War For The Oaks Part 30

"Carla?" Eddi said. "Carla, calm down. Are you hysterical, or what?"

"No, no, it's-oh, G.o.d, you'll kill me. I can't tell you." And she burst into another fit of giggles.

"Carla..."

"Eddi and the Fey!" Carla squeaked, and had another attack.

"What?" said Eddi.

w.i.l.l.y rubbed his chin. "Not bad."

"Quite good, actually," the phouka seconded.

Dan began to grin. "Sure doesn't make us sound like something we're not."

Hedge seemed to be trying not to smile.

Eddi looked around at all of them, wondering if they had gone mad simultaneously. "What? You mean-good grief, as a band name? You're all crackers."

"Nah," Dan said. "It'll be great."

"Eddi and the Fey," w.i.l.l.y said, wrapping his splendid voice around it and making it resonate.

"h.e.l.l, I'm smart," Carla sighed happily.

"I suppose form demands that it be put to a vote," said the phouka. "All in favor?"

Three fey hands and two mortal ones went up, as Eddi flapped hers helplessly. "Who said this was a democracy?" she wailed, and no one paid the least attention. It wouldn't help a bit, she reflected, to rule that the roadie couldn't vote. Besides, it was growing on her. Eddi and the Fey. It embarra.s.sed her, putting her own name in the band's. But it was her band....

They'd fallen silent, and watched her eagerly. "n.o.body'll know what it means," Eddi warned.

"Jefferson Airplane," Carla intoned. "X. The Psychedelic Furs. At least this one you can look up in a dictionary."

"Well..."

"And it's a lot better than InKline Plain."

"Okay," Eddi said. "But if anybody laughs, I'm gonna tell who made it up."

"You're late," said the phouka, and they scrambled for the door.

Eddi used the new name to introduce the band. No one laughed; they applauded and yelled.

She led off alone on the intro to "When You Were Mine," her guitar thin and high and lonely. Then the rest of the band swelled up under that, with w.i.l.l.y on his electric demon fiddle. Carla and Dan had come up with a bizarre percussive patch for one of the synthesizers, and hung it on the end of the fiddle's phrases. The effect was that of a succession of violins being bitten neatly in half.

Eddi found that the single-minded frenzy of the first set had pa.s.sed. She still had the crackling energy, but she had a clear head to use it with as well. She tried to make every note glow; she felt the rest of the band respond to that and stretch like a racehorse seeking that one winning length. And they listened to each other. A sudden musical discovery by any one of them would be picked up immediately by the others, so quickly it must have looked rehea.r.s.ed.

The party was supposed to end at 11:30, but with the encore they ran late. "An encore," Carla grinned.

"These people must all run marathons in their spare time. Jesus Christ." But they played it, wringing wet and panting, and if the crowd was reduced by weariness to a sort of vigorous swaying-in-place, n.o.body seemed to mind.

Afterward, people came up to the stage and told them they were a wonderful band. Eddi had forgotten that things like that happened. It was all she could do to say, "Thank you," instead of, "My G.o.d, aren't we?" Was Hedge right? Was all this too good to last? Let him be wrong, let him be wrong, Eddi prayed.

They tore down their equipment; then Eddi went to the ladies' room and washed the sweat off her face. She studied her badly lit reflection in the mirror and grinned. No, she looked exactly as she had when she left her apartment that evening. Well, exhausted. But she still felt as if the night's work should have changed her. "Great band," she told the mirror, and went back to the gallery.

Something was wrong. The phouka stood at the lip of the stage, one of w.i.l.l.y's cables half-coiled between his hands. w.i.l.l.y was on his feet, too. The double doors were still open, but the station wagon was gone-no sign of Carla or Dan. Hedge stood in the doorway, and if Eddi were to believe his face, someone had glued his feet to the sill and he wasn't happy about it.

Their attention was fixed on a woman who stood on the dance floor, looking up at them. Her back was to the gallery door, and all Eddi could see of her was the smooth, s.h.i.+ning coil of her black hair, her gray trench coat cut long and full, sheer black stockings, and black lizard pumps. She carried a wide-brimmed black hat in one hand.

From behind, she was elegant but nothing more. The phouka, however, was in front of the woman, and his expression...

He was afraid. It was difficult to tell at first; but he looked past the woman in the trench coat and saw Eddi, and she was sure. The phouka was afraid, and for her.

w.i.l.l.y's chin was up in that haughty way of his. Something about that seemed odd, but Eddi hadn't time to think about it. She stepped warily toward the stage.

She could have sworn that the woman had seen the phouka's look, and knew Eddi was behind her. But she didn't turn. She was speaking in a low, pleasantly hoa.r.s.e voice, and as Eddi drew near she heard her say to the phouka, "Well, my compliments. I couldn't have done better myself."

The phouka bit his lip for an instant, then lapsed again into stillness.

"This is no business of yours," w.i.l.l.y said, but not with any great certainty.

"Isn't it? Perhaps you don't think so." Eddi heard laughter in the woman's voice as she turned a thin hand toward the phouka. "But I'd bet he wouldn't agree."

Eddi took a deep breath. "May I help you?" she said crisply. "I'm the bandleader."

The phouka closed his eyes.

The trench-coated woman inclined her head, as if thinking about Eddi's offer, then, in no discernible hurry, she turned around.

Not beautiful-she was too feline for anyone to comfortably call her beautiful. Her gleaming black hair was sc.r.a.ped severely back from her face, which made her gray almond eyes look as huge as a cat's. Her eyebrows were thick and black, and their high arch gave her a look of perpetual gentle surprise. She had a small, narrow nose, dwarfed by the rest of her face, and a wide, well-shaped mouth painted the color of cyclamen petals. Her cheekbones were p.r.o.nounced, and her chin was pointed. She was tall, wide- shouldered, and narrow-hipped, and looked very good in the cream-colored suit under the trench coat.

She tipped her head and smiled. "You must be Eddi, then-oh, unless it's one of those band names."

"No. No, it's... I'm Eddi." In the fourth grade she'd had a teacher like this, gracious of manner, elegant of person even on a teacher's wages. Eddi had adored her.

"So pleased to meet you. Your band is fabulous." The woman extended one of her thin hands to Eddi.

Of course, the teacher's wages had, as it turned out, been supplemented.... "Thank you. But I think you'd better get to the point." Eddi put her hands in her pockets.

Those black arched eyebrows climbed a little more. "I beg your pardon?" Her voice remained pleasant, and for a dreadful moment Eddi doubted.

But she pressed on anyway. "They'll tell me all about you as soon as you leave," Eddi said, pointing at the phouka and w.i.l.l.y. Hedge, she saw, now stood openmouthed behind the stage. "I know all the things I'm not supposed to know. So there's no point in pretending."

The woman looked at w.i.l.l.y and the phouka, neither surprised nor displeased. Then her attention returned to Eddi. "How did you guess I wasn't just another audience member? For the sake of my curiosity, you understand."

"The way w.i.l.l.y acted. One of his redeeming social graces is that he almost never subjects mortal strangers to that nose-in-the-air routine. I saw him do it to you when I came in, and it bothered me, until I realized that either you weren't a stranger, or you weren't mortal."

She laughed. "Or both. But why did you a.s.sume I wasn't one of your allies, and decline to shake my hand?"

"The way the phouka behaved," Eddi said.

The woman turned another look, longer this time, on the stage. "Ah, of course, your watchdog. Don't trust too much to one guardian-he's not incorruptible, my dear."

"Who is?"

The woman's throaty laugh was quite genuine. "Exactly! I've built a very old reputation on that principle."

Hedge took a step forward, his hands curled into fists and raised. Eddi and the dark woman turned almost in unison, each equally wary, it seemed, of breaking eye contact.

The dark woman stared at Hedge, then smiled one of her quiet smiles. He glowered and turned his face away.

"Leave him alone," Eddi said quietly. "We're not on the battlefield now."

"No, we aren't-quite." The woman returned her attention to Eddi. "And there are better targets."

She set her black hat on her head at a striking angle, casting a diagonal of shadow across her features.

"Again," she said to Eddi, "a marvelous band, and I was delighted to meet you. I'm sure we'll see one another soon." And she left the gallery, her heels making small, sharp noises with the measured cadence of her stride.

"Front door's locked," Eddi said thoughtfully.

"Oh," w.i.l.l.y replied, "she'll get out."

The phouka sank down on the edge of the stage and buried his face in his hands. Eddi hurried to him, alarmed.

"Phouka...?"

"Heart failure," he murmured through his fingers. "I warned you, my primrose, that I would be like to die of it, should you go on as you have."

She made a disgusted noise and pulled his hair. He lowered his hands and grinned wickedly up at her.

"Creep," she said. "All right, guys, who was that?"

Hedge looked at his feet. The phouka drew breath to answer, but it was w.i.l.l.y who spoke first. "The Queen of Air and Darkness," he said. His voice was soft and pitched low, but every surface in the room seemed to catch his words and whisper them back.

w.i.l.l.y was standing at the back of the stage, his eyes fixed on the empty oblong of the gallery door. He rubbed his hands absently over his upper arms, as if he suffered from cold and knew there was no relief for it.

"She scares you," Eddi said.

"She scares anyone with any sense," w.i.l.l.y replied sharply. He stepped off the back of the stage and went outside through the double doors. After a moment and a long inscrutable look at Eddi, Hedge went, too.

"Where are Carla and Dan?" Eddi asked the phouka after a respectful silence.

"On their way home."

"No ma.s.s outing for coffee?"

"They didn't seem in need of it," the phouka said.

Eddi raised her eyebrows. "Which didn't they need, the caffeine or the camaraderie?"

"They seemed quite happy, and almost incapable of beginning a sentence, let alone finis.h.i.+ng one."

"You're right. They need to sleep. Well, then tell me who the Queen of Air and Darkness is."

"You don't-? Ah, of course. Never mind. She rules the Unseelie Court."

Eddi took a deep breath; it wobbled when she let it out. "Oh." Then she added, "I guess I understand why you might feel heart failure coming on."

"I should not have said that," he said seriously. "You managed that confrontation very well indeed, my sweet. I suppose I spoke out of a spasm of guilt-here was the villain of the piece, and I had done nothing to prepare you for her."

"Is she really the villain?" Eddi sat down on the stage next to him. "I kind of liked her."

With a rueful snort, he replied, "It would hardly be to her advantage, my primrose, to be repulsive."

"Why did she tell me you could be corrupted?"

"Oak and Ash," the phouka muttered, "do you remember everything that's said to you? She was sowing at random, hoping that a seed of doubt would find fertile ground in you."

"Well, it didn't," Eddi said crisply.

The phouka turned and studied her face. She resisted the sudden shyness that urged her to look away.

"Thank you," he murmured.

"Any time," she said lightly, but she thought, If I'm not supposed to thank him, what the h.e.l.l does it mean if he thanks me?

"If you're interested," w.i.l.l.y's voice came from behind them, "there wasn't any fertile ground here, either."

"What?" The phouka looked confused; then his frown disappeared and he turned to w.i.l.l.y, who stood in the door. "Ah, that's right-she aimed a bolt or two at you, didn't she?"

w.i.l.l.y strolled in and sat next to Eddi. He was trying to seem at ease, his equilibrium recovered. It was very different from the real thing. "I don't think she seriously intended them to work," w.i.l.l.y said. "She was shooting in the dark, probably, just to see if anything would break."

"So you no longer think I might be her agent?"

"She wouldn't have made the crack about not doing better herself if you were."

"I shouldn't point out, I suppose, that she might have done it to lay your suspicions."

w.i.l.l.y looked disgusted. "Don't be a pain in the a.s.s."

"I thought I was being a devil's advocate." The phouka looked brightly at Eddi. "Are they synonymous?"

"Don't be a pain in the a.s.s." Eddi smiled and shook her head at him. Then she turned to w.i.l.l.y. "Where's Hedge?"

"He's gone home."

It occurred to her that she didn't know where or what Hedge considered home. "We should follow his lead. It's been a long night, kids."