. Layers of clothing protected me from that touch, concealing the truth of his nature. But I'd learned to live with it once already, before I knew what it meant. Did anything really change, just because I knew the number?

Well, yes. But that didn't mean I couldn't get over it a second time.

My breath wavered, but I reached out and laid my own gloved hand on his shoulder. He spooked beneath the touch. “No, it wasn't easy,” I said. “But I'm glad you told me. And Julian—it'll be okay.”

He nodded, but the stiffness didn't go away, the wariness. As if he were ready to pull away at any instant. Maybe he was even preparing to do so. I spoke without stopping to consider my words, before he could draw back. “I swear by all the gods, if you use this as an excuse to run away from me again, I'm going to—”

It sounded good, up to the point where I had to figure out a threat. Then I floundered, unable to think of anything appropriate. But a faint tremor shook Julian's shoulder, and I realized it was a laugh. “Thank you,” he whispered, and looked up to meet my eyes.

And this time I was ready for it. His gaze didn't paralyze my mind, didn't drop the bottom out of my stomach and chill my blood to ice. His eyes were filled with fading worry—and gratefulness words could never express. I'd tried before to imagine what it would be like, going through life with everyone constantly flinching back from you. Now, for the first time, I saw its effect.

Not for all the world would I betray the trust between us. He needed me—not just my gifts or my mind, but this, the hand on his shoulder that did not draw back. Despite the cold, I pulled my glove off. I couldn't hide the conscious effort it took to reach out and take his hand, but as I wrapped my fingers around his, I saw Julian smile, and for a moment, the cold went away.

~

“What a charming scene.”

Julian whirled to his feet, Kim a half-instant behind him. Falcon was standing about twenty feet away, his usual smooth expression cast in sardonic lines. Better him than one of the Unseelie, Julian supposed—but so much for his calculation that the sidhe would take longer to return.

“My apologies for the interruption,” Falcon said.

He said it like a rote phrase. Julian wasn't sure the sidhe
knew
how to apologize sincerely. “I was just telling Kim some of what I learned from your people,” he said. How much had Falcon overheard?

“I see,” the sidhe murmured. Julian didn't relax. The Seelie as a whole might be friends, but Falcon was not. Neither was he an enemy, of course; he hated the Unseelie as much as any of his Court. But he also disdained Julian. And so Julian kept all his gifts awake, projecting their readiness. He hated to do it to Kim, so hard on the heels of telling her his Krauss rating, but he wanted to remind Falcon that he had some power of his own.

Behind him, he felt Kim tense again. She had to be wondering what was going on, but now was not the time to explain.

Infuriatingly, the sidhe merely let it pass. “I am glad to see you looking better,” he said, and that at least sounded true.

Julian had no interest in small talk. Now that he had his mind back, there were things he needed to confirm. “They were trying to make me like them. Weren't they.”

The sidhe nodded, accepting the change of topic. “It's what I would do, were I trying to control you.”