The buzzing was getting louder, and Miles could swear there was a whisper in it now: drink it, drink it, drink it. He didn’t want to—what Terris just said meant it was poison. But the buzzing urged him on, and before he knew it, he leaned forward and closed his lips around the straw, drawing more of the toxic stuff inside him.
—not too much, not too much. Stop, Miles. Stop drinking now.
Miles did stop, startling so hard that the whole table jolted. He stared at Terris, who regarded him innocently.
Conductor of electricity. What is thought if not electricity across the brain? And under the right circumstances, it can easily be transferred from one brain to another. With the right catalyst.
Miles’s eyes went wide, and he fell back against the back of the booth, only remembering to breathe when his vision started to go black.
Terris leaned back too. All his playful, arrogant guise was gone, and he stared at Miles coldly. Blankly. “It won’t last very long in your system,” he said out loud. “So don’t waste time gawking. Go on, darling. Go in and have a peek around.”
For a second all Miles could do was quietly panic. He could feel the connection into Terris’ mind as if someone had hooked a cable between them, and it was maddening. Everything felt like a hot rush, strange and terrible and loud. He tried to shut his eyes, but it didn’t do him any good—it was in his head.
And then, slowly, it began to calm, like a wave pulling back. Something gently urged him forward, and he went, hesitant, growing bolder as he went deeper. This was Terris’s mind. There were no lies here—it was like hearing someone talk about going to a foreign country versus going there yourself. He could see it all. He could feel it all. He could feel everything about Terris, all his wants, his needs; his mysteries were all here, open and exposed.
They were terrible.
Terris’s mind was full of shadows—full, like long planks standing on end, a thousand shields hiding pieces of him from some greater, bigger shadow that lurked around every corner. Miles wound down strange hallways, tiptoeing because he knew something terrible was on the other side, but he knew, too, that whatever it was could not find him here.
So many secrets. There were words that could not be spoken, thoughts which must not be thought, because if they were uttered, the shelters would fall, and it would all be over.
Lonely. It was so lonely here and had been for so long. Only the one had come close to entering within, and what a disaster that had been. Not my fault. I gave him a choice. But there was regret there, and sorrow, and fear.
And now there was another—he’d been smarter this time, but it hadn’t worked. Why? He’d been so careful! So exact! He’d done it all right, but it hadn’t worked. It had to be him. But how? The sacrifice and the other hadn’t had any contact, so how could it be? How, how, how?
So cold, so cold, so alone…
I am so much better than this!
Seolfor, seolfor, seolfor, seolfor…
The buzzing began again, and Miles felt himself fade back into his own mind. But even before he landed, he started shaking. He stared at Terris, mouth agape, eyes unblinking, tears thickening his throat. He’d seen it all. He knew everything there was to know about Terris. He knew what he had been. He knew how he’d come to the Lord of Dreams, knew how he’d been imprisoned, and he knew how he was trying to get out. He knew how he’d tried to get out before. He shut his eyes. Oh, Harry.
“You can say that I am despicable,” Terris said calmly. “You can say that I am cruel. I suppose I couldn’t argue with you. But, out of curiosity—do you blame me? Would you, put in my place, behave differently?”
Miles would have laughed, but he was afraid he might cry instead. “Yes, I would have behaved differently.” Eyes still closed, he shook his head. “But no. I don’t blame you.”
Terris’s hand stole across the table and captured Miles’s own. “Will you give yourself to me, Miles, and set me free?”
It was a trap. Even without the silver, he still remembered, and he knew that Terris had set this up, had forced himself into being and followed Miles here, lured him into this conversation and even the drink, exposed himself all so he could do this, so that he could move Miles by pity, fear, or, if he were lucky, compulsion to present himself as an offering. His soul. And unlike the Lord of Dreams, Miles would not die by pleasure, but by the most exquisite sort of pain as his soul spun out like a ladder, a bridge for Terris to crawl out on, into death, life, or something else. It was impossible to know what exactly would happen, but Terris’s departure would take Miles with him, and they would go there together, Terris whole, Miles in ruins. But they would not be in the prison of the Lord of Dreams. That was all that mattered. Because this loneliness, this pain, this agony could not be borne, not anymore. Not for anything.
It wasn’t pity or fear that drew Miles, but something far more lethal: fellow feeling.
He let Terris lead him out of the café, his notes clutched awkwardly against his chest. Terris paid his bill with silver coin, and the waitress took it in a dreamy, absent state. Together Miles and Terris went through the trees behind the parking lot, and then they were in the forest, then the castle.
“It’s not your castle,” Miles said, his voice slurred as he followed Terris down the hall. “It’s not really a castle at all. It’s inside your mind. It’s where you live, all by yourself, and there’s no one here. You could go and be with him, but that’s worse, and so you’re here. You found me because I was vulnerable, and I was a good shot at getting out.”
“Yes.” Terris eased him onto a silver mattress and looked down at him with real longing. “Will you give me my escape, Miles?”
Drugged by silver, lured by empathy, and lost in the dream, Miles nodded and opened his arms.
There was little foreplay this time, but there was hardly any need. Terris opened Miles and pushed inside him, and Miles lay back and let him in, feeling himself rising away, wondering what it would be like to feel that kind of pain, to be held up so high, to be spun out like an endless thread between two universes, then catapulted into something that he couldn’t even comprehend. He opened and arched into his lover, his murderer, and he waited.
Nothing happened.
He was aroused, because he always was with Terris—but he couldn’t give himself to him because he could not come. He couldn’t exit his body, couldn’t ride with him out of his hell, couldn’t give Terris his release. Even though he gave himself freely, it wasn’t working. No matter how much he let go, something in him held back. No matter how Terris plunged inside him, no matter how he pleaded or coaxed, Miles could not give him his release.
Terris finally collapsed forward onto Miles’s body, clutched the silver bedding in his fists, and screamed.
“Why?” he cried, half raging, half weeping. “What have I done wrong?” He swore passionately in a language Miles couldn’t understand. “I can feel you giving yourself, but it won’t work. It’s even worse than it was with the other one.” He pounded the bed with his fists, shouted again, then withdrew from Miles and rolled away. “Go,” he said gruffly. “Just leave me.”
Miles stared at him. He felt sick, and he felt confused. He hated Terris, and he ached for him too. He wanted to run, weeping with relief at what he had just escaped, and he wanted to take Terris in his arms and hold him.
Terris snorted. “Don’t. Just leave.”
Miles turned his head toward Terris and tried to glare, but the weight of his knowledge took the bitter edge from him. “You expect me to know what I know about you and just leave you?”
“Oh, if you want to save me, feel free.”
But of course, Miles did not know how to save him. He shut his eyes.
“Take heart,” Terris said, still mocking. “You’ll remember my suffering for the rest of your life, but your life will be but a flutter of a heartbeat of my existence. It will be over for you very soon.”
Miles felt sick. “Let me help you, please! I want—”
&nbs
p; Terris leapt on him. He had his tongue down Miles’s throat, thrusting against him, fucking him roughly without entering him, but Miles only held still and bore it until Terris pulled back again.
“Then give yourself to me.” Terris licked his throat. “Just once. Once, Miles, and I’m gone. The energy you give during your orgasm is enough to take me away. But you must give yourself to me. Not to him. To me.”
Miles tried. But once again, it didn’t work.
Terris shrieked, a sound more full of pain and rage and helplessness than anything Miles had ever heard, a sound more awful than any look he had seen on Harry’s face. He felt a hard slap against his cheek, and then he fell down to earth, down to the patch of weeds outside the café, where Terris left him.
He sat there for a long time, sobbing quietly. Then he rose, gathered up his notes, and drove away. But he didn’t go back to the pawn shop or the trailer.
He called Julie, and at her urging, they went to Katie’s.
“HE IS A fairy,” Miles began.
Katie looked up from her notebook, pen poised. “I assume you aren’t making some clever statement on his sexuality. You mean that he is fey? Faerie, with the ‘e’ and the ‘ie’ present? Drag-you-under-the-hill faerie, not sprinkle-pixie-dust fairy?”
Her tone was sharp and thick with disbelief, but Miles took comfort in Julie’s presence. She sat between them, looking wide-eyed at Miles. She believed him.
Miles nodded and drew the blanket closer to his chin as he tucked his feet farther back into the easy chair where Katie had stationed him in front of her fireplace. Faerie. Funny how the word tasted different when he changed the spelling in his head.
“He was a musician in the court of a high-ranking faerie, but he was bored, and he thought—” Miles paused, feeling the frightening echo of the words which had been both Terris’s and his own. “He thought, I am so much better than this. He tried his hand at magic. Except from what I could see it looked more like science. Like alchemy. Whatever it was, it didn’t go terribly well, and he got in big trouble. He was banished from the court. In a moment of rage and vulnerability, he gave himself to the Lord of Dreams, who is one of the Old Ones of the faeries. Had he been human, he would have been consumed, like Harry told me he should have been. But he was faerie, so he was simply abused, and then when the Lord grew bored, he was imprisoned.” Miles shuddered, remembering the feelings he’d brushed against inside Terris’s head. “It’s cold where he is. Really, really cold, and very painful. And he’s been there a long, long, time.”
Katie still looked dubious, but Julie leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “What does he want with you?”
“He wants a way out,” Miles said. “Because I have a human soul, he can use that somehow—something between a slingshot and a ladder, as best I can understand.”
Julie frowned. “But that sounds like it would kill you.”
“Oh, yeah.” Miles leaned his head against the side of the chair and stared into the fire. “I think it would have been pretty painful too. But he can’t do it. I don’t know that he’s given up trying with me, but there seems to be some block against his being able to use me that way. And I don’t think it has anything to do with the Lord of Dreams. I think it has something to do with Harry.”
“Harry?” Julie echoed.
“That’s the beast,” Katie said, grumbling. “The beast who, if he finds Miles, will rape him out of desperate madness. Nevertheless, Miles happily put on a sex show for him.” Katie put down her notebook and covered her cheeks with her hands as she shook her head. “None of this makes any logical sense.”
“Logic isn’t the important part here,” Julie argued, then turned to Miles. “This is bad. You can’t let him do this to you.”
Katie nodded, a little weary. “I’ll put some wards up around you, Miles. But Julie’s right. You should let this go.”
“I can’t,” Miles said with some heat. “Don’t you understand? I saw. I saw and I felt. You can’t imagine what it feels like to feel what I found there in his head. I can’t forget this. Not ever.” His hands clenched around the frayed edges of the blanket, and he shook his head. “I have to do something. I have to find a way to help him. To help both of them.”
“Miles.” Julie reached out and put a hand on his leg. “Miles, he is fey. That, by definition, means he is capable of deceit you can’t even process, even when it’s staring you in the face. Nothing about them is human. Do you understand? Nothing. They look like us, but they aren’t like us inside. They feel about as much affection for humans as we feel for cockroaches. He wouldn’t let you see inside his head if he weren’t sure it was to his advantage. This is part of his plan, don’t you see?”
Miles brushed her hand away. “I know that already, and it doesn’t matter. You didn’t see it, Julie. I don’t know, maybe if I saw it every day for a week on the evening news I could move on, but you know what? I don’t want to. It’s like you—” He paused, realizing that Katie was still there, and censored himself. “I can feel what he feels, Julie. I have empathy for him. You guys are always on me to be less selfish, to stop going on about myself and my due. Well, you’ve got your wish. All I want right now is to help the both of them. I can’t think of anything else. I guess I still want to help them for me, because it’s the pain in my heart that’s driving me, but I’m more devoted to this than any bad relationship or job I’ve ever had.”
He rested his head in his hand and stared at the fire. “I saw Harry, too, inside his head. I saw how Terris tried to do the same thing with him that he did with me. He’s even worse off, Katie, because Harry does have a soul. That’s what’s driving him insane. He’s caught between two faeries, unwilling to yield to both, but unable to escape and unable to die.”
“And how are you going to help?” Katie demanded. “What are you going to do that doesn’t trap you the same way, or make things even worse?”
“I don’t know,” Miles confessed.
“That’s why we came to you,” Julie said, turning to Katie. “You have studied magick for so much longer than I have. Surely you must know something about faeries.”
“I know about mythology,” Katie snapped. “I know about metaphor and philosophy. I don’t know anything about faeries who are real.”
Julie’s shoulders slumped. “Then you can’t help him.”
Miles rubbed at his face. “I’ll just have to do it myself, then.”
Katie glared at him. “You don’t have any training in this, any at all. You don’t even know the theory of magick. And yet you’re just going to barge in?”
“Yes,” Miles snapped. “I don’t know what I’m doing, no. But I’m going to figure it out. You can help me, ignore me, or get in my way, but I’m going to do this no matter what.”
Katie glared at him a moment, then looked at Julie for support. But Julie still looked disappointed, and eventually Katie threw up her hands and sank back on her chair.
“Tell me, wonderboy,” Katie asked, “how does your silver flute fit into this? Have you tried to use it yet?”
“I think it was Terris’s,” Miles said. “Terris wouldn’t talk about it, and I could feel him blocking it inside his head. And one of them said it was the enemy of the Lord of Dreams. I think it was Harry, but it’s starting to all blend together in my head. It makes sense, though, if it’s Terris’s. And there’s something with silver. Something huge with silver. That’s what he used to read my mind, and how he got me to read his. And if the silver flute is the enemy of the Lord of Dreams, that means either silver or music is his vulnerability.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Katie said. “Are you listening to yourself? You’re nothing but speculation! How are you going to test these theories? By dying stupidly?”
“I don’t have that as my plan, no,” Miles shot back. “I plan to study, and I plan to think.” He bit his lip. “I do plan to try the flute. Soon, I think.”
“I don’t know that that’s such a good idea, given what you’v
e told me about this Terris,” Katie said. “What if it gets you into more trouble?”
“Then I’ll do my best to get out of it,” Miles said. He looked at her patiently. “Is there any practical advice—outside of ‘don’t do this, it’s crazy’—that you would care to give me about fey, or magic, or magick with a k, or even musical instruments?” He looked at Julie, but she only smiled with quiet encouragement. Miles turned back to Katie and waited.
Katie looked at him for a long time. Then she swore under her breath and passed him the notebook and pen as she rose and headed to the kitchen.
Miles’s shoulders slumped. “So that’s a no?”
“No,” Katie said. “That’s a ‘sit tight while I put on some tea, and work out your hand cramps, because you are going to take notes like you should have taken them in college.’”
Miles smiled in relief. “I took pretty good notes in college.”
“Multiply that by whatever value you put on your life, and you ought to be about where you should be.”
“What are you going to tell him about?” Julie asked.
“Folklore. Everything and anything I know about folklore and myth and all the things that I say I believe in but actually don’t. Or didn’t, until now.”
Julie smiled. “I can help with that too.”
“Good,” Katie said gruffly.
Miles sobered. “Thank you.” He took Julie’s hand. “Both of you.”
“I hope you still feel that way once you start playing that flute.” Katie disappeared into the kitchen.
Chapter Eight
Behind me is loss. Behind me is pain.
Behind me nothing but sorrow can reign.
Do not let me look. Do not let me see.
No more of my life: only pleasure, with thee.
WHEN MILES FINALLY left Katie’s house, his head was spinning. His arms ached too. He had a huge box of spell casting supplies as well as a three-ring binder full of notes, some he’d taken, and some Katie had recopied for him from her own files. Julie had promised to give him more materials once they were back at the trailer too.
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