"Then where do I come into it?"
"The paranoid part."
"She's afraid of harpists?"
"Your brain, Dee. Use it. What were we just talking about?"
It dawned on me. "My telekinesis. That's what you meant back in the kitchen, when you told her I wasn't a threat." I thought further, and burst out, "But that's so stupid. If I hadn't been messed with at the competition and had four-leaf clovers hurled at me by perv freaks, I would've never even known faeries existed. The only people I would've been a threat to would've been the ones between me and the bathroom when I got nervous."
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Luke grinned at me; I'd never seen him so cheerful. "That's where the paranoid-schizo part comes in."
"But I can't be the only one like me--oh." Suddenly, the pile of bodies in Luke's memory was starting to make sense. "So, that's why--oh." All the overheard conversations were starting to make sense, too. "So, she makes you do it. Why you?"
Luke answered with another question. "Why not Eleanor?
I saw Eleanor in my mind, her elegant fingers jerking back from me and the key around my neck.
"The iron... Eleanor can't touch it. But can't the Queen touch it? She's human."
"Not quite, not anymore."
I shook my head. "But I saw you--I saw how you felt about all this. How can she make you do it?" "You know I can't tell you."
I thought of Luke plunging the knife into his heart, trying to destroy himself. And of him sitting in the tomb, plaintively asking me if I would ever forgive him. Whatever it was that compelled him to kill those people must have been pretty awful. A horrible idea occurred to me. "You don't go into a trance, do you? Does she do some sort of voodoo remote mind control?"
Luke shook his head. "I'm afraid I'm utterly conscious for the whole thing. But you came along and fascinated me, and that was the end of it all." He grinned suddenly, surprising me. "I'm so damn giddy. Is this what love is?" Before I could answer, he braked hard. "Is this the place?"
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I looked up. "Yep."
The Warshaws' enormous brick house sat well back from the road, its columned facade dominating the massive sloping lawn in front of it. Luke drove Bucephalus up the steep driveway, peering at the immaculate grounds. "I don't see any cars. Are you sure we're here at the right time?"
"It's seven thirty, isn't it?" A glance at his car's clock confirmed the time. "This should be right.
Mrs. Warshaw said the party started at eight but to just go around back and set up in the rotunda.
I've been here before, for her daughter's reception; they're friends with Mom."
"Your mother has friends? "
"Be nice!"
Luke grinned and parked the car near the house. He took my harp, I took his backpack, and then he came closer and clasped my hand tightly. Together, we walked around the back of the huge brick house, past bushes sculpted in spirals and a stone fountain in the shape of a little boy peeing into a puddle. I hoped that if I ever got rich and famous, I wouldn't be so warped by my gobs of money that I thought little peeing boys counted as acceptable lawn ornaments.
The spacious back yard was empty of people, although folded tables leaned up against the wall near the back door and folding chairs leaned in long rows against a screen porch. I led Luke through the orange-green evening to the rotunda, a brick-floored circle of columns covered with a white dome.
"I think we must be very early," Luke remarked. He retrieved a folding chair for me and sat on the edge of the
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rotunda, watching me set up. After a few minutes of silence, he said, "I know about your brother."
I looked up from tuning my harp. "My brother?"
He reached into his battered canvas backpack and withdrew his flute case. "From one of your memories. How old were you when your mother lost him?"
I could have feigned ignorance, but the truth was that I remembered the exact month, day, and hour that Mom had lost the baby, down to the weather outside and what I'd eaten for breakfast. I wondered what else Luke had dug up from inside my head. "Ten."
His deft fingers assembled the flute pieces while his eyes scanned the edges of the yard, ever on guard. "Does it bother you to talk about it?"
I remembered Mom's huge belly disappearing too soon, and the last time I'd ever seen her cry.
But it wasn't my sorrow; I was a step removed, and to me, the pregnancy had always been a bit surreal anyway. "No. Why do you want to know?"
Luke's eyes flitted over the trees closest to the rotunda: three petite thorn trees a few yards away.
"Before I decide I don't like someone, I always try and figure out if there's a reason why they are who they are."
"Me?"
He gave me a withering look. "Your mom, stupid."
I chewed my lip, feeling both defensive and relieved that an objective third party thought she was hard to live with. "She's all right."
Luke frowned. "I've had plenty of time to watch the two of you, thanks to your memories, and I don't think she's been
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all right in a while. And don't get me started on Delia." He shook his head, and added after a moment's pause, "We're going to have to protect your family. If I won't touch you, They're going to try to come at you any way they can."
I imagined trying to coax Mom into wearing iron jewelry. Or trying to have an intelligent conversation with Dad about faeries. And Delia--well, she could fend for herself. Maybe I could use Delia as a decoy.
Luke laughed when he saw my face. "I think we have to find out what Granna was working
