Free Bone Walker by Angela Korra'ti Page B

sensitive as well. That wasn’t, however, enough to distract me from the regret in his eyes. “But I can’t tell if there’s anything odd about her. Not from here.”
    I had no real call to be surprised by that; neither he nor Millicent had picked up anything from her from within arm’s reach in my living room the night before. “We should go on about our business then, I guess,” I said.
    â€œAre you sure, lass?”
    â€œNo.” The word came out as the sigh I was trying to repress, gruff and awkward. Team Honesty had its flip side, and had for me ever since I’d learned that the Sidhe had a thing against lying. I’d been uncomfortable about even the smallest of white lies ever since. “But we should go anyway. The Wards need you, and we’d better not stay away from my place for long.”
    He nodded with a look on his face that made me suspect he knew exactly what that admission said about my state of mind, yet wasn’t going to say a word about it. In a grateful rush I thought, for the very first time since I’d ever laid eyes on him,
I could love this man.
    Right on the tail end of that, with a simplicity that stopped me in my tracks, came an addendum.
I do.
    For several long moments that one concept distracted me from everything else. I’d never been swimming in boyfriends even before my changeling blood awoke. Being an African American geek chick had pretty much assured me of that, since that had been weird enough on its own. And once I’d turned into a living poster child for human-Seelie relations, my world had gotten a lot weirder. But it also now included Christopher, and I could no longer imagine it without him at its core. A strong, deep part of me was certain that between us, we could handle whatever else the world of magic, of Warders and the fey, wanted to throw at us. Tortured Unseelie bards, resentful Seelie warriors? No problem. Bring it.
    Another part of me, though—the part that was worried sick about the ghostly shape last seen vanishing into Jude—wasn’t so convinced.
    That part of me prayed that the two of us would be enough.

Chapter Seven
    Warding a city, or so I’d learned in the months since I’d met Millicent and Christopher, was a larger-scale version of the effort required to Ward a single house. It required tapping into the life energy created by every creature, human or otherwise, who lived, worked, or did anything else within the city limits. Each and every activity that went into weaving the fabric of a city’s daily existence counted towards the pool of magic that could be used to Ward it. The magic from actual city residents was best, though the lesser hit that came from people who lived outside the city but commuted into it for work was substantial. Even the fleeting glimmers of power you could get from travelers just passing through did their part.
    By her personal tradition, Millicent had for the last fifty years, rain or shine, risen to travel as far around Seattle’s borders as she could each morning, pouring power into the city Wards. Now that she had Christopher—and by extension, me, since I seemed to be a walking battery for his power—she’d leaped at the chance to make him cover even more territory than she could.
    Two months after the fact, I understood the basic whys and wherefores, or at least I thought I did. There was a kind of music to it. Literally, since Millicent and Christopher both almost always busked whenever they went out, she with her whistle and he with the bouzouki that was seldom out of his reach. Most Warders, Millie had told me, were in fact musicians. When they were constrained to their chosen cities for their entire lives, music gave them all a way to keep from going stir crazy. Even more importantly, it channeled Warder power.
    When we had time to spare, I brought along my violin and played with them. This morning, however, we had no such option.