Drink Down the Moon (20 page)

It was the very thing she’d sought.

She turned slowly, pin prickles starting at the nape of her neck and scraping down her spine. The black dog regarded her from across an empty expanse of lawn. It was half-hidden in the shadows of a building, but she could see its gleaming eyes and black shiny fur, smell its strong odour, hear the rasp of its breathing. Behind it stood a silent figure in a brown cloak, its features hidden in the fall of its hood.

Now she knew why she’d really gone on alone. She couldn’t have been brave enough for both Johnny and herself. She wasn’t even brave enough for herself.

“The same,” the figure in brown said softly, echoing her own earlier thoughts, “yet not. Who would have thought that there would be two of you?”

She wanted to throw herself at him, claw at his eyes, tear out the throat that voiced those words so calmly, but for once common sense got the better of her temper. As the dog rose from its haunches, she turned and, with fiaina skill, began to scale the side of the building, her small hands finding fingerholds in the stonework where a mortal would never even look. She could sense the dog coining for her— as it had come for her sister— but she didn’t look down, not until she reached the roof.

The man in his brown cloak stood below, looking up. His dog— which seemed to be more ape-like now than canine— was climbing after her.

Now she knew what she faced.

The man was a gruagagh and the thing he had sent after her was his shadow. She couldn’t match that kind of magic. She was just a Pook, a halfling at that.

She stared down at the creature, searching through the wash of her memories for something that the Bucca might have said about dealing with this kind of a creature, but her mind just went blank.

“You’re not mad, are you?” Kate asked.

Jacky tried to put what she called her “Squint Eastwood tough gal” look on her face, but all it did was squinch up her features and make her look silly, so she gave it up. And looking at Kate sitting beside her on Gump’s bed, the leather-bound Caraid on her lap and the worried look in her eyes, Jacky didn’t have the heart to tease her.

“No,” she said. “It’s something we should have done a long time ago. But you know me— I’m such a pack rat. I always want to hoard everything for that someday when it’s going to be needed, but in the end, nothing ever gets used at all.” She put out a hand to touch the book. “It really makes you stop and think, doesn’t it? All this magic. I wonder what makes it work.”

“There’s a piece of Bhruic in those pages,” Finn remarked from beside the hearth.

He and Gwi were sharing cushions there, while the big trow sat in his chair. He was the only one who fit the furniture.

“The books replies as Bhruic spoke,” Finn added.

A wistful look came into Jacky’s eyes. “I wonder where he is now.”

“With the Summer Stars,” Finn said. “Or maybe not. He’s traveling with Kerevan, after all. They could be anywhere— walking on the Moon, or deep in an Otherworld of the manitou.”

“I’d like to go to one of them someday,” Jacky said. “I’d like to meet the native spirits— the ones that were here before any of us came.”

“They’re skin walkers, most of them,” the hob said. “And Arn’s luck touches them in other ways than it does us. She takes shapes for them and walks the world in different guises to teach and talk with them.”

“Totems,” Kate said. “That’s what you’re talking about. But I don’t see Bhruic needing a totem.”

Finn smiled. “I suppose not. But I don’t doubt he’d like to talk to them all the same.”

“I’d like to see him again,” Jacky said.

Gump cleared his throat. “Better you were worrying about the gruagagh that’s here— not the one that’s gone. Time enough for Bhruic after. If there is an after.”

Jacky’s warm, thoughtful mood slipped away at the trow’s words.

“How can we do anything about him?” she asked. “He could have hidden his heart anywhere. There’s no way we can find it.”

Gwi stirred beside Finn. “We don’t even know his name,” she added. “We can’t kill him with weapons, and we can’t kill him with spells.”

Jacky nodded, remembering her knife sticking from the droichan’s chest and the way he had just plucked it out again. There was nothing inside him, she decided. Just shadows, like the bit of himself that he let loose to do his killing for him.

“Maybe we’re going about it all wrong,” Kate said. “Caraid told us that we have to know him before we’ll find the heart. What we should be doing is backtracking him— find out where he came from, that sort of thing.”

“A good point,” Gump said, “but we don’t have his name, so how could we do that?”

“I don’t know.”

Kate frowned, idly flipping Caraid’s pages. She looked up suddenly.

“He can’t have come from nowhere,” she said. “And wherever he’s been before— he’d have done the same thing there, wouldn’t he? Can’t we contact other Courts and find out if they’ve had this kind of trouble?”

“There would be nothing left of a Court for us to contact,” Gwi said. “Not if he’d been there first.”

“But what about their neighbours? Wouldn’t they know something?”

“The idea has merit,” Gump said. “We could put out the word, through all of Faerie. Someone will have to remember hearing of a similar situation in the past year or so. A Court suddenly barren of its folk, perhaps. A cairn emptied of its luck. A crossing of moonroads no longer so hale

“

“It will take time,” Gwi said. “Time that we don’t have.”

“But most of the Courts are in Ballymoresk,” Finn said. “For the Fair.”

Gump grinned. “Then what better place to ask? Who will go?”

“Wait a minute,” Kate said. “You said something about a place where moonroads cross each other not being so healthy anymore?” When Gump nodded, Kate turned to Jacky. “Remember the night Mull came to the Tower to get us?”

“We were looking at that house!” Jacky cried.

“That’s where he was,” Kate said.

At their companions’ blank looks, Kate explained what they’d seen.

“That also bears looking into,” Gump said.

“But we can’t ignore asking the other Courts,” Gwi said. “I’ll go to the Fair and get Deegan to ask the other Lairds and Ladies, but I’ll need a swift mount for the ride.”

Deegan was the Laird of Kinrowan.

“Hay will lend you one of the Laird’s own mounts,” Finn said. “I’ll speak to him myself. You’ll ride down in style, Gwi, and have the sons of Lairds falling over themselves to get to know you.”

The forester harumphed. “Not with my blood,” she said, but she smiled.

“And I’ll go spy out this house,” Gump said.

“You’ll need someone to guide you,” Jacky said.

Gump nodded. “That’s true— but it can’t be you. I can still hear the cries of Cumin’s folk hunting you beyond the safety of these walls.”

“I’ll show you where it is,” Kate said.

“That will be good. It’s always better to have a skillywoman at your side when you go to spy on a gruagagh.”

Kate laughed uneasily.

“I wouldn’t put too much stock in any magics you think I’ve got,” she said. “About as magic as I get is making tea without burning the water.”

The trow hooted— a big, booming sound. “Oh, that’s rich! Well, I’ll take the chance. If you can’t spell him, Kate, perhaps you can quip the information from him. Now, come on. We don’t have much time. My sort of folk don’t take to the sun, and the dawn’s far closer than I’d like.”

Jacky looked uncertainly about herself as there was a sudden rush of everyone getting ready to go.

“I won’t be long,” Finn told her. “Just up to the Court to get a mount for Gwi, then I’ll be back.”

Kate gave her a big hug.

“Don’t do anything silly like stepping outside for some fresh air,” she said. “I couldn’t bear for the droichan to get his claws on you again.”

“Not to mention that he might find some way to force you to break Bhruic’s enchantment on the Tower,” Gwi added.

“I’ll be fine,” Jacky said. “You’re the guys who are going out there, not me.”

There was some more bustling about, then a few moments later they were all gone. Jacky closed the door to the trow’s home and walked slowly back to the bed. She poked at the side of it a few times, then wandered over to the hearth, where she slumped down on a pillow.

“Great,” she muttered. “This is just great. Some Jack I’ve turned out to be. The first time something goes wrong and the most I can do about it is to hole up in some trow’s place and let everyone else do my job for me. Lovely. Wouldn’t Bhruic be proud of me now?”

The worst thing was that it was all her fault. She’d invited Cumin into the Tower in the first place. A real Jack would have sniffed him out for what he was right away. Bhruic would have sent him packing, quick as a blink. But she’d asked him home for tea.

She caught her own reflection in the shiny bottom of one of Gump’s pots hanging from the hearth above her and frowned at it. Getting up, she trailed about the big room, not really looking at anything, just berating herself.

She should have sent Cumin packing. But he’d seemed important and she’d been flattered that he paid attention to her. And that was the problem— part of a bigger problem that kept screwing up her life. After years of being a relative nobody, becoming a Jack had finally put her in a position where she was somebody, never mind that it was all irrelevant, that in her heart she truly believed that people were important for who they were, how they acted, not for their position in life. Wasn’t that what kept getting in the way of her relationship with Eilian? Did she care about him because of who he was, or because he was a Laird’s son who happened to love her?

It was all so confusing. Things had to change. It was high time she got it all straightened out in her mind. She was going to have to do something better with her life. Buckle down with Kate and learn everything there was to learn in Bhruic’s study, make her own Caraid, find an honest gruagagh to teach her more, or maybe go to a Billy Blind like the one in Eilian’s Court.

Eilian.

She had to work out what they were going to do with their relationship.

Oh, yes. Things were going to be different. She was going to become responsible if it killed her.

She paused by the bed— having paced by it at least twenty times already— and picked up the curiously ribboned headgear that Finn had given her. She’d get Finn to teach her his skilly stitcheries as well, to learn how to make disguises like this where no one could recognize you

.

Her train of thought trailed off as she lifted the headband from the bed. Of course. With this, Cumin wouldn’t be able to spot her. And neither would any of the Unseelie Court that had rallied around the droichan. She could just waltz into the Tower wearing it, grab the wallystanes, and be useful for a change. Maybe she could wish up a magic mirror or something that would show them where the droichan’s heart was hidden.

She put the headgear on, buttoned the appropriate ribbon to her shirt, then studied herself in another of Gump’s pans. She didn’t make a very fierce-looking bogan, but that didn’t matter. She still looked like a bogan and that was what mattered.

Don’t do this.

A voice of reason spoke up in the back of her head.

Be sensible for once.

She shook her head. I’m being responsible for once, she told it. I’m cleaning up my own mess.

But the voice inside her continued to argue. It told her that she was safe here. That she’d promised the others she’d stay. That even with her disguise, she wouldn’t necessarily be hidden from the droichan. Not when he had her scent.

Except he’s looking for Kate, too, she argued back, and Kate’s disguise isn’t any different from mine. If it’s safe for her, then it’ll be safe for me.

The voice seemed to have run out of arguments, because it stayed silent now.

I won’t screw up this time, Jacky promised.

Finding some paper and a stub of a pencil, she left a quick note for Kate and the others. She didn’t say anything in it about trying to regain some pride in herself, about wanting to fulfill responsibilities that were hers and alleviating the feeling that she was a half-wit for fouling everything up in the first place. It simply said:

Dear Kate,

I can’t sit around doing nothing, so I’m going back to the Tower to get the wallystanes. Don’t worry. I’m being smart this time and wearing the bogan disguise that Finn gave me. No one’ll even know me. I’ll be a walking, talking “purloined letter” and very, very careful.

Love, J.

She put it on the table where it was sure to be noticed and left the room through the trow’s tunnel.

Getting into the Tower was going to be the only problem, she decided as she followed the canal south to where it stood. Once she was in the study, it would just be a moment’s work to grab the wallystanes and jump through the window, landing right on Gump’s front porch, as it were. But the getting in

Worry about that when you get there, she told herself.

It just never stops, Johnny thought. As he sat listening to what had happened to Henk earlier tonight, he wasn’t sure if he was glad that somebody else— somebody normal— was experiencing the same strangeness that he was, or if it just made things worse.

“I was never so scared in all my life,” Henk finished. “Johnny, just what the hell’s going on?”

Johnny didn’t know what to say.

“I was sitting there in the donut shop,” Henk went on, “and I just couldn’t leave. I must’ve been there for over an hour, Johnny, just staring out at the parking lot, waiting to see more of them. To see if they were still out there. Waiting for me.”

“But you made it back,” Johnny said.

Henk nodded. “Yeah. I was on my third coffee, I guess, when it all just went away. Like someone had turned off a switch in my head. I got on your bike-“

“My bike. I’d forgotten about it.”

“Well, it’s back here, safe and sound. Just like us. Except I got the shakes again, waiting for you

“

Henk took a sip from his coffee. His hand shook and the cup rattled on the table, slopping coffee over the side.

“Christ,” he said. “Look at me. I’m a wreck. You know what’s doing this to me— what’s really doing it to me?”