War For The Oaks Part 25

"No, I tried to follow you. Dammit, girl, if you don't tell me what happened and whether you're all right, I'm gonna come over there and see for myself."

"Ah... I don't think you should come over just now." The phouka was watching her, his head c.o.c.ked.

w.i.l.l.y was pacing the living room, or rather limping it. Eddi put her hand over the mouthpiece and hissed at him, "Sit down, for G.o.dsake! If you stayed off it, it wouldn't hurt!"

"What?" said Carla ominously.

"Listen, I'm fine. I'm just really beat. And I'd tell you the rest of it, but I can't just now. I'll call you tomorrow, okay?"

"Eddi! No, it is not okay. I was going crazy all afternoon, trying to figure out what to do. And I knew there wasn't any point in asking you about it, because you wouldn't tell me-"

"I wondered why you didn't mention it."

"Anyway, I decided I'd follow you. You couldn't do anything about it if I just showed up. So we sat in the car and waited 'til you left-"

"Wait a minute. What do you mean, 'we'?"

There was a long silence on the other end. "I brought Danny."

"You brought Danny. How much does Danny know?"

Carla made an impatient noise. "What could I do? Tell him, 'Hey, you wanna stake out Eddi's place?

Just for fun?' I had to tell him what I was doing."

Eddi sighed. "I suppose he thinks I'm out of my mind."

"No, he thinks I am."

"He's right."

w.i.l.l.y had begun a low-voiced conversation with the phouka, full of half-audible distracting phrases.

"Listen, kiddo," she said at last to Carla. "w.i.l.l.y and the phouka are both here, and I have to keep them from eating each other. I will call you back tomorrow, I promise."

"w.i.l.l.y?" Carla said.

"Oh, h.e.l.l. Tomorrow, okay?"

"Sheesh." Carla hung up.

"... it's not as if it was easy under normal circ.u.mstances," w.i.l.l.y was saying fiercely as Eddi replaced the receiver.

The phouka looked smug. "You were warned. The glaistig learned that first night that she was... less than susceptible."

"You'll forgive me," w.i.l.l.y said, his voice br.i.m.m.i.n.g with sarcasm, "if I point out that I'm rather better than a glaistig."

Eddi could see the phouka mastering his anger. "Humility does come to you slowly, doesn't it?" he said at last, deceptively mild.

"What are you talking about?" Eddi asked.

w.i.l.l.y turned away. "Nothing you should know."

"Oh, yeah? That usually means exactly the opposite." She switched her glare to the phouka.

"It's not mine to tell, sweet. But I don't think you should stop asking." And he grinned fiendishly at w.i.l.l.y.

"Well?" she said, when w.i.l.l.y glowered at her.

"We were talking about your resistance to glamour."

She stared at him. "You've tried it on me?"

"Yes."

"And failed?"

"Not entirely."

Of course not. She'd thought him human, hadn't she? But she had a dreadful, growing suspicion that he'd done more than disguise his appearance. "What did you do?" she asked, barely above a whisper.

He wore the haughty little smile that she was quickly coming to a.s.sociate with the Sidhe. "I made you a little easier to deal with."

"I told you once tonight, say what you mean."

"When you objected to something I did or said, I blunted that objection. When you might have thought I was behaving strangely, I clouded your mind, and you accepted whatever I was doing."

She felt grimy, and she didn't think a shower would take care of it. "You made me fall in love with you."

"I did not."

"The h.e.l.l you didn't! You pretended to be a different kind of person entirely, and you forced me to believe it. The man I thought I was with when I was with you doesn't exist! What do you think falling in love is?"

"What does that have to do with it?" w.i.l.l.y frowned.

He honestly didn't know. Sadness took a little of the edge off her anger. "So," she said heavily, "what was the problem? Everything you did seems to have worked."

w.i.l.l.y ignored her distress-or perhaps he didn't notice it. "It was d.a.m.n difficult to keep it up. You didn't stay pacified, and after a while I realized that though I could make the glamour work on you, it never worked as thoroughly as it should." He looked thoughtful. "I'd love to know why."

Eddi shook her head. He'd toyed with reality, bent her perceptions, and showed not the least guilt at the admission. She felt a lingering desire to punch his exquisite nose.

The phouka laughed softly, and Eddi and w.i.l.l.y both looked at him. "A lad so widely traveled as yourself, and you don't know the answer to that?"

w.i.l.l.y's expression was eloquent, even for w.i.l.l.y.

"A great pity," said the phouka. "You'd do well to read Yeats. But I suppose you haven't time, just now."

"Are you going to say anything useful, or are you going to pat yourself on the back?" w.i.l.l.y snapped.

"Both. She has her own glamour, w.i.l.l.y lad. All poets do, all the bards and artists, all the musicians who truly take the music into their hearts. They all straddle the border of Faerie, and they see into both worlds.

Not dependably into either, perhaps, but that uncertainty keeps them honest and at a distance."

Eddi found all this uncomfortable to hear. It wasn't that she was being described in the third person; more that someone else was being described, and called by her name.

"Does this sound familiar yet?" the phouka asked w.i.l.l.y, in his sweetest voice.

"Oh, I'd stop you if it did," w.i.l.l.y muttered. "Trust me."

"I am surrounded by people with no appreciation for history. Ah, well. In a time when we were stronger and more numerous, we sought out mortal men and women with that dual vision, kept company with them, and sometimes carried them away with us."

"I know that" w.i.l.l.y said.

"We usually did badly by them, in the end." The phouka glanced at Eddi then, and she saw regret or sorrow in his face. "But we cannot resist the lure of that mortal brilliance. It is its own kind of glamour, that dazzles the senses. And once we have found it, we cannot turn away."

It was explanation and apology at once, and Eddi realized that it was meant mostly for her. She wanted to tell the phouka that it was all right, but w.i.l.l.y was there, and she couldn't do it in front of him.

"So I can't work magic on her because she already has magic of her own?" w.i.l.l.y was asking the phouka.

"For the sake of brevity, more or less."

w.i.l.l.y squinted as if with a headache. "Oak and Ash. And you've... what she heard tonight... Oak and Ash."

The phouka leaned back, cradling his coffee cup and smiling.

w.i.l.l.y looked up at him sharply. "Did you plan all this from the beginning?"

The phouka's smile turned bitter. "All the parts of it that you're asking about, yes."

For a long moment, w.i.l.l.y gnawed his lower lip and glared. "And it's all gone just the way you wanted, hasn't it?"

The phouka's only answer was a crack of harsh laughter.

"I could gag you," w.i.l.l.y said.

"You wouldn't... ah, yes, I suppose you would dare. Who would teach her, then?"

"No one," w.i.l.l.y replied, soft-voiced and precise.

"All my work for naught?"

"If I knew what you were working toward, you might get a little sympathy out of me!"

"I work toward a victory for the Seelie Court."

"Why do I think that's only half an answer? Never mind. I'm too tired to go around in circles with you now."

"Pity." The phouka sighed. "I was just about to offer you first watch."

w.i.l.l.y shrugged. "I can handle it."

"Good. I very much doubt I could. Wake me at sunrise." And he set his coffee cup on the trunk, stretched out on the couch with his back to the room, and appeared to fall instantly asleep.

"Lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d," w.i.l.l.y muttered.

Eddi got up from her chair. "Very interesting," she said. "Teach me what?"

"I'd forgotten you were there," w.i.l.l.y said.

"I thought you had. Answer the question."

"Teach you-oh." He laughed weakly. "No. If I answer you, you'll have had your first lesson, and I won't be responsible for that. But ask him when he wakes up. I've left him free to tell you. Try not to make me regret that, all right?"

Eddi unfolded the afghan from the back of the armchair and threw it over the phouka. He didn't stir.

"No promises," she said. "If you want promises, I have to know what the h.e.l.l you're talking about. And you don't want that, do you?" She headed for the bathroom door. "Practice tomorrow at 4:30. See you there."

"Eddi." His voice stopped her on the threshold. "About the band..."

"Yeah?" She held her breath.

The silence went on for long enough that she turned to look at him.

"Hedge," he said, "is one of us."

Us. It took an instant for her to understand. Then she stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind her. What, after all, could she say to that?

chapter 13 Do You Believe in Magic?

Her denim jacket was mended and clean. Eddi stood in the living room with the thing hanging from her fingers, and squinted at the phouka through a deluge of noon sun.

"It wasn't me," he told her.

"Well, it sure wasn't me."

The phouka leaned in the kitchen doorway. He was wearing navy chalk-stripe pleated trousers with cuffs, a pink band-collared s.h.i.+rt with the sleeves rolled up, and suspenders embroidered with-were they?

Yes, they were. Palm trees.

"The G.o.dfather meets Miami Vice," Eddi muttered. "How's your head?"

"Perfect, of course," he said. He swept his hair back from his forehead to show her a short, pink scar.