“So, yes,” Branwyn said.
He sighed. “It’s a little more complicated than that. Are you going to make me talk about it, mistress?”
Branwyn scowled. “I’m not going to make you do anything.”
Severin’s head lowered. “I do love it when you lie to yourself, cupcake.”
“And stop kneeling there!”
He laughed again and sprang to his feet. “Shatiel also told me you found a way to stop the Wild Hunt. Well done.”
His praise slid off Branwyn’s back as she regarded him narrowly. “What are you going to do now?”
With a wide-eyed look, he said. “You’re the mistress. What do you want me to do?”
“I hate you so much,” she told him. In response he smiled at her and she remembered his fingers on her skin, and her unlatched bra. She fixed it. “So much. Severin, dear, would you please be so kind as to escort me back to Tucker, Idaho?”
In response, one of the windows circling above swooped down to pass over them. As simple as that, they were standing in Tucker, beside a black and white stone wall, and AT’s dogs were extremely unhappy.
They darted between her and Severin, then leapt at the fallen angel, snapping and snarling. He pivoted and ducked, catching first the gray dog and then the black one by the scruffs of the neck. The red dog pressed against Branwyn’s legs, growling savagely. Severin gave it a disgusted look.
I guess I know what they were supposed to protect me against…. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” said Branwyn. The red dog flicked her ears, and the grey dog whined pathetically, but the black dog remained focused on ripping Severin’s throat out.
“Ah, a dog after my own heart,” Severin said, and maintained his grip on the black one while releasing the gray one. “Hey, AT, can I keep him?”
AT came pounding up. “Nod! No! Let him go! What are you doing back here?”
Severin dropped the black dog, and it joined its siblings lurking behind AT. “This is my fucking party, wolfchild. You’re the gatecrashers, not me.” He shook his head, glanced at Branwyn, and then said, “I’m going to go talk to Imani. Come along and maybe I’ll introduce you.”
7
Forking Roads
For some reason, nobody wanted to let Severin find Imani alone, or even with only Branwyn supervising. “It’s like they don’t trust me,” said Severin, and smiled like a shark when Amber hissed and followed along with AT and Yejun.
It’s okay. I’ve got this, Branwyn could have said. It probably would have helped. But she wasn’t a fucking regulator, or a limiter, or leash-holder. She was only here to rescue some kids she couldn’t even name.
“Severin!” cried Imani, when he came around the corner to where she was peeling the petals from white roses. They fluttered in the wind, each one marked with a crimson fingerprint.
The roses grew outside a picturesque shadow-and-paper bistro that was as out of place as the cottage earlier. The ghost inside peeped out over low curtains, all eyes and a chef’s hat. It was ludicrous and funny and wrong. This place was definitely getting stranger away from Brynn. The chef was positively cartoonish compared to the previous nightmarish hellscape.
“Severin, why do you keep coming back? It wouldn’t have mattered if I’d listened, so you don’t need to gloat.” Scarlet skirts swirled and the fire at Imani’s heart brightened as they approached.
“She’s been conjuring shadows of him to stick pins in. Little dreams,” confided AT. “He’s definitely one of her unresolved issues. Solving it might be a little tricky….”
Severin walked right up to the ghost as she settled to earth and took her into his arms. Ruby light flared like a halo and faded as she pressed her head against his chest. He stroked her flaming hair while looking down at her. But there was no tenderness in his expression, only a cold bleakness Branwyn had seen before.
“Uh,” said AT.
“That’s just wrong,” said Amber. “What the hell is he doing to her?”
“Hugging her?” suggested Yejun. “Come on, guys, let’s give them some space.” But neither Amber nor AT responded, too busy gawking to listen.
After a moment, the tight embrace between monster and ghost slackened. When she drew away, Imani looked nearly human. The proportions of her face were less exaggerated and her Hellqueen ballgown had become a simple dress.
“What happened, Severin? Why didn’t you come? Was it because I ignored your warning?”
Branwyn felt rather than heard the creak of cracking glass. She put her hand on her chest, but remained silent.
“You spent your whole life ignoring me, little star. Why would it would have mattered that time?”
“I wish I hadn’t!” cried the woman and pressed herself against his chest again. AT turned away at that point, crouching to pet her dogs.
Severin stroked Imani’s hair again. “I would have come if I’d known, but I didn’t. I was bodiless and… distracted and by the time I’d touched earth again, I was far too late.” He laughed harshly. “Too late even to get revenge for you. Your lover had taken care of that.”
Imani’s face shifted back toward that of the Hellqueen. “Gale….” she hissed. “He burned everything, Severin. All my work. He burned Charlie. Won’t you punish him for us? We have to punish everyone, but Gale most of all.”
Very deliberately, Severin took Imani’s face in his hands and rested his forehead against hers. “He did not burn Charlie.”
Imani froze before exploding away from him. As she rocketed into the sky, she wailed, “Then where is she? How can you say that? Even he can’t say that! He burned Charlie, and he didn’t even notice. Oh, I wish I’d listened to you, I wish I’d listened, I wish, I wish I’d never come here, I wish I’d never heard the stories, I wish I’d killed him, I wish I’d killed them all. I should have listened….”
“I’ll find her,” said Severin flatly.
“You won’t! Or you’ll only find her soul, and if you bring her to me she’ll be caught here. I wanted her to live. My Charlie.”
Amber convulsively turned away, joining AT and her dogs. Branwyn remained. The ghost’s high, thin wailing hurt, and Branwyn, who was weak to maternal tears, tried to focus on Severin instead. He said nothing more, but remained looking up at the grieving ghost, his eyes growing wider and his pupils constricting.
Branwyn moved beside him. “Hey,” she breathed. When he didn’t respond, she repeated, “Hey,” and this time brushed his hand with her own. He glanced down at her expressionlessly and she said, “Let’s go find her.”
His hand twitched next to hers, his fingers brushing against her palm. Then his face relaxed, and he exhaled. “Yes.”
After another breath, he added, “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it? You’re a born regulator.”
“Fuck off,” said Branwyn, but she was secretly proud of herself for redirecting without commanding. AT and Amber both stared at her in bewilderment and she gave a small shrug. “Where did Rhianna go?”
“She’s sleeping in one of the tents,” said AT.
“Oh, goodie. That means I get to wake her up.”
Rhianna was instead on one of the sleeping bags, outside the single remaining tent. The other two had been removed and half the supplies hauled away. Cat sat in the camp chair Branwyn had once set up, writing in a book.
Silently, Branwyn peeked into the tent, saw it was full of strange shadows of a cramped mansion, and closed the flap again. She studied her sister. Rhianna slept curled up, except for a single leg. Ready for kicking, Branwyn had always felt. She had always been a kicker.
Her chest clenched, and she stopped herself from waking Rhianna with a wet willie. They were both on a job, not a sisterly retreat. Rhianna had approached her as a professional. She would do the same…
…even if she hadn’t signed a contract, and she probably wasn’t getting paid; even if she’d stuck her nose in purely as a sop to her integrity.
She wasn’t even angry at herself, just wry and… sad. She’d wanted so much to
wake Rhianna up like a big sister should.
Rhianna’s eye cracked open, and she said around a yawn, “That’s a mighty glare, Branwyn. What’s up?”
“We need to have a planning session. About Imani, and our original purpose here.”
“Ooh, okay!” Rhianna kicked up from prone to standing in a single smooth move. Branwyn’s beautiful, talented sister….
Branwyn shook her head. “Also, I was promised coffee. Where’s the coffee? I don’t even smell coffee. If the coffee is a lie, I’ll just go join Imani in a duet.”
Rhianna ran her fingers through her hair. Uselessly, because her natural curl had taken over and was starting to knot. “It was bad coffee, and honestly, it was mostly tea. But! Before you go tap into your banshee roots…” Rhianna rolled an inquiring eye at Cat.
He’d stowed his pen, but he was still wearing the small eyeglasses Branwyn was confident he didn’t need. Perhaps he thought Clark Kent had found a good disguise.
“Jen should be back any—ah. You have only a few minutes yet to suffer.” He smiled.
Rhianna said brightly, “All right,” and wandered behind the tent. When she returned a moment later, she had her own messenger bag, the one she’d had in Branwyn’s studio during her recruitment pitch. She rummaged through it for a moment and resurfaced with some toiletries. After a glance in a compact mirror, she said, “Ugh, look at me. I’m going to run down to the creek and fix this mess. Be right back!”
Branwyn watched her go and sat on the vacated sleeping bag, resting her chin on her pulled-up knees. Severin and the rest of the Wild Hunt had followed her to the campsite. All the latter were watching her while Severin focused his attention on the non-existent fire of the fire pit he crouched beside.
“What’s up with the tent interior?” asked Branwyn. “And the bistro, and the cottages?”
AT shrugged. “Ghosts don’t always look like what they were before they died. Draining the energy out of the corruption seems to have given the trapped souls the freedom to… pretend they were something else.”
Brynn objected. “Is it pretending, or their true selves manifesting?”
Skeptically, AT said, “I don’t know if a ‘true self’ can be a bistro chef. That seems like it requires more work than simple self-identification.”
Brynn glanced at Branwyn as if deferring to her authority, but Branwyn shook her head, unwilling to get involved and a little embarrassed than Brynn expected she would be.
Cat said, “There’s a difference between wishing you were and knowing what you are.”
“As you’ve discovered, cast-off?” said Severin, still focused on invisible flames.
Cat shrugged. “I started out as somebody’s wish they were but unfortunately for them, I know what I am.”
“And what’s that?” Branwyn said. She considered it only polite to ask.
Cat’s gaze raised to the sky above the campsite. “Hers,” he said, and with the low song of the Horn, Jen and her horse burst through the sky.
As Jen came in for a landing, Cat returned his gaze to Branwyn. “In any case, I do think it’s more pretense than truth with the ghosts, just as Imani pretended to punish him. But just because something is a dream doesn’t mean it should be disregarded.”
Ouch. Branwyn bounced to her feet and went to where Jen, now completely dressed, was dismounting. She carried a suitcase in one hand, and a gallon container of coffee in the other. Branwyn relieved her of both and said, “You’re the true angel here.”
Jennifer smiled at her, the lines around her eyes crinkling. “I’ll take that as the compliment you intend. There’re bagels in the suitcase.”
Once Rhianna had returned, looking far more groomed, and the rest of the Wild Hunt donned more substantial clothing, everybody who wanted breakfast settled around the fire pit. It had gained an actual fire at that point, possibly fueled entirely by Severin’s glare. Branwyn certainly couldn’t see any other source for it.
“This will be tough, even with extra time,” said Yejun. “This isn’t simple.”
“They’re never simple,” said Brynn.
“Did you see what he did?” asked Amber, waving a bagel at Severin. “He just… and he…”
“Did he?” Jen looked puzzled. “That’s…”
“Yeah, it was,” said AT. “But you never know. She’s got other…”
Cat said, “I’ve been writing down… something’s missing…”
Rhianna and Branwyn glanced at each other over the fire. Finally Branwyn said, “Where’s Gale?”
The Wild Hunt chatter faded away. They all looked at each other, and then Amber pointed towards the center of town. “The faerie is in chains at the whipping post.”
“I talked to Umbriel,” said Rhianna. “He wants to turn Gale over to his own people for justice. He’s part of Honeychord, which is bound to Summer and Air.”
Branwyn filed that under will make sense later and also the things Rhianna knows now. “Okay.” She drained the last of her coffee, and repeated, “Okay. It sounds like you guys have ideas on what to do with Imani. You’ve been figuring out some of her issues. It sounded like she had a few. Stay here. Work on those. It’ll probably help. Meanwhile, I’m going to Faerie.”
Brynn’s brow furrowed in disappointment. “Why? Because of that—?”
“Because seventy kids didn’t die in Gale’s revenge spree, Brynn, and one of them is Imani’s daughter. And I don’t think she’ll rest until she knows her kid is safe and sound. Until she sees it with her own two burning eyes.”
“Oh,” said Brynn, frowning. Then she looked at Rhianna hopefully.
“I’ll be going with Branwyn, kiddo. Sorry, but this is actually what they sent me here for.”
Brynn pouted. “You two are always going off on adventures without me.”
The fire crackled and popped. And that’s the place we’re at, Branwyn thought. She’s an indestructible force of Creation and she still wants to tag along with us. “You’re having your own adventures. You’ll be fine.”
“How do you know they’re in Faerie?” demanded Brynn.
“I don’t know. I suspect. But there’s people in Faerie who will know, whether they’re there or hidden somewhere on Earth.”
Rhianna nodded. “Plus, I bet faeries will want to sort this out rather than face the consequences of this thing going critical.” She waved around the nightmare town.
“I just bet,” said Jennifer darkly.
“Unfortunately, you can’t take the faerie out of the haunt system until we’ve resolved it,” said Cat. “He’s a part of it as much as the mortal souls are.”
“That’s fine,” said Rhianna. “A drunk, depressed faerie would get in the way anyhow. I’ll make sure some other big strong faeries are ready to grab him once we finish here.”
“What about him?” asked Amber, and the fire flared and brightened.
Severin raised his gaze from the flames to look at Amber until she said hurriedly, “Right, okay, of course you’re going after the kid.”
Branwyn frowned as he lowered his gaze again. “Is that going to work, Severin? Last time I checked, you and the faeries don’t get along, and they’re capable of throwing you out without talking first.”
“Then I was a stray mutt, but now I’m your dog, cupcake. Ask AT if anybody can keep her dogs away from her.” He smiled into the flames.
“Uh,” said AT, looking intensely uncomfortable. “I don’t think whatever you’ve got going on is the same—” Once again, Severin raised his head to stare at AT, and her dark skin flushed. “Uh, no. Not anymore.”
“There you go,” said Severin, although Branwyn didn’t think much of the proof, and really hoped AT was right in that they were very different circumstances.
It didn’t matter though. She’d known he would come, regardless of difficulties. “All right. That just leaves prepping for the trip and finding the right door.”
Admiringly, Rhianna said, “You sound like such a pro, Branwyn.”
&nb
sp; Branwyn snorted. “You’re the one going on about Honeychord and Summer and Air.”
“Oh, that’s just reading memos. Though… what about a guide? Don’t we need a guide? I remember reading that it was dangerous to travel through Faerie without a guide.”
“It is. We’ll have one,” said Branwyn, trying to sound more confident than she was. She might have to negotiate with whoever showed up, but she was almost certain somebody would show up.
Yejun flicked his paper cup into the fire and watched as it didn’t burn. “We’ll do our best here, but it might not work. Brynn’s already started losing souls.”
Brynn jumped and looked up guiltily as Yejun continued. “If the system powers up too much, I can’t drain it again the way you can. Not yet. Maybe someday.”
“How long?” Branwyn asked Brynn.
“A few days, more or less,” said Brynn unhappily. “Probably less.”
“Just like old times,” said AT. “Hurrah.”
“Plenty of time,” said Branwyn. She brushed her fingers over the black diamond in her hammer, which still held a few knots worth of energy. They’d discharge too, eventually. She’d know. “But if it gets close, I’ll get back here. We can keep working on this as long as we need to.”
She was lying. Everybody was aware she was lying. Shatiel was gone, and it was Shatiel who had given them the time to drain the system the first time. But they accepted her lie, even Severin, because sometimes another word for lying was ‘hope’.
Branwyn walked back to the rose bower to figure out the rest of her plan, leaving Severin to play with his fire while the Wild Hunt did their thing nearby. She stopped along the way at the whipping post. Though Gale was shirtless now, his skin was unmarred, and the chains that bound him were shaped from lightning, from his own magic, which told Branwyn all she needed to know about his imprisonment. It was performance art, probably put on entirely for the sake of his own ego.
He cringed when he saw her. “I don’t know!”
“You’re hiding yourself. I saw you in the system,” she told him. “I guess I’m glad you feel bad about what you’ve done. With a hurricane we don’t even get that much.”
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