Momentarily, almost as if altered by a stray breeze, Tilly’s face softened, then formed a grimace of rage. But as I stepped forward, able at last to move, pointing the walking stick toward her as if I were an extra on a Harry Potter film with an unusually big wand, her body became smoke. Then the smoke retreated, first folding in upon itself and then disappearing altogether.
As the smoke vanished, the glass figures vanished, too. The cave gave way to open air. Between one instant and the next, I stood in the dark heart of a small grove of oak trees. I could feel the ties, but I could not, in this moment, see them. I was alone, except for the walking stick, which was very pleased with itself.
“Mercy.” Adam’s voice recalled me to the real world.
Breathing heavily, sweat pouring off me, and both hands empty, I looked down to see that the wounds on my shoulder no longer bled. I blinked a couple more times before I could orient myself.
I stood once more on an asphalt driveway. Adam stood between me and the enraged, ugly little man who was screaming in a voice that must have had some magic in it to sound so sharp and wrong.
“I’m here,” I said, because Adam’s back was to me. Only afterward did I realize that had probably been the wrong thing to say. To the perception of anyone watching, I had never gone away. “I’m fine. I’m still me.”
I flexed my fingers, still feeling the impression of the walking stick in my hand—but there was nothing there.
“Stole it! She stole it!” the weaver screamed.
For a moment I thought that he was talking about the walking stick—then I realized that he meant the power that had followed me to my other place and had not come back to him. I noticed that the smoke was entirely gone from the circle—although the circle, stretching over our heads like a giant snow globe made with darkened glass, was still in place.
Ben, Luke, and Kelly were on their feet. Kelly held the chain to Ben’s collar, but they were all staring at the little man and his very noisy rage.
There was no more pillar of rock. Only a cluster of people on their knees beside a very still body. That was something I would have to worry about later.
And the little man raged on.
“Quiet,” my mate thundered, the power of an Alpha werewolf in his voice.
And it was evidently as effective on very angry little men as it was on a restless pack of wolves. The weaver stopped his tantrum, though his whole body shook with the effort, his skin, where it showed, several shades redder than his hair.
“I have completed the second part of our bargain,” I said into the sudden silence.
“You never said you would steal it,” the weaver said in despair. “It was mine. Fair and square. I bargained for it. You can’t take it.”
“Underhill is what she is,” I told him. “She isn’t a personage, though it pleases her to pretend. Any magic, any power that is hers, remains hers even if she lent it to you. You pushed it all inside me. When all of it was in me, and you held none of it—it became hers once more. It has returned back to where it came from.”
Adam, once he had determined that the weaver was no longer a physical threat to me, stepped aside. We faced each other, the weaver and I.
“I have completed the second part of our bargain,” I said again. “You came here in your own blood and bone. You bit me and failed, once more, to hold me. Now, as agreed, I will answer one question and then give you one truth. Ask me your question, smoke weaver.”
“Why you?” he asked. “Why were you able to resist my power? And you the second person I bit after my escape? How did chance favor me so ill?”
In words it was more than one question—but it felt like they were twined together—something that would balance the truth I would have for him after I answered. For the first time, I really felt the power of a fae bargain. Because certain things became very clear to me that had not been clear until he asked his question. I didn’t gain new knowledge, but all the bits and pieces seemed to gather together. I just had not realized, until the weaver’s question, how much I actually knew.
“I was supposed to be the first person you bit,” I told him.
Underhill had driven me out of my own house, hadn’t she? Just after the weaver escaped. She could not break her bargain with the weaver, but she could cheat.
“Your power came from Underhill—was a part of Underhill,” I told him. “And so it was limited by her limitations. Had you bitten me while I was standing in Underhill’s own realm, I might be in your power now. But this is not the heart of Underhill’s power.” And where I had unwittingly taken her magic was the heart of mine.
“Why you?” repeated the weaver.
“Because I am Coyote’s daughter,” I told him, though that would mean nothing to him, trapped as he’d been in Underhill. So I explained in a way he could understand. “My father is a primal power and he has jurisdiction over certain spiritual magics. He is an agent of chaos. Underhill’s magic, wielded secondhand, could not prevail over that.” Not in my otherness.
“I would have killed you if it had not been for the vampire,” growled the weaver bitterly. “You are not that powerful.”
I nodded. “Yes. Not by myself. But my mate, my pack, and my friends and allies are part of my power. That the vampire saved me was because of my own earlier actions. He was something I had the right to call upon.”
“Accepted,” said the weaver sadly. “Your answer is full and whole truth. Give me then your truth that I have not asked for, would not ask for.”
He knew, I thought.
“There is a more complete answer for your question than what I have given you,” I told him. He was right, I didn’t owe him more. But I felt that I needed to give it to him to keep the balance of our bargain. It was insight that I wouldn’t have had without our bargain, after all. “Underhill released you on purpose—you did not escape against her will. She is girding up for war and so collecting all the bits of herself that she had used to make better playthings.”
The fae aren’t playing nice, Tilly had told Aiden when she first put the door in our backyard.
The weaver looked up at me.
“She had intended her bargain with you to be small. She told me so. She carefully found something that you wanted—to be able to appear human so you could more easily blend in with humanity.”
“To make better bargains,” agreed the weaver. “Bargains are more necessary to me than soup or bread. Better that I should starve than to have no one to bargain with.”
“She made a mistake. The power she gave you was no small thing.” I thought of how I had perceived the smoke in my otherness, how immense and heavy it had felt. It had contained so much of Underhill that she had been able to manifest in the heart of my spirit.
To the weaver I said, “She did not understand how much power she must give up to allow you to overcome another’s will, to steal their spirit. And she feels that she needs that power now. She used me to cheat you of your due. But she did it without breaking your bargain. You lost the gift she gave you; she did not take it from you.”
That was behind the avarice she felt when she looked at Aiden, as well. If the weaver had consumed a noticeable amount of her magic—how much more of her magic did Aiden hold?