Robert raised one eyebrow at Julian, amusement lurking around the corners of his mouth. “Is there, by chance, anything you have neglected to tell me?”
“Such as?” Julian paged irritably through the book he was holding. The index was worse than useless, and he couldn’t find the information he was looking for.
“Oh, some trivial matter which might cause Kim to glow faintly at dinner—and not in a magical sense, I might add—while blushing from time to time, at no visible cause.”
Julian put the book down and gave his roommate a level look. Blushing? He hadn’t noticed that.
Robert needed no verbal confirmation. He crowed with laughter, sprawling back in his chair so the long bones of his arms and legs radiated outward, starfish-like. “At rather long last! I thought I saw her gathering the nerve necessary to say something to you. And you needn’t pretend I have it wrong; I know she was the one to speak first.” He quieted and looked across at Julian, face still merry. “And now I shall have the delightful entertainment of watching you figure out what to do with her.”
Before Julian could find something approaching a sane response to that, they heard an unsteady knock on the door.
Head-blind as he was, Robert simply got up to answer it. Julian reached outward with his mind, and shot to his feet just as his roommate opened the door.
“Ye gods,” Robert said, seeing Kim outside. Blood streaked her face, and she had the wide-eyed stare look of someone staying on her feet only by force of will. Robert drew her into the room and closed the door while Julian guided her into a seat.
“What happened?” he asked. He kept himself locked down as he said it; she didn’t need to be hit by his reaction, not in her state.
“Unseelie,” Kim said faintly, not looking at either of them. “Talman. In the stacks.”
His hand floated a hair’s-breadth from the slash along her cheekbone, then fell to the bloodstains on her shoulder. “One of them did this to you?”
“Books first. Then he started throwing computers.” She buried her face in her hands and began to shake uncontrollably.
Julian wrapped his arms around her, trying to halt his own shaking. Fury nearly overwhelmed everything. The Unseelie had attacked Kim. But he shoved that down; anger wasn’t what she needed from him. He channeled warmth and support to her, and from the other side, even Robert did what he could, one long-fingered hand touching her head. The comfort broke the last of Kim’s fragile control. Tears began to roll down her face, though she made no sound.
Above her head, Julian exchanged a glance with his roommate, and found Robert’s face reflecting his own thoughts.
But they stayed silent while Kim cried. Only when she shifted, raising one hand to wipe her face dry, did they sit back. “Grayson came,” she said, her voice still thick with tears. “She felt it, I guess. Said the rest of the Ring would be there soon. She’s going to cover it up. Don’t know how.”
“The Unseelie escaped?” Robert asked.
She nodded, the motion jerky. “Yeah. Don’t know where he went. I was too busy playing tennis with shards of glass to pay attention. Then when they stopped flying at me, my first instinct wasn’t to go after him.”
“Of course not,” Julian said. His anger almost slipped its leash as he said it. Attacks on him, he could accept; he was fair game. Kim was a different story.
She felt it, and glanced up at him, but he instinctively avoided her eyes. Robert, deliberately or not, deflected them both. “Why was he trying to kill you?” he muttered.
“He wasn’t,” Kim said. “I don’t think so, anyway. At first it was just scare tactics, trying to make me freak out. Then….” She shuddered, and Julian laid a cautious hand on her shoulder, focusing himself once more. “I guess he lost his temper. Or something.”
The words were coming slowly, her voice dead with fatigue. She was in no state to keep talking about the matter, and Julian glared Robert into silence when he tried to ask another question. It could wait.
Julian laid his head on top of Kim’s again, and held her until she was asleep.
~
The light was coming from the wrong direction, I realized sleepily. It shouldn’t be falling on the left side of my face. Was it that late? But no, that didn’t work either; my room didn’t have a west-facing window.
Puzzled, I opened my eyes. It took a moment for the shapes I was seeing to resolve into a coherent picture, and then a moment more for it to register. I wasn’t in my room. I was in Kinfield still.
The spartan austerity of the room told me whose it was. I pushed back Julian’s worn blue comforter and sat up. And looked at the window. And remembered that his room, unlike mine, faced west. It was that late.
“Shit,” I groaned, and flopped back onto the pillow.
A step outside the door brought me up again, but even as my mind reached out, Julian appeared in the doorway. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I just realized I slept through all my classes.”
He shrugged and came into the room, folding into a cross-legged position on the tile floor. “With good reason.”
“But I can hardly tell my professors that, can I?” I shoved my hair out of my face and wished for something to tie it with. Unfortunately, Robert cut his ponytail off freshman year, and no longer had hair-bands around. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Don’t you have classes, too?” I doubted he’d gone outside in those scruffy clothes.
He shrugged carelessly.
“Julian! You’ve already missed two weeks; you can’t afford to miss more!”
“I wasn’t going to leave you alone.”
That was both touching and irritating. Last night I’d been grateful beyond words to know that I didn’t have to worry about defending myself for a little while, that any Unseelie who tried to walk in the door would be dead before he got two steps. Still…. “You’re as much of a target as I am, you know.”
“Except I wasn’t sleeping off a backlash-headache.”
Irritatingly, he was right. I opened my mouth once or twice but couldn’t find a useful comeback. Had anyone come for me while I was out, I would have been an easy target. “Don’t worry,” Julian said. “I’ll be fine.”
That was always his answer. “I guess so,” I muttered rebelliously.
“How are you feeling now?” he asked, blatantly changing the subject.
“Better than I was yesterday.” Thanks to my long sleep, I had only traces of a headache. Memory said I’d fallen asleep on their futon; there was no way I’d been in a state to go back to Wolfstone. I hadn’t even noticed them shifting me to the bed. Where had Julian slept? On the futon, probably, if he’d slept at all. He didn’t look like he’d been up all night, but I wouldn’t put it past him. “I don’t suppose you have any idea what explanation Grayson cooked up for the damage in Talman?”
“Not yet. I told Robert to call if he heard any rumors.”
“What about Liesel? Has anybody called her—does she know where I am?”
“She knows. She was scared, at first, but you might be glad to know the next words out of her mouth were ‘I hope Kim got the bastard good.’”
I sighed wearily and leaned my back against the wall. “As if I could. I got one bolt off before he expected it, but he blocked everything else. It’s a pity they don’t teach undergrads combat magic.” Julian’s face didn’t flicker, but I still found myself wondering what he knew. If he’d learned summonings before coming to Welton, what else had they taught him? “Shit,” I said, as something else occurred to me. “I left all the books I’d found in Talman.”
“On the sidhe?”
“The I Ching. And other things.” I chose my words carefully, so as prevent the conversation from going down any of the various tracks I wanted to avoid. He didn’t know about my mother’s dream, and it wasn’t like he needed more warnings to protect me. “This is a turning point, so it’s damn near impossible to get anything concrete from divination. Still, I wanted to try other methods—but I don’t know the I Ching well enough to use it without a reference.” And try though I might, I could not convince myself to go back to Talman.
“I have a book on it,” Julian said. He helped me to my feet, and I did need the help. My knees felt like limp noodles. But we made it to the common room without mishap, where Julian fetched the appropriate book from its shelf.
“Thanks,” I said, looking it over. The title was one I’d pulled in Talman last night. Now it was lost, somewhere in the disaster that was the third floor. Gods, I hoped the checkout boy was all right. Maybe he’d just gone to the bathroom when the Unseelie slipped in.
I stretched my back, feeling it pop in four different places. “Well. I should go back to my room and give this a try. Maybe even some class work; I can’t afford to miss tomorrow, too. Not if I’m supposed to be acting normal.”
Julian nodded and picked up his coat. I frowned. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Going with you.”
I almost objected. I didn’t want to be coddled, like some kid who couldn’t cross the street on her own; I’d had enough of that after my brother died. Then it occurred to me that, while Julian might want to protect me, that wasn’t necessarily his only reason. And I didn’t exactly object to spending more time with him. “Let’s get food, though. I’m not hungry, but I know I should be.”
After a quick meal in Kinfield’s dining hall, we went out into the snow. For once, I didn’t care about the cold. Julian walked at my side in companionable silence, not touching but closer than usual, and for a brief moment I could pretend everything was normal.
But not forever. With people coming out of afternoon classes, I should have felt safe. Instead, every nerve was standing on end, hypersensitive for danger. My eyes darted from side to side, and it was only by force of good manners that I didn’t psychically scan everybody who walked past. My muscles were tensed to run.
“Try to relax,” Julian said quietly.
I tried to smile, but didn’t quite succeed. “I know. They’re not likely to try anything here.”
“They might,” he said. “But you can react faster if you aren’t tense.”
That unexpected response rocked me. Were we really in that much danger? No, hopefully not—but this was how Julian lived, or at least how he’d been trained. Assume danger, but don’t let it paralyze you. Gods. And I needed to learn to think like that, too.
It was impossible to be aware of everything at once, but my paranoia tried. Could I trust my senses, though? This might all be an illusion. All the people I saw around me, they might not really be there. I might not be where I thought I was. If it was a glamour, the level of detail was insanely high, but who was to say the sidhe weren’t capable of it? I could be walking the wrong way, into the Arboretum where they could attack me, or off campus and onto a road. They could kill me with simple misdirection.
Could they deceive my body like that? I’d walked this path a thousand times. Surely my feet would follow the right course without thought, would notice if my surroundings went askew.
But I couldn’t be sure.
By the time I reached Wolfstone, my nerves were frayed. I reached out reflexively and scanned the building, feeling the comfortable familiarity of the place, the gentle pulse of the various shields on people’s rooms. My own room. I didn’t think the sidhe could fake that.
We paused inside the doorway, gear-shifting again from potential Unseelie targets to a pair of young people in the awkward early stages of a relationship. An involuntary grin crept over my face at the ridiculousness of it. Julian showed amusement as well, but before we could decide what constituted an appropriate goodbye between a standoffish wilder and his girlfriend of two days, a voice came from the stairs. “Hey, Kim. Hey, Julian.”
We twitched apart, as if we’d been caught doing something scandalous. Michele crossed the entrance hall, studying the two us with obvious curiosity. Then her eyes widened. “Lord and Lady, Kim—what happened to you?”
I’d forgotten about the cuts on my face. “A botched PK exercise,” I improvised. “The glass exploded, and I, being stupid, got hit.”
“Ouch. Weren’t you wearing any protection?”
“Obviously not enough.” Michele made a sympathetic noise, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “What are you doing here?”
“Liesel asked me to come by. She and I meditated together, and then did a couple of protective spells.” She nodded at Julian. “For you as well as for the rest of the Circle.”
Julian only said, “Thank you,” but I rather thought he was surprised. “And thank you for the healing work—I sent everyone a message, but I also wanted to say it in person.”
I hadn’t even thought about that. I mean, I’d thanked them, but somehow it never occurred to me that Julian would think of it, with everything else on his mind. I hadn’t considered what it would mean to him, that people he wasn’t good friends with would do that for him, a wilder.
“You’re welcome,” Michele said. “Hey, not to be rude, but I’ve got something to tell Kim—do you mind?”
He shook his head. “I’ve got to head off anyway. Kim, I’ll see you later.”
“Bye,” I said, and inwardly cursed Michele for not having come downstairs thirty seconds later.
When he was gone, the Circle leader said, “I guess I could have said this in front of him, but—well, I had a weird dream last night, about you.”
First my mother, now Michele. At this rate we weren’t going to keep things secret much longer. “What happened?”
“The whole Circle was there, but you were standing apart, looking at us in a strange way. And there was this band of mist between you and the rest of us, and I was afraid to touch it or walk through it.”
My precognition twinged ominously. “Any idea what it means?”
“None whatsoever.”
I shrugged with my best imitation of carelessness. “Me neither. Thanks for telling me, though.” Everyone was warning me lately. Grayson’s reinforcements could not arrive fast enough.
“You’re welcome.” Michele looked uncomfortable. “I have to go. Just—be careful, all right?”
I nodded. “I will be.”
Alone once more, I climbed slowly up the stairs. Whatever Grayson was busy doing, I couldn’t sit on my hands—not where my own safety was concerned. I would try to get information tonight.
~
This time the four of us ate in Liesel’s and my room in Wolfstone. Back in the days when we had nothing to hide, we’d rarely taken our meals out of the dining halls. Now it was becoming routine. We couldn’t talk about the sidhe in public, and our conversations were about little else.
Even when the topic wasn’t the sidhe, it was still indirectly about them. “So, did you hear about the idiot who set an imp loose in Talman?” Robert asked dryly as we ate.
I blinked, momentarily confused. Then I made the connection. “What the hell did Grayson do?”
“Covered your tracks—yours and the Unseelie’s.” Robert shook his head in admiration. “The woman works fast, I’ll give her that. She conjured up an imp and persuaded it to run all over the mess, covering the magical traces with its own, and then subdued it before anyone else arrived. Not that she’d find that last a difficult task. I’ve yet to see the imp that could look Grayson in the eye.”
I glanced at my textbook from Lesser Banishing Rituals and shuddered. Imps were, at the moment, beyond my skill. They were pissants in the grand scheme of things, being nothing more than the embodiment of humanity’s baser urges, but they were bloody nuisances, and sending them back to the weird quasi-plane they inhabited could be a frustrating task. The only thing that made them useful was that they were marginally more intelligent than constructs, and could be drafted for more complex tasks. “Why the hell would anyone let an imp loose in the library, though?”
“To do his research,” Robert said blandly. “Except that the creature had ideas of its own.”
Gods. I could just see some of the idiots on campus doing that. “Who’d she blame the summoning on, though? And how’d she handle the issue of permits?”
“According to rumor, it had been loose for too long, so she could not tell who called it. It was gone before the other Ring anchors got there, so they could not check her story. And presumably the fellow responsible is taking a summoning course. The University may try to investigate who among those currently studying summoning would have an interest in divination books, but since they cannot be certain that was the section the imp was directed to, they will likely give it up as a waste of time.”
Smooth. Grayson had covered amazingly well, and with little time to plan. Guardians were used to doing that, after all. “What about the checkout boy, though?”
“He was discovered locked in the broom closet.”
“And….”
“He corroborated Grayson’s tale of the imp, insofar as he was able. The imp, he says, locked him in the aforementioned closet. The rest, he obviously was not there to see.”
I blinked. “He mistook the Unseelie for an imp? And that bastard, who threw screens at my head, only locked him up?”
Robert shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. Either you are correct, or Grayson got to him first and implanted a ‘suggestion’ of the proper story. Only she can say.”
That latter sounded more plausible to me. If it was the case, though, Grayson had, in the space of ten minutes at most, summoned an imp, directed it to run amok while she doctored the checkout boy’s memories, and then banished it once more.
Were all Guardians that good?
We finished our meals and stacked the dishes by the door, then began setting out candles. Liesel had asked Julian and Robert over to help reinforce the shields on our room. What we currently had blocked us from sensing our dorm-mates’ nightmares or other nocturnal adventures, but she wanted something more substantial. I wondered how much good it would do us against the Unseelie. Our idea of a shield might be laughable to them.
Julian led our circle, of course. He’d taken more shielding courses than the rest of us put together; I didn’t even recognize most of what he did. I tried not resent the fact that I was just there for power, but it was hard.
How quickly I’d gone from ignoring CM with all my might, to wishing desperately that I knew it all.
The ritual was over and I was snuffing out candles when a thought occurred to me. I might be uneducated compared to Julian, and I might not have a fraction of his power, and I might not know anything of use—but there was one thing I had done that no one else had.
“I want to talk to Falcon,” I said.
All three of them blinked in unison. I fought an urge to laugh. “Now?” Liesel said blankly, sounding utterly confused.
“Yes. Now.” I glanced at Julian. “I have questions for him.” And I was going to get answers if I had to take the sidhe by his pointy ears and shake him.
Julian rose immediately. “I suggest we go elsewhere. The Arboretum would probably be best.” Always the bloody Arboretum. I tried not to sigh.
Liesel and Robert also climbed to their feet. Startled, I said, “You’re coming?”
Robert snorted, and Liesel looked like she wanted to do the same. “Of course I am. I haven’t even met this guy yet; you think I’d stay behind?”
So she hadn’t. I’d forgotten that. “I just hope he doesn’t run at the sight of a stranger.”
~
I cupped the carving in my hands and studied it. The other three watched me patiently, their breath clouding in the chill air.
Falcon said I’d know how to contact him. No, that wasn’t it; he said I had the skill to reach him. Telepathically, no doubt. And, since I wasn’t at all familiar with his aura, this carving would—if my guess was right—be my link to him.
I glanced up at the others from my seat on a log. “I think I’m going to have to trance to do this. If … if something weird happens … well, you’ll figure something out.” The last time I’d stuck my nose out like this, the Unseelie had nearly snapped it off. I prayed this wouldn’t be a repeat.
“I’ll follow you,” Julian said.
Of course he wouldn’t let me go off on my own. The geis probably wouldn’t let him. There was no guarantee the two of us would be any safer than one alone if the Unseelie detected our presence, but having him along wouldn’t hurt.
“You guys stand guard, then,” I said to Robert and Liesel. They took up stances on either side of us as though they meant it physically as well.
Julian and I slipped into trance easily, and linked mental hands in a firm grip. Here, the power of his presence was reassuring instead of unsettling; it belonged to this realm. The carving now manifested as a glowing line, much as I had expected. I’d read about similar tools, though never used one. But this one led off in a weird direction—as though my world had only two dimensions, and this was headed into a third. Frowning, I followed it.
Or tried to.
I couldn’t find the knack of it. Every time I moved to follow the line, it was like I slid sideways, staying in the flat plane of my own world. Frustration made my trance ripple; I calmed myself and studied it.
Like this.
I watched Julian. See? he asked. I studied him carefully before indicating understanding. He was doing it weirdly, but I thought I could imitate it….
It felt ass-backwards, but it worked. Exhaustingly. Instead of reaching for something naturally, I was having to very carefully twitch just one tiny muscle, letting it lead the way. Damn Julian; it seemed much easier for him.
Of course it did. With that thought, I realized what we were doing. This line led toward the Otherworld. To follow it, we were having to follow our sidhe blood. Tiny muscle, indeed. Four-tenths of one percent. He got to use a whole twenty-nine percent.
We slid along the glowing line, leaving behind the comfortable surroundings of our own world. My skin began to tingle, as if the human part of me knew this was not native territory. What would it be like, when our two worlds combined? Would everything feel like this?
And we reached the boundary, the physical plane of the Otherworld looming ahead.
In theory we might be able to send our spirits through to manifest visibly there, but I had a suspicion that would be more difficult here than in our world. Probably by orders of magnitude. It wasn’t necessary anyway; we only had to summon our target.
Julian indicated to me that I should make the call.
Falcon.
It reverberated along the line and passed out of sight.
Falcon. Come to us; we must talk.
Assent. He would come, and reasonably soon. I could pick up no more than that—no surprise, nothing.
Let’s go.
At Julian’s suggestion, we began to back away. Returning was far easier than going out, with my mortal blood pulling me rapidly toward its home. I understood better now what Falcon meant about our world not being comfortable for him. What would it feel like if I entered the Otherworld physically?
Back in our bodies, Julian and I opened our eyes. Robert and Liesel relaxed with twin sighs of relief. Glancing at my watch, I saw that the journey had taken remarkably little time.
“Did it work?” Liesel asked.
“Yeah, he’s coming. Soon.” Julian and I rose to our feet, stiff with cold, and we all waited, wary, looking in seventeen directions at once. To pass the time, I tried to explain to the other two what the journey had been like, but I saw from their expressions that words did a poor job of describing it. They would have to feel it themselves.
“Not I, my lady,” Robert said with a stiff laugh when I suggested bringing him along the next time. “I fear such tricks are best left to those with more telepathic ability than I.”
“What do you want?”
Liesel made a strangled noise and whipped around. I’d forgotten to tell her that Falcon had a habit of appearing without warning.
The waxing moon was intermittently covered by clouds tonight, so Falcon seemed to fade in and out of the shadows. His green eyes glowed unnervingly, like a cat’s, reflecting what little light there was. Liesel was close enough to me that I could feel the tension in her body. I sympathized. I remembered what my first encounter with Falcon had felt like.
A lot like it did now.
But I refused to let his strangeness put me off-balance. I’d taught myself to cope with Julian, back when I first met him; I would do the same now.
“Impatient, are you?” I stepped forward to catch his eye. “I’ll get to it, then. What are the limitations of glamours?”
Falcon’s eyes traveled the length of my body appraisingly. From a human it might have been lascivious, but from him it was just a flat evaluation. “You look well. We had word of your adventures last night.”
“Forget about that; it’s not why I called you here. What are their limits?”
Something flickered in his eyes, that I couldn’t read clearly. But his posture was a little less arrogant, and that was a victory. If Falcon respected firmness, then I’d give him firmness, until he choked on it.
With poisonous precision, he said, “Because the burden of them cannot be shared, they are limited to what a single individual can maintain. Thus they are small in scope. It is extraordinarily difficult to convince all senses at once; thus they are focused on deceiving only a few. And no sidhe can disguise his eyes—not even to change their color and convince you he is of the other Court.”
So their limits were closer to ours than I’d feared. But what did eye color have to do with it? I glanced at Julian. His jaw tensed, and he said, “All Seelie have green eyes. The eyes of the Unseelie are gold.”
It would have been nice if one of them thought to mention that sooner. I wasn’t about to yell at Julian, though, and I had better things to press Falcon about. “Okay, next question. How is it that I understand you?”
Now he looked blank. “I beg your pardon?”
“How am I understanding you? I’m not going to believe that after who knows how many thousands of years of separation, the sidhe just happen to be fluent in modern English. How are you communicating?” It was as close as I could come to asking if they’d been spying on us prior to Samhain. I doubted Falcon would ever answer that.
“Ah. I understand.” Falcon seemed amused again, damn him. “I am not speaking English at all.”
I looked at him closely. He sounded perfectly intelligible. But once I paid attention, I realized he was telling the truth. My mind heard English, but that wasn’t what my ears were picking up, and that wasn’t what his lips were forming. It was done so skillfully, better than any dubbing, that I hadn’t noticed until he pointed it out.
“How are you doing that?” I whispered, fascinated by the trick.
He shrugged. “Your mind chooses words to suit the thoughts it receives.”
Telepathy. At such a highly refined level I could barely begin to comprehend it. Most telepathic communication was like slightly quicker speech, and was language-dependent. A closer link could pass language boundaries by relying on images and emotions, but then it was nonverbal. I marveled at the beauty of this. With it, no interpreter would ever be needed. Every language would be understood.
Provided the people on both ends were gifted. “So a person with no sidhe blood wouldn’t be able to understand you,” I said.
“That explains my difficulty, I suppose,” Robert said with a painful laugh. “He doesn’t sound entirely fluent to me. Damn my lack of telepathic skill.” The uncertain light made his expression hard to read, but he felt more than a little bitter.
I turn back to Falcon. “So you understand me….”
“By the thoughts and images you project.”
Those “thoughts and images” had to be damn faint, as we all shielded against leaking anything strong. “If I put up tighter shields, would we be able to communicate?”
“I would expect not.” Falcon continued talking, but it became incomprehensible as I sealed myself off as tightly as I could. For the first time, I truly heard his words, in the sharp, alien language of the sidhe. “Gods, that’s weird.”
He shook his head, and I lowered the shields. “You didn’t understand what I just said, did you?”
“No. I was almost able to extrapolate from the others, since they understand you, but it was too indistinct.”
So we could, if we wanted, converse amongst ourselves without the sidhe understanding. Not for long, though; staying that thoroughly locked off was tiring. But ungifted baselines might be unintelligible to the sidhe. It was possible to pry into their minds, but that took a more concentrated effort, since they didn’t leak anything. They were, in a way, safer than bloods—until somebody started flinging around the telekinetic effects, or ceremonial magic.
I made myself focus. We needed information that would protect all of us, blood and baseline alike. That was what I came here for, to bludgeon Falcon into being of actual use. It didn’t matter how many skirmishes we won against the Unseelie, if we didn’t have something to base a broader strategy on. “How about travel? How did you get here?”
“My people sent me.”
“I know that. What I want to know is how—the mechanics of it. You didn’t just wiggle your nose, I’m sure.”
“No, I did not.” I let him think it over. For once he didn’t seem like he was trying to avoid the question, just searching for the words to answer it. Or not words—given what he’d just told me—but an answer I could comprehend. “We … reached through. I do not know how else to explain it. We reached through, and found your world, and temporarily made a hole. Then I was here.”
“And to go back?”
“The same, except it is easier. I contact them, to let them know I am ready. They make the hole. I go back through.”
“You don’t make it yourself?”
“It is too difficult for one alone, and even to help would tire me. We think it safer to have it done by those who can remain in our world and rest.”
So theoretically we could trap a sidhe here, if we could block him from contacting his people. I wasn’t planning to try it on Falcon—not unless he really pissed me off—but it could be useful against the Unseelie. And there was at least the possibility that we could make a portal of our own, if we had to.
“But it will get easier as time goes on,” I said.
Falcon nodded. “Yes. Gradually, until the solstice, when it will but require intent and energy. One alone will be capable, then.”
“And it’s easiest here, at least for now.”
“Yes.”
“So why Welton?”
“Are you asking why it was chosen in the first place?”
“Yes.”
Falcon leaned his head back, considering his answer again. “I cannot say for certain why the Unseelie chose this place. All our kind are restricted to this area at the moment because this is the point of contact, the one place that has a link to our world. The farther we move from it, the more … uncomfortable it becomes.”
“But you can guess why they chose it.”
He lowered his chin. I controlled my reaction as his reflecting gaze settled on me. “This is … a good place. For us. It is closer to our world than most. There are others like it, but not all of them also have the concentration of those you call gifted that this does.” Julian shifted next to me.
Closer to the Otherworld. There was a cave, deep in the Arboretum, that had been sacred to the Ojibwe before they were driven off the land. The tribe had made an almighty protest when the university was built here—but the powers that be, determined to put the campus on a strong magical locus, had pushed it through anyway. Throw in a high number of bloods, and suddenly you had a place that was as close to home as the sidhe were likely to find in our world. “But there are other places—not many, but a few—with similar locations and many bloods. Why this one?”
Falcon indicated ignorance with another faint shrug. “Who can say. Chance, it would seem; they had to choose a place, and this was it.”
Chance. Fate rolled the dice, and we won—or lost. I wondered if anyone in those other places had gotten the same signs I had, the Tower and Hagalaz. Warnings of the Otherworld’s approach.
“Are you finished?” the sidhe asked, at his very driest.
“I’m not,” Julian said even as I nodded. Falcon looked to him with a raised eyebrow. Sidhe body language might not be like ours—in the end, they simply weren’t human—but the way his shoulders settled back read like disdain to me. He truly did have it in for Julian. I, not being a wilder, was apparently less to blame.
For a moment I thought Falcon would just leave, but he let Julian ask his question. “How did the Unseelie find Kim?”
The moonlight limned Falcon’s graceful hands as he lifted them in a careless shrug. “I can only assume they followed from you.” A cloud scudded across the moon, and when it cleared, the shadow where Falcon had stood was empty.
~
“Damn it!” I swore, jumping half a foot. “I wish he wouldn’t just vanish like that.”
Julian was still staring at the place where the sidhe had been. Half to himself, he said, “But you got real information out of him. Interesting.”
Robert linked his hands over the top of his head and exhaled loudly. He began questioning Julian; I went to Liesel, who was standing with her arms wrapped tightly around her body. “You okay?”
She shook her head—it was more like a whole-body shudder. “No. I thought—I thought it would be like meeting Julian, only more.”
But it really, really wasn’t. “Maybe some of the other sidhe aren’t so creepy. Maybe it’s just him.”
Liesel tried to fold in on herself, even smaller. Her voice went very quiet, until I could barely hear her below Robert. “The summer before I came to Welton … I volunteered at a psychiatric hospital. There was a sociopath there, a man who just didn’t see other people as human. He was flat, cold, as if nothing ever touched his heart—as if he didn’t have a heart to touch. And Falcon reminds me of him.”
I understood her shudder, now. Of course Falcon didn’t see us as human—or rather, as sidhe. We might carry a small bit of their legacy, and I supposed by the usual biological definition that made us variants of the same species … but we were not the same. And from his perspective, I imagined, we were not just different but lesser.
Falcon called Julian a changeling. If that was the translation my mind chose, then whatever word he was using was meant to be a slur.
My roommate looked up at me suddenly, almost desperately. “Power isn’t the only difference between us and them, Kim. Don’t make the mistake of believing they think or feel like we do. Even the Seelie.”
I nodded soberly. We headed back toward the dorms with Robert making his best attempts at jokes along the way, but Liesel’s words stayed with me.