Thank heavens it's only an hour till lunch.
Lianne eyed her students with weariness that bordered on desperation. And I'll have several minutes of blessed silence while we do the spelling test. Of course, I could have a lot more silence if I just shot them. Nice idea. I like it a lot.
The three-minute pencil-sharpening break was over. It was time to get everyone back in order.
"Sit down in your seats, facing forward. Be quiet, get out your pencil, get out your paper. Use your pencil to write on the paper—write the following things. Your name—yes, Keith, when I say your name, I do mean the name your parents gave you, not any name you think is really cool today. The date. Today's date. It's on the board. Look at the board. Copy the date. Get it right. Your life depends on it."
Lianne tapped the blackboard with a piece of chalk for emphasis and counted mentally to ten. The fifth grade Mafia had apparently declared that today was Silly Day—every simple chore required detailed instructions. Even usually well-behaved kids like Latisha McKoy and Marilee Blackewell were misbehaving. The first time she told the class to sit down, almost all of them sat on the floor. It was a bad moment—for the continued existence of the kids, as well as for her.
She hadn't done anything to them—yet—that would lose her this job. Her guardian angels were probably taking bets on how much longer that could last, though.
"Fold the paper neatly in half, longwise. Write the numbers one through twenty-five, down the left side of the paper—Arabic numerals, William, not Roman numerals—no, Snyder, you may not go to the bathroom during a test—I don't care if your big brother did tell you it's your Constitutional right. He lied. Write the numbers twenty-six through fifty down the fold in the center of the paper."
Because we have learned never to say the words "center fold"—in any context—in a room that holds fifth-grade boys, haven't we, Lianne?
"Jennifer, Latisha, you do not talk at any time during a test. Not even if you dropped your pencil, Jennifer—getting it back does not require conversation. Maurice, close the book!"
Ten minutes of orders. Now, finally, she could give the test.
"Number one—concentration. CON-cen-TRA-tion. School work requires concentration."
Not murdering you little monsters requires CON-cen-TRA-tion. Lianne felt her teeth grinding and tried to relax her jaw before she splintered something. Crowns were expensive, and they didn't come under the heading of "injuries in the line of duty."
She studied her charges. Twenty-six heads bent over their papers. Twenty-six hands wrote out creative versions of the spelling words, some that would bear no relationship to any word ever written in the English language. The Death Row Five snuck surreptitious glances in her direction to see if it was safe yet to use their microscopically handwritten cheat sheets. If they spent half the time studying that they did in cheating, they'd be straight-A students. Beth Hambly sat primly in the front row, carefully guarding her (surely perfect) answers from the prying eyes of less perfect classmates. William Ginser, foiled in his plan to number his paper with Roman numerals, was misspelling his words in some ornate style that bore a striking resemblance to German Blackletter.
If he'd just put that kind of energy into learning to spell the damn words in the first place—She sighed. Then he wouldn't be William.
Amanda Kendrick, sitting in the back corner of the classroom, stared out the window.
"Eight. Contradiction. CON-tra-DIC-tion. If you say something that means the opposite of what I have said, that is a contradiction."
Amanda didn't move. Lianne had noticed, on and off during the morning, that Amanda was quieter than usual—but usual was awfully quiet. Now, though, she looked closer.
The total absence of expression on Amanda's face made Lianne shiver. Is she breathing? Yes, she is—a little. Good God, she looks dead. She is breathing—but she sure as hell isn't here. And I don't think I'd want to be wherever she is right now. She hasn't done a single spelling word—no, screw the spelling test. I don't want to call her down in front of the rest of the class. Not right now. She doesn't look like she feels too well.
Lianne cruised through the words on the test, making up sentences on autopilot. She couldn't stop looking at Amanda.
The dead look is in her eyes. They're glazed—could she be having some sort of a seizure? Maybe I need to call a doctor. But she doesn't look physically sick. And the few times I've called on her, I have been able to get an answer out of her—she just drifts away right afterward.
Lianne bit her lip.
We're going to take a break after this test, and I'm going to talk to her.
"Thirty-nine—" Decision made, her attention snapped back to the rest of the class. Her loss of vigilance had not passed unnoticed. "Snyder, Maurice—I'll take those papers, gentlemen, and you may sit out the rest of the test. You've just earned yourselves F's. Anybody else like to try? No? Thirty-nine. Interception. In-ter-CEP-tion. What you have just seen, folks, was the interception of two cheat sheets."
The rest of the test went without incident.
Lianne got everyone started reading Thomas Rockwell's How to Eat Fried Worms, a book she had fought long and hard to get on the fifth grade required reading list. It proved to her students that reading really was fun—she'd converted more book-haters with that—plus A Light in the Attic, and the Alvin Fernald books—than with anything else she used. They wallowed in the gross-out joys and Machiavellian plotting of a kid who got dared into eating a worm a day and the friends who'd bet him he couldn't.
With their attention fixed on their books, she was free to take care of Amanda.
She walked to the back of the room, squatted down beside Amanda's desk, and waited. Amanda kept staring out the window. There was no sign that the child knew she was there.
"Amanda," Lianne whispered. "I need to talk with you."
She got no response.
Lianne rested her hand lightly on Amanda's shoulder, and said, "Amanda, is something wrong?"
The girl's whole body shuddered, and her face turned toward Lianne—and Lianne pulled her hand away, horrified. Pale, pale jade-green eyes stared back at her, stared through her, lips pulled back from teeth in an animal expression of fear, or rage—or both. The face was not Amanda's face, not a child's face—if it was human at all. The expression was fleeting—there, and gone so fast Lianne wondered if she'd really seen it—then one of the girls behind her and towards the front of the class started shrieking. Others yelled, desks squeaked, and something hard hit Lianne on the back of the neck. She spun towards the front of the class, started to yell at the kids to stop fighting, and froze.
Impossible.
Loose chalk flew from the chalkboard as if thrown by an angry child. Closed chalk boxes opened themselves, spewed their contents into the air—the liberated chalk rained against walls and ceiling and floor and kids. Bulky blackboard erasers pelted students and furniture, fell to the floor, and leapt up to attack again.
The neatly stacked spelling tests on her desk launched themselves into the air, to join with piles of loose construction paper from the bulletin board corner and reports on The Planets of Our Solar System that had suddenly come to life.
Books fell off of desks to the floor. Pens and pencils leapt from desks to smack against the windows. The classroom door opened, then slammed shut, then opened again to allow a stream of paperwork to escape out into the hall.
The children's screams didn't cover the sound of paper snapping in the nonexistent wind.
Lianne had just enough time to realize that what she saw was real; it actually was happening. Then it stopped.
Projectiles in mid-course slammed into some invisible wall and dropped to the floor. Papers swirled downward like rainbow-colored autumn leaves. The door shut with a soft click.
There was silence.
Everyone waited. Scared, big-eyed kids looked at her for direction.
She didn't know what to do. So she cleared her throat, bent down, tentatively picked up a piece of chalk, then another. They didn't attack. She picked up a handful of paper.
"Okay, folks—everyone all right?" There were tentative nods from the kids as they looked themselves over and made sure they were still intact. "Good. Then let's . . . let's get this mess cleaned up." She tried to sound brave. God knew, she didn't feel it. "Whatever happened, it's over now. When we've finished, you can all read until the lunch bell rings."
Lianne's knees felt weak. She made her way to the front of the class, put all the chalk and loose erasers around her desk back on the blackboard, then sagged into her seat and rested her head in her hands.
Two days in a row. Right now, I could be convinced to give up teaching forever. The racing accident, the Attack of the School Supplies, Amanda's weird behavior—
Amanda! I forgot about her!
Lianne looked up, expecting to see Amanda frozen at her desk. Instead, she saw the girl chatting with Brynne Lassiter as the two of them cleaned up one corner of the mess.
Amanda glanced in her direction, saw Lianne watching her, and smiled brightly. She bounced up to the desk, and handed the young teacher her gold Cross pen.
"Your pen fell beside my desk."
Lianne tried to smile. "Thank you, Amanda," she said.
"That was really strange, wasn't it, Ms. McCormick?"
"Strange doesn't begin to describe it." Lianne looked closer at the girl, then closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the back of her hand.
"Are you okay, Ms. McCormick?" Amanda asked. She sounded so normal!
"I'll be fine, thank you. Just—just go back to your desk now, please." Lianne felt herself struggling to breathe, felt the room starting to reel, but her skin felt cool to her touch. No fever.
She was light-headed—certainly sick. She had to be.
Amanda's eyes are blue.
Mac woke up with sunlight streaming through the sheers in the window of his hotel suite.
Dammit. Forgot to pull the drapes again. What time is it?
He looked at his clock on the tacky vinyl-veneer almost-Scandinavian dresser that sat in a puddle of sunshine. Green digital numbers, muted to pastel by the light, glowed reassuringly back at him. He stretched with feline grace. Eleven-fifteen. No hurry. I've got plenty of time for room service.
He rolled over to the phone that rested on the equally cheap nightstand and dialed. A bouncy-sounding girl at the other end took his order for French toast and bacon and orange juice and the fruit plate. It would be up shortly, she assured him.
Mac smiled and rolled over on his back. A nice hot shower, I think, while breakfast is getting here—then maybe a little TV. Out in time for the maid to straighten the place up, take Rhellen for some exercise down Bragg Boulevard, drive over to the school to see where Lianne works. Then a stop by the track so Mother doesn't think I've vanished into the ozone. I'll tell her about the outcome of the Belinda Affair. She'll enjoy that.
It felt like the start of a wonderful day.
Of course, any day that started out with room service and a maid couldn't go too far wrong. Maclyn approved of room service.
He lolled in bed, not quite ready to plunge into the pounding spray of a shower, when he noticed a flash of blue and a dull gleam of gold on the other side of the open door that led to his usually-dull-beige suite living room. Curious, he crawled out of the bed and went to take a look.
:Not a very early riser, are you?: The Mindspeech was female, frosty—condescending, too.
Felouen—beautiful, irritating Felouen—lounged on his couch. She wore a cobalt blue silk Court jerkin heavily embroidered with gold over a soft, pale-blue silk blouse. Gold-and-sapphire chains draped around her neck and wove through her pale amber hair. Her long legs—in matching blue trews—were thrown indecorously over one of the couch's overstuffed arms. She hadn't bothered to take off her knee-high blue leather boots. She lay her head back on a cushion and stretched, sending a languorous, sexy smile in his direction.
"A little overdressed for the area, aren't you?" Mac remarked.
:And you're a little underdressed.:
It was a legitimate comment. Mac was stark naked. "You didn't make an appointment. You don't let me know you're coming, you take your chances."
She smiled. :And this time I won.:
Mac refused to be amused or flattered. "I have plans for the day, Felouen. Go home."
:I have plans for the day, too, Mac. I want you to come Home with me.:
He glared at her. "What is this? You can't get me to play warrior for the Court by guilt, so you fake lust? I don't believe you, dear."
She laughed out loud, delighted. :Fake lust! You'd suspect that, with every other elvish maiden sighing after your broad retreating back? My bonny lad, I needn't fake lust.:
She sat up. :But the Unseleighe Court—:
He blanked out her Mindspeech and turned his back on her. "I won't play defender of the lands with you, Felouen. The lands don't need a defender."
Unable to continue her conversation in the more compelling Mindspeech, she shifted with bad grace to physical speech. "It isn't play," she snapped. "The minions of the Unseleighe Court surround you, even now."
"Ooooh, minions," he mimicked. "I'm terrified." He crossed his arms over his chest. "They don't bother me, I don't bother them."
If anything, her voice grew colder. She sounded like his old sword-instructor, Siobhan: deadly, deathly serious. "You know evil doesn't work that way, Maclyn. The Unseleighe Court grows stronger with every back that's turned to it. The darkness has spread to our corner of Underhill—the filth is leaking through even there. Soon enough, it will be able to conquer even the strongest and best of those who could have defended against it. If you don't face it now, you will face it later—on its terms."
There was a knock at the door. "Room service," someone called.
"Yeah—just a minute." Mac pointed into the bedroom. :Get in there—then vanish:, he told the elven warrior. He pulled his bathrobe off of its hook on the coatrack, put it on, and opened the door.
A smiling busboy pushed the cart into the room. "Mornin', Mr. Lynn," he said. "All ready for the race Saturday?"
"You bet, Sam. You gonna be there?"
"Nah." The young man shook his head, disgusted. "Cain't. I'm scheduled to work. I'm pulling for you, though."
"Thanks." He signed for the food—on the Fairgrove account, of course—and grinned as the busboy left. But the grin vanished with the closing of the door. Mac turned and stalked into his bedroom, expecting to find Felouen waiting for him.
She was gone. Good, he thought. The day is looking up.
But the feeling of Presence hadn't abated—
On his bed, gold gleamed. He could feel it. He didn't need a closer look. He knew exactly what she'd left.
Shit. The day is looking down.
Mac felt pretty much the way someone who'd just found a leaking radioactive canister in his house would feel. He stared at the lovely gold circle and swore creatively.
Finally, he picked it up. Uh-huh. I should have known she'd pull something like this. One of the Rings. He pulled a scrap of silk out of a drawer, and carefully wrapped the bit of jewelry in its insulating folds. Then he shoved it into the leather pouch he kept with him. Well . . . maybe D.D. will take it off my hands.
In spite of Mr. Race-Driver's machismo, he doesn't drive so damn-all fast. That stupid shit yesterday must have been to impress me. Ooooh, ooooh, I was so impressed. Gonad-brained jerk-off!
Mac Lynn's '57 Chevy with its custom colors was about as easy to keep track of in traffic as if it sported strobe-lights. She'd always been good at tailing—this was so simple it was dull.
My commission is the same whether I have it hard or easy. I guess I shouldn't knock it.
Belinda downshifted and slipped in behind a pickup as her target slowed and turned into the elementary school parking lot. She chose an unobtrusive spot about a hundred yards down the road, U-turned, and parked. Then she settled back with a bottle of mineral water and a packet of fresh sliced vegetables to wait Mac out.
Her old partner in the Berkeley P.D. had given her endless grief on her choice of stake-out munchies. Ed had hated rabbit food. His idea of stake-out rations was a cold Philly steak sandwich, a stack of Domino's pizzas, and a carton of Mountain Dews. Of course, Ed had given her good-natured hell about almost everything. Sometimes she even missed him.
She missed him at that moment. He would have loved trailing a race-driver with a classic car. He would have known Mac's racing stats and would have tried endlessly to get her to be interested in them. They could have had a wonderful argument about racing, and what it did to the environment. That argument would have segued into solar versus fossil fuel, and Middle Eastern politics, and even—she grinned thinking about it—psychic phenomena. Ed wouldn't have believed the accident yesterday was anything but an accident. He would have argued until his last breath—in spite of her neat gizmo, in spite of the lack of casualties, in spite of everything. Ed had loved to argue.
Debate, he'd called it.
She bit her lip, and glared out the window.
In the end, he had died arguing—debating. He'd had a lot of practice, and he was very convincing, too. She'd wanted to believe him. But he hadn't had as much practice lying as he had at arguing. He'd caught her with the dead mark in the alley, taking her cut to look the other way, and no matter what he said, old Honest Ed could not have meant it when he said he wouldn't turn her in.
She'd hated killing him.
The job wasn't the same after that—it was ruined for her.
She bit viciously at the carrot stick.
Damn Ed, anyway!
She could have been happy in the police department for years.
It was Moonchange, tide change, sea ebb at Fayetteville's Loyd E. Auman Elementary, where the thundering outrush of the pounding surf of children battered against the lone swimmer-to-shore, who was Mac Lynn, Mighty Racecar Driver—
Or maybe it's more like the charge of the lemmings, Mac thought, as he watched small children trample all over each other in their race to leave.
Fascinated, he stopped to watch.
Teachers bellowed and directed and commanded in voices that would have done a drill sergeant proud—Mac wondered how many of them joined the Marines following a few years of teaching so they could get a vacation. Parents leaned out car windows and screamed for their youngsters to hurry up. Kids shrieked and yelled insults and questions and promises to call each other, fighting to be heard over the general uproar. The school bus engines rumbled bass counterpoint.
The odors of asphalt and bus fumes and new-mown rye grass mingled with the smells of books and stale baloney sandwiches and sweaty gym clothes. Noise, commotion, odors: all were overpowering. For a moment, he wished he was Underhill.
But if I went there right after all of this, it would feel like someone had plugged my ears and my nose, muffled my brain in silk, and put dark glasses on me. It would be too subtle, like that awful French food.
There was rarely anything subtle about the world of humans.
The buses filled slowly, then, abruptly pulled away—little pockets of traveling riot. Parents drove off with their young, the few walkers vanished into the distance—and quiet returned suddenly, like the descent of the theater curtain. Mac watched as teachers sagged with relief against the building or their cars, or turned with slow and tired steps to head back inside.
He went inside after them.
Lianne's head rested on her desk. Her eyes were closed and her hands were locked over the back of her neck. To Mac, she looked pale.
"Bad day, huh?"
The teacher looked up at him, blearily, too exhausted to register surprise at his appearance. "Hell day."
Mac grimaced by way of showing sympathy. "I'm sorry. You want a back rub? Or maybe you'd prefer that I drive you home?"
Lianne buried her head in her hands again. "I want to crawl into my bed and die."
Mac shook his head. "The first part of that idea doesn't sound too bad. Tell you what. We'll go over to your place and crawl into bed, and I'll bet I can get you to change your mind about dying."
"I doubt it," Lianne groaned. She sounded sincere. She sounded frightened.
Mac leaned his palms on her desk and waited until she looked up, then stared intently into her eyes. "It can't be that bad. What's wrong?"
Lianne pushed away from her desk and started gathering up her things. She turned her back to him. There was a long pause, filled mostly with the sounds of her stacking papers and breathing rapidly. Finally, she said, in a small, hesitant voice, "Mostly, it seems that my classroom is haunted."
Mac started to laugh, but stopped himself when he noted the tension in her shoulders. "You aren't kidding."
"God, Mac, I wish I were." She sighed and turned, and he could see the brightness of impending tears in her eyes. "You're—you're going to think I'm crazy, but it happened! All the kids were so scared—"
And so were you—"Tell me," he urged. "Lianne, I've seen plenty of things that seemed crazy at the time." He grinned at her, the lopsided, very Celtic grin that always won women's trust. "I may not hang crystals in my car like Bill Gatlin, but I'll go along with Will Shakespeare."
" 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy'?" She managed a tremulous smile. "You know, I think I believe you. . . ."
Mac said nothing, only continued to smile encouragingly.
She took a deep breath and relaxed, just a little. "Partway through reading today, papers and chalk came to life and started flying around the room on their own, attacking people. The door opened and slammed shut—it was a madhouse in here. Then it just stopped. I was terrified."
"I'll bet." He put warmth into it, so much that Lianne smiled at him. Mac felt a twinge of excitement. Something was up—it seemed a bit of a coincidence that he should be hunting a telekinetic kid when inanimate objects suddenly came to life in that kid's homeroom teacher's class. Mac was willing to bet that something about the visit to the track had triggered the girl. Maybe the accident.
Time to do a little fishing, he decided.
"What were you doing when it started, baby?" he asked, urging her to keep talking. "Do you remember?"
She nodded. "Oh, yeah. It was weird. One of the kids in my class had been lost in space all morning—I'd assigned everyone to read, and I went back to her seat to talk to her. I didn't get the chance to, though. I hadn't any more than gotten Amanda's attention when the classroom just—blew up."
That name sounded familiar. "Amanda . . . is the name of the kid?"
Lianne didn't notice his increased interest. "Yeah. You might remember her from our little disaster yesterday. She was the skinny blond girl who wouldn't get down behind the bleachers. She's an odd kid."
Mac felt a surge of triumph. There are no coincidences. I knew it. Same child—and the accident was the trigger.
He nodded casually. "I remember her—she always act like that?"
Lianne picked up jacket, bag, and papers and headed out the door. Mac followed.
"Yes, no, and maybe," she told him. "Nothing about her makes sense. Her aptitude tests indicate that she should be one of the smartest kids I've ever taught. . . ."
"And?" he prompted, taking her elbow.
Lianne sighed. "And sometimes she is. One minute she's sweet and chatty and willing to discuss the lesson, and the next she doesn't even seem to realize there is a lesson. Her spelling tests are a trip. She'll either slaughter the words entirely, or she'll get them all perfect—and sometimes she'll kill the first half of the test and ace the second half. As far as I can tell, she has no attention span. And sometimes she really likes me, and sometimes she really hates me—and I don't have any warning before she goes from one attitude to the other."
Mac frowned; there was something about those symptoms. . . . "That is strange."
"She has parents that care—they have lots of money, she has all the advantages—" Lianne shrugged. She waved to another teacher who was coming down the long hall toward the stairs from the other direction. "I'm not the only one she's this way around. Her health teacher says she went into a rage during sex ed the other day. Said that she started screaming that anyone who could do something that disgusting was a whore or a slut or worse—I guess Amanda used a few words Nancy had never heard before. What's funny was, they were talking about where babies come from. Really low key, really mild—and all of a sudden, there goes Amanda, right off the deep end."
A sick feeling had started in the pit of Mac's stomach when Lianne began describing Amanda's behavior. It grew worse with every detail. By the time she'd finished, he was sure something was horribly wrong with the child. He just didn't have any idea what.
They walked out of the hot hallways, redolent with chalk dust, ink, schoolgirl perfume, and sneakers, into baked-asphalt parking lot heat.
Mac held onto her elbow as she started towards her own car. "Let me drive you home," he urged. I have to find out more about this child—or better yet, get Lianne to take me to her.
But Lianne shook her head with a stubborn determination he was beginning to know well. "Mac, I appreciate it—but I'll be fine. I have to get some groceries, and I want to go home and just soak in the tub and think for a while." A bit of breeze touched the little tendrils of hair that had escaped from her French braid. Not enough breeze to cool, just enough to be annoying.
Azaleas, dogwoods, and a goddamned heat wave, all blooming at the same time. Welcome to April in North Carolina, he thought.
He persisted, in the forlorn hope that she had been worn down enough to give in to him. "Are you sure?"
This time her nod was quite determined. "I'm sure."
Mac shrugged. "Okay. I really guess I ought to stop by the track before D.D. sends out search teams, anyway." Try a different tactic. "May I see you tonight?"
She finally gave in to his persistence, yielding with a willing heart, if the smile that answered his was any indication. "I'd like that. But—how about just an evening in? I'm too tired for anything that involves going out in public."
He pretended to consider it. "Hmm. Never tried one of those before. . . ."
She lifted a skeptical eyebrow, and he laughed. "It's a date," he said, and gave Lianne a tight hug and a kiss. She returned the kiss with startling enthusiasm, and Mac caught his breath.
They are so warm, so bright . . . so enchanting—
And so fleeting—
He pulled away quickly and forced a grin. "Gotta run, babe. See you tonight," he told her, and turned away. He didn't want her to see the pain in his eyes.
—And they die so soon, he thought. So soon . . . and anyone who loves them dies a little bit with them. Not again. I won't ever let myself hurt that way again.
Redmond Something-or-other was pawing Mac's mother again, back in the corner behind the tire stacks. Mac heard D.D. giggling and whispering, and her young lover's erratic breathing. It was, he reflected, a hard life that gave a man a mother who looked ten years younger than he did—when she was nearly two hundred years older.
"Hey, D.D.," he yelled. "You're never going to get my car ready doing that. Chase your stud-muffin off with a nice big tire iron and get out here."
"There's more to life than cars," she yelled brightly, but she and the stud-muffin appeared. Redmond, looking flushed and flustered, was struggling with his buttons. Mac suspected he'd gotten the zipper back in place before he came out of hiding.
D.D., of course, was unfazed. "I didn't think you were going to join us poor peons today," she said, flaunting her pony-tail. "And Redmond and I didn't see any reason to waste a perfectly good day if you weren't even going to show up."
"Mmmm-hmmm." Mac looked over at the dark corner of the garage. "Fooling around on the cement behind the tires has got to be one of the more romantic ways I could think of to spend a day."
She laughed at him. "We pump grease our own way, we do. You're too stuffy, Mac. You wouldn't know a good time if it bit you on the ass."
Mac smiled agreeably and made a tsk-ing noise. "That's the difference between you and me, D.D. If it bit me on the ass, I wouldn't call it a good time."
D.D. laughed and flipped him the finger. "You'll never know what you're missing."
He cast his eyes up to heaven, as if asking for help. "Gods, I hope not. You're one short step above delinquent, and if you weren't such a good mechanic—"
"But I am," she replied impudently. "So you indulge me."
"So I do. Hey, D.D.—I just remembered. A friend of yours stopped over at my place this morning—she had a present for you, but she couldn't find you, so she left it with me." Mac fished the scrap of green silk out of the bag in his pocket, and started to hand it to D.D. . . .
But D.D. kept her hands shoved firmly into her pockets. :Bullshit, Maclyn, my love.: "What friend was that?" she asked out loud.
"Felouen," Mac said. He saw no point in lying. :I'd appreciate your help here, Mother.:
:No doubt—but I'm not going to interfere in your relationship with the Court. You have some responsibilities that you're evading—I won't force you to live up to them. I also won't help you get out of them.: Out loud, D.D. lied for Redmond's benefit. "Felouen and I can't stand each other. I wonder what she's up to."
:She stuck me with a Ring, Mother. Won't you please take it off my hands? Before it calls too much attention to me?: Mac proffered the silk again. "She wants to be friends, D.D. Why don't you just take her present? You can always give it back to her later if you don't change your mind about her."
:You deal with it, kiddo.: "If she wants to be friends, she can find me herself. If you see her again, give her present back to her. And tell her what I said. I'm sure she'll be seeing you again."
Mac muttered, "I'm sure she will."
He held the Ring in his fingers and wished that it would go away. It radiated warmth, power, assurance—and a broadcast beam that would tell every Unseleighe thing in the area that a Seleighe warrior was among them.
Just exactly what I needed for Christmas.