Chapter 24

  I left D.T. enjoying her first encounter with the fairies and did a complete circuit of the clearing, talking softly with Sparkle, Spice and Shine about ways we could reinforce their defenses. Sparkle and Spice had been discussing the possibility of building a stone wall with the village's new gnome and brownie residents, both species being gifted at earth magic. It sounded like a good idea to me.

  I, in turn, needed to work on my warding skills, to improve their magical defenses. In addition to the ones that they raised themselves, of course.

  None of which addressed the problem of them running out of space. I had no particular problem with them spreading into the area in front of my windows, but they seemed to consider that space the next best thing to holy ground. If they had their way, it would remain an open area for them to play games and dance in at night for the foreseeable future.

  Once again, I shelved that problem for now. I still had time to decide how I was going to respond to Oberon. I knew I had to decide something soon…I was having a hard time making up my mind, but couldn't afford to wait until the last possible moment.

  By the time I made it back around to where I'd started, the cluster of fairies had dispersed. I could see the back of D.T.'s head through the windows, and Ken was standing nearby, so I guessed that she'd reached her saturation point and retreated back inside.

  I didn't blame her. My fairies could be a lot.

  Penny and Sparkle went in ahead of me while Spice and Shine went back to whatever they'd been doing. As I closed the window behind me and stepped down off the window seat, I saw that D.T. was sitting with the war hammer I'd made for her across her knees and was staring at it.

  It really was a rough, uneven thing. For all it had gotten the job done, I could've made a better job of it.

  "I'll make you a nicer one," I said immediately. "I know it's pretty ugly, but I was in a hurry." I looked at Ken. "I can do a lot better than that."

  Ken was standing with his arms folded, frowning slightly. "For a quick transfiguration with only rough focus, it's quite acceptable," he said softly. "But yes, you can do better."

  Then he caught my eyes and nodded at D.T..

  I turned back to her, confused, and saw that she was watching me now, her brows drawn down in a little frown. "How are you okay with what we did last night?"

  "Huh?" I asked, bewildered.

  "Caley," she said patiently, "we killed dozens of living creatures last night…how are you okay with that?"

  I blinked at her, then sat down on the window seat, separated from her by one of the step-gaps. "They…were monsters, D.T.," I said quietly.

  She nodded quickly. "Don't get me wrong, I get that…boy, do I get that. I had one trying to gnaw its way through my boot at one point. They were angry, aggressive, repellent things." She shuddered a little. "And completely unnatural."

  "What's the problem then?" I asked, struggling to work through my confusion.

  "What separates them from, say, Penny?" D.T. asked carefully.

  Penny - who had sprawled comfortably in front of my bedroom's cozy little fireplace - lifted her head and frowned. "I resent that." Her tails were lashing behind her.

  "No offense, Penny," D.T. said quickly, "but you're not exactly a natural animal yourself."

  Penny went completely still, then swiftly turned, sitting up facing us. "No," she said, her voice frosty, "I'm not. And yet, I am. Look at me carefully, Ms. Burroughs. Aside from my coloration and tails, is there anything to separate me from a normal fox?"

  "You're the size of a Husky," D.T. pointed out.

  "And my size," Penny said, rolling her eyes. "Those things aside, am I not distinctly a fox?"

  D.T. tipped her head a little, frowning. "You're unmistakably a fox," she confirmed.

  "And what were those creatures we killed last night?" Penny asked.

  D.T. hesitated. "Well, Caley called them ratlings…"

  "Because they vaguely resembled rats," I said. "Maybe they were some sort of rodent, but I'd be hard-pressed to say that with any certainty."

  D.T. looked down at the hammer resting across her knees, then looked back at Penny. "So can we say with certainty that every creature we run across that definitely resembles one from the mortal world will be friendly, like you?"

  Penny snorted. "Of course not. In fact, it's reasonable to assume that any given creature you encounter from Faerie - or worse places in the Otherworld - is going to be at best dangerous and at worst hostile, at least to some extent." She paused, frowning, then nodded. "I see your point. I still don't like being compared to those…things."

  "So is it intelligence that makes the difference?" D.T. asked, her hands clenching into fists on her lap.

  "Of course not," Sparkle said, suddenly popping to human-size and sitting on the edge of the bed. She looked as confused as I felt. "If anything, intelligence makes beings of the Otherworld even more dangerous."

  D.T. looked at me, "So are you okay with last night because those things weren't intelligent? Is that is?"

  I leaned away from her a little, utterly bewildered. "I…no, it was because they were threatening not only us, but the Roberts family. And you heard what the spirit of the land said…they were unnatural and didn't belong there."

  "That's a reason to relocate them, not kill them. What we did was unquestionably self-defense, I'm not arguing that, but what will you do when you're faced with something that can talk and reason?" she pressed. "Because it sounds like you're going to be, more regularly than things that're just animals."

  "I…" I stopped, remembering the ogre that had inadvertently stumbled into my clearing in Faerie and attacked. When it turned and ran, I'd hesitated to kill it, even though it might have tried to come back. Or, worse, it might have told someone - or something - more dangerous where my clearing was.

  "What about another hostile wizard?" D.T. asked, rising and dumping the war hammer to the hardwood floor with a heavy thud. "I arrived too late in April to help you with von Einhardt, but you didn't need my help…you'd already burned him down where he stood."

  I opened my mouth to protest, leaning away a bit more, but she cut me off with a raised hand. "Again, what you did was self-defense. There isn't a court in the world that would say otherwise, and neither would I. But you still responded with lethal force. You killed a man, another human being, and it doesn't seem to me like it's bothered you all that much. For that matter, your friends, Ariana and Emrys, they treated disposing of the body and evidence like it was just another day for them. I wonder how many people they've killed."

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  I sat there with my mouth open and my brain off-line. I couldn't think of anything at all to say.

  She wasn't wrong…but I had learned the hard way, with von Einhardt, that my life was going to be loaded with mitigating circumstances. In the wake of my final encounter with him…in the wake of killing him…I'd forced myself to accept that violence was going to be part of my life. I had perfectly good reasons for engaging in it: Protecting my own life, my home, the lives of everyone who was depending on me for protection, both in the mortal world and in Faerie…

  Had I completely shut off my concerns about killing? No…but I wasn't going to let myself feel guilty about it either, when I had to. Was I? Should I? I didn't think so, but maybe not letting myself feel guilty about it was wrong?

  "D.T.," I said quietly, "how do I not kill in self-defense when lethal force is being directed at me?"

  She threw her hands in the air. "That's just it, I don't know! And I'm not trained for this sort of thing. I'm just a normal police sergeant, not SCO19. I'm supposed to keep things from escalating to violence at all, let alone to lethal violence. What we did last night…you call it pest control, and I get that, and I even agree with you, but I still feel like it was wrong somehow. And I'm confused that you don't."

  She took a breath but continued on inexorably before I could say anything. "If I had mice in my flat I wouldn't be in a rush to go about stomping them to death, and I'd probably feel guilty just laying out traps. I don't know if I can do that if what I'm helping you confront is intelligent…and that's going to happen, sooner or later." She looked at Ken. "Isn't it?"

  Ken sighed heavily. "Yes. The good news is that most beings who live in Faerie won't resort to lethal force as a first recourse -"

  He was interrupted as both Sparkle and Penny snorted.

  Grimacing, Ken continued, "At least not when dealing with Caley. As the Guardian of Oakwood Hall there are many mitigating circumstances -"

  "Mitigating circumstances keep coming up," D.T. said, shaking her head. "It seems to me that they form a door that swings both ways."

  Ken unfolded his arms and took a couple of steps toward D.T.. "You're not wrong. However, I believe you are all overlooking an important point."

  All of us - even Sparkle and Penny - turned to look at him.

  "You said the spirit of the land called them unnatural," Ken said quietly. "Penny, Sparkle, Caley, you've all said you sensed a wrongness about them. Even Ms. Burroughs expressed feeling unease in the creatures' presence." He turned to look at her directly. "Do you feel that from me? From the fairies outside? From Sparkle or Penny? Or even from Caley?"

  D.T. blinked a few times. "No, of course not."

  He nodded a little. "When the spirit of the land called them unnatural, it was speaking - I believe - literally. They were not natural. What this means specifically I do not know…it could mean they weren't native to this reality, it could mean they had been twisted and distorted by some unknown force…it could mean many things. But most importantly, it means that they shouldn't have existed in the first place…at least not here and now. Few other things could produce that sense of wrongness."

  He made a good argument, and what he said made me feel better about it, even in the face of D.T.'s uncertainty and unease. But at the same time, I knew that she wasn't wrong, not really. I was, I felt, standing on the precipice of some slope…and with as certain as I felt that we'd done the right thing in killing those creatures, only time would tell if it was a slippery one or not.

  We were all silent for a moment. Finally, D.T. said softly, "I need to think about this. Ken, would you see me out, please?"

  "Of course," he said quietly, looking at me rather than her. When I didn't move or say anything - I could barely even start to sort out what I was feeling in that moment, what could I say or do? - he nodded slightly and gestured toward the door. "Right this way, Ms. Burroughs."

  When he opened the door, I saw that it opened onto the foyer this time. The Hall was offering D.T. a quick exit. My hands fell half-open and limp into my lap. I stared at them, my emotions a roiling mess of confusion, guilt, and fear. All I could do was sit there and watch her leave.

  It wasn't until the door closed behind them that I realized she'd left her new war hammer behind. It lay there on the floor between me and where she'd stood, gleaming steel. It had, I saw, left a bit of a dent in the hardwood floor where it had fallen.

  Well…I'd promised to make her a better one anyway. Maybe with a nice blackthorn shaft.

  It certainly didn't mean that she was abandoning her offer to help me. Or me, in general.

  Doubt crept in, followed by fear and sadness.

  I sighed and rubbed my face. "This is why I've been avoiding relationships."

  Sparkle sat down beside me and slipped her arm around my shoulders. "I'm sure everything will be fine once D.T. has time to think this through," she said stoutly.

  Penny whined softly, put her head down, and covered her eyes with her paws.

  I am not, by nature, the type to wallow in misery or abandon myself to fits of passion when trouble comes my way. So, as was my habit when I was stressed or depressed, I threw myself into my studies. I practiced my spellcasting for hours, fenced with Ken, practiced my Jeet Kune Do, and spent time out in the field with my fairies (and other new friends).

  The last also let me keep an eye on Penny's brother. Basil's poultices kept him asleep a couple of days longer than originally anticipated, but according to the gnome healer - who I had no cause to doubt - he would be up and about in a few more days and well on his way to fully recovered by next week.

  I really needed to find the right name for him.

  But working on mom's staff provided the best distraction from the sudden silence from D.T.. It required hours of intense concentration, first to copy out the rune arrays and locate the mistakes - or problems - in them, and finally to plan how to correct those issues. As expected, I'd found a half-dozen other mistakes similar to the first one…little things that were hard to spot because they looked correct, but were subtly wrong. It would probably take me a couple of weeks to correct all of them.

  And it was a good thing that I had so many distractions. The three days that followed were the longest that D.T. and I had been out of touch since April. She didn't call, the voicemail I left went unanswered, and I didn't bump into her on my early morning jogs through town.

  Intellectually, I understood why she was upset. It was, essentially, the same reason I'd been upset when Ken and Sparkle had matter-of-factly informed me that I would have to fight - and probably kill - opponents at some point. Maybe I'd just had more time to absorb the fact than D.T. had…but then, she was also right that I was not at all upset about having killed von Einhardt, and that was definitely the sort of thing that would have upset me before I'd begun my new life.

  Though to be honest, why von Einhardt's death didn't bother me was pretty obvious, even to me. He had, after all, tried to control my mind twice, ripped up Oakwood Hall's wards, torn down the gate, and tried - however haphazardly - to kill me. It was tough to feel guilty about removing someone like that from the world.

  Ken, meanwhile, had assured me - after going walkabout in my thoughts - that I was accepting having to kill the ratlings for the right reasons, and that there was nothing for me to worry about in that regard. Dara, in turn advised patience while D.T. worked through it herself, not having had, in her words, "…The benefit of having to absorb such an extreme volume of weirdness in as short a period of time as you did."

  On the morning of the fourth day after D.T.'s precipitous departure, I was just beginning to make repairs to Mom's staff when Ken approached, holding the phone's wireless handset. I pushed up my magnifying lenses, lifted my eyes from the engraving work I'd been doing on my mom's staff, and looked up at him.

  Ken smiled faintly, put the telephone handset on the workbench beside me, and gestured. "Another distraction for you. Ms. Rhodes is on the line."

  I removed the headband that the magnifying glasses were mounted on, put it down, then stretched and arched my back. "How long have I been working?"

  "A little over two hours," Ken said. "I definitely suggest a break."

  I nodded, and pressed the button on the phone to unmute it. "Hello?"

  "If I don't get out of this city for a few hours," Jessie's voice said over the phone's speaker, "I'm gonna lose my mind. What does your schedule for this afternoon and evening look like? Think maybe I could come out for that walkin' tour?"

  I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was just past eleven. "It's about a three hour drive, so if you leave now you could be here mid-afternoon," I said.

  "Not a problem," Jessie said firmly. "What time do you want me there?"

  I blinked a few times. "Uh…how about 2 p.m., then?"

  "Meet ya at your home?" She asked.

  "Sure," I said carefully. "We can drive into town from here…"

  "Nah, I'd rather walk. Not much of a fan of cars," she said. "Walkin' I'm used to, and it'll give us a chance ta just talk."

  "Fine by me," I said agreeably.

  "Dress code?" she asked.

  "Definitely casual," I said with a smile, "though I might have a chance to introduce you to some of the people in town you wanted to meet, so…"

  "Gotcha. Think I can manage ta look presentable. I'll see y'all at 2 o'clock. Lookin' forward to it."

  "Likewise," I said. "See you in a few hours."

  We both hung up, and I stretched again, then rubbed my eyes. "Well, this should make for an interesting afternoon. I guess I'd better get cleaned up."

  The Oakwood Hall Bestiary, in which Caley writes about her favorite little friends, fairies. If you have suggestions for the content of future entries - creatures, beings, and entities you'd like to read Caley's thoughts on - let me know!