“Are we getting in over our heads?” Jacky asked.
She stood in the doorway to Kate’s bedroom, putting on her jacket while Kate changed into a pair of jeans.
“We pulled out okay the last time,” Kate said. She paused, one leg in, the other out, to look at Jacky. “We accepted the responsibility from Bhruic. We can’t just back out the first time things start to get a little rough.”
“I know. I wasn’t saying that.”
Kate got her other leg into her jeans and tugged them up. “You just don’t want to blow it, right?”
“Something like that. I don’t want to make a muddle. I guess I’m scared of making things worse, instead of fixing them.”
“We’ve done fine so far.”
“Little things. But”
Kate joined her in the doorway and laid a finger across Jacky’s lips.
“Listen up, kiddo,” she said. “If it wasn’t for you, there wouldn’t be any Seelie Court left in Kinrowan. Remember that. And since then you’ve kept the luck replenished, just the way you’re supposed to.”
“Right. So now we’re supposed to play detective and figure out who murdered some poor little fiaina sidhe? And what do we do if and when we do find out? What are we going to do about something that can cause that kind of damage without leaving any trace of itself behind?”
“Run like hell?” Kate tried. She gave Jacky’s shoulder a light punch. “Just kidding. Don’t worry, Jacky. Things’ll work out.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve got a valiant tailor complex.”
“While you’re a giant-killer remember? So let’s not keep our hob waiting.”
She led the way downstairs.
“I only brought the one pony,” Mull said when they rejoined him. “I never thought”
“That’s okay,” Kate said. “We’ll follow on our bikes.”
Five
The night was quiet in Puxill.
The only real sound was that of the Rideau River washing across the flat stones by which Johnny and Jemi Pook were sitting. There was a mist on the river, making a blur of the university’s lights on the other bank. It muffled the already vague sound of distant traffic until it seemed that he and his diminutive companion were the only ones about at this hour.
At first the time passed pleasantly enough. While they didn’t talk much, Johnny was content to wait until Jemi’s sister came before asking any more questions. But as they continued to sit there waiting, the earlier sense of warmth and closeness slowly drained from him and he grew impatient again.
Why were they just sitting here? For that matter, how did he even know that Jemi had a sister? The whole affair was beginning to feel like another prank or a part of the same one that he’d fallen for last night.
He stood up suddenly and walked to the edge of the river. Picking up flat stones, he skimmed them across the water, growing more angry with each throw.
“She’s not coming, is she?” he asked.
He turned to face Jemi. She seemed tinier than ever a small bundle of shadow, perched on a rock.
“It doesn’t seem so.”
“Of course, how could she even know that we’re waiting for her? We didn’t phone ahead or anything.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
Johnny nodded. “I know. It needs a fiddle tune. What should I play?”
“That won’t work,” Jemi said. “She should have known we were here by now. I guess she’s just not around tonight.”
“If she even exists in the first place.”
The shadow that was Jemi moved as she looked up from the stones at her feet to frown at him.
“Are you saying I lied to you?” she asked.
Remembering the warmth, the feeling of closeness, even if he couldn’t regain it at the moment, Johnny shook his head. But it was too hard to simply set aside his frustrations and forget.
“I just don’t know what I’m doing here,” he said. “I mean, last night was strange enough. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson. But no. Here I am, back again.”
He skimmed another stone across the water, using far more force than was necessary. It skipped all the way across to the other shore.
“What are we doing here, Jemi?” he asked as he turned back to look at her once more.
“Waiting for Jenna.”
He shook his head. “C’mon. What would she be doing here?”
Now even the memory of the warmth he’d felt with her was fading.
“She lives here,” Jemi said.
Johnny looked around.
“Here?” he asked. “Under these stones, maybe? In the base of the train bridge? In a tree?”
“I’m worried,” Jemi said, ignoring his questions. “It’s not like Jenna to leave like this.”
“Leave what?”
“Puxill,” Jemi said impatiently.
“Your sister’s a baglady?” Johnny asked. “She lives in this park?”
Quicker than he might have thought possible, Jemi was on her feet, closing the distance between them and poking a finger in his chest.
“Don’t talk like that about her!” she said. “I said I was worried. I don’t need your stupid jokes on top of it.”
“Oh, excuse me. How rude of me to not take this all more seriously.”
He took a step back as she lifted her finger to poke him again. A wet stone slid under his foot and he would have fallen, except Jemi reached out and grabbed his arm, hauling him erect. As soon as he regained his balance, Johnny moved gingerly around her and onto safer ground. He rubbed his arm where she’d grabbed him. Like last night, the grip had been very strong.
“It was you last night, wasn’t it?” he said. “Why are you going through with this charade of looking for a sister who doesn’t even exist?”
Jemi looked at him for a long moment, then shook her head.
“Screw you,” she said, and vanished.
Johnny stared at the spot where she’d disappeared. This time there couldn’t be any other explanation. Last night she might conceivably have slipped into the trees somehow she could move fast, he remembered but there was no place for her to have done the same here.
The stones were bare, pale as bones in the starlight. She couldn’t have gone into the mist on the river because he would have heard her in the water. They’d been standing on a slight promontory jutting out into the river. To get to the forest behind him, she would have had to pass by him, and she hadn’t.
She’d just disappeared.
“Jemi?” he called quietly. “Jemi! Look, I’m sorry. Please don’t take off like you uh, like your sister did last night. I thought you were just having me on again pulling my leg.”
There was no reply.
He turned slowly, head cocked slightly as he strained to hear her move. He caught sight of their instrument cases and hurried over to them, staking claim to them with either hand. She wouldn’t just take off and leave her sax behind, would she?
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going. I’ll leave your sax with Greg, or you can come and get it now.”
He looked around some more. Maybe she’d fallen into the river, he thought suddenly. The water could have taken her under before she had a chance to call out. He just hadn’t heard her fall that was all. The water wasn’t running fast, but all it needed was a slip on a mossy stone he’d slipped himself a moment ago maybe crack your head on a rock as you fell
He started for the river, alarmed now, then stopped dead in his tracks. Like a magician’s rabbit, pulled from an empty hat, Jemi was suddenly standing in front of him. They studied each other, neither speaking. Johnny swallowed, his throat unaccountably dry.
“Look,” he began. He cleared his throat, started again. “I don’t know how you’re doing that, but how are you doing that? Wait. Don’t tell me. I know you don’t like questions. So how about if I just leave your sax here” he set the case down on the stones between them “and I’ll just go, okay? No hard feelings, rig
ht?”
He began to back slowly towards the bicycle path, trying not to think about what she might do next. If she could just pop in and out of existence the way she did, who the hell knew what else she could do? Best not to find out. Best just to get out while he could.
“Don’t go,” she said.
He stopped moving immediately. She’d asked him, not told him, but he wasn’t taking any chances.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about from me,” Johnny told her. “I won’t tell anybody about you. Well, I told Henk, but I won’t tell anybody else, okay? And even Henk doesn’t know that you
that you’re
what you can do
” He looked helplessly as her. “Christ, I don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
“I’m sorry,” Jemi said. “I really am worried about my sister, but I never stopped to think about what this must all seem like to you. Since she got you into it, I was going to let her explain it, but now I don’t know where she is and
“
She sighed.
“Hey,” Johnny said. “It’s no problem. Really. I’ll just go and you won’t have to worry about”
Jemi stamped her foot. “Would you stop acting like I’ve got three heads and I’m about to take a bite out of you with one?”
“Well, it’s just
“
“I know. You thought I’d just disappeared on you like Jenna did last night.”
“Well, you did.”
“But it’s not disappearing not really. It’s just sort of
stepping sideways. I’m still here, but you can’t see me.”
“That might not seem unusual to you,” Johnny said, “but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense from where I stand.”
“I want to show you something,” Jemi said. “And after I’ve shown it to you, I’ll answer your questions. Okay?”
“Ah
sure.”
She picked up her saxophone case with one hand and took his with the other.
“It’s up the hill a bit,” she said.
“Puxill?”
She smiled briefly and nodded. They crossed the bicycle path and plunged into the woods on the other side of it, angling in a southwesterly direction, which took them to the park’s steeper slopes. In a small clearing, Jemi paused.
“Now, don’t get all weird on me again,” Jemi said as she let go of his hand.
“Me go all weird on you? Hey, I’m not the one that”
“Whisht!”
Obediently, Johnny fell silent. He closed his mouth and concentrated on what Jemi was doing. She bent over a granite outcrop and tapped it with her finger. Once, twice, quickly. After a pause, a third tap. Giving him another quick smile, she stepped over to him and took his hand again. Her grip was very tight.
“That’s starting to hurt”
But then he knew why she was holding him so firmly. Given his druthers, he’d have preferred to simply bolt.
A large piece of sod was slowly lifting from beside the outcrop. As it moved to one side, Johnny could see a short tunnel that led into something wider which was dimly lit.
“What
what is it?” he managed.
“This is my home where Jenna and I live,” Jemi said. Though I spend more time in the city itself lately, this is my real home, Johnny.”
Johnny stared down the tunnel. “So you
you’re a fairy, too?”
“A halfling, actually. And we’re not exactly faerie not Court fey, at any rate. We call ourselves fiaina sidhe.”
“A halfling?” Johnny asked. “Like a hobbit?”
“No. I’m just half fiaina the other half’s as human as you.”
“And Jenna’s really your sister?”
“Half-sister. She’s pure fiaina.”
“Right. And you live in this hill.”
“Well, not so much lately. But Jenna does.”
“And you can step sideways, which is like disappearing, but isn’t.”
“It’s stepping into Faerie, actually. The Middle Kingdom. Not everyone can see into it.”
“You need special glasses, right?” Johnny tried.
Jemi smiled. “Do you want to come inside?”
Johnny looked down at the short tunnel, then back at her.
“Why are you showing me this?” he asked. “Why are you telling me your secrets?”
“I’m not sure. Partly because of Old Tom, I suppose, and partly because Jenna’s been a little unfair to you. But mostly because I have a feeling
” A look Johnny couldn’t read came into her eyes. “I’ve a feeling that I’m going to need a friend and I’d like you to be it.”
Jemi’s explanation put Johnny through another mood shift. The puzzled anger he’d been feeling earlier was gone as though it had never existed. He felt like he had to be dreaming, but he couldn’t deny the tangible evidence that lay before his eyes. The hill was hollow and Faerie existed. If he accepted that he had to accept it, it was lying right there in front of him then by the same token he should be willing to believe that Jemi meant him no harm.
He wasn’t sure how the logic of that worked; it was just the way it came to him.
“I’d like to be a friend,” he said, “but I’ve got to admit that my head’s still spinning.”
“Duck that head,” Jemi said, and she led him into the tunnel.
Without looking into Faerie, there didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary in the place where Dunrobin Mull had found the Pook’s body, but in the Middle Kingdom, it was plain to see the scene of the butchery for what it was. The sod was torn up where the Pook had struggled, the grass still stained red with her dried blood. Jacky and Kate laid their bikes on the ground nearby and walked gingerly forward to look around. Behind them, Mull slipped from Goudie’s back and followed.
“It wasn’t bogans?” Jacky asked after having taken a slow turn around the disturbed ground.
“No bogan tracks,” Mull said. “Just what the Pook made in her struggling.”
Jacky nodded, deciding that a forester would know. She couldn’t even see any tracks made by whoever had looked at the Pook after she’d been murdered.
“What about the sluagh?” she asked, unable to suppress a shudder just thinking of the restless dead.
“They would have left a bog scent,” Mull said.
“And there was none of that,” Jacky said thoughtfully.
“But there is something,” Kate said.
Both Jacky and the hob looked at her.
“What do you mean?” Jacky asked.
Kate shrugged. “There’s just a feeling in the air like when Finn works his stitcheries. It’s not strong, but I can feel it. Just a tingle.”
“Magic,” Mull said.
“You can really feel that?” Jacky asked.
“You can’t?”
Jacky shook her head.
“Can you tell what sort of magic it was?” Mull asked. “A gruagagh’s or a skillyman’s or what?”
“No,” Kate said. “I’m sorry. But it reminds me of something. Sort of like
“
Her voice trailed off and the other two waited for her to finish. Finally Jacky spoke up.
“Like what?”
“Look,” Kate said, instead of replying. “Over there.”
She pointed towards the downtown skyline behind them. Standing on a rise, watching them, was a huge black dog. Because of the distance and poor lighting it was difficult to see it properly, but they all got the impression that it was very large at least the size of a Great Dane, but bulkier, more powerfully muscled, with shaggy hair.
It studied them for a long moment after Kate had spotted it, then abruptly turned and sprinted away. The shadows below the rise upon which it had been standing immediately swallowed it.
“What was that?” Jacky asked in a small voice.
She was suddenly very aware of the fact that they were standing in the open, unprotected. Mists clouding th
e surface of the Ottawa River nearby did nothing to lessen the sudden attack of the creeps that came over her.
“An unsainly beast,” Mull said, and he quickly shaped a saining in the direction it had vanished.
He looked to Jacky, to Kate, then mounted his pony and rode to where the dog had stood watching them. The women fetched their bicycles and walked them to the top of the rise where Mull was poring over the ground.
“You see?” he asked when they joined him. “There’s nothing. No track, no sign it was ever there. There’s something new haunting Kinrowan.”
“You think it was that dog that killed the Pook?” Jacky asked.
Mull nodded.
“Then why didn’t it attack us?” Kate asked.
Mull shrugged. “I don’t know. Perhaps its bloodlust is sated for the moment. Perhaps it has a master and it was only spying out the lay of the land for now. Oh, I don’t like it.”
He stood slowly, a frown wrinkling his brow.
“I think it’s time we talked to Hay of Kelldee,” Jacky said.
Mull nodded and mounted his little hob pony. He followed his companions as they walked their bikes to the parkway. When they reached the pavement, Jacky and Kate pedaled downtown, going slowly so that Mull could keep up, Goudie bearing him at a brisk trot.
Six
Jemi kicked off her shoes as soon as they were inside and turned to Johnny.
“So what do you think?” she asked.
All Johnny could do was stare out the big window that was set in the wall. Through it he could see the trees and slopes of Vincent Massey Park. The window, reason told him, could not exist. It was impossible. He knew there was just a hillside out there.
“This
this window,” he said slowly. “It’s
when we were outside
“
“We’re in Faerie now.”
“Just a step sideways. Right. Only
“
He shook his head and turned to look at the rest of the room.
At first glance it reminded him of his own apartment. There was a wall of books old leather-bound volumes and paperbacks evenly mixed. A sofa and two easy chairs stood near a large stone hearth the chairs were wooden frames filled with fat comfortable pillows. A pair of battered wooden cupboards on either side of the room held a clutter of knickknacks and the like. The floors were polished oak, islanded with thick carpets. Tapestries hung from the walls. A door at the far end of the room led off into darkness.