A big black sedan hove into view, and I recognised it instantly.
It appeared to glow a little in the early morning light, as if its driver was very, very angry.
I swallowed, momentarily considered darting for the cover of some nearby shrubbery, then discarded the thought. I wasn’t strong enough to dart anywhere.
So I straightened up, wondering whether looking exhausted would work better for me or if I should go for the calm and confident and “delighted to see you so unexpectedly” look. In the end I had the choice made for me when Harry pulled his car over beside me, opened the door, got out, and glowered angrily at me.
Exhausted it would be. It certainly wasn’t a look I would have any trouble maintaining.
“Harry?” I said.
“Grace,” he said, and instantly metamorphosed into the Lord of the Faerie, which made me realise just how angry he was. “What have you been doing?” he said.
Well, I’ve been lying mostly dead on a bed for months, my Lord of the Faerie, and if things have gone wrong, then think not to blame me for it.
“Not much,” I said.
He moved around the side of the car and came to stand directly before me, so close I had to crick my neck painfully to look him in the face. Intimidated, I tried to huddle a little deeper into the coat. Catling might not scare me any more, but her I loathed. The Lord of the Faerie was someone I respected, and I hated it that he was angry towards me.
“Why did you stop Jack and Noah from completing the Troy Game?” he said.
“Because it would have been tragic if they had completed it.”
“And it isn’t ‘tragic’ that now Catling has vowed to destroy every creature in the Faerie until she is completed? Damn you, Grace, the Sidlesaghes are gone, and within hours she will start on—”
I sighed, which was the wrong thing to do, because the Lord of the Faerie went almost into apoplexy.
“The Faerie is being destroyed and you can only sigh in irritation?”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Harry…or Coel, or whoever you are. Look, I can stop her, but I don’t have the strength to blow out a match right now. If you want me to stop her, I can, but you’re going to have to help me.”
I don’t think that was what he expected me to say.
“You can stop her?”
“I can stop her from murdering any more of the creatures of the Faerie, at least. More than that I don’t know. But…I…need…you…to…help…me.”
He realised then that I was close to collapse, and he put out a hand onto my shoulder. “What do you need?”
“I need you to take me to Catling.”
He stared at me. “And will I be able to walk away from that, Grace?”
Oh, damn him. “Yes. I promise she won’t touch you. Now, help me, curse it!”
He did. He transferred both of us into the crypt of St Paul’s, cloaking us in a glamour of invisibility.
Catling was waiting for us.
She didn’t say anything, merely watched with narrowed eyes as the Lord of the Faerie and I walked (well, the Faerie Lord walked; I hobbled, leaning heavily on his arm) over to her.
I wasn’t in the mood for long conversational niceties. “Don’t,” I said.
Catling raised an eyebrow.
“I have heard,” I said, very quietly, “that you have threatened to destroy the creatures of the Faerie, one by one. Do you not recall what happened when you thought to murder the Sidlesaghes?” At that I saw the Faerie Lord look sharply at me, but I couldn’t pause now for explanations.
“If you do that, Catling,” I said, “then I will be the stronger for every Faerie death you cause. Do you understand?”
She paled (if that is possible for someone who affected so white a face under normal circumstances). “Are you threatening me?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“If I die,” Catling hissed, “so do you!”
“I know that.”
We fell into silence, staring unblinkingly at each other.
Then I turned my face slightly to the Lord of the Faerie. “I am tired,” I said. “Take me home, please.”
“If I die, so do you!” Catling seethed at me as the Lord of the Faerie removed us both back to the roadside at Leytonstone.
“What did you mean,” he said, “by saying that you would be the stronger if she destroyed any of the creatures of the Faerie?”
We were standing by his car. It was cold, fully light, and I was so drained I felt nauseated.
“Can I sit in the car, please?” I said.
“Grace?”
“May I call you Coel?”
He nodded.
“Coel, I want more than anything, need more than anything, to get some rest. Then I need to talk to Jack. Then we will talk to you. I promise.”
He looked at me for a long moment, his face unreadable. “Is there any hope, Grace?”
I smiled. “Yes, but it is a strange one, and thus my need to talk to Jack.”
He drew in a deep breath. “Where do you want to go?”
“Copt Hall.”
I stood on the porch of Copt Hall and knocked at the door. I’d drifted into the unreality of Jack’s Copt Hall and, while I was aware of the gardeners and caretakers who still lived and worked about the hall, there was no one and no reality for me save Malcolm’s unsurprised face as he opened the door.
“I knew you’d come here,” he said. Then, without asking, he stepped forward, picked me up in his arms, and carried me inside.
“I would really, really like a bath,” I said.
“I have one steaming,” he replied, and I was not surprised at all that he should be so considerate.
I sat in the bath and soaked, blissfully happy. For the moment there was nothing for me save the bath, its warmth and its comfort. Malcolm had carried me up the stairs to a little wood-panelled bathroom that opened off one of the bedrooms, and there, indeed, was a wonderful claw-footed bath, steaming with crystal-clear hot water. Malcolm helped me out of the coat—I was completely comfortable with him, and felt no awkwardness that he should see the horrors of my wasted body—then aided me into the bath.
There he left me, saying only that he would fetch some brandy, as he thought I could do with it.
There was a shelf sitting across the bath, with a flannel and a bar of clear brown soap, but I was too tired to be bothered washing. I just sat, soaking in all the comfort the bath could offer, and eventually I heard footsteps ascending slowly up the stairs.
They stopped just outside the bathroom, then entered.
Only then did I look up, and smile. “Hello, Jack.”
He looked almost as exhausted as I did, his fatigue underscored with uncertainty and dispiritedness. He was also terribly dirty, smudged with soot and ash, and he had several small abrasions on his face.
He was dressed in a coat as poor as mine had been, and I reflected that it had not been a good night in the sartorial elegance stakes.
I nodded at a stool. “Sit down, please.”
He did, with a thump, still staring at me. “Grace?”
“No,” I said, “merely a phantom passing through.”
I regretted the jest as soon as the words left my
mouth, because his eyes filled with tears and he had
to bite his lip to keep the emotion contained.
“Grace,” he said again, this time the word emerging on a breath fraught with such emotion that now my eyes misted up.
I took a deep breath, rubbed at my eyes with the back of my hand, and managed to speak calmly. “Thank you for sitting beside my hospital bed for so long.”
“Your parents were there, too.” “I know, but right now I am thanking you, Jack.” He swallowed. “I can’t believe you’re here.” We fell silent. There was so much to say, and neither of us knew how to start. I began to feel a little bit awkward about sitting naked in a bath before him, and wished that my body didn’t look so awful.
“You look beautiful,” he said. Then he gave a soft laugh. “I can’t believe you are alive! Grace, how? What has happened? How did you manage to get out of that damn hospital bed? And get away from Catling? And the shadow has returned! What do you know about that? Do you know about the White Queen? Oh, I have so much to say to you, to ask you…And the Sidlesaghes, something has happened. Did you…oh, curse my damned mouth, I am sorry.” He grinned, finally relaxing. “I’m just glad you’re alive, Grace. And here.”
“Here is where I want to be,” I said, and before either of us could say anything really stupid, Malcolm made one of his fortuitous entrances with a tray bearing a decanter of brandy and two glasses.