Page 84 of Sleep No More

“I don’t think I’d like to be called ‘Carl.’”

“Not my name, you doofus. You’d pick a new name for yourself, something modern and mundane, something that helps you blend in with everyone else.”

The Luidaeg was waving for me to come back. I nodded politely to Carl.

“Not the goal, but I appreciate the advice,” I said, and moved to rejoin the group.

Negotiations did not appear to have gone well. Devin was smiling smugly, while the Luidaeg was glowering at him. “I need you to check for the scope of Titania’s spell and remove it,” she said, curtly.

“You know I can’t just—”

“Now.”

Her tone didn’t leave a lot of room for argument. I popped one of the blood gems into my mouth and closed my eyes, unsurprised by the dense tangle of pink threads that appeared where Devin was standing. It outlined him completely, just like the one I’d seen around Blind Michael—or around the Luidaeg herself, when she’d been a tree.

She’d been a lot less bossy when she was a tree.

Bracing myself, I slipped another blood gem into my mouth and reached out magically, “grabbing” handfuls of the threads wrapped around Devin. His scream was immediate and blood-chilling. Around the room, more clusters of pink shifted as the watching teens began to move in my direction. If I’d been alone, my goose would have been well and truly cooked. As it was, the people I was traveling with fanned out to surround me, protecting me from the advancing figures. I kept pulling.

It was amazing, how quickly this had become almost routine. A small part of my mind noted, analytically, that “can’t lie” wasn’t the same as “has to tell us everything.” The Luidaeg had known this Devin guy was dead before we came there, and that we’d be dealing with an enchanted imposter taking his place. She’d only made a very loose stab at what I could refer to as “diplomacy,” if it had even been that, and then pivoted straight to ordering me to unbind him. Whatever she was playing at there, she clearly had a plan and just as clearly wasn’t overly interested in sharing it with the rest of us.

I pulled with freezing fingers, feeling the first tendrils of pain uncoil behind my eyes, like flaming worms beginning to burrow into my brain, and ground my teeth together as I forced myself to keep pulling. Even with the Luidaeg’s blood in my mouth, this process wasn’t fun. Oh, it was easier than it had been in the beginning, but that was such a small change that I couldn’t really credit it, not now, with my hands full of threads that didn’t exist and the cold creeping steadily toward my elbows.

“I hate this,” I muttered, and bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood.

That was the little extra bit I needed to rally and sink my fingers all the way into the spell, wrenching it away with an effort that left my head pounding and my jaw aching, and not a trace of pink in front of me. Panting, I unkinked my fingers and opened my eyes, just in time to see a much, much smaller figure crumple to the floor. It was a boy, with untidy, pale blond hair, no more than nine years old.

“Andrew,” said the Luidaeg, with weary fondness. She moved to scoop the boy off the floor, holding him as easily as if she handled children every day. He dangled in the gawky, totally limp manner of a sleeping child, showing no signs that he was aware of his surroundings.

I bent forward until my hands were resting on my knees, waiting for the room to stop spinning. The teens were still advancing, although they had yet to push the situation to an actual fight.

“What did you do to the boss?” demanded Carl.

I couldn’t answer him. I wasn’t sure I could talk if I tried. I shook my head, leaving it for the Luidaeg to answer.

“I know you won’t like this answer, but she didn’t do anything to ‘the boss,’ because you’ve never met Devin,” she said. “He died six years ago, and Home burned to the ground shortly after. Everything you remember about this place is a lie, planted in your heart like a seed to blossom and grow into a poisonous flower. This isn’t your life. This is a cruel joke played on you by someone with so much power that it never occurred to her that she might be doing harm even if she wasn’t hurting people directly. And it’s all going to be over soon.”

“For one of us,” he said, and there was a dangerous note in his voice.

Ginevra growled. It was a low, primal sound, and something about the resonance it set up in my bones made my teeth ache while also, paradoxically, chasing away some of the pounding in my head. I stood up straighter, sneaking another of the blood jewels out of my pocket at the same time. I wouldn’t have them forever; I didn’t want to get addicted. At the same time, I wouldn’t be unweaving Titania’s spells forever, and I wouldn’t need them anymore.

I slipped the blood jewel into my mouth. It burst on my tongue, and the pain receded further, still present but no longer all-consuming. I lifted my head.

Devin’s teen army was in a standoff with my equally mismatched assortment of companions, all of whom were watching them with the air of people who didn’t want to deal with this right now. Behind me, the Luidaeg turned and walked away, still carrying Andrew.

Chelsea sketched a quick circle in the air and disappeared. The teens flinched and blinked at the space where she’d been, for all the world as if they’d never seen a Tuatha transit before. Maybe they hadn’t. Tuatha aren’t terribly common in the Mists, and it was entirely possible that these people had never been at a Court that included one. Sometimes the things we feel are commonplace are the strangest of them all.

Ginevra kept growling. Grianne cracked her knuckles, utterly blank expression all the more unnerving in the absence of her Merry Dancers.

Chelsea reappeared, popping out of the air behind Carl with a coil of braided yellow and green rope in her hands. She tossed one loop of it over his shoulders, then threw the rest of the coil to Etienne, who laughed as he caught it.

“Really?” he asked.

“Really,” she said, and disappeared again.

I took a step backward, instinctively shielding Raysel and Dean with the angle of my body as I put a little distance between us and the fight that I could virtually smell coming. The air was thick with tension, and Carl was scrabbling to get the loop of rope off of his shoulders before it could become something more binding.

Etienne handed the rope to Grianne, who curtsied quickly and did a backflip into the air, vanishing. Carl was jerked forward, his efforts to remove the rope ending as he fought to stay on his feet. The rope didn’t break, but remained taut, simply disappearing into thin air until Grianne appeared on the other side of the room and jerked it tight, beginning to tie him up by disappearing and reappearing multiple times, the rope somehow never breaking, even when one end of it was clearly anchored on absolutely nothing.