WAR FOR THE OAKS by Emma Bull

Author:Emma Bull
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

chapter 13

Do You Believe in Magic?

Her denim jacket was mended and clean. Eddi stood in the living room with the thing hanging from her fingers, and squinted at the phouka through a deluge of noon sun.

“It wasn’t me,” he told her.

“Well, it sure wasn’t me.”

The phouka leaned in the kitchen doorway. He was wearing navy chalk-stripe pleated trousers with cuffs, a pink band-collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and suspenders embroidered with—were they? Yes, they were. Palm trees.

“The Godfather meets Miami Vice,” Eddi muttered. “How’s your head?”

“Perfect, of course,” he said. He swept his hair back from his forehead to show her a short, pink scar.

She felt comforted. “It’s more than you deserve. Well, if neither of us did this”—she flourished her mended jacket—“who did? Willy?”

The phouka made a dismissing gesture with his coffee cup. “Once you’re fully awake, I trust you’ll recognize the folly inherent in that suggestion.”

“I wasn’t serious.”

“I also trust you’ll observe that it’s not just your jacket.”

Eddi looked around. The sun streamed uncommonly bright through the blinds. That held her attention for a moment. “The windows are clean,” she said at last, wondering.

“Very good. Don’t stop there, sweet.”

In fact, everything was clean. And the apartment smelled of fresh bread, which, she realized belatedly, was what had awakened her in the first place. “You made bread?”

“No.”

“Then what do I smell?”

“Bread.”

She pushed past him to look in the kitchen. There were two round brown loaves cooling on the counter. There was a pot of coffee made, as well. She drew back and looked him in the eye. “And you didn’t do any of this.”

“None, I’m ashamed to say.”

“So?”

He sucked in his cheeks and looked thoughtful. “If I were required to be forthright, which, thank earth and air, is rarely necessary, I would have to say that you’ve acquired a brownie.”

Eddi stared at him. “That’s silly,” she said after a bit.

“Possibly. But just in case, don’t offer up any thanks for all this. I don’t really enjoy washing dishes.”

Eddi paced the apartment, touching things. Perhaps she’d had so many intrusions into her life lately that she’d gone beyond resenting any more. Or perhaps the nature of this intrusion was different—its character was so clearly a smoothing of the waters of daily routine. Whoever had come and gone had left nothing in the way, nothing that wasn’t useful, nothing that Eddi had to rearrange her life around. The message of the clean apartment, the bread, the mended jacket, was, “The irritants are gone, the mundane details are taken care of. The important matters are left to you.”

She couldn’t say thank you. But she remembered how pleased the phouka had been at praise. “This is great,” she said softly. “The place never looked so good.”

Eddi stood at the window, not really seeing the rooftops and the waving trees of Loring Park. It was more than just clean windows and mending. She felt as if her future was back in her hands. She was not just baggage for the Seelie Court, an amulet that brought death but had no life of its own.

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