below were shiny beetles, the walking mortals dots of muted color, hurrying or ambling as the mood took them. From this height, they were ants. Scurrying, just like the ones he worked beside, sweating out their brief gray lives.
A chill breeze resonated through superstructure, iron girders harpstrings plucked by invisible fingers. He was wet with sweat, exhaust-laden breeze mouthing his ruthlessly cropped black hair. Poison in the air just like poison in the singing rods and rivets, but neither troubled a Half. He had nothing to fear from cold iron.
No mortal-Tainted did. A fullblood sidhe would be uncomfortable, nervous around the most inimical of mortal metals. The more fae, the more to fear.
Like every proverb, true in different interlocking ways.
Jeremiah leaned forward still further, looking past the scarred toes of his dun workboots. The jobsite was another scar on the seamed face of the city, a skeleton rising from a shell of orange and yellow caution tape and signage to keep mortals from bruising themselves. Couldn’t have civilians wandering in and getting hit on the head, suing the management or anything like that.
A lone worker bee, though, could take three steps back, gather himself, and sail right past the flimsy lath barrier. The fall would be studded and scarred by clutching fingers of steel and cement, and the landing would be sharp.
If he was singularly unlucky he’d end up a Twisted, crippled monstrosity, or even just a half-Twisted unable to use glamour—or any other bit of sidhe chantment—without it warping him further. Shuffling out an existence cringing from both mortal and sidhe, and you couldn’t keep a mortal job if you had feathers instead of hair, or half your face made of wood, or no glamour to hide the oddities sidhe blood could bring to the surface.
Daisy would have been clutching at his arm, her fear lending a smoky tang to her salt-sweet mortal scent. She hated heights.
The thought of his dead wife sent a sharp, familiar bolt of pain through his chest. Her hair would have caught fire today; it was cold but bright, thin almost-spring sunshine making every shadow a knife edge. He leaned forward a little more, his arms spreading slightly, the wind a hungry lover’s hand. A cold edge of caress. Just a little closer. Just a little further.
It might hurt enough to make you forget.
“Gallow, what the hell?” Clyde bellowed.
Jeremiah stepped back, half-turned on one rubber-padded heel. The boots were thick-soled, caked with the detritus of a hundred build sites. Probably dust on there from places both mortal and not-so-mortal, he’d worn them since before his marriage. Short black hair and pale green eyes, a face that could be any anonymous construction worker’s. Not young, not old, not distinctive at all, what little skill he had with glamour pressed into service to make him look just like every other mortal guy with a physical job and a liking for beer every now and again.
His arms tingled; he knew the markings were moving on his skin, under the long sleeves. “Thought I saw something.” A way out. But only if he was sure it would be an escape, not a fresh snare.
Being Half just made you too damn durable.
“Like what, a pigeon? Millions of those around.” The bullet-headed foreman folded his beefy arms. He was already red and perspiring, though the temperature hadn’t settled above forty degrees all week.
Last summer had been mild-chill, fall icy, winter hard, and spring was late this year. Maybe the Queen hadn’t opened the Gates yet.
Summer. The shiver—half loathing, half something else—that went through Jeremiah must have shown. Clyde took a half-step sideways, reaching up to push his hard hat further back on his sweat-shaven pate. He had a magnificent broad white mustache, and the mouth under it turned into a thin line as he dropped his hands loosely to his sides.
Easy, there. Jeremiah might have laughed. Still, you could never tell who on a jobsite might have a temper. Best to be safe around heavy machinery, crowbars, nail guns, and the like.
“A seagull.” Gallow deliberately hunched his shoulders, pulled the rage and pain back inside his skin. “Maybe a hawk. Or something. You want my apple pie?” If Clyde had a weakness, it was sugar-drenched, overprocessed pastry. Just like a brughnie, actually.
Another shiver roiled through him, but he kept it inside. Don’t think on the sidhe. You know it puts you in a mood.
Clyde perked up a little. “If you don’t want it. How come you bring ’em if you