Free Landslayer's Law by Tom Deitz

mistakes.”
    David shook his head. “No, it’s more that he lives in Camelots.”
    “Camelots?” asked Calvin.
    “Brief shining moments. He’s enshrined certain periods of his life in his mind as golden ages and won’t let ’em go. Like the summer he and I got to be friends. Like the first summer after me and him and Aik all hit puberty—which he beat us to, incidentally. Like the summer G-Man and Darrell moved up, and we started the MacTyrie Gang.”
    “Ah,” Calvin yawned, “I see.”
    “Possibly,” David yawned back. “But most of ’em were before we got involved with Faerie and the Worlds and all—back when magic was just fun, ’cause it was mental masturbation out of a gaming manual. But anyway, the last golden age lasted about two days, which was back when I first met you, and Liz and me finally got together, and he got jealous of all that, and Aife used his jealousy to get to us through him. She also popped his cherry, which was something he’d romanticized: doin’ it under perfect conditions with the perfect woman.”
    “And then findin’ it was all a cheat,” Calvin finished for him. “Poor guy.”
    “Except that he can’t seem to let go and get on with his life. I mean, he really has been hurt, but there’re a lot a people in the world, and surely somewhere there’s somebody he can love who’ll love him back.”
    “Unfortunately,” Liz said quietly, “he’s nobody’s number one—not even his folks’, ’cause they’ve got each other. I mean, it really isn’t fair: that some of us are the most important person in the world to two or three people, and poor Alec, who is absolutely not a bad guy, isn’t to even one.”
    Calvin gnawed his lip. “I don’t suppose we could boil this down to something as crude as the fact that—’scuse me Liz—his first piece of ass was a Faery woman? I mean, no offense, but everything I’ve heard leads me to believe that any mortal woman would be an…an anticlimax after that.”
    David grimaced at the probable pun. Liz scowled. “Even if the woman proved to be an ice-hearted bitch?”
    “—Who finally admitted that she really did love him,” David shot back. “Who suffered imprisonment for him. Who risked Lugh’s wrath to be with him. Who’s stuck by him even with cat instincts ruling her mind most of the time, and you know how fickle even normal cats can be.”
    “So we all agree that what Master McLean needs most is somebody to love him as much as he loves…the memory of Aife?”
    David nodded. “We have to be honest: the boy can certainly love. I’ve felt that love and it’s wonderful. Trouble is, he fell in love with the wrong person. God knows it’s hard enough for two regular folks who love each other to keep things straight, as I’m sure you know, considering how different you and Sandy are.”
    Calvin rolled his eyes. “Tell me about it.”
    “Speaking of which,” Liz inserted. “Everything okay with you guys?”
    “Fine as frog hair,” Calvin replied, with a wink. “So that’s it with McLean, then?”
    David shrugged again. “Basically. Well, except that I guess things are a little worse with him right now, given that we’re going Tracking tonight and he doesn’t like doin’ that. Plus, it’s gotten to be kind of a couple-thing, and he’s often odd-man out. I could probably think of some more if I tried.”
    Liz checked her watch. “Not if we’re gonna get through Scott’s woes and whatever’s bugging you before you have to head out for your final.”
    “What about Scott’s woes?”
    “Simply stated,” Liz began, “he’s been in grad school so long he’s about to start losing credits.”
    “Faerie, again,” David appended. “His crowd had their own little interface with the dark side of the Sidhe a few years back—before I knew any of ’em but Myra, and her only ’cause she was Darrell’s sister. But anyway, I eventually found out about it, and, again to make a long story short, it had much