Blood

So, what’s better: having a shitty plan or none at all?

Because I’m still not sure which I have, even after Justin’s gone off to find his brother.

Hey, so, did you put a little faerie charm under my pillow to kill me? Very smooth.

Or it could be the opposite, Reid did say Mallory had come to see me the day before I got better.

Correction. Why the hell would you try to save me? Equally stupid question.

I don’t even know if it was Mallory that put that charm or spell or whatever it is there.

Yet here I am, freezing my ass off as I lean against a fence rail, only a couple snow-dusted fields away from Wanderer’s Wood.

Justin had disappeared behind the big old barn, and I’d vaguely considered following, but I don’t like the way the cattle stare at me. Damn them to hell.

At least a dozen of the brown and white beasts are gathered in a clump against the barn wall, and I think each of them is staring at me.

There’s something moving behind the cows, but I can’t tell what. And then it’s obviously a person. An aggravated person, shaking his head.

The person also has to be Mallory, unless there was somebody else back there, because Justin was wearing a black coat, while the person angrily moving past the clump of cows is wearing one of those tan jackets that make the person either look half their size or double, depending on how fat they are already. It makes Mallory look like he’s…what’s the word for starving yourself?

As he gets past the cattle, only a few yards away, it’s obviously Mallory, because I can see his eyes, which look eerie at this distance, as though he didn’t have any colour to them at all. What’s the coloured part called again? It sounds like eye, doesn’t it?

Crap, that’s going to bug me.

“I heard you were dead,” says Mallory when he’s close enough to talk at a normal volume.

He doesn’t look surprised in the slightest to see that I’m not dead, though. It was just like a formality for him to point out that I was sicker than a dog. Does a phrase like that still work if you change it? Whatever.

“You heard wrong.”

He seems to struggle for words, making me kind of hope that he’s a bad liar. Although I don’t know why it matters. I just prefer people who are bad at lying.

“Nice for your family,” he says after a minute as he kicks at some snow.

I tilt my head to the side a little, because he’s looking at the ground, and I want to see if he does anything specific when he’s uncomfortable because he’ll likely stop if he’s lying. “Some of them anyway.”

He kicks at the snow again and then asks, “Is there something you’re after?”

I wonder if this’ll be any fun. “Yeah. You.”

This made Mallory look up with a start. “Uh…me? What can I…help you with?” And then he shakes his head. “Actually I have some work. You can stick around if that’s what you fancy, but you’ll have to ask whatever you need to while I’m moving hay.”

So he already knows why I’m here. “Yeah, o’course.”

Mallory nods in a way that makes me think he needs to do work because he wants to, meaning he was trying to get rid of me. Meaning it’s entirely possible that this could be entertaining.

No one’s ever accused me of being a decent person. At least not in a while.

Mallory ducks between the two rails on the fence and then starts to walk away towards the front of the barn. Or at least, I figure it’s the front.

He stops and turns for a second, looking me down and up, but not romantically or anything, like he’s checking my resolve. “You’re coming, then?”

Mallory starts walking again.

I take my weight off the fence, and then run for a second to catch up to him.

For some reason, he’s smiling.

“Are you laughing at me?”

He glances at me, his grin evaporation. “What? No, no. I just—the irony.”

“At what?”

He looks like he’s going to say something before changing his mind and frowning. “Nothing, sorry.”

Well that’s boring.

“Hey,” he glances at me, and then catches the little purple pouch I toss at him. “This is yours, right?”

Mallory’s stopped completely now, staring at me, although he doesn’t seem to realize he is. For a second, and not much more than that, he looks like a normal guy, about to say something a little bit asshole-ish, and then he looks old again. “What would you do if I said no?”

“Well I’d probably figure you’re lying,” I say.

“What’s the point, of asking then? If you’ve already made up your mind.”

I sneer slightly, but otherwise ignore him. “What is it?”

He holds up the little pouch and glances at it before sticking it in his pocket. “A charm.” He takes a couple steps forward to an old looking door before pulling on its handle.

So maybe this wouldn’t be very fun.

“What’s the charm do?”

He steps through the door without answering, and I figure I’m supposed to follow, even though the barn is dark as hell.

Mallory isn’t going to murder me if I go in there, right? Justin knows I’m here, he wouldn’t let his brother murder me. Well, actually…But I don’t think I’ve done anything to make Mallory want to kill me. Unless he’s crazy, because then he doesn’t really need a reason.

Probably against my better judgement I step inside the dark building, and then find that it’s not actually dark, since there are at least three holes that serve as windows and a huge door on the far side.

It’s an old barn to be sure, with a high ceiling filled with little nesting birds, but it seems sturdy enough. Half way between the two walls is a green gate, splitting the single room into two little areas, and then there’s also a ladder, which Mallory has started to climb.

I decide not to follow, both because I figure I shouldn’t, and because I don’t want to.

I watch Mallory climb the ladder, which seems unbelievably long, to a platform filled with hay and some other stuff that I can’t name; there’s lots of rope, but it’s bent into little…holders…for the calves’ heads, and then there’s bottles and stuff, sitting on a table. I think there’s a pile of books as well, although it seems like a funny place to find books. Maybe they’re cow books.

I stay standing by the door as Mallory grabs and drops a rectangular hay bale to the floor of the barn, which bounces in a cloud of dust before sitting. I realize with a start that cows eat hay, so they might come in here to get it.

“Uh, can the cows get in here?” I ask, a little more sheepishly than I would have liked.

“No, the yard’s closed off,” says Mallory as he drops another bale. He stops and looks at me with his head tilted a little, and I realize his brother does the same thing, it just doesn’t bother me when Mallory does it, so I hadn’t noticed. “Why? You aren’t afraid of them, are you?”

Heat rushes to my face and I sneer up at Mallory. “No, ’course not.”

I think Mallory smiles, though I can’t tell in the gloom of this tall barn. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, they won’t hurt you.”

“I ain’t afraid of your stupid cows, Mallory Fionn,” I snarl.

He laughs a little, but breaks off real fast. “No, I’m sorry. That wasn’t very good of me.” Mallory shakes his head and goes back to grabbing hay bales. “The charm’s for a couple different things, depending on how it’s made. With the salt, it’s for breaking spells, there’s a little wire beneath the chord, or there was, it might have got lost when you untied it.”

I blink a couple times, confused beyond words. “How’d you know I untied it?”

A fourth bale falls to the floor and Mallory says, “There were seven knots when I made it, now there’s two…I think.”

He lowers himself to sit with his legs hanging over the edge of the little platform, at least fifteen feet off the ground.

I’m not sure what to say, so I stutter when I begin speaking. “How—why…I don’t…” I sigh angrily. Why was I acting the blithering moron? It’s not like I didn’t figure he made it. That’s why I’m here.

And then I end up saying the first thing that comes to my mind.

“Hey, what’s the coloured part of your eye called?”

Fucking idiot.

I see something change in Mallory’s face. “The iris…why?”

He figures I’m going to make fun of him, I think.

“I couldn’t remember—it was the first thing that came to my mind.”

He looks more surprised by that than me still being alive.

“Interesting thought process,” he says after a minute. He kicks his feet together just as Sean would. “Uh…can I ask you something?”

“Well you just kind of did,” I say, and then the door beside me opens.

“Hey, Mal—” says Justin Fionn, but he stops and his eyes slightly widen when he sees me. “I’m sorry. I’d forgotten you were here,” he smiles and glances up at his brother, tilting his head to one side.

“Jesus, you take everything so seriously. Yes, you’re supposed to be on top, but don’t you think twenty feet’s a bit much?” Justin glances back at me with a grin. “I’m sorry about him, I mean, I try to teach him, I really do.”

He slides out the door with a laugh, making me wonder if he did know I was here and planned this whole appearance.

I look back up at Mallory, who is getting up from where he was sitting. I wonder if he’s angry, because he looks strange, something about the way he’s moving is off, tight might be the word.

“Uh, sorry. My brother’s a bit of a pisser…when he gets it in his head to be.”

“So’s mine. What was it you wanted to ask me?”

He seems uncomfortable, almost shaking. “Uh, it’s not important. You got everything you needed, right?”

I shake my head. And here I was thinking Mallory might actually be alright. “You’re a fucking asshole,” I say, though I don’t think he’s really done anything asshole like.

Mallory climbs down the ladder, and once at the bottom, looks at me with those beautiful eyes of his. “Am I now? You know I’ve been called lots of things, but I think you’re the first to use asshole.”

“Good for me. Now what was it you were going to ask before you turned craven?” I ask, because I know it will bug me much more than forgetting the word iris if he doesn’t tell me.

He laughs a little to himself, but not happy laughter. “There’s one I’ve heard before.”

“I don’t care what insults you’ve heard and which you haven’t, Mallory. Just ask me what you were going to ask.”

“What does it matter?” he asks.

Have I made him angry? Not as entertaining as I’d thought it would be. Actually, it isn’t entertaining at all.

“I want to know,” I say stubbornly.

“Why?” he asks.

Mallory’s gotten startlingly close without me noticing, within an arm’s length likely.

“You aren’t going to kill me, are you?” I ask, because for some reason it sounds like a totally rational question, until I actually say it.

“What?” He takes a half step back, as though he’s only now realized how close he is.

“Well, I don’t know. I mean, you’re close enough to. I’m sure you’re stronger than I am, and I seem to have pissed you off.”

Mallory looks down at the ground as I’ve seen him do more times than I would have liked this year. Why did everything have to involve Mallory fucking Fionn as of late? Anyone else could have just let me die.

“Why’d you make that little charm-thingy? You didn’t have to. It’s not like I’m anything to you.”

Mallory looks down at his hands for a minute, and then turns to walk back towards his hay bales, shrugging. “I knew I could. There wasn’t any reason to just let you die. I mean, you’ve got your family, and most of them seem to like you well enough…” he trails off as though there were other things that he could add, but didn’t want to.

“Oh,” I say, “well, maybe you ain’t an ass.”

I kick at the ground, and then feel bad about it, because it’s not my floor to destroy.

Mallory shrugs again and says, “No, I probably am. Kind of you, though…to say I’m not.” He stops and I think he sighs. “I remember, when you were little…you got lost in the Wood, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you…remember how you got out? At all?”

He’s stopped in front of his pile of hay, but hasn’t made any kind of move to pick any of the bales up.

I think of my little faerie stone where it lies in the little hole in the floor. Was I willing to share that with Mallory Fionn? He might actually know something about it…or not…

“How much do you know? About the Wood?”

“Uh…” he says, but not as though he knows nothing, more as though he knows more than he should, and isn’t sure how much he should say.

Same as me, I guess.

“More than most.”

“Less than some?” I ask.

“No,” he says with enough finality to make me wonder why he knows so much about the home of the fey.

I bite my lip.

He might know what it is… says one side of my mind, while the other says, You don’t know Mallory Fionn.

“I know you said you have work, but I figure you were trying to get rid of me…”

Mallory doesn’t say anything, but he turns and looks at me.

“Are you doing anything now? After you put that wherever it’s going.” I point at the little pile of hay bales.

Idiot! says my mind.

He tilts his head a little bit to the side, and I think his eyes, his crazy eyes, are smiling.