Free Roadside Magic by Lilith Saintcrow Page B

pleading little noise again.
    Robin dropped the glass shard onto her skirt. The wound glowed red as sunshine steamed along the wreckage. Behind her, the kitchen door slammed, the mortal house closing itself around its secret carnage.
    The changeling’s mouth fastened on her arm. It suckled, experimentally, and Robin opened her mouth. The Old Language dropped like rain, chantment blurring down her arm, and when the changeling set itself more firmly, its small hands creeping up to grasp her arm, and drew again on the wound, she winced.
    She held the chantment steady, even when darkness beat at the corner of her vision, and the changeling drew again. A Half wasn’t supposed to do this; changelings belonged to the Queen. Their blood made corners of the sideways realms forever Summer, and her apple trees drove their roots deep to do the same. To do this was to rob the Queen, outright inexcusable theft. No sidhe of Summer would ever dream of attempting it.
    Swimming weakness closed around Robin Ragged. Lungs straining, heart laboring, she held the stream of the Old Language steady. The changeling flushed, its outlines running like clay in water.
    Syllables thrust up through the stream of chantment, repeated over and over. They fitted themselves together, sharp edges slicing as they fought against her hold. If she could just keep the chant long enough, they would knit themselves together, and—
    A massive internal noise. Robin sagged, dimly aware of her head striking the deck as she toppled. The changeling’s mouth tore away, almost taking a chunk of her arm as its teeth clickedtogether, and the thing threw back its head and howled as the finished chantment pierced it, reshaped it.
    The oldest of magics—to create is to
name
.
    Howling ceased. Groaning and shuffling, glass shattering, the creaking of metal tubing. Heavy, wet crunching sounds as the changeling-no-more writhed and spasmed, the name shaping the thing.
    Birth is always painful.
    Darkness, brief shutterclicks of light as her eyelids struggled to rise, then slammed down again.
    When the spasming and writhing ended, a sleek wheat-gold shape lay, still as death, next to a milk-pale woman in a faded blue dress, her redgold hair oddly drained of its luster. The sun shrugged free of thin clouds, burning away haze and pouring over both of them, and for a moment the heartbeat of both creatures halted. Still, the chantment continued, its thunder fading into the distance as the act rippled through real and more-than-real.
    The changeling-no-more stirred. It whined as the cramps and seizures withdrew. Its slim paws twitched, and after a little while it dragged itself to the depleted statue of a sleeping woman, curling its long body into that uncertain shelter.

DIRTY WORK
16

    C lose. Very close.
Half the afternoon was gone, clouds massing in the north as another spring storm tiptoed its unsettled way closer and closer. Jeremiah sighed, an involuntary noise, as he scrambled up the side of an embankment and found a housing development spread before him. One of the newer ones, its pavement still tar-black, and a couple dead ends showed where they were going to build even more as soon as winter lost its grip. Bulldozing the trees that might have been here before and putting in these blocks of tofu, then planting anemic saplings—well, it was enough to make any sidhe shake their head. Even a Half.
    Still, people had to have places to live. And he’d done his share of running a dozer, or a chainsaw. Each time he saw mortal buildings rising, or a mortal street running straight and true, half of him felt a nasty secret joy.
    He just didn’t know
which
half.
    What the hell was Robin doing
here
? There was some sense to her wanderings, she was going far too directly to be simply hoping to throw off pursuit.
    The sunlight dimmed, and Gallow’s back prickled. Thescars writhed madly, but he denied the lance its freedom and simply turned, slow, his hands loose and easy.
    Scrubwood and