Whiskey and Water Read Free Page A

his phone, whether he chose to
answer or not. Simple enough magic. The sort he would have worked without
thinking, himself, once upon a time.
    Christian didn't answer his question.
"Jane wants to talk to you. Just talk."
    Matthew stared through his eyeglasses. The
apprentice didn't drop his gaze, but met him glower for glower. He wondered how
long Jane had been recruiting apprentices, how many new Magi she'd collected .
. . whether she was planning on moving against Faerie again.
    "Jane needs everybody,"
Christian said. He held out a granite-colored business card; when Matthew
didn't take it, he tucked it into the breast pocket of his gaudy coat with a
sort of charming insolence. "She needs as many of us as she can get. She
just wants to talk to you."
    "How many of you are there now?"
    "About twenty," Christian said.
"And growing. I've been with her five years, and I know she's sincere."
    Matthew put his phone away again and
smoothed his left hand over his hair. "You know why she doesn't have any
Magi left, Christian?" he asked. "Why she's starting over from
scratch?
    Christian bit his lip, frowning. "The
Faerie War."
    "Because she got the last batch all killed," Matthew told him. "And she'll get you killed too. No." "Matthew?"
    He turned away, showing Christian the back
of his hand. "No," he said. "I won't talk to Jane. I have a city
to take care of. Leave me alone."
    Two young women and a man in their early
twenties hesitated on the platform, bewildered by the rumble of trains, the
reek of grease and the arch of yellow metal against swallowing darkness. The
train had breathed them into Penn Station like a dragon breathing particles of
soot onto the air. The chambered heart of a vast beast echoed around them,
sound ringing off granite blocks laid with a master's precision. The three
exchanged glances, their own hearts thundering in their chests as New York's
thundered in their ears.
    They ascended the narrow escalator single
file, passing through a gap in a dull, corrugated walkway suspended above the
platform like a vast air-conditioning duct. Inside, grimy cement was punctuated
in long rows by the alien luxuriance of cobalt tiles, blue as a madonna's robes
against char.
    The city noticed their coming.
    The train watched them climb, calm in its
long steel body, and the sidewalks took their weight in knowing silence when
they ascended into the indirect brightness of a New York morning.
    The eldest of the three was Althea
Benning, who bought a white T-shirt from a vendor. It was marked in black and
red and blue with a map of the New York subway system that stretched across her
breasts when she pulled it over her tank top.
    The boy was named Geoffrey Bertelli; his
mouth twitched side-ways when he was amused. It was twitching now, as he raked
bony, beautiful hands through his matted, matte-black-dyed red hair and said, "Everyone
will know you're a tourist."
    "Everyone will know I'm a tourist
anyway, and this way, if we get lost, all you have to do is stare at my
tits." Althea checked her reflection in the shopwindow; Geoff laughed at
her, shifted his knapsack, and dropped an arm around the third companion's
shoulders.
    She only smiled.
    She was the one who might have seemed most
Fae, at least to someone who had never seen the Fair Folk. She was called
Juliet Gorman, known as Jewels, and she was scarred and tattooed and pierced through
fair freckled skin, her ears altered to points and a terrible homesickness in
her flinching gestures.
    She wasn't Fae. She was Otherkin, a
peasant child dreaming she was a stolen princess . . . who knew that her real
parents—who loved her — would be along any moment to reclaim her from unkind
but temporary mundane bondage.
    Jewels slid from under Geoff's arm and stood
atop a subway grate, the warm wind swirling her skirt around her ankles. She'd
braided her hair and pinned it so it covered her ears, mostly at Geoff's insistence.
    "Look at me," Althea said,
spinning in place, colliding with a