FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—1

CHAPTER FOUR

True to their word, Jake and Carson got me home once

Christopher was ensconced in a bed for the night. I could easily have collapsed into one of the ER ward’s beds myself, but I had no injuries past scrapes and bruises and I was still coherent enough to want to cling to the few scraps of dignity I had left.

So I stayed on my feet long enough to let the boys escort me to their car, and on the way out wrote down my name and phone number for the orderly--the land line at home, since my cell was toast. The hospital couldn’t contact me about Christopher since

I wasn’t family, though Nathan promised to relay my note in case the patient wanted to do it himself.

On the way back to the house, I started to drift off in the back seat. But I snapped awake when Jake said, “Kendis, if you need us to stay with you tonight, we will of course cancel our trip.”

“What?” Rubbing my eyes, trying to refocus my weary FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—2

thoughts, I peered at my housemate. “Right. Trip.” The boys liked to take weekend jaunts sometimes, to places like Whidbey

Island, the San Juans, or the hot springs out on the Olympic

Peninsula. Sometimes I tagged along, but not often—third wheel and all that. I couldn’t remember what they’d planned this time, but I frowned at them both nevertheless. “You can’t cancel on my account. I’ll be okay.”

“We can’t cancel at all,” Carson muttered. Most of his attention was on his driving, but his gray eyes flicked a glance at the rear view mirror by way of looking at me. “Kind of late for that.”

He didn’t look like a man planning a weekend with his partner; he looked nervous, an expression I didn’t often see on

Carson’s face. Jake looked pensive. I squinted back and forth between them and demanded, “Am I missing something here?”

Sighing, Jake said, “We’re going to deal with family business of mine this weekend. It’s complicated.” He swiveled his head around to regard me with a look so thoughtful and direct that I jerked my own gaze away. I was still twitchy about what I’d seen in the bathroom mirror, and not at all certain how

I’d explain it if Jake noticed anything new about my face. “And it isn’t pertinent to tonight, anyway. If you’d like to talk about it, if you need us, my business can wait.”

I wanted to talk, all right. I wanted to shriek, wail, and howl that I’d seen a monster. But the moment I gave in to that FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—3

impulse was the moment the boys would wonder if I’d gone nuts and I wouldn’t lay that on them. Especially not on the night before they left to take care of ‘complicated family business’.

I could do the math. They were a male couple, after all. And from what I knew of Jake’s family, only settled in America in the last couple of generations, they were big on traditional

Japanese culture. And conservative to boot.

“Right now,” I said, slumping back and closing my eyes, “I just want to decompress. I’ll be fine, Jake, I swear.”

“If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure.”

He let it go, to my relief. But to ease his and Carson’s minds, once we got home I accepted their offers of chamomile and peppermint tea and the recovery of my bike from the Burke-Gilman trail. Once I had the former, they set off to retrieve the latter, leaving me to the company of my cat and my wildly churning thoughts.

The haven of my bed temptingly beckoned, as did my favorite quilt all done in fiery shades of red, yellow, and orange. But my hands needed the warmth of the cup of tea, and after that, my violin. I settled on the couch with the instrument, not noticing what I played aside from slow, gentle airs in minor keys that suited my mood. Each note’s vibration through my palms and the physical act of drawing the bow across the strings provided the comfort I sought. Forgiving me for my earlier negligence, Fort FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—4

curled up at my side, lending his purr to the violin’s soft meditations.

When my eyes refused to stay open any longer, I stumbled off to sleep without bothering with the usual nighttime bathroom rituals. The bathroom had a mirror; the mirror meant my reflection. And right under “real, live monsters” on my list of things I least wanted to see on the planet was a pair of yellow eyes staring out of my mirror. I shed clothing and shoes and crawled beneath the quilt, wrapping its vibrant hues around me, and imagining myself an ember in a fireplace’s heart.

Fort jumped up to join me, bonking me with his substantial head until I rolled over on my back. Then he climbed atop my chest, jammed his whiskery muzzle under my chin, and launched into a steady, rib-rattling purr. I kept most of me under the quilt, but snuck an arm out to hug my cat close. And after a while, I slept—somewhat.

They never blossomed into full-blown nightmares, but scattered fragments of dreams continually sparked like bolts of summer lightning across my mind. I remember running along a

Burke-Gilman trail overgrown with sinister vegetation through which I glimpsed misshapen shadows and implacable, glowing eyes.

I remember the presence of something huge and ancient behind me giving chase, something I needed to elude at all costs.

But I never saw what gave pursuit. Far clearer were the flashes of Christopher’s searing, pleading gaze and the strange FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—5

electric pressure of his fingers, his skin hot against mine in dreaming as it had not been in truth, almost too hot to bear.

* * *

A sane, sensible person would have called in sick the next morning. But when the alarm clock jarred me awake, neither sense nor sanity had gained much ground against the night before. I still felt in physical and mental shock, queasy and off kilter, as though I were fighting off the flu. My skin itched and stung in random places. My eyes, gritty and heavy with inadequate sleep, burned.

I risked a glance into the mirror when I stumbled into the bathroom to make myself fit for public consumption. My hair was a wild mess, but a fast shower and several determined swipes of a brush fixed that. Less easily mended were my haggard complexion and the shadows at the corners of my glassy and all too yellow eyes. Once out of the shower I shook my head vigorously and scrubbed a towel across my face, hoping my eyes would revert to normal if I just woke up a little more. No dice.

Idiot, I chastised myself. If they didn’t change overnight, they’re not changing now!

Of course, they shouldn’t have changed color in the first place, but my battered prudence sternly recommended I not go there. FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—6

Instead, I retrieved my blood-marked biking top from the bathtub. It bore one small stain, high on the shoulder where

Christopher’s head had rested. The sight of it reminded me of the shape of his body in my grasp and his agitated eyes, and I swallowed a little while I mechanically scrubbed Woolite into the garment and left it to soak in the sink. I dressed without noticing what I was wearing, confined my unruly hair with a scrunchy and my favorite patchwork-hued cap, and grabbed my backpack and keys.

En route through the kitchen to get Fort a few of his favorite kitty treats, I found a note from Jake on the table. In his clean, spare handwriting it read:

Kendis,

We got your bike last night and put it on the porch. Your phone was trashed, but we found the SIM card, so you should at least be able to recover your data. We’re setting off for the weekend, but I really do want to talk to you when we get back.

It’s important. Please call if you need us for anything.

Jake, 6:40am

I didn’t recognize the number Jake had written down; it wasn’t Carson’s cell. Fort, however, gave me no time to mull it.

He pawed my shoes and yowled until I forked over the treats, and only then was I free to flee to work. I fled gratefully. If anything could banish last night’s weirdness from my brain, it was the prosaic clamor of a software department about to ship FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—7

their latest product.

The sight of my bike stopped me in my tracks. I’d forgotten my worry about some passerby finding the troll’s remains; the memory brought new panic with it now as it came flooding back. I slumped against my front door, wondering wildly if the boys had seen what was left of the monster, and terrified that it might have come back to life.

Then clearer thoughts prevailed. The bike was here.

Damaged, its mangled frame and sliced tires mute testimony to the reality of the ambush on the trail, but here. Chances were slim that the troll, even if it had reanimated, had politely returned the bike it had almost bent in half. No one but my housemates knew I’d abandoned the bicycle. Therefore, they must have reached Burke-Gilman, found the bike, and brought it home without mishap.

But as I stumbled off to the nearest bus stop, I still felt like a heel for endangering them, and sick with nervousness besides. When they got back, what would I say? ‘Did you guys happen to see a petrified troll with my Swiss Army knife sticking out of it when you got my bike?’

Yeah. Right. That’d sound nonchalant.

As I walked I fought to keep from jumping at random sounds or flinching every time I hastened by a bush or a hedge. At first all I saw within the neighborhood greenery were sparrows and finches and a few foraging squirrels, but the sparkling, FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—8

translucent-winged shape flittering in the curlicue limbs of a monkey-puzzle tree was no bird. Not when it peeked down at me with doll-like but unmistakably humanoid eyes as it vanished into the shelter of the higher branches.

Nor was the thing scampering across someone’s lawn a squirrel, though it was squirrel-sized. Clutching a discarded fragment of uneaten pizza, it ran upright on two feet and cackled to itself in triumph. It hissed at me in passing.

Squirrels don’t do that, and they don’t have wicked little goblin faces and shaggy lime-green hair either.

Okay, midget, pizza-filching goblins? Not as scary as trolls. But I bolted across the street anyway, choking back a scream as I went. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of looking where I’d been rather than where I was going, and tripped headlong over the curb. I staggered, went sprawling, and crashed through the thick green laurel hedge that blocked off the sidewalk from the yard behind it.

Twigs scratched at my cheeks and snagged my hat off my head; my left palm and elbow scraped against concrete as I landed hard. I lay stunned for a few seconds with my eyes squeezed tightly shut. Then I groaned a string of curses and tried to extricate myself from the hedge.

But before I could get up, I blinked through frustrated tears and saw a dozen pairs of eyes glaring malevolently down at me. They belonged to a swarm of creatures with twig-thin bodies FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—9

no bigger than my hand, and long brown noses and fingers of a bark-brown color that made them seem like mobile pieces of the hedge. Some of them hissed. The rest shrilled in anger, a noise that echoed somewhere to the immediate right of my head, and in alarm I realized two more of the twig-creatures were writhing through my hair.

Worse yet, they were calling out comprehensible words.

“Nasty Big One falling into nest!”

“Scratch it! Sting it! Make it hurt for falling on us!”

“Magic in eyes, magic in smell, sting it before it smashes us with magic!”

My brain reeled at those high, piping voices, but I didn’t stop to make sense of any of it. I hurtled to my feet, snatched up my hat, and flailed out with it at the creatures. They swarmed after me with preternatural speed. Half of them leapt up to cling with sharp, miniscule fingers to my limbs and sides before I’d run ten feet, and I swatted at them as though they were a cloud of mosquitoes out for blood. The jabs of their fingers and the nips of their teeth stung and itched like any mosquito bite, only worse.

One of the creatures fell off me as I ran. I knocked off two more with my hat. The other three tenaciously hung on, one in my hair and the other two on my left arm; one of the latter pair bit me hard enough to pierce my skin near where I’d taken a scrape in the fall. Infuriated now as well as frightened, I FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—10

yelped and stumbled, swiping harder at the things on my arm. The bite throbbed fiercely, overriding the other small pains along my body and flaring through my entire system.

For a few seconds my eyes welled with hot tears of reaction, blinding me. But even as I struggled to keep my feet,

I heard the twig-creatures shrieking in alarm.

“Magic in her blood!”

“Great Fey! Smash us with magic!”

“No smash! Flee! Flee back to nest!”

Without warning, they let go of me, dropped down, and skittered along the sidewalk back to the laurel hedge. My vision refocused in time to show me the last three twig-creatures vanishing into the shelter I’d disturbed. They leapt into the laurel, melding with the leaves now uncannily weaving together until I could no longer spot the place where I’d fallen through.

I blinked, stared, and then wheeled around and sprinted for the bus stop. My bus arrived just as I came pelting up, and I could barely keep from clawing through the doors before the driver could open them. Once on board I found nothing out of the ordinary: route leaflets behind the driver’s seat, ads and random poetry high on each side of the vehicle over the windows, and passengers of various ages, dress styles, and levels of alertness. Profoundly relieved, I showed the driver my pass and toppled into the first empty seat I reached.

And I kept my eyes closed—refusing to look out any of the FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—11

windows—all the way to work.

* * *

Microsoft is not the only software company around Seattle.

It’s just the biggest, a lone giant sequoia in a forest of lesser pines and oaks and saplings that die off fast for want of the sunlight of profit. I worked for one of the lesser oaks: a company that boasted a modest office building overlooking Lake

Union, several hundred employees, and products translated into three foreign languages. We specialized in Internet security and performance applications for Windows and Linux, a versatility that helped us stay afloat. My department developed a program that monitored network traffic levels, rerouting data across different servers to avoid overloading any single one. And I was one of the program’s testers.

If you’re not a computer geek, software testing is as engrossing as watching paint dry. But it had a kind of systematic, structured order that appealed to me. I needed that order today, needed to lose myself in making sure every feature of the program worked the way it should.

As I wobbled up to the door of my office one of our team’s developers bolted past me. Alex’s dark eyes were full of urgent frustration, and he dashed down the hall muttering “Crap, crap, crap!” with every step. He didn’t say hello, but I didn’t stop FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—12

him; I knew better than to distract a developer in ship mode.

Within, my officemate Jude (‘not Judith, and please God not

Judy’) Lawrence swiveled her chair around to me, saying breezily, “Hi, Kendis! I just found me a baby-muncher of a shipstopper, want to lay any odds on whether we’re going to get this thing gone today or—” Then she took a closer look, and her expression morphed from smug pride into bemused concern. “Whoa, babe, you look like hell on toast. Are you okay?”

What could I tell her? Jake and Carson were two of the three people in my life I could tell almost anything; Jude, my best friend as well as my officemate, was the third. But I hadn’t thought of a rational, ‘I don’t need a straitjacket, honest’ explanation for last night’s weirdness for the boys, and

I couldn’t think of one for this morning’s weirdness for her either. I opened my mouth. I closed it. Then I mumbled, remembering the pseudo-story I’d babbled at the hospital, “I’m just dead tired is all. There was an accident on the Burke-

Gilman trail on my way home last night. This guy got hurt…”

My mind spiraled off at the thought of Christopher. I wondered if he’d gotten my number, and if he was all right. With a jolt, it occurred to me that he might well have saved my life.

That thought made my mouth go dry, and it took me a moment before I was able to finish, “Jake and Carson and I had to get him to the hospital.”

Jude’s eyes, good reliable brown eyes that hadn’t changed FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—13

color since the last time I’d seen them unlike certain other brown eyes I could name, went wide in her heart-shaped face.

“Holy crap! You’re okay, right? You must be okay, you’re here— why are you here? If I were in your shoes, I’d be home neck deep in a bubble bath right now!”

“I’m okay. And we’ve got to ship today,” I said lamely.

“Good grief, woman, the gods of software development can let a tester off the hook if she had to take somebody to the hospital!” Jude got up to give me a big, impulsive hug. “Was it anybody you know? Is he okay?”

I tried not to think of the troll nearly cracking

Christopher’s head open, but I couldn’t pull it off. “He had a nasty concussion,” I said. “Had to have stitches. Him, I mean, not me. I hadn’t ever seen him before.”

“So you took a complete stranger to the hospital? You’re a better woman than I am, Gunga Din. I probably would’ve crawled into bed as soon as the ambulance showed up.”

Making a crumpled expression that wasn’t quite a smile, I shrugged. “There kind of wasn’t an option.”

“But he’ll be okay, right?” Jude plopped back down in her chair, and as I nodded, she gave me a critical frown. “Good, but how about you? You look like you fell off a ladder or something.”

“I, um, took a tumble on the way in this morning—”

That made her blink and then point a peremptory finger at FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—14

me. “Say no more. Mama Jude will attend to your needs and get you through the day so you can go home and collapse as is your rightful due. Sit there and think peaceful, happy thoughts.”

With that, my friend sped off to the kitchen down the hall.

She returned with band-aids and a packet of antiseptic from the first aid cabinet, two paper towels (one damp, one dry), and a soda and a breakfast bar from the vending machines. I patched up what damage I’d taken from my fall—and the twig-things, who stubbornly lurked in my thoughts along with the troll. The soda and the breakfast bar gave me enough energy to confront my email and run what would hopefully be my last round of tests before we called it a product and shipped it.

And with Jude’s aid, I slogged through the morning. I couldn’t have done it without her. Every time I finished a test and logged the result in the bug-tracking database, I promptly forgot what I’d done. Teammates showed up at our door, but I registered them only as faces and voices just outside a veil of weariness around me. Jude intercepted anyone who came to talk to us and shooed them off so I could have relative peace and quiet.

She kept the soda coming and by the time the reminder for our

11am status meeting fired off on my computer, a caffeine buzz hummed along my nerves. It was no substitute for sleep, but for now, it kept me awake and more or less alert.

Jude never once remarked on my eyes. Neither did James, our boss, who drew me aside just before the meeting and solicitously FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—15

murmured that he’d heard I’d had a rough night and morning, and was I all right? I assured him I was. Inwardly, though, the apparent invisibility of the transformation in my features was starting to spook me more than the troll or the things in the hedge.

I ducked into a ladies’ room before the meeting started, just to verify if a second mirror would show me what I’d seen at home. It did. My eyes remained an eerie, undeniable yellow.

So why couldn’t anyone else see it?

You can see ’em. See ’em with your shinin’ eyes…

Christopher’s voice again, echoing through my mind.

Luckily the meeting required nothing of me but my presence, for I couldn’t have uttered an intelligent word if my job had depended on it. No one else’s words made sense within my jumbled thoughts either. Everyone around me seemed insubstantial, like wraiths of people going about their workdays, as if some power on another plane of reality had pulled them all off this one and left only their echoes behind.

Or maybe it had pulled me instead, I thought uneasily, and

Christopher as well.

The instant the meeting ended I stopped in the kitchen where Jude had gotten my first aid supplies and the steady supply of soft drinks. Only part of the room was the actual kitchen. Shelves of office supplies, a copier, a fax machine, and a phone took up the rest. I aimed for the phone, and FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—16

nervously punched in the number for the University of Washington

Medical Center. I don’t know what drove me more: worry over

Christopher’s condition, or the mounting need to find out the cause of the strangeness that had infected my existence. Neither was satisfied, for the hospital operator informed me that they’d released Christopher MacSimidh from care that morning.

Disappointment and dismay shot through me as I hung up.

Both of them vanished, though, the moment I caught sight of two pairs of faintly glowing red eyes in the cramped, shadowed space beneath one of the vending machines.

With a hoarse whimper, I threw myself to my hands and knees before the big boxy snack dispenser, choking on my own relief and panic when I found nothing beneath it but dust and somebody’s forgotten quarter.

I’d wondered last night if I’d started hallucinating, looking into my bathroom mirror. I wondered that again now. Had

I imagined my eyes changing color? Something lurking under the vending machine? The hedge creatures? The troll?

Surely I hadn’t imagined Christopher?

Was I losing it?

“Ken?” Jude’s voice and her hand on my shoulder sent me shooting upright with a yelp. In turn she jumped back a step and blinked up at me as she asked, “You okay, chica?”

Hoping I didn’t look as paranoid as I felt, I babbled,

“Yeah, I, um… quarter. I dropped a quarter.” I stooped and FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—17

snatched up the coin I’d spotted, trying to look casual.

Jude didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. She just grinned and waved me back towards our office. “Well, come on, then!

James is springing for pizza, so let’s go tell him what we want and see if we can get this puppy out the door.”

The rest of the afternoon went by in a blur of pizza, soda, frenetic waves of email, and Jude and I repeating our test sweeps when builds came out with new bug fixes. By four-thirty, the last build passed testing. By five, cheers rang out up and down the hallway as James declared the product ready to ship.

Everybody cheered but me. I wanted to go home and hide.

“Ship party!” Jude crowed as she whirled in her chair to high-five me. But she hadn’t forgotten our exchange from that morning, and though she was grinning ear to ear, she gave me a shrewd once-over too. “Are you up to it? You want happy fun party time, or quiet comfy ‘wake me up in a week’ time?”

I started to say I’d just head home and crash. Then I remembered the walk to the bus stop and the things in the tree, on the lawn, in the hedge. If I went home, I’d have to take that same route. And I thought of the eyes under the vending machine, and my own eyes turned an impossible color in my reflection. But nothing out of the ordinary had invaded our office, and in desperation, I seized on a possible explanation. In our office,

I’d had Jude for company all day.

Suddenly the prospect of a boisterous ship party was FAERIE BLOOD KORRA’TI—18

tantalizing indeed. I’d get a headache—even more of one than I already had—from the loud conversation, loud music, and free- flowing alcohol. But there would be people involved. Nice, safe, not-troll-type people.

I wouldn’t be alone.

“I’ll take door number one, Bob,” I joked, and dug up a crooked grin for added plausibility.

Jude slapped my shoulder in approval. “That’s the spirit!

We’ll get blitzed, and you can tell me all about your adventure last night. It’ll be fun!”

My grin slipped a little at the reminder. But I fought off the jangling chord of disquiet in the back of my head, squared my shoulders, and let her lead me off as the team gathered to head out… praying as I went that I wouldn’t see anything else.