Page 38 of Sleep No More

There was a soft sliding sound, like steel rubbing against stone, and I realized what it was a bare second before a knife drove into my upper abdomen, right below my sternum, knocking the air out of me. That pain, combined with the pain in my head, was so intense that everything else went away: they almost seemed to cancel each other out.

My eyes snapped open again, my hand going automatically to the knife at my hip. I had managed to shove it back into its sheath before Chelsea pushed me out of the kitchen, and it was still with me. Less than a second later, it was in my hand, and I was bringing it up in a hard, slashing motion that seemed born half out of instinct and half out of some incomprehensible muscle memory.

The man’s throat opened like a flower, skin parting in a blossom of red blood and yellow fat. He made a startled choking sound and staggered back, dropping his own knife.

Blood was gushing down my front, already starting to slow down, and for the first time, I had to wonder how quickly I could actually heal. Was I going to run out of blood before my body closed the hole? Did it matter? I’d just killed a man. A pureblood, even, one of my betters in every possible way.

I sagged in the Bridge Troll’s grasp, all the fight going out of me, trying to ignore the choking sounds from the dying man and the high, agonized wailing from Dame Altair.

“Fuck this,” rumbled the Bridge Troll. He shoved me away from him, so hard I bounced off the edge of one of the metal boxes before hitting the ground again. “Come on, El. We’re out of here.”

“But Kyle—”

“Come on!”

Then they were gone. No more screaming, no more stabbing. Just gone, and everything was quiet in the alley.

In the distance, I heard the sounds of the human city. Cars rolling by, some kind of rubber bladder being honked, like children were having a wild party, loud alarms. None of it slowed or stopped for me, as I bled in the alley, alone with a dead man. I tried to pull myself into a sitting position. I couldn’t. I didn’t have the focus, or the strength.

Then there was a new sound. The sound of wings. I squeezed my eyes as tightly shut as I could, no longer trying to sit up; instead, I tried to turn my face away. Looking at the night-haunts was forbidden. I didn’t know why, only that it was. People who saw them never made it home.

The wings got louder, and louder, until I was surrounded in every possible direction. And a small, puzzled voice said, “Aunt Birdie?”

I didn’t move.

“Aunt Birdie, why are you here? You were asked not to summon us again.”

The voice was close to my face, and I couldn’t help thinking that whoever it was, they were speaking to me. I knew I wasn’t allowed to look. I knew it would do me no good in this world.

I still opened my eyes.

A figure about twice the size of a pixie hung in the air in front of my nose, held up by wings like fast-beating skeleton leaves, the delicate veins left when the flesh of a leaf has rotted away. It wasn’t glowing, like a pixie would have been; instead, it was pale as a moon-washed beach, faintly silvered and alien enough to be unsettling.

If I focused past that, I could tell it was a child, a little girl approaching her teens, wearing a winding white dress and no shoes. Her hair was brown, straight and uncombed, and her ears were softly pointed, topped in tufts of fur like a lynx’s. She didn’t look like a shapeshifter. She didn’t look like any sort of fae I knew. She was something terrifying and new.

“Oh, Aunt Birdie,” she said, deep sadness in her voice. “We knew what she’d done—she can’t touch the dead, everyone has their limits—but not the whole of it, and I didn’t know what she’d done to you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry my mother is hurting everyone because you tried to save me. I know you tried to save me. I watched, after I joined the flock. I saw more of everything than I wanted to see, and I know you tried. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, and it shouldn’t be like this.”

I stared at her.

“Tybalt is looking for you. He’s getting closer all the time, and he’ll have his way clear to you sooner than you might think, if he keeps up like this. It’s going to be okay. I know it’s going to be okay.”

I swallowed. My throat was so dry it ached, and I still couldn’t really move, couldn’t even tell if I’d stopped breathing. All I could do was swallow, and stare.

The hovering figure darted closer, setting one tiny hand against my cheek for a moment. Her skin was cool.

“This is her fault, not yours, and I know you’ll fix it, because you always fix everything,” she said. “That’s why Faerie makes heroes. Because sometimes we need someone who can fix things. I’m just sorry for what has to happen next. You can rest now. Just for a little while.”

The strange flying girl who seemed to know me and might or might not be a night-haunt said I could rest. That was good enough for me. I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of wings as I tried to melt into the ground.

It became a lot less reassuring as it was joined by the sound of ripping, chewing, and chomping, but the wings were still there, and so I tried to focus on the wings.

The ripping stopped. The wings receded into the distance, becoming nothing but the whistling of the wind, and I knew, absolutely, that I was alone in the alley.

I was also too weak to move. That didn’t make my situation any better than it had been a few moments before. Well, there wasn’t a knife sticking out of me. That part was an improvement. But I had apparently killed a man, and a pureblood man at that. Moving Day made it safer—not safe, but safer—for me to be outside the familiar confines of my family’s wards. It didn’t make me immune to the Law. If those people who’d accosted me told anyone . . .

I could be tracked down. Blood magic would lead the Queen’s guard right to Mother’s door, and even she wouldn’t be able to protect me. Maybe her powers were great enough to cleanse me of any traces of the dead man’s blood, but that would require me not only getting to her but telling her what I’d done.

No matter how this evening ended, I was going to be in so much trouble. I was already in so much pain that thinking was getting harder and harder, although that may have been more about the blood loss than anything else. I swallowed again. Why was my mouth so dry? Did blood magic make you thirsty all the time or something?