Impostor Syndrome

by Mishell Baker

  But whoever it was in New York might try to call back. And if they did, anyone who could get to the phone in time could pick it up.

  I pocketed the phone and took it upstairs to charge it. Wouldn’t it be extra nice of me, after all, if I returned it to Alondra with a full battery?

  22

  Thursday afternoon I got word that Brand had locked down all but the Vessel-guarding wraith into another book, pending eventual distribution into more permanent spells. We’d have to sort through which wraiths had done what during the rebellion before we decided their “sentences,” but there wasn’t going to be time for that in the foreseeable future. All that mattered for the moment was that they were no longer wild cards in the war.

  I made a date to meet Shock in Arcadia early Friday morning; coordinating with him was much easier now that his dad was covering for him. I set the meeting in Arcadia to reduce the chance of Caryl stumbling in on us and distracting him, and I decided to use the opportunity to test out my new suit. It was heavier than regular clothes, I still couldn’t get the shirt off by myself, and I was going to have to figure out a better way to keep the pants from riding down aside from yanking them up every couple of minutes, but all in all it was a fine piece of work. Once I got my surgical gloves on, I felt ready for anything.

  Shock and I found a place to settle, a pair of warm, flat rocks not far from the LA4 Gate. I was actually more comfortable standing, but I wanted to look comfortable to my guest.

  “I’ve got another question for you about facades,” I said once we’d exchanged apologies and small talk. “Do you have to make them exactly from the DNA blueprint, or can you vary them?”

  He made a wobbly, equivocating gesture with one hand. “We always make some choices,” he said. “How the hair is cut and so on. But each choice adds time, and so we keep them as close as possible to the way they ‘grow’ naturally.”

  “But once a facade is grown? Can you alter it? Could Belinda, for example, make one of me, and then put scars and iron into it so it would match?”

  He shook his head, wincing a little. “You cannot make a wound heal in a certain way. No two scars would be the same. Besides, every cut you made on the facade would cut the fey linked to it as well.”

  “If it was just a facade, though, not linked?”

  “Then the wounds would not heal at all, unless you had a Seelie spell caster nearby to do it right away. And then the wounds would not leave scars. The Seelie Court’s healing magic is based upon the body not ‘remembering’ that it was injured at all.”

  “Okay, well suppose you had a facade, and Claybriar sitting right next to you to help you. Could you cut it open and put iron in its bones?”

  Shock looked flat-out horrified. “I—why would I want to do that?”

  “I’m trying to figure out a way to make Dawnrowan and her guards think we have a second Ironbones, in case we need to make a threat to get away safely. And I had an idea of maybe using a facade to create that illusion.”

  “So you want me to make another facade for you, and then try— I have no idea how long this would take. I have never tried to . . . alter a facade this extensively before.”

  “If it helps, you can shave off the time it would take to make it. I want you to use one you’ve already made, one that’s currently lying empty somewhere, now that Brand has locked the wraiths down.”

  I’d thought Shock had already gone as pale as he could go, but apparently I was wrong.

  “Don’t try to tell me you don’t have a way to track that thing down,” I said. “You can do whatever experiments on it you want. And then when we’re done with it, we can put Qualm into it and send it to jail. It was Qualm, wasn’t it? That was the wraith you put into it?”

  “You knew,” he said softly. “You knew all along.” He raised his eyes to give me a pleading look. “Yes, I made that facade, put Qualm into it. Dame Belinda said she needed it to gather information. A spy, I thought. I didn’t know what she actually used it for until I met with you that day about Brand. I promise, I would never have—”

  “I know, Shock. Otherwise I’d be hammering you full of iron nails right now. Let’s focus on the matter at hand. Can you do this? Will you?”

  “I—I do know where the facade is,” he said. “The spirit brought it back to Arcadia, through the NY2 Gate.”

  “Wait, how did it get all the way to New York?”

  “Buses,” Shock said. “During off hours. It was cloaked, and it is quite easy to take public transportation when no one can perceive you.”

  “Can you get it? Stick some iron in there, have Claybriar patch it up afterward?”

  “I—I could try. Just—please don’t tell Caryl it was me, all right?”

  “She already knew, Shock. That’s why we invited you here in the first place.”

  He stared at me a moment, then rose to his feet, pacing. “She knew, and she—” The words “kissed me” seemed to hover in the air unspoken. “—forgave me,” he finished instead.

  “Caryl is complicated,” I said diplomatically. “But you see why we need you to make this work. Not just to get the vials, but to access this facade. We can use it to make them think Tjuan has iron bones like me. So you get caught, trying to get the vials out of there? The real Tjuan and I can threaten the standing stones until they let you out safe.”

  “The st—wow.” Shock’s eyes flew wide beneath his blue fringe. He laughed. “Well, that would certainly get their attention. You’d do that, to save me?”

  “Of course I would,” I said. “But don’t get teary eyed about it. You understand, don’t you, that the entire fate of this war depends on getting those vials back to Los Angeles? Even if the rest of us don’t make it, you have to get that bag back here.”

  He turned to me, solemn, and gave a slight bow. “I understand,” he said. “This is about more than my father’s mourning. I will not fail you.”

  “That leads me to another thing. You’re going to need your wings for this.”

  “No, it’s fine,” he said nervously. “I go up there all the time like this. They have horses that—”

  “To leave, Shock. Remember, I’m planning as though things might go pear-shaped at some point. You grab the vial your dad wants first, then living employees, then everything else. If you get caught somewhere in the middle of it all, you may have to just make a run for it. No waiting for a ride.”

  “Ah. Ah, I see.” He started to gnaw at his fingernails. I wondered if somewhere in the void his natural form was slowly filing down its claws.

  “How do you change back into your fey form?” I said. “How long is it going to take for you to recreate that link?”

  Slowly his face took on that wine-red stain I’d seen when I caught him kissing Caryl.

  “Shock, what is it?”

  He sighed. “Okay, here is the secret. I made my own facade; I customized it. I control when I change. I did not want to be forced back into my normal form even when I came to Arcadia. I hate it.”

  “You’re saying you could change back anytime?”

  “Yes.”

  “Show me.”

  His head snapped up; his small dark eyes went wide. “Miss Roper, no. I do not like for humans to see me that way. This is how I want you to see me. This is how I look, even in my own mind. This is who I am.”

  I felt a pang of sympathy for the kid. “I’m not asking you to claim the body,” I said. “I’m not saying it’s you. I’m asking you to use it, when it helps you. I need to see how it works. It’s a tool to use in our heist, that’s all.”

  Shock let out a long, slow exhale. “All right,” he said. “Okay. I will—I will show you.”

  I’d forgotten, until I saw him, that he was Vivian’s grandson.

  It was like a slap of cold water to the face; I sucked in a sharp breath. Bat wings, pale praying-mantis arms, bleeding wounds for eyes.

  I rose from my seat on the tawny rock and staggered back, breathless nightmare screams escaping my throat.
Almost immediately I lost control of my limbs and fell down hard on my ass, half catching myself on one forearm in the mercifully spongy sand.

  Next thing I knew, Shock was kneeling beside me in human form, and for a moment I saw his father in him, in the graceful way he reached for me, confident in his ability to comfort. He put his arms around me as I had seen Winterglass do to Caryl, but there was restraint here, both from politeness and from his efforts to avoid touching any part of me the suit left exposed.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s only me. It’s me.”

  He held me for a moment, and I might have objected to being comforted by a seventeen-year-old if it weren’t for the fact that I was shaking uncontrollably. When he spoke again, his voice was bitter.

  “I am so sorry,” he said. “I truly hate myself sometimes.”

  “No,” I said. “No, it isn’t you. I mean sure, you look scary, but I’ve gotten used to scary, and I trust you. It’s just . . . you look like her. Like your grandmother.”

  He pulled back, looked at me gravely. “Feverwax,” he said. “The mad countess.”

  “I knew her as Vivian Chandler. I’m the one who—who murdered her. She looked just like that.”

  “Oh,” he breathed. “I should have warned you.”

  “No way you could have known.”

  He carefully arranged his hair. “Father always said I looked like my mother. The princess-consort, Slakeshadow. I suppose she took after her mother too. I am truly sorry.”

  I got to my feet carefully; he let me lean on his arm. “This is good, though,” I said. “It means you can access the form when the time comes, escape by air if you need to.”

  Shock made sure I was steady on my feet before drawing away from me. “I wish you had not seen me that way,” he said. “You—you won’t tell Caryl that I look like the countess, will you? She and my mother are the reason Caryl got abducted.”

  Something twisted a little inside my chest. “That’s Dame Belinda’s doing,” I said. “She is the one who ordered it. If you care about Caryl, you are definitely on the right side of this war now.”

  “I thought helping London was the right thing,” he said. “I didn’t know. Dame Belinda made you all sound so dangerous, evil, insane. All I knew was that you had asked me to make a facade for a monster. It sounded plausible.”

  “You’re a good kid,” I said, giving his shoulder a brief squeeze with my gloved hand. “Belinda’s always been good at making people believe she’s on the side of virtue. Alvin fell for it; I fell for it at first; even your dad fell for it. Don’t feel bad. Thanks to you, your dad is going to be on our side soon. With the whole Unseelie Court behind us, Belinda will have to surrender.”

  “The whole Unseelie Court?” A bit of his father’s disdain entered his tone. “Do you see Queen Shiverlash settling in with my father in wedded bliss?”

  I thought of the way she’d laughed the first time Winterglass had addressed her. The utter contempt with which she’d shoved him to the soundstage floor.

  “Sure,” I said, grinning to hide the gnawing uncertainty in my gut. “We’re all going to be one big happy family.”

  23

  The key to setting up a meeting at the White Rose without drawing suspicion was to make it look like it was all Queen Dawnrowan’s idea. My experiences working with actors on a film set had prepared me well for this sort of subliminal inception, and I’d already gotten started.

  Thanks to Brand’s indiscriminate recruiting, rumors were already trickling out that the dread manticore Throebrand was waiting for the queen to exit the palace so that he and his hidden commoner army could destroy the wards protecting the White Rose. Foxfeather was especially helpful in spreading these rumors, as she had a nightmarish tale of her own to tell, and we sort of hadn’t bothered to inform her that it was all a ruse. The fewer fey we had to count on to tell truth “creatively” the better.

  On Friday morning after my meeting with Shock, I approached Phil to get the proper paperwork sorted out to employ the usual local courier to the queen. I needed to talk to Tjuan, too, but Caryl had made me pretty paranoid about getting in touch with him, so I got Song to lend me one of the spare prepaid phones she kept in her room, activated it, took it up to my room, and used it to call Gary’s motel.

  “Have you got a mobile phone?” I asked Gary once we’d established that I was the girl Abigail had made the suit for.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “I need you to give it to the guy in room two for a few and tell him to call this number.”

  Gary didn’t seem too pleased by the arrangement, but he said he’d do it. So I ended the call and set the phone aside on the desk, using my own to text Alvin while I waited.

  Going to need 2 more suits, will send measurements soon, get this rolling ASAP tho

  He texted me back in a few minutes: Do I even want to ask?

  Will fill u in later

  The prepaid phone buzzed, and I snatched it up like the desk was on fire.

  “Tjuan?”

  “Yeah.”

  I leaned my head into my hand, closed my eyes. “You all right?”

  “I’m here. What is it?”

  “We’re going to need your help with a heist.”

  “Millie.”

  “No, no, it’s safe for you. It’s in Arcadia. It’s going to be me and Shock and Caryl and Caveat and possibly Elliott if we can get him back from where he got stranded in the last heist.”

  “Alvin told me about that. You got the Medial Vessel.” I couldn’t tell if he sounded impressed, or if I just wanted to hear it so badly I was imagining it.

  “Sure as fuck did.” I put my hand over my pocket. My precious. “Anyway, Shock’s going to bring us that facade they used to frame you; Brand already yanked Qualm out of it. We’re going to fill it full of iron, make the queen and the guards think you’re an Ironbones too, to help with an emergency exit strategy. It’s complicated. But when we’re done . . . Winterglass is going to put Qualm back in it and send the thing to a police station.”

  There was a brief silence. I could almost see Tjuan’s flat expression as he processed this. “A John Doe that happens to look just like me,” he said. “Nice. Especially if you can plant the gun on it.”

  “So, you in?”

  “What will I have to do?”

  “Not much, actually. You’ll be pretty safe; you’re just going to be part of the exit strategy if things go sour. Otherwise it’s going to be fake you doing the hard part, piloted by Elliott. But I wanted to make sure, before I nail all this down, that you’re okay with this, because the copy of you is going to get into trouble again. Just, in Arcadia this time.”

  “You gonna clear my name in Arcadia when it’s over too?”

  “Well, we are actually going to be committing a crime this time. But if it goes well, there will be no one left in power who’ll care about punishing us for it.”

  “If it doesn’t go well?”

  “Well, we’re all fucked six ways from Sunday if this doesn’t work, regardless. Our reputations are going to be the least of our problems.”

  A long silence as he thought it over. “Beats the shit out of sitting here eating Triscuits for the rest of my life,” he said.

  “That’s the spirit. Now I need just one more thing. We’ve gotta make you a suit like mine. Two of ’em, exactly the same. So let’s make sure they fit.”

  He talked me through what he could remember of his measurements, shoe and shirt sizes, et cetera, and then I reluctantly ended the call so that I could send the info to Alvin and then check in on the situation with the courier.

  By afternoon our courier was cleared to go. The tiny butterfly-winged blue pixie Glitterbell was our go-to because she was fast as hell and had an Echo—a painter living ironically in Echo Park—that made her good at remembering orders. The letter I sent with her claimed that I was reconsidering Dawnrowan’s demands and was willing to hear her out regarding potential candidates for Seelie King, if sh
e’d come back to Los Angeles for a few hours.

  Then I waited. The only break in the excruciating suspense was an annoying text from Zach.

  Just dump me already, i hate this shit

  I was strongly tempted to just reply ok and have done with it. But then I remembered my opposite-to-emotion thing. What would I do if I were a person with a heart and soul who actually cared about the feelings of the guy she’d been regularly fucking since October? Once I’d looked at it from that perspective, I texted him an apology.

  Sorry it’s been crazy at work and i’m kind of falling apart, i just have not had the brain space to deal with this rn

  Millie he texted back. Dot dot dot underneath, my name hanging there over it like a sentence unto itself. Those dots lingered forever. I stared at them in astonishment, wondering if he was writing a novel or if he just couldn’t figure out how to make words anymore. Turned out it was a bit of both.

  The thing is I think we haven’t even really given this thing a fair try and i get why, we just fell into it because we were next door and it was easy, and so it’s easier not to think about it i guess. But im just going to put this out there that i actually miss you, that i am curious so much about you, i know you tried to kill yourself, its all over google, also that you were a filmmaker? And you seem like you dont have a lot of friends and i worry that one day you’ll just be dead and i wont even know why or if there was something i could have done. Sorry if this is too much but what have i got to lose at this point, i care about you is all im saying

  I sat there reading it and wanting to be stirred, wanting to feel some abrupt outpouring of affection. I didn’t, but something ached in the vicinity of my breastbone. It was probably pity, but it was at least human, something I was feeling for a person who wasn’t a scary warlock or the king of the fairies. It was a close enough feeling to normality that I wanted to cup my hands around it and blow on it gently and coax the ember into a flame.

  I care about you too, I lied. But I still need a little time. I will let you know when, ok?