Page 70 of Sleep No More

“This may hurt,” she murmured, and yanked the dagger—or whatever it was—out of my leg, clearing the wound so it could start to knit itself closed.

The smell of bonfire and blood was everywhere, drowning the world, and my arms were cold almost to the elbow, making my fingers clumsy, making the remaining threads harder to hold. Still I kept yanking and snapping and pulling them away, until I suddenly smelled peppermint and basil, and the last of the threads came away in my hands, and I opened my eyes.

NINETEEN

MY HEAD WAS POUNDING like a timekeeper’s drum, and my eyes wouldn’t quite focus. I looked down at my leg. There was a hole through my kirtle but no corresponding hole in me; it had healed cleanly after Ginevra got the dagger out of me.

A woman’s voice I didn’t recognize rose and fell not far from me, ululating in a steady wail. I tried to force my aching eyes to look at the source of the sound, and finally saw the yellow woman who’d been seated next to Michael—the one almost as enchanted as he was—draped over something in his chair, clinging to it and sobbing.

Then she shifted, and I saw what she was holding.

It was a lanky teenage boy, not quite old enough to be considered an adult, with shaggy hair that was white until about halfway along the individual strands, where it transitioned to brown, giving it the somewhat disconcerting appearance of brown smoke. He was dressed in clothes from the mortal world, and his eyes were closed; he appeared to be unconscious.

“That,” I said, somewhat woozily, “is not Blind Michael.”

“No,” said the Luidaeg, tone grim. “That’s Anthony Brown.”

The name meant nothing to me. Ginevra made a complicated sound, somewhere between a gasp and a groan, and kept holding me up as the Luidaeg moved toward the wailing woman. Blind Michael’s Riders still surrounded us, many of them holding weapons at the ready, but as yet, none had made the move to strike.

“Acacia,” she said, once she was close enough to have a prayer of being heard above the wailing. “Acacia, I’m so sorry. But that wasn’t your husband, and it wasn’t my brother. This boy was placed under an enchantment by your mother, who’s trying to take over our world. I know it hurts right now. I know. But nothing has actually been lost. Nothing has ended but a lie.”

The woman continued to wail, even as the Luidaeg stepped up onto the low platform beneath the chairs, working her arms around the boy and easing him away from Acacia.

“Toby?” she called. “Little help here?”

My head hurt so much that I was afraid it might pop if I tried to shout back or, worse, to do any more magic. Despite that, I knew better than to ignore her. I slipped another of those hard red stones between my lips and let it dissolve on my tongue, washing fatigue and pain both away in a wave of raw, radiant power.

I straightened, standing on my own, and focused my attention on Acacia as I moved to join the Luidaeg. “I can make this all make sense,” I said. “Do you want me to?”

Still wailing, she nodded.

I closed my eyes and reached.

As before, it was easier to catch hold of the spell than it had been when I was working without the blood of the sea witch on my tongue, easier to grab and pull and unravel something I should never have dared to so much as touch. The pain, however, was back to the level I’d experienced with January and Chelsea, horrible and agonizing but oddly manageable after seeing how much worse it could be. I pulled until the screaming stopped and the last of the threads came loose, and then I teetered, nearly toppling over.

Ginevra was there to catch me, keeping me from doing more than stumbling. “Hey, none of that,” she said. “Good job, Toby. You’ll be proud of yourself when this is all over and you understand what you’ve done.”

I opened my eyes. “Can I be proud of myself on the other side of a dose of laudanum?” I asked.

Acacia wasn’t crying anymore. Instead, she was recoiling, looking in horror at the boy in the Luidaeg’s arms. The Luidaeg, for her part, was strangely tender as she held the motionless stranger close, keeping him from touching the ground.

“All right, you assholes,” she said, clearly pitching her voice at the gathered Riders. “We don’t have the time to break the spell on every single one of you individually, but your master’s gone, and your mistress is on our side. Can we trust you to keep your hands and your halberds to yourselves?”

“She just said that for the alliteration,” said Ginevra in a low voice, clearly trying to make me laugh.

It would have worked, too, if not for my throbbing head. I snorted with brief amusement anyway, then shot her a quelling look. She shrugged, unrepentant.

Still carrying the unconscious boy, the Luidaeg climbed down from the platform and walked back over to us. “This is Anthony,” she said, nodding toward his face. “He’s your nephew, sort of. His mother was a good friend of yours, before she had to go away. Titania hates him and his siblings in specific, but my father bound her against hurting them the last time he had the chance to make her listen to his rules, so I guess this was the worst thing she could do, even while she was building her perfect little nightmare paradise. But this explains a lot.”

“It does?” I asked. “How?”

“Anthony is a descendant of Titania. With him and Acacia holding down the skerry, Titania would have no barriers to using this place as a dumping ground. I can tell from your eyes that you’re hurting, and I’m sorry about that, but I have to ask—do you think you can look for any more traces of her magic? Just so we know if there’s anyone else here who shouldn’t be?”

“All the people by Dean’s fire,” I said. “They’re not supposed to be here, but they didn’t have any magic on them.”

“Hey,” said Raysel. The Luidaeg turned to look at her. She didn’t flinch. “My mother’s here.”

“Luna?” asked the Luidaeg, eyebrows raising.