Page 75 of Smoke & Ashes
“So...” I tried. “I’m Kate, these are Sofia and Flick and… I need your help.”
She looked up at me with these blue lamb’s eyes. “But why could you possibly need me?”
“If you’re about to sayI’m just an ordinary girlthen I swear despite the incredibly poor optics, Iwillpunch you.”
“But Iamjust an ordinary girl.”
I wimped out on the punching her thing. It would have been really, really problematic. “No, you’re not. You’re—like—the holy grail or something which I know sounds absurd but your boyfriend is a vampire, and you’ve woken up from what I’m guessing was a very confusing dream about lions in the middle of a misty valley with a faery princess and the Delphic oracle.”
Flick waved a hand. “If it helps, I actuallyamcompletely normal. Which, I’ll be honest, hasn’t been great for my ego.”
“Anyway,” I went on. “I know this is a lot to take in but the long and short of it is that we need to put you in a car and take you back to London so that you can save a magic queen from a coma she was beaten into by a cockney gangster wizard so thatshecan get on with maintaining some kind of cosmic balance that is stopping everything going utterly to shit.”
Flick blinked. “Oh.”
“It helps if you don’t think about it. Also I’ve found hard liquor works but—”
“Kate!” Sofia was giving me a disapproving look.
“But as I wasjust about to say,you’re probably a bit young and I obviously don’t recommend you solve your problems with alcohol because then you’ll wind up bitter and alone and with everybody you care about dead. Like me.”
Patrick helped Elaine to her feet, and we made our way back to Elaine’s parents’ house by a mixture of my hunter’s instincts, Sofia’s sense of direction, and a fair amount of bickering. Once we were inside, Sofia vanished into the kitchen and made a round of teas for those who needed the caffeine-slash-comfort, which was basically everyone, and I crashed down into an armchair and began to seriously reconsider my policy of running around woods and fighting monsters at my time of life, and also my policy of ever getting up ever again.
“So what do we think?” I asked when everybody was settled and those who wanted to be were enteaed. “Do we head off now to keep ahead of the game or rest up overnight so we don’t all die in an ironic car crash.”
“We should leave at once,” Patrick insisted. “This place is no longer secure, and Elaine’s safety is all that matters now.”
Well that was me told. And since nobody else had strong opinions on the subject, we set off as soon as we’d finished our tea. Well, as soon as we’d finished our tea and Sofia and Flick had done the washing up because they—to be fair absolutely rightly—pointed out that leaving dirty cups lying around in a house that would probably be empty until the summer of next year was a major dick move. Anyway, once that minor detail was dealt with it was get in the car and back on the road.
With Tara gone there was only one car for five of us, and since Elaine had to ride beside Patrick because of their intensely true love and unbreakable eternal bond that was definitely more eternal than the eternal bonds he’d had with Yelena, Sofia, or me, I wound up having to squeeze in the back with the undergraduates. It wasn’t exactly comfortable, and Patrick wasstillplaying Claire defuckingLune on a loop, but what with the five hour drive and the sheer amount of exhausting shit that had happened to me, I managed to fall asleep almost immediately.
* * *
Under a bridge in an unreal city, the Witch-Queen of London sat on her swing of red threads, looking out over the water.
“What shall we ever do?” she asked.
“I’ve found the grail,” I told her. “At least, I think I have. She’s more of a person than a cup.”
“I am waiting,” Nimue said. “Suspended in a place between. Waiting for somebody to touch the scale and tip the balance.”
That had been a total non-sequitur and honestly this was getting more frustrating by the second. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”
“No,” she said. “It is not.”
I turned and walked away, stalking through overgrown rubble and hoping that fucking giraffe wouldn’t come back. What was it with the weird animals anyway? Stupid magic and its stupid layers of metaphor.
On the wreckage of a red-brick pub I found the woman who had once been Nana King dealing cards and moving little pegs around a cribbage board.
“Fifteen-two,” she said. “Fifteen-four, and one for his nob.”
I didn’t even ask.
“So you found the grail?” Her smile was inviting, cruel.
“What’s it to you?”
“Nothing now. Not since you killed me—don’t think I’ve forgotten that, my girl. If young Arty had lived then she’d have been for him, but as it is”—she shrugged—“do what you like with her. You’ll need to spill her blood in a silver bowl if you want to wake your friend. Maybe better to let her die instead.”
