The fey hogging the center of the cramped space meant I was forced to stand almost between the elevator doors. To my horror, from my vantage point I saw Chin Ju and Garcia appear around the corner of the hallway. I ducked around and squished myself against the wall of buttons with a muttered, incoherent prayer, frantically stabbing the door close button. When the last sliver of hallway disappeared and the floor began to sink, I shuddered with relief. But the elevator was so slow Tjuan had time to straighten my wig; it seemed likely they’d beat us by taking the stairs.
Good news: they didn’t. Bad news: apparently, they alerted the guy at the security desk in the lobby, because as I got off the elevator, there he was, standing in my path.
“Ma’am, can I see your identification please?” said the security guard in a brisk but friendly tone.
“Sure,” I said. I could have flashed my empty hand, had Claybriar do his trick. But I knew damn well this guy wouldn’t just nod and let me by. We’d assaulted an employee; even if he believed I was a real cop, he’d want to talk to supervisors and things I didn’t have.
So instead I reached behind me and grabbed Winterglass by the wrist. The king’s don’t-look spell dropped, along with his facade. Almost immediately Winterglass wrenched his arm from my grasp, but it was too late.
The security guard staggered backward until he slammed up against the desk he usually sat behind, preventing him from fleeing farther. His mouth opened, but nothing emerged except for a high-pitched whine, and then his legs gave out completely, forcing him to sit down hard on the floor. I guess it was a pretty rough way to force a paradigm shift. The man didn’t raise an objection as I walked briskly out into the parking lot with the boys close behind.
“To the car,” said Tjuan. “Fast as you can go.”
19
I took a moment to adjust the valve on my prosthetic knee, then broke into a respectable jog under the fading late-afternoon sky. My heart was hammering from more than exertion as Tjuan and I opened the back doors of his gray Camry for the fey, then let ourselves in the front.
“Morozov,” Tjuan said sharply, starting the car and peering out the window toward the Cera building. “Can you hide the license plate until we’ve cleared the parking lot?”
“I cannot cast spells upon steel,” said Winterglass.
“Caryl could have done it,” I said sullenly.
Something about my comment seemed to light a fire under Winterglass; he murmured a few words in the Unseelie tongue. I shivered as the stretch of sunbaked asphalt between us and the building was suddenly wreathed in a toxic-looking smog.
“Not exactly subtle,” said Tjuan, “but it beats getting tracked to the Residence.” And then he peeled the hell out of there.
• • •
As much as I was tempted to pop some pain meds that night, I’d been too long away from home and a decent shower, so once Tjuan was sure we weren’t being followed, I asked him to take me back to my apartment in Manhattan Beach.
On the way I saw a whole new side of Tjuan; our little adventure had left him almost giddy. As he bounced theories off us, one hand occasionally leaving the steering wheel to gesture emphatically, I suddenly had less trouble picturing him as a writer. I was so exhausted and so fascinated by the excited-geek vibe he was putting off that I had some trouble following what he and Claybriar were heatedly debating.
“It doesn’t matter,” Tjuan said. “They wouldn’t need appointments. They’ve got uniforms, trucks, and equipment with a recognizable brand name; if they just show up when no one’s home and start spraying the yard, who in the neighborhood’s going to call the cops?”
“So why haven’t they?” said Claybriar. “She’s had all those locations for at least four months. They’ve obviously infiltrated the hell out of Cera. If it’s not a scheduling issue, what are they waiting for?”
“Damned if I know,” said Tjuan.
It was full dark by the time we got to my place, and Claybriar asked if he could walk me to my door. I suppose I didn’t think it through too well; fatigue left me feeling more brain-damaged than usual. As we climbed the exterior stairs and passed into the radius of Zach’s porch light, I saw his curtain flicker aside for a moment, then fall back. A twinge of guilt left me feeling a little queasy.
“What’s the matter?” said Claybriar as I started to unlock my door. His constant scrutiny of me was both flattering and inconvenient.
“I can’t talk out here,” I whispered. “Step inside a minute.”
He did, and I closed the door behind us. Somehow the simple act of putting that slab of wood between us and the others shifted the mood to something dangerously intimate. He felt it too, and stepped closer, so that he was a couple of inches from pinning me back against the door.
“I—I should tell you,” I said hurriedly, “I’ve been—my neighbor and I are . . .”
“Fucking?”
I stubbornly lifted my chin as though my face hadn’t just gone tomato red. “It’s just a—you know, it was a convenience arrangement. I should have told you right away. I just—”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” Claybriar said, stepping back a little, palms out. “You do whatever you want. Seriously. Whatever and whoever.”
My queasy feeling intensified. I tried to read his face, but he seemed relaxed, even amused. “You don’t care?”
“Don’t make it sound—I just mean, you and I obviously can’t—and it’s not as if I . . .” He didn’t seem to know how to finish.
“It’s not as if you what?”
He shrugged and addressed his next words to my shoes. “Well, I’m a faun. Right? I—frolic. That’s pretty much how fauns kill time.”
“Oh.” I let out a short, awkward laugh. “So you—get around.”
“Does that bother you?”
“No, no, I mean, who among us hasn’t had an orgy in a magical forest, right? Good on you.” I ransacked my brain for signs of jealousy and surprised myself by finding none. Did I expect a damned goat-man to become celibate the minute he met me? Of course not. I hadn’t changed my ways; why should he? I turned it over and over, looking for hallmarks of denial, but it felt pretty solid. Whatever he was giving all those Arcadian nymphs, I didn’t want. And if I needed my bell rung, I knew where Zach lived. So that was that. Right?
“You should get back,” I said. “You and Winterglass need to get back to Arcadia and dump those wraiths, get the Seelie Court to do the ritual.”
Claybriar groaned and rested his eyes in the palm of one hand.
“What? You can come back, right?”
“Probably. It’s just—that means we’ve got to get past the damn manticore again.”
“Can’t Winterglass call it off?”
“No, that’s the weird thing. It ignored his commands.”
“Wait. How? It’s not an Unseelie fey?”
“It sure as hell spoke Unseelie.”
“The thing talks? What was it saying?”
“Winterglass didn’t translate.”
“Did he say why he couldn’t command it?”
“That seemed to surprise him as much as it did me. He panicked and yelled something about beasts, but I didn’t really catch it; I was kinda busy fighting and casting spells and whatnot.”
“Damn it! Am I sending the two of you back to get eaten?”
“It’ll be fine, Millie. The only reason that was such a close call is that Mr. Arrogant had figured he could just order it away. He and I know what to expect this time; I’m better prepared, and I suspect he is too.”
“Just be careful,” I said. “And see if you can find out what the manticore’s deal is and why it won’t obey. Ask Winterglass to translate. That thing starts going crazy right after Vivian dies? It could be involved in this mess somehow.”
“Winterglass didn’t seem to think so when it was yelling at us before. But I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Please do—so long as it doesn’t get you killed.”
He step
ped closer, his eyes soft and his voice low. “You are not going to lose me,” said Claybriar. “I don’t want to put you through that.”
“Is that a promise?” I said, and then immediately realized what I’d asked. I held my hand up in front of his mouth even as he drew breath to answer. “No,” I said. “Don’t bind yourself. Just do your best to stay alive; that’s enough for me.”
It was a little dizzying to realize that he’d been willing to promise me that he’d never leave me, and that unlike the others in my past he’d be bound to that promise. It was tempting, in a dark sort of way. But I wouldn’t let him do it any more than I’d let him chain himself in the hold of a sinking ship.
• • •
Once we handed the list over to the Arcadia Project, for a couple days, everyone there seemed to forget I existed. The fey got busy back in Arcadia, and the humans got busy studying the list Tjuan had found. I had almost started to settle back into a relatively stable rhythm at Valiant by Thursday, around the time Parisa Naderi decided that breaking and entering was the answer to her problems. Just before lunch I got a call from Sam the security guard alerting me to the fact that Naderi—who we’d all thought was safely tucked away in her office writing—was apparently trying to find a way to pick the lock on the side door of stage 13. Where there was still a treacherous pit leading to another dimension.
“Jesus Christ on a moped,” I said. Inaya wasn’t there to take offense at my blasphemy; she’d been called away an hour ago to an emergency meeting at the Arcadia Project’s Residence One in Santa Monica, of all places.
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” said Sam on the phone. I loved Sam; there was literally no one high enough on the totem pole that he wouldn’t spy or tattle on for me, and I had no idea why. I think he just enjoyed getting important people in trouble.
“I’m more likely to slip you a big fat wad of cash,” I said. “You’ve saved me some huge drama if I can get there in time.”
I hopped into the less sluggish of the two golf carts parked outside the building and floored it, but even so, by the time I got to the soundstage, Naderi was nowhere to be found. I prayed that meant she’d given up, but a quick check of the side door found it unlocked. God damn it.
“What the hell is all this?” Naderi greeted me as I stepped inside. She’d turned on the floodlights and was staring not at the hole in the floor but at the mural David had painted on every square inch of wall.
“Ask David Berenbaum, if you can find him,” I said. “If you want evidence that he was starting to lose his marbles when he left, you’re looking right at it.”
“David painted that?” She looked like she couldn’t decide whether to be angry, bewildered, or impressed. “In a soundstage? Why?”
“Again, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“This isn’t so bad, though,” said Naderi. “We can work around this. All of this,” she added, gesturing to the center of the room. So she’d seen the hole, too. Hard to miss, I suppose.
“No, we can’t work around that hole in the floor,” I said through gritted teeth. “Not if it goes against city ordinances, which it does. Please, you can’t keep taking things into your own hands like this.”
“Who else am I supposed to trust?” she said.
“Try trusting the woman who got you a meeting with Wendigo, the woman who is busting her ass to keep your show on the air while interest is still hot. That would be me, if you’re not keeping track.”
I had never spoken to her quite like this, but it was doing what I wanted it to do, i.e., making her mad enough to quit staring at the soundstage and focus on me.
“Rahul is an asshole,” she said. “I’d rather take the show off the air than work with him.”
“Look. I’m in full agreement with you that this never should have happened to you. This soundstage should have been yours from day one. But—have you ever heard the term ‘radical acceptance’? I heard this from someone with a PhD in psych. Psychology is useful to writers, right?”
“I’m not sure I like where you’re going with this,” she said.
“Hear me out. The idea of ‘radical acceptance’ is that sometimes in order to reduce suffering, you have to stop fighting the situation and do the counterintuitive thing. Wholeheartedly embrace reality, spiky bits and all.”
As I talked, I eased my way back over to the soundstage door and held it open for her. Distracted by my words, she unconsciously took my body language cue and walked through it as I continued.
“There are similar ideas in scripture,” she said.
“Exactly,” I said warmly as I led her down the steps. “Will-of-God type stuff, right? When you stop saying, I shouldn’t be in this mess! and start saying, I am in this mess; what next? supposedly it sets you free, makes things much less painful, and your eyes are clear to see solutions.”
“Solutions like that jackass Rahul?” she said warily.
“I could be wrong here, but I think half of what’s making this so stressful for you is that you can’t give up on the idea that you can have it the way it should be. We all know how it should be. But it isn’t that way, and you’re tearing yourself apart with the idea that you can force it into being. You’re a hell of a woman, Naderi, but you’re not God.” I sat in the driver’s seat of the golf cart, swiveling toward the passenger’s seat as though she were already sitting in it. Distractedly she slid in beside me, and I started the motor.
Naderi looked a little depressed, but that was good. It meant she finally understood that she wasn’t in control.
“It’s going to be all right,” I said to her as I drove back toward her bungalow. “Maybe this first season you have to do green screens. Maybe things don’t look exactly how they should. But first seasons are always awkward, and anyway let’s not kid ourselves that people are tuning in for the visuals. You’ve got them hooked on the drama. And you need to keep them hooked a little longer. You know how viewer attention spans can be, and how many options they have nowadays.”
“I know,” she said. Huge exhale. “I know.”
“We reel in the fish this season, end on a cliffhanger, and in season two we can wow them with production values. And you get to tell this whole sad story in the DVD commentary so there will be no question about whose fault it was that season one wasn’t up to Parisa Naderi’s standards. The fans will eat it up.”
I could have been wrong, but I swore I saw a hint of a smile at one corner of her mouth. I was nailing this, and I couldn’t even brag to Inaya, because that would involve telling her that Naderi had broken into the soundstage in the first place. If I wanted to be a good assistant, I’d have to make it seem like I wasn’t doing anything at all.
I barely got back to my desk in time to give Araceli the nutshell version and then make myself look busy before Inaya burst back onto the scene, her arm wrapped firmly around a gorgeous strawberry blonde. I raised an eyebrow for half a second before I registered two important details: first, that the woman had scratches across one side of her face and was leaning on Inaya heavily, and second, that I recognized her, or her facade anyway.
Baroness Foxfeather. Inaya’s Echo.
20
“What fresh hell is this?” I greeted them, rising from my chair.
“In my office,” said Inaya with a jerk of her head.
Araceli gave me a wide-eyed look I couldn’t quite read as I followed the two of them. Inaya must have caught it, because she said, “Honey, could you run down to the Jamba Juice and get my friend here a smoothie? That orange-blueberry one.” Araceli hopped to it, seeming to sense the pained urgency in Inaya’s tone.
“What’s going on?” I said as soon as Inaya’s office door was safely between us and the rest of the world. Foxfeather sank into the plush upholstered chair in the corner with a little whimper, then abruptly pitched forward, face in her hands, and began to sob. Inaya stroked Foxfeather’s reddish hair in a way that made a throb of jealousy rise up through my confusion.
“Poor Vi
cki is a refugee,” said Inaya, referring to Foxfeather by her alias, which was too much like Vivian’s for my liking.
“Refugee from what?”
“There’s some kind of monster loose in fairyland,” said Inaya. “Something I’m led to understand your Echo was supposed to be taking care of.”
“The manticore?” I said in shock. I moved to Foxfeather, trying to adopt a comforting posture without touching her. “Did it hurt you?”
“My estate,” she said, looking up at me with streaming eyes. “It’s gone.”
My hands went cold. “Gone? As in . . . big interdimensional void?”
“No, just . . . a rotting wreck . . . uninhabitable! The manticore destroyed it!”
“Destroyed your house?”
Foxfeather just buried her face in her hands again.
“It wasn’t exactly a house,” Inaya said tentatively. “Or so says Luis at Residence One. It was some sort of oasis: trees and vines and a magical spring, all protected with spells. It’s where Vicki and her family and her—what did you call them?”
Foxfeather looked up again. “Vassals.”
“Her vassals lived. A dozen people. All refugees now.”
“All except the two the manticore ate,” sobbed Foxfeather. “My bard and my aunt!”
“Oh my God,” I said. “I thought sidhe estates were impregnable or something!”
“Only if I’m inside it!” she sobbed. “But I thought it was safe to leave! The manticore had always been nice to me.”
“Wait, what?”
Foxfeather nodded solemnly. “It’s been wandering Skyhollow for years. It was always ugly, and smelly, and ate some of us—but some of us got along with it just fine! It let me ride on its back once!”
“What the fuck?” I said. “And now it suddenly turned on you? Where was Claybriar during all this?”
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