Holly Black - Tithe

"You think it was Nephamael?"

"I don't know. Tell me, how did your friends become aware you were a pixie when not even the Queen of the Unseelie Court could see through your glamour?"

"The Thistlewitch said she remembered when I got switched."

"Now, how is it that they know Nephamael?"

"I don't know."

"We lack some piece of information, Kaye."

"Why would Nephamael want to make trouble for Nicnevin?"

"Perhaps he sought revenge for being sent away. I doubt he found the Seelie Court to his taste."

She shook her head. "I don't know. I have to get Corny."

"Kaye, if what you say is true, you know that he may well no longer be alive."

She took a sharp, shallow breath. "He's fine," she said.

She'd only ever brought one other person to the Glass Swamp. The summer when she was nine and Janet had taken to constantly teasing her about her imaginary friends, Kaye had decided that she was going to prove they were real once and for all. Janet had stepped on a half moon of bottle glass, cutting through her sneaker and jabbing into her foot on the way to the swamp. They'd never even made it down the ridge.

It had not occurred to her until now to suspect that Lutie or Spike or even poor, dead Gristle had something to do with that.

Darting lights were easily visible from the street, and shouts carried through the still air. She couldn't hear the voices well enough to discern whether they were about to stumble down into a bunch of kids drinking beer or into something else.

Roiben was all in black—jeans and T-shirt and long coat that all must have been conjured up from moonbeams and cobwebs because she was sure they didn't come from any of the closets in her grandmother's house. He had pulled the top part of his hair back, but the shock of white somehow made him seem even more inhuman when he was dressed in modern clothes.

She wondered if she looked inhuman too. Was there something about her that warned people off? Kaye had always assumed that she was just weird, no more explanation necessary. Looking at him, she wondered.

He glanced toward her without turning his head and raised his eyebrows in a silent query.

"Just looking at you," she said.

"Looking at me?"

"I… I was wondering how you did that—the clothes."

"Oh." He looked down, as though he'd only then given a thought to what he was wearing. "It's glamour."

"So what are you really wearing?" The words left her mouth before she could consider them. She winced.

He didn't seem to mind; in fact, he flashed her one of his brief smiles. "And if I said nothing at all?"

"Then I would point out that sometimes, if you look at something out of the corner of your eye, you can see right through glamour," she returned.

That brought surprised laughter. "What a relief to us both then that I am actually wearing exactly what you saw me in this afternoon. Although one might point out that in that outfit, your last concern should be my modesty."

"You don't like it?" She looked down at the purple vinyl catsuit. There had been no reason for her not to put it on immediately. After all, it was still Halloween.

"Now, that's the sort of question I begin to expect from you. One to which there is no good answer."

Kaye grinned, and she could tell that the grin was likely to stay on her face for a long time. They could do this. They could figure this out. Everything was going to be fine.

"Down here?" he asked, and she nodded.

"Indiscreet," was all he said before he hooked his boots in the muddy ledge and carefully walked down the ridge.

Kaye followed him, stumbling along at more or less her own pace.

Green women and men were half immersed in the deeper parts of the stream, androgynous forms rough with bark and shimmery lights.

A few of the creatures saw Roiben and slithered into the pool or back up the bank. There was some whispering.

"Kaye," a voice rasped, and she spun around.

It was the Thistlewitch, sitting on a log. She patted the place beside her. "Things did not go well under the hill."

"No," Kaye said, sitting down. She wanted to put more anger in her voice, but she couldn't. "I almost died."

"Nicnevin's knight saved you, did he not?"

Kaye nodded, looking up to see him, half in shadows, his hands in the pockets of his coat, glowering impressively. It made her want to grin at him, although she was afraid he might grin back and ruin his furious demeanor.

"Why have you brought him among us?"

"If it wasn't for him, I'd be dead."

The Thistlewitch looked in the direction of the knight and then back at Kaye. "Do you know of the things he has done?"

"Don't you understand? She made him do them!"

"I have no desire to be welcome among you, old mother," Roiben said, kneeling down on one knee in the soft earth. "I only wanted to know whether you were aware of the price of your freedom. There are trolls and worse that are delighted to be without any master but their own desires."

"And if there are, what of it?" Spike asked, corning up behind them. "Let the mortals suffer as we have suffered."

Kaye was astonished. She thought back to Lutie's disdain for mortal girls. They were only her friends because of what she was, and not for any better reason than that. Her fingers brushed over the purple plastic covering her legs, letting her nails cut little lines in the vinyl. She had wanted them to be better than people, but they weren't, and she didn't know what they were anymore. She'd been flung back and forth through too many emotions over the past few days, she was hungover from adrenaline, she was worried about Corny and worried about Janet.

"So it's us against them now? I'm not talking about the Unseelie Court, here. Since when are mortals the enemies of the solitary fey?" Kaye said, anger bleeding into her voice, making it rough. She looked at Roiben again, drawing confidence from his proximity, and that worried her too. How had he gone from being someone she half despised to being the one person she was relying on, in the space of mere hours?

Roiben's hand touched her shoulder lightly, a comforting gesture. It amused her how wide Spike's eyes got. She wondered exactly what Spike imagined had passed between them.

"You think like a mortal," Spike said.

"Well, gosh, I did spend every week of my life except the last thinking I was one."

Spike's thick brows furrowed, and he tilted his head to the side, black eyes glittering. "You don't know anything about Faery. You don't know where your loyalties should be."

"If I don't understand, it's because you didn't tell me. You kept me in the dark, and you used me."

"You agreed to help us. You saw the importance of what we were doing."

"We have to tell the solitary fey that Nicnevin was innocent of the sacrifice. This has to stop, Spike."

"I won't go back to being a slave. Not for any mortal. Not for anything."

"But the Unseelie Queen is dead."

"It doesn't matter. There's always another, worse than the last. Don't you dare try to undo this. Don't you dare go around telling tales."

"Or you'll what?" Roiben said softly.

"It's not her place," Spike protested, twisting the long hairs of one eyebrow nervously between his fingers.

"The Tithe was not completed. The reason matters little. The result is the same. For seven years the solitary fey in Nicnevin's lands are free."

"Unless they enter into a new compact."

"Why would they do that?" Spike demanded. "Rumor has it that the Seelie Queen is coming down from the north, bringing practically the whole court, from what I hear."