Valiant (Modern Faerie Tales 2)

"Who do you think Silarial wants Mabry to poison? It has to be someone in the Unseelie Court."

"That's what Ravus called the Night Court."

Val walked to the map on the wall of Ravus's room. There, outside New York City, far from the pins marking each of the poisonings, were two black marks, one in Upstate New York, the other in New Jersey. She touched the one in Jersey. "Here."

"But who? This is way over our heads."

"Isn't there a new king there?" Val asked. "Mabry said something about Midwinter. Could he be the one she's supposed to make dead?"

"Maybe."

"Even if he isn't—it doesn't matter. All we need to know is where she is."

"But the Courts aren't places humans are supposed to be, especially the Unseelie Court. Most faeries won't even go there."

"We have to go—we have to get Ravus's heart. He's going to die if we don't."

"What are we going to do? Go down there and ask for it?"

"Pretty much," Val said. As she got up, she saw a tiny vial of Never lying beside asphodel and rose hips. She lifted it up.

"What's that for?" Luis asked, although he must have known perfectly well.

Her thoughts strayed to Dave, but even his pallid skin and blackened mouth didn't make her any less hungry for Never. She might need it. She needed it now. One pinch and all this pain would be gone.

But she stuffed it into her pack and fished out the return train tickets she'd bought weeks before, holding them out to Luis. The paper was so worn from riding around in her bag that it felt as soft as cloth between her fingers, but when Luis took his, the ticket sliced shallowly over her flesh. For a moment, her skin seemed so surprised that it forgot to bleed.

Chapter 13

Immediately after the monsters, die the heroes.

—Roberto Calasso,

The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony

Val perched in her seat for a few moments, then paced restlessly in the aisle. Each time the conductor passed her, she asked him what the next stop was, were they running late, could they go faster. He said they couldn't. Glancing over at the sword swaddled in a dirty blanket and tied with shoelaces, he hurried on.

Val had had to show the hilt to prove that it was merely decorative when she boarded. It was only glass, after all. She'd explained that she was making a delivery.

Luis spoke softly into Val's cell, his head turned against the window. He'd called all the hospitals he could think of before he thought to call Ruth's phone and now that he'd gotten her, his body had relaxed, his fingers no longer digging into the canvas of Val's backpack, jaw no longer clenched so tight that the muscles in his face jumped.

He clicked off the phone. "You only have a little power left."

Val nodded. "What did she say?"

"Dave is in critical condition. Lolli fucked off. She couldn't handle the hospital, hates the smell or something. They're giving Ruth a hard time because she won't tell them what Dave took, and, of course, they won't let her in to see him, 'cause she's not family."

Val fingered the torn edge of the plastic seat, nostrils flaring as she breathed hard. It was more fury, heaped on what already felt like too much fury to bear. "Maybe you—"

"Nothing I could do." Luis looked out the window. "He's not going to make it, is he?"

"He will," Val said firmly. She could save Ravus. Ravus could save Dave. Like black dominoes, set up in winding rows, and the most important thing was that she didn't tip over.

Looking at her own hands, splintered and smudged with dirt, it was hard to imagine that they would be the hands that saved anyone.

Her thoughts settled on the Never in her bag.

It promised to sing down her veins, to make her swifter and stronger and finer than she was. She wouldn't be stupid about it. She wouldn't wind up like Dave. Not more than a pinch. Not more than once today. She just needed it now, to keep herself together, to face Mabry, to let all the rage and sorrow be swallowed up into something larger than herself.