Chapter Fifty-one

I slept for over a day. And, for a wonder, nobody bothered me this time. Well, almost nobody.

I blinked my crusty eyes open to find another pair staring back at me. They were blue, a lovely almost-violet shade that human eyes never achieve without help. And huge, like those of an anime character come to life. And startled, because I guess they hadn’t expected to be suddenly looking into mine, either.

A small creature let out a bleat and stumbled away, into the middle of my bedroom floor, because somebody had brought me to Claire’s. He hunched down with arms over his head, like he thought I was about to strike him. And then just stayed there, shaking in fear.

I didn’t move.

The shaking increased for a moment, and the arms tightened. But when nothing happened, they loosened enough for one large, purple eye to peer out from underneath. It flicked toward the door, which was halfway open, but the owner didn’t budge.

I didn’t, either, because I’d recognized my guest, and wasn’t particularly worried about being attacked by a half-dead troll kid. Not that he was looking half-dead now. I hadn’t expected Olga’s rescue to be on his feet anytime soon, even in an obviously shaky sort of way, much less to be exploring the upper floors of the house.

But trolls are damned hardy, more so than me. I felt stiff and starved and badly in need of a drink, but I didn’t want to freak out the kid. So I just stayed there, unmoving, until he slowly, slowly, slowly stretched into a more or less standing position.

He had dark brown hair, thick and shaggy and completely unlike the twins’ baby-fine variety. He also wasn’t the usual gray-green, but more of a gray-teal, with bluish undertones to the skin. He had the small mouth and round face of a child, and even a somewhat smallish nose, which for trolls is more telling. To the point that I wondered how young he actually was. And then there were those eyes, framed by long, thick, dark lashes.

He was freaking adorable.

But he was also still hunched over somewhat, despite the impression I had that he was standing straight, or as straight as he could. Claire had put him in one of her old hippie shirts, loose and flowy and painter’s-smock-y, which was enormous on him, so all I could see was a head and some teal-colored toes. I supposed it was a miracle that he was getting around at all, but the posture looked uncomfortable. I wondered why—

Oh.

That was why.

The big eyes moved to my bedside table, and mine followed. And showed me that I’d had an earlier visitor in the form of my roommate, who knew a little about dhampir metabolism and liked to feed people. She’d loaded me up, probably because food had a tendency to disappear if left in the kitchen.

As a result, I had three whole sandwiches waiting for me. I slowly reached out a hand and took one, a nice fat BLT, because Claire understands that the B is the most important part. Thick-cut, peppery B, complemented by her own homemade bread and vine-ripened tomatoes and bacon jam and—

I heard my stomach grumble. And be echoed a second later by a similar sound from under Claire’s smock of a shirt. My visitor was hungry, too.

I held out the sandwich. “It’s okay,” I said. “You can have it.”

The little troll didn’t move.

But he didn’t run away, either, although his eyes kept flicking from the sandwich to me to the door. Over and over. He was obviously frightened, but also hungry, but also frightened. . . . It was an impasse.

I decided to help him out and put the sandwich platter on the foot of the bed, pushing it as close to him as I could without getting up, which I somehow knew would spook him.

Then I sat back against the headboard and ate my own sandwich, because it smelled like heaven.

He watched me for a moment, eyes huge.

And then, faster than I would have expected—almost faster than I could see—he grabbed the remaining two sandwiches and fled, practically knocking Claire over in the process.

She’d been coming in the door with some laundry, and had to do an acrobatic maneuver to avoid getting mowed down. “What the—Hey! What are you—”

But the kid and his loot were already gone.

Claire stared after him for a moment, and then turned to me, astonishment on her features. “He’s walking!”

“He’s running around, stealing sandwiches,” I corrected. “Good ones, too.” I licked bacon grease off my fingers.

“He’s supposed to be in bed!”

“Put a platter of sandwiches beside it. He’ll never leave.”

Claire blinked, considering that. Then she put down the laundry basket and went out again. I heard her talking to Gessa, and I guess they sorted it out, because she was back a moment later. She started putting towels away while I hauled my stiff-as-fuck body out of bed.

“I’m surprised Bulsi risked coming in here,” she told me, from the bathroom. “He’s really skittish.”

“Bulsi? Is that his name?”

Claire nodded. “He woke up briefly yesterday. I managed to get some soup down him, and a little medicine, before he passed out again. He and Olga talked while I fed him.”

“Did he remember anything about those mystery words?”

Claire looked confused for a moment, and then shook her head. “He was barely conscious. They did a number on him, Dory!”

Yeah, I remembered. And felt my face flush in anger, which was stupid. The slavers didn’t care about wiping out whole villages of fey; how much less would they care about a single child?

“I don’t think he trusts anyone right now,” Claire said. “She was lucky to get his name. Although she isn’t too happy about it.”

“Olga isn’t?”

She nodded.

“Why not? What’s wrong with . . . What was it again?”

“Bulsi. It means wart.”

“What?”

Claire came out of the bathroom, having loaded me up with fresh-smelling towels. “Or lump or bump or protrusion. It’s what his owner called him. Anyway, it doesn’t matter; we’re not keeping it.”

“The name or the kid?”

“Don’t look at me like that,” she told me severely.

I’d hobbled over to the dresser for something to wear, so hadn’t been looking like anything. I glanced over my shoulder. “Like what?”

“I’m not adopting him! We can’t have any more houseguests, or this place is going to pop.”

Couldn’t argue with that.

“Anyway, Olga is trying to find his people, but it’s not easy. She said his dialect is really strange. He might be from one of the mountain tribes. With all the fighting, a lot of groups went to the hills over the centuries and some never came down again.”

“So how do we find them?”

Claire didn’t immediately answer, being busy staring at my rumpled mess of a bed. And a few bloodstains here and there, from where I guess I’d bled through my dressing. I felt around under it now, and found a ridge of puckered skin, but no bullet hole.

Sometimes I love dhampir metabolism.

“I can do that,” I said, as Claire started stripping sheets, but she just shook her head. Housework is how Claire works off excess energy. She sometimes complains about it, but if you try to take over, as I have plenty of times, she gets upset.

Unless she gets to boss you doing it, of course.

“Pillowcases,” she instructed.

I blinked at her.

“They’re in the bathroom closet, third shelf.”

Really? Who knew? I put down some old jeans and moved to oblige.

“I’m not sure,” she told me, answering my previous question. “Olga has been talking to the other slaves, trying to find out about her nephew. And she’s also been asking about the boy—” She stopped abruptly. “What do you think about Kjeld?”

“Kjeld?”

“As a name.”

I handed over pillowcases. “It’s . . . all right. Why?”

“Well, Bulsi needs a new one, and there’s not a lot to choose from. Most of the fey names, boys’ ones anyway, are all about war. It’s all ‘Fighter with Helmet’ or ‘Warrior in Armor’ or ‘Spear of God.’ And Olga says he’ll probably never be a fighter, so a name like that would just make people laugh at him.”

“There’s other things in life than fighting,” I pointed out.

And got an incredulous look from Claire.

“I do other things!”

“Name one.”

“I paint. I play a mean hand of poker.” I thought about it. “I know how to tango.”

“Well, maybe you should teach the fey,” Claire said, dumping my rumpled sheets into her now-empty basket and putting on new ones. “They’re obsessed. Even the stuff that isn’t war related is usually designed to strike fear into their enemies by reminding them of scary stuff. I like Calder, for example, but it means harsh and cold waters. Who would want to be called that?”

I agreed that Calder was a no go.

“And then there’s nicknames, although they aren’t any better.”

“Nicknames?”

“You know how the fey are; everybody has a dozen different names. But, apparently, other people are supposed to give them to you. You aren’t allowed to just name yourself.”

I shrugged. “So name him.”

“I would, but there’s all these rules. Even nicknames are supposed to say something about you. I asked the guards for recommendations, and you know what they came up with?”

“No idea.”

“Inn magri: the thin one. Or óþveginn: the unwashed.” Claire looked indignant. “He’s not unwashed! I bathed him just yesterday! Or—even worse—rotinn, the broken. I mean, can you imagine?”

“Some of the guards are pricks,” I agreed.

Claire gave me a sideways look. “They have one for you, too, you know.”

“A nickname?”

She nodded. “They’re calling you ambhǫfði. It means two-headed. I guess because of you and . . . you know.”

I blinked. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“They say it’s an honor. That all warriors have a string of nicknames, telling their story.” She sighed. “They’re probably going to give you more.”

“Good,” I decided.

“Good?”

“Then I can bore them with all my names, just like they do me.”

Claire laughed. “They’ll probably enjoy it! If you stay still long enough, they’ll tell you all about how they got each of their names, and ask about yours. You can be trapped for hours.”

Okay, that was slightly alarming.

“So, anyway, back to Kjeld. Do you like it?”

“What does it mean?”

She spread out some wrinkles in the sheets. “Large pot.”

I grinned.

“Well, trolls like to eat! And a large pot of . . . whatever . . . means you aren’t likely to starve. And you can even feast others!”

“Sounds good to me. Or you could just ask him what he wants to be called.”

She shook her head. “I can’t. He speaks almost no English, and even Olga can barely understand his dialect. But he’ll be around a little while recovering, and I refuse to call him Wart the whole time!”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I had a kid named Stinky.

“Anyway, word is that the mountain tribes have been hit hard by the slavers, because they’re usually small groups, and too weak to fight back. But there’s a lot of them, and they’re spread over a large area, and sometimes they war with each other and”—she sighed—“it’s a mess. And with the little one’s condition, even if Olga does find his people, they may not claim him.”

“So what happens then?”

“I don’t know.”

She fluffed pillows.

“He’s very sweet, though.”

More fluffing.

“He liked my soup.”

I didn’t say anything; I wasn’t stupid.

I was seriously stiff, though. It felt like the years were finally catching up to me. A lot of years, I thought uncomfortably. All the freaking years.

Until I stretched, and oh. My. God. Oh yeah. Oh fuck yeah.

Claire was looking at me in sudden alarm. “Did you just crack every bone in your spine?”

“Yeah.” It felt so good that I did it again. And then rolled my neck around, hearing what sounded like miniature fireworks going off.

“How do you do that?” She looked disturbed.

I extended my arms, laced my fingers together, and cracked my knuckles. “Like that.”

“Stop it!”

I laughed, and contemplated chasing her around the room, cracking things at her. But that might impact the chance of breakfast, and I was out of sandwiches. “Food?” I asked hopefully.

“Get a shower. I’ll have something for you by the time you’re done.”

That, I decided, was a plan.

Twenty minutes later, I was clean, moisturized, and dressed. But not downstairs, because Claire had a tray waiting for me when I emerged from the bathroom. She’d also brought a chair for herself.

Uh-oh.

Not that I wasn’t happy to have company, but Claire wasn’t a big fan of bedroom eating. If this was a normal conversation, we’d be having it at the kitchen table. So it wasn’t going to be normal, and judging by the closed door, she didn’t want it overheard.

Well, crap.

“Relax,” she told me. “I just want to fill you in.”

“You want to fill me in?” I ambled over to the spread on the spread. “I thought that was my job.”

“Louis-Cesare brought you home. He told me what—” A phone rang. She sighed, pulled it out of a pocket, rolled her eyes, and put it back.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Sit down and have breakfast. Or lunch, I suppose.”

“Lunch? Shouldn’t it be dinner?”

Which is how I found out that I’d slept the clock around.

“Shit!” I was halfway to my feet, when Claire pulled me back down. “Sit. Eat. Listen.”

Which is how I also found out some other things.

“So that’s why we’re talking behind closed doors,” I said.

I was looking at a newspaper pic of Blue’s latest activities. It showed an illegal market in some abandoned subway station. It didn’t specialize in the fey per se, but in forbidden ingredients, the kind of stuff you couldn’t walk into a normal potion shop and buy. But some of those did originate in Faerie.

Need a basilisk’s egg for an unbreakable ward? Got you, fam. Want kelpie blood for detection-proof glamouries? Step right up. How about naga venom, for a poison no antidote can treat? Sure, for a price.

It was exactly the sort of place where you’d expect to find fey bones and the fey supplying them. Because butchering a bunch of helpless slaves is safer than constantly going into Faerie, isn’t it? Or it was.

Until things suddenly got a lot Bluer.

All that was left now were broken cages and blood. Enough of the latter that I was assuming slavers number four and five had just bitten the dust. Along with probably a bunch of their crew.

What a pity.

Claire nodded. “If all this gets out—when it gets out—nobody knows what will happen. But that”—she fluttered a hand at the paper—“will probably get a lot more common!”

“I understand why Olga felt she had to tell the Elders,” I said. “This affects the whole Dark Fey community. I just wish she could have held off for a few days, until we know a little more. We don’t need riots—”

“Oh, there will be riots. You can count on it!”

I looked up. “You think it will be that bad?”

“The troll council does! That’s why they’re meeting now, to try to figure out how to spin it. But that’s just it—there is no way! The Dark Fey believe that these weapons are powered by the souls of their people, souls that will never again be able to reincarnate. You can’t spin that!”

She got up and started pacing.

“And the worst thing is, it’s not just some crazy superstition. Louis-Cesare said it had some truth to it.” She turned and put her hands flat on the bed. “He can’t be right, can he? Tell me he isn’t right!”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But Mircea confirmed that it was life energy. Vamps can tell the difference between that and regular magic. And there was plenty of it floating around, after the consul almost got incinerated.”

“I don’t believe it.” She abruptly sat back down on her chair. “I don’t believe it!”

She did, though. The green eyes had just gone incandescent.

“They’re killing us! And Faerie—”

She cut off, and then just sat there for a moment, trying to absorb the implications. Because, yeah. There were a lot of them.

If Caedmon was right about the symbiosis between Faerie and its people, then whoever was making these weapons wasn’t just using up the souls of individuals, but draining that of their entire world. Might explain why there were fewer vargar being born these days, I thought. And then I wondered how many more traits had been lost, how many more vital ways Faerie had been diminished.

I also wondered what had happened to all those souls that had been left behind through the years, but not used up. If the bones deteriorated enough, were they lost, too? Just dissipating into the ground of an alien world, and fading away?

I shivered, despite the warmth of the day and the residual heat of a very hot shower. How long had Faerie been bleeding out? Centuries? Millennia?

Because it had to be that long, right? Ever since our two worlds encountered each other, and people started going back and forth. And while the Light Fey seemed to have a policy of taking their dead back with them, what about the Dark?

They might have done it if left to their own devices, but they hadn’t been. Not those who had been used as slaves and killed for sport. And if what Caedmon said was true, the soul of a Dark Fey this incarnation might be that of a Light Fey the next, so every group was hurt, every group weakened.

It was kind of stunning. And appalling. Which probably explained why Claire looked sick as well as furious.

“They should string her up publicly,” said my pacifist roommate. “That bitch!”

“You mean Efridis?”

“Of course I mean Efridis! Who else?”

And there it was. The thing I’d been contemplating in the shower while my groggy brain woke up. The thing I’d been hoping to avoid, because I knew how this was going to go.

I didn’t say anything for a moment, because I am a coward. And then I sighed, and womaned the hell up. “Ermh.”