Whiskey and Water by Elizabeth Bear

and then something Geoff didn't quite catch. "No, I don't need
help. Or bail. Please tell Jane her assistance isn't required. I'll handle it
myself—no, I do not care to speak with her."
    The tattooed man flipped the cell closed,
something awkward about the method that Geoff didn't understand until he took
the phone from his right hand with his left and the right one stayed curved
into a claw. He stuffed the gray metal phone into the pocket of his jeans and
stood, just waiting, dark eyes incongruous under all that fair hair, as if he
expected Geoffrey to come to him. He didn't say anything. He held out his hand,
the right one, crooked inside his black glove.
    Geoffrey got up from the mustard-colored
chair and went. He blinked, surprised to find his feet had carried him all the
way across the checkerboard floor. The blond man's eyes were dark, brown
as bottles behind glare-proof glasses, with a sharp kind of knowing gleaming at
the bottom of them—a very long way down, as if light shone sideways through the
irises. "I'm Matthew," he said. "You're —Geoffrey? And you don't
like blood — "
    "You're one of them," Geoff
said, swallowing hard enough to sting his throat.
    "No," Matthew said. "I'm
one of us."
    Geoffrey stepped back, fighting now, magic
drawing tight around him: the strands of a spider's web on a struggling fly.
Geoffrey's power was ignorant —reflexive—but it was real. It flickered up the
strings of Matthew's control, trembling and ineffectual, the strength under it
un-leveraged. Matthew used a touch of mesmerism, put his soul and his power
into his eyes and waited for the boy to stop struggling.
    The girl had died on Matthew's watch. Had
died due to his negligence. She was his failure. Crippled magic and a crippled
hand were not excuses.
    He was angry.
    Furious, with a kind of cold rational
wrath that left him in a limpid state of focus. He'd come to rely on Faerie's
gratitude, he realized. He'd pulled off his rings and turned his back on his
responsibilities, and it had been stupid, stupid.
    Unforgivably so. Because the conscience of
a Faerie was as reliable as the conscience of a shark. Althea Benning had paid
the price for his arrogance. For his complacency.
    And he had a long, long way to go to atone
for that.
    "I'm not Otherkin," Geoff said,
his voice shivering. He raised both hands. Matthew did not move. "That's
Jewels. And Althea. They're the ones who want to be kissed by Faeries — "
    "Nobody wants to be kissed by
Faeries," Matthew said—a painful lie, a falsehood that chipped away at his
strength. Faerie magic, like Faerie gold, was based on glamourie and bindings,
half-truths and misrepresentations and outright skullduggery. Matthew's magic
was opportunistic, but it relied for its power on the naming of names and the
knowledge of essences. To tell a knowing lie was to undermine the fabric, warp
and weft of his power. And he had known one person who very much had wanted to
be kissed by Faeries. Matthew had paid more than passing consideration to it
himself, when it came to one Fae in particular.
    "You don't have to tell me that,
man." Geoff shivered harder, dropping his hands to tug his zipper edges
together. He hugged his elbows to his sides. The gesture pressed skin-warmed
air away from the coat, spreading the scent of leather. "There's nothing
Faerie's got I want, you know? But they've got their fantasies."
    Matthew knew. "But you're with
Jewels."
    "Yeah," he said, and turned his
head, because Matthew's power held his body. "I'm with Jewels. I don't
like blood either, you're right. But I'm with Jewels."
    A cryptic statement, and Matthew would
have ferreted after it, but he caught a hitch in his new acquaintance's
breathing, and followed the direction of his gaze. The girl in the gray sweater
had paused in a slip of light between the door and the doorframe; illuminated,
she was positively translucent. Pale-colored markings followed the scars along
her hairline: a tiara of knots, wrought in dye and