warm in here. He was sweat-clammy, heart pounding like an overworked engine. He reached the bar, scooped up the quirpiece just as its shine sent a hard dart of light winging into the far dark corner.
A bottle shattered. Someone cursed, and a woman screamed. The quir had done its job, muddying the girl’s trail, and turned scorching-cold in his palm. Jeremiah ignored it, as well as the sudden tip-shift of the crowd’s mood, and lurched after her. The crowd pressed carnivorously close, and someone shoved him. “Watch where you goin’!”
Jeremiah stepped sideways, dropped his shoulder, and drove toward the entrance. A flash of redgold as the swinging doors opened and she ducked out. There was no doubt—her stumbling attempt to flee said it all.
She was prey.
The silver whistle unsounded again, too high for any mortal but the gifted or sidhe-touched to hear, and every living thing in the bar tensed.
The mortals couldn’t hear that sound… but they could certainly feel it. A flare of violence, wine-red, closing over his vision, and he dove for the door, his weight turned into a battering ram.
The inside of the Wagon Wheel erupted. Fists, elbows, bottles. Another female scream, cut short with a crunching sound. A chair broke, and Jeremiah ducked under a clumsy strike from a squat bearded man.
The ripple of violence spread, confusing the woman’s scent. Russet gold and blue silk, a faint blooming of… what was it? Cherry? Strawberry with sandalwood? Spice-fruit, as if she was part nymph.
That was one relief. She didn’t smell like his purely mortal, salt-and-sweet Daisy. She reeked of sidhe, even through the quirpiece’s struggle to mask her. Breaking her trail with a mortal whirlpool because the riders were close behind—but riders of which Unseelie faction, and why? Was it Unwinter himself riding, one last hunt before Summer’s Gates opened and he was confined to the dark of the moon or the Blighted Lands? Or was it simply some of his knights a-riding, for no other reason than the joy of it?
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t Daisy. She couldn’t be Daisy… but still. He knocked one man aside, ducked another flung beer bottle, threw his arm up as someone tossed a bar stool. It was nothing but reflex; the leg almost clipped his skull, but the cursed sidhe speed was still with him. Everything slowed down, droplets and shards of glass hanging in struggling air, faces contorted with rage.
Jeremiah moved.
TO SELL HERSELF DEAR
6
It was a risk, leaving the quir behind. Robin pawed in the pockets of her mended skirt as she bolted down the street, finding little that would aid her. Of course it was an Unseelie knight following her; she had caught a glimpse of him, helmed and gauntleted and smoking with Unwinter.
She had also seen the play of greenblack sickness on the horse’s mane. A plagued rider. Panic beat high and thin in her throat, cold sweat tracing down her back with one chill bony finger. At least it was not Unwinter himself, though that was cold comfort indeed.
If she could just slip away, or find an entrance-point, she could be over the border and back in Summer in a trice. Returning empty-handed was better than this. All she needed was a few moments’ worth of quiet—but that, apparently, was just what she was not about to be granted. The silver whistle-cry lifted behind her, eager and searching, and she would have cursed whoever had betrayed her—had it been Goodfellow?—down to the seventh generation if she could have spared the breath.
If someone hadn’t betrayed her, she might be simply unlucky. It was, she supposed, just barely possible. During their season, the Unseelie hunted where they would, and they always liked to do Summer a disservice. Unwinter grudged the Queen her glory, it was said, but perhaps he had just grown tired of her fickleness. Sometimes Robin wondered if the Sundering was a lover’s spat now ossified, King and Queen at each other’s throats by proxy. They were wondrous well matched, from all Robin could tell.
Her skin still crawled. The reek of the mortal tavern clung to her. It was a good attempt at camouflage, but not enough to discourage a Court Unseelie. The riding hunters were far too thoroughly practiced, the lords of the lesser Unseelie accustomed to all the various ways prey sought to escape.
If the plague was Unwinter’s, and the rider suspected what she was about… well, best not to think upon it. Best just to run.