Page 86 of Sleep No More

I stared at him. “My Fetch? You mean the death omen? If I had a Fetch walking around, I should be dead by now, not sitting here and trying to help you figure out how to break Titania’s Ride.”

“Yeah, it was complicated, and I don’t all the way understand it. I’m sure someone will explain it to you—oh, or we can get that spell off you, and then no one will have to explain.”

“I can’t take it off myself, and we need someone else who can tell us more about what they remember after it’s broken before we’re going to be able to convince August. Acacia is Firstborn, and August will probably wonder if that’s why she might have retained more memories than either of us will. My sister can be stubborn like that when she wants to be. Which is pretty much always.” I paused, looking across the room to where Chelsea was engaged in a quiet, but apparently vigorous, argument with her father. “Sir Etienne? May I have your kind leave to borrow Lady Chelsea for a moment?”

“I hope this doesn’t last long enough for me to get used to you talking like that,” muttered Dean.

Raysel giggled behind her hand.

Etienne, meanwhile, looked up sharply, then nodded. “You may, providing she comes right back over here when you’re done with her,” he said.

“Ugh. Fine, Dad,” said Chelsea, and stomped over to join me. “Appreciate the save, Toby. He’s being all protective and parental at me, and I’m not used to it, and I don’t like it. What can I do you for?”

I decided not to ask about her weird choice of words: it was a distraction from what actually mattered. “I broke the spell that was making everyone take you for a changeling.”

“Yes, and I’m way grateful for that.” Her expression turned speculative. “Not sure why setting up a whole illusion to lock me out of Faerie was easier than making Dad think my mother was some Tuatha lady who died or skipped town, but whatever. I like my actual mom, and it would have been double-dose trauma if I’d suddenly had to deal with being someone else’s kid.”

“Up until the spell was broken, though, you really thought you were a changeling. You totally belonged to Titania’s version of the world.”

“Ah,” said Chelsea, and nodded. “You’re working your way around to asking how much I remember, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

She shrugged. “The last four months are really clear. Everything about them is just like I lived through them, all the classes, the commute, watching Mom argue with Dad when he’d get home from the Court, trying not to get caught out by the fae, feeling like something was wrong with the whole world. Like I was out of step with myself. Everything before that is . . . it’s there, but it’s hazy, almost, like a story someone else told me once and asked me to believe in. The life I actually lived is a lot clearer. What’s funny, though? I used to be sort of mad at Dad, for not being there when I was a kid. Here I was, not all the way human and trying to cope with that while Mom pulled her hair out looking for ways to hide me, and he was off dancing with the fairies.” Chelsea chuckled. “Only in my version of the world, it was because he didn’t know I existed. In this version, he was there from the beginning. He watched me grow up, he taught me how to throw a punch when I was ten—and I still know how, even if that never really happened. I think I love him more because I dreamt I lived inside a lie. Is that what you needed to know? The love you already had will come back when the spell comes off. The love you grew inside it will still be with you.”

“I . . . Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I needed to know.”

I didn’t know my own full history, and I didn’t see the point in asking. More and more, it looked like breaking the spell was going to be our only real option. Staying as I was wasn’t going to be on the table, and to be completely honest with myself, that ship had already more than sailed. I’d seen too many fragments of the other me’s life. I understood too many things I should have known nothing about.

And then there was Tybalt.

I didn’t know the man. I’d met him once, and I hadn’t enjoyed the experience. I was also married to him, and cared about him enough to dream about him even when I had no idea who he was. It was a contradiction in every way possible, and the longer I stayed snarled in this spell, the longer he was living in a world where I didn’t know him but he knew me well enough to look at me the way he had in my first blood memory. I needed to get back to him.

And if what Chelsea said was true, I could do that, and I would still love my sister. That mattered more than anything else. I finally opened the package of ham as Chelsea walked back over to Etienne, pulling out a cold, limp slice of improbably pink meat. I frowned at it. It wobbled.

Glaring at my lunch wasn’t going to do me any good. I wrapped the two orange squares around the ham and took a bite, nearly gagging at the taste. It was nothing like either meat or cheese, but was some indescribable third thing that my body nonetheless recognized as food. Even as I found the flavor revolting, my mouth demanded I eat the whole roll, and I found myself making a second before I finished swallowing the first.

“Great,” I muttered. “Guess this is something I ate before the world changed.”

“Yeah, your diet’s never been what I would call astonishingly well balanced,” said Dean. “If May didn’t cook, I think you’d probably have starved by now.”

Raysel looked alarmed. “I can’t cook,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” said Dean. “If May doesn’t feed you, Quentin understands takeout menus.”

I couldn’t sit through another discussion of Quentin as if he were someone I should voluntarily spend time around. “Excuse me,” I said, and stood, walking back over to the Luidaeg. She was still on the couch, eyes closed, clearly awake, since she was sitting perfectly upright and continuing to stroke Andrew’s hair with one hand. “Are we just going to sit around here until the Ride starts?”

“You have a better idea?”

“We could do something.”

She opened one eye. “Oh, very clever. The solver of problems has solved this problem as well. Tell me, o solver, what should we do?”

“We could . . .” I stalled. “We could find my sister. I can’t remove the spell from myself, but I think I can convince her to take it off me at this point, if I can just talk to her about it. Back at the tower, you said Chelsea could make it all the way to Golden Shore. She could take me there to look for them. Even if they aren’t there, I bet Arden could tell me where they went, and then I could see August. Won’t it be easier to break the Ride if I know what I can actually do?”

“That is, somehow, not the most ridiculous plan you have ever proposed to me.” She closed her eye again. “But no, Toby. I will not be sending you off on your own to try and find your historically fairly selfish sister and convince her to do something she doesn’t want to do. You’re staying where I can keep an eye on you.”

“Then we should—”