Spirits White as Lightning Read online

  He couldn't help but get excited about the prospect of playing with the banjo-Bard again. Gigging with another good musician was one of the things he liked to do best, but gigging with another Bard had been an experience so enchanting that he couldn't wait to do it again. Kory nodded his understanding, and the more enthusiastic Eric got, the more pleased Kory looked—but Beth was frowning.

  "I don't know, Banyon," she said slowly, her brows furrowing with unease. "This could all be a setup. I don't like it—I mean, you don't know anything about this guy—not really! Isn't it just a little too convenient that he's busking at your subway station just as you get out of class?" She put down her tea and shifted uneasily in her seat on the couch.

  It was hard, now, to remember what Beth had been like when he first met her—hard to remember what he'd been like, come to that—but he knew she hadn't been this suspicious, jumping-at-shadows paranoid. Since Griffith Park, and everything that followed after, every year Beth seemed to be darker, more intense, more focused—and not entirely in a good way, either. It was as if the person she might have become had been destroyed by this other self—and equally true that she had always held the potential to become either one. He supposed it bothered him more because he'd been counting on Maeve to erase all the scars and make Beth the person she'd been at twenty. But that wasn't ever going to happen. Done was done, and living things changed.

  But some changes weren't for the better.

  "Bethie, this guy couldn't be a Fed," Eric answered firmly. "I've been here almost a year—if anyone were looking for me, they'd have found me already. Besides, no Fed I ever saw looked or acted like Hosea, or could. They're just not good enough actors."

  "He doesn't have to be a Fed," she argued, leaning forward, her face intent. "What about those people that were using LlewellCo as a front to make mages on crack or whatever it was? What about the guys with the pet Nightflyers that were after us in San Francisco?"

  "Not a chance. Trust me, those kind of guys stink of bad juju a mile away," he insisted. "I'd know. Believe me, I'd know." I'm a Bard, Bethie. This is what being a Bard is. I'd know.

  But Beth still wasn't willing to drop the subject. "Maybe," she said grudgingly. "But you have to admit that the story is just—awfully pat. In fact, this sounds like a classic con job to me!"

  Oh, Bethie, when did you become so stubborn, so blind? You used to be able to see what was right in front of your nose better than most people!

  "He's a Bard, Bethie," Eric said patiently, throttling his irritation. After all, she had every reason to be paranoid; she wasn't Underhill ninety percent of her time because she wanted to be, she was there because "They" were after her. He'd never understood why it was Bethie they wanted, and not him or Kory, but there was no arguing with the facts.

  "I'm telling you. I couldn't make a mistake about this. Trust me. I know he's a Bard; you can't fake that. I know he's one of the good guys—it's in his music. A Bard can't hide what he is—at least, not from another Bard. And anyway, a Bard isn't going to try to con another Bard! What would the point be? Anything he can get from me he can get for himself a lot easier just by using his magic!"

  "Not if what he wants is you," Beth said, her jaw set in a stubborn line of temper.

  "A Bard would not betray another Bard, acushla," Kory said, coming to Eric's defense. He put a hand on Beth's knee soothingly. "I know this. And our Eric is no fool; he can weigh the human heart as easily as I could weigh an egg."

  Beth looked from Kory's face to Eric and back again, and finally shrugged and sat back. "I suppose," she said grudgingly, then smiled with a visible effort. "Well, you've done all right so far. I guess"—now it was her turn to falter—"I guess you don't need us to shepherd you anymore."

  Eric forced a grin, though he'd rarely felt less like smiling. "Like you ever did—or at least, any more than I did the same for you two!" Eric scoffed, and the other two looked a little shamefaced and ill-at-ease.

  They were all so uncertain with each other! This wasn't the easy seamless reunion he'd imagined. It was as if they'd never been friends and lovers, as if they were meeting now for the first time, none of them knowing the others any too well.

  And that would never have happened in the past, either.

  Greystone got to his feet, stretching his wings. "Well, I'll thank ye now for a foigne evening, but it's going I have to be. Can't be spending all me time away from me duties, y'know." He clumped across the room to the windowsill and ducked out onto the fire escape. "But any time ye need a sitter for the wee one, just gi' me a shout, eh?" In moments, he was back in his post on the cornice above.

  Once he was gone, a silence descended that was just a bit too uncomfortable, and Eric hastened to break it.

  "So is there anything planned for Maeve?" he asked, figuring that the baby was the subject least likely to cause any more awkwardness. "I mean, like a christening or a baby shower or something?"

  "Oh, aye!" Kory brightened up again, his delight in Maeve transparently obvious. "There's the Naming ceremony—you'll be coming, of course—"

  "Of course," Eric assured them quickly, and was rewarded by smiles.

  "She will be brought up to the Court for it—you've never seen the Court, Eric—it is a sight beyond compare—and there'll be the godparents speaking for her, and a ceileighe, of course—"

  Kory went on at great length, using a number of words Eric didn't know, but he did manage to gather that the real reason for the Naming was to have the biggest party Underhill had seen for a long, long time. Guests from every Elfhame known would be invited, and the ceremony itself would serve to confirm Beth's place as a member of the Underhill community. In one way Underhill was like a family—or the extended family of Rennies—in that it functioned as much as a web of kinships and relationships as after the fashion of a true feudal society. To be known, and to know people in turn, was the very foundation of Sidhe life. As the old saying went: it wasn't what you knew, but who you knew. . . .

  All of this made Eric feel acutely aware of how very much he was no longer really a part of their lives, though he tried very hard not to show it. After all, that was the point of his being here, wasn't it? He had a different sort of life to lead, now, and it was nothing like theirs. It didn't even take place in the same world. Literally.

  It's done. The break's a fact. He'd known that, he really had—but here it was in front of him, undeniable, and Eric's throat suddenly knotted with a surge of loneliness that took him entirely by surprise.

  He was so lost for a moment in his own thoughts that he missed the change in conversation.

  "—think you're going to ask Ria?" Beth was saying hesitantly.

  Eric stared at her blankly. To the Naming? You're asking me that? Beth obviously mistook his blank incomprehension for something else, because she flushed and added hastily, "If it hasn't been a good idea to bring up her father and how she was born, I understand, but Kory and I haven't had much luck in finding out anything for ourselves. And I thought . . ."

  He shook off his melancholy with a start, and frantically tried to put the bits of conversation together into a coherent whole. Ria—Perenor—oh, of course! Not the Naming. About Sidhe/human crossbreeding.

  "I have asked her, actually," he said, hoping he hadn't looked too blank. "I even told her why—well, I had to, she came out and asked me," he added, in response to Beth's sudden scowl.

  "Oh, I'm sure she was only too pleased with that—" Beth snapped.

  "She's not your enemy," was all Eric said, not defensively, but determined that the feud between Beth and Ria—if there was one—was not going to go on. Maybe bringing Ria to the Naming would be a good idea after all. Beth can't throw a fit in the middle of a big party, and Ria needs to get on good terms with her relatives. Half her heritage is Sidhe. You can't just ignore something like that.

  "She risked her life to save the Sun-Descending Nexus—and paid a heavy price for her help," Eric said firmly. "Elizabet and Kayla both say she's okay. Whatev
er happened in the past is over with, and if she could have told me anything that would help, she would have.

  "Unfortunately, she says—and I believe her—that what Perenor did in order to father a child on her mortal mother was not something we'd want to repeat." He shook his head, and sighed. He hated to disappoint them—Beth and Kory wanted a child of their own so badly—but Ria's information had been pretty grim.

  "You remember how we found out that Perenor drained all those young kids that would have been Bards if they'd had a chance to grow into their power?" he asked.

  "And left them sad, empty husks, aye," Kory said, slowly, the horror of it dawning on him. "Do you mean—that was what he used to make the woman conceive?" The Sidhe knight drew back in horror, his green eyes wide.

  "In a nutshell, yeah. He kept draining them for other reasons and other magics later, but that was the first thing he used them for." Eric shuddered. He'd seen a couple of the kids—Elizabet, their human Healer-friend, had gotten some of them as patients once she'd known they were there to look for—and in Eric's personal opinion, they'd have been better off dead. Actually, most of them had died, especially at first, and to Eric's mind, they'd been the lucky ones.

  If anyone had taken the music, the life, the dreams I'd had out of my world and left it gray and drained and empty, I wouldn't have wanted to live.

  Ria had told him that the actual spell Perenor had used had been a bit more complicated than simple draining. Perenor had forced two of the incipient Bards—one of them Ria's uncle, her mother's twin—into a kind of mind-bond; they'd hated and feared him and each other, and when they realized what he was doing, it had driven them crazy before it killed them. The backlash had damaged Ria's hippie mother's mind, leaving her with so many mental kinks her psyche resembled a ball of steel wool and an insatiable craving for drugs that could not be explained by normal addictions—if you could call an "addiction" normal. Eric got the feeling she hadn't lasted long after Ria ran away and took refuge with her loving father, either. Perenor probably protected her from herself only so long as she and her friends were useful, literally "minding the baby."

  "You're right," Beth said flatly, as Eric's explanation faltered to a stop. "That's not something we'd want to repeat. So it's a dead end. Another dead end." She seemed to fold in upon herself, as if the disappointment were a palpable weight.

  There didn't seem to be much else Eric could say, and the conversation stumbled awkwardly into another subject. Eventually, around about three in the morning, Eric smothered a yawn and Greystone poked his head in the window.

  "Streets are quiet as a nun's funeral," he said. "Are ye plannin' on stayin' the night, then?"

  Beth and Kory looked at each other, a quick sort of "married people" glance.

  "You can have the bedroom," Eric offered quickly. "Just like always. You know the couch makes up into a good bed—you picked it out, remember?—and it won't be the first time I've fallen asleep on it."

  But Kory and Beth exchanged another one of those looks that excluded Eric, and Beth chuckled.

  "I don't think so, Banyon," she said, not unkindly. "Maeve is as good as gold except for first thing in the morning. And she may not have anything else of yours, but there's no doubt she's got your lungs. She'd have the whole building up here, thinking we're murdering a cat."

  Eric blushed, but laughed along with the other three, for Greystone seemed to find this observation hilariously funny. "Okay, then—I was thinking you'd spend the weekend, but—"

  "What, and get in the way of you making a date with Ms. Llewellyn?" Beth asked, with just a hint of bitterness that she tried hard to conceal. "We'll send you word of when the Naming is—you are coming?" she asked again.

  "If I didn't, you'd kill me," he pointed out.

  "Well—unless you were in a hospital bed, yeah, I probably would," Beth admitted. Kory went to fetch Maeve from the bedroom, while Beth stood up and gave him a hug and a kiss that was, for one moment, like the old Beth's. "I'll try not to be so jealous, Banyon," she whispered in his ear. "As long as the bitch makes you happy. But if she ever hurts you—"

  "That'll be between her and me," he replied, breathing it into her ear. "Don't interfere, Bethie. Not even out of love. I'm a big boy now. You can't always be trying to protect me."

  She pushed him away, and looked into his eyes for a moment; hers were suspiciously damp. "You've grown," was all she said, but the smile she gave him wavered just a little.

  Kory came back with Maeve. He handed Beth the baby to tuck into her carrier, then put an arm around Eric's shoulders.

  "The Bard's a warrior now, acushla, well-trained and proven in dire battle. He doesn't need us for protection anymore." The elf smiled, that kind of smile that just melted the heart. "But I know he will always need us as friends."

  "Always," Eric said, drawing both of them into a fierce embrace. Maeve was a warm weight between them—between them, Eric now realized, in more ways than the physical. Beth and Kory were parents now, and he wasn't. "Always. Never doubt it," he repeated. But it's a different kind of "always" than I'd planned for. . . .

  * * *

  It was just as well that Beth and Kory left that Friday night, because Saturday turned out to be a day of running around on a hundred little errands that ate up all of Eric's time from the moment he got up around noon. Light bulbs blew, he ran out of toilet paper, then out of ink for his printer (at which time he discovered that he was out of paper as well). He went down to the basement to do laundry, and discovered he was out of detergent.

  If it weren't for the party this evening, I'd be really bummed.

  It wasn't anything major in the way of parties, but over the past several months those who were in the "know" about the true function of Guardian House—the four Guardians and a few others—had fallen into the pleasant habit of getting together once or twice a month to just kick back and socialize. These gatherings were usually held at Eric's place—Eric was a Bard, not a Mage, and, as Paul had been happy to inform him, Bards were legendary for their hospitality.

  And practically speaking, Mages were solitary types who didn't much like getting their personal space invaded at the best of times, even if Paul's computers and reference library, José's birds, and Toni's kids weren't taking up all the available entertaining space in their various apartments. And Jemima, being a New York City cop, was particularly possessive about her space, which was her sanctuary from the horrors a patrol cop saw on a daily basis.

  Eric had been invited in a couple of times; Jemima had a small one-bedroom decorated mostly in blues and greens, its walls hung with her collection of nature photographs, including an original Ansel Adams. It was a serene yet somehow impersonal space, reflecting its owner's personal reserve. Especially if you never got to see the sword hanging on the bedroom wall, its blade glowing with Runes of Intent. . . .

  Eric shook himself free of the reverie with a smile. So what it all boiled down to was that his apartment had become the de facto Mage Community Center for Guardian House. Fortunately, all he had to do was place his standing order with the corner pizza place and look forward to an evening of good talk and good people.

  Tatiana and Alex were the first two to arrive. Tat was a book designer; Alex did indexing and research, as well as teaching part-time at the New School. Tatiana was tall and flamboyant, with pre-Raphaelite blonde hair and a gypsy taste in clothes. Alex was dark and saturnine, with a neatly-trimmed black beard and a positive addiction to sober suits. His hobby was stage illusionism, and on occasion Eric had seen him pull off feats of sleight of hand that he wasn't sure he could duplicate even with the help of Bardic magic. Both were what Alex called "research magicians," devoting more time to the history of the Art than to actual practice. They were members of one of the more close-mouthed magical lodges, New Age by courtesy, though unlike a lot of the New Agers Eric had met over the years, they weren't "in-your-face" about it. They spoke appreciatively about Eric's "air-conditioning," and Tat poked her head out the w
indow to say "hi" to Greystone while Alex got them drinks—Vernor's with lime for himself, Schweppes' Bitter Lemon with ice for Tatiana.

  One thing I've got to say for magicians—they certainly make cheap dates. Nobody I've ever met who had the Gift—and knew what they had—really drinks much. Or smokes, or, well, much of anything in that line. I guess once you've plugged into magic, the other stuff all seems second best.

  The others began to appear fairly quickly after that, arriving from their various day jobs. Toni Hernandez was the building's manager, a pretty, no-nonsense Latina in her early forties, a single mother with two kids. As much as such an anarchic group as the Guardians had a leader—and Eric had gotten the feeling that they were a lot more like the Texas Rangers, or four Lone Rangers, than any organized Occult Police—the Guardians of Guardian House looked to Toni.

  Jimmie—short for Jemima, and she'd kill you if you used it—was fashion-model tall and slim, with thick, lustrous, straight black hair, very dark eyes, a bronzy complexion under a good, even tan, and high cheekbones in a face too strong to be called "pretty." She was manic about keeping civilians off the fire line; back when she'd just been starting out as a Guardian, her partner had been killed because she'd been unable to keep him out of a paranormal investigation. Now she was adamant about protecting the innocent.

  Paul Kern was a tall elegant black man with a hint of Islands British in his voice, who carried himself with the grace of a dancer. Paul made his living doing something esoteric with computers, and used the same valuable skills to find information about whatever problems the Guardians might face. Though his abilities had come up dry when the Guardians had faced down an Unseleighe Lord last year, Eric had no doubt that by now Paul had managed to corner the world market in elven lore.