Enough. I needed to get down, right away. I could start with the bottom floor, just start reading everything on the walls and see if any of it meant anything to me. Maybe I’d get lucky and he’d have written it out somewhere on this structure. I started down the ladder. The world seemed to shift and my head swam. I threw myself against the rungs and hung on for dear life.
A voice rose up from below me. “Hey, girl. Hey!” Rosa.
I risked a look down. She stood at the base of the ladder, looking up at me. Beyond her, Morph was once again empty and silent, as it had been the first time she appeared to me.
She snapped her fingers at me. “You deaf, or just ignoring me? I’m talking to you, girl!”
“You startled me. But I’m glad you’re here. Maybe you can help me--”
“Yeah, later. You better get a move on. Your friend, the one who’s dying? She needs you. Get out to that grass. Now.”
She was gone. The world slammed back into motion and I swayed, my head throbbing. As soon as I got my bearings, I picked my way down the ladder and got to ground level as fast as I dared. The bed sheet labyrinth was endless, taunting me with its twists and turns. After the first turn or two, I got on my belly and squeezed under them, crawling paratrooper-style until I was outside them at last.
I raced toward the path to the grass, no longer caring if Mr. Frosty or anyone else saw me. I prayed I wouldn’t be too late to say goodbye.
Just past the entrance to the path, I saw Tamar and Cherry walking in the same direction I was running. They carried big black trash bags and rolls of duct tape. “There you are,” said Cherry. She looked broken. “Joe’s keeping watch. Sara and Dionne went to get some water and supplies and they’re meeting us too.”
“Need to move.” I took the excuse to pause and gulp a couple of painful breaths. “Rosa. She came. Said. Vivi needs us.” I took off again, this time with them in my wake.
As we approached the end of the path, a figure crawled toward us and pushed up on weak arms. It was Joe. His cheek was red, his nose fat and bloody, and he looked dazed. Cherry cried out and slid to her knees beside him. Tamar and I kept going. My nose tickled with the buzzing scent of ozone. Shit.
The rippling branches of the weeping willow in the breeze made a curtain backdrop for the scene that played out over the hungry grass. Vivi lay on it, but no longer frail and sleeping--her teeth were bared, her gums pale and receded, her eyes vicious and bulging. One bony hand grappled the man on top of her for the knife in his hand. The other held him by the throat.
My stomach clenched. It was Teo.
He rasped words I couldn’t make out. His eyes were wild, alien, full of anger and hate, but he was weeping. Something familiar about the look on his face. The brush nearby rustled, shifting like something large was behind it, and I heard a hiss. “Teo! No! What are you doing?”
Tamar grabbed my arm and I went hard to one knee as she yanked me back from the grass. “Stay back, Mari! If you step on it, you’ll get the hunger too.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’ll go away when they unmake it. I have to help them--they’re going to kill each other!” I wrestled her grip but she just held on tighter.
“Not if she dies first! If the Hungry Man goes back into the grass and one of you is on it, we don’t know it won’t just go into you.”
I stopped fighting and stared at her. “What?” Behind her, Cherry came into the clearing with Joe, his arm slung heavy around her shoulders.
“Think about it.” Tamar shot the words rapid-fire. “She dies, Hungry Man goes into the grave. How’d she get it in the first place? Walking on the grass. You and Teo are on the grass, what’s gonna happen then?”
I turned back to Vivi and Teo and that’s when I recognized the look on his face.
It reminded me of Murmur.
But how would Murmur have driven Teo out here? Unless--
The brush rustled again. Another hiss. The smell of ozone.
Ozone--the tickle in my nose back at the fairy circle. Murmur was there. He’d heard us talking.
Why would Murmur care if the Hungry Man was in Teo?
Because we’d killed Vivi’s egregore.
But not Teo’s.
“Teo! Egregore! Kill it!” I tugged Tamar’s arm, pointing to the brush as I struggled to my feet. “Boden! Boden, are you there?”
“He’s--he was claimed by--” It was dawning on Tamar’s face.
Last night, at the wards, Murmur had offered me a truce of sorts if I gave him Vivi, because she had the Hungry Man in her. Surely even one night would have been enough for him to get his hooks back into her, if I had. But if he could get the Hungry Man into someone else, someone he still had a claim on--
I had to get Teo off of her, away from her. I didn’t think. I leaped forward, grabbing Teo around the chest and prying Vivi’s fingers from his throat.
“Mari, no!” Joe’s voice was anguished.
Vivi was so strong. “Help me!” I yelled to no one in particular.
Sara was there, dropping a bag of supplies and diving in beside me, and then so was Cherry, holding Vivi down and pinning her arms.
Behind me, Tamar and Dionne chanted, and Joe’s voice rose over theirs. “I’m going to find those fucking fae.”
Don’t you dare!
I closed my eyes, trying to force Murmur’s voice out of my head. You can’t stop me. You’re too weak right now.
I will burn your world to ashes. Everything you’ve ever cared about.
Not if I get to you first.
I will not be depleted for long. And then we will have a reckoning.
He was gone. Teo’s flailing hand smacked me in the face and I blinked away an explosion of bright colors. His throat was free and I wrapped my other arm around it, hauling him back. Sara hit his other hand, forcing him to drop his knife. She scooped it up as I tumbled backward with him on top of me. Cherry darted off the grass as Vivi snarled and clawed at her, thick ropes of saliva dripping from her teeth. Vivi scrambled to her knees, but to my shock, stopped short of leaving the grass and screamed in fury. That’s when I saw the salt outlining the grass. Tamar and Cherry had planned for Vivi trying to move.
“I think we pinned it, but I don’t know if we can hold it,” gasped Dionne. “I can’t see nothing without them glasses Tamar made. But he gotta be the one to kill it, if we got any chance.” She pointed at Teo, who writhed and wept and fought me.
“Teo, please,” I begged. “You don’t have to live with him in your head. You don’t have to suffer because of him. You can end it. Can you see, over there? Can you see a vulture in the brush? Kill it and you can be free.”
I wasn’t sure if he heard me, or understood. He was deep in a hell within himself, groaning and doubling over with agony.
“I found them!” Joe ran back into the clearing, leading Boden and several other fae.
“He can’t do it.” I looked up at Dionne and Tamar. “Teo. I don’t think he even knows where he is.”
For just a moment, we were all still, frozen in the knowledge of our only remaining choice.
Dionne met Tamar’s eyes. “We have to.”
She nodded. “I know.”
Dionne held out a defeated hand toward the grass and beckoned the fae. “Come on. Time to unmake it.”
Boden looked between her and Vivi. “The One Who Hungers still walks in her.”
“We know,” I said. “But it’s the only way we keep that thing out of the demon’s hands. We can’t risk waiting for her to--you know.”
“Three of them walked on the grass during this fight,” said Joe. “Get it the fuck out of here and fix them.”
Sara and I held Teo down while Tamar and Dionne set about banishing the egregore to give him some relief. Cherry and Joe kept watch over the path, and the fae circled the hungry grass. Boden stared hard at me and Sara. “We
must ask you to turn away and do not try to watch what we do. This magic is not for humans.”
We did it, reluctantly. Behind me, I could hear them speaking and singing, like nothing I’d ever heard. Colored light flashed, and there were crackles and whooshes. Vivi grunted and howled.
In all my life, I never again want to hear a sound like the one that was unleashed when they released the nain rouge’s voice to complete the destruction of the hungry grass.
There was a furious scream from the brush, and the sound of flapping wings. I couldn’t see the egregore the way I could with the glasses or in Murmur’s dead realm, but I perceived a blur where it lifted up and flew off. It was huge. Vivi’s had been so small. When it vanished, Teo went limp in my arms.
Silence fell behind me. The fae trudged toward the edge of the clearing. They looked sickened and repulsed. Boden’s smooth human face was hard. “Let us leave now. My fellows and I would as soon be quit of this spot.”
Teo lay half in my lap, blank-faced and unblinking, breathing hard. But when I touched his hand, he clasped mine. I looked up at the others.
They circled Vivi, who sat half-propped against Joe, her eyelids papery and fluttering and her lips pale as she pulled in each labored breath. There was something about her face, a hardness, that was her and not quite her at the same time.
She rolled her head toward me with an effort. “Mari. I want...to help him.”
“Help who?”
Boden folded his arms and glared at me. “We upheld our end of the deal. You said you would accompany us. We are ready to go now.”
I cradled Teo’s head as I lowered it from my leg to the ground. I didn’t want to leave him or Vivi, but maybe I could get this over with quick. “I’m ready. Where’s this thing you want me to carry across for you?”
“Wait, what?” Joe shot me a ferocious look.
Dammit. I had forgotten that Joe wasn’t around for that conversation. “I sort of promised to take an item across to Faerie for them. In exchange for their help last night. They said they’d bring me right back.” My defensiveness covered up my sudden chilling fear, as I remembered everything Cherry told me earlier about their perception of time.
“You’re not doing that,” he said, as if that settled it.
“It’s not up to you.” I almost wished it were.
“We have a deal,” Boden said to Joe with no small amount of dismissive scorn.
“Goddammit, Mari--”
“I don’t have time to argue this with you,” I snapped, and turned to Boden. “Let’s just fucking go and get this over with so I can get back to Vivi and Teo. Where is it?”
“Here.” Boden held up a small item wrapped in a piece of neon-colored fabric that might have been a scarf from some Morpher’s outfit. “We have it, that’s all that concerns you.”
I reached for it. Boden stepped back, but was a hair too slow reacting. Next thing we knew, it had been snatched from his hand, and mine was empty.
Vivi moved with the sudden speed of a trapped animal, though it cost her an effort. Somehow she’d gotten Teo’s knife and now held it out, fending us all off. She dropped to the ground, cradling the bundle deep in her lap, and with her other hand shook the contents free of the cloth.
It was nothing. Just a small, cheap, kitschy little figurine of a garden gnome, the kind of thing you’d buy as a joke at Goodwill or the dollar store for that friend who likes tacky things.
“Are you fucking kidding me with this?” Surely I was being punked and none of this was real.
“I told you it would mean nothing to you.” Boden’s smooth face suffused with anger as he tried to get past Vivi’s determined stance and even more determined knife. The other fae circled her, wary.
“I’m going instead.” Vivi was working hard to draw each breath, but her eyes glittered with fight. Her voice wasn’t quite hers.
“No,” I said. “I don’t care if you think you owe me or whatever. I made the deal, I’ll pay the price.”
“This is not about you.” She sounded just as scornful as Boden had to Joe. She turned to Boden and it was no longer Vivi speaking. “You will let me finish the deal in her place so I may cross.”
“Why would I do that?”
The Hungry Man held up the figurine, clenched in one fist. “So I don’t just destroy this.”
Boden jerked toward it and then checked the movement, but he’d already given himself away. “Fine,” he said after a moment of internal struggle. “Acceptable. You will carry it across and then we will return you.”
“No,” said the Hungry Man. Something about it chilled me.
Again Boden paused to consider his moves, but he was too eager. “What do you want?”
“Your escort and help,” said the Hungry Man. “The fruits of your realm will keep this mortal alive and strong enough to travel with me, and will keep the hunger-madness at bay. I will protect her. You will help me reach the council of the Wise Ones who are my only chance. Swear this to me.”
“Only chance for what?” I tried to take this all in.
The One Who Hungers turned ancient eyes on me. “To break the curse that has kept me bound to this world in madness for ages uncounted.”
“Oh.” My voice felt very small.
“Why my help?” said Boden. “Simply opportunity?”
The Hungry Man looked him over. “My cause will help yours. It will ensure your loyalty.”
“You don’t know me.”
“No, yet I know something about you because you want this--trinket.” He leveled his gaze at Boden. “You are a peasant still. You surely do not know the half of how to use this. Help me, and I can show you how to wield its power. I think you know what that would mean for you and those allied to you.”
I could see he was pushing all the right buttons with Boden. I don’t know why I felt entitled to be nosy at that moment, but I blurted out, “Seriously? Are you telling me that thing is some kind of relic or something?”
The Hungry Man looked me over. “I’m telling you nothing. This is not your concern.”
“But Vivi is,” I said. “I’m not stupid. I know you’re not supposed to eat fairy food and stuff like that.”
“That’s...it’s not quite that simple,” said Joe.
“I want to know what happens to her.” I crossed my arms and stood my ground. “You’re saying you can keep her alive over there? What happens when your mission is done? Are you just going to toss her aside like last week’s trash? Is she going to die then?”
“I can make no guarantees,” said the Hungry Man. “But she will not sacrifice her life to host me there as she does here. She may very well even recover. As I said, I will protect her there as I cannot here. If we remain here, she will die and I will lose my chance to finally be free. If we go, she may live; she may even be able to return to you when our work is done.”
“I want to talk to her,” I said.
The Hungry Man was silent for several moments. Around us, everyone else watched, wary, except for Teo who remained lost in his own sorrow and exhaustion. “All right,” he said at last.
It took several more moments for Vivi to rise to the surface from her own depths; even then I had the feeling of looking at her below the surface of water or through a mirror. Her body trembled with weakness, but she curled defensively around the little statuette and kept the knife pointed outward. “Mari.” It sounded like her, though her voice was distant.
“What do you want, Vivi?” I was afraid she might ask to die. “Do you understand any of this? It’s your body and your life we’re talking about here.”
She smiled faintly, painfully. “I understand it. Better than you know. Mari...he and I...we can help each other. I want to. I...feel what he feels. Remember when we talked the other night?” It was getting harder for her to speak with each word.
“I do.”
>
“This...means something. Whatever happens...I can say I did something. That had...purpose. That made me feel something.” Her eyes shimmered and it was tiring her just to smile. “Even if I’m scared.”
“I’m scared for you,” I said around the tightness in my throat.
“I want to go,” she said.
I just nodded.
Boden seemed more subdued. He laid a hand on my shoulder. “A year and a day. Come back then, and make another circle. Call to us. I cannot promise this will be done, but I promise one of us will come through and tell you whatever we can.”
The Hungry Man emerged again; I saw and heard the change. “Then are we agreed?”
Boden nodded. “We are agreed.”
“Let us not delay. We have very little time left here.”
I shuddered. Everyone else remained in solemn silence. Even Joe no longer seemed willing to argue.
“I’ll stay here.” Cherry spoke up softly but with an iron firmness. “I can’t--I just can’t watch it. I’ll look after Teo and take care of him.” She hugged Vivi. “Please come back. You in there, take care of her and help her come back.” She turned away and knelt beside Teo, her head bowed.
The rest of us gathered ourselves and rose to go. It seemed that when the Hungry Man was in control, he could still lend Vivi’s body some extra bit of strength, but it also seemed like it was beginning to dwindle. We began the long walk to the fairy circle.
It felt like an eternity until we reached the circle, and none of us spoke along the way. It wasn’t until we got there, when I saw how the heather was turning brown and dry and the ground within the circle looked faded, that it really struck me. In a few minutes we would close the circle and this doorway would vanish, with Vivi on the other side of it. My gut ached.
“Are you ready?” asked Boden.
Vivi emerged, with difficulty, one more time. She drew her phone from her pocket. We waited as she typed out a couple of messages, her fingers unsteady. When she was done, she handed it to me. “Told my business partner what to do. Texted my ride home and said I had to take a taxi out of here for an emergency and to please take my things home. Will you put this in my tent? They’ll just think I forgot it or dropped it.”
MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Page 45