Page 44 of The Innocent Sleep

“Yes.” The admission pained me.

“Why?”

“Seers are . . .” I paused, sorting through my thoughts. “They’re not guarantees. A Seer glimpses a possible future, or several, and tells you how to claim or avoid them. The big prophecies, the ones that tend to slide into story and be remembered, happen when so many futures align that the Seers can’t focus on anything else. If you lose in nineteen out of twenty possible endings, they don’t see the one where you win. That’s why we tend to listen. If Mary says patience gets us what we need, then we have to be . . .” Bile rose in my throat. I swallowed it back, and forced out the final word, resenting every syllable: “Patient.”

“You’re really going to stay away from October until Moving Day?”

“It seems I must, for the sake of never leaving her alone again. I’ll keep my peace, and watch from a distance. Come Moving Day, I’ll enter the tower to set the next phase into motion, and then speak to any member of her family who happens to cross my path. Until then, they say patience is a virtue. It seems I am to be a virtuous man.”

“But there’s things we can do in the meanwhile,” said Ginevra. “She mentioned her First—that’s the Luidaeg, right? The sea witch? You said she was missing . . .”

“Eira hates her. Titania was the one who bound her into what she is today. It makes sense that Titania wouldn’t want her around, with or without her memories intact.”

“All right. Where could she have gone?”

“Not to the Undersea. Pete hasn’t seen her either.” Talking about the location of Firstborn in such a casual manner was still strange and unsettling.

Ginevra didn’t seem to find it so. She frowned, tapping her fingers against her chin. “So she’s probably somewhere like the Court or the Library, that can’t be accessed through most normal means.”

“A skerry or a sealed shallowing would seem to make the most sense, yes,” I agreed. “She could be anywhere.”

“Good thing we apparently have almost four whole months to find her, then,” said Ginevra.

I didn’t throw anything at her. Sadly, there was no one else present to admire my restraint, as we had arrived in my private quarters. Only semi-private; she and Raj could both come and go freely. So could Julie, the changeling girl I all but raised after her mother died, but she seemed to have forgotten our relationship in the transition to this new world. According to Gabriel, she had been taken in fosterage by another, a Cait Sidhe woman who had lost her own child, and grown up happy, surrounded by love. There was no point in ripping her away from that before it became necessary.

“There are other locked realms where she could be hidden,” I said, slowly.

“Do lost people ever wind up in the Court, or just lost things?” asked Ginevra.

I stared at her. “Things,” I said, firmly. “Never living, either. This is not a lost and found for pets and children who’ve wandered away from their keepers!”

“Or for sea witches, I guess.” She sighed. “That would have been too easy.”

“I would suggest Blind Michael’s skerry, as I know it survived his death, and rumor says he’s still alive in this version of our world, but people have always accessed that by claiming a Babylon candle from the Luidaeg herself—or when he abducted them. We’ll find no answers there.”

“Maybe I could find one of those candles, though. It seems worth checking. Come on.” Ginevra beckoned me to follow her as she made for the door, energized by the thought of a task she might actually be able to perform.

I, in opposition, was exhausted and dispirited, the weight of the situation descending on me with a new, crushing finality. Four months. We had been married for such a short time, and October was already denied to me, and I to her. Did she even know she missed me? Or was I just a shadow in her dreams, something to regret without comprehension?

It would almost be better if she had forgotten me entirely—I didn’t want her to suffer—but I couldn’t wish for that, no matter how merciful it might be.

Ginevra led me out of the room and down the hall, to a stairway that wound sharply, unsteadily upward. I eyed it warily. Stairs in the Court of Cats are not trustworthy things, as a general rule; everything we have is lost, after all, and lost staircases are often better described as “death traps.”

Still, she seemed to know where she was going, and as she charged up the stairs, I followed close behind. After ten steps, she shifted to her feline form, and I did the same, trying to leap where she leapt, step where she stepped, and match her move for move. Her tail was a flame-colored comma, leading me ever onward, and it was surprisingly like playing with my sisters, back in long-gone Londinium, when we had been careless and young and unaware of how terribly wonderful the world was going to be.

I missed them still. I expected I always would, even to the very end of time.

The stairs ended not at a landing but at an open doorway looking out on a vast warehouse-like room filled with junk. Ginevra leapt through the doorway, landing lightly on a rafter, and began to pace along it. I followed, allowing her to lead me.

Rooms like this formed all across the Court of Cats like cysts in wounded flesh, filling with the debris and detritus of the Summerlands and mortal world alike. If a thing was lost and not destroyed, it wound up here, at least until it was found again. If one of us found an object in the jumble, it would no longer be lost, and wouldn’t become a relic for some human archaeologist or curious child to stumble over.

Many famous treasure-hunters have been Cait Sidhe. This isn’t always something to be proud of, but it’s something that has purchased a remarkable amount of tuna over the years.

Ginevra began descending, using shelves and chests as steps to the floor. Again, I followed, and we both shifted back to bipedal form when we reached the ground.

“Babylon candles are made using people’s blood,” I said. “I doubt anyone’s lost one. We probably couldn’t use it even if they had.”

“Everything is already terrible, focus on finding something that can help.” Ginevra stalked off into the shelves, poking at things as she passed them. I watched her go and sighed, feeling momentarily helpless. This situation needed magic other than my own. It needed solutions I couldn’t access. It needed October.