Jack, the giant-killer by Charles De Lint

will.”
    “Great.” Jacky glanced at Kate. “Are you up for Calabogie?”
    Kate nodded, not quite trusting her voice. Jacky squeezed her arm.
    “I know what you’re feeling,” she said.
    “I’m still going,” Kate told her.
    “I know you are. And I love you for it.”
    Walking a couple of paces behind the pair, Finn shook his head. They were either brave or fools. What they had just undergone in Jacky’s apartment could not begin to prepare them for what was waiting in the Giants’ Keep. And yet, brave or foolish, they were going all the same. And he—knowing himself to be a fool—was going with them.
    The Laird of Kinrowan’s folk owed them that much and since he was the only one of the Laird’s folk present, since he’d put the burr in Jacky’s cap and set her on the road, it seemed only right and proper that he be the one to .see it through and go with them. But oh, he wasn’t happy about it. Not one bit.

    CHAPTER NINE
    « ^ »
    You okay?” Kate asked.
    Jacky nodded. Or at least as okay as could be expected, she thought, now that the immediate need to be brave and sure of herself had passed. When Kate had been falling apart back at the apartment, it had been easy to take on the leader’s role. But now Kate was more herself and Jacky was wondering where she’d find the courage to go on. When she thought about those things in her apartment… the bogans…
    “You and me,” she said to Kate. “We’re like a couple of yo-yo’s—first you’re being strong for me, then I’m doing it for you, and now we’re back to square one again. I just hope that we don’t ever fall apart at the same time.”
    “There’s always your friend Finn.”
    “I suppose.”
    The two of them were sitting in a window booth at Hitsman’s, a restaurant on Bank Street that was just a couple of blocks south of Jacky’s apartment on Ossington. They were trying to come up with a plan of action. Finn was at the pastry counter, deciding what he wanted to have with his tea. He looked like a small, but ordinary man, rather than the hob Jacky knew, but that was a part of the—what he called—glamour that he wore in the everyday world.
    They had chosen the restaurant, rather than Kate’s apartment, because it was more public and therefore—
    they hoped— safer. The Unseelie Court preferred to act in lonely places and at night, Finn had assured them.
    “It’s past noon now,” Kate said. “Do you think we can get to Calabogie and do whatever we have to do before it gets dark?”
    Jacky shook her head. “I’ve got a pretty good idea where the Keep is from Bhruic’s map, but I don’t know how long we’ll be inside looking for the Horn. Actually, I don’t even know how we’ll get inside, or what we’ll find there.” She looked out the window and watched a couple of cars go by. “Actually,” she added as she turned back to Kate, “it seems like a pretty crazy thing to be doing in the first place. I mean, it’s not like we’re really the heroes that Finn keeps talking us up to be.”
    “Maybe we should get a gang,” Kate said. “We could call it ‘the Gang’ and…” She was looking out the window and broke off as Finn joined them, his plate loaded down with a half-dozen pastries.
    “You’re going to get sick eating all of those,” Jacky said.
    “Finn,” Kate said before he could reply to Jacky.
    “There’s a guy standing there beside the Fresh Fruit Company—on the left, see him? He’s been there for about ten minutes now, not doing anything except just hanging around.”
    “Where?” Jacky said, sticking her face close to the window to have a look.
    The man met her gaze from across the street, a halfsmile on his lips, then stepped back around the corner of the building and out of sight. Jacky was left with a vague memory of a tallish man in jeans and a jean jacket, clean shaven with tousled chestnut hair.
    “Now you’ve done it,” Kate said. “You’ve let him know we’re on to