Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter
Twenty-Four
The lawyers had decided that Oz Park was, by its very nature, wizard territory.
Or at least, that it favored me. So, I had to arrive first for my next date with Lara, on the last of November.
I guess negotiations had gotten tense and there had been shouting and thrown documents, food, and beverages.
Things were tough all over.
Or maybe I’d touched on Mab’s last remaining nerve ending, and it had been passed down to her people.
She mostly used changeling attorneys, half bloods, usually of the Sidhe.
They made excellent litigators and negotiators and could navigate tense situations and delicately phrased legal paragraphs with Grishamesque aplomb.
But when the Queen of Winter was on edge, so was the rest of the Court.
That’s just how those things worked out.
I had spent the night pacing my room and muttering out loud to no one.
That was one of the things that told me I was still hurt.
That I wasn’t healed. I couldn’t just sit.
I had to get up and move sometimes. I had to pace.
And it hurt so much, in my belly and chest and head, that I had to talk to someone.
Even if there wasn’t anyone there. Just hearing a voice, even if it was mine, even if I was carrying both sides of the conversation, eased something inside.
I kept waiting for that kind of thing to ease up.
To go away.
I just wanted it to stop. Hurting.
“I just need time,” I assured myself.
I just needed time.
It was a cold day, with five inches of snow everywhere, after the Witch had arrived.
Big wet flakes were coming down. There was a freezing wind off the lake.
Tonight, icicles would start forming as the warmth of the day bled out into the night.
I was wearing jeans and sneakers and a light jacket.
Cold and snow and ice were becoming second nature to me.
They gave my brain something to track other than what real pain felt like.
I settled down on my heels at the base of the statue of the Scarecrow, closed my eyes, and waited.
Lara made no sound when she approached, but I could…
feel her coming, through the snow. Just the faintest quiver, or shiver, in the proper time to match slow steps.
My nostrils flared, and I caught the faintest hint of expensive perfume, a mix of several scents.
“Nice day for a walk in the park,” I said in greeting.
Lara stopped in the snow. She’d been attempting to approach in stealth. “The Scarecrow, eh?”
“I think I can make good arguments for having a certain amount of courage. And a heart.” I sighed. “If I only had a brain.”
She let out a rueful laugh. “I think we all know that feeling.”
“Either that or we’re about to,” I agreed.
I opened my eyes. She stood twenty feet away from me, on the snow over the sidewalk that hadn’t been shoveled yet.
The trees behind her were thick but almost denuded of leaves.
Between them and the steady blur of the snowfall, she seemed the only thing tangible and real in the scene.
There was even enough snow to hide the city skyline beyond the park.
It felt like we were alone together. Things had been tough enough in town that people weren’t going for casual walks in half a foot of snow.
This part of the city was in pretty good shape, and I had seen lights in most of the buildings when I had walked in.
Lara’s footprints, and mine, were the only ones visible.
Lara wore jeans, a quilted leather coat, and a knitted cap. Her hair had been braided back into a neat tail. Her eyes were sapphire blue, and that and the faint pink shade to her cheeks and nose were the only colors in the grey surroundings.
“It would be very easy,” I heard myself say, “to think a lot more about how attractive you are, and a lot less about how dangerous you are.”
Lara blinked at that, and her eyebrows went up. She looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, “That may be one of the more flattering things anyone has said to me in at least twenty years.”
“I owe you an apology. For my behavior at Halloween. I haven’t always done well in situations like that one and…The bravado is how I try to compensate. You were well within your rights to be upset. I’ll try not to let it happen again.”
A little burst of a snicker exploded from her lips as she smiled with one side of her mouth.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Harry,” she advised me.
“If some terrifying creature shows up in the future and flirts with your fiancée while simultaneously offering to hand you your head, I expect you’ll react in exactly the same way. ”
“Yeah, probably,” I said. “But I’ll try.”
She considered that for a moment and then nodded. “That’s worth something, isn’t it.”
“I suppose there’s only one way to be sure,” I said. “But…I’m not really a party person. So that’s something you know about me.”
She came closer, though without making eye contact, and settled down beside me, in the same posture, both of us facing out in the same direction. “I had been concerned that it was me.”
“Being an ass? No, that was me, I promise. You were an excellent host.”
She shook her head. “Not that. That your behavior was a reaction to being near me. In my territory. That you were…I don’t know.
Resentful. Frightened.” She pursed her lips.
“It took me time to realize it, but that was what my father’s resentment was about.
He was frightened of me. From the beginning.
It was what drove several of his more…unsavory behaviors. ”
“How can a sweet Midwestern girl like you resist a man who reminds you of Dad?” I said drily.
I saw her smile in my peripheral vision. “We all face that kind of thing, don’t we? Old defense mechanisms that we developed for very good reasons come up at the damnedest times.” She turned to face me, her expression serious. “I owe you an apology as well.”
I glanced at her and waited.
“The kiss,” she said. She looked…almost flustered.
“Dammit,” she muttered, “I have never apologized for anything like that before and…” She closed her eyes for a moment and I got the impression that she was consulting mental notes.
“Part of that was about my past. And a lot of it was about being…well. Somewhat intimidated. Partly I did it because your behavior had angered and embarrassed me.” She exhaled.
“But I should not have done that without talking to you about it first. I’m sorry I did.
I should have used my words. And I hope I didn’t hurt you. ”
I studied her face. Lara was a world-class actress and operator. She was a manipulator like few others who walked the earth. She could have been offering me a double dozen artful expressions, all delicately blended together. But she wasn’t. She just regarded me and looked…
Damn. She looked tired.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
“No,” she said frankly. “My people were on Justine’s trail, but something happened to the team.
They haven’t called in. Riley will let me know what happened in a few hours, when he gets to St. Petersburg.
Skavis and Malvora are plotting again. I suspect Father is communicating with them somehow.
Which makes him a fool, to move against me.
It isn’t as if they’d respect him enough to leave him alive after they seize power.
And if he’s found ways to communicate with them, it’s possible he’s working with others as well, to undermine me. ”
“Should I be worried?” I asked.
She frowned a bit and glanced at me.
“Coming after me is coming after you, isn’t it?” I asked.
She considered it, exhaling slowly. “I suppose it might be. I hadn’t considered that.” She shook her head. “I’m not thinking clearly. I haven’t slept well in…a while now.”
Her voice sounded unusually flat. Not like she was doing funny voices or anything, but it lacked its usual vibrance.
Physically, she was doing the same thing—slouching.
I had always had the impression that no matter how hard you tried, you wouldn’t be able to catch Lara in an awkward or unappealing photograph, but today…
“You’re not wearing any makeup,” I noted.
She spread her gloved hands. “At the party, I showed you the part of me that…has done some terrible things, in her day. That’s one portion of who I am, and I assume it always will be.
” She focused on me more intensely, her eyes having stolen all the celestial blue from the landscape.
“But that’s not all I am. For a very long time, I have been working to rise above the…
the base nature of my heritage. I want you to know that it is a road I will be following. ”
I stared at her in total silence for a minute.
“That’s a big statement,” I said.
“It is.”
“I hope you realize how big.”
“I do.”
“It is, of course,” I said, “exactly what you should say to get me to like you and lower my guard.”
Her teeth showed. “That’s the problem with making fools of people,” she said. “After a while, they come to expect it even when you’re sincere.”
“Can you blame me?”
“Not really.” She sighed. “There’s only one way for you to know for certain. And that will take time.”
“I suppose we both have some of that on hand,” I said.
“I liked it,” Lara said. The words weren’t exactly hurried, or stammered, or rushed. Or they wouldn’t have been, from anyone else.
“Liked what?” I asked in a neutral tone.
“Kissing you,” she said, staring firmly into the distance. “The way you…you taste, I suppose.”
“You got one bite and haven’t slept well since,” I said. “Am I right?”
Her mouth firmed into a line. “You aren’t entirely wrong.”
“Well,” I said. I cleared my throat. “I liked it, too. Or at least, a lot better than when we thought we were both going to be blown to kingdom come or torn into little pieces by ur-ghouls.”
“My God, you silver-tongued devil,” she said levelly.
I felt myself smile.
She noticed. Her own mouth softened, and the corners of her eyes crinkled.
“I have a proposition,” I said.
“Really?” she asked. “At the feet of the Scarecrow, of all places?”
“Not that, your pink bits would freeze,” I said, feigning annoyance. “This is more…an educational opportunity.”
“Educational? You can’t talk to a woman like that in current year.”
Now I felt like there was context I wasn’t getting, but I ignored it. “I’m serious. We’ve done a few little trades. Maybe it’s time for a bigger one.”
“Interesting,” Lara said. “What do you have in mind?”
“I need to know about the White Court,” I said. “Where you come from. How it works. What happens when a Hunger gets successfully cut off. Exactly the kind of process Thomas is going through. I need to know everything.”
Lara’s eyebrows couldn’t levitate off the top of her skull, but they tried. “Surely you aren’t serious.”
“I’m always serious,” I deadpanned. “And stop calling me Shirley.”
She idly picked up a handful of snow in her glove. “You realize what you’re asking me, yes?”
“Me, a wizard, the walking, talking personification of ‘knowledge is power,’ is asking you to give me power, possibly over you and your whole Court,” I said. “And only a few years after I wiped out the Red Court. Every single one of them.”
“Well put,” Lara said. “Why should I take that kind of chance?”
“Because I won’t share what I learn with anyone else. I will only use it to help Thomas. I swear it by my power.”
Lara’s head rocked back a little as I spoke the quiet oath.
“Okay,” she said a moment later, her expression pensive. “What’s my cut?”
“This is your cut,” I said. “You talk to me, I use it to help me figure out a course of action, then I save Thomas’s life. That’s what you get.”
“What does it cost me?” she asked. “Other than the potential enslavement or destruction of the White Court?”
“I need Etri off my back,” I said quietly. “I need your help talking him down.”
She replaced the snow from where she’d taken it and began trying fruitlessly to smooth out signs that she had. “That’s a tall order. The svartalves may look all Roswell, but they learned their fighting in the fjords. They play by an older set of rules.”
“New, old, they’re all made to be broken,” I said. “I need your help figuring out a way to convince Etri to do it. Otherwise, there’s no point in saving Thomas from his Hunger. He’d still have to stay hidden on the island.”
“Please tell me what I’m missing here,” Lara murmured. “It sounds like I’m going to be doing you favors on both sides of this deal.”
“You get Thomas back,” I said. “And you smooth over a situation with Etri before it becomes a headache for you, too.”
“That’s me getting two things that you also want,” she said, amused.
“Isn’t it great when a deal profits everyone involved?
” I asked rhetorically. “Look, I had to get involved in removing a curse and…long story short, I liked the work. I’m still not at my best. But things are starting to function again, and by God it felt good to be useful.
I want more of that. I want to help Thomas. But I can’t do it alone.”
“Next time lead with that one,” Lara suggested. “It sounds much better than where you try to get me to whitewash your fence for you.” She glanced at me, and her smile faded a little. “You’re asking for a lot of trust.”
“And you’re not, Miss Smoochie Face?” I demanded.
“Touché,” she acknowledged.
“Which is my point,” I said, more earnestly. “I can’t say I’m thrilled with the idea of Mab ordering me to marry anybody, but maybe it would be smart to find out if we can work together now, rather than finding out we can’t when it’s all too late to change.”
“If I was really playing you,” Lara said, “I’d agree to this right now. Just to get things moving in the direction I want.”
“Yeah, you would,” I said, and stood up.
I offered her my hand.
She blinked at me for a second. Then she reached up, a little tentatively, took my hand, and came to her feet with my help.
“Let me think this over,” she said. “Might take a few days.”
“I’d have respected you a little less if it didn’t,” I answered.