And next to his dead wife was a gaptooth child, another girl. Older, just a little, but both of them held the promise of beauty. Anyone could see it. They’ll grow up to be stunners, an observer would say, squinting at the fading image.
Their arms around each other, their hair clearly redgold, but the older girl… well, the half-nervous smile, the way her thin knees rested under her dress, the pearliness of her teeth all shouted sidhe.
At least, now that he knew what he’d been looking at, they did.
“Is it true?” He skidded to a halt just at the edge of the orchard and suddenly realized she was gasping to breathe. A mortal man might have cared. Jeremiah just hitched his backpack higher and grabbed her other arm. Shook her, so sharply her head bobbled. “Is it true?”
Tears slicked her cheeks. Was she crying for the boy? Goddamn sidhe and their little games.
“Damn you, answer me!”
Robin’s sob, bit in half, hit him like ice water, right in the face. Her hair bounced, curtaining her expression, and suddenly she was Daisy during one of their few fights. Hit me if you gotta, Jer. Just don’t leave me.
As if he would. As if he would raise a hand to her. Daisy’s flinching told him much about her early life, the things she didn’t speak about, and he had let them lie.
Robin’s flinch spoke the same language.
“Christ,” he breathed, unmindful of the way the blasphemy shriveled into blackness and fell to his feet, shredding in the sunshine. “Come on.” His grip did not gentle, and she still didn’t struggle. Just let him bear her along, like a breathing, pliable doll.
All in all, he supposed, it was pretty much how he’d feared walking into Summer again would go.
They stepped over the border into a chill late-spring mortal morning, the uncommon bite in the air making much more sense now that he’d seen the Gates firmly closed. This particular exit was ancient and well-worn, and he might have been more worried about someone watching it if not for Robin’s pallor and her gasping.
Even while weeping, splotches of red on her cheeks and her nose pink-raw, she was still beautiful. It was pure sidhe, and its similarity to Daisy both curdled his stomach and started an ache down low where a man did most of his thinking before he learned better.
If he ever did.
There were bruises on her bare, milk-pale arms, rising swift and ugly. Deep red-black, the marks of his fingers clearly visible. Even though she could probably hurt him past Twisting him if she opened her mouth and let that massive orchestral noise loose, he’d still bruised a woman.
A sidhe, though. Did she count as defenseless?
Once you started thinking like that, were you any better than a murderous highborn, or a drink-maddened mortal?
Just look at her. Or better, don’t. It’ll only get you in trouble.
He glanced at the sky, took in the terrain. A dead-end street, juicy-greening blackberry bushes with long tearing thorns making an arch over this small doorway in a concrete wall. The door itself was closed, age-blackened wood and tarnished metal buried under the vines. No prying, watching eyes he could see, and it was daylight. Still, going blindly for a familiar exit wasn’t wise.
Losing his goddamn mind in front of her hadn’t been wise either.
Robin’s gasping quieted, little by little. She flinched when he tried clumsily to wipe at her wet cheeks, and the tiny cowering movement was so much like Daisy’s a hot acid bubble rose under his breastbone.
It was that flinch that made it truth. Even a Realmaker couldn’t be glamoured this thoroughly. She even smelled right, Half and mortal flesh both.
What were the chances of seeing her in that bar? What were the chances of anything, now that both Summer and Unwinter were involved?
Now that he had to, he was thinking about the accident again. A long straightaway of dry pavement. A single oak tree across a ditch. A parched autumn night, no frost, nothing to make Daisy’s car—a reliable sedan he had bargained for in a dusty lot off Shreves Avenue—veer, jump the ditch, and ram into the only obstruction.
Her body, tumbled across the field. No seat belt, Mr. Gallow. Did she often drive without it?
No. Never. Numb and shaking, had he really only thought it was ill-luck? Chance? Misfortune?
I’ll tell you, Gallow-my-glass, she met a sidhe.
Which could mean anything mortal-Tainted, a quarter sidhe or above.
The Polaroid he remembered, tucked safely in his dresser, had a