rider had, against all expectation, robbed him of pretty Ragged’s fine voice, Goodfellow would play a tune or two on his pipes, and that would be vengeance enough. Plagued or not, they could still die when he breathed across the tubes.
Any sidhe could.
A MORTAL QUOTIENT
8
The bouncer stared over the swinging door, jaw dropping. Jeremiah hit the wooden panels at a run; one smacked solidly against the mortal and sent him flying. Gallow was already past, a fine evening mist just beginning to solidify into rain kissing his sweating face and hands. The scent was sharper to the right, but he jagged left on instinct. A sidhe who could craft a quirpiece could also craft—or barter for—a breakaway, and if the huntwhistles were so close he could hear them through a mortal brawl, it was time for her to use every trick she could beg or borrow, not to mention steal.
He was rewarded with a shadow slipping down the street, a flicker whose flying hair caught a stray red gleam from a streetlamp. She was flagging, stumbling, and that changed the equation somewhat. Perhaps she didn’t have the endurance—and running in heels, even if you were sidhe, was probably enough to slow down even the fleetest.
The hunter’s whistle came again, to the north, probably over on Colchis Avenue. He marked it and continued, running lightly as he hadn’t done for years, skipping every few steps to avoid the crazyquilt of cracks—break your mother’s back, though his nameless mother was long dead—in the sidewalk and keeping as far as he could to the shadows. The rain would help, and there was no ribbon of scent on the cold, iron-tainted breeze. The breakaway lay glittering on the pavement, sucking in traces of her presence, its other half bouncing merrily away to distract and mislead.
He could still hear hoofbeats plucking at the night; the shadows communicated them over his skin. Silvershod, slender hooves. A rider whose eyes would be cold moonlight, whose laugh would be chill, and whose armor would be chased with sharp, hurtful runes, either blazing with sick white or bloodred.
The hounds commenced belling again, howls and yaps made of sharpsilver ice, and Jeremiah cursed internally.
He could have stopped there. Drawn aside into the shadows and let the hunter pass him by. But the girl had stopped, too, her hair dewed with jewels of rain. She nipped into an alley, her steps slowing.
It was the worst possible choice. Running until your heart gave out was preferable to halting and hoping they would ride past. Sometimes they did find new prey when one proved too quick and determined. Not often, but more often than you could successfully hide.
It was a simple choice. Halt and conceal himself, because he heard the hoofbeats drawing closer and there was a chance the horseman would break through all deception? Or involve himself, again?
The whistle sounded again, savage delight in its trilling. The mortals wouldn’t hear it unless they’d already been touched or hooked; they would simply feel a chill.
Mortal-Tainted and sidhe alike would hear, know, understand.
And fear.
He was already moving. The alley was raw with the smell of garbage, greasy crud sliding under his workboots. A good choice to go to ground, perhaps, if she had been eluding one of the Lesser, not one of either Court.
The Lesser, of any allegiance, did not ride silvershod. They had other means, from a kelpie’s dragging to a boggle’s ghostcold fingerings.
Gallow halted just inside the alley’s mouth. His breath was coming fast but not hard. Not like the woman with her back to the brick wall, fingers spread against it, chin lifted and the skirt of her dress draggled around her knees as if she’d fallen into a puddle. How far had she run tonight?
Pointed chin, high cheekbones, wide-spaced blue eyes. Pale. An aristocratic nose. There was an echo of Daisy, but it was filtered through the hurtful beauty of the sidhe. Her spice-fruit smell carried a tang of iron.
She was mortal-Tainted, quite possibly a full Half. Like him. If she was less than that most salubrious of mixtures, of course a horseman would run her down without even this attempt at escape.
She clutched at the brick wall, her pale hands starfish-spread as if she intended to splinter her fingernails scratching her way through. Ribs flickered under her dress as she panted, and her hair was now weighed down with dampness. The gold hoops dangling from her ears peeped at him, and the first hounds skidded behind him on the