Page 36 of Sleep No More

“I can try,” I said, slowly. “Chelsea, stay still.” I closed my eyes again and breathed in deep, reaching out at the same time with the not-quite-sense I’d used in Dreamer’s Glass when I needed to see the tangled threads around Li Qin and January. It was a hunch. But with everything else getting so strange, playing a hunch didn’t feel like such a bad idea.

As I had more than half-expected, the same pink, prismatic weave of tangled-up threads appeared around Chelsea. I glanced to the side. The same web of threads surrounded Etienne, as strong and bright as they had been in Dreamer’s Glass. The tangle of threads around Bridget was more of a surprise. Seeing such clear evidence of a spell cast on a human was nearly enough to make me lose my focus.

All fae knew that coexistence with humans was impossible because they lacked the magic to hook any sort of standing enchantment on to: while illicit substances like Faerie ointment could be used to give them the temporary ability to perceive enchantments and hidden things, they never lasted. You couldn’t take a human into a knowe, or use them as the anchor for any sort of spell. But Bridget was currently under some sort of enchantment, and it hadn’t originated with Etienne; seeing things this way was still new to me, but I could already start to see some of the logic behind it, the ways the smell of magic would translate into its own visual counterpart. Etienne’s magic was many things. None of them were prismatic and pink.

“I think I’m the one who needs to bleed here,” I said, keeping my motions slow and obvious as I reached for the knife at my hip. “Bridget, you may not want to watch this.”

I didn’t really know how humans felt about bloodshed, but the last thing I needed right now was to upset the woman and have her rush me while I was trying to work an unfamiliar bit of magic on her daughter.

“I’m staying,” said Bridget, ice in her tone.

“That’s fine. Please don’t interfere.” I pulled the knife, a little amazed by how easy and familiar the gesture already seemed. I pressed the edge against the back of my hand, tensing against the anticipation of pain. I couldn’t see Chelsea with my eyes closed, and couldn’t see the threads if I opened them, so I had to count on her staying calm when I started bleeding everywhere. Because that wasn’t stressful or anything.

“Chelsea, I’m going to cut myself, and then I’m going so swallow some of the blood. It’s gross, but that’s the way blood magic works for my kind of fae. You need to stay as calm as you can, because like Etienne said, I’m still pretty new to this, and I could lose focus if you freak out or distract me, okay?”

“Okay,” said Chelsea, voice much more subdued now that this was actually happening. She still sounded determined, and so I decided to keep going, forcing my way forward.

I ran the knife across the back of my hand. It was easier than it had been the first time I’d cut myself, not because it didn’t hurt, but because now I was reasonably sure it would heal. The scent of my blood filled the room, overwhelming the signatures of Etienne and Chelsea’s magic with my own. It was still organic and vital, but it was cut-grass and copper at the same time.

Eyes firmly closed, I sheathed the knife and raised my hand to my mouth.

This time, I wasn’t fast enough to shunt aside the red veil of blood memory before it caught me, even if only momentarily.

I stand in a kitchen I don’t know, staring into a tall white box filled with cold food and drinks. The memory supplies the name: ‘refrigerator.’ There’s one in Bridget and Etienne’s kitchen, on the wall across from where I left my actual body. I’d dismissed it as some form of wardrobe, and I guess that’s what it is, just a wardrobe for food.

I am looking for something to eat, and there are so many things, meats and cheese and leftovers wrapped in shining silver metal. I reach for a carton labeled orange juice, and close the fridge just as a stampede of teenagers bursts into the room.

The first is a boy with deeply tanned skin and russet-red hair, each strand tipped in black, like he’s been caught in some sort of ink fight. He’s wearing mortal clothes, but his ears are pointed and his pupils are vertical slits against amber-gold eyes. The combination of red and gold should have marked him for a Torquill, but it somehow doesn’t; the shades are all wrong, as is everything else about him.

Hot on his heels comes . . . Chelsea Ames. Laughing, no disguises, clearly enjoying the chase.

“Raj, you give back the remote or I’m going to skin you!”

“You can try,” he counters, and they thunder past me as the vision breaks.

“October?” The voice was Bridget’s. The concern was sincere. More sincere than I ever would have expected it to be. “Are you all right?”

“You took a mouthful of blood and then you went still,” said Chelsea, clearly trying to help. “Do we need to stop?”

“No,” said Etienne.

“No,” I said. “I’m all right. I just . . . I lose control sometimes. This is all still new for me. Hang on.” I sliced the back of my hand again, reopening the healed wound, and took another mouthful of blood.

The red veil tried to descend. I shoved it aside and reached for the threads with the hands I didn’t actually have, feeling the chill spread through my real fingers almost immediately.

As with January, the pink threads were wound tight, knotted together until it was impossible to pull any single one of them loose without shifting all the others. As I pulled, the pain in my head returned, even brighter and more urgent than before, and Chelsea screamed.

It was a high, agonized wail, like she was the one being slashed and stabbed, even though I wasn’t touching her. I heard Bridget yell something, heard Etienne’s voice raised in what could easily have been panic, and kept pulling. If they were going to try to stop me, I needed to unravel this as fast as I possibly could.

Because now that I had my hands on the web, it felt utterly essential that I finish what I’d started and rip it cleanly away. As with January, it was wrapped all around and through her, anchored somewhere behind her breastbone. Even as my hands were freezing, I wondered whether the fact that the spell was also wrapped around Bridget meant mortals had some magic after all—something for the spell to latch onto—or whether it was somehow feeding off the ambient magic generated by the presence of Chelsea and Etienne.

Then things started happening very fast.

The first thread snapped in my hand, sending a bolt of pain through my head and a jet of icy cold all the way up to my elbow. Chelsea screamed again, louder this time, as the scent of sycamore smoke and calla lilies flared right behind me.

I realized what was about to happen a heartbeat before it did, and tried to react. I really did. If I could have opened my eyes or said something, could have asked her not to, it might have been all right.

But no. It was all too fast, and I was in too much pain from what I’d just done, what I shouldn’t have been able to do. Chelsea, pained and possibly panicked by whatever the spell had been hiding from her before I broke it—whatever memories it had obscured, whatever illusions it had anchored—rushed forward and shoved me, and I fell through the portal she had instinctively opened in the kitchen behind me, her magic interpreting my efforts to break the spell as a threat.