Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson #5)(76)

"Why did you make it that way?" asked Jesse.

Ariana smiled at her. "I didn't. But things of power . . . evolve around the limits they are given. That's why, even though I thought it did nothing, I kept it with me. Because even unfinished, it was a thing of power."

"How did you figure out that it . . . Oh." There was comprehension in Jesse's voice.

"Right. It's a very old thing, and many of its owners have died in various ways. The fire thing came later." Her face grew contemplative. "And quite spectacularly."

"Aren't you its owner?" Jesse asked.

"Not if I want to keep my magic - I'm only its maker. That's why it's called the Silver Borne."

"Ariana means silver in Welsh." Samuel sat down on the floor and leaned against the end of the nearest metal shelving unit. He'd had a rough couple of days, too - but I hoped that Ariana's obvious fear of him wouldn't send him sliding back into despair.

"Jesse," I said. "Ask her how we find Gabriel."

"What did you bring me that belongs to this young man?" Jesse handed her a white plastic bag. "It's a sweater he loaned me when I was cold."

"Phin told me that his magic was that he could sometimes feel things from objects," I said. "Things like how old an object is. Psychometry."

"Something he inherited from me." Ariana pulled the sweater out and put it against her face. "Oh dear. This won't work."

"Why not?" Samuel asked. "It is his. I can smell his scent on it from here."

"I don't work off scents," she told him, her eyes on the sweater. "I work off ties, the threads that bind us to those things that are ours." She looked at Jesse. "This sweater means far more to you, as a gift of love, than it did to him when he wore it. So I can use it to find you, but not him." She hesitated. "Does he feel the same way about you?"

Jesse blushed and shook her head. "I don't know."

"Give me your hand," said the fae woman.

Jesse reached out and Ariana held it - and smiled like a wolf scenting her prey. "Oh yes, you are a lodestone." She turned to look at Zee. "With her I can find him. He is that way." She pointed toward the back of the garage.
* * *

WE LOADED INTO ADAM'S TRUCK BECAUSE ZEE'S TRUCK wouldn't hold us all - and Zee drove. Ariana sat in the front and Samuel sat behind Zee, as far as he could get from her in the big truck.

The sound of the big engine brought a smile to Zee's face; he appreciates modern technology more than I do.

"Adam has good taste," was all he said.

Looking for Gabriel was frustrating because it took us a while to figure out that we had to cross the river, and the roads didn't always lead where she was pointing. Adam had a map in his jockey box, and Samuel used it to figure out how to work our way around to the most likely destinations.

We ended up in an empty, flat meadow up a winding dirt road (not marked on Adam's map) that might have been an hour's drive from the Tri-Cities if we'd known where we were going in the first place. There was a fence around the field we'd all had to climb over. Maybe ten years ago it might have held in livestock, but the barbwire drooped and T posts were tipped over. Near where we'd parked the car were the remnants of someone's old cabin.

Ariana, looking out of place in her cardigan and stretch-knit pants, stopped in the middle of the field between a thatch of bunchgrass and a couple of sagebrush.

"Here," she said, sounding worried.

"Here?" Jesse said incredulously.

I took advantage of our halt to start picking cheatgrass out of my socks. If I'd realized we'd be running around out there, I'd have worn boots - and a thicker jacket.

"The fairy queen has set up her Elphame," Zee observed soberly.

"That's bad?" I asked.

"Very bad," he said. "It means she is stronger than I thought - and probably she has more fae at her command than we suspected if she still has the ability to build a home."

"How could she have done that here?" asked Ariana. "She must be able to tap into Underhill to create her own land. The gates to the Secret Place have been lost to us for centuries - and Underhill never was in this land."

I looked at Zee. I couldn't help it because I'd been to Underhill - and then sworn to silence.

"Underhill was wherever it chose to be," Zee said. "The reservation is no more than ten miles away as the crow flies. Most of the fae who live there aren't the powerful among the fae - but there are a lot of us, more than appear on the government's rolls. There is power in that kind of concentration." He was careful not to say that the reservation had reopened a path or two to Underhill.

Ariana held her hand out, palm down, and closed her eyes briefly. "You're right, Zee. There is power here that tastes of the Old Place. I had wondered why she bothered to keep Phin alive when killing him would have been the most logical path for her to take. She outsmarted herself when she took him to Elphame."

"Fairy queens follow rules," agreed Zee. "Mortals who are taken to the Elphame cannot be killed or permanently harmed - it's part of the magic of building a place apart."

Ariana gave him a little smile. "My Phin must be too human for her to kill. I wonder if she knew that when she took him to her lair? If he is human, she cannot, of her own volition, release him for a year and a day."