“There is no debt.” The words bolted free. “I was equally at risk.” Now there was a lie, and it stung his lips.
“Nevertheless.” Now she sounded amused. “I didn’t bring sugarpowder, but there’s syrup. You had no buttermilk.”
I had no milk at all, and no bread either. No salt. There’s iron buried under my doorstep. “You’re at least Half. You have to be. Why were you running?”
Her shoulders came up slightly. She piled the pancakes on the plate, turned away to pick up a fork, and spun on her bare heel to face him. Her skirt moved with a low, sweet sound, and her face…
No. She wasn’t Daisy. Still, there was the same nose, and the chin. The beautiful cheekbones. No fading, no intimation of mortal death or sagging on her. “Tainted, but straight Half. I’m under commission, and I… My talents are not like yours.”
“What, you’re Twisted?” Yet there was no twisting on her. A reflexive insult, to keep her at arm’s length. “What was wrong with that knight? We didn’t even exchange names. And he was—”
“Rotting with blackboil. Yes. This won’t stay hot forever.” She all but shoved the plate into his hands, and he took it numbly. “He was plagued. How do you take your coffee? Black?”
He took it with milk, like any self-respecting sidhe. But he merely nodded and retreated. The table had been cleared, papers stacked haphazardly at one end. One of the good blue linen placemats sat there; a sparkling jelly glass held a few weedflowers from the field behind the trailer. She must have dug in a drawer for that placemat, and the sudden fury that shook him made the marks itch on his arms, all the way up to his aching shoulders.
Plagued. But sidhe don’t take ill. Not like that, anyway. There’s poison, and the iron-burn, but neither looks like that.
She busied herself in the kitchen, making little sounds but no longer humming. He stared at the steaming pancakes. Perfectly golden, perfectly round. A ceramic dish Daisy had used as an ashtray held pats of butter, each individually wrapped and probably stolen from a restaurant. The blue ceramic was scrubbed clean, no trace of cigarette remaining.
Robin Ragged. Not a bad name, but not one he’d ever heard of either, and probably not her entire name. He hadn’t given his, either. Well, he wasn’t taking a debt; he didn’t have to give even a use-name.
She tripped blithely around the end of the breakfast bar with a smaller plate. A mound of crispy bacon tangled like tentacles. She set down a coffee mug as well, one he hadn’t seen since the morning after the accident, when he’d filled it with milk and sat, stunned. In this very chair, as a matter of fact. “There. Do you want a glass of milk? I brought orange juice, too.”
“How did you…” Yet he knew how she’d made it over his doorstep. The quirpiece. He glanced instinctively at the counter, to see if she’d left the leaf or stone it had been made from, and his breath caught in his throat.
She followed his glance. The quirpiece sat, glowing-mellow, still silver. Still real.
“I have some small skill as a Realmaker.” Now her bright cheerfulness faltered. Her eyes darkened to indigo now, the irises flooding with dusk. “It makes me… valuable.”
She said it like it meant dangerous. It probably did. The halfbreeds who showed promise as Realmakers were customarily snapped up by both Courts before their third birthdays, changelings sometimes left temporarily in return, except the Realmaker children weren’t returned, and their placeholders not sacrificed in the usual way but buried alive.
So how did this girl know how to cook mortal food? Bannock and apples would have been more a Court-raised Realmaker’s forte.
“I wasn’t taken until I was twelve, and I… have no shadow.” A pretty way of saying there wasn’t a changeling buried in an oaken cask somewhere in Summer, quietly moldering. Her face set itself, a shade less lovely in that moment. “Anyway, I’m under commission now. Summer may possibly be grateful for your aid, and she’ll reward you. If you want it.” A quick nervous flicker of her tongue as she wet her lips. “I’d caution you, though. Court isn’t safe nowadays.”
Of course, she wouldn’t refer to Summer by her formal name, even with the Queen before. Only a fullblood would do such a thing. And Court, safe? A bubbling chuckle rose up like acid in him. “It never was.” He stabbed at the pancakes.