War for the Oaks Read Online Free PDF

queasy forboding. "What do you want me to do? Referee?"
    The phouka flung his head back and barked laughter. "Ah, sweetling, you are fresh as the wind, if not as quick. The Unseelie Court are as immortal as we are. We could strike off all their warty heads tonight, and have it all to do again tomorrow. How would you slay an immortal?"
    "I wouldn't."
    "A sweet sentiment." He smiled fondly at her. "But there is a way. Were
you
upon the battlefield, you would bring to it the taint of mortality. All wounds would be true ones, and some would be fatal."
    Eddi said slowly, "You want me to help you kill each other. And all I have to do is stand there."
    "For all that it's inelegantly expressed, yes."
    "Good. I hope you all die to the last man—or elf."
    "Tsk. Oh, did I neglect to say that the Unseelie Court, being less than fond of parting with their loathly lives, will be eager to prove your mortality and rob us of your talismanic presence?"
    "Ah," said Eddi. "I suppose I would have figured that out eventually."
So this
she thought, her stomach clenched with fear,
is how it feels to be drafted
.
    The glaistig spoke again. "The phouka has been assigned as your keeper, that we need not hunt you out when you are wanted. He will be at your side always. He serves also as your bodyguard," she continued, before Eddi could protest. "Spies for the Unseelie Court will learn of you soon." She raised her sharp white face to the sky. "Dawn is almost upon us, and I am tired. Begone." And she melted back into the pool with a rush.
    Eddi saw that she was right about the dawn; the windows across the street reflected pink-tinged gray. She was aware, suddenly, of the reality of the buildings around her. This was the same Nicollet Mall that had been here yesterday. The difference, the unreality, must lie with her.
    But she felt real. She ached from falling down the steps, she was tired, the fingertips of her left hand smarted from playing guitar . . .
Carla
, she thought.
I could call her right now, and she'd answer the phone and grunt at me, and say. "Are you crazy, girl? It's
—" is it six? "—
six o'clock in the goddamn morning!" And I'd tell her what just happened, and she'd say
—

    "Rowan and Thorn, woman!" came the voice of the phouka from the street above her. "Do come along, or I'll fetch you!"
    Climbing the steps felt like mounting a scaffold. When she got to the top, there was no sign of the phouka. Then, three feet away, the black dog rose from behind a planter and turned his red eyes on her.
    "Stop that," she said. "Change back."
    "Indeed not. I'm to be your bodyguard, am I not? Many's the mortal in this city who'd envy you your fine big guard dog, poppet. See?" And he leaped between her and some imaginary assailant, his head lowered and hackles bristling, stiff-legged, a rumble in his throat that seemed to shake the pavement. "Oh, what a terror I am! But puppygentle with my mistress." He bounded back to her, tail wagging, and licked her hand.
    Eddi snatched it away and wiped it on her jacket. "Cut it out, you hear me? Don't touch me again!"
    His ears drooped, and he rolled his fearsome eyes upward. "She rejects my doggish loyalty. Ah, my heart, my heart." He turned and began to prance down the mall ahead of her.
    "Where are you going?"
    "Why, home with you, my sweet."
    "How do you know the way?"
    He looked at her over his black-furred shoulder. "Did you think, perhaps, that I wandered into that vile hole last night by chance? You've been my study, Eddi McCandry, for many a day. I know where you live." And he set off once again.
    She was furious. What else did these—things—know about her? The color of her rugs? The contents of her refrigerator? That she talked to her reflection in the bathroom mirror?
    "What makes you think I'm going home?" Eddi said sweetly.
    He looked back and cocked his head. "Aren't you?"
    "No. I'm going to the pound. There's a dangerous dog loose in this neighborhood."
    His lip began to curl back from his