“What? You mean the whole flirtatious thing? I wouldn’t think of it.”
“Shut up.”
We jumped in his car. Murdock cut over to the Avenue, and we cruised toward Sleeper Street. At this time of night, few people walked the streets. Even the Weird settles down by dawn. You could find an after-hours party if you wanted, but it was a weeknight, and only the diehards and desperate were out.
“Another interesting evening with Connor Grey,” Murdock said.
“Hey! Talking to Moke was your idea.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Yeah, but provoking him into using you as a bat and me as a ball was not my intention. What set him off like that?”
“The crack about ripping off his door at noon. Sunlight kills trolls. I guess he took it more personally than I intended,” I said.
Murdock pulled up in front of my building. “I have a doctor’s appointment in the morning. Pick you up around noon?”
“Sounds good.” I got out of the car and didn’t even watch him pull away.
Up in my apartment, I chewed through a few ibuprofen and seltzer. Meryl might have sped up my shoulder healing, but she couldn’t touch what was in my head. It was pounding. I could feel the hazy black cloud in there squeezing whatever was left of my brain.
I stripped out of my clothes and crawled under the bed-covers. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling. Dawn was just a few hours away. I would have to get up then and do my sun rituals. Sunrise was always too early for me. The thing I hated was that the nights when I wanted to sleep the most were when I needed to do the rituals the most. I had committed myself to doing what I needed to do to recover from my accident. The damned mass in my head never went away, but I felt stronger since I had gone back to the rituals. Hell, my shields hadn’t collapsed even when Moke threw me the second time. They didn’t work as well as they used to, but they had held.
Despite my curiosity as to how Crystal Finch ended up with Moke, I was too exhausted to care. Partying with a couple of fairies, brawling with a troll, and flirting with a druidess healer all in one night can take their toll. The sad part is, it felt like just a busy day at the office. That’s what the Weird can do to you.
Chapter 11
My internal alarm clock woke me just before dawn. Gray light filtered into my living room, the cold gray of late fall. The soft hiss of the radiator whispered to me to get out of my nice warm bed. I ached everywhere. Meryl’s healing booster had focused on the shoulder, so every other muscle reminded me that, yes, I had been tossed through the air several times the previous night.
I eased out of bed feeling every vertebra trying to decide whether it wanted to be closer to its neighbor or farther apart. I didn’t think about the headache. I always have a headache, so I only notice the pain if it’s reaching incapacitating levels. I slipped off my T-shirt and boxers and stood naked at the window, eyes closed, arms upraised. All across the city, hundreds, maybe thousands, of fey stood in the exact same posture, naked and waiting for the sun. I suppose if someone had a good vantage point and decent binoculars, the landscape made for a voyeur’s wet dream.
Being fey means being in tune with essence on a level that human normals cannot grasp. It means feeling a connection with the world, with nature, with other beings, through the essence that binds everything. Human normals don’t know what that experience is. Some have a vague sense—the sensitive types who get flashes of precognitive warning, or second sight, or dreams that feel important. The reality of the Convergent World, the world I was born in, my reality, never reaches the essence that Faerie has. Had. Still has. No one knows if Faerie is still there, missing the people and places that ended up here. But the fey here remember it and yearn for it. And so, each morning thousands stand facing east, preparing themselves for a ritual that reminds them of their abilities and keeps them connected to lost Faerie. Me, I just want the headaches to stop so I can get back to work.
I knew the moment the disc of the sun met the horizon. A flush of warmth fluttered in the center of my forehead and in the socket of my shoulder. Meryl’s healing spell continued its work, drawing a boost from the new day. I inhaled, my lungs expanding to their maximum, and I began to chant the ancient words of greeting. As the sun rose higher, I moved through the postures I had learned as a child, pose and voice and essence entwining to realign the pathways within my body that enhanced the ability to manipulate essence. As the sun rose, I moved faster, the chanting became more urgent, my intellectual mind receding as I became one with the flow. That is the core of being fey—the ability to lose oneself completely, to find one’s place in conjunction with the being of all things. As the sun lifted off the horizon, full white blaze above the heaving ocean, I thrust my arms down, my head back, and exhaled in exhilaration.
The problem with doing the sun ritual after a night of little sleep, is you want to stay up and enjoy the endorphins no matter how tired you are. I hit the coffeemaker and went into the shower. One of the nice things about living in an old warehouse not originally meant for residential use is that the heat and hot water boilers tend to be huge. Everyone in the building can probably shower at the same time and not feel a shiver. I still ached from Moke’s love tap, so I let the water massage my skin. Essence may improve my constitution, but it still didn’t make the bruises go away unless a healer manipulated them.
I dressed in jeans and a black turtleneck, poured a cup of coffee, and settled back in bed to watch the news. Nothing startling, the usual chaos and mayhem of a big city. Two more gang fights overnight, one not far from my apartment. The news cycled again on the top of the hour, and a name caught my ear. Gerin Cuthbern stood in front of the Guildhouse, a distinct lack of any of the usual Guild public relations lackeys in attendance. Gerin wore an embarrassingly outdated white robe of druidic office, which told me right away whatever he was droning on about had to be good. I turned up the volume.
“…in this tragic time,” he said into several microphones thrust into his face. “We extend to Eorla Kruge our deepest condolences and our prayers. In what can only be a small gesture of gratitude for all the work Alvud Kruge did for this city, indeed the world, the Boston chapter of the Druidic College offers as a sorrowful gift a place of rest for Alvud’s body. His wish to leave his corporeal remains on these shores speaks volumes about how much he cared for Boston and its people. We can only respond by donating the land in the Forest Hills Cemetery for an appropriate burial and mourning spot for his friends and family.”
The video clip vanished and the perky blond anchor-woman popped back on the screen. I laughed and lowered the volume. Keeva, I’m sure, was blowing a fit somewhere. Given that she wasn’t standing by Gerin’s side for his announcement meant he had just thrown a big wrench into her funeral plans. The Guild had their media protocols, which Gerin well knew, and he had just done a great job of breaking them.
I had to give it to Gerin, though. He knew how to play politics. Staging his announcement in front of the Guildhouse certainly implied their endorsement, although those in the know would know better, and putting Eorla Kruge—a high-ranking Consortium member—in a position to reject a cooperative gesture from the High Druid of Boston was elegant. Neither the Guild nor the Consortium could criticize him without looking like they were using Kruge’s funeral as an excuse to play politics themselves. He was also laying the groundwork to make Eorla look ungrateful if she contested a director’s appointment. A brilliant move. The man knew how to play.
Getting an essence recharge at dawn is great, but it’s all a wash if I exhaust my physical body. It didn’t help that a dream had bothered me. Dreaming gives me a bit of anxiety these days. Last spring I realized my dreams had taken on a predictive bent, an ability I never had before my accident. After midsummer, the dreams stopped, and I thought they were just a fluke brought on by the possibility that I might die. Sort of a heads-up from the Wheel of World to keep me on my toes.