Phantom Pains

by Mishell Baker

  Caryl was waiting for us as Tjuan pulled into the driveway, sitting bent over with her head in her hands on the disgusting wreck of a love seat that rotted there on the front porch. Tjuan opened the car door for Winterglass, then lent me his arm as I struggled my way through the mess of the front yard, which now contained entire tree branches thanks to the recent storm. It was hard not to cling to Tjuan, but I didn’t want to press my luck, so I confined myself to a steadying touch on his forearm.

  Tjuan helped me up onto the porch, and the two of us remained standing as Winterglass sat next to Caryl. She looked up at him, face patchy from tears. Her lips parted as though she intended to speak, but before she could, he drew her fiercely into his arms. She didn’t resist, leaning her cheek against his chest and starting to sob.

  “It’s going to be okay, Caryl,” I said, since Winterglass couldn’t lie.

  “Please do not wait for me to calm myself before we discuss strategy,” she said brokenly as Winterglass stroked her short dark hair. “I doubt I will find calm at any point today.”

  “We’ll get through this,” I said. “We’ve got the king. She can’t command him, and he speaks her language. There’s still hope.”

  “By the time she arrives, she may have access to English, as well,” said Winterglass.

  “From rifling through Brand’s mind. God, Unseelie are such jerks.”

  “Millie!” said Caryl into the king’s shirt.

  “I shall temporarily deafen Caryl and Tjuan so that the siren has no power over them,” Winterglass said.

  “Other than to, you know, rip them apart with her razor-sharp talons.”

  Winterglass gave me a frigid glare. “I suggest we all maintain a respectful distance from said talons.”

  “Look,” I said. “Is there any way we could get a friendly Unseelie successor to Residence Four in time to murder this bitch?”

  “The only two Unseelie visiting Los Angeles at the moment are male,” said Caryl.

  “There’s Blesskin,” I said. “She defected to the dark side at the meeting. Long story.”

  “No,” said Winterglass. “Even if she somehow managed to kill a creature many times her size, she would be doomed to a grisly death by the next fey with any ambition. She has done nothing to deserve that.”

  Caryl slowly sat back and looked Winterglass in the eyes. “I will slay the Beast Queen,” she said.

  Even the wind seemed to hold its breath for a moment.

  “Caryl,” I said. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Possibly,” she said. “But I am, by arcane law, an Unseelie female. The census ward counts me as such. I have killed when necessary to defend myself. I have refrained from killing on many occasions, when I might have. That is, in fact, why the Project fears me.”

  “Caryl, you’re talking about becoming the Unseelie Queen.”

  Caryl looked down at her gloved hands. “If the king does not object,” she said quietly.

  I wouldn’t have thought Winterglass’s facade had room to go any paler, but I was wrong. He said nothing, simply staring at Caryl.

  “He would have made you a princess, when you were little,” I said. “Of course he’ll say yes. But this is no fairy tale. You’re talking about going back to the Unseelie Court, the place you said you’d kill yourself rather than let Alvin and Tamika send you.”

  “That was before I knew that I could save us,” she said. “It is interesting, having access to all of one’s most irrational impulses. At times, passion for others, or for an ideal, is a source of strength.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “You don’t get to leave me.”

  “Think of it as having friends in higher places.”

  As sick as it made me, as much as I hated to admit it, her idea made a kind of sense. I didn’t want to see, through my cloud of panic and loneliness and grief, that having Caryl ruling the Unseelie fey would be the best thing that had ever happened to the Arcadia Project. I didn’t want my Reason Mind to speak up and tell me that Caryl was right. My throat closed off and refused to let me agree. But it wasn’t my decision. And the one person who could have refused, the one person who could have stopped her, was apparently even more besotted with her than I was.

  “If it is truly what you wish,” said Winterglass, “I would be honored to share my rule with you.”

  “Fantastic,” said Tjuan. “So how exactly are you planning on killing her?”

  Caryl hesitated. “I . . . cannot bring myself to use spellwork, now that I know what it is.”

  I exhaled in frustration. “Well we’re fresh out of rocket launchers, Caryl.”

  Her eyes went out of focus for a moment, and then a look of profound sadness came over her face. “Ah,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “Elliott says I may use him as a weapon.”

  “Will he be hurt?”

  Caryl shook her head slowly. “Spirits are indestructible. Immortal. But—binding him into a spell of such violence could change him. I . . .”

  “Not sure how much time’s left,” said Tjuan. “Make up your mind, Vallo.”

  “Even with magic,” said Caryl, “I doubt it could be so simple as casting a lethal spell. Surely someone thought of slaying her in this way during her rule.”

  “How could they?” said Winterglass. “She could call every spirit to her, render any spell caster helpless. Here, though, she dares not use that power. In this realm she is vulnerable, especially if we take her off guard.”

  “And how do we do that?” I said.

  “We must trick her into believing she is in control,” said Winterglass. “When her guard is down, Caryl can reach inside her and tear out her heart.”

  “Elliott can, you mean,” said Caryl, her eyes dull.

  “How do we get her guard down?” I persisted.

  “I will deafen all of you, but you will feign hypnosis if she should begin to sing. That part should be easy enough for Miss Roper . . .”

  “You’ll cast another spell?” said Caryl. “By whose consent?”

  “I do not require consent from my subjects,” said Winterglass coldly. “The spirits will serve their king as do the rest of the fey.”

  Caryl’s eyes burned, but she stayed quiet. How cute, their first marital spat.

  “I shall begin a negotiation with the siren,” said Winterglass. “Wait until she seems appropriately distracted, and then begin your incantation. Quietly, if you please. Her hearing is superb.”

  “I’m really uneasy about this plan,” I said, “on a number of levels.”

  “Do let us know,” said Winterglass contemptuously, “if you conceive of a superior one.”

  Before I could even think of an appropriately snarky rebuttal, I noticed a strange shift in the light. I eased my way carefully down the porch steps to the lawn and looked up at the sky; what I saw made my skin prickle all over.

  The sky was filling with what must have been every crow in Los Angeles.

  “Now,” said Tjuan. “Stop our ears. She’s coming.”

  The crows didn’t wheel or flock neatly like other birds, but swarmed like cinders in a volcanic updraft, blackening the sky. As they reached us, they made a fearful racket that Tjuan and Caryl were lucky enough not to hear; the lawn under my feet seemed to seethe with their collective shadow.

  Then they were on us. Some of them swooped so low that I felt the air displaced by their wings. Backing toward the porch, I glanced behind me and saw that Tjuan and Winterglass had both risen to their feet. I could see the whites of Tjuan’s eyes, but Winterglass strode calmly forward. His long black hair stirred in the chill breeze, and his coat flared open, dancing a little. He lifted his arms as though embracing the oncoming disaster. Caryl advanced cautiously at his left hand, standing literally in his shadow.

  The Unseelie Queen was approaching from the southwest, in flight just above the treetops. Her faithful hound loped just ahead of her on the ground, cutting across lawn and street and sidewalk as he did so, doing his b
est to approximate the path of her flight. His coat shone so red, even with the sunlight mitigated by clouds and masses of crows, that I half expected the grass to catch fire as he crossed it. He slowed as he reached the sidewalk that marked the edge of Residence Four, and the liquid, leonine roll of his shoulders as he paced that boundary looked wrong, almost grotesque in a dog. His eyes were dark pools of apology.

  Behind him, the siren descended, her great wings sending buffets of frigid air at us as she stretched out her taloned feet to find purchase on the lawn. Then her wings folded, blatantly defying physics as they compressed and tucked against her back.

  “Let them hear me,” the siren said to Winterglass, in a voice like poisoned honey. “I will not sing. I only need to speak with the iron child.”

  Winterglass stopped short, looking equal parts baffled and unsettled. “If it will prevent further violence against my allies,” he said after a moment, “you may say whatever you wish to her.”

  Shiverlash turned her eyeless face toward me. “You are the one who freed me,” she said.

  “Uh, yes.” I figured this would be a bad time to mention that it was a deeply undesired accident.

  “And you are the one who has been carrying on the work of my champion, Countess Feverwax.”

  “I— What?”

  “Fighting to free the spirits, to end the tyranny of the sidhe. You serve the revolution.”

  It was probably for the best that she couldn’t see my look of slack-jawed idiocy. Vivian’s voice returned to haunt me again. I’m the hero of this story. I know I don’t look the part.

  Oh my God. At what point had Vivian and I ended up on the same side? Was I completely deluding myself that I was the good guy here? Or had I been deluding myself that she was the bad guy?

  In my mind, I heard Vivian’s shrieks as Tjuan shoved her onto holy ground, felt the grit that was left of her when I’d finished draining away her essence. Panic rose in my throat, and my nails dug into my suddenly sweaty palms. I could feel myself slipping from sanity, losing my sense of self, of what was real. This was really not the time.

  “We need your help, Millie,” said the Unseelie Queen, and reached out to me with a taloned hand.

  Caryl, of course, couldn’t hear what she was saying; she only saw the siren reach for me. In her panic, her caution slipped; even I heard it when she begin to murmur the words of her terrible spell.

  The siren snapped a command at her faithful hound.

  I had just enough time to see the look of savage fear that pulled Brand’s lips back from his fangs as he propelled himself across the grass toward Caryl. She was so wrapped up in her casting that she didn’t see him coming. But then he was on her, and her arm flew up to protect her throat as he lunged for it, knocking her down. His jaws closed on her forearm instead, and I saw her body arch with agony; the red of her spurting blood was louder than her scream.

  Without thinking I lurched across the lawn and seized Brand, tried to pull him off her, but the moment I grabbed his hindquarters I only made the situation worse; suddenly I was clutching the rear leg of a winged leonine monster. I let him go, and he was a dog again, his head turned briefly over his own shoulder to look at me with an expression of open-mouthed canine astonishment that might have been meme worthy if his teeth hadn’t been red with Caryl’s blood.

  Caryl seized the opportunity to try to commando-crawl toward the porch despite her mutilated forearm; Tjuan was already on his way to intercept her; but I knew that even in dog form Brand was perfectly capable of killing the both of them.

  He lunged toward Caryl’s jugular and then—for lack of a better word—exploded.

  40

  I tasted blood, felt a soft hot chunk of something slap me in the face. I blinked, eyes tearing from the sting, and saw bits of Brand decorating everything: the tree trunks, the porch, the grass. I can only assume it was Brand, because everyone but him was still where they’d been a moment ago, and everywhere I looked I saw fragments of bone and flesh, fur and organs.

  I turned to gape at Winterglass. His face was misted with gore, his eyes wild with malice. I did not have to ask if he was responsible for the carnage.

  “Brand,” I said, my voice almost lost in the racket the crows made. We’d come here to save him.

  The mess that was left of Brand was so abstract, so like something from a horror movie, that it might not have even upset me if not for the smell: raw meat and copper with a hint of sewage where the dog’s guts had been vaporized.

  I leaned over and got sick in the grass, trying to aim away from my shoes. When I’d recovered, I was treated to the surreal sight of Tjuan standing bare chested over Winterglass and Caryl, holding a pocketknife. I wondered if he was possessed, then realized that he’d whipped off his shirt and cut it into strips while I’d been tossing my cookies. Winterglass was wrapping Caryl’s arm, trying to slow the bleeding, but we were going to have to get her to an ER soon.

  I turned and looked at Shiverlash. She seemed, for the first time since she’d emerged from her enchantment, completely at a loss.

  But why? She couldn’t harm Winterglass, but why wasn’t she shredding the rest of us? Why was she standing there letting Tjuan and Winterglass help the woman who’d just tried to murder her?

  And then I realized. Not only had Brand been her seeing eye dog, but he’d been the only one she’d trusted to get her back to Arcadia. She was stranded now in a world where her spirit allies could not help her. She couldn’t afford to eliminate anyone she might be able to cajole or command.

  “She couldn’t hear you,” I told Shiverlash. “She thought you were trying to hurt me. That’s why she attacked.”

  Shiverlash turned toward me again. “And because she is bound to the sidhe. You understand, don’t you, why the sidhe must fall.”

  “I don’t understand anything right now,” I said.

  “But you feel for the spirits. Brand let me see the time you spent with him, learning the truth.”

  “He—” I choked up a little. Felt queasy again.

  “The sidhe have no power over you,” said Shiverlash, “not unless you allow it. You can lead me home, and I will wreak a vengeance upon these tyrants that will shatter their world. And you . . . your reward will be beyond imagining.”

  “Oh wow,” I said. “Seriously? Okay, just stop.” I held up my splayed hands in frustration, not that she could see them. “I am not cut out for the role of Christ on the mountain here. Can both sides just stop exploding people and wreaking vengeance upon vengeance for a second? You, especially. You have no idea where and when you are, even.” I whipped my phone out of my pocket. “What’s this thing I’m holding?” I demanded. “What’s it do?”

  Her nostrils flared; if she could pick up its scent, or see it through my eyes, nothing on her face gave me any indication.

  “No? Okay, who’s president of the country you’re in right now?”

  Again, that blank, eyeless stare.

  “Yeah, I thought as much. You may be three thousand years old and scary as shit, but when it comes to right here and now, you’re a fucking noob. So why don’t you sit the fuck down and listen to the people who know. As a personal favor to me. In return? I promise, you have my word, that if you’ll do this much for me, I will not rest until I find a way to help your spirit friends. Because Brand was right about that: there’s no way in hell I’m okay with carrying on the way we have been.”

  For a long moment Shiverlash was silent, and I thought maybe I’d gone too far. But this was no Seelie cream puff I was dealing with, and I guess she appreciated tough love.

  “The manticore told me,” she said, “that you could be trusted. For the sake of one who died in my service, and because I owe you my freedom, I will make this bargain with you. But if you throw in with the sidhe, the bargain is over, and I will find my own way to my desires.”

  • • •

  Though I strongly suspected we were beyond this sort of damage control, we ushered Queen Shiverlash insi
de Residence Four and insisted that she stay there until we’d all reached a satisfactory enough agreement that we could return her to Arcadia. In the meantime the house was a beacon, though; the small nation of crows that congregated on the roof was a dead giveaway as to the siren’s hiding place. Sooner or later, authorities were going to come looking—police? Animal control? Who exactly was supposed to respond to reports of a flying monster?—and by then we needed there to be no evidence that we’d ever had anything to do with her.

  During the agonizing half hour we had to wait for Dame Belinda and the rest to arrive, an Arcadia-friendly paramedic came to stitch up Caryl’s arm while Tjuan filled Phil and Stevie in on the current catastrophe. A few gentle questions from Phil—one of the few people Stevie would actually respond to—revealed to us that she’d never had the slightest inkling that she’d been possessed. The wraith inside her—Tjuan translated its name as Qualm—had apparently been in stealth mode until Brand’s summons had yanked it to the soundstage, and now it was hanging out on page 201 of A Game of Thrones. Tjuan had made a point of remembering the page number, since he suspected that Alvin would want to have a word with Qualm later on.

  When Belinda and company finally arrived, Alvin directed them to make themselves comfortable on the couches while the rest of us stood awkwardly nearby, divided into Seelie and Unseelie factions. Absurd that I had ended up on the Unseelie side of the room, but there Tjuan and Caryl and I were, facing down the Seelie Queen’s lackeys: Claybriar, Alvin, and of course, Dame Belinda.

  You’d think that bringing Shiverlash into such mundane surroundings would have reduced the horror of her presence, and I suppose there was something theoretically comical about it. But in the reality of the moment, the effect was reversed; instead of the IKEA furnishings bringing her down to earth, she seemed to infect them, lending them the quality of an innocuous dream about to warp into nightmare.

  “Queen Dawnrowan will need assistance in order to communicate in our common tongue,” said Dame Belinda, as though she negotiated with doom-creatures on a daily basis.