“I didn’t plan for us to be dealing with demons and scary-as-fuck goblins,” I said. “I would have negotiated, but you jumped on it so fast-”
“I started to read Black Lamb’s Blood,” Rose said.
Those fucking lawyers. Giving us the book, having things play out like this.
“What the fuck could that book say that would make this a good idea?” I asked.
“Its not a good idea,” Rose said. “But… I saw an out, and I knew you hadn’t read it, so you wouldn’t see it as an out. So I jumped on it.”
“Meaning I need to read the book,” I said. “On top of everything else.”
“It’d be a good idea. But… we’re getting away from the main topic of conversation.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Yeah. You said you didn’t plan on errands dealing with demons. What did you plan on?”
I debated for a minute. I could tell her that I didn’t think Conquest was nearly as strong as he let on, I could tell her that Conquest was insecure, desperate…
“Blake?”
“I’m not sure what I can tell you while you have that shackle on you.”
“You think he can hear?”
“Just by the look of it, I’d guess it’s more so he can bring you to him whenever he wants. And if he tortures you for information…”
I trailed off, and Rose apparently didn’t have anything to say in response.
“Fuck, I shouldn’t have let you wear that.”
“What’s done is done,” she said. “If he tortures me for information, at least, can you give me a good reason to keep my mouth shut? Tell me your plan is good enough that rescuing me is a possibility?”
“It’s not great,” I said. “But it’s a start.”
“Am I helping? Are you telling me the particulars?”
“You are, and I am. Between running these errands of his, binding the demons and the Über-goblin, we’ve got to wrangle a mutiny, and get some of the other locals and powers on board for unseating Conquest from his throne.”
“That’s it?” she asked.
“That’s all I got,” I said.
“That’s not a very good plan.”
“I know. It’s only a start.”
“Fuck.”
“I know.”
4.04
What did it say about me and my situation when my first thought when I got dressed wasn’t what looked good, but what would serve me best in a bad situation?
I grabbed a pair of cargo pants from one drawer and frowned a bit. Not my first choice. Free clothes I’d gotten at a shelter, I hadn’t liked the pants then, I didn’t like them now.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t grateful. It was more… well, as Joel had gently put it, not long after I’d moved in, they had probably been out of fashion for a few years before their previous owner had bagged them up with a bunch of other clothes and dropped them off at a shelter. But they would have been out of fashion in Ontario, which put us about two to four years behind the times.
By the time I traced it back to a time when it would have been in fashion, I was thinking the late nineties.
Bleh. They were canvas, and consequently durable, and the extra pockets were what I was looking for.
T-shirt. Knit hooded sweatshirt to get the two added pockets.
I slid the hatchet down the side of my pants leg, and found it didn’t sit nearly as well as it had with my jeans. Too much room, the handle swung as I walked. I held on to it instead, and I grabbed two spare belts from the hook in the back of my closet.
What else? The locket was still uncomfortable. Looking at it, I noticed the small wound on the back of my hand where I’d stabbed myself. It wasn’t scabbed over, but it wasn’t bleeding either. Tender. Infected, or had I just washed away the scab while showering?
The Faerie hair was, I noticed, winding along the chain, maybe a little closer to the injury than elsewhere. Closer to the wounds on my fingers where I’d sliced myself than it was to my arm.
“You okay, Blake?”
Hearing her voice coming from nowhere didn’t startle me anymore, I realized. “I’m okay, generally speaking.”
“You look pensive.”
“I’m trying to shake the idea of this Faerie hair crawling into the hole in my hand and winding its way through my entire circulatory system.”
“That’s grisly.”
“It’s not impossible to believe,” I said. “And if I let myself think it’s possible, then it’s going to become more possible, and once I get hair threading its way through my bloodstream, pain, physical changes, well, there’s no way I’m just going to meditate and convince myself it isn’t real. So how would I stop it? Even if I pulled it out, could I be sure I got all of it?”
“That’s… darker than I’ve come to expect of you. Letting your imagination run wild.”
I looked over to see Rose in the mirror I’d stuck to the wall, an open book in front of her.