Whiskey and Water by Elizabeth Bear Page B

think to check for your corpse in
Faerie, once-Mage."
    He pushed a bill under square
crackle-glazed pottery and stood, giving her his shoulder. It made her smile
almost as much as the iron ring on his right hand. "Did they let you keep
that? Or did you have to get another one made? Maybe bought it mail-order, from
one of those places that advertise magnetic jewelry on late-night
television?"
    "Kadiska," he said. He nodded
thanks to the chef, who was eyeing his new companion and hefting a cleaver in
one callused fist. "Three little, four little, five little Fae in New York
in a day. Surely, that can't be a coincidence."
    She shrugged one-shouldered, the gesture
rolling a sharp-edged collarbone and shoulder blade under her vest, lifting
the chains around her neck. Her shadow coiled and spread a cobra's hood on the
floor behind her. "I only knew about the one," she said. "But
once I saw you watching him, I could hardly resist a visit for old time's
sake."
    "All the cats in Katzenstein,"
he said. "Do you have somebody holding your tail up too?"
    "If I do, I hadn't noticed." Her
eyes were a strange, mossy color in the squint of her smile, paler than skin
like polished cocobola wood warranted. The color shifted, lichen
gray-green-brown. A color he knew; one that marked her an enemy.
    As if he hadn't known that already.
    Her sandals scratched the goza mats
against the terra-cotta beneath. She shuffled, as if unused to walking in
shoes, and nodded thanks when he got the door for her. A brushed aluminum push
bar clicked under his fingertips. The door was painted with hex signs and ward
signs from three cultures, and a garland of zigzag Shide strips swung
against the glass, bronze and iron coins wrapped in prayers dangling between
the paper charms. A straw rope twisted with tassels hung over the lintel: Shimenawa.
    Felix looked at the Fae and put a question
on his face. Before the Dragon, Shimenawa had been used in shrines, to
mark the passage between the sacred and the profane. But they also provided a barrier
to spirits, which is to say, the Fae. It should, he thought, have kept anything
Fae out of the restaurant, even the changelings that made Seekers.
    She dropped her ear to one shoulder, and
reached out to brush one of the paper-wrapped iron coins as she walked by.
"We never did let you know everything we could manage, Murchaud, Àine, or
me. I'm still a Seeker, Felix. Though of the Daoine, now." She stuck her
fingertip in her mouth. "Born mortal. It takes more than a little iron
over a cradle to keep me at bay."
    And you're here to steal me away to
Faerie?"
    You'd like that too much. Tell me why I
shouldn't make sure Jane rinds out you're in her city, once-Mage." Kadiska
kicked out of her sandals as soon as she reached the sidewalk, and let them
dangle from one hand.
    Felix considered her question. "Do
you think she'd react any better to your presence?"
    The Fae turned to examine her reflection
in a window smeared with neon. "It still hurts, doesn't it? The way your
archmage shrugged you off like an outworn coat, took up with a boy whose chief
qualification was being one of two brothers with so much magic the Fae would
find them seductive?"
    "Considering what became of Matthew
and Kelly Szczegielniak, and Jane and all her plans for the overthrow of Faerie
and the uplift of the Magi?" He paused; she knew his thoughtfulness for
mockery. "No, it doesn't sting so much as all that. It could have been me
she gave to your Cat Anna, after all. Me, and not that poor idiot kid."
    "That idiot kid." More mockery.
He smiled through it. They walked through streetlights, their shadows stretching
and retracting. Hers had tufted ears that twitched or flattened at any sound.
"He had some fire in him. And his brother has some steel. How does it
feel, once-Mage, to walk in a city where a broken Magus stands in the place
that was rightfully yours?"
    "I've gotten used to it," he
lied.
    "When I was Unseelie," she said,
as pedestrians parted to let them