Cold Days

I forgot how to speak for a couple of seconds as I fought the image out of my forebrain. Then I forced myself to look away from her, out to the water of the lake. I leaned down on the guardrail, gripping it with my hands. I was a little worried that if I didn't give them something to do, they might try something stupid. I took a cleansing breath and reengaged my speech centers. "I'm not the only one who's changed since that day."

I could feel her eyes on me, intently studying my face. I had a feeling that she knew exactly what I'd just felt. "True," she murmured. "But we've made our choices, haven't we? And now we are who we are. I am sorry if I made you uncomfortable, Sir Knight."

"What? Just now?"

I saw her nod in my peripheral vision. "A moment ago, you looked at me. I have seen a face with that precise expression before."

"Slate."

"Yes."

"Well," I growled, "I'm not Slate. I'm not some pet monster Maeve made to play with."

"No," Lily said, her voice sad. "You are a weapon Mab made to war with. You poor man. You always had such a good heart."

"Had?" I asked.

"It isn't yours any longer," Lily said quietly.

"I disagree," I said. "Strenuously."

"And the need you felt a moment ago?" she asked. "Did that urge come from your heart, Sir Knight?"

"Yes," I said simply.

Lily froze for a second, her head tilting slightly to one side.

"Bad things are inside everyone," I said. "I don't care how gentle or holy or sincere or dedicated you are. There are bad things in there. Lust. Greed. Violence. You don't need a wicked queen to make that happen. That's a part of everyone. Some more, some less, but it's always there."

"You say that you were this wicked from the beginning?" Lily asked.

"I'm saying I could have been," I said. "I chose something else. And I'm going to continue choosing something else."

Lily smiled faintly and looked back at the lake. "You wished to speak to me about my knight."

"Fix, yeah," I said. "He basically gave me until noon to leave town, or we shoot it out at the OK Corral. I'm busy. I don't have time to skip town. But I don't want either of us to get hurt."

"What do you wish me to do?"

"Tell him to stand down," I said. "Even if only for a few days. It's important."

Lily bowed her head. "It grieves me to say this, Sir Knight. But no. I will not."

I tried not to grind my teeth audibly. "And why not?"

She studied me again, her green eyes intense. "Can it be?" she asked. "Can it be that you have come so far, have fallen in with your current company, without realizing what is happening here?"

"Uh," I said, frowning. "You mean here, today?"

"I mean here," Lily said. "In our world."

"Yeah, uh. Maybe you haven't heard, but I haven't been in our world much lately."

Lily shook her head. "The pieces are all in front of you. You have only to assemble them."

"Vague much?" I asked. "Why can't you just tell me what the hell you're talking about?"

"If you do know, there is no need to speak. If you truly do not know, no amount of speech will convince you. Some things must be learned for oneself."

I made a disgusted sound and spit into the lake. Take that, lurking bodyguards. "Lily," I said. "Look, this isn't complicated. Fix is about to come at me. I don't want to hurt him. So I came here in peace to try to talk it out. What have I done here today that has convinced you that I'm some kind of psychotic maniac who can't be trusted?"

"It isn't anything you've done," Lily said. "It isn't anything you had any control over. You didn't know."

I threw up my hands at that. "Didn't know what?"

Lily frowned and studied me, her expression drawn with worry. "You . . ." She shook her head. "God, Harry. You really mean it. You aren't her creature?"

"No," I said. "Not yet."

Lily nodded and seemed to think for a moment. Then she asked, "Would it pain you for me to touch you?"

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I must know," she said. "I must know if it is upon you yet."

"What?"

She shook her head. "I cannot risk answering any questions until I am sure."

I grunted. I thought about it. Yeah, I could keep my inner caveman on a leash, if it meant getting some answers. "Okay," I said. "Go ahead."

Lily nodded. Then she walked toward me. She reached up and her slender, warm fingers touched my forehead, like a mother checking a child for a temperature. She stayed that way for a long moment, her eyes distant.

Then abruptly she let out a little cry and flung her arms around me. "Oh," she said. "Oh, oh, oh. We thought you taken."

Okay, inner caveman or not, when a girl that pretty is giving you a full-body hug, you don't come up with the wittiest dialogue. "Uh. I haven't had a girlfriend for a while now."

Lily leaned her head back and laughed. The sound of it was like eating hot cookies, melting into a warm shower, and snuggling a fuzzy puppy all at the same time. "Enough," she said. "Enough, come out. He is a friend."

And, just like that, faeries popped out of absolutely everything in sight. Elves, tiny humanoids no more than a couple of feet high, rose up out of the bushes. A serpent the size of a telephone pole slithered out of the bridge's rafters. Seven or eight silver-coated faerie hounds emerged from behind a stand of groomed arbor vitae. Two massive centaurs and half a dozen Sidhe of the Summer Court simply blinked into visibility from behind their veils. They were all armed with bows. Yikes. If I'd meant Lily any harm, my body would have resembled a feathery porcupine. The water stirred, and then a number of otters who were all too big to have been born this side of the last ice age came rushing out.

"Ee-aye, ee-aye, oh," I said. "Uh, wow. All this for me?"

"Only a fool wouldn't respect your strength," she said. "Particularly now."

Personally, I thought she'd gotten to overkill about one elf after those bows, but I didn't want her to know that. "Okay," I said. "You touched me. Make with some answers."

"Certainly," she said. Then she moved her hand, and the open air suddenly had the enclosed feeling of a small room. When she spoke, her voice sounded odd, as if it were coming over a radio. She'd put up a privacy spell so that no one could listen in. "What would you like to know?"