my eye I could see the air swimming in something that was almost a shape. It was bigger than a man.
Magnus turned and saw us. He stood up abruptly, and the swimming air blinked out like it had never been. He wiped a sleeve across his mouth.
"Dorrie..." His voice was soft and strangled.
Dorrie clawed her way up the hill. She screamed, "Blasphemy!" and smacked him. I could hear the slap all the way across the clearing.
"Ouch," Larry said. "Why is she mad?"
She hit him again, hard enough to sit him down on his butt in the flowers. "How could you? How could you do such a vile thing?"
"What did he do?" Larry asked.
"He's been feeding off Rawhead and Bloody Bones just like his ancestor," I said.
Dorrie turned to me. She looked haggard, horrified, as if she had caught her brother molesting children. "It was forbidden to feed." She turned back to Magnus. "You knew that!"
"I wanted the power, Dorrie. What harm did it do?"
"What harm? What harm?" She grabbed a handful of his long hair and pulled him to his knees. She exposed the bite marks on his neck. "This is why that creature can call you. This is why one of the Daoine Sidhe, even a half-breed like you, is called by death." She let go so abruptly he fell forward on his hands and knees.
Dorrie sat down in the flowers and cried.
I waded into the flowers. They parted like water, but they didn't move. They were just never exactly where you were stepping.
"Jesus, are they moving out of the way?" Larry asked.
"Not exactly," Magnus said. He walked down the mound to stand at its base. He was wearing the white tuxedo from last night, or what was left of it. The smear of blood on his shirtsleeve was very bright against the whiteness.
We waded through the flowers that were moving and not moving, to join him in front of the mound.
He'd shoved his hair back behind his ears so his face was visible. And no, his ears weren't pointed. Where do these rumors get started?
He met my eyes without flinching. If he was ashamed of what he'd done, it didn't show. Dorrie was still weeping in the bluebells like her heart would break.
"So now you know," he said.
"You can't bleed a fairie, in the flesh or not in the flesh, without ritual magic. I've read the spell, Magnus. It's a doozy," I said.
He smiled at that, and the smile was still lovely, but the blood at the corner of his mouth ruined the effect. "I had to tie myself to the beastie. I had to give him some of my mortality in order to get his blood."
"The spell isn't meant to help you gather blood," I said. "It's to help the fairies kill each other."
"If it got some of your mortality, did you get some of its immortality?" Larry asked. It was a good question.
"Yes," Magnus said, "but that wasn't why I did it."
"You did it for power, you son of a bitch," Dorrie said. She came down the mound, sliding in the strange flowers. "You just had to do real glamor, real magic. My God, Magnus, you must have been drinking its blood for years, ever since you were a teenager. That's when your powers suddenly got so strong. We all thought it was puberty."
"Afraid not, sister dear."
She spit at him. "Our family was cursed, tied to this land forever in repentance for doing what you have done. Bloody Bones broke free last time someone tried to drink from his veins."
"It's been safely imprisoned for ten years, Dorrie."
"How do you know? How do you know that nebulous thing you called up hasn't been out scaring children?"
"As long as it doesn't hurt any of them, what's the harm?"
"Wait a minute," said Larry. "Why would it scare children?"
"I told you, it's a nursery boggle. It was supposed to eat bad children," I said. I had an idea, an awful idea. I'd seen a vampire use a sword, but was I absolutely sure of what I'd seen? No. "When the thing got out and started slaughtering the Indian tribe, did it use a weapon, or its hands?"
Dorrie looked at me. "I don't know. Does it matter?"
Larry said, "Oh, my God."
"It might matter a great deal," I said.
"You can't mean those killings," Magnus said. "Bloody Bones cannot manifest itself physically. I've seen to that."
"Are you sure, brother dear? Are you absolutely sure?" Dorrie's voice cut and sliced; she wielded scorn like