“Alexis?” Dugan asked behind me, concern tinting his voice.
“She does this,” Falin told him as a way of explaining my habit of talking to beings no one else could see. Then he turned toward me. “Ghost or collector?” He studied my face in the moonlight and scowled before answering his own question. “Collector.”
Yeah, Falin and Death didn’t like each other.
“You’ve been . . . busy,” Death said, looking around. I was standing on a hill with a prince, a knight, and two dead bodies. Yeah, I’d been a little busy. He frowned. “I’ve been looking for you for the better part of the last two days.”
I lifted my shoulders in an awkward shrug as I fidgeted with the skirt of my gown, wishing it had pockets. “I had Faerie stuff.”
“You say this is normal? Who is she talking to? No one is there,” Dugan said behind me.
I twisted around and shot him a glare. “Hey, you talk to shadows. I talk to ghosts and soul collectors. Just because you can’t see them, doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
“You’re hurt,” Death said. “And the old wounds in your soul are inflamed.”
He took a step forward, but I took a step back. It would be way too easy to fall into old habits, but we’d already had this dance and come to the inevitable end. Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t go out looking to get hurt.
Death and I stared at each other for a long moment. He was the one to look away.
“Don’t die in Faerie, Al.”
“Not high on my to-do list.” Obviously.
He didn’t seem to know what to say after that. This kind of awkward had never been part of our relationship in the past. But things were different now. I needed something to do with my hands, but there was nothing. No pockets. Nothing to fidget with.
Death clearly felt the same way. He at least had something he could do.
He walked over to Lunabella’s body and bent down. Thrusting his hand into her chest, he pulled her soul free. It glowed a brilliant silver.
“Wait.” I needed to talk to her ghost. I hadn’t been able to get to it myself because of the basmoarte, but now that she was outside the body . . .
I knew Death wouldn’t let me talk to her. He couldn’t. Asking just underscored some of the reasons our relationship hadn’t worked. But I would try anyway, which was another reason things hadn’t worked.
Death hesitated, his shoulders tensing.
“Just one question?” I pleaded.
He didn’t look at me as he said, “One.”
That was better than I’d assumed I’d get.
“Did—” I started, letting my mouth get ahead of my brain in my hurry to get the question. I snapped my teeth shut. I’d been about to ask if she’d participated in Stiofan’s murder. But whether she did or not didn’t truly matter and wouldn’t help us find the rest of the murderers.
“Who killed you?” I asked, hoping my hesitation wasn’t too long.
With Death still grasping her soul, Lunabella hadn’t transitioned over to the land of the dead and become a ghost. She was a soul, in its brilliantly raw form. There was no true shape, no features, in the radiant silver glow that made up her soul, so I couldn’t read her expression. Her voice, when she answered, was high and distant, and very unlike a ghost’s.
“The scarred prince.”
“Who is—?” I started, but I’d gotten my one question. Death flicked his hand and the soul vanished.
Lunabella was out of my reach now, unless I wanted to risk lacerating my magic to raise her shade. Death moved to Jurin next, sending his soul on in one smooth motion before I could ask him to wait.
I turned toward Falin and Dugan, opening my mouth to ask who the “scarred prince” might be, but then hesitated. I’d seen every noble in Faerie—aside from the high king—at the revelry. There had been only one prince present. Dugan.
I stared at him. Only his face and hands were visible, and they certainly weren’t scarred. The rest of him was covered in armor. He didn’t look like anyone who would be described as scarred, but who else was there? I thought about everything he’d said over the last two days, searching for loopholes in his words. Could he be involved? Why would he be here now if he were? And how could he have killed Lunabella when he and Falin had been together when they reached the clearing? Of course, it was only his shadow cat’s odd actions that we were basing time of death on. Could he have orchestrated the discovery after having followed and killed them sometime while I’d been unconscious?
I didn’t know. My gut said he wasn’t involved, but I’d talk to Falin alone first. Find out if there were any other princes I didn’t know about. I turned back to Death.
“There might be a broken ghost in my office,” I said, because he hadn’t had to let me ask Lunabella any questions, so I was showing my thanks in a peace offering. Besides, if Stiofan was still there, he needed help. There were no therapists for ghosts, and the land of the dead wasn’t exactly a bright and happy place full of healing. Hopefully wherever souls went next would be better.
“I found him already,” Death said as he straightened.
That’s right, he’d mentioned that he’d been looking for me. But he hadn’t said why yet. I waited. He would tell me why he was searching for me, or he wouldn’t. That had been another major stumbling block. Too many secrets.
Death turned to me and brushed his dark hair out of his face. He looked around and scowled at Falin and Dugan, who were watching me, no doubt searching for hints about the conversation they could only hear my half of.
“You might want to go somewhere with less of an audience. He wants to talk to you about the debt you owe him.”
I frowned, confused, and then the blood drained from my face as comprehension hit. There was only one he that Death would use that much emphasis about.
The Mender.
I grimaced and twisted my hands in the skirt of my dress. I didn’t want to deal with a visit from the Mender. Not tonight. I’d had a long couple days, and a meeting with the very powerful—very scary—leader of the collectors was not something I wanted to contemplate. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a choice. I’d made a bargain with him, and now I owed him an enormous debt. If he’d come to collect, I was bound by magic to grant him what he requested. The Mender’s interest certainly explained why Death had sought me out despite his intent to stay away—I’d made the bargain and taken the debt to ensure Death’s freedom.
“When?”
“Soon, now that you’re back in a plane where we can find you.”
Crap. I nodded. I didn’t thank him—I didn’t need any more debt floating around—but I think he understood that I appreciated the heads-up.
“Be safe, Al,” he said, and I could see in his hazel eyes there was a lot more he wanted to say. But it was better for both of us if he didn’t. He gave me a small smile. Then he vanished.
“I try,” I whispered after he was already gone. Then I turned, looking first at the two fae who were watching me skeptically, and then down at the bodies laid out on the hill. I couldn’t raise the shades, and the souls were gone, so I couldn’t question the ghosts. There was absolutely nothing I could contribute further besides offering extra hands to help move them—which was hardly unique or irreplaceable.
“I hate to do this, but . . . can I leave these bodies for you two to take care of?” Now that was a sentence I never thought I’d utter. I lifted my skirt, starting down the hill even as I spoke. “You can get them back to Faerie, right? Don’t leave them on the hill for my roommates to find.” Another sentence that I shouldn’t have ever had to use. “I have to go. Something’s come up.”
Then I turned and ran toward the castle, hoping I could change out of my gore-streaked dress before my meeting with the single most powerful being I’d ever met.
Chapter 17
The Mender hadn’t appeared by the time
I made my way through the castle to my rooms, so I snatched a pair of clean clothes from my dresser and hurried to the bathroom. I only planned to change, but a glance in the mirror convinced me a shower was essential. My hair was a tangle of curls and pine needles, I had mud and things I didn’t want to think about on my arms from my fall in the woods, my skin was sticky from dried sweat, and I had an overall feeling of ick after over a day without a shower. I peeked back at my room—it was dark and empty. I turned the shower on, jumping in before it had a chance to warm up.
I’m normally one to relish my showers. Not tonight. While I wanted to scrub myself pink, I didn’t have time for more than a quick wash. It probably was one of my top five fastest showers of all time. Then I was out and pulling my clothes on over my still-damp body. Getting caught naked by the Mender was not something I wanted to happen.
I stepped out of the bathroom, towel-drying my hair, and stopped in my tracks. The door to my sitting room stood open. I’d definitely closed it when I’d walked through. I tossed the towel back in the bathroom and walked from my bedroom to the sitting room attached to my suite. The room had been empty when I passed through earlier. It wasn’t anymore.
The Mender sat in one of the overstuffed lounge chairs in the center of the room. For a being of incredible power, he wasn’t an imposing figure. Not currently, at least. His rounded shoulders dipped as he leaned forward, thin arms on knobby knees, and his balding head tipped to examine the books scattered across my coffee table—the one surface in the entire castle where I’d convinced Ms. B to let me enjoy my clutter. He picked up a book, examining the spine and nodding silently to himself, as if agreeing with some conversation only he could hear. His face had deep wrinkles and well-etched smile lines, and the impression was that of a kind old grandpa who would regale me with tales of his great-grandchildren.
I wasn’t fooled.
By the time he looked up, he appeared younger, hale and strong. The wrinkles had faded to lines of definition. The change happened so subtly that I didn’t realize his features had changed until it occurred to me that he looked different. And they kept changing as I entered the room.
How long had he been waiting?
“I didn’t mind. It wasn’t a long wait. I knew you were hurrying.” He said this as if we were already in midconversation.
Yeah, one of the more disconcerting things about the Mender was that he was a telepath. And probably psychic. He definitely saw possible paths of the future, even if he didn’t know which would come to fruition.
“He said you wanted to talk to me about the debt.” I didn’t need to clarify who “he” was. The Mender knew, either because Death was the only collector I was likely to talk about or because of that whole telepath thing.
“I’ve come to collect your debt.”
I nodded, sliding into the seat across from him. He hadn’t stated his demands yet, but I could already feel the magic binding me. I’d foolishly failed to set any terms on the favor he could ask of me. He could request anything, and I would have to comply—the magic in the debt would ensure I did.
The Mender’s features settled on something I’d classify as refined middle age; I wasn’t sure if he was in control of the shift, or if it was a natural condition of his existence, but this face made me think of a shrewd businessman. It didn’t reassure me.
The Mender held out his hand. A small polished wood box sat on his palm.
“Take it,” he said, nodding to me.
I reached out tentatively. I didn’t need to use my ability to sense magic or peer across planes to know the box was more than it appeared—that was a given considering who was offering it to me. Still, I was unprepared for actually touching it.
The box itself had no physical weight, but the moment my fingers touched the polished surface, my magic rose unbidden. I jerked back, nearly dropping the box as I squeezed my mental shields closed tighter. The Mender clapped his hands around mine, keeping the box pressed against my palm.
I gasped, using everything I had to reinforce my mental shields and keep my magic from spilling down into the box.
“What is this?”
“Just a little ball of reality,” the Mender said. He looked like a kindly grandfather again when he smiled at me. “Stop fighting yourself. You cannot win a battle against yourself, and I’m not giving you something meant to harm you.”
I didn’t know if I believed him. I didn’t understand enough about what the Mender was to trust him, but he was right about one thing—I couldn’t win against my own magic. Even as part of my magic battered against the mental shields I’d erected to hold it in, another part oozed through those shields, exploiting pores in my walls. The more magic that slipped through the shields, the larger the small holes became. It would wear down the shields in a matter of minutes at this rate and all I’d have to show for my efforts would be the exhaustion I’d earned fighting a losing battle.
I let go of my shields, and my magic moved.
There was no other way to describe it. Usually I directed my magic like a pair of hands. A tool to reach out, to pull, to push. Sometimes, if I let too much of my grave magic build, it hemorrhaged out of me, rushing for anything it could reach. But this wasn’t grave magic, it was my planeweaving ability. And it didn’t react like any magic I’d felt before.
I stopped trying to block the magic, and it moved like a wave engulfing the box. At the same time, the magic never actually left me. It stretched, folding around the ball of reality in my palm, connecting me to it and mixing it with the main pool of my magic. And then it settled. Seemingly content.
I mentally poked at the box in my hand. Physically it still felt like it wasn’t there, but my senses could feel the compacted strands of reality. I examined them. I could feel the land of the dead and the crystalline plane the collectors existed on. Other planes were there too, ones I’d felt before but had no name for. The ball of reality didn’t feel that different from many of the strands of reality all around us right now, it was just far more compressed. Now that my magic had encompassed the ball of reality, it seemed perfectly content to let it be.
“What is this?”
The Mender leaned forward, his face that of an inquisitive youth. “It is exactly as you suspect. A compact ball of select realities.”
“And what happens when I open the box?” I had a sudden vision of Pandora’s box, which loosed horrible things into the world when she opened it.
The Mender chuckled. “Nothing so dramatic. Go ahead, you can try it now.”
Saying I was unsure would have been an understatement, but if this tied into the debt I owed him, I’d have to do it eventually anyway. Might as well get it over with.
There was no lock on the box, but when I tried to flip open the lid, it didn’t move. I tried to pull the lid. Nothing. I flipped the box over, looking for a latch or release.
Nothing.
I looked up, frowning at the Mender. He smiled back at me, content to watch me fumble with the box.
“It doesn’t open?” I asked, feeling like an idiot.
“It’s not really a box, is it?”
My frown deepened. “Next you’ll hand me a spoon, I suppose.”
He didn’t get the joke. I wasn’t going to explain.
“Okay, so then what do I do with the box that isn’t a box and can’t be opened?”
“Take it to Faerie. Let the reality in it naturally unfurl and spread.”
My jaw dropped, and I shook my head. I couldn’t take death and decay into Faerie. The land of the dead didn’t belong there.
The Mender’s face shifted to the businessman again. “This is the debt you owe me. I’m calling it in. What I want you to do is take it to Faerie. The souls of the dead are stuck in Faerie. I want to collect them.”
I shook my head again, clenching my jaw. He was right, I couldn’t refuse. But there had to be another way.
“There is more than just the collectors’ plane here. This ball of reality contains the land of the dead. If I take it to Faerie, well, I don’t know exactly what would happen, but it would definitely introduce decay.”
“Much as the courts of Faerie balance each other, certain planes of reality balance each other. One cannot exist without the other, so you must release both.”
“The very nature of Faerie might change. This could destroy it.”
The Mender’s lips pressed out as he gave a nodding shrug. “That’s true.”
“Don’t make me do this.” I couldn’t do this. My own life wasn’t worth destroying an entire plane and the people on it.
“Well then, I suggest you learn to open and close that box.” The smile the Mender flashed me suggested that he’d played me. He’d offered me the worst option, to make what he really wanted sound better. I couldn’t refuse either way, but if there was another way, I’d jump on it. And he knew it. He continued by saying, “You don’t have to leave the reality to spread unattended if you can control it. Open the box, release reality, collect the souls, and then trap the realities foreign to Faerie back away again.”
I glared at him. Oh, that is all, is it? And how did he expect me to do that? “The box doesn’t open.”
“You can feel the reality contained there?” he asked, and at my nod he said, “Unravel it, just a little.”
I cocked a skeptical eyebrow, but dutifully focused on the box on my palm and widened my shields so that I could gaze across the planes. The room changed. Decay encroached on the furniture and rugs in the room, the material fraying and the wood rotting. Bright wisps of raw magic danced in the air. The Mender didn’t change, and he didn’t glow like a soul, but a rosy pink light surrounded him. I wasn’t sure from which plane the light originated or what it meant, but I was guessing knowing wouldn’t help me with the task at hand. I focused on the ball of reality.
The box in my hand changed and didn’t at the same time. I could see it, and yet I could see through it. Considering it had no apparent weight, that wasn’t surprising. My magical sense of it didn’t change—the space above my palm still held a tightly compact ball of reality—but my perception of it did. I can’t actually see the planes, instead seeing what is on those planes. So I couldn’t see the ball of reality, but staring, I could catch a flash of iridescent color or splash of gray, like seeing something from the corner of one’s eye. But the planes contained in the ball were already present all around me, so there wasn’t much to differentiate them from the reality already surrounding me.
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