The mirrors were Aerune's other joke—funny, with all the time she'd spent imagining what elves would be like if they were real and she could meet them, she'd never imagined they could be so mind-numbingly petty. It was one thing for Aerune to still be in mourning for a girlfriend killed, as far as Jeanette could figure out, about five thousand years ago, and to be intending to wipe out the human race in revenge. That was almost dignified. Romantic, Byronic, all those things that she loved and hated at the same time. But at the same time, to have him invent this whole elaborate sniggering joke, not only on the way she looked now, but on her humanity as well. . . .
That was cheap and petty, a symptom of an arrogance so vast it didn't only not care how it appeared to outsiders, it couldn't even imagine any point of view but its own. And that amount of self-obsession sort of took the edge off the whole romantic lost-love thing.
She went over to the stained-glass windows and pushed them open wide, leaning out as far as she could. Damp smells of forest and water welled up out of the night, and in the distance she could hear the sound of a river. But aside from minor variations, the landscape was as unchanging as a photograph. The moon (or moons) never moved, the sun never rose—sometimes the place went to a foggy twilight, but on no particular schedule—and somewhere at the edge of the forest, the world stopped and turned back on itself, and the only way to get somewhere else was through a Gate that only a Sidhe could work.
She had only the vaguest idea of how long she'd been here—even when Aerune took her out to hunt, she couldn't get an accurate idea of the time, and the time where she went didn't seem to have any relation to the time here—but she'd learned a lot during her captivity. About the nature of the Sidhe, about Aerune's plans, about magic itself. Once she would have given up anything she had to see and do the things she'd done. Now, she only wished she'd been spared the disappointment of finding out what she knew. She hadn't wanted to know that elves were so petty, so mean, so . . . empty.
The whole place seemed as if it'd been assembled as a scrapbook of Gothic Evil Through the Centuries, with the emphasis on the High Medieval period. There was nothing new here, nothing exciting—nothing, in fact, that she couldn't have made up for herself. Sure the creatures were weird—but no weirder than she could see in the movies. Sure the landscape was alien—but no more alien than she could see in a painting. Sure her surroundings were opulent—but you could get awfully sick of gold and jewels. Everything was grand, but nothing was comfortable. It was like trying to live in a museum.
She should have turned herself in and gone to prison when she'd had the chance. At least they let you read in prison.
But Aerune would have found her there, too. And Aerune still scared her, terrified her, frightened her on levels she didn't know were in her. He was trite, but he was also monstrous. She forgot what he was like the moment she left his presence—a form of self-preservation, she suspected—but when he was near she resonated to him, like a crystal goblet that someone had struck. And that hurt, like a dentist's drill that never stopped.
That was what the T-Stroke had done to her—turned her into an Empath, and she resonated to the physical and psychic pain of anyone she was near. She had no control over it. And she was drawn to magic, to Talent, to what Aerune called Crownfire, most of all. That was what made her so useful to Aerune. She could no more not sense the presence of Talent than she could hold her breath forever, and try as she might, she couldn't hide her reaction. All Aerune had to do was drag her within range of someone with Talent and she vibrated like a tuning fork. Every time he took her out of here, it was to find people like that.
And then Aerune killed them. Sucked up their magic, their potential, their Talent, and killed them.
And there was nothing she could do about that, either. She'd tried to kill herself. It didn't work. It hurt a lot, and it scared her, and it didn't work. She'd given up trying.
She'd also tried to refuse to do what he wanted, but all it got her was pain—and if she still tried to refuse, he would begin to kill people. Surely it was better to give him what he wanted? That way, only a few people died. Fewer.
Funny how I can't seem to stop doing things like that. So much for good intentions.
Time to try the mirrors again—that or throw herself out the window. She kept covering them up and turning them to the wall, but the invisibles always put them back again the way they'd been. Maybe she'd get used to what she saw in them eventually. She turned away from the window and crossed the room, her long heavy skirts swishing. She was dressed in what she guessed was Elvish haute couture, and it made everything even worse. These weren't her kinds of clothes. They didn't suit her, and she didn't deserve to be wearing them. They made everything worse.
She approached the mirror, eyes closed—after this long, she knew every inch of her prison and all its accessories well enough to navigate it blindfolded—and stood before the mirror for a long moment before she could force herself to open her eyes. A stranger stared back, looking like a caricature of the self she knew. This was what Aerune had made of her.
Her eyes were now wide, the bright unnatural green of a child's crayon, fringed with thick black lashes. Her body had been fined down to asexual slimness, stretched and remade. Her hair was long and thick and moon-silver, cascading down over her shoulders and back, giving her the look of some exotic bird. This was her the way she'd always wished she was, and that was the cruelest joke of all—that Aerune had taken her secret dreams and dragged them out into the light of day, making them dirty with his touch. She hated it, hated him, and hated herself most of all.
As she watched, the elaborate silk gown she wore began to flow and change like melting wax, darkening and molding itself to her body until she was clad head to foot in a sheath of form-fitting black leather covered with matching silver studs along the shoulders, arms, and legs. Around her neck was a heavy leather collar with silver spikes, the kind a hunting dog might wear.
This was her hunting costume.
"No. Oh . . . no," she whispered, backing away from the mirror.
And then her image vanished as well, and Aerune stood within the ornate frame, holding out his hand.
"Come, my hound. It is time to hunt once more—and this time, I have a special treat for you."
She made a sound in the back of her throat—a groan of utter despair. Useless to fight him, impossible to try. Hating herself, she held out her hand to him in response. There was a jarring wrench of translocation, and they were . . . elsewhere. Now she had a leash upon her collar, and Aerune held the end.
"Do you like it?" Aerune asked her.
She looked around herself, wondering where he'd brought her this time. Back to Earth, somewhere in daylight, in some sort of office building.
No, not an office. The halls were filled with teenagers, wearing clothes that hadn't been in fashion in a very long time. A school of some sort, she supposed.
No one saw them. No one would see them unless Aerune wished them to. But Jeanette could see—and feel—everything. Emotions buffeted her naked senses like gusts of wind—despair, murderous anger, fear and pain and joy so intense it made her reel drunkenly, bathed in the emotional storms of adolescence.
This was high school. Her high school.
Recognition brought horror. James K. Polk High School, sometime in the late eighties. The same time she'd been going there.
"Why did you bring me here?" she demanded furiously.
"To hunt," Aerune answered. "Do you wish to see yourself as you were? There you are."
He pointed. A girl was walking down the hall. Her mouse-blonde hair was skinned back in an unflattering ponytail, and she wore no makeup. Her skin was blotched with acne. She was wearing a cheap leather jacket that didn't fit very well and carrying an armload of books. Her head was down and her shoulders hunched, as though she expected somebody to hit her.
Me. That's me. But why don't I stand up straight? Scuttling along like that, it's practically like wearing a "kick
me" sign.
She stared at herself, feeling the faint recognition of Talent thrill over her skin. It was no surprise; the T-Stroke would have killed her outright if she didn't have it. But it was stifled, suppressed, ignored. Covered over with a sullen anger that didn't look outside itself, that poisoned everything it touched.
Stupid. I was so stupid.
Jeanette watched as her younger self stopped in front of her locker, awkwardly juggling books as she reached for the padlock. A boy in a cream and gold varsity jacket strode toward her, deliberately banging into her and spilling her books all over the floor.
Cary McCormack. Oh, god, I hated him!
As she bent to pick them up, one of the boys with Cary darted forward and slapped a sticker onto the back of her jacket. It was a promo sticker for a local rock band, and adult Jeanette thought it looked pretty cool. But she felt the flare of rage from her younger self like a spike in her guts as younger-Jeanette wheeled on her tormentor, hissing curses.
All of the boys laughed, even Cary, but she could see into them as well as she could see into her other self, and there was none of the gloating joy she expected to see—just worry and uncertainty, boys feeling their way into adulthood just as her younger self was. And stuffed into Cary's back pocket, a well-thumbed paperback novel, one that she had read and loved. He was watching her younger self anxiously, a little bit of him hoping for some other reaction than rejection and anger, an acknowledgement that he hadn't meant her any real harm.
He just wants to talk. But boy, is he going about it the wrong way!
But how could she expect more? They were children, all of them. They were still learning how to do all the things adults took for granted—make friends and alliances, fall in love, serve conflicting loyalties, react wisely to unfairness and cruelty, and all the rest of the things that were supposed to set adults apart from children. If she'd been willing to make an effort, she could have turned the whole situation around, made a joke, maybe even talked to Cary. . . .
But she hadn't. She'd pushed hard to make them enemies, because it was easier, because she was young, too. She'd made them into monsters and they'd done their best to be what she wanted.
But I could have wanted something else. I threw away my whole life and let them bring me to this just because I was stupid!
It was an epiphany, but she didn't like it very much. The best revenge wasn't revenge, it was living well, and she hadn't. She hadn't revenged herself on her childhood tormentors by turning into Aerune's hound—she'd finished their work for them.
The boys went on. Young Jeanette got her locker open and began picking up her books again. A clique of girls—the bright ones, the pretty ones—went by, pointing at her and sniggering, but inside each of them was the fear: am I like that? What makes me different? What if I'm not pretty any more? How do I do everything right when I don't know what I'm doing at all?
They could never have been her friends—their interests were too different—but they didn't have to have been her enemies. She hadn't had to notice them at all, one way or the other. That was the part that had been her choice.
"Can we go home now?" she asked in a hard voice.
"There is still the hunt. You know what I seek. Find it for me," Aerune answered implacably.
She looked at the kids still filling the halls. They all thought of themselves as fully adult—only she knew how much of their lives' journey was before them. Refuse to do what Aerune wanted, and those unfinished lives all ended here. She didn't remember a bloodbath happening in her high school years here, but that didn't mean Aerune couldn't arrange one now.
The few for the many, and no matter what she chose, Death would come to JKPHS today.
Defeated, she began the hunt, pacing through the halls at the end of Aerune's leash. For a while back in the beginning she'd used to hope that if she spent enough time back in the Real World the T-Stroke would catch up with her and burn her out, but Aerune had quickly destroyed that hope. While she hunted for him, his spells kept time from touching her, even here. There was no escape.
She had no way to block the pain radiating from the kids around her—this one was pregnant, that one's parents were divorcing, the other was trying drugs for the first time and was terrified he was going to hell—but if she forced herself, she could let it wash through her, sifting through it for what Aerune sought. Several times a pang of Talent made her stop and quiver, but a lot of kids had Talent that burned out within a few years at this age. That wasn't what Aerune was looking for, and god help everyone here if he didn't find something to make his Hunt worthwhile.
Then she felt it. Burning like the sun, heat and life enough to warm her cold bones, banish all the borrowed pain. Helpless, she turned toward it. Refuse to follow the trail, and the killing would begin.
One or two instead of a dozen. That's good, isn't it? Isn't it a better choice?
There were other wellsprings of Power here. She could feel them. But this one was the strongest, the closest, and so she could concentrate on it and not give warning of the others. It was all she could do.
It was lunchtime, so most of the classrooms were empty. She passed each one, seeing glimpses of a world as foreign and lost as ancient Atlantis inside. There were real tragedies here, and cutthroat social climbing more intense than anywhere outside of Hollywood, but at the same time, there was a certain innocence to all of it. That was why people always spoke of high school as the happiest time of their lives . . . if they managed to forget the pain.
She hadn't. She'd let it rule her. And this was the result. She'd become someone she didn't even know.
She followed the trail of Power to the school auditorium. No one was supposed to be in here, but it wasn't locked. James Polk had been a nice upper-middle-class school in a good district. Parents all congratulated each other about not having the problems with violence or vandalism found in other schools. She and Aerune went inside.
It was dark in here. The school had been built in the thirties, and the auditorium bore a more than passing resemblance to a theater, with balconies, stage, and thick red velvet curtains, now drawn back to reveal an empty stage. A few lines of Shakespeare were carved on the archway above:
All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts . . . As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7.
There was someone sitting at the foot of the stage, leaning against it; a small untidy boy with an ever-present spiral notebook in which he had constantly been doodling.
That's Strange Stan Chandler. He ran away from home his junior year and nobody ever found out what happened to him.
Now she knew. She could feel his power, his creativity, that wonderful gift that the Sidhe lacked. She could see the life he would have had as if a movie were unrolling in her mind: high school, then art school, then an apprenticeship at one of the major animation studios, then ground-breaking work in CGI and a series of brilliant movies that would bring a renewed sense of childhood wonder to all who saw them. . . .
And none of it was ever going to happen. Because Stan Chandler wasn't going to get a chance to grow up to be a wizard. Because Stan Chandler hadn't run away at all.
"So this is the one," Aerune said, as Jeanette died a little more inside. There was a ripple of Power, and she knew they were suddenly visible.
"Come with me, little one," Aerune said. "Come into my kingdom."
She saw Stan's face awaken with wonder, with hope, with incredulous disbelief and gleeful awe, saw him jump to his feet—a skinny kid with big ears and thick glasses, somebody that nobody would ever look at twice—staring at the elf-lord in amazement. And then saw suspicion replace wonder, saw the fear begin.
But by then it was too late. Aerune had reached him, taken his hand. And the world melted around the three of them like a disrupted reflection, to re-form as Aerune's throne room.
Jeanette backed away—he'd dropped her leash, now that his prize was in
his hands—but she could not block out what came next. Somehow Aerune reached into Stan, finding the reservoir of his Talent and draining it away, into himself.
It hurt. She covered her ears, but that didn't block out the screams. Or the pain. She crawled up the steps of Aerune's throne and huddled against its coldness, begging and praying that the pain would soon be over.
For both of them.
A long time later she became aware that people were talking above her head—Aerune and someone else. This was rare, but not unheard of, and she tried not to listen. If Aerune noticed she was here—if Aerune noticed she was here and didn't like it, he would transport her to some other place. If she were lucky, she'd wind up back in her room. If she weren't, it would be some place like an open grave, or a swamp filled with maggots, or a bright place where things she could never remember clearly afterward did . . . something. Something horrible.
But she couldn't shut out the voices. Because while one of them was Aerune's, the other was human, from her own world and time.
"Oh, we're moving forward, Lord Aerune. People are willing enough to believe in you after Tunguska and Roswell and Grover's Mill. I'm sure you don't mind if they think you're space aliens—`elves' is a little hard for folks to swallow these days, but it doesn't matter what they call you, so long as it gets the job done. And psychic space aliens are even scarier than the other kind, if you get my drift—especially once they start encroaching on humanity."
Whoever he was, he wasn't afraid of Aerune. Jeanette listened in amazement. It was almost as if they were . . . allies.
"I believe I do, Mr. Wheatley. But I trust that your inner circle is quite aware that the invaders are not `space aliens,' but the Sidhe?" Aerune asked.
"Indeed they are, Lord Aerune. The bodies you've provided have been quite helpful in that respect. But I have to ask—when are my boys going to have a live specimen to play around with? We can go just so far with sweeps and drills."
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