Page 49 of Sleep No More

“No one wants to take your sister away from you,” said the woman with the bicolored hair, raising her hands in a placating gesture. “No one has said that. No one at all.”

“If she stays here and I don’t, how is that not taking her away from me?” demanded August.

“Well, for one thing, you could eventually choose to leave the tower and relocate to Golden Shore, assuming you could get permission from the local regents,” said Father, slowly. “They rely heavily on the cooperation of the local pixie colony for their lighting and some of their more delicate tasks; the colony near us is very fond of you, and I’m sure we could convince them to come with you long enough to talk the local pixies into putting in a good word.”

Grianne’s Merry Dancers bobbed and wove around her head in an elaborate pattern as she shot him an amused look. “You think someone here can talk to pixies?” she asked.

Father shrugged. “They have Piskies and Cornish Pixies in residence. I’m quite sure they can communicate with their smaller kin. So you see, August, no one is trying to separate the two of you, and I’ll do whatever is within my power to keep that from happening, but you have to accept that things won’t go back to the way they were just because you raise your voice.”

August gave him a helpless look before she finally, reluctantly, let me go. “I hate this,” she said.

“I hate it, too,” I said, relieved that we appeared to be moving away from the topic of whether I had actually broken the Law. August’s insistence on my innocence was a pleasant thing. I didn’t want to bring it to an end.

“Those of us who’ve been trying to deal with it for the past four months hate it even more than you do,” said the strange woman.

I frowned, looking at her. I couldn’t exactly ask if the blood memories I’d seen of her companion were accurate. I knew his name, and mostly knew his face, although the man I remembered had been less hollow-cheeked and haggard, but there was one thing I had yet to confirm.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said. Her gaze snapped around to me. “I know this is a rude question to ask so bluntly, but it seems we’re shorter of time than any of us would like to be, so: are you Cait Sidhe?”

“I am,” she said, with the ghost of a smile. “And you’re the first person to recognize that so quickly since this whole mess started. How do you know my descendant line, if I may answer boldness with boldness?”

“I don’t,” I said. “I mean, I’ve never met a Cait Sidhe before. But I saw something, recently, that made me think you might be one.”

I wasn’t ready to admit to doing blood magic. Not yet. Not in front of my family.

There was a heavy smacking sound from the other side of the room. I looked toward it. Tybalt had just punched the wall.

“We have very sensitive ears as a rule,” said the woman. “Don’t mind him. My name’s Ginevra, and I’m either the Queen Regent to the Court of Dreaming Cats, or I’m a visiting Princess from the Court of Whispering Cats. It’s very confusing, and we don’t entirely understand it ourselves.”

I blinked. “Cats have Courts?”

She nodded. “We do. Oberon set us aside long, long ago, to watch over the Divided Courts and keep them in balance as much as we could. The Cait Sidhe are the only line descended from all of the Three. That grants us special responsibilities and privileges.”

“And as with all descendant lines, certain unique aspects to their magic,” said Garm.

“Well, yes,” said Ginevra. “We determine rulership not by birth but by innate magical strength. A royal cat will not necessarily sire or birth a royal kitten. Magic does as it will. All Cait Sidhe are somewhat resistant to being caught in illusions and magical deceptions. Those of us who are born royal are, well . . .”

She paused to shoot a frustrated glance at Tybalt, who was punching the wall again. Returning her attention to me, she continued:

“We’re effectively immune to illusions. We can be caught by spells that change the way we understand the world, but only briefly; they never fully take with us, and given time or reason to resist, we’ll see through virtually anything.”

“Gwragen are among the best illusionists in Faerie,” said Garm. “We can’t necessarily see through illusions, but we know when they’re around us, and for the last four months or so, the whole world’s been shrouded in illusion. It hurts my eyes. Hurts my head, too. But because we truck so much in illusion, we knew the Cait Sidhe quite well, when they still existed. So these two fetched up, claiming to be the missing cats, and they didn’t flicker or have soft edges. Not like everything else around us. Everything I am tells me that means they’re speaking truth.”

“Truth about what?” I asked, although I was direly afraid I knew.

Ginevra looked at me sadly. “October, you’re smarter than that; you already know,” she said. “The truth is, four months ago, Titania wrapped as much of Faerie as she could reach in an illusion so seamless that it’s taken us this long to find a way to reach you. We need your help if we’re going to put Faerie back the way it’s meant to be. We need you so we can save our world.”

“Oh,” I said faintly. “Is that all?”

FOURTEEN

AUGUST STEPPED IN FRONT of me again, scowling at Ginevra. “What do you think my sister is going to do to save your version of Faerie, and why do you think your version of the world is more important than ours is, anyway?”

“Because ours is the real one,” said Ginevra. “Ours is the way things really happened, and this is the way Titania thinks they should have happened, the way that puts her in charge of everything and eliminates everything she can’t control. There are hundreds of Cait Sidhe locked inside the Court of Cats right now. Royal cats are rare, and the other cats can’t see through the illusion. They can’t get out. We’ve been running ourselves ragged trying to hunt and steal enough food to keep everyone healthy, and it’s not going to work forever. And the Undersea—”

Father made a scoffing noise. Ginevra shot him a hard look.

“Out of everyone here, I’d expect you to be the last person who’d scoff at the idea of the Undersea,” she said, voice sharp. “They offered you a home when no one else would have you.”