Chapter 30

The third repetition of her name hung ringing in the air, and deafening silence came after as I awaited the response.

When you trap something dangerous, there are certain fundamental precautions necessary to success. You’ve got to have good bait, something to draw your target in. You’ve got to have a good trap, something that works and works fast. And, once the target is in the trap, you’ve got to have a net or a cage strong enough to hold it.

Get any of those three elements wrong, and you probably won’t succeed. Get two of them wrong, and you might be looking at a result far more disastrous than mere failure.

I went into this one knowing damned well that all I had was bait. Mab, for her own reasons, had wanted to suborn me into her service for years. I knew that calling her by her name and title would be enough to attract her interest. Though the mechanism of my improved summoning circle would have been a fine trap—if it still existed, I mean—the cage of my will had always been the weakest point in any such endeavor.

Bottom line, I could get the tiger to show up. Once it was there, all I had was a really good chalk drawing of a pit on the sidewalk and “Nice kitty.”

I wasn’t going into it blind and ignorant, though. I was desperate, but not stupid. I figured I had the advantage of position. Mab couldn’t kill a mortal. She could only make him desperately wish he was dead, instead of enduring her attentions. I didn’t have a lot to lose. She couldn’t make me any more useless to my daughter than I was already.

I waited, in perfect darkness, for the mistress of every wicked fairy in every dark tale humanity had ever whispered in the night to put in an appearance.

Mab didn’t disappoint me.

Surprise me, yes. But she didn’t disappoint.

Stars began to appear in front of my eyes.

I figured that was probably a really bad thing, for a moment. But they didn’t spin around in lazy, dizzy motion like the kind of stars that mean your brain is smothering. They instead burned steady and cold and pure above me, five stars like jewels on the throat of Lady Night.

Seconds later, a cold wind touched my face, and I became conscious of a hard smoothness beneath me. I laid my hands carefully flat, but I didn’t feel the cot and the backboard under me. Instead, my fingers touched only cold, even stone, a planar surface that seemed level beneath my entire body. I wriggled my foot and confirmed that there was stone beneath it there, too.

I stopped and realized that I could feel my foot. I could move it.

My whole body was there. And it was naked. I wavered between yelping at the cold suddenly being visited upon my ass, and yelling in joy that I could feel it at all. I saw land to one side and scrambled to get off the cold slab beneath me, crouching down and hanging on to the edge of the slab for balance.

This wasn’t reality, then. This was a dream, or a vision, or something that was otherwise in between the mortal world and the spiritual realm. That made sense. My physical body was still back in St. Mary’s, lying still and breathing deeply, but my mind and my spirit were here.

Wherever “here” was.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness and I saw gentle mist and fog hanging in the air. Boiling clouds let a flash of moonlight in, and it played like a spotlight over the hilltop around me, and upon the ancient table of stone beside me. The moon’s touch made deeply carved runes all around the table’s edge dance with flickers of illumination, writing done in some language I did not know.

Then I understood. Mab had created this place for our meeting. It was known as the Valley of the Stone Table. It was a broad, bowl-shaped valley, I knew, though the mist hid most of it from me. In its exact center stood a mound maybe fifty feet across and twelve feet high at its center. Atop the mound stood the massive slab of stone, held up on four stumpy pillars. Other stones stood in a circle around it, some tumbled down, some broken, only one remaining in Stonehenge-like lintel. The stones all shed faint illumination in shades of blue and purple and deep, deep green. Cold colors.

Winter colors.

Yeah. It was after the equinox. So that tracked. The Table was in Winter’s domain. It was an ancient conduit of power, transferred in the most primitive, atavistic fashion of all—in hot blood. There were grooves and whorls in the table’s surface, coated with ancient stains, and it squatted on the hill, patient and hungry and immovable, like a snapping turtle waiting for warm, vital creatures to wander too close.

The blood spilled upon this table would carry the power of its life with it, and would flow into the well of power in the control of the Winter Queen.

A movement across the table from me drew my eye. A shadow seemed to simply congeal from the mist, forming itself into a slender, feminine shape draped in a cloak and cowl. Glittering green candle flames flickered in what looked like two eyes within the cowl’s hood.

My throat went dry. It took me two tries to rasp, “Queen Mab?”

The form vanished. A low, feminine laugh drifted through the mist to my right. I turned to face it.

A furious cat squall erupted from the air six inches behind me and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I spun to find nothing there, and the woman’s laugh echoed around the top of the misty mound, this time more amused.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you,” I said, my heart pounding in my throat. “You told me so, didn’t you?”

Whispering voices hissed among the stones around me, none of them intelligible. I saw another flicker of mocking green eyes.

“Th-this is a limited-time offer,” I said, trying to make my voice sound steady. “It’s been forced by circumstance. If you don’t get off your royal ass and jump on it, I’m walking.”

“I warned you,” said a calm voice behind me. “Never let her bring you here, my godchild.”

I carefully kept myself from letting out a shriek. It would have been unwizardly. Instead, I took a deep breath and turned to find the Leanansidhe standing a few feet away, covered in a cloak the color of the last seconds of twilight, the deep blue-purple fabric hiding her completely except for her pale face inside the hood. Her green cat eyes were wide and steady, her expression solemn.

“But I’m here,” I said quietly.

She nodded.

Another shadow appeared beside her, green eyes burning. Queen Mab, I presumed, and noted that she was actually a couple of inches shorter than my godmother. Of course, especially in a place like this, Mab could be as gargantuan or Lilliputian as she chose.

Probably-Mab stepped closer, still covered in shadows despite the fact that she was nearer to me than my godmother was. Her eyes grew brighter.

“So many scars,” said my godmother, and her voice had changed subtly, growing cold and precise. “Your scars are beautiful things. Within and without.” The shadowed figure stepped behind one of the fallen stones and emerged from behind another on the opposite side of the circle. “Yes,” said the cold voice coming from the Leanansidhe’s lips. “I can work with this.”

I shivered. Because it was really cold and I was naked, I’m sure. I looked from the dark figure to my godmother and back, and asked, “You’re still using a translator?”

“For your sake,” said the cold voice, as a shadowed figure stepped behind the next menhir and appeared atop another. Walking deosil, clockwise.

Mab was closing the circle around me.

“Wh-why for my sake?” I asked.

The cold voice laughed through the Leanansidhe’s lips. “This conversation would quickly grow tedious if you kept falling to your knees, screaming in agony and clawing at your bleeding ears, my wizard.”

“Yeah. But why?” I asked. “Why would your voice hurt me?”