The leanansidhe had gathered mundane ephemera throughout the room—a bowl of key chains, a box of gloves, stacks of playing cards. They were either trophies of her kills or the by-products of an obsessive-compulsive mind. Haphazard stacks of books covered three tables. No common theme ran through the titles, everything from pulp detective novels from the 1950s to studies of irrigation systems in the Midwest. They seemed collected for the sake of collecting, many soiled with dirt or blood, their pages swollen from old moisture.
Forlorn. That was the overall impression. The nature of her existence was depressing. We all played the hand we’re dealt, but when that hand made you a murderer and you had a modicum of conscious mind, it had to weigh on you. If it didn’t, that made you something less than humane.
Her essence permeated the room, probably the only place she allowed it to remain, but nothing indicated anything more than a hideout. A lair. The room had a distinct lack of feyness. No grimoires or spell references, no major ward stones. Not even a stray wand. It was as if her entire life was about hiding, with no interest beyond that.
I sat in the same chair that I had the other night and flipped through a well-thumbed decorating magazine by the armchair, imagined her poring over it, wondering about sun-filled windows and flower-stuffed vases. Was she envious? Perplexed? Or was it a safe way of understanding the living environment of her prey? Studying their habitat in order to set a trap for them?
She was watching, I knew. When you fear being killed in your sleep, you made arrangements to protect yourself. I didn’t have wards all over my apartment building for peace of mind alone. Even if she wasn’t there when I arrived, she had to have some kind of warning system that her space had been violated.
“Are you going to watch me all evening?” I asked.
I heard a soft gasp and a chuckle from near the bed. A hand appeared from a narrow fissure in the wall, and she peered in at me, her face tentative, yet avid. “You return, brother.”
“I have more questions,” I said.
She crept across the floor in plain sight, hid behind one of the tables, and stretched her neck up above the books. “Druse has questions, too, my brother. Why did you flee so? Shall I bring the rat for you? It is yours. It was always yours. Druse swears this.”
The idea that a dead rat was somewhere in the room was not something I wanted to dwell on. “I meant no offense. Please accept the rat as my apology.”
She ducked down behind the books and muttered. Hospitality rules among the old fey were complicated. In certain quarters, offering a guest a gift was required and refusing it brought shame. With matters of honor and apology, the same sort of thing happened. When the rules conflicted, things got interesting. I hoped this particular complication would not end up with a rat in my pocket.
The leanansidhe moved on tiptoe across the floor toward her armchair, shooting looks at me as if she were trying to slip by without attracting my attention. She huddled in the chair, her legs tucked under her, and fidgeted with the hem of one of the several skirts she wore. Her eyes darted to the open book on the table. She flipped it closed and pushed it toward me. “This is a very good book. Druse should like you to have it, yes?”
I picked it up. It was a computer-programming reference work from 1983. “Thank you.”
She clutched her hands to her mouth. “Yes, it’s very exciting. You will enjoy it.”
I leaned forward, and she leaned back, wary. “Druse . . . is that your name?” She nodded vigorously. “Druse . . . I sense in you something akin to what is in me. Do you know what I mean?”
Her eyes went wide as she nodded. “You are my brother. We share that which the others deny.”
“Darkness,” I said.
She shook her head. “No! No, no, no . . . not dark. Rich. It is rich in lack.”
“Does it have a will of its own?” I asked. The question had been gnawing at me for months. The idea that something alive, maybe even malevolent, was in my mind sickened me. Sometimes the dark mass seemed alive and aware, moving in ways that were more than autonomic responses. Sometimes it seemed to protect itself. Sometimes it seemed to protect me. It prevented me from accessing my abilities yet absorbed essence that was thrown at me. On Samhain, it devoured the essence of several Dead people.
Confused, Druse cocked her head to the side. “It is the Wheel, my brother. The will of the Wheel is the will of the World.”
The Wheel of the World. I believed in the existence of the Wheel. It wasn’t a faith in the same way others believed in gods. It was an acceptance of a philosophy and understanding of the world. Some people thought of it as fate, the inexorable unfolding of what is meant to be. For me, it was an eternal now—a constant present that moved from moment to moment, becoming the present even as it became the past. In short, shit happens, and you have to roll with it.
I groped for words. “It’s not a person.”
Druse tangled her fingers in her hair and scratched at her head. “It is the lack. It is the Wheel the others deny.”
I pursed my lips. “The others—do you mean the solitaries or people who aren’t like . . . us?”
She rubbed at her face. “You confuse Druse, my brother. We all touch the light, but the others, it blinds them to its lack.” She pulled her knees up and stared at me. “Only such as we, the chosen of the Wheel, touch the whole of it.”
Essence. She was talking about essence, the light of the Wheel, the force that permeates everything. The fey manipulated it. Their ability to manipulate it defined them as fey. But Druse was talking about something else, something other that existed, too. “Can you work this . . . this lack of essence, Druse? Is that what you do? Like the others manipulate essence?”
Her eyes teared. “Oh, my brother, we are kin, we are. Stay with me, brother. We are not like them. We are apart. We shall bring joy to each other here.”
Not my first choice for retirement. “Show me what you do.”
A joy spread across her face with a slash of gray teeth. She jumped from the chair and tugged at my knee. “This way, brother. First, we reach the safe place. The Wheel is not always kind.”
I followed her to the fissure in the wall, which was wide enough for me to step through sideways. On the other side, an empty chamber rose two stories, empty except for a heaving of dark gray bedrock in the center. On the outcropping, an oval ward stone about a foot wide rested, glowing with essence. More traditional obelisk wards ringed the natural pedestal, protecting the ward stone behind a thin barrier field.
Druse approached the field. “You have a bowl, brother, yes?”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
She trotted back to me and patted my left arm, clenching my forearm up and down its length. “Here, ah, not a bowl, no. Something different, but the same. Good, good. Nice to carry it in you. Druse should like that. You should show Druse how to make such as this.”
The tattoo on my arm tingled as she probed at it through the sleeve. I gently pulled away from her. “Show me yours, Druse.”
I bit back a nervous chuckle at the reminder of the “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours” game that children play. Despite wanting to know how her abilities worked, that particular situation wasn’t a line I was willing to cross.
She pinched my sleeve between two fingers. Her essence slipped over my arm, not a full envelope, but enough to allow the wards on the ground to recognize me. The dark mass shifted in my head as we entered the contained haze of essence around the stone pedestal. My ears popped from a sudden pressure against the inside of my skull.