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Claire’s eyes narrowed; something must have come through in my tone. “What have you been experiencing?”
“As you said, some mild side effects.”
“Like what?”
“Heightened memories, mostly. With sharper sensations, Dolby surround sound, the works.”
“Like hallucinations?”
“Like heightened memories, Claire. It’s no big deal.”
She didn’t look convinced. “And you can control them? You can snap out of these memories whenever you want?”
“Yes,” I said easily. “Now, do you want to eat, or do you want to lecture me some more?”
The look on her face said this wasn’t over. But her stomach growled, momentarily overruling her head. I flopped onto the love seat, passed around oyster pails, paper plates and chopsticks and we dug in.
“God, I missed this,” she told me a few minutes later, her mouth full of chow mein.
“What?”
“Greasy human takeout.”
“They don’t have the equivalent in Faerie?”
“No. They also don’t have TV, movies, iPods or jeans.” Her hand ran over the threadbare denim covering her knee. “Damn, I missed jeans.”
I laughed. “I thought you’d like being waited on hand and foot—”
“And having servants follow me everywhere, and having to dress up every damn day and having everybody defer to me but nobody talk to me?” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah. It’s been great.”
“Heidar talks to you, doesn’t he? And Caedmon?” Heidar was Claire’s big blond fiancé. Caedmon was his father, the king of one branch of the Light Fey.
“Yes, but Heidar’s gone half the time, patrolling the border, and Caedmon’s holed up in high-level meetings deciding God knows what while I’m supposed to hang around and, I don’t know, knit or something!”
“You don’t knit.”
“I’ve been so bored, I’ve been thinking of learning.”
“Sounds like you need a vacation.”
She chewed noodles and didn’t say anything.
I tugged off my boots and chucked them by the door, enjoying the feel of the smooth old boards under my feet. They’d absorbed a lot of heat through the day, and were giving it off in steady warmth that contrasted nicely with the cooler air. A few moths fluttered around the old ship’s lantern overhead, which was swinging slightly in the breeze.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” I finally asked, when Claire had finished most of her whiskey and still hadn’t said anything.
She’d been staring out at the night, but now she shifted those emerald eyes to me. “How do you know anything is? Maybe I decided to take that vacation.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“You keep odd hours sometimes—”
“With no shoes, no luggage and no escort?”
She frowned and gave it up. “I don’t want you involved in this. I only came this way because I didn’t have a choice. The official portals are all guarded since the war.”
“The ones we know about,” I agreed.
