Mad Maudlin Page 5

  They'd found nothing. No ransom demand, no threatening letters had ever come, and slowly Billy had come to realize that his Heavenly Grace had committed the ultimate act of defiance: she'd run away.

  He kept the professionals on the payroll. Gabriel had been a tower of strength. He'd sworn they'd find Billy's daughter, that they'd get her back. And meanwhile, her absence was easily explained: she was away at school—a good, God-fearing. private, Bible-based girls' school, away from all the temptations that the world posed for sensitive and vulnerable teenage girls.

  It had to be done that way, Gabriel explained. It was important—for the future—that no breath of scandal be attached to her disappearance. There was Billy's future to think of. And Heavenly Grace's, of course. When she returned, their Prodigal Daughter, undoubtedly sorrowful and repentant over the tribulations she had caused them, naturally they would want her to be able to slip right back into her old life again without anyone knowing about her shame. That would be what she would want, as well.

  Donna had been the hardest to convince, but she had doted on Gabriel Horn from day one, and finally she had given in. Gabriel had sworn to her that he would work day and night—over and above his duties for the Ministry—to find her daughter and return her to the fold of her family's love. Why, Gabriel had come to think of her as his own little girl as well. . . .

  What could have been a more convincing argument than that? Nothing that Billy could think of.

  * * *

  Humans were really a constant source of entertainment—when they didn't vex one half to madness.

  The being who—in this time and place—chose to be known as Gabriel Horn closed the door to his private apartment in the Fairchild Ministries Tower and activated the wards that sealed the doors. No human could pass them now.

  With a sigh of relief, he dropped the glamourie that he wore among humans. It was necessary, but it was also rather demeaning to go about aping the appearance of one's inferiors. And the clothes! Gabriel shuddered. A second spell adjusted his garments to something closer to his liking; he inspected the embroidered velvet sleeve of his tunic critically, then headed toward the liquor cabinet and poured himself a large measure of a venerable single-malt Scotch.

  Still, there were some things about the human world that Gabriel liked quite well. He stood for a moment, inhaling the complex scent and admiring the play of light through the facets of the cut-crystal glass.

  He had come to the World Above to entertain himself, for what else was a Prince of Underhill to do? If one could not enjoy the pleasures of war among one's own kind, the next best thing was to make trouble among the Mortalfolk, yet in these degenerate days that was a delicate proposition, for there were always spies of the Bright Court ready and willing to meddle where they weren't wanted, as if all Mortalfolk belonged solely to them.

  Finding Billy Fairchild had been a stroke of luck—the pompous fool was so easily manipulated, and came ready-supplied with a coterie of foolish followers. But Gabriel would have taken him as a momentary pleasure—a quick scandal, and the destruction of his "Ministry"—if it had not been for the daughter.

  The girl had Power. Gabriel had known it from the moment he'd first seen her. The Power to bend human hearts to her will any time she sang.

  She hadn't known him for what he was, of course, but she'd known enough to fear him. He couldn't beguile her as he could her parents, but that made things all the sweeter, to Gabriel's mind. And so he had abandoned his plans for the quick destruction of Billy Fairchild, and settled down to a longer and ultimately more satisfying game. He would use the girl to give Billy real power—the power to make great trouble in the land. The one thing that was guaranteed to make trouble among the mortals was religion. Religion had caused more wars, more scandals, more pogroms, and more death and torture than any other aspect of humans' lives—save, perhaps, money. And even then, it was difficult to tell which caused the most havoc, for religion and money were inextricably tangled among the mortals.

  And what could his high-nosed Bright Court cousins do about that? They would never make war upon a human child. And the girl was but a child, well under the control of her parents. A pawn. Helpless. And that was even if the Seleighe Sidhe realized that he was the power behind Billy Fairchild's throne, which they likely never would.

  Later it had occurred to him that perhaps he could even enchant the parents enough to make them give him the girl. And then, with time, he would wear away her will, and take her power for his own.

  Or so he had thought, a year ago, as the Earthborn reckoned time.

  A flash of anger crossed Gabriel's face, and the glass in his hand shattered. With an absent gesture, he made the shards of crystal and the spilled liquor vanish, turning away from the liquor cabinet.

  But the girl had run. Against all prediction, against all expectation, she had fled—and not all his spellcraft had been able either to summon her back, or determine her location.

  Impossible.

  A fact.

  Gabriel began to pace the room, his scarlet cloak belling out behind him. He was a Magus Major, a Knight and Prince of Elfhame Bete Noir: as the Unseleighe reckoned power, he was a mighty force Underhill. There were only three possibilities that would keep him from finding her.

  One—that she was dead. And if she were dead, by now his sorcerous allies ought to have brought him some word of that, so while it was still a possibility, it was a very unlikely one.

  Two—that she had been found and taken Underhill by the Enemy.

  This was much more likely—he knew how much his Bright Court cousins liked to meddle, especially among Children of Power, and it was a possibility he could never rule out. But Gabriel had spies in a number of places, and there was always the possibility he would get word of her. And if he did . . . well, then he could always arrange for her parents to beg for her return. His Bright Court cousins were as soft-headed as they were soft-hearted, and would probably return her.

  Of course, if she had fallen into the hands of some other faction of the Dark Court . . .

  Why, then, he would merely take her back, and she would undoubtedly be so grateful to see him that she would fall in with any plans he made.

  The third—and most vexing—possibility was that she had managed to flee to one of the blighted places in the Mortal World where Sidhe magic simply didn't work at all reliably. Unfortunately, there were more of them every day. Seeking spells wouldn't work there, in the lands where there was so much Cold Iron that spellcasting, even when the mortals did their petty and foolish spells, went awry. None of the Sidhe entered such places without good reason. In fact, very few of the Folk were even able to venture into such places at all—and he did not command such numbers that he could afford to search all such places in the world.

  But even if the girl had gone to ground in one of them, if she used her Gift, he would know. He knew the signature of her magic, the scent and taste of it, and if she practiced it anywhere in the World Above or Underhill, he would know.

  He stopped before a large cabinet on one wall of his apartment. It was an antique Chinese apothecary cabinet, filled with many tiny drawers. He opened the one he sought unerringly and took out a small silver casket. From it he removed a silver ring wrapped with a single strand of long blonde hair.

  Hers. And by all the magical Laws of Consanguinity, still a part of her.

  He turned away from the cabinet and gestured. A patch of air began to ripple, darkening and solidifying until it gleamed as dark as any mirror, hanging before him in the air. He touched the ring to the mirror, but—as so many times before—nothing happened.

  Hide if you can. Flee if you will. But you can only escape me for a time, Heavenly Grace Fairchild. And when you fall into my hands again, you will be mine forever.

  With a gesture he banished the black mirror. Slipping the ring onto his finger, he walked over to the desk. There was much to do to prepare the world for the coming of Billy Fairchild.

  Chapter T
hree:

  Away We Go Again

  This had been his last class before the Thanksgiving break, and why all the odd gods of scheduling had put it on a Monday was going to have to remain a mystery, because nobody he'd been able to ask had been able to explain things to Eric's satisfaction.

  Even with all the makeups and takeover classes he'd had to do to compensate for missed coursework and failed exams (he'd been off saving the world, but sometimes the best excuses were the ones you couldn't use), he was finally going to do it. After an almost twenty-year interregnum, Eric Banyon was finally going to graduate from the Juilliard School of Music this spring.

  And what then?

  What did he want to do with his life here in the World Above?

  He'd already rejected one life—that of a Human Bard at the Elven Courts of Underhill—and come back to finish Juilliard, just to see if he could. Well, it turned out he could. With his Juilliard degree, he could now get a legitimate high-class professional music gig just about anywhere, but that really wouldn't fit the life that had grown up around him in the last couple of years, and the need he'd discovered to be ready to deal with Evil when it showed up and had to be fought.

  It sounded awfully melodramatic when he put it that way—as if he might have a cape and tights hanging in his closet—and as a matter of fact, he did, since they were common articles of apparel Underhill, where he still made frequent visits—but how else was he supposed to describe things like Threshold and Aerune, or Perenor, or the powers behind the Poseidon Project? Cranky? Bad-mannered? Socially unacceptable? No. They were Evil. Each of them, in their own ways, had been out to hurt or kill a large number of people for nothing more than their own personal gain, and if there was a better definition of Evil, Eric hadn't found it yet.

  He wasn't going to waste his time on the differently social who just needed a little time to work out their personal adjustments. They might be really loud and hurt a lot of feelings, and maybe even leave a few bruises behind, but nobody was going to die. And for the average run-of-the-mill villain who killed by accident or design, there were a whole lot of people and agencies better trained than Eric was to take them down. Call 911, leak information to the FBI, but don't ring up Call-A-Bard.

  But they couldn't go after people like Aerune. When people like that showed up (and if someone like Aerune never showed up again, Eric would be just as glad), even finding out about them was a job in itself, let alone stopping them. The police, the FBI, the CIA, even the Marines weren't the right people to call when someone like that appeared on the scene.

  Which still left the question: what was he going to do with his life? Because while taking out weird villains might be a mission, and a necessary job, it was hardly a career. You couldn't tell when or where—or if—those kinds of problems were going to happen, for one thing. What did you do with the rest of your time? Even Batman had a social life. Sort of.

  Though Eric could spend the rest of his life living off kenned gold with the best wishes of Prince Arvin of Elfhame Misthold—who was, as the Seleighe Sidhe understood things, his patron—that wouldn't satisfy him either. He'd discovered in himself a need to be useful, odd as that would have seemed to him at twenty.

  So what was he going to do after he left Juilliard, in between bouts of saving the world? Which—he devoutly hoped—might never need to happen again.

  In front of Lincoln Center, he caught the bus and, after a series of transfers, reached Museum Mile.

  It was like stepping into another world. Even though the Upper West Side, where Juilliard was, could hardly be said to be an area of New York lacking in money and class, Museum Mile was so different that by rights there ought to be a high wall around it. Museum Mile was old money, Edith Wharton money, and it showed. Even in an unseasonably cold November, everything was still green, and the air positively reeked of the kind of wealth that had nannies and live-in servants, that summered on Fire Island or Martha's Vineyard, that took its limousines for walks and thought that shopping at Bloomingdale's was slumming. Apartments in these buildings almost never came up for sale—they were handed down through the generations, like the Renoirs and Monets and the Limoges services for forty-eight.

  His shrink lived up here.

  Eric had seriously resisted the whole idea of professional counseling for too long. His parents had dragged him to far too many of them when he'd been a child, and he'd quickly realized that every single one of those professional "helpers" had been interested in only one thing: getting inside his head and turning him inside out, to get a handle on what would control him. And once they did, no matter what they said, no matter how many times they promised they'd keep everything confidential, they'd take back whatever they found to his parents to use against him.

  Bitter much? Eric thought with a rueful smile.

  This time, he'd nearly drowned in his own problems before he'd been willing to admit that they were bigger than he was. But the fact that he'd been seriously considering going back to drinking—had been standing outside a liquor store last September with money in his pocket, thinking about walking in the door—had finally scared him enough to take the problem to Hosea.

  Hosea had listened and come back with a name and address. Eric had been furious—terrified, he was willing to admit now. But Hosea had been just plain stubborn. Eric had asked for help. This was help, the Ozark Bard had said implacably. What would it cost him to simply go and see the woman? He'd faced Nightflyers and Unseleighe Lords, after all.

  Eric hadn't been willing—hadn't been able, really—to explain. So he'd gone, sure that all he'd find when he arrived would be one more clueless psychotherapist, probably with a specialization in substance abuse telling him things he already knew too well.

  But this time, it had turned out to be a whole different gig.

  For one thing, he was paying the shrink. For another, there were no secrets, because Oriana Dunaway was a magician herself, though Eric knew little more about her than that.

  "You don't need to know about me, Eric, or about what I do," she'd told him at their first meeting. "All you need to know is that you can trust me. And that whatever you tell me, no matter how unbelievable it is by the standards of the Worldlings, I will believe that it is so, though I may require an explanation of it, should it lie outside my own experience. And so, shall we begin?"

  He was a Bard. He knew the truth when he heard it. Together, the two of them had begun to try to make sense of a life that had been twisted and damaged long before the events of last autumn. He slowly came to realize that he had to get his head straight before trying to get on with his life, lest the past reach out and drag him under when he least expected it. He was a Bard, gifted with the power to make or mar. He had to be able to use it wisely. Sanely. Because, if he couldn't get his own psyche in order, as the power within him grew stronger, so would it find the weakest places in him.

  And to his surprise, Oriana's specialty was not substance abuse at all, but the problems of magicians, Talents, and nonhumans living in the World Above. That much she had been willing to tell him, though she would not otherwise discuss her patients.

  "And I tell you this because it is important for you to know that you are not alone, either in your strengths or your weaknesses, Eric. It is a small community—often it is not a community at all—but you are not unique."

  * * *

  He reached the door of her building—after almost a year of Mondays, the doorman knew him by sight—and went inside. He passed through the exquisitely tasteful lobby—it had always rather reminded Eric of a high-class mortuary, with its dark heavy furniture, gilt mirrors, and oriental carpets over parquet marble floors. All that was missing were the vases of funereal lilies; fortunately the flowers here ran to something more cheerful. Shrugging his gig bag higher onto his shoulder, he went down the hall to the bank of elevators.

  If the lobby was a mortuary, then the elevators were surely top of the line sarcophagi, all highly polished, heavily ornamented bronze, lin
ed with more mirrors, so the building's inhabitants could give themselves one last once-over before hitting the street. The infinite number of reflected Erics always made him faintly uneasy; he stared fixedly at the doors as the car made its leisurely way to his floor.

  The doors opened. He stepped out onto the thick carpet of the corridor and headed down the hall. Right on time. Maybe even a minute or two early. He opened the door into Oriana's apartment.

  As always, the wards she had set tingled faintly over his skin when he crossed the threshold. They were a necessary part of her work, given the people she saw. It wouldn't do to disturb any of the other tenants of the building with anything that happened in her sessions, or leave any psychic detritus lying around from one appointment to contaminate the next.

  What would have been the foyer if Oriana had not chosen to see her patients in her own home had been set up as a waiting room. There were a couple of comfortable couches and a low coffee table, covered with the sort of bland, inoffensive, upscale magazines that filled any professional's waiting room, occupying the space now. Eric picked up a copy of Architectural Digest and sat down.

  A few moments later, Oriana's previous patient walked out. Eric had seen him a few times, but had never spoken to him. He didn't even know his name. He was a spare, slender man, closer to fifty than to forty. His dark hair was several weeks late (always! How did he manage it?) for a haircut, shot with early silver, and his eyes were a curious light amber color, nearly gold, making Eric wonder if he might be one of Oriana's nonhuman patients. He was dressed for Wall Street, in a completely unremarkable business suit that would blend in anywhere in New York. The only thing at all out of the ordinary about his appearance was the scarab pendant in bright blue faience that hung from a silver chain about his neck, resting against the sober institutional necktie. He nodded slightly to Eric, recognizing him as well, then walked out.

  Oriana poked her head through the inner door a moment later.