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I sigh. “As soon as anyone can answer that question, life will be so much better for everyone. Speaking of making life better for everyone, we still have a Nesanth to deal with.”
“What’s a Nesanth and what happened here?” whimpers Sansha.
“Someone evil,” I say. “An invader from another realm who does not belong here. She’s responsible for the assassins, the poison, everything. It’s not really House Teredwyn’s fault, nor did House Normund do this with magic. It’s completely outside anything from this world. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to stop her.”
Sansha nods timidly. “What happened to Elden?”
“The dark magic tried to kill him.” Tammy presses a hand to his forehead. “He fought it off, so he’s sleeping now. Same with Roldon. They should wake up soon.”
“All right.” Sansha sniffles.
“Any idea where she went?” asks Kingsley.
“Not really. I was—” I blink in surprise. Out of the blue, I’m suddenly sure she ran back to the manor of House Teredywn. This isn’t my psychic abilities picking up on things. My hunches are never so absolute. No, this has got to be a message from Quentin. So what if it’s weak writing to have a character magically know things? I don’t think he’s too concerned with anything more than getting out of here alive at this point. It’s not like he’s going to leave anything I do in the manuscript. “She went to House Terewdyn. I’m going after her.”
As I start to summon the dancing flame, Kingsley, Anthony, Tammy, and Allison all clamp onto me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” The big guy smiles at me. “Taking all the fun for yourself?”
“She’s being overprotective, again.” Tammy squeezes my arm. “C’mon, Ma. You’re about to fight a goddess. You need reinforcements.”
Sigh. Maybe I do.
Chapter Eighteen
Revisions
I teleport us to Nielf’s manor house.
We reappear in the big library where I’d previously met him and Meritha.
Wow, it really does make sense how Nielf had been so deferential to her before. He really still is the head of the house. She’d likely been dominating his mind the same way she made Roldon go crazy at the party. I wonder why, if she had the power to just mind control people, she didn’t simply make the nobles go after each other directly.
It’s because she needed to work within the mechanisms of this world. It had to be convoluted and dastardly. If she’d bent the rules too much, the cords binding Quentin to her would have frayed and snapped. In fact, she’d already started to lose the instant she took Roldon’s mind over and made him into an attack dog. The first inch her hand slips on the rope is the deciding moment. She’s sliding away from him and can’t stop herself. Everything that happens between right now and booting her out of this realm is her lashing out to do as much damage as possible before she’s gone from this reality.
Huh. Okay. Those thoughts leapt into my mind out of the blue. Must be Quentin feeding me omniscient knowledge. Good sign he’s got some degree of control and awareness now. I don’t understand why it worked that way, but whatever. We’re in an alternate reality that sprang from the mind of a mortal man. Who am I to question anything?
Anyway, the library is a complete mess. Chairs are knocked over, books are littered about, and several bookshelves have toppled over. Demetria and Meritha spin around near the ceiling, both flying as they claw and grab at each other. I almost laugh at the sight of them behaving like a pair of high school girls having a catfight, only they have actual claws. Also, not too many high school girls can telekinetically hurl ten-foot-tall bookshelves at their archenemy. At least, not outside of Stephen King’s books. In all seriousness, I think they’re trying to kill each other. Operative word here being think. There’s lots of shouting and cursing in Romanian.
“Which one do you think stole the other one’s man?” Kingsley gazes up at them. “Women only get like that over dudes.”
“That’s a little shallow, don’t you think?” Tammy smirks. “Ma used to get that angry if something put us in danger.”
Kingsley sets his hands on his hips, still peering up at the vampire catfight. “Hmm. They’re not really trying to end each other, just inflict pain. If it was over kids, one of them would be dead by now.”
“They already are dead.” Anthony chuckles.
“Well… dead-er.” Kingsley frowns.
Nesanth fakes Demetria out with a feigned claw swipe to the face. When Demetria swerves to defend herself, she flies right into a heavy table that catapulted itself up off the floor. The thud of her skull hitting the three-inch-thick wood is loud enough to make me cringe in sympathetic pain.
Demetria careens out of the air, goes face-first into the south wall, then flops to the floor, apparently dead with a broken neck.
“Eep!” Lindsey clamps both hands over her mouth.
“Chill,” whispers Tammy to Lindsey. “She’s a vampire. That didn’t kill her permanently.”
“Hah! My turn to win,” shouts Nesanth. Before she can gloat at length, the woman finally notices us… and points at me. “You!”
