Roundtable redcap, p.4
Roundtable Redcap, page 4
I leaned against the kitchen doorframe, holding my lunch box. I’d just have to jump into this quest with both feet and worry about the whys in whatever future coincidence had in store for me.
Chapter Four
Irina
The Nocturnal Lounge over at PPC was one of the strangest places I’d seen at that point in my life. It wasn’t the jam-packed bookshelves or the mismatched vintage and antique furniture, but the way half of it floated in the air while one of those robot vacuum cleaners puttered around the top floor. I hadn’t imagined there’d actually be ghosts moving things around in there, or a Psychic Medium who looked like she time-traveled to shop in 1965 conducting them. A scarred cherrywood buffet that served as a coffee counter wobbled, then slid diagonally out of the nook it occupied on its own. Well, not really. A ghost I couldn’t see had to be moving it.
“Thanks, Horace,” said the medium. She squeezed her way into a claustrophobic looking space between the wall and the counter. “Take it away, Miss Williams!”
A vacuum cleaner whooshed to life, letting the medium clean an otherwise-impossible-to-reach spot. I shook my head. Why did my own Psychic ability have to be so relatively useless? I’d have had Grandpa’s front room done in under an hour instead of three with ghostly help. If I’d been a Medium instead of an Empath, maybe my family would have been spared back when I was a kid. The vacuum switched off, so I figured I’d follow its example and flip off my whole sucking vortex of tragic thoughts.
“Oh, hi, Fred!” The medium squirmed out of the tiny space and dropped the vacuum wand to wave. “Didn’t expect anyone at this time of day.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s not even noon.” Fred shrugged. “I have to get in the lockers.” His lips twisted in contemplation as he studied a pile of what looked like portable stage sections blocking an alcove at the foot of the stairs.
“Okey-doke.” The medium nodded at a spot off to my right. “You there, um, new guy?” She tilted her head, then smiled. “Colin, is it? Thanks for telling me. Could you move the stage so Fred can get his stuff, please?” A big study table set itself down in front of a built-in bookcase.
I felt a chilly stir of air and crossed my arms, gripping them through the billowy cotton fabric of my elbow-length sleeves as my teeth chattered. Maybe it wasn’t so bad being an Empath instead of a Medium. I hated getting cold so much that I wore jeans and boots in summer. I also hated imagining a ghost sinking through the floor right next to me.
“Oh, jeez, my manners suck.” Fred literally smacked his head. “Irina, this is Bianca. Bianca, Irina.” He headed down the stairs.
“Hey, maybe she could help?” I pitched my voice to a whisper, taking advantage of the fact that my mouth was at Fred’s ear level on the stairs.
“Help with what?” Bianca peered at me, then Fred. “Sorry to pry, but Miss Williams is a busybody, and I was just communing with her. She listened in on you guys even though I tell her not to all the time.”
“Heh,” Fred grinned. “Yeah, it’s all good. I don’t think Bianca will be much help, though. Ghosts from out here can’t get into the Under. And the reverse is also true, mostly.”
“Really?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah.” Bianca twirled the end of her braid, which was dyed a shade of cotton-candy pink. “The only ghosts over there are from people who died in the Under. Since most of those are tithed, their pledges keep them anchored to their monarch. The only way for them to move on is if their unfinished business can get done in the Under or the monarch lets them leave. But with the power struggle between them, neither lets ghosts come and go.”
“Oh. I should have remembered that.” Unlike Fred, I didn’t smack my head. It made sense now why Mrs. Redford said it was hopeless and hung up the phone. She was one of the best Mediums in the whole state, but if she couldn’t bring her dead friends, she wouldn’t be much use on a rescue mission in the Under.
“Wait.” Bianca blinked, squinting in my direction. She peered at me for a moment until the light of recognition, which meant she realized who I was, took over her face. “You’re bringing Irina Kazynski to the Under?”
“Hey!” I couldn’t help but stomp my foot. “I’m standing right here. And yes, he is.”
“Sorry, but Horace is freaking out over here.” Bianca shook her head. “He’s babbling something about how Fred bringing you there will make big giant trouble.”
“Good.” Fred slammed a metal locker shut. He slung a huge canvas sack across his body. “Trouble of the biggest, most giant variety is exactly what I want to bring. She took Ed, Bianca.”
“She—” Bianca tilted her head, as though listening to something Fred and I couldn’t hear. “Great Ghostly Realm, you don’t mean the king’s opposite?”
“What, you can’t even say the Sidhe Queen here or something?” I put my hands over my mouth a moment later. All the levitating objects in the room dropped.
“No. No, you can’t.” Fred sighed, shoulders drooping as if something a hundred times heavier than his bag dragged at them. He gestured at the stairs. “Ladies first.”
“I just played our outro on accident, huh?” I walked up, not bothering to glance over my shoulder to see if Fred heard me.
“Pretty much.” A chuckle bubbled up from his throat, oddly melodic. “It’s a good thing. Bianca’s one of those people it’s easy to lose track of time while talking to.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t sure why that bothered me. I shouldn’t care who Fred Redford liked talking to. We’d reached the door to the steps leading down to the old trolley tunnel, so I got a chance to look at his face. “Maybe you should take her out for coffee sometime.”
“Um, no.” Fred headed down the stairs before I could meet his eyes, but too late to hide his blanching face.
“I expected more blushing from a lunk like you,” I teased as I followed him down. "Instead, you went paler than a vampire."
“I don’t date.” He opened the door and let me through, but his hand closed around my upper arm before I could head back out to Thayer Street. “The gate to the Under is back through here.”
“Wow, kinda biased of your school to put their Nocturnal Lounge here.” I walked behind him through the dark, gloomy tunnel.
“Not really.”
“Well, it seems like it, being right next to the lounge the Unseelies and undead use.” My motocross boots crunched in some kind of gravel or grit before Fred stopped. "Makes things super easy."
“You have no idea, do you?” Fred turned to face me, then leaned against the concrete wall. “Headmistress Thurston walks a fine line between the Courts. She’s on a first-name basis with both my dad and Hertha Harcourt, who’s one of the queen’s biggest allies here in Rhode Island. You’re the one being biased, anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I held my head high, instantly on the defensive.
“You see the Nocturnal Lounge and the nearest gate to it and make assumptions.” Fred snorted. “I bet you haven’t even set foot on campus. Do you have any idea how much bigger and closer to everything the Solarium is? Did you bother asking me to tell you that their Under Gate’s right inside their lounge? Of course not. You just saw one side and judged. Definition of bias if I ever heard one.”
“Oh.” I didn’t back down physically, but the lunk had a point. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s just that it makes me nervous, seeing an imbalance with anything faerie.”
“Why?” Fred’s one-word question was almost a whisper.
“What’s it to you?” I peered up at Fred, trying to read his expression. I might have pushed him too far with the ribbing. Regular plain old human eyes didn’t adjust to darkness like a Redcap’s. I could have used my Empathy, but that would have felt like cheating.
“We’re about to go somewhere a hundred times weirder than ghost vacuum day at the Nocturnal Lounge because I got handed an honest to goodness Quest while I’m still just a changeling. I have no idea why you’re even helping me. For all I know, you’re a Seelie ally. You have to give me something, or by the Goblin King’s Garters, I’m leaving you out here and going it alone.”
I froze. It wasn’t a question of how much I wanted to tell him, or how much I should. What I could had limits, or I’d be too much of an emotional wreck to help with this task, anyway. I closed my eyes even though I couldn’t see him all that well. I knew he could see me perfectly fine after all. For whatever reason, even though I performed for millions of people, I didn’t even want an audience of one for this.
“Your brother’s not the first child the queen’s tried to steal away.” All my flesh went goose, telling me I’d barely skirted disaster with my confession. “I can’t say much more right now. Just that I’m helping because Psychic kids don’t belong in the Under.”
“Fair enough.” Fred clicked his tongue against his teeth. “A common goal will do. And for Pete’s sake, don’t try to talk about it again until whatever Ban’s got you lets go, okay?”
“Oh, don’t worry.” My goosebumps eased back down into a more normal state. I didn’t bother telling Fred I wasn’t under a faerie Ban, just a regular psychological human one. “I’m used to not talking about plenty of things.”
“Good. While we’re talking about not talking about things, no more about dating, either.” Fred held one hand out toward me in the darkness. “Take it when you’re ready. We’ll need to hold hands until we’re through. And after that, don’t go off the path no matter what. Leave anything off to the side to the changeling, capisce?”
“Ponimat’.” I grinned, knowing he could see me. I wanted our truce back.
“Huh?” I imagined Fred scratching his head.
“It means I understand.” I snickered, hoping he’d take it kindly. “If you’re going to spice up your English with Mama’s Italian, I’m doing the same with Grandpa’s Russian. It’s only fair.”
I waited until he nodded before taking his hand. After that, Fred pulled something from his bag and scraped it across the tunnel wall, marking out a glowing rectangle on the brick surface. The outline’s pale shimmer deepened to a red too crimson to be fiery. The wall crumbled away, and we walked through together.
My eyes were open, but the world looked blank. Not black like the tunnel or a room with no light, not the swirls and loops of eyelid interiors. I mean blank like a sheet of paper, but even that’s not right since paper is white. The world before my eyes was colorless. I’d expected the deep crimson of Fred’s faerie doorway magic but found I shouldn’t have.
My right hand was stuck in something up to the wrist. It felt less like what I knew it was, Fred’s hand, and more like leather. That was the only thing I could feel by touch, too. I tried looking at him, but my eyes still saw blank everything, and I wasn’t even sure my head turned. If I even had a head that was. But no, I still had a head. I could hear, even though my most dependable sense was on the fritz, with something between static and the pressurized cabin of an airplane the only discernible sound.
I reached out with Psychic Empathy, trying to sense that way even though I was more accustomed to broadcasting emotion than opening myself up to it. And that hated last resort worked.
The rest of my senses came back with pins and needles, waking limbs and eyes and ears. The Under wouldn’t let me deny who and what I was. I finally understood in practice how it might have been for Bobby if the bear shifter had tried coming here. He’d have been forced into his bear form the same way I’d been forced to see everything through the filter of my Psychic ability. Glancing over at Fred, I understood that the realm of faeries and their kin was an equal opportunity tangle of truth. If I wasn’t careful, my figurative demons could go on display for anyone we happened to meet. But mine were nowhere near as blatant as Fred Redford’s.
“Sorry.” He hung his massive flat-on-top-but-otherwise spiky-haired head. His skin was gray, although not the way the Hollywood makeup artists color the faces of zombies. I remembered that all Redcap changelings who’d used their faerie magic would look like this without a glamour. Fred’s skin was something in between two extremes, which made sense since he hadn’t tithed. Either it was some vestige of one of Grandpa’s stories, or the Under reminding me of the important fact that Fred hadn’t chosen a side. He loosened his grip on my hand. “I’m so sorry about how I look. And now you know why I don’t date.”
“It’s okay.” I left my hand in his massive one, our palms flat against each other. Fred's fingernails looked more like petrified wood chips. His eyes and lips were red, the former gleaming like Sauron’s eye and the latter more stained like the shark in Jaws. His muscles bulged, lumpy and veined like the Hulk’s, but more terrifying than incredible. I took a deep breath, the same as I did every time I stepped on a stage or turned on a camera. “I can handle it.”
Until the words came out of my mouth, I hadn’t realized they were true. Good thing, too. Ed Redford couldn’t afford a full-blown Irina Kazynski freak out session. After Fred’s remarks about dating or the lack thereof, he couldn’t either.
“Thanks.” He stood, managing to keep his palm under mine the whole time.
It surprised me how much grace came in such a bulky figure. I’d never expect anyone to understand unless they saw it for themselves. Not many would dare. I could see why Redcaps in stories from before the Reveal got the monstrous villain treatment. But Grandpa always taught me that real evil in the world most often had an all too human face. Also, since our first meeting at the party, I knew better than to judge Fred based on his looks alone.
“So, where do we go from here?” I stood up, balancing with his help despite the vanishing tingles in my feet.
“You know, I’m not sure.” Fred scratched his head, which was weird. The Redcap’s fingers raked through his hair, where his magical cap should have been. That was twelve kinds of wrong. I’d thought he just glamoured it for all the regular people, but I was wrong.
“Govno.” I took a deep breath, trying not to jump to a conclusion and panic.
“Is that one of Grandpa’s Russian swear words?” The corner of his mouth tilted up in a half-smile.
“Yeah.” I wasn’t going to translate that one for him. “Fred, we have a huge problem.”
“What’s that?” He put his hands on his hips.
“This is the Under, so glamour doesn’t work here, right?” I had to make sure this wasn’t just some kind of paranoid misunderstanding on my part.
“Mostly.” Fred nodded.
“What do you mean by mostly?” I tilted my head, peering up at him.
“A pure faerie’s glamour still works unless someone or something with stronger magic takes it off. Same goes for a Monarch’s.” Fred shrugged. “But I’m definitely not either of those.”
“Okay. So, new but not unrelated question.” I took another deep breath. “You’re a Redcap. Doesn’t that mean you should always have a cap on?”
“Yeah.” He shuddered. “And I don’t.”
“Bingo.”
“Lynn was right.” Fred closed his eyes. He didn’t have to translate. I knew what that word meant. "Merde."
“My sentiments exactly.” I dashed behind Fred without looking to see who’d spoken behind me, then peeked out from around one of his massive arms.
A statuesque redheaded woman with a fanged smile stood leaning on a walking stick, her back to the gate from the trolley tunnel. I blinked, wondering how a vampire had managed to open the gate from the other side. changelings and faeries couldn’t get turned. It just didn’t take. And then, the walking stick moved on its own with a slight creak.
“A vampire with a brownie?” I blinked. “What are you, a Summoner or something?”
“You guessed right. I’m a Psychic vampire.” She dimmed down the smile though I could still see her fangs. I hoped she wasn’t hungry. “But you still have no idea who I am, though.”
“True.” Fred shrugged. “So tell us, already.”
“Margot Malone.” She dropped the name like a gauntlet.
“The reporter?” Fred cracked his knuckles. “You following us for a scoop or something?”
“Maybe,” Margot grinned, patting the messenger bag clinging to her right hip. “It’s awfully interesting, seeing the accomplished violinist, Irina Kazynski, taking a trip to the Under with a Redcap who just happens to be friends with Lane Meyer, of all people. Do I smell a collaboration in the future?”
“Shouldn’t you be writing about WaterFire or a Night Creatures concert instead of barging in here after us?” I stepped to the side of Fred with my hands on my hips, still not quite daring to get in between him and a potentially hungry vampire.
“Was on my way to do exactly that, you know.” She shrugged. “Twiggy here helps me get around town in the daytime by taking shortcuts through the Under. I was just kidding about following you for a scoop, although whatever you’re doing here would make an excellent piece for my blog if you ever want to tell me about it.” Margot brandished a business card at me.
“Not happening.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
“I’m about to tithe, so maybe you’ll get your story in a year and a day.” Fred plucked the card from her hand and pocketed it. “Nice meeting you and all, but we have to get going.” Fred turned toward the fork in the path leading south.
“Wait.” Margot rummaged in her bag. “If you’re going to the queen’s demesne on that road, you’ll want these.” She held out a thin stack of post-it notes.
“Why? What are those?” Fred tilted his head, peering at the paper with one baleful eye.
“Psychic paper.” I chuckled. “Wow, Margot. You must really want that story. Technically, I can only see that they’re imbued with Psychic energy, not what kind.”
“For a woman who chose music over magic, you sure know a truckload about my world.” Fred’s mumble was more like a rumble.
“I call these my Summoner hall passes.” Margot pushed shook them. “There’s only three, but they’ll let you call one of my pure faerie friends named on the paper.”
