The Mustang purred happily as Tannim drove into Sam's driveway. There were times, especially lately, when Tannim wondered if maybe he hadn't instilled a little too much magic into the car. Or maybe he'd planted something else besides pure Power. Lately it had seemed as if the Mach 1 was almost—sentient. It certainly seemed to approve of Sam Kelly; there was a warmth to the engine's purr that hadn't been there before he turned into the drive, and the car had embraced Sam as if he belonged inside it.
Well, for that matter, Tannim approved of Sam Kelly. He was a smart, tough old bird, and too good to waste on retirement. Now, as long as he and Keighvin hadn't gotten the old man into more danger than any of them could handle. . . . His conscience bothered him a bit over that. Sam had brains and savvy, but what if he needed that and a younger man's reflexes as well?
He was taking Sam to dinner, after a couple of drinks at Kevin Barry's Pub in Savannah, on River Street. There were several Irish pubs in the area, but Kevin Barry's was the one Tannim preferred. He had the feeling that Sam would feel more at home, easier, in an atmosphere that reminded him of Ireland and all it meant.
He'd chosen a dinner meeting rather than a return to Fairgrove for a very good reason; he wanted Sam's first dose of Keighvin Silverhair to wear off before they talked again. Keighvin's formidable personality had been known to overwhelm far stronger personalities than Sam's, even without a glamorie at work.
Not that Keighvin would have used a glamorie on Sam Kelly. They wanted a willing ally, with all his faculties in working order, not a bemused dreamer.
Tannim wasn't entirely certain how old Keighvin was; certainly at least a thousand. That much living produced personalities that could easily bowl the unsuspecting over. If Sam was having second thoughts, Tannim wanted to know about it without Keighvin around to influence him.
The pub itself, however, was a good place to talk to Sam. The atmosphere, so strongly Celtic, should put Sam in the state of mind to remember and Believe, even though he was going to be completely in the "real world."
And there was no more "real world" a clientele than the bunch that frequented Kevin Barry's. Students from SCAD, business people, locals, artists, holdover hippies, folkies—you name it, and you would probably see it in Kevin Barry's. Except maybe yuppies; the place wasn't trendy enough for them.
Not enough ferns, or drinks with clever names and inflated prices. And no selection of forty-five mineral waters.
Sam must have been watching for him, for he was locking up even as Tannim arrived. He opened the passenger's side door and slid in beside Tannim as soon as the Mach 1 came to a full stop. He was amazingly fit for a sixty-five-year-old man; he looked as if he'd been getting lots of regular exercise and watching his diet—his build was a lot like Jacques Cousteau's, in fact, who at sixty-five had still been leading his own underwater expeditions. Maybe Tannim didn't need to worry quite so much about him after all.
"Am I in for any more impromptu racing today?" Sam asked, with a twinkle, as Tannim pulled out again. And there was no doubt of it; the Mustang was truly purring with satisfaction, a note in its engine he'd never heard before. The Mach 1 liked Sam.
Too bad I can't ever find a lover it likes that much, he thought ironically. Of course, if I do, she'll probably like the car better than me. I can see it now—my girl and my car, taking off into the sunset without me.
"No, no racing today," he said, with a chuckle. "I'm taking you into Savannah. I had the feeling you probably haven't been downtown in a while."
Sam nodded. "Not for years," he admitted. "Never had a reason to. And to tell you the truth, I spent most of my time at Gulfstream. There wasn't much of anything I wanted to go downtown for."
"I may be able to change your mind," Tannim replied. "So, how are you feeling about our offer in the cold light of day?"
"Well—the check didn't disappear, or turn into a handful of leaves when morning arrived," Sam replied after a moment. "And my bank was perfectly happy to have it. I wasn't entirely sure it would still be there when I woke up this morning, and that's a fact. I was half convinced I must have dreamed the whole thing. Especially that car-horse-car."
"I don't blame you." Tannim chuckled, watching Sam out of the corner of his eye. "I know how I felt the first time I saw anyone working real magic."
There. The word was out in the open. Sam hadn't flinched from it, either.
"Magic," the old man mused. "The Sidhe, and magic. Maybe I've come into my second childhood, but—I think I could come to appreciate all this." He tilted his head to the side. "So, what happened the first time you saw magic at work?"
Tannim laughed. "I freaked. For the first few minutes, I thought someone had slipped me recreational pharmaceuticals without my noticing. Then, once I figured out that everything I saw was real, I just hoped that whoever was duking it out didn't notice me. I was—oh, sixteen or so—and I kind of got caught on the sidelines of a magic duel." He waited to see the effect of that revelation on Sam.
"Fair Folk?" Sam asked after a moment. "A duel between elves?"
Tannim shook his head. "No. A witch and a sorceress. The witch was the good guy—or rather, gal. I didn't know who the bad guy was, or that it was a female at the time. I was just glad the witch had a good sense of ethics and was trying to keep the mayhem to a minimum where the audience was concerned."
"A witch and a sorceress? Aren't they the same thing?" Sam asked, in a genuinely puzzled tone.
Again, Tannim shook his head. "Trust me, there's a difference between the two. The reason it was dangerous was because although the witch was being careful about innocent bystanders, the sorceress wasn't. And, like I said, in this case, the witch was the good guy. There's a lot of parallels between the Seleighe and Unseleighe Courts there."
Sam nodded thoughtfully, but made no further comments for a moment. By that time, they had reached Savannah proper, and the infamous brick-work streets. Quaint and picturesque, but hell to drive on.
They got a bit of relief at a stoplight. Tannim's leg ached distantly, from hip to ankle. "I keep forgetting about these damn streets," he remarked to Sam, who nodded.
"I remember now," Sam responded. "This was one of the reasons I avoided coming downtown. There wasn't anything down here that was worth having to drive this, and the cobblestones are worse."
Tannim sighed. "I guess it's because I like River Street so much I sort of forget what it takes to get there. I'm sure the tourists like this—but I swear, I know I'm going to have to put the car up and do an alignment when I get home.
"It's the tight suspension, I'd wager," Sam said through clenched teeth. "Makes you wish you had a Lincoln or a Caddy."
Tannim laughed. "Maybe I'll remember this next time I come here, and rent one!"
The Mustang coughed as though its carburetor had stuck, then settled once Tannim patted the dash.
Some things never change, Sam thought, as he watched a trio of black-clad art students walk by in the shade of the old, Spanish-moss-bedecked oaks. There seemed to be an unwritten rule that young artists had to wear black and act morose at least twelve hours out of every day. He'd seen that sort of thing, in a different way, with the Gulfstream engineers, who thought that if they wore blue cotton shirts, club ties, and Cross pens, they would be taken for Brain Trust. Sam had never been able to take that kind of thing seriously after watching a PBS documentary about mimicry in moths.
The art students were a constant source of amusement and amazement for the locals, but the kids always meant well. It tickled Sam that their school was slowly buying out the entire downtown, building by building. "Are those ninjas, or performance artists?" Tannim chuckled, nodding at a duo in black gis and black, absurdly baggy pants, like rappers wore on MTV. They lounged beneath a wrought-iron balcony that was old when their great-grandparents were their age. They reminded Tannim of similar sights in New Orleans, and the mix of cultures and ambience there.
"Poster kids for mousse abuse," Sam replied solemnly. "Ninjas would have better taste."
"Geez, you could hide aircraft in those pants," Tannim commented, after a second look. "Better keep them away from Gulfstream, Sam. Some of your planes might mistake them for hangars."
A blue-haired old lady under the trees of one of the dozens of tiny park squares nagged at her husband as the balding man focused his camera on a building across the street. "Wait until the kids are in the picture, George," she shrilled. "I want a picture with art kids in it. This is where the art school is, I want art kids in the picture."
The old man just grunted and made minute adjustments of the focus. The art students just ignored it all and continued drifting along in front of the boutique windows, expressions of studied angst decorating their young faces.
"Maybe he can't hear her," Tannim suggested. "His shorts are drowning her out." Indeed, the man was wearing possibly the most obscene pair of Bermudas Sam had ever experienced; an appalling print in cerise and chartreuse. He and his wife were completely unaware of the team of video students behind them—taping every move they made. Sam nearly died, choking down laughter.
They found themselves creeping along at five miles an hour, stuck behind one of the horse-drawn sightseers carriages. Tannim put up with it for a little, but finally muttered something under his breath and turned off their street at the next light, leaving the coveys of tourists and micro-herds of art students behind. After about a mile, Sam noticed they had left the glass-front boutiques and hole-in-the-wall shops behind as well. The buildings were neglected, now; paint cracked and peeling, windows broken and patched with tape and cardboard, yards full of weeds. The cars here were in the same shape as the houses. There weren't many businesses; what few there were had grates over the windows and rusted bars on the doors.
Sam would not have wanted to break down here, and now he recalled another reason for not visiting downtown. River Street was flanked by two bad neighborhoods. Even in daylight, Sam would not have wanted to be alone out here. The sullen expressions of the toughs lounging on the corners were not feigned or practiced, and their cold, dead eyes gave Sam the chills. He kept his eyes on the dashboard, and Tannim was uncharacteristically silent.
Finally the young man broke the silence. "This neighborhood's economy isn't depressed," he said grimly, "it's suicidal."
They turned another corner and drove for about half a mile, with the buildings slowly improving again. Finally they turned onto River Street itself, and as they hit the cobblestones and the punishment really began, Sam felt able to take his eyes off the dashboard. That was when he found that the dubious sorts weren't limited to the bad neighborhoods, either; there was a cluster of kids in front of a shop with a "for rent" sign in the window, and from the look of them, they were exchanging money for drugs. Sam watched the loitering toughs out of the comer of his eye, and remembered that this was yet another reason why he had avoided the downtown area in general. He certainly wouldn't want to come here alone at night, and maybe not even with someone. He knew he was tougher than he looked—yes, and a lot sprier than he let on—but he was no match for a street-gang.
And he was smart enough to know it.
A cop car rumbled down one of the cobblestone ramps from the street above River, and the gang evaporated, vanishing into the covered alleyways behind the River Street stores.
Well, maybe it wouldn't be so dangerous. The cops were certainly a presence. And then, again, there were a number of Irish pubs around here, and a lot of Irish on the street as well—the ones without the bags and cameras and look of tourists. If he did happen to find himself in trouble, it could be there'd be more help here than he first reckoned.
Tannim pulled into a parking place so abruptly that Sam was taken by surprise; cutting in right under the fender of a departing vehicle, and neatly getting the Mustang worked into the slot so quickly it seemed as magical as the car-horse. As the young man shut the engine off, he turned to grin at Sam. "You've got to be quick around here," he said. "Parking places go fast, and the god of parking has a short attention span."
To his surprise, since Tannim hadn't mentioned specifically where they were going, the young man led the way into one of those Irish pubs Sam had been eyeing. And to Sam's great delight, once inside, the place proved to be real Irish, not "tourist" Irish. It looked—and felt—homey and lived-in. There was a small stage in the restaurant section, against one wall, with a folk-group setting up on it, whose instrumental mix Sam also noted with approval. He liked mixing the old with the new, although one could do some quite amazing things with traditional instruments. One of his most cherished memories was of being in a club in Tennessee and hearing the Battlefield Band performing "Stairway to Heaven" on the bagpipes. . . .
Still, although he was prepared to spend several delightful hours here, this did not look like the kind of place that would suit his companion. Young Tannim looked as if he'd never encountered an acoustic guitar in his life; a rock'n'roller to the core. The Clannad tape notwithstanding, he couldn't imagine Tannim caring for any music that didn't come with amps and megawattage. It was to Sam's considerable astonishment that the lady bartender greeted his escort by name, and asked if he wanted "his usual table." At Tannim's nod, the lady waved them on, telling them that "Julie" would be with them in a minute.
As Sam took his place across from Tannim, he realized that, once again, he was going to have to realign all his previous ideas about the lad. And that was a discovery just as pleasant as the existence of this pub.
"Well," Tannim said, when the waitress had brought them both drinks, "ready for a little more business?"
Another surprise for Sam—not the question, but the drink. Tannim had stuck to pure cola. He was young enough to take delight in drinking because he could. Interesting.
"I think so," Sam replied cautiously. "You gave me a lot of information last night, but it was all in pieces. I'd like more of a whole picture."
"Fine," Tannim said agreeably. "Where would you like me to start?"
"With magic." Sam took a deep breath. "Just what is it? How does it work? What can you do with it—and what's it got to do with racing—"
Tannim held up a hand. "The discipline people call `magic' is a way of describing an inborn talent that's been trained. It has rules, and it obeys the laws of physics. It uses the energy produced by all living things; it also uses the energy of magnetic fields, of sunlight, and a lot of other sources. It's a tool, a way of manipulating energies; that's the first thing you have to remember. It's not good or bad, it just is. Like,I can use a crowbar to bash your head in, or to pry a victim out of a wreck." He shrugged. "It's a tool; just a tool and nothing more. Some people have the skill to use the tool, some don't."
Sam nodded, since Tannim looked as if he was waiting for a response. "But—how does it work? And who has it? Can anyone work it if they've got the knowledge?"
Tannim chuckled. "Hard to describe, Sam. First of all, you have to be able to see the energies in the first place, or at least know that they're there. That's the key; if you can see them, you can learn to manipulate them with magic—which is basically a way of making your own will into that tool to manipulate energy." He licked his lips. "Here's where it gets complicated. If you've trained your will well enough, you can still use the energies without seeing them. Everyone could use some kind of magic, if they had the training—but most folks never come in touch with what they can use. Know anything more now than you did before I said that?"
Sam shook his head, ruefully. "Well . . . no. Not really. But I can believe in plasma physics without knowing exactly how it works. I suppose I can believe in magic too. So long as it follows rules."
"That's the spirit!" Tannim applauded. "Now, what Keighvin won't tell you, because like most elves, he's an arrogant sonuvabanshee, is that humans were applying magic to cars before the elves thought of it. A lot of times they didn't realize that was what they were doing, but a lot of times they knew exactly what they were doing, especially on the racing circuit. So when the elves came on the scene, they got a bit of a shock, because there were humans out there already, using magicked cars. That's when they decided it might be a good idea to try and join up with some of those humans." He spread his hands. "Voila—SERRA was born."
"But why racing?" Sam asked, still bewildered. "For the Sidhe, I mean. It seems so—foreign to what they are."
"Boredom," Tannim replied succinctly, tracing little patterns on the wooden tabletop with his finger "They live—if not forever, damn near. But here's something else they won't tell you. The one thing they lack is creativity as near as I can figure. Every bit of their culture, with the sole exception of who and what they worship, comes from humans." He looked up through his lashes, as if he were sharing a secret "They can replicate what we do, and even improve on it, but I've never once seen one of them come up with something new and original. So they depend on us to bring new things to their culture; as far as I can tell, that's always been the case. They were bored, and racing gave them a chance to bring back some excitement to their lives, like the old combat-challenges used to give them. Brought them that element of risk back—" his face sobered "—'cause, Sam, if you mess up on the track, sometimes it's permanent, and sometimes it's terminal."
Sam wondered if Tannim's game leg was evidence of the boy's own brush with just that.
"But they won't admit it, even if you confront 'em," Tannim said, with a crooked smile, making a figure eight. "That's the real reason they got into racing though, I promise you. Now as to why Keighvin took it farther, to where Fairgrove is trying to make mundane money—he's not lying, he wants to have that kind of mundane cash to kind of fix things for kids. I've got a hunch he wants to set up some safe-houses for abused kids that we can't take Underhill, starting here in Savannah. All elves have this thing about kids; Keighvin has it harder than most. If he could save every kid in the world from pain, hunger, fear—he'd do it. But he can't do it magically, not anymore." Tannim made a complex symbol that looked suspiciously like a baseball diamond. "For one thing, there's too much Cold Iron around for his magics to work down here in the cities."
"Huh." Sam nodded, but he had reservations. Not that he hadn't heard about all the supposed abused kids, on everything from Oprah to prime-time TV dramas, but he wasn't sure he believed the stories. Kids made things up, when they thought they were in for deserved punishment. Hell, one of the young guys at work had shown up with a story about his kid getting into something he was told to leave alone in a store, breaking it, then launching into screams of "don't beat me, Mommy!" when the mother descended like a fury. Embarrassed the blazes out of her, especially since the worst she'd ever delivered in the kid's life was a couple of smacks on the bottom. Turned out the brat had seen a dramatized crime-recreation show the night before, with an abused-kid episode. Sam was beginning to think that a lot of those "beaten kids" had seen similar shows, then had been coached by attorneys, "child advocates," or the "non-abusing spouse." Wasn't that how the Salem witch-trials had happened, anyway? A bunch of kids getting back at the adults they didn't like?
As for the runaways—they'd had a solution for that back when he was a kid. Truant officers with the power to confine a kid, and reform school for the kids that couldn't toe the line at home. Maybe that's what they needed these days, not "safe-houses."
But just as he was about to say that, he took a second, harder look at Tannim, and thought back about what Keighvin had said. Tannim might be almost a kid himself, but he didn't look as if he was easily tricked. And Keighvin had known what was happening to Sam—and presumably Sam's great-uncle—by supernatural means. It wasn't likely that they were being tricked. . . .
They, the elves, had been right about Sam's great-uncle. And who could say what might have happened if Keighvin hadn't intervened that night, so long ago. Would John Kelly have come to his senses before he'd done more than frighten Sam? Or would the beatings have continued, getting worse with every incident, until Sam turned into a sullen, trouble-making creature like Jack McGee, with his hand against every man alive, and every man's hand against him? Jack's father was the mainstay of the town pub . . . Jack's mother a timid thing that never spoke above a whisper, and always with one eye out for her husband, wore high collars and long sleeves, and generally bore a healing bruise somewhere on her face or neck. Now Sam was forced to confront that memory, he wondered, as he had not, then. What did those sleeves and collars conceal?
Maybe the stories were true; maybe the elves were right. . . .
Glory be. Am I thinking as if they're real?
He was. Somewhere along the line, he'd accepted all this—magic, elves, all of it. He might just as well accept the abused kids as well. . . .
"Have you people cast some kind of spell on me?" he demanded. "Made me believe in you? Brainwashed me?"
Tannim laughed. "If we used magic to make you believe in magic, to brainwash you, doesn't that mean magic works?"
Well, the boy had him there.
"I suppose you could have brainwashed me some other way," Sam said, feebly.
Tannim shrugged. "Why?" he replied reasonably, as the waitress brought another round. "What's the point? By definition, someone who's been brainwashed is operating at less than his optimum reasoning capacity. Why would we want you brainwashed, when what we want is for you to be at your sharpest?" Tannim took a sip of his cola, and looked up at Sam from under a raised eyebrow. "Are you having second thoughts about all this, about agreeing to help Keighvin?" he asked. "If you are, Sam, it's nothing to be ashamed of. We need you, but not at the expense of forcing you to make a bargain you regret."
Sam sighed. "No. No. It's just that I find myself believing in the impossible, and it doesn't seem right, all my brave words about plasma physics to the contrary."
The young man took a moment to finish his drink before answering. "Sam," he said, slowly, gazing off into nothing for a moment, "when you were a kid, people said it was impossible for a plane to fly past the speed of sound, for polio and smallpox to be eradicated, for the atom to be split, for a man to walk on the moon. I don't know what's impossible. All I can say is that `impossible' just seems to mean that nobody's done it yet. There's some people that still don't believe a man walked on the moon. And there's people who still believe the earth is flat. Nobody puts their names in the history books. I know it all seems fantastic, but we are based in reality. It's just a bigger reality than most people are used to dealing with."
"What do you know?" Sam found himself asking, his own meal forgotten for the moment. "You, who's magicked his car, who walks and talks with the Folk and treats them like mortals—what do you know?"
Tannim grinned. "Well—I know your beer's getting flat."
Sam laughed, and gave in.
Tannim finished his third cola with one eye on Sam, and another on the crowd. On the whole, the evening had gone well. Sam had weathered both his initial exposure and the period of doubt that always followed it in good form. Better than Tannim had expected, in fact. Of course, he'd had a dose of the Folk as a child; that tended to leave a lasting impression.
Sam had finally worked himself round to asking specific questions about the elves, and how they were functioning in the human world. And why.
The crowd-noise around them was not too loud for them to be able to talk in normal voices—or at least, it wasn't after Tannim did a little local sound-filtering around their table, a tiny exercise in human magic that was worth the energy he expended on it. "Well, this is something else Keighvin won't admit unless he's pressed. Essentially, the Seleighe Court is split," he said. "One group thinks they should all withdraw Underhill, and leave the world we know to the humans. The other group thinks that would be a major mistake."
"Why?" Sam wanted to know, his head turned to one side.
"Remember what I told you about them, that they can't seem to create anything?" Tannim reminded him. "Keighvin thinks that if they withdraw, they'll stagnate. That's something a little more serious to them than it is to humans. They call it Dreaming; they can be forced into it by caffeine addiction, or they can drop into it from lack of stimulation, and being cut off from their old energy sources by Cold Iron. That's happened to one group in California already. They managed to get out of it, but—it wasn't pretty."
He didn't like to think about that. They had all been damned lucky to pull out of their trap. And they wouldn't have been able to without the aid of humans.
He pulled his thoughts away; Elfhame Sundescending was all right now, and thriving. "Like the old story of the Lotus-Eaters; they lose all ambition and do next to nothing, sit around and listen to music and let their magic servants tend to everything, dance, and never think a single thought. Scary. I've seen it once, and I wouldn't wish it even on the Folk who'd be pleased to see me six feet under. Keighvin's got some plans to keep it from happening on this coast, and they involve all of us in Fairgrove."
Just then, his attention was caught by someone that didn't fit with the usual Kevin Barry's crowd. She was clearly underage; he guessed round about thirteen or fourteen. Fifteen, max, but he doubted it. She was tarted up like a bargain-basement Madonna in black-lace spandex tights, a black-lace skirt, and a cheap black corset; wearing entirely too much makeup, so that her eyes looked like black holes in her pale face, with a bad bleach-job that made her hair look like so much spiky dead straw. What in hell was she doing here? This didn't look like her kind of crowd. God,she looks like Pris from Bladerunner, he thought.
But then, Sam had been surprised that he was a regular here. Maybe she just liked the music.
"I can see that, and I can see why racing, now," Sam said, in answer to whatever he'd just told the man. "But what are they doing about Cold Iron? That's what drove them out of the Old Country, isn't it? Doesn't it bother them now?"
"How much real iron and steel do you see nowadays?" Tannim countered, raising his eyebrows. "Plastic, fiberglass, aluminum, yes—but iron?"
"Hmm. You have a point."
The girl had worked herself in towards the stage, with a look of utter fascination on her face. Tannim felt a twinge of sympathy; he remembered the first time he encountered really good Celtic folk-rock. It had been right here—and this band, Terra Nova. Kind of like having your first experience of pizza being Chicago deep-dish. And it wasn't often that the old members of Terra Nova got back together again for an old-time's-sake gig, what with Trish being so busy at the restaurant and all. No wonder this chick had shown up. Yeah, it looked like she was just a punker with Celtic-rock leanings. Too bad she was so young. This was supposed to be an adult club, what with the bar and all. She could get bounced in no time, if she got herself noticed.
Well, if she behaved herself, they'd probably leave her alone.
He watched her, still a little bothered by something, something not quite right. Then, as he saw her stop and talk to a businessman who shook his head abruptly—and ignore a SCAD student who half-made an approach, it dawned on him.
She was a hooker.
He'd thought he was beyond shock, but this stunned him. So damned young—
He watched her make her way around the floor, most of her attention on the band, but obviously a part of her keeping an eye out for a potential john. Don't try and turn atrick in here, honey, please, he pled silently with her. He might be wrong—but the more he watched her, the surer he became. At that age—out here on a school night, dressed like she was—it was long odds against her being on River Street for the fun of it. If you get too obvious, or bother the customers, they'll throw you out. Stay cool. It's cold and mean out there, and if one of the soft-hearts sees you, they'll get you something to eat and you'll be safe a little longer. . . .
Sam asked him a question, and he answered it absently. "Well, what's happening is that some of the elves—with Keighvin leading the pack by a length—are trying to build up a kind of immunity to Cold Iron—or a tolerance, at least. I can think of half a dozen, actually, who can handle it with a minimum of protection, and two that can actually tolerate it well enough to work on and drive a stock car."
Donal, he thought fondly. Wish you were here, man. You could pick up this poor little chick and glamorie her into coming back to Fairgrove with you, tuck her away Underhill until you'd talked some sense into her. And if you couldn't your brother could.
The more he watched the girl, the less comfortable he felt. She was wandering around the area of the stage, and although she wasn't making any full-fledged tries at picking up the customers, it was pretty obvious that if anyone that she thought had money responded to her tentative overtures, she wouldn't turn him down.
"Keighvin says the Folk have to adapt or die, it's that simple," he concluded, as the band finished a wild polka and went into a still wilder reel. "They haven't got a choice anymore. He thinks if they withdraw, they'll do worse than stagnate, they'll fade away. Just—disappear."
"Is that possible?" Sam asked, sounding surprised. Tannim pulled his attention away from the girl long enough to catch his eyes. He nodded, slowly.
"It's already happened," he said seriously. "Mostly in Europe, but even over here, there've been enclaves of the Folk that went Underhill and just vanished after a while. Nobody's heard from them, nobody can find them."
"Couldn't they just have closed themselves off?" Sam wanted to know. "If they became that anti-social, maybe they even got tired of other elves. I mean, what is this Underhill, anyway? We used to say the Fair Folk lived in the mounds, but what you're saying, it sounds more like Underhill is everywhere. Couldn't the missing Folk have just shut the door and turned off the phone, so to speak?"
Tannim shook his head. "Underhill doesn't work that way. It's hard to describe. It's kind of—another world, one magicians can touch, and sometimes get into. A kind of parallel world, I guess. Lots of magic; I mean, of power, and it's readily available, like electricity, only it's like—" He thought for a moment, as the crowd began clapping in time to the music. "It's like having all the power-stations and the power-grid in place and running, only there's nobody manning it, and no electric company to make you pay for what you take. It's yours for the tapping into. The only `cost' involved is in tapping into it and in using it."
Sam shook his head, but not in disbelief, exactly. "Sounds like free lunch, to me."
Tannim looked around for the girl, but she'd gotten lost behind a screen of taller people. Not that that was hard, as tiny as she was. He thought he knew where she'd moved to, though, by the path of mild disturbance along the bar. "Not really; the cost to the individual of tapping in and using it is high, and you have to have the ability in the first place. Kind of like solar energy. Keighvin thinks that's where the power created here that doesn't get used leaks off to—if you think of it as bio-energy, the kind that makes Kirlian auras, you're close enough to the truth."
Sam closed his eyes for a moment in thought. "All right," he replied, opening them again. "That much I can believe in. What's it like in there?"
"Parts are like a bad sf novel," Tannim laughed, without humor. "Like some of the old pulp writers described an alien planet. Parts of it are like an architect's wet-dream." He spread his fingers wide for emphasis. "Mostly it's a kind of chaos, a place where things are always changing, always dangerous, and that's where the Unseleighe Court creatures go. Then there's stretches of order, walled gardens or even small countries, and that's where the Seleighe Court enclaves are."
"And those?" Sam prompted.
Tannim sighed, but this time at the memories Sam's question invoked. "I've only been there a couple of times, and each time it was different. Figure every description you've ever heard of Elvenlands, Morgan Le Fay's castle, the Isles of the Blest—that's what those Underhill enclaves are like." He felt his eyes sting with remembrance and the inevitable regret that he hadn't stayed, and pushed the memory away. "Incredible—and they require elven-mages of very high power and a great deal of will to force the chaos out, and the area into that shape. That means they leave a mark on the world of Underhill, very visible, like the Red Spot on Jupiter. When someone like Keighvin goes Underhill, he knows where all the other pockets are, at least the ones created by other Folk. Always. He might not be able to get into them without invitation, but he knows where they are."
Sam took a sip of his beer before replying. "So it doesn't matter if the Folk in that place don't want to be bothered, they can't hide themselves. At least not on purpose."
Tannim nodded. "Right. So with the ones that faded out, the places that have gone missing—well, they're not there anymore. Maybe they died, maybe they went to still another world, and maybe they just dissolved back into the chaos. Even if there are still Folk alive in there, nobody can reach them, and they can't find their way back to the rest of us, nor to the real world. Likeliest—according to Keighvin—is that they faded until they were easy prey for the Unseleighe Court critters."
Sam toyed with a napkin, looking troubled. "You mean—they—"
Right on cue, Terra Nova launched into "Sidhe Beg and Sidhe Mor;" a tune that sounded lighthearted—but was about a war between elves of the Seleighe and Unseleighe Courts. The body count, as Tannim recalled, had been pretty high.
He raised an eyebrow at the band. Sam chewed his lip, as the meaning of the tune came home to him. "The Unseleighe Court plays for keeps, and every time they kill a Seleighe Court creature, or a human, they add his life-energy to their own power. Elves can die; they can be killed. Ever think about where the word `banshee' came from?"
Sam's eyes widened. "Bane-Sidhe?"
"Right. `Bane' or `death' of elves. And it's not just a name." Tannim was just glad he'd not had any personal experiences with one. The descriptions were bad enough.
"The stories my grandmother told me—she said some banshees actually came for people." Sam looked a little embarrassed, as if he'd been caught believing in the bogeyman.
Who also exists.
"They do that too; they'll do their damnedest to scare you to death," Tannim said grimly. "That's how they get their energy; from your fear and from your dying."
"Oh." Sam blinked, as if he wasn't sure how to take that. He'd accepted danger last night—but that was with Keighvin, in Fairgrove territory. He was here now, the "real world," in the middle of a pub full of noisy people and a Celtic-rock band.
And a thirteen-year-old hooker.
She appeared again, this time giving up all pretense of working the crowd, just standing close to the stage and hugging herself, as Trish sang "Buachaill on Eire" with a voice an elven Bard would have paid any price to display.
A glitter of Trish's half-closed blue eyes, and the set of her chin, betrayed the fact that she was watching the girl too, and Tannim relaxed minutely. Trish didn't pick up on street-sparrows often, especially not now that she was managing "Acadia," but when she did, she was very kind to them. Like the way she'd adopted that monster wolfhound of hers, letting it take over her life to the point of buying a house just so the dog would be able to stay with her. She wouldn't let the girl get away without at least trying to see she got something to eat. With luck, she'd keep the child busy until Tannim could take over.
Maybe I can get her to Keighvin. I can't get him out of Fairgrove territory, not yet, but if can get her to him, he'll take care of her. Not for the first time, he wished that he could just lie to the kid, get her into his car and make off with her, but to take her away from whatever life she had chosen, he had to have her consent, and she had to know what she was choosing. Conal and Donal wouldn't have worked that way, but they were Sidhe, and trickery was a part of their nature. Not his. It couldn't be by deception. Even Keighvin could work that way, but he couldn't; he was bound by a different set of rules. Self-inflicted, but nevertheless real. He hadn't liked being lied to, or manipulated, even with good intentions, when he was younger. He wouldn't do that to another kid. Besides, small incidents have a way of turning around and biting my ass. If the wrong person saw me getting into my car with an underage hooker, it could mean big-time trouble later. Trouble we can't afford.
As the band finished the set, he saw with relief that Trish definitely had her eye on the girl. As soon as they'd finished their bows—and before the child had a chance to escape—she was down off the stage and beside the kid. She made it look completely casual, and Tannim gave her high marks for her subtlety.
"What's wrong?" Sam asked, startling him. He tore his eyes off the girl for a moment to stare at his companion.
"What do you—"
"Oh, come now," Sam interrupted. "You haven't had more than half your attention on me for the past fifteen minutes. And you've got a frown on your face, so it can't be that you're watching a pretty girl, or that you're enthralled by the band. So what's the problem?" As Tannim paused, debating how much to say, he lost his half-smile and began to frown, himself. "Is it something I should know about?"
Tannim sighed. "Over there, with Trish, from the band. See that other girl?"
"The one that's made up like a cheap tart?" Sam asked, disapproval thick in his voice. "Girls these days—ah well. What about her?"
"She's not only made up like a cheap tart, she probably is a cheap tart," Tannim replied wearily. And before Sam could reply to that, added, "Take a good look under all the paint. She's not only underage, she's hardly gotten away from playing with Barbie dolls. What's a kid like that doing out here hooking? And more than that, why? She has to be a runaway—what's she running from that's bad enough for her to be turning tricks at fourteen?"
Sam started to make some snap reply, but it looked as if some of what Tannim had been talking about—the abused kids and all—had penetrated. Tannim could almost read his mind from the fleeting expressions that passed over his face. First, contempt—then disgust—but then a moment of second thoughts, followed by worry. "I don't like it," he said.
"Neither do I," Tannim told him, "but we're going to have to be careful about this. She could be bait in a trap; she could be a trap herself. Some of the Unseleighe Court things can look like anything they want. I don't See any magic around her, but that doesn't mean she's not one of them, or even a human kid they picked up to use against me. This is one of my regular hangouts, and everybody knows it."
And they know my soft spots.
"So what do we do?" Sam asked. A frown line was forming between his brows. Obviously he wasn't used to the kind of the multitudinous layers of deceit the Unseleighe Court creatures used by habit.
"We let Trish handle her. If she's after me, she'll find a way to get Trish to bring her over here. If she's a real kid in real trouble, she'll act like one." He watched the two of them, without seeming to. It looked as if the singer was warning the girl against soliciting; Trish was nodding her head so emphatically that her black hair bounced, while the child blushed under all the makeup, and hung her head. But the singer didn't leave things there; she took the girl to a table in the corner, and got her a sandwich and a cola, standing over her and talking until the food arrived. By then, it was time for the next set, and Trish abandoned the girl for the stage.
The kid finished the food in about three seconds flat. Tannim had never seen a kid put away food so fast, and the way she cleaned up every crumb argued that it might well have been the first meal she'd had today. She lingered over the dregs of her cola until Trish was obviously wrapped up in her song. Then a look of bleak determination passed over her face, and she slid out of her seat; and without a single glance at Tannim or even in his direction, she went back to the bar.
Tannim sighed, half in relief, half in exasperation. All right, he said to himself. She's genuine. Now what am I going to do about her?