Page 87 of The Innocent Sleep

“Can you hide us from them?”

“Not while they’re looking right at us. I’m good. I’m not so good that they wouldn’t notice the people they’re moving toward blinking out of existence.”

Out of . . .“I have an idea,” I said. “It’s going to be dreadful, and you’re all going to hate it, but it might get us away from here. Simon, take my hand.”

I reached behind myself, and was relieved when I felt Simon’s hand in mine, clammy but grasping me firmly.

“Hold on to August,” I instructed. “Garm, grab her sleeve.”

Bemused, he did as I said, and we continued walking, now joined in a rough chain.

“Everyone, take a deep breath,” I said.

The beach was littered with driftwood, clumps of kelp, and the remains of bonfires, black char standing out against the pebbled sand. Nothing tall enough to cast a massive shadow, but then, I have never needed a massive shadow.

Garm, who had been Grianne’s friend and comrade before I entered the picture, realized what I was about to do even before I did it. He inhaled and exhaled several times in quick succession before taking a massive breath. Simon and August were slower to catch on, but I waited until I heard them both inhale sharply, then stepped forward into the nearest shadow.

It was small, cast by a piece of half-burnt driftwood. That, combined with the strain of pulling three people in my wake, made the transition less like a simple step into the dark and more like pitching forward, a moment in terrible freefall before my feet hit the ground. Simon’s hand slipped in mine. I clamped down, holding on as tightly as I could, and had to hope the others had the sense to do the same.

Distance is different in the shadows. It still exists, but much as the Summerlands are smaller than the mortal world, the shadows are smaller than the Summerlands. Traveling from one place to another happens more quickly in the dark, if it happens at all. We didn’t need to go far, or I would never have attempted this.

Exhaustion is a risk when you run too hard along the Shadow Roads. Cait Sidhe have died there, pushing themselves too hard and collapsing in the dark, where their bodies may go unfound forever. Royal cats are blessed with more than the standard number of lives, although that number is far from infinite, and I had exhausted myself to the point of death at least once before. I got better. There was no guarantee that it would happen again, or for any of my semi-willing passengers, none of whom fully understood the risk they were taking.

I used the fear of something going wrong to push myself as far as I could safely go, then toppled out of the shadows and onto the soft, dense, evergreen-scented mat of fallen needles covering the ground. I rolled onto my back, gasping for air, and tried to count the equally winded voices around me, verifying that no one had been left behind.

One, two . . . and there was three. I didn’t need to go back into the dark to hunt for a lost companion. I felt an obligation to Garm, who had been my first unexpected ally in this strange new version of our world; if I’d managed to lose August or Simon, October would murder me. So really, I would have returned to the shadows no matter which of them had managed to lose their hold.

All the better that I didn’t need to. I stared up at the redwoods looming all around us, trying to steady my breathing and figure out where the hell we were at the same time.

August, unsurprisingly, was the first to recover. I heard her scramble to her feet, kicking needles in all directions. “Father?” she asked. Then, in a voice gone shrill with panic: “Father!”

Simon coughed as she dropped back to her knees, presumably beside him. “I’m fine, August, I’m fine. That was just a longer run with less breathing than I’m used to . . . Squeezing the air out of me won’t make it better.”

“Oh, Father, you frightened me,” August moaned.

“I’m sorry, my dear.” He wasn’t coughing anymore, although he was still wheezing. Then he chuckled, sounding a little strained. “It’s very odd to hear you call me that, even with four months of memory telling me it’s correct. I’ve always been ‘Papa’ to you. Amy hated it so much that I allowed you to be informal with me . . .”

His voice trailed off, tone turning perplexed.

Garm groaned. “Tybalt? You alive over there?”

“Sadly, yes.” I pushed myself into a sitting position, shaking frost and redwood needles out of my hair, and looked around. We were in the clearing that should have housed Arden’s knowe. A reasonable destination for me to have landed upon, all things considered. At least it was someplace I knew.

“I didn’t know you could do that!”

“Technically, I can’t,” I said. “The Shadow Roads are difficult to traverse with one passenger. Three is beyond even my capabilities. If we hadn’t been going such a short distance, this would have had a very different outcome.”

Garm blanched. “You mean you weren’t sure?”

“I was sure those people were coming for us, and that if I didn’t do something, we were going to be taken.” I pushed myself to my feet, relieved when the world only spun a little in response. “Further, I was sure that once my strength began to flag, I’d be able to throw us out of the shadows. I only had to hope we’d find sufficient distance first.”

“Well done,” said Simon, looking at me over the top of August’s head. She was clinging to him like she had no intention of ever letting go.

“It would have been better if not needed,” I said. “How were we followed here?”

The answer would have to wait, as the sound of boots marching through the undergrowth reached us. I looked to Garm, gesturing frantically. He nodded and began waving his hands, the haze of an illusion settling over us and erasing my companions from sight. I was sure that from their perspective, the same had happened to me; we were, for the moment, invisible.

None too soon. Four men in the livery of the Mists emerged from the wood, looking around the clearing with wary eyes.