Soon the child was gamboling merrily among the ladies-in-waiting, who petted and cosseted him under the Queen’s gaze. The rogue drew close, whispering in Summer’s ear as she drank from a moonwrought chalice, and if her laughter rang a little harshly, none dared to remark upon it.
Quite a few of the assembled sidhe smiled cruelly at the thought of Ragged Robin’s return, even as they fed the boy ambrosial bits and crowned him with glossy chantment-wrought laurel.
SHADOWCOIN
11
Four ambulances. Cops everywhere sorting out the mess. Broken car windows and other detritus crunched underfoot. One car was a fuming hulk, firefighters still dousing it with foam or fog or something. Jeremiah watched, the marks on his arms tingling as the lance, unsatisfied, ached for release.
There were bodybags. Three of them loaded into coroners’ vans. The quirpiece had done its work well, and a crowded bar on a Friday night was never too difficult to tip into chaos. Lowered inhibitions, petty pride, and rough words were fertile ground for any seed of mischief.
He stepped back into shadow, his skin alive with twitching adrenaline. His truck was at the other end of the parking lot; Panko’s ancient Volkswagen van listed slightly to the right half a block up the street. He couldn’t see Clyde’s motorcycle; a fire engine was blocking the view.
He searched for Panko’s familiar wide broad bulk, or Clyde’s muttonchops and baseball cap. Nothing yet. The quirpiece was a cold weight in his pocket. By morning it would be crumbling mud, or leaf sludge. Of all the uses such a sidhe chantment could be put to, this was one of his least favorite.
It was amazing to watch human beings cooperate in the face of disaster. Sidhe response would be… otherwise. The humans, they swarmed to comfort one another and repair the damage. Someone wept in huge messy gulps, while someone else made soothing sounds.
He kept looking, unwilling to leave his vantage point until he saw a familiar face. Maybe it was his mortal half forcing him to tarry. Maybe it was the traitorous ache in muscles he hadn’t used in a while—construction kept you in shape, but combat was another thing entirely.
Clyde, his head wrapped in a white bandage, stood stolidly at the edge of a knot of people corralled in a corner of the parking lot away from the action—the lightly wounded section. His hands hung loose at his sides, and his bald spot glowed under the assault of light, circled by white gauze.
Jeremiah eased forward. There was no crowd of onlookers; the Wagon Wheel was at the end of a street packed with warehouses, well after quitting time. Everyone who was likely to gawp had been involved. Nobody even looked at him.
Except Clyde, who glanced up dully. “Gallow.” He blinked, and his face settled back into sullen shock.
“Clyde. Jesus. Panko?”
The foreman pointed at the coroner’s van.
“No.” Jeremiah didn’t have to work to sound shocked. “What the hell?”
“Someone had a knife. Where’d you go?”
“Ended up outside.” Just like a sidhe—lie with the truth. “I thought, that girl…”
“What girl?” Clyde scratched at his cheek gingerly. His gaze was very far away. Maybe shock, or just too exhausted to respond. A stripe of drying blood on his cheek smudged as he rubbed at it with his knuckles. His hand dropped back down again, a limp, callused fish. “Cops took my name. Fuck.”
“You didn’t do anything.” Fat lot of good it would do, though. The truth never shielded anyone. Not in this world, certainly never in Summer or Unwinter… and, he’d bet, not even beyond the Second Veil itself, in those realms even the fullborn feared to tread.
“Yeah, well.” Clyde shook his head. “One minute, everything’s fine. The next, Jesus. All hell breaks loose.”
He would probably be repeating that for a while. A mortal trick, seeking acceptance through repetition. Just like pacing outside a hospital room, wearing a rut in the linoleum as your wife tried to breathe with the aid of mortal machines, her fragile body shattered by mischance.
Jeremiah shut his mouth. Stood close enough to feel the other man’s heat. Death smelled like brass, and tasted of the bitterness in his throat now.
Just like a sidhe to spread this chaos. She’d been trying to escape, but…
Had she even thought of the trouble a quirpiece would spread in a human hole, with alcohol lowering inhibitions and—
That’s not the real point, Jeremiah. He winced as his conscience pinched him. He had probably led the rider right