Mickey nodded in agreement, instantly happy by Keiko’s offering. “I didn’t think elves could speak English.”
Keiko pinched Mickey.
“Ow! What?”
“Don’t display how ignorant you are. She was a human until the viceroy turned her into an elf a few months ago.”
Mickey looked at Tinker, recognition dawning on him. “Oh, she’s the Dufae girl?”
“Yes.” Keiko said.
Fear filled Mickey’s face.
“Why are you scared of me?” Tinker asked.
“We know what Riki had to do to you.” Mickey whispered. “How he had to turn you over to the oni.”
“Riki didn’t want to us to come to Elfhome,” Keiko said. “He said that either the elves would find us, or the oni would. Better stay on Earth where we were at least free. But the oni came to our house and took Joey hostage. Riki sent us on ahead to be with our aunt, but he stayed to work for the oni — to try and get Joey back.”
“He never told me about you.”
“If he told you, then the kitsune would know, and then the oni would know. He couldn’t tell you the truth about anything — or he’d put us in danger.”
“You hate the tengu now — don’t you?” Mickey whispered.
A few days ago, Tinker probably would have said yes. She knew that when she found the MP3 player, she’d been angry enough to beat Riki to a pulp again. Now, with the dead in Chinatown, and the children looking at her in fear, she couldn’t hate all the innocent strangers. “No.”
Keiko scoffed, disbelieving. “I’d never forgive anyone that did that to me.”
“I saw what Lord Tomtom did to those that failed him — and it scared the living shit out of me.” She shuddered with the memory of the torture; the flash of bright blades and white of bone stripped clean of flesh. “I was willing to do almost anything to keep the knives away from me.”
“So you forgive Riki?”
There was something about the darkness that demanded honesty. “I’m still angry at him. But I was with the oni for nearly a month — I can understand why he did it and don’t think I can hate him for it. He took my shit and never complained, and when he could, he protected me.”
There was a sudden roar outside and a hoverbike — lift engines at full — popped up and landed on the massive branch outside the door. Its headlight flooded the room with stark white blinding light.
Tinker stood and called magic, wrapping the wind around her.
“Tinker domi!” Stormsong’s voice came out of the light.
“Stormsong?” Tinker squinted into the glare.
The headlight snapped off. Stormsong sat on a custom delta Tinker had done for a charity auction last year. Somehow Stormsong had managed to land and balance on the branch — it was going to take work to get it down in one piece. In her right hand the sekasha held a shotgun resting across the handlebars and trained at the cabin door.
“How the hell did you find me?” Tinker asked.
“I closed my eyes and went where I was needed.” Stormsong glanced beyond Tinker to the kids. “They’re tengu.”
Tinker realized that her being safe meant the kids were now in danger. “I promised that they wouldn’t be hurt.”
“That was a silly thing to do,” Stormsong said.
“They’re just kids.” Tinker moved to protect them with her shield.
“Kids grow up,” Stormsong said.
Tinker shook her head. “I can’t let you hurt them. I promised.”
“Yes, Tinker ze domi.” Stormsong said in High Tongue.
Tinker released the winds. The kids huddle against the back corner of the loft bed.
“We won’t hurt you,” she told them, “but I need to leave.”
“Hey,” Keiko called. She pulled off a necklace and scrambled forward to dangle it out to Tinker. “Take this. It will protect you.”
“From what?”
“Tengu.”
Tinker looped the necklace over her neck and picked her way out onto the branch. “How the hell did you get a hoverbike the whole way up here? I know the lift engine can’t do a hundred feet straight up — or down.”
“Flying blind.” Stormsong uncocked her shotgun and holstered it. “Hang tight to me — this is going to be tricky. And you might want to close your eyes.”
Tinker clung tight to Stormsong, trying to let her trust of the bodyguard override her knowledge of the hoverbike’s limitations. Stormsong didn’t even turn on bike’s headlight, just raced the bike’s engine and then tipped them over the edge. A squeak of fear leapt up Tinker’s throat — followed by her heart — as they nose-dived. They hit a lower branch that cracked under the lift drive and suddenly they were corkscrewing madly. She gripped Stormsong tight. She felt more than saw the blur off tree trunks and branches as they kissed off them. Seconds later they straightened out and roared through the darkness — Pony on a second hoverbike waiting on the ground running along side of them.
“Thank you,” Stormsong called back.
“What for? You rescued me.”
“Yes, but you trusted me to do my job.”
Chapter 18: Seek You
The sekasha suggested a bath and bed, but Tinker didn’t want to unwind and take it easy. Things in Pittsburgh were bad, and getting worse, and like it or not, she was one of the few people that had the power to fix things. The only question was how.
She placated the sekasha by agreeing to dinner and took her datapad with her to the enclave’s private dining hall. Maynard thought that opening a line of communication with Earth would be key. Yeah, right, just phone home. Riki had said that the dragon was the wizard of Oz, and implied that dragons understood how to move from world to world. She didn’t know where the dragon was, however, and from the sounds of it, both the oni and tengu were searching hard for it. Follow the yellow brick road? What road? Ohio River Boulevard? I-279? The last lead she had was the black willow tree and last she saw of that, it was flambé.
Wait, she had gotten seeds from the black willow. At least, she thought she did. She had Windwolf’s staff track the small jar down, and the MP3 player. Watching the seeds wriggle in the glass, she listened to the songs recorded on the player. It was one of Oilcan’s favorite elf rock groups, playing a collection of songs that her cousin had wrote for them. If you didn’t know Oilcan, the songs seemed to be about lost lovers. Tinker knew that they were about his mother. Odd how the words could stay the same but knowledge changed the meaning.
Tinker laid her head on the table and remembered Riki in another light.
Pony ran his hand across her back, a delicious feeling that uncoiled a sudden deep need. On the heels of that, like cracking open a bottle full of dark storm winds, a confusing wash of emotions.
“Don’t do that.” Tinker shifted away from his touch and tried to cork the bottle. She was too fragile for that.
“Have I hurt you?” Pony asked.
She shook her head.
“All day, you have avoided me as if I had. I need to understand — what have I done wrong? We are not fitting this way.”
She had? She hadn’t even been aware of it. “It’s not you. It’s me. I–I’ve so totally—” Unfortunately there wasn’t an Elvish match for the word ‘fucked up,’ so she stuck in the English, “everything and everyone.”
“Fuck,” Pony repeated the English curse. “Can you teach me that?”
“No!” She realized he meant the word’s meaning, not the actual action. “It means intercourse.” And once she saw the confusion in Pony’s face as he tried to plug in the meaning into her sentence, she added, “It’s a curse word generally meaning — well — anything you want it to mean. It’s one of the more versatile words we have.”