Tithe (Modern Faerie Tales #1)

"Vaseline glass," he said. "Some of this stuff is really old. I bet you could sell some of these." He pushed another bottle with his toe. "So, how do we call this thing?"

Kaye picked up a brown leaf. "Do you have anything sharp?"

He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a pocketknife, flicking it open with a deft movement of his thumb. "Just remember what the site said—no getting on its back, no way, no day, no matter what."

"I saw the page, okay? You don't have to keep reminding me. Kelpie equals evil water horse that drowns people for fun. I get it."

"Well, just so you're sure."

He let her take the knife. She slid the tip of it into the pad of her thumb. A bright dot of blood welled up, and she smeared it on the leaf.

"Now what?" he asked, but for all that the words sounded cynical, he was barely breathing as he spoke them.

She dropped the leaf into the stream, blood side down, as she had done before. "I'm Kaye," she said, trying to remember the words. "I'm not from any court but I need your help. Please hear me."

There was a long moment of silence after that when Corny let out his breath. She could see him start to believe that nothing was going to happen and she was torn between the desire to prove that she knew what she was doing and the fear of what was coming.

A moment later, there was no more doubt as a black horse rose from the water.

Either because it was day or with Kaye's new sight, the creature looked different. Its color was not so much black, but an emerald so deep that it looked black. And the nacreous eyes were gleaming like pearls. Still, when it regarded Kaye, she was forced to think of the research Corny had done. That was chilling enough.

The kelpie strode onto the shore and shook its great mane, spraying her and Corny with glittering droplets of swamp water. Kaye held up her hands, but it hardly helped.

"What do you seek?" the horse spoke, its voice soft but deep.

Kaye took a deep breath. "I need to know how to glamour myself and I need to know how to control my magic. Can you teach me?"

"What will you give me, girl-child?"

"What do you want?"

"Perhaps that one would like to ride on my back. I would teach you if you let him ride with me."

"So that you can kill him? No way."

"I wonder about death, I who may never know it. It looks much like ecstasy, the way they open their mouths as they drown, the way their fingers dig into your skin. Their eyes are wide and startled and they thrash in your hands as though with an excess of passion."

Kaye shook her head, horrified.

"You can hardly blame me. It is my nature. And it has been a very long time."

"I'm not going to help you kill people."

"There might be something else that would tempt me, but I can't think what. I'll give you the opportunity to think up something."

Kaye sighed.

"You know where to find me."

With that, the kelpie waded back into the water.

Corny was still sitting stunned on the bank. "That thing wanted to kill me."

Kaye nodded.

"Are you going to try to find something it wants?"

Kaye nodded again. "Yeah."

"I don't know how I feel about that."

"You read the site. You knew it would be like this."

"I guess. It's different to see it… to hear it."

"Do you want us to leave?"

"Hell, no."

"Any ideas what it might want that doesn't walk on two feet?"

"Well," he said, after a moment's consideration, "actually there are a whole lot of people I wouldn't mind feeding to that thing."

She laughed.

"No, really," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that there are a whole lot of people that I wouldn't mind seeing drowned. Really. I think that we should go for it."

Kaye looked up at him. He didn't look particularly fazed by what he had just proposed.

"No way," she said.

Corny shrugged. "Janet's boyfriend, for example. What a prick."

"Kenny?" Kaye squeaked.

"Look, it doesn't have to be him. I could think of a dozen people. The best thing is that they're all so dumb I'm sure I would have no problem convincing them to come down here and ride the horse. I'm thinking that stupidity should have consequences. C'mon, we can do a little weeding of the human race." He waggled his eyebrows.

"No," she said. "Think of something other than people we can give it."

"Oats?" he said vaguely. "A huge box of instant oatmeal? A subscription to Equestrian's Digest? Hay and lots of it?"

"We're not getting people killed, so just give it up, okay?"

She was getting sick of listening to Corny's sighs.

She bet that Roiben's name would be a fair price. After all, this thing was probably not part of any court, being tied to the stream here. She bet that he would be counted as a fair price indeed. And it wouldn't change the fact that she knew the name too.

It would be a fine revenge on him for killing Gristle.

But then, she imagined that the kelpie would just order him to bring people for it to drown. And he would do it.

What else was there to bargain with that a kelpie might like?

She thought about the dolls in her room, but all she could picture was a little girl following a trail of them to the shore of the stream. Ditto with any musical instrument. She had to think about something that the kelpie could enjoy alone… clothing? Food?

Then she thought of it… a companion. A companion that it could never drown. Something that it could talk to and admire. The merry-go-round horse.

"Oh, Corny," Kaye said, "I know just the thing."

Getting back in the car was the last thing that Kaye wanted to do, but she did, sliding into the backseat, pressing her shirt over her mouth as though the fabric could filter the iron out of the air.

"You know where you're going, right?" she asked, wondering if he could understand the words, muffled as they were by the cloth.

"Yeah."

She let her head slide down to the plastic seat, one wing twitched just out of her vision, sending scattered luminescent rainbows through the thin membrane to dance on her leg under each passed light. Everything narrowed to those rainbows. There was no Corny in the front seat, no scratchy radio song, no passing cars, no houses, no malls, no real things to protect her from the glittering patterns on her grass-green thighs.

There were no words for what she felt, no sounds, nothing. There was no word for what she was, no explanation that would keep back the numb, dumb dark. She felt the dizziness threaten to overwhelm her.

"Can you please open your window?" she asked. "I can't breathe."

"What's wrong with yours?"

She crouched on the edge of the seat and reached her hands into the front of the car, palms up like a supplicant. "Every time I touch the handle, it burns. Look." She held her hand out to him, and he could see that part of it was flushed. Her fingers wiggled. "That's from the door handle."

"Shit." Corny took a breath, but he could not seem to let it go. He rolled down his window.

The salt in the air cleaned her throat with each lungful from the open window, but it wasn't enough to battle the rising nausea. "I have to get out of this car."

"We're almost there." Corny stopped at the red light.

Corny parked the car outside the big building. It was strange to see it in the daytime. The overcast sky made the outside of the building look even dingier.

"Are you okay?" Corny asked, and turned his head to see her in the backseat.

Kaye shook her head. She was going to vomit, right there, right on top of the empty soda cans and mashed fast-food boxes. She put her hand in the pocket of the sweatshirt and opened the door.

"Kaye! What are you doing?"

Kaye half fell, half crawled onto the asphalt of the parking lot and dragged herself to the edge of the grass before she started vomiting. There was little in her stomach, and most of what she coughed up was stomach acid and spittle.

"Jesus!" Corny crouched down next to her.

"I'm okay," Kaye said, rising dizzily to her feet. "It's all the metal."

He nodded, looking back at the car and then looking around skeptically. "Maybe we should forget about this."

Kaye took a deep breath. "No. Come on."

She ran around the back, following the path she had walked with Janet. "Give me your jacket," she said. "There's glass."

Everything was different in daylight.

Up the stairs and there it was, dingier now that she got a good look at it, but still beautiful. The cream of its flanks was closer to a brown, and the gilt trim was mostly rubbed off. Its lips were carved in what she thought was a slight sneer, and Kaye grinned to see it.

Together, they dragged the horse over the floor toward the stairs. Leaning forward, the weight of it was resting on Corny as they eased it down step after step. It barely fit.

Downstairs, Kaye climbed out through the window as Corny pushed it carefully through.

Outside, Corny started to panic. There was no way it was going to fit in the back of the car. Worse, the trunk was filled with boxes of used books and oddball tools.

"Someone is going to see us!"

"We've got to find a way to tie it to the roof."

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Corny dug around in the trunk of the car and came up with a single bungee cord, two plastic bags, and some twine.

"That string is very thin," Kaye said skeptically.

Corny twisted it around the wooden creature's neck and body and then through the inside of the car. "Get on the other side. Someone's going to see us. Hurry."

He tossed her the twine, and she looped it over the horse and threw it back to him. Corny knotted it.

"Okay. Good enough. We gotta go."

Corny hopped in on his side, and Kaye walked around and got in, wrapping Corny's jacket around her hand to close the door. He took off, stepping on the pedal so hard that the tires screeched as they pulled out.

Kaye was sure that each car that pulled up behind them was going be a cop or that the horse was going to fly off onto the road or hit another car. But they got back in one piece.

Pulling over, they hauled the merry-go-round horse down into the forest and to the stream.

"That thing better like this. I'm going to have splinters for a week."

"It will."

"And I'm going to have to pop the hood of the car back up in the center."

"I know. I would help you if I could touch it, okay?"

"I'm just saying. That thing better like it."

"It will."

They set the legless horse down on the muddy bank, angling it so that it sat relatively upright without their holding it. Kaye looked around for another leaf, and Corny took the knife out of his pocket without being asked.

"'S okay. I'm just going to pick the scab."

He made a face but didn't say anything.

"Kelpie," Kaye said, dropping the leaf into the water, "I have something I think you might like."

The horse rose up from the deep and stared at the crippled merry-go-round horse.

Whinnying, it clopped up onto the shore. "It has no legs," the kelpie said.

"It's beautiful anyway," Kaye said.

The kelpie circled the wooden thing, snuffling appraisingly. "More, I think. Crippled things are always more beautiful. It's the flaw that brings out beauty."

Kaye grinned. She'd done it. She'd actually done it. "So you'll teach me?"

The creature looked at Kaye and shifted, and where it had been now stood a young man, nude and still dripping, hair tangled with rushes. It looked from Kaye to Corny. "She I will teach, but you must make it worth my while if you want me to teach you too. Come and sit near me."

"Nothing's worth that," Kaye said.

The kelpie-man smiled, but his eyes were on Corny as he traced a pattern on his chest. Corny's breathing went shallow.

"No," Corny said, so softly that it was hard to hear his voice.

Then the creature transformed again, sinuous energy coiling until Kaye was looking at herself.

"Are you ready to begin then?" the kelpie said in Kaye's voice with Kaye's mouth. And then the smile, not at all Kaye's, curled slyly. "I have much to teach you. And the boy would do well to listen. Magic is not the sole province of the fey."

"I thought you said he had to make it worth your while."

"His fear is worth something, for now. I am allowed so little consolation." The kelpie looked at her with her own black eyes, and she watched those lips, so like her own, whisper, "So long since I have known what it was to hunt."

"How come?" Kaye asked, despite herself.

"We, who are not the rulers, we must obey those that are. Mortals are a treat for the Gentry, and not for the likes of you and me. Unless, of course, they are willing."

Kaye nodded, pondering that.

"Do you know how it feels to build magical energy?" the kelpie asked. "It is a prickling feeling. Cup your hand and concentrate on building the energy in it. What does it feel like?"

Kaye cupped her hand and imagined the air in her hand thickening and shimmering with energy. After a moment, she looked up in surprise. "It feels like when your hand falls asleep and then you move it. Prickly, like you said, like little shocks of energy shooting through it. It hurts a little."