“If Blake is a stray dog, what am I?”
Jealousy? Feigned jealousy?
Where did the game end and the reality begin? Or was he all game?
The worst part was, she enjoyed the lack of commitment, the fact that she only had one toe in this water. Telling herself that she was safe, that there would never ever no way no how absolutely not be a relationship between them.
And that in itself could be part of the lure, the bait being set.
“Good question,” she hedged.
“Take a stab at it,” he said.
“You’re… the kitten in the shelter. Giving me that big-eyed look. And I know it’s calculated. Everyone and everything is telling me it’s a bad idea, but here I am. I haven’t walked away.”
He smiled.
And if I ever took that kitten home and let my guard down, it would kill me in my sleep, then curl up on the corpse.
She had no illusions about the monster Padraic was.
Even if he was damned attractive.
“Like the cat, I know you’re prone to doing what you want to do, regardless of the wishes of others, but-”
“You want me to wait here.”
Maggie nodded.
“I can,” he said. “But I have to demand a favor, in compensation.”
She tensed a little.
“When you’re done, you let me teach you another trick with glamour, convincing spirits, and the objects they represent. It has its uses in a melee, and I know you like the ones with uses in a fight. I’ll even forfeit the glamour you need to practice.”
This wasn’t a spur of the moment decision, she knew. What he was offering now was more bait. This was something he’d anticipated handing over to her to keep her interested. Keep her around. He would have had this in mind for months, even.
“If it sounds uneven, remember, I need your continued silence about the lessons I’m offering. If we get caught, we’ll have the Queen’s Riders after us.”
He managed to make it sound so alluring, the idea of them sharing a secret.
The kitten’s wide-eyed plea? Please. She was staring into the serpent’s eyes while the coils surrounded her. She knew, and he knew she knew.
He knew, too, that she would accept. She had to.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll take you up on that deal if you watch the goblin. Watch and nothing else.”
“Of course,” he said, smiling. She was careful to look away before the smile could get its hooks in her heart.
All glamour, she told herself.
She quenched the buzz of adrenaline and other excited, warm feelings with ugliness.
The path down the hill was a steep one, though it had been traveled some. Footsteps had tromped snow down until it was almost smooth, and she had to move slowly to avoid falling over while Padraic watched.
There were flowers, odd as it was, in the middle of winter. Pictures and arrangements, cards, all sitting on a wooden platform that rested in the snow.
Maggie drew her Athame.
She pricked herself under the fingernail of her pinky finger, and watched as the blood filled the little concave of her overturned pinky fingernail.
Tilting her hand, she let blood drop. She repeated the process of letting the blood well up and then drop a total of three times.
The ghost absorbed the offered energy, growing strong enough to be seen.
The echo of the departed Molly Walker stood amid the token offerings that family members and various residents of Jacob’s Bell had left near the site of her death, hugging her arms to her body, face hidden by hair.
The boards that kept all the little offerings dry and safe from the elements were inscribed with a circle, to prevent interference. It wouldn’t do if a goblin desecrated the little shrine. But Molly’s echo had drawn a crude circle too, Maggie noted.
Maggie’s inverse. Molly had never fought. Maggie saw no option but to prepare for war, to face it head on. Even as an echo, she continued to defend herself, retreating from this hostile, unfathomable world.
Maggie stared at the ghost, trying to interpret details, to come to grips with what it meant and represented.
She’d been in a bad place, scared, out of her element, desperate. The arguments had been persuasive.
Could she really sign that contract? Sign on with them? Knowing that Laird was a part of it?
Could she, conversely, really side with Blake, letting guilt and shame make the decisions for her, and render herself weaker?
Maybe she’d decide by the time she was done.
She began what she considered her penance. A way of reminding herself of what she’d let happen, so she wouldn’t do it again. Every day, an offering to help keep the echo alive, and-
“It was a pretty slow day, I guess. I captured a goblin, but I’ll get to that in more detail in a bit…”
8.02
It was still strange, seeing Patrick attending high school. Like Ev and Keller, he showed up once in a blue moon, as interest suited him. He wore different faces, stirred up drama, and then disappeared when he’d scratched that itch. Maggie suspected that it might be a way of keeping tabs on the local players, as humans grew up and the local dynamics shifted.
Evonne, Essylt in her tongue, had only showed up to talk to Patrick the once, that Maggie was aware. The woman was more predatory, and interrogation of bound goblins had revealed her father was some Faerie De Sade, someone known to be a very good and creative torturer, among a people who’d had centuries to pursue torture as a hobby. He’d been executed for some failure, and the Ev had been banished. Keller, a friend of hers and something like an apprentice to Ev’s father, had elected to come along and protect her.
Keller, doing the grunt work in Ev’s plan, showed up now and then among the student body, primarily during lunch hours or after school. Faerie liked pretty things, and had a way of gravitating toward the prettiest person in a group, but Keller targeted the fringe groups. The kid with the funny ears and his friends, who all liked the roleplaying games but hid what they were really talking about because the faculty considered. The French-speakers in French immersion who seemed to do their very best to avoid learning or speaking more English, and the less than successful drama club members. To them, Keller was the guy with connections, old enough he didn’t attend high school, young enough he could relate to them, even flirt, without crossing a line. He wore a different face for each group, and he seemed to be equipping them. More than one had trinkets with some kind of power that Maggie could recognize.
The kid with the funny ears with no cartilage to keep the top ends upright had a regular old book, nonmagical, that had been loaned to him by Keller, that he was apparently using to inspire the adventures he made up for his friends.
The cigarette smoking Quebecois girl that led the French immersion crowd had something in her pocket, and she’d made a recent trip to Toronto, returning with a completely overhauled and rather expensive wardrobe, albeit largely in black, with gifts for all her friends. Maggie’s suspicion was that the girl was finding she was suddenly far, far better at shoplifting since she’d received the good luck charm from ‘Alain’, Keller’s Quebecois guise.