Page 116 of Tidal Creatures

Leaning as far back in her chair as she can, until she feels the front legs lift off the floor and the back of her head is resting against the wall, she stares at the ceiling and wonders how long she’s supposed to endure this before she’s allowed to start waking people up. That’s probably one of those social rules you learn through osmosis when you’re allowed to actually be a part of the world and not just an adjunct to everything that’s happening around you.

“Kelpie?” Luis’s voice is thick with sleep. She whips around, the front legs of her chair thudding back to the floor, and finds him standing in the kitchen doorway, rubbing his eyes with one balled-up fist and blinking at her. In case it wasn’t clear enough that he just got up, his hair is sticking out in all directions, lending him a comical air. “What are you doing here?”

“I, um. I’m staying here too,” she says. “Did your mom not tell you?”

She’s not sure what Isabella will have told him, or what she can have told him. Does he even know his father is dead? Do they know who has the body? If the alchemists have him, friendly, non-magical Juan, they can bring him back as an auf, they can turn him into the weapon he never asked or deserved to be—

But that’s a problem for later, for people more accomplished and experienced than she is. For right now, she only has to deal with Luis, who has stopped rubbing his eyes and is looking at her plaintively, as Bobby comes up behind him and starts nudging the back of the boy’s knees with his cold, wet nose.

“I was going to take Bobby out. Is there breakfast when I get back?”

“Not the kind your mom will make when she gets up, but I bet we can manage toast without setting the kitchen on fire.”

Luis nods and heads for the back door, and Kelpie rises to begin looking for things they can eat without using anything more complicated than the toaster. Bread, milk, and cereal are all reasonably easy to locate, and she can only hope she’s not stealing someone’s specifically earmarked food as she toasts the first few slices and begins searching for jam and butter.

Luis comes back in a few minutes later, and for a little while, things are easy. Food is simple. He seems enchanted by the novelty of cold breakfast and sugar cereal, and doesn’t ask her any more questions, which she views as a small mercy at the beginning of what’s likely to be a long and terrible day. She’s rinsing their bowls in the sink when she hears Artemis scream.

The sound of ceramic shattering against the floor is almost drowned out by the agonizing wailing in her ears. She claps her hands over them and whirls around, seeking the source of the sound. She finds nothing. She and Luis are alone in the kitchen. He’s staring at her, frightened and confused by her sudden panic.

“Kelpie? What’s wrong?”

Artemis is still screaming, but the sound is distant, for all that it’s deafeningly loud. It’s almost enough to knock her down. She forces herself to straighten, to take her useless hands from her ears—they weren’t doing anything to block the sound, anyway; it’s not the sort of sound that stops with a physical barrier—and looks to Luis.

“When Roger and Dodger get up, tell them I had to go,” she says. “Tell them I’m sorry, but it was important. Can you do that?”

“I don’t…”

“Can you do that?”

Luis stares at her for a few more seconds, then nods, slowly and deliberately.

“I can do that.”

“Thank you,” she says, and turns, and runs, racing toward the sound as hard as she can. She hits the front door without slowing more than absolutely necessary, and then she’s outside, running toward campus, running across the city she doesn’t really know, through crowds of people who can’t see her clearly because of what she is. And for the first time, she isn’t thinking about the ones who can see her. She’s just running, moving as fast as she can with screams ringing in her ears and threatening to overwhelm her.

The cereal and toast she ate with Luis are a stone in her stomach, heavy and unyielding. She’d stop to vomit, but that would slow her down, and she doesn’t feel like they have the time to waste on something as trivial as her nausea. Artemis is still screaming, and so she’s still running, following the sound, which isn’t a sound at all, but a feeling, like razors being dragged along her nerves.

She hits the edge of campus hard and keeps on running, letting the screams guide her, arrowing in on their source as accurately as an actual arrow, like she’s been loosed from Artemis’s bow, designed to fly straight and unerringly to her target.

Her path takes her to a large brick building with students gathered outside. None of them give her a second glance. She expects, momentarily, to charge inside, but instead, the screams lead her around the building to the creek beyond, a channel cut through campus, flanked by high muddy banks. Hooves don’t give her a lot of traction on the slope, but they dig in enough that she doesn’t need to slow as she plunges down, into the water, through a faint gleam in the air and into someplace entirely other.

Diana of the moon; Diana of the underworld. There’s a reason Diana is among the most powerful Lunars, and as Kelpie stumbles to a stop on the wide stone floor of a seemingly endless cavern, she understands the reason better than she ever has. The alchemist who killed Margaret is there, as are Chang’e, Máni, and Artemis. The latter isn’t screaming. She’s bound and gagged, tied to some sort of stone spire growing straight out of the floor. Máni and Chang’e are back to back, their eyes fixed on the auf surrounding them. These auf are less human-looking than the two former members of Margaret’s research team, but Kelpie recognizes them all the same; they’re the members of Isabella’s coven, seized and gutted by the man with the cadaver’s smile.

Diana is there, fully stepped up into her divine aspect, the air around her sparkling like purest moonlight. She turns to Kelpie as she hears the other woman’s hooves clatter on the cavern floor, and she beams with satisfaction and pleasure.

“Ah, the little runaway hind,” she says. “I wondered if you’d be joining us today.”

“Kelpie, get out of here,” yells Chang’e.

“Don’t be silly: she can’t leave,” says Diana. “She’s our guest of honor. The Lunar with no alignment. She’ll open the door to Aske’s everything, and we’ll be able to end this. The light will be restored to the tower, and all will be well. Forever.”

“The light will guide us home,” says the alchemist, and somehow that’s the worst thing of all, hearing the words Kelpie once thought of as a sacrament transmuted into the threat they always truly were.

Artemis glares daggers at him. Kelpie stumbles to a stop, looking wildly around the room they’re all occupying.

“What are you doing?” she demands.

“Oh, it’s very simple,” says Diana. “Tonight’s the last time the City will be accessible before the eclipse. So we’re going to send you to open Aske’s everything, and let your creators in. They’ll open the gates for their fellows, and cut the tie between the City and the Lunars. We’ll be free. We’ll retain our divinity, but we won’t be servants anymore. We can finally be the gods we were always meant to be.”