Page 81 of Sleep No More

“Unless we want to head for the Undersea, I’m not seeing a lot of choices,” said Ginevra. “And there’s no way most of you would survive the Shadow Roads long enough to get there. Toby would, normally, but right now, I’m a little loath to try it.”

“I don’t know this world the way people Titania bothered to enchant do, and that’s a good thing, because you don’t want me on the other side.” The Luidaeg looked to Etienne. “Tell me about Chelsea.”

He blinked. “I hardly think this is the time—”

“I don’t see where we’re going to have a better time. I know her story where I come from, and that’s the story she knows now too. Tell me your version.”

“I . . . My liege was having one of his moods, and I felt uneasy in his halls. I decided to go wandering in the human world for a time, and see what could be seen. I admit, I did think to perhaps dally with a mortal woman and fulfill my duty to Faerie, if I found her comely and she found me an acceptable lover.” His cheeks flushed red at the admission. “I remembered the tales I had from my own father, of mortal women when he was young. He made it sound like an endless parade of carnality, like the hint of otherworldliness I carried on my shoulders would be an irresistible attraction and they would fall over themselves to bed me.”

“But it wasn’t like that, was it,” asked the Luidaeg, with poisonous amusement. “Turns out, humans are people, and you can’t just crook your finger and make their clothes come flying off.”

“Indeed,” said Etienne, with some vestigial frustration in his voice. “The stories I’d always been told about the human world were untrue, and I began to sate my curiosity by spending time there, trying to learn the fact behind the fiction. I met Bridget in a coffee shop near the university campus, in Berkeley. She was clever and cutting, and before long, I was smitten. When she welcomed me to her bed, it felt not like I was blessing her house with magic, but like she was giving me a great and wonderous gift of which I might not be found worthy. Through her company, I came to learn still more of humanity—and I was not the only one learning. My Bess is what the humans call a ‘professor of folklore.’ She studies stories of our kind, and passes them on to human youngsters as they prepare for their adulthoods. By the time she found herself with child, she knew full well what I was, having worked it out some time before.”

He took a deep breath. “I still thought to be away with the babe in the night. I loved her mother very well, and had no desire to harm her so, but I knew my duty, and I knew why I had dallied with her in the beginning. Chelsea was an infant. She would never have known. I entered the nursery. I picked up my infant daughter. And the door opened, and Bridget was there, an iron pan in her hand, telling me our affairs were not so easily ended.

“We spoke honestly after that, for perhaps the first time, and while it took some time for trust to be reestablished, we found a new peace between us. I stayed by her side, attending to my duties in Shadowed Hills at night and returning to her during the day. We raised our girl together. I taught them both what I could, to keep Bridget safe and Chelsea concealed, and we prepared to run for Golden Shore on the day when concealment ceased to be possible. But Bridget loved her job, and I loved my liege, and we didn’t want to go. I began to watch for opportunities to have away with one of Simon’s daughters, in the hopes that they could cut our tangled knot in two.”

“Was that your only way out?” asked the Luidaeg. “Had you heard rumors, maybe, of a place where changelings could go without leaving the Mists?”

“Everyone’s heard those rumors,” said Etienne dismissively.

“Yes, but I’m not a part of the world where you were raising your daughter in secrecy, and I’m not part of ‘everyone,’” said the Luidaeg. “Tell me what you heard.”

“Supposedly,” said Etienne, with slow displeasure, “changelings who find themselves dissatisfied with their place can flee to a man who lives in the underworld of the mortal side of San Francisco, and he will hide them, protect them, and put them to work. The rumors say he has a knowe of his own, or perhaps a shallowing, a space scraped out of the Summerlands and barred to pureblood intervention. They say the changelings who go to him are thieves and worse, and that he never lets them go. To serve him once is to serve him evermore and always.”

“His name?” asked the Luidaeg.

“Devin,” said Etienne.

“Dead in my world, but okay,” said the Luidaeg. “Makes sense, though. Stacy was one of his ‘kids,’ and Titania was Stacy—she remembers everything Stacy knew, which means Devin would seem like a logical safety valve for the pressure that this kind of system is going to build up. People are still people, even here, and even if some of the rules you’re living under are so contradictory that you’ve all learned to tie your own brains in knots to justify them, as long as she leaves you with free will, some of you are going to rebel. Golden Shore catches the ones who want out of the system but don’t want to leave Faerie altogether, and Devin takes care of the rest. That’s where we can go. We can’t stay here, we can’t access the tower, and we can’t make it all the way to Golden Shore without exhausting Chelsea and getting us all caught. But we can go Home.”

The way she said that, it became a proper noun, meant to be capitalized and noted. I frowned. “How are we supposed to get there?”

“We have a decent number of teleporters, but I’m the only one who knows the way, assuming it’s in the same place here that it was in reality,” she said, frowning, and looked to Chelsea. “Hey. You’re used to living in the human world, right?”

“Right,” said Chelsea.

“Can I give you an address?”

“Like a street address? Sure. It’d help if you can give me some landmarks to go with it, but if you know where we’re going, I may know the way.”

“And can you hold a portal open long enough for us all to get through?”

“I held bigger and farther when we went to Toronto for the wedding,” said Chelsea smartly.

The Luidaeg smirked. “Just checking. Okay.” She rattled off a string of names and numbers that meant nothing to me, ending with the location of something called a “BART station.” Chelsea nodded, apparently understanding every incomprehensible word.

She took a few steps away from the group, taking a deep breath. “Okay. I have a longer range than most Tuatha—and that’s not bragging, Dad, you’re the one who told me that—but I haven’t been doing much beyond popping myself around for the last four months. I need a second to center myself before I do this.”

“Take as much time as you need, while remembering that eventually someone’s going to think to come looking for us here.” The Luidaeg smiled at her, showing serrated teeth. “I’d say ‘no pressure,’ but I can’t lie.”

Chelsea glared at her without heat. What kind of world was the “real” Faerie, if kids weren’t afraid of the sea witch?

Finally, Chelsea raised both hands, inscribing a wide circle in the air. On the other side, I could see a brick wall, stomach-churningly like the alley I’d landed in when she’d shoved me through a different portal. The air crackled with the smell of her magic.

“Through here,” she said, sounding strained. “I opened the door in an alley. You should be able to get through without being seen.”

“Don’t forget human disguises,” said the Luidaeg. “We’re stepping into the mortal world.” She called no magic, cast no spells, but her features shifted subtly as she moved toward the circle, becoming indefinably mortal in a complex, concrete way.