Insurance. Always bring something to barter with. Jeremiah dug in his lunchbag. He’d almost forgotten he’d crumpled most of the brown paper in his fist. Daisy always sent him to work with a carefully packed lunch, but the collection of retro metal boxes she’d found at Goodwill and Salvation Army were all gone now. If he hadn’t thrown them away he had stamped on them, crushing each piece with the same boots he was wearing now. “Habit. Put ’em in the bag each time.”
She’d done sandwiches, too, varying to keep them interesting. Turkey. Chicken. Good old PB&J, two of them to keep him fueled. Hard-boiled eggs with a twist of salt in waxed paper, carefully quartered apples bathed in lemon juice to keep them from browning, home-baked goodies. Banana bread, muffins, she’d even gone through a sushi phase once until he’d let it slip that he didn’t prefer raw fish.
I just thought, you’re so smart and all. Ain’t sushi what smart people eat? And her laugh at his baffled look. She often made little comments like that, as if… well, she never knew of the sidhe, but she considered him a creature from a different planet just the same.
“Oh.” Clyde took the Hostess apple pie, his entire face brightening. “Just don’t stand too near that edge, Gallow. You fall off and I’ll have L&I all over me.”
“Not gonna.” It was hard taking the next few steps away from the edge. His heels landed solidly, and the wind stopped keening across rebar and concrete. Or at least, the sound retreated. “Haven’t yet.”
“Always a first time. Hey, me and Panko are going out for beers after. You wanna?” The waxed wrapper tore open, and Clyde took a huge mouthful of sugar that only faintly resembled the original apple.
“Sure.” It was Friday, the start of a long weekend. If he went home he was only going to eat another TV dinner, or nothing at all, and sit staring at the fist-sized hole in the television screen, in his messy living room.
Ridiculous. Why did they call it that? Nobody did any living in there.
“Okay.” Clyde gave him another odd look, and Jeremiah had a sudden vision of smashing his fist into the old man’s face. The crunch of bone, the gush of blood, the satisfaction of a short sharp action. The foreman wasn’t even a sidhe, to require an exchange of names beforehand.
I’m mortal now. Best to remember it. Besides, the foreman wasn’t to blame for anything. Guiltless as only a mortal could be.
“Better get back to work,” Jeremiah said instead, and tossed his crumpled lunchbag into the cut-down trash barrel hulking near the lift. “Gotta earn those beers.”
Clyde had his mouth full, and Jeremiah was glad. If the man said another word, he wasn’t sure he could restrain himself. There was no good reason for the rage, except the fact that he’d been brought back from the brink, and reminded he was only a simulacrum of a mortal man.
Again.
A MORTAL FAILING
3
It looks clear. The Gates shimmered slightly, cold metal under Robin Ragged’s fingertips. Triple her own height, cruel spikes along their tops frozen with hungry, thorn-carved flowers, they hummed a low warning scrape-noise at her.
She drew back into shadow, afternoon sun rippling as the border between here and there slid. As long as she stayed just within touch of the Gates, one foot carefully on either side of the dividing line, she wasn’t trackable even though she was technically outside Summer’s realm. Had Robin a choice, she wouldn’t have picked this point of egress—but the Queen had ordered her to make haste.
The shadows there, in the gray mere-mortal world, all had teeth. Low doglike shapes with moonlit eyes twisted, their slim muzzles lifted between wavering seaweed fringes. If there was any doubt of the watch kept on the Seelie Gates, it was now assuaged most heartily.
Robin whistled tunelessly, concentrating, a silver quirpiece—an hour’s worth of work, a paltry insurance against pursuit—clutched in her free hand. Her palm was sweating. Mortal sweat, perfuming the air around her in long shimmering strands. Her skirt fluttered a little, eternal Summer breathing against her left ankle, a chill almost-spring wind touching her right. Dusk was the best time to slip through unremarked, but too far into nightfall was dangerous.
She could not wait for dawn, the rising sun that would keep most Unseelie at bay. One of the Queen’s mortal pets had sent word, so Robin was sent to fetch and carry.