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"Can't you see that I'm chained to the floor?" Luis said. He turned his wrists and she saw that his own braids were wrapped around them, pulled taut.
"The floor?" Val repeated stupidly. "But what about the carpet?"
Luis laughed. "I suppose this place looks beautiful to you."
Val looked at the low couches, the bookshelves overflowing with cloth-covered fairy stories, the faded grandeur of the carpet and painted molding on the walls. "It's one of the most gorgeous rooms I've ever been in."
"The plaster walls are cracked and there's a leak in the ceiling that pretty much means that whole corner is black with mold. There's no furniture here, either, and certainly no rug—just floorboards with some old nails sticking up out of them."
Val looked around at the soft light coming from a pewter lamp with a fringed shade. "Then what is it that I'm seeing?"
"Glamour, what else?"
Ruth ducked her head into the room. "What's goi—Luis?"
"Hold on. How can we be sure it's really you, Luis?" Val asked.
"Who else would I be?"
Ruth came most of the way in, her foot still in the glamoured opening, as though she thought it might close at any moment without a wedge. "We just left you in the park and you were sleeping."
Luis let his head fall back. "Yeah, well, the last time I saw Ruth, I was with Lolli and Dave in the park. We'd picked out a place to sleep near the weather castle. Lolli was leaned up against me, dozing off when Dave just got up and walked off. I knew he was upset. Shit, I was freaking out, too. I thought maybe he wanted to be alone.
"But then he didn't come back and I didn't know what to think. I went out looking. I saw him walking back through the Ramble. He wasn't alone, either. At first I thought it was some guy—I don't know, hitting on him—but then I saw the guy had feathers instead of hair. I started toward them and that's when tiny fingers covered my mouth and my good eye, grabbed hold of my arms and my legs. I could hear them snickering as they lifted me up into the air and my brother saying, 'Don't worry. It's just for a little while.' I didn't know what to think. I sure didn't think I'd wind up here."
"Did you see Mabry?" Val asked. "Did she say anything to you?"
"Not much. She was distracted by something that was going down. Someone visited her and she was pissed about it."
"There's something we have to tell you," Val said.
Luis went quiet, his mouth pressed into a thin line. "What?" he asked, and his voice was so quiet that it made Val's heart ache.
"It was Dave that we thought was missing. He's gone. Someone's pretending to be you."
"So you came here looking for Dave?"
"We came here looking for evidence. I think Mabry's behind all the faerie deaths."
Luis scowled. "Wait, so where's my brother? Is he in trouble?"
Val shook her head. "I don't think so. Whatever's pretending to be you seems to be spending all its time screwing Lolli. I don't think that's exactly on the supernatural agenda, but it's definitely on Dave's."
Luis winced, but he said nothing.
"We should hurry," Ruth said, patting Val's head, her fingers threading through the stubble. "Just because this bitch can't tie you up with your own hair doesn't mean we should hang around."
"Right." Val leaned over Luis, looking at the braids that bound him to the floor. She tried to snap them or pull them loose, but they were as hard as if they were made of steel.
"Mabry cut them with scissors," Luis said. "She fucking scalped me, too."
"Do you think scissors would cut the braids?" Ruth asked.
Val nodded. "She has to have a way to cut through her own spells. Where do you think they would be?"
"I don't know," Luis said. "They might not even look like scissors."
Val stood up and walked out into the parlor, stopping at the fountain where the flour had dissolved, then walked over to the display cabinet.
