Betrayals Page 4

  Did I take some pleasure in seeing their faces fall as I mentioned that dreaded name? Maybe.

  I walked to the counter, and said hi to Larry--the cook and owner. I'd worked here for a few months after I arrived, and contrary to what the elders claimed, I did still stop by quite often. I just didn't talk to them.

  I motioned to the server--Susie--that I was going to take the coffee pot. Then I carried it over to the dark-haired guy banging away on his laptop. Patrick didn't even let me draw up alongside his table before he lifted his mug.

  He smiled as I filled it. "Hello, Liv. Good to see you."

  Gabriel took the pot from me and returned it as Patrick said, "You, too, Gabriel. The old folks are right. You don't come by nearly often enough these days."

  I took the seat across from Patrick.

  "Pleasantries complete, one-sided though they may be," Patrick said. "Liv wants to get down to business. How may I help you, Olivia? I presume that's what brings you to my office. You want something."

  "Of course."

  "And in return?"

  Quid pro quo. That's how all fae operate on some level, but it's more overt with a hobgoblin.

  "In return I will tell you what we're investigating," I said. "And you can decide how much of it you want to pass on to the other elders."

  The old folks heard that perfectly well, and they were not pleased. Patrick's eyes glittered as he sipped his coffee.

  I glanced around. Other than the elders, there were no other customers. Susie and Larry had gone into the back, like bartenders sensing a brawl brewing.

  "Is that a reasonable deal?" I asked Patrick.

  "It is."

  "No." Ida got to her feet again. "It is not."

  She started toward me. Gabriel stepped into her path.

  "I want to speak to Liv," Ida said. "I am allowed that, under the terms--"

  "Under the terms of our agreement, you are allowed to speak to her, but not to interfere. She wishes to consult with Patrick. You are attempting to interfere."

  "Patrick isn't the one she should speak to."

  "Perhaps, but he is the one she chooses to speak to."

  "He cannot be trusted--"

  "None of you can."

  Ida stepped closer. "We are trying, Gabriel. Mistakes were made. If you and Olivia would just put aside this nonsense--"

  "It isn't nonsense to us. Olivia wishes to speak to Patrick. Please allow her to do so. I'm sure he'll share the story with you afterward."

  "I might," Patrick said.

  Gabriel gave him a look. Patrick might play the rebel, but he didn't antagonize the others unnecessarily.

  "Can we move this conversation to your place?" I asked Patrick.

  "You kids go on ahead. I'll finish my coffee and catch up."

  --

  Ida didn't try to follow us out of the diner, and while I hate to give Patrick credit, I think he sent us on ahead so he could deal with them while we escaped.

  Patrick's house wasn't hard to find. The town is arranged in a grid pattern. All commercial and public buildings are in the downtown core. Beyond that, it's houses, houses, and more houses. Besides Grace's walk-up, there are no townhouses or apartments. And there are very few buildings--residential or commercial--less than a hundred years old.

  That is strange, when you think about it, but unless you do think about it, Cainsville settles comfortably in the mind, as if this is how towns should look. No rundown corner stores with barred windows and cigarette ads. No tawdry McMansions on streets of stately Tudors. There aren't even many stop signs--you're expected to follow the common courtesy of slowing down and checking before turning or crossing an intersection.

  Cainsville is a town of unspoken rules and unconscious compliance. For someone like me, who chafes under restrictions and expectations--or Gabriel, who refuses to acknowledge them at all--that should be hell on earth. But it isn't.

  It's not fae compulsion that draws us here. We don't balk at natural rules, like slowing down to watch for children. It's the larger, more institutional ones we struggle with, and there's no sense here that we're unwelcome if we don't conform to the laws enforced beyond the town borders. Only what happens within the confines of Cainsville counts in Cainsville.

  We were walking past the school when I thought I spotted a gargoyle. That shouldn't be surprising, considering how many there are in the town. But they appear and disappear, and there's even a May Day contest to find them all. The local children submit their lists to the elders and win prizes for the most found. If they locate them all, they get a special award: a gargoyle made in their likeness. The last child to win that was the guy walking beside me.

  The gargoyle I'd just spotted wouldn't have done much good as a waterspout. It was tucked under a bush beside the school's front gates. I hadn't noticed it before, so I stopped...and saw nothing. The gargoyle had vanished. I took a step back. Still nothing.

  I glanced at Gabriel. He just stood there, waiting. I crouched beside the bush and pushed the leaves aside. Behind them I saw a rock. Just a regular gray rock. Despite the rough and jagged surface, no matter which way I looked at it, I couldn't find a face.

  "I did see one, right?" I said.

  "Possibly."

  "Can I get a hint?" I asked.

  "You're the detective."

  "Spoilsport."

  "No, I'd be spoiling your sport if I told you. The clues are there. Follow them."

  I touched the rock.

  "I wouldn't do that," Gabriel said. "It bites."

  I shook my head. Holding the branch aside, I tried looking again from every angle. No shape took form.

  The clues are there.

  I let go of the branch and eased back. That's when I saw another branch, higher up, the bark almost worn away in one spot. I tugged it, and there was the gargoyle. Or, more accurately, a baby gargoyle. That's what it looked like--an infant in swaddling clothes, with twisted and exaggerated features, its face contorted in a wail. I reached out to touch it...and let out a yelp, drawing back to see a drop of blood welling on my fingertip.

  "Didn't I warn you?" Gabriel said.

  "Ha-ha. There must be a thorn..." I leaned in further, seeing no thorns...and a smear of red on the gargoyle's tiny jagged teeth.

  "You weren't joking," I said.

  "Do I ever?"

  I sat back on my haunches and looked up at him and thought, Where's yours? Where was his gargoyle?

  "Ah," said a voice behind Gabriel. "I see you've found one of our most popular gargoyles. The cranky baby."

  I looked over at Patrick. "It bites."

  "Of course it does. The children wouldn't love it nearly as much if it didn't. That's why it's at the school."

  "That makes no sense."

  "Then you, my dear, don't know children."

  "What's their purpose?" I asked as I stood.

  "Children? No idea. It appears to be simply an inconvenient stage between birth and usefulness."

  "I mean the gargoyles," I said.

  "They divert water from buildings, reducing wear on the stonework."

  I shook my head. "I know they can scare away the Cwn Annwn's ravens, but this one couldn't do that--or divert water. The gargoyles must serve a greater purpose."

  "They do." He leaned in conspiratorially. "Would you like to know what it is?"

  "Yes."

  He straightened. "Then you have to ask the other elders, because solving the mysteries of Cainsville for you is a line I will not cross."

  I looked at Gabriel.

  "You already know what I was told," he said. "They ward off the Black Death."

  "There's never been an outbreak of bubonic plague in Illinois."

  "So apparently they work," Patrick said. "Now come along, kids. I still have another chapter to write today."

  CHAPTER SIX

  Patrick's house was typical for the town: a one-and-a-half-story Gothic Revival. Inside, it was typical for him, far more concerned with personal comfort and amuseme
nt than historicity. In the living room, walls had been ripped down to create a large area that was half entertainment center and half library. We sat in the library end.

  "I had a vision," I said. "The details are unimportant, but--"

  "Details are always important."

  "I just want to know what kind of fae I saw."

  "And I want the details. Start at the beginning." When I hesitated, he said, "Liv..." as if I were a child being difficult for the sake of being difficult. I don't know how to deal with Patrick. He's useful, and he's not unpleasant to be around. I could like him, as an ally. But I cannot get past what he did to Gabriel. Patrick was Gabriel's father and--fae or not--he left him in unconscionable circumstances with Seanna.

  "Olivia?" Gabriel said, glancing over, wondering why I was balking when I'd wanted to speak to Patrick. He didn't know Patrick was his father, and I was in no rush to tell him.

  I told Patrick the whole story, starting with hearing the Wild Hunt, through the death of the girl, to the others mourning her and the youngest's words to me.

  "Lamiae," he said. "Greek fae."

  "Like Lamia from the myth?" When Gabriel arched his brows, I said, "She was a Libyan queen Zeus fell in love with. Hera punished her--because, clearly, if your husband screws around, it's the other woman who needs punishing. Hera turned her into a snake-woman and forced her to devour her own children. She also made Lamia unable to close her eyes, so she'd forever relive her children's horrible deaths."

  "Charming."

  "Oh, but Zeus came to the rescue. He made it so she could take out her eyes. Which solved all her problems. Then she went mad and started devouring random children." I looked at Patrick. "Other than the snake part, I'm not getting the connection."

  "Folklore and myth is a muddled mess," he said, easing into lecture mode. "Stories are told and retold, passed on and altered according to each storyteller's proclivities and imagination. Take Matilda--there are clearly elements of her true story in the myth. Same with Arawn. Gwynn ap Nudd, though..."

  Gabriel flinched. Patrick didn't notice and continued. "The legends of Gwynn bear little resemblance to the truth other than the fact he was king of the Tylwyth Teg. In some lore, he's confused with Arawn, making him lord of the Hunt. Then there's his part in the Arthurian legend cycle. Yet his real role--in the Matilda myth--was stricken from the records. The simple fact is that the stories you'll find in human collections rarely have more than a nodding acquaintance with the truth. Which is understandable."

  "Because they come from humans."

  "History is written by the victors."

  An odd choice of quote. Was that what humans were to fae? The victors? Driving them from their homes and destroying their lands?

  I pushed back on track. "So the lamiae?"

  "A similar mess. You have the Libyan queen of myth. A half-snake monster who devours children. Later she's not so much devouring them as sucking their blood, becoming a form of vampire. Then, rather than being half snake, she's a beautiful young woman, often depicted with snakeskin around her waist."

  "The belts I saw."

  He nodded. "And by that point, she isn't targeting children at all--she's going after men. Seducing them and stealing their life force."

  "Making her a variation on the succubus."

  "Exactly. Go a step farther and you don't have a single monster named Lamia, you have a monstrous subtype called lamiae, young women with snakelike traits who seduce men and consume their life force."

  "Which is closest to what I saw. Are they descendants of Lamia, then?"

  He shook his head. "Remember what I said about the records getting mucked up? Flip it around the other way and you have something closer to your answer."

  "The fae known as lamiae culturally evolved into the story of the Libyan queen."

  "Either the story changed with the times--folklore giving way to myth--or two separate stories got mashed together. The point is that what you saw are lamiae, a Greek fae subtype."

  "Show me," I said, nodding at his bookcase.

  He smiled, not at all perturbed by my lack of trust. "You want the truth straight from the source? Good girl." He glanced at Gabriel. "You won't hit me again, will you?"

  "That depends on whether you do something to deserve it."

  "I would strongly advise against hitting me, Gabriel."

  "Then I would strongly advise against giving me cause."

  Patrick shook his head and went to the bookshelf. The tattered and worn tomes mended at his touch, the leather so new I swore I could smell it. He selected one and motioned me over. I took the chair he offered at a desk. Gabriel positioned himself at my shoulder. Patrick set the book in front of me.

  "Fae of Foreign Lands," I said.

  "You've been learning Welsh."

  "It seemed prudent."

  He chuckled and flipped open the book. It was handwritten, like many of his volumes--bound journals rather than printed books. The black ink gleamed so brightly it shone, and the words wriggled like eels, slipping and sliding across the page.

  "Focus," he said.

  "I am."

  "Boinne-fala," he said. "As impatient as the children you are."

  "What does that mean?" I asked.

  "That you lack the patience of--"

  "Boinne-fala," I said. "The fae use the term for humans, but the translation is 'a drop of blood.' Which makes no sense."

  "Doesn't it?"

  "I could see if you used the term for those with fae in their bloodline. For the disgynyddion--descendants--rather than epil--offspring. We do have a drop of fae blood."

  "You have far more than a drop, Liv. You may not be a direct epil, but you have enough Tylwyth Teg and Cwn Annwn to make you more fae than human. To fae, boinne-fala is a disparaging term, meaning one who has no more than a drop of Old Blood. A base and mortal creature. So, when I call you boinne-fala..."

  "You're mocking me."

  He smiled. "Exactly."

  I shook my head but did take his point about my lack of patience. I concentrated on the ink squiggles, on catching them and forcing them to be still. Soon they settled and turned into Welsh words. I started to translate.

  "They appear as young maidens just past the cusp of womanhood, of marriageable age and..."

  The words shimmered and bled into one another, and I struggled to pull them apart again, but they kept running across the page, turning it into a pit of black ink, and then...

  I was on a hill. Ahead stood a small marble temple. I climbed the hill to see the temple columns wound with snakes.

  I stepped inside. A mosaic covered the nearest wall. I had to squint in the candlelight to see it, but when I did, I could make out a woman in bed with a man who was half snake. Olympias and Zeus, if my classical mythology was correct. History claimed that the mother of Alexander the Great had been part of a snake-handling cult devoted to Dionysus. Mythology further claimed that she'd been impregnated by Zeus himself in snake form. As for the second mosaic...well, I recalled that both snakes and Dionysus were associated with fertility, and that next mosaic certainly suggested that. Let's just say there were a whole lotta young men and young women and snakes having a whole lotta fun. Well, the men and women seemed to be enjoying themselves. It was tougher to tell with the snakes.

  "May I help you?" a high voice asked.

  I turned to see a girl, maybe sixteen, dressed modestly in a linen peplos--the gown so often depicted on women of ancient Greece, a long tubelike affair, fastened with clasps at the shoulders, leaving her arms bare. A belt cinched the waist. A snakeskin belt.

  "May I help you?" she repeated, but she wasn't addressing me. A man stood in the temple doorway. Perhaps twenty, with a military bearing, though he wasn't in uniform. He looked about the temple uneasily, his brown face darkening with a blush as he saw the mosaics.

  The girl smiled. "I am afraid we cannot offer entertainments such as that."

  "N-no," he stammered. "Of course not. I...I simply wish to pay m
y regards...That is, I wish to honor..."

  "You came to pay your respects," she said. "And to honor the gods with me."

  He nodded and held out his hand, coins in the palm. The girl smiled and motioned for him to deposit them into the mouth of a carved snake. Then she took his hand and led him to a room in the back.

  The scene went dark, and I heard a girlish giggle. I turned to see dim light filtering through a crack in a stone wall. I followed it and came out in a room, unlit by anything except that seeping light. Another giggle. Then I spotted a girl in a simple Edwardian-era garb, suggesting she was a maid or of similar station. A well-dressed young man bore down on her as she danced away.

  "Do you want something, my lord?" she asked.

  "You know I do."

  He lunged again and she feinted, and eluded his grasp for a few minutes, only to be captured when he faked another charge. He pushed her up against the wall, fumbling with her petticoats. When he shoved them up, I saw a belt of snakeskin around her waist. He got his trousers down and was inside her so fast she gasped. Then she wrapped her hands in his hair, pulling him against her as he thrust.

  "You're good to me, Anna," he said.

  She smiled. "We're good to each other, my lord."

  The scene darkened again. Nighttime now. I heard whispered voices--a man saying, "I don't usually do this," and a girl's laughing reply, "That's okay. Neither do I."

  After a moment, I could pick up just enough light to make out what seemed to be an alley. A very dark, very dirty alley. Music boomed from a nearby club. Footsteps sounded and I saw a girl in a miniskirt with a snakeskin belt, cropped leather jacket and leg warmers, her hair teased a mile high. She led a man by the hand. He had to be in his forties, wearing what looked like eighties-style club clothes meant for a guy half his age. A middle-aged divorcee--or not-so-divorced--out for a night on the town. As for the girl, despite the outfit, she didn't look more than sixteen.

  As I thought that, he said, "You are eighteen, right, babe?"

  She giggled and replied, "Sure I am," in a way that said both of them knew better. He knew what he was getting. He wanted what he was getting.

  "So, uh, how much?" he asked.

  "Fifty."

  "Isn't that a little steep?" He looked down the alley. "I mean, I'm no expert, but this isn't a night at the Ritz."

  "I can give you a night at the Ritz...for five hundred." She tugged him closer. "Don't be cheap. I'm quality goods. For men with quality tastes."