Page 84 of The Innocent Sleep

Simon watched his approach with wide eyes and, when Patrick was close enough, threw himself into the other man’s embrace, the two of them holding each other so tightly that I would have been hard-pressed to work a sigh between them.

“Oh, I missed you,” murmured Patrick, and kissed him.

And all hell broke loose.

TWENTY-THREE

SIMON RECOILED, AN EXPRESSION of shock and abject horror on his face. “Sir,” he said, in a strangled tone. “I am a married man.”

“Tybalt, what is this?” asked Patrick, mingled pain and anger in his eyes as he looked past Simon to me. “When you called for us to come, we thought—”

“Technically, I only called for Amphitrite,” I said. “I wasn’t sure she’d be able to make the journey, even alone, much less with passengers.”

Dianda was storming toward us across the water, a look of burning fury on her face. She stopped when she reached Patrick, putting an arm protectively around his shoulders and directing a glare in our direction. “What, we weren’t suffering enough, so you had to make sure we felt every bit of the rejection and isolation you did?”

“It wasn’t my intention,” I said.

Simon was still moving backward, away from Patrick, seeming utterly mortified. His hand shook as he touched his lips, and in that gesture I could see the love he’d pushed so carefully away, lest it anger the woman he had already pledged to honor all his days. Simon had loved Patrick long before they were parted, or their current relationship would never have been able to work.

Dianda, on the other hand, was only now learning to love the strange and slippery man whose heart had accompanied her first husband beneath the sea, and from the way she was glaring now, endlessly fierce in the defense of her family, it seemed that love might not long survive. I stepped forward, holding up my hands in a placating gesture.

“Dianda, I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have guessed sooner that you would come to the surface with Amphitrite; I should have asked Simon and August to wait in the car, or at least warned them in more detail of how you might react to seeing them.”

“How would you expect us to react?” demanded Dianda. “They’re our family!”

“They don’t remember that,” I said. “If it helps at all, October is just as mistrustful of me. Titania took care to split up families when she thought she could get away with it. You aren’t unique.”

“But we’re the ones who fought our way here from the bottom of the sea,” said Dianda sourly. “Why did you even call us here?”

“October and Ginevra have gone to find the sea witch,” I said. “We believe Titania intends to Ride at midnight on Hallows’ Eve, as is traditional. I had hoped Amphitrite, as her daughter, might be able to help us stop her. If we can’t break Titania’s Ride, she’ll lock Faerie into this form, and sunder the Undersea from the land forever.”

“That might be better for your survival,” said Dianda. “Hard to drown a man without the depths.”

“Simon didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said.

She shrugged, glaring at me with hopeless rage. “Who said I was talking about him? And why should I believe you?”

“You can’t drown Tybalt,” said Pete. “That would be death by water.”

“There’s one way we can prove it,” said August, shaking off her shock and stepping forward. She eyed Patrick and Dianda warily, like they were dangerous beasts of a variety she had never seen before. I turned to look at her. She met my eyes, and shrugged. “You keep telling me I can do it. Maybe now’s when we need to prove it.”

“I thought you were concerned that memories of this world might be lost in restoring memories of the other,” I said.

“Everything you’ve said about that other world tells me that my father still knows and loves me there; that my father will always know and love me, no matter what,” she said. “You can’t say the same for my sister. The situation isn’t the same.”

Simon turned toward her, naked desperation on his face. “Please,” he said, in a half-strangled voice. “Please, do it.”

“I’ll need a knife,” said August.

Amphitrite pushed herself upright and plucked one of the scales from the outside of her thigh, lobbing it underhand toward the shore. It stretched and grew as it flew through the air, finally embedding itself in the sand as a blade easily six inches long, with a handle of unpolished shell. August bent to pull it loose. The blade gleamed oil-dark and filled with rainbows, like the rest of Amphitrite’s scales.

August glanced at her in surprise. Amphitrite shrugged.

“Your mother is my sister on the paternal side, and I didn’t attend the presentation of your birth, which means I never gave you a proper gift. Call this a birthday present with several decades of accumulated interest on top, and mind the edge. It’s sharp.” She grimaced then, putting her hands back on her knees. “And whatever you kids are planning to do, get around to doing it, okay? Mom’s trying to put me back where she thinks I belong. It’s not guided—if she were doing this consciously, I’d already be five fathoms down and dropping—but even a reflex is going to push me out sooner or later, and without me to play anchor, we’re all going down. Hurry it up.”

August nodded, looking at the knife in her hand. She looked back up at Simon, paling slightly at the thought of what she was about to do.

“Please,” he repeated.