Okay, so there are a lot of them, just kind of fidgeting around under the surface, rolled in the fetal position at the shallow end and standing or leaning where the water is deep enough to cover their heads. And they’re not just kids, though there are plenty of those; one of the first faces I pick out is Lexi’s little sister, Marissa, cradled in their mom’s arms, with her dad standing beside them. But I also see tons of teenagers we both know, like Xand and Derrick and that horrible, catty girl, Lila, and adults too: sweet old Mrs. Hixson from next door, and our friend Hadley from the bookstore, and a couple of cops who look vaguely familiar. I mean, it’s not the whole population of our old town, obviously, because they’d never fit in one swimming pool. Just the college has maybe ten thousand students. But it’s enough that they don’t have a lot of personal space, like maybe two hundred people or something, and most of them seem to be people we’ve met.
Except that they’re not people, of course. Fakes. Living decoys, like the fake Kezzer that died in front of Lexi and then came here and wriggled through our house. They’re all completely submerged in the lavender water, just gaping around or looking up at the ceiling with their eyes reflecting the fluorescent beams overhead. Random scribbles of liquid light dance around on their skin. Kezzer is shaking and I wish she’d calm down, because it’s not like anyone is drowning.
Though—is Prince planning to bring that many people here? That’s usually what it means when you see one of these puppet-people; they get the replacements ready to go first. But if that is what Prince has in mind, it was outrageously rude of him not to discuss it with me. I never said I wanted to share this place with a whole horde of evil idiot humans, after we came here specifically to get away from them. I’m scoping out the faces in the pool, and I’m recognizing way too many that I would have preferred to never see again. You know, if anyone had bothered to ask me.
The stork-girl wobbles and her foot—which still looks kind of human, but with these long, knobby, birdy toes that end in hooked claws—comes down right in the phony Marissa’s face. We’ve stopped dancing, and Kezzer is just sagging against me, so we both see how those claws gouge long stripes in Marissa’s soft, brown cheek. I know it’s not actually Lexi’s sister, but it still makes me wince.
The fake Marissa coughs up a single, fat air bubble, and looks dazed.
Kezzer lets out this choked, furious sound, and bursts out of my grasp. The whole room feels like it’s rocking, water pitching out of the swimming pool, and by the time I get my balance Kezzer is already too far away to catch, barreling her way through Prince’s people, lashing out at them with her fists and elbows when they get close. Not that they care, really—they mostly look vaguely entertained, even pleased that Kezzer is making a proper effort again, though Unselle’s mink head snarls at her—but it still makes me worried about what she’ll do next. It’s what they enjoy about her, okay, the outrage and dramatics, but is it possible for her to go too far?
When she gets to Prince, for instance. Because of course that’s where she’s heading, and there’s already a thin scream leaping out of her throat. I’m going after her as fast as I can, but I guess Prince really got to me just now, because the whole world is freckling with black and burning specks. The air warps and shoves me around. I see him grinning as Kezzer gets close, and one idea cuts through the mess in my brain: Yeah, this is why he insisted she had to come tonight, so she would see those fake people down in the pool, and realize he’s planning something. Something big.
So she would get in his face. Kezzer’s been kind of quiet recently, kind of withdrawn, and probably Prince was starting to get bored.
She’s really a sucker when it comes to falling for these games of his.
“What the hell is this?” Kezzer is inches away from Prince, yelling her head off, and she grabs his jacket in a big wad of fabric just under his throat. “What do you think you’re doing? Jesus, all those people … Lexi’s family. You really think that Josh and I will let you mess with them?”
He just smiles at her—because seriously, what does she think she can do to stop him?—and pats her cheek. “My little Ksenia. What on earth has put you so out of sorts?”
“You’re going to kidnap everyone, and send those things in the pool back to die in place of them, and then—all those people—they’ll be stuck in this damned half-life with me and Josh. But I won’t—” Oh, and here her voice starts faltering, because the whole what-can-she-do snag is maybe dawning on her too. “I won’t let you. I—we’ll find a way to fight.”
I’ve finally shoved through the craziness until I’m almost next to her. She sees me and grabs my hand—and maybe for the first time in my life I resent it. Like, she’s just assuming I’ll fight Prince? Because she takes it for granted that I’ll do anything she wants? Kezzer, hello, I’m not actually insane.
“Ah, well. That’s one use for changelings, Ksenia. It’s certainly traditional. But an inventive ruler can think of other ways to deploy them. And they needn’t always be made of rotten wood and straw, ready to collapse at a touch. These are far sturdier. Fit for battle, you see.”
That’s a relief. And: changelings? That’s what he calls those things? Okay.
“Cool,” I say. “I was afraid you were going to clutter up the place with a bunch of douchebags.”
Kezzer shoots me a pretty rude look.
“So—what are you going to do with them?” It’s surprising, but now her voice sounds calmer, flatter, than it’s been for a while. And Prince grins like this is the question he’s been dying for all night.
But then it gets too loud for anyone to talk; there’s a hard, clacking drumbeat coming from near the ceiling. We all crane back—it’s a pretty tall room—and see that two of those misty horses are in a race around the top of the walls, totally horizontal and galloping with their riders sticking straight out like coat pegs or something. We all turn in circles to follow them, and Prince waves in excitement. One of the riders is Mallora, the girl I met that first night, with her blue-black skin gleaming against the cheap white tiles up there, and her long pink dreads lashing at her horse until they tear little cloudy chunks from his back. She’s laughing so hard you’d think she would suffocate.
The other rider is the boy in peacock leather, as rainbowed as an oil spill. I’ve never learned his name, I don’t think, but I remember him kissing Kezzer at the gorge. It didn’t bother me at the time, but now I feel this hot, thick hatred, watching him smack at his horse. He and Mallora are both shrieking, roaring, beating their mounts into shreds—they’re only made of water vapor, after all, and they’re totally not solid enough to take it. Both horses are pounding so hard that their hooves start to break apart, and for a while they keep galloping on the stumps. Then they’re down to their knees, hobbling pathetically along the walls above us, while the crowd screams them on.
Seeing those poor horses, even if they aren’t real animals—for a few pulses, it’s like something is coming back to me. Something I’d forgotten. All at once Kezzer’s voice rushes into my head, saying, In a lot of ways, they’ve shut down your heart, and I know that somehow I couldn’t really hear her, not while she was saying that to me. My mind feels so much clearer, and my eyes cut through all the glitter and bewilderment, and I turn to watch Kezzer, where she’s watching the horses, her face tight with grief.
For a few more beats I want to hold her, and cry, and tell her—how sorry I am? Is that it? I feel my mouth opening, I feel words like slippery pearls on my tongue, and these aren’t from Prince, but from somewhere else, somewhere that aches so bad I could cry. Kezzer, you’re right, this isn’t who I’m supposed to be. Please don’t think this is me!
Prince is looking at me in a way that cuts off the words, though. A hot sickness floods my skull and my vision swarms. And then there’s a howl of frustration from Mallora, and I look up to see her leaping off her crippled, broken cloud of a horse—she has no problem standing on the wall twenty feet up, her body poking out sideways—and kicking it in a rage. The horse gives a pitiful whuff, like dying wind, and skids down the tiles, still thrashing. It hits the floor and kind of spills along, oozing around everyone’s legs and losing its shape by the second, until by the time it reaches the pool it’s a vaguely animalish blob of fog.
Then it spills into the water and dissolves with a hiss. I feel Kezzer’s nails digging into my palm.
I was going to say something to her, wasn’t I? But I can’t remember what it was now, so it couldn’t have been that important.
“You were just asking me something, Ksenia. Weren’t you? Oh—you wondered why I felt the need to create such a large assembly of changelings. What use I thought to make of them.” Prince is gazing at her affectionately, and I don’t see why she can’t just get along with him.
Kezzer is staring at the spot where that cloud-horse sucked into the water, but now her head snaps back toward Prince. “Yeah. I am wondering about that.”
Icy sarcasm whips through her voice. Haven’t I asked her to be more polite? Like, repeatedly?
“I’m sure you have no suspicion of it, Ksenia. But the fact is that one of the residents from your former town recently offended me. She behaved with such unforgivable insolence that I see no choice but to avenge myself. My changelings will assist me in making my wrath felt, in ways those human wretches could never anticipate. Direct and physical damage to your world is largely beyond us, you see. But I’ve designed these newest replicas to be capable of attending to such matters on our behalf.”
Lexi; by the person who offended him, he obviously means Lexi. The unforgivable insolence he’s talking about must be when Lexi ran away. That, and maybe what Prince said before, that Lexi is scheming to steal Kezzer from us? We can’t let that happen!
And there’s what Kezzer did too. How she betrayed me and Prince both, whispering information to our enemy. Unforgivable, Prince said, and the word bangs and echoes until my head feels huge and hollow and full of nothing but bat-winged syllables: un, for, giv, able, all wheeling through space.
I watch Kezzer’s face as she takes it in, what Prince just told her—I mean, as well as I can through the stars and the little void-colored grains drifting around. Pinched, contorted, barbaric. It’s not her best look.
“You think we’ll stand for that? An assault on our old friends? Do you really think, for one second, that Josh and I won’t stop you?”
There she goes making assumptions, like her mood swings can pick me up and throw me around, wherever she wants to send me.
“Oh the contrary, Ksenia, I believe Joshua is ready to take on greater responsibilities.” Here I start hoping he doesn’t mention how I’ve been helping with the kids, because Kezzer doesn’t know about that part, and she’d probably refuse to understand that I’m doing the right thing for them. “He’ll be leading the charge. And really, if you think about it, Joshua is ideal for the job. He has such great insight into our foes! After all, he was once a human knight.”