My fears for myself were all but forgotten. I would have been glad, if they hadn’t been replaced by fears for Julian.
He hadn’t been able to pass the knowledge of the shield trigger to me without traces of the emotions it sparked in him; his control must have slipped. Mine certainly would have. Knowing what gutting did to him, knowing how deep his hatred of it ran … how could I bring myself to destroy him?
My worries might be pointless. If the Unseelie were planning something involving the wilders, and if they successfully captured Julian, and if they found a way to use him, and if they didn’t kill me taking him—which I vowed they would have to do—then I might have to use it. Maybe. But it wasn’t an immediate issue, and so I should put it out of my mind.
It wouldn’t go away, though.
The existence of this control on wilders nauseated me. And despite Julian’s high-flown words about guns and protecting people, I couldn’t help but feel there was more to the situation than he’d been willing to say.
I could guess some of it. Wilders were dangerous, not just individually but collectively. One uncontrolled wilder could cause a lot of damage; fifty wilders, well-trained and with a specific purpose in mind, could do far worse than that. If they ever decided they needed to turn against the governments that had raised them, the ensuing war could destroy whole cities.
And that was what the governments were afraid of.
They shielded wilders, not just to protect people, but to protect themselves. To prevent that kind of mutiny. If the wilders tried to slip free of their control, it would be simple to deprive them of their claws. To gut them. And that deeply ingrained fear kept the wilders in line.
Had I learned this three months ago, I would have been calling up the ACLU to scream about it. Right now, all I could think was that the deep shield might be one of our few defenses.
Because if the Unseelie ever did find a way to enslave wilders, we’d need a way to stop them.
My own thoughts sickened me, but I couldn’t deny them. That was what it came down to. If the misery of a few could save billions, wasn’t the cost justified?
Julian would say it was.
The geis was the heart of it. The same impulse that drove wilders to be Guardians, to dedicate their lives and often their deaths to protecting people from dangerous magic, would inspire them to sacrifice themselves for this. Julian hadn’t hesitated in telling me to shield him, to gut him, even though it was the most horrifying thing I could do short of making him Unseelie. He would willingly ask for misery and madness if he thought it would help others.
For someone often accused of being aloof and inhuman, that was inconceivably selfless.
And I was the only person here who knew how Julian felt. Even Robert and Liesel didn’t understand, not completely; I was certain of that. As for the others, the ones who made those accusations—they had no idea.
I tried to shake off these morbid thoughts, but failed. I could feel Julian’s eyes on me that day and the next, watching, probably guessing at the turmoil in my mind. Falcon was no help; when summoned, he said he had no clues as to what the Unseelie were planning. He had promised to find out, but so far had come up with nothing … or at least nothing he would share with us. And from the Guardian Ring, equal silence—at least as far as Grayson was authorized to tell us. She got very closemouthed, though, which made me think something was happening, where we couldn’t see.
I prayed it was something useful.
By Friday I’d completely forgotten my promise to Liesel. When I came home that afternoon and dropped my coat onto the couch, she glanced up from her desk and grinned in something like her usual manner. “I found something for you to wear.”
Looking down at my worn but perfectly serviceable sweater and jeans, I blinked. “What’s wrong with this? It’s all I’ve got left that’s clean.”
Her smile faded. “The ball, remember?”
Shit. I’d told her I would go. “Liesel, I can’t.”
Now the smile vanished entirely. “You promised you would.”
“I know. But—I just can’t do it. I’ve got too much on my mind.” How could I dance, knowing what I did about Julian? “I found a book that I think might say something useful about—” The sentence died abruptly when I saw my roommate.
Liesel was trying for expressionless, but failing miserably. Tears glinted in the corners of her eyes, and just as I noticed them a surge of emotion hit me, then cut off with a jolt.
Misery. A sensation of being at the bottom of a pit, looking up at a circle of light, so small, and so far away. A feeling of terrible weight, of being under fire, of desperately wanting everyone and everything to shut up and go away. A scream, building up inside, kept in only by a will whose strength was crumbling fast.
It hit me like a hammer blow, then vanished, locked back inside as if it had never been. But it was still there, and now I knew it.
I whispered an oath under my breath.
Her mouth wavered. I crossed the room in three steps and reached her just as she broke.
Liesel hugged me around the middle, so hard I almost couldn’t breathe. And she cried. Cried her eyes out, soaking my sweater, and I found myself patting her head awkwardly and feeling as though the world had just flipped upside down. This wasn’t the way things were supposed to go. I wasn’t the one who comforted Liesel. She always comforted me.
Of course she did. She was an empath. And we knew that, all of us, and so we leaned on her, looked to her for calming words and rock-solid stability. We used Liesel to keep ourselves sane. It was what she wanted; helping others made her happy. But I hadn’t stopped to think what a burden that put on her. I just piled more and more stress on her head, telling her about my dreams, about my worries, about everything. And she took it, not complaining, not saying anything … but no one, not even Liesel, could take on that kind of strain and not collapse.
“Gods,” I whispered, stroking her hair. “Lord and Lady—I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.”
My empathic skills were nothing next to hers, but I tried anyway to wrap her in a feeling of comfort and support. I thought about my newfound determination, the confidence that we could do something to take care of ourselves, and tried to share that with her. It wasn’t easy. Liesel had given up any attempt to maintain shields, and her terror threatened to swamp me under. I closed my eyes and concentrated, and while it wasn’t perfect, it seemed to help. After a while Liesel’s crying came to and end, and then she let me go.
I fetched her a glass of water and waited as she drank it down. When the last drop was gone, she said in a hoarse voice, “Please go to the ball.”
My reaction to that was still incredulity, but I made myself think past it. She wouldn’t ask if it didn’t matter to her.
Finally I figured it out. “You need me … to be normal. Or at least pretend.”
“I need to be around other people,” she whispered. “People who don’t know what’s going on. People whose biggest worry is the astrology test they have next week.”
“Can’t you go by yourself?”
Her shields were still gone, and I felt her fear as though she’d tossed a bucket of cold water over my face. “If they show up there—” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Grayson never comes to the ball. Neither does Julian.”
That left Robert and me. And Robert’s antics the other day ruled him out as an escort.
I didn’t want to go, but Liesel needed me to. After all the stress I’d put her under, I owed her this.
“Okay,” I said. “You, uh—said you found a costume?”
My agreement worked wonders on her. Liesel opened her eyes and got to her feet, heading for the bedroom. I followed more slowly. She met me in the doorway with a bundle of fabric in her hands. “Here.”
I took the bundle as she shoved it at me and shook it out. Cream-colored silk fell to the floor in luxurious folds, a shimmering curtain of elegantly tailored gown.
Despite my resolution to cooperate, the words slipped out. “You have got to be kidding.”
Liesel managed an unsteady grin. “Ceridwen just got this. And when she found out the costume was for you, nothing else would do.”
“I am not going to wear it.”
“Oh, but you are.” She was laughing at me! I was glad to see her regaining her composure, but not at my expense. Not like this. “You look too much like Christine Rendal not to.”
I tried to hand the dress back, but Liesel wouldn’t take it. “We both have dark hair. Some resemblance.”
“You want to try and convince Ceridwen to give you something else? Good luck.”
“I don’t care how much I look like Christine Rendal; I don’t care how much money Descent ended up grossing. I am not going to the Department of Telepathic Sciences’ Annual Masked Ball dressed as Persephone. Especially not when Persephone’s dress covers less of my chest than your average bra.”
“You’ll look good in it, Kim.” Liesel took the dress now, but only to measure it against me. “And it’ll fit you perfectly. Come on; where’s your sense of adventure?”
“In the closet, cowering in shame.”
“It’s not that revealing.”
“Yes it is.” I backed away from the dress and fled to the dubious safety of the common room. “There’s to be something else I can wear. Don’t you have anything?” Liesel, grinning, blocked my attempt to dodge past her. She held out the dress invitingly. “I told you, I’m not wearing it!”
Five minutes later, I tugged uncertainly at the bodice encasing me rather closer than a glove. “It’s not sitting right. The neckline’s riding lower than it ought to.”
“No, it’s riding right where it ought to.” Liesel straightened my skirts and stepped back. She nodded approvingly. “If we do your hair right, we’ll barely need the glamour. You do look an awful lot like Rendal.”
I reluctantly faced my reflection in the mirror. The apparition that looked back wasn’t me. I never wore things like this, deep-skirted dresses with bodices whose necklines wanted to migrate to my navel. And it was about as Greek as I was. Persephone ought to have worn a chiton or something—not this costume Lady Godiva would have blushed to wear.
The silk was gorgeous, I had to grant. The seamstress knew what she was doing; the skirt hung in soft folds from the bodice, which fit rather better than I wanted it to. Either Ceridwen had gotten it tailored to herself—we were pretty much the same size—or I resembled her favorite actress from the neck down, too.
Why couldn’t I have resembled someone who dressed decently?
“Sit here.” Liesel led me to a chair. I had to pay attention to how I sat, lest the skirts foul me up. They actually weren’t as bad as I had feared; I could still move in them, and surprisingly well. They did require minding, though.
Liesel’s hands were busy in my hair, twisting it up into the pseudo-Greek style Persephone wore in the movie. I still sensed the darkness inside her, but this was helping. She could pretend, if only for a little while, that the Unseelie didn’t exist. “What are you dressing as?” I asked her, still bitter over my own forced costume.
“Cinderella. Pre-fairy godmother. The dress isn’t right, but it’s close enough to pass with a glamour.”
“Why do you get to be virginal and modest?”
“You’re virginal too—at least until Hades gets hold of you.” I sensed her smiling wickedly behind me.
“I think you’re enjoying this far too much.”
A quiet laugh. “My dear friend, I haven’t even begun to enjoy it. Just wait until we get to the ball.”
~
The glamour was my one saving grace. Its weak telepathic suggestion kept people from properly seeing my face unless they tried to. And that wouldn’t be in the spirit of the ball. Instead, looking at me would give them an impression of who I was supposed to be.
Until midnight. And I hoped I would find a way to slip out before then.
The hall was a swirl of brilliant color. Although the ball was hosted by my department, some of the people in telekinetic sciences lent us a hand with the decorations each year. Globes of witchlight lit the room, and under their glow, everything took on a surreal, vibrant edge. I wondered if this was what the Otherworld looked like.
Stuart Hall was an amazing place even without the special lighting. Its architect had been on crack; the style resembled Gothic more than any other, but even that was a tenuous match. Its vaulting space, marked out by columns and arches, usually hosted activities fairs and such, but events like this were what it had been built for. Gods only knew why a university campus would need it. Some wealthy donor had paid for it, and the administration didn’t argue.
Fantastical carvings ornamented the piers of the columns, standing out in strange patterns of bold light and angular shadow. Costumed people moved among these like ghosts of the imagination, dressed in fashions they would never consider in broad daylight. I wasn’t the only one there out of my usual habits. In theory the costumes could be drawn from any source, but in practice they came primarily from history and legend, or pop culture based on them. Stuart Hall seemed to command such behavior. The vulgar present was not permitted through its massive oaken doors.
On the way there from Wolfstone I did my best to project an attitude of pleased excitement. Liesel’s calm was fragile, I could tell, and she needed me to pretend I was all right. Keeping an eye out for the Unseelie without seeming to do so nearly drove me out of my skull, though.
But then we got to Stuart Hall, and suddenly I found myself cringing with very mundane dread.
I fought the urge to slouch as Liesel and I wove our way into the crowd. Even hidden behind the glamour, I felt horribly exposed; I wasn’t used to breezes crossing those parts of my flesh. But cowering would mar the dress’s lines and weaken the effect of the glamour. So I steeled myself and straightened my spine, consciously trying to imitate the fluid grace with which Christine Rendal had moved in the movie.
It seemed to work. People congratulated me on my costume without any hint of mirth. I was fairly certain they didn’t recognize me, which meant the glamour was holding. It was certainly more effective than the traditional mask would have been—especially given that Persephone hadn’t had a mask.
On second thought, maybe that was a lack. If we hadn’t been using glamours, I wouldn’t have been stuck in this damn dress.
Queen Elizabeth I, surrounded by her skirts, nodded gravely at me; I made a curtsy to her. A few moments later I passed Odin. With my luck, some guy out there was dressed as Hades, and then I’d be in for it.
Liesel plastered a smile on her face and made sour comments about the two other Cinderellas, one of whom was relying heavily upon the suggestion of her glamour; her dress was suitably ballgown-ish, but there the resemblance ended. “If only Carnivale hadn’t been sold out of everything good,” she said with a sigh. “I could have been something interesting. Boadicea maybe, or Lucrezia Borgia.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “We’ll plan next year’s costumes early, do something really dramatic. Some kind of paired thing.”
Neither of us wanted to voice the unspoken question: would this all still be here, so normal, next year?
We split up and circulated, chatting with various specific targets in an attempt to guess who they were. In a while we’d meet to compare notes and make our predictions. The familiar ritual brought some happiness to Liesel, so I was glad to cooperate.
I extricated myself from a conversation with Cleopatra and took a turn around the room to look for my next target. The Egyptian queen was almost certainly Maria Chiaro, the department’s undergraduate coordinator. I had a private guess that the Shiva I was currently searching for would prove to be Fitzgerald, but I had to speak to him to be certain.
A hand clamped down on my silk-covered arm and pulled me into the shadow of a pillar.
My own hand dove for my athame, but it was strapped to my thigh and damnably hard to get at in this gown. Idiot! I was gathering myself to attack without it when the figure who had accosted me hissed, “Do not.”
I stayed frozen, my back to the pillar.
The shadow confused things, but the glamour told me the man in front of me was supposed to be Arawn. My mind lashed out in a very specific attack, to punch through the effect and discover his true identity.
It held.
My blood went even colder. Costume glamours weren’t supposed to hold up to that, and even a stronger one should have broken under my strike. The list of people who would could cast a glamour that strong was very short indeed.
Arawn—the Welsh god of the Otherworld. Was that somebody’s idea of a joke?
“Come,” he whispered. “I must give you a warning.”
“Not until you show me who you are,” I snapped, resisting his attempt to pull me along.
He growled low in his throat and stepped sideways, into the light. My jaw fell open. It was Falcon, plain as day. He hadn’t even disguised himself, aside from the glamour’s suggestion of a name; he just pretended his Otherworldliness was part of the effect. He pulled me unresisting through the room without trying to hide, and people complimented him on his costume. I couldn’t decide whether to tear his head off or admire his gall. This room was probably the only place on campus he could get away with looking like himself in full view of everyone.
Once we passed the outer doors, he drew me off to the side, away from the few people coming and going.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I snarled at him, venting my nerves.
“I have to warn you. I could not risk waiting, and so I disguised myself in the manner you are using. Is it wrong?”
“It’s too damn strong, is what it is. None of us can do that—a costume glamour shouldn’t be able to hold up to an attempt to look through it.”
“Which would be worse—a strong glamour, or myself without it?”
He had a point there, and I wanted to slap him for it. I quelled the urge. Falcon might irritate the hell out of me, but he’d said he was here to warn me, and I shouldn’t waste time arguing over petty concerns. I wrapped my arms around my body to warm myself and set my feet. “What do you have to say?”
“The Unseelie are planning something.”
“No shit. Details, please, if you have any. Or are you just wasting my time?”
His emerald eyes betrayed contempt. “I do not waste your time. Will you listen, or shall I abandon you to your own stupidity?”
I swallowed and told my pride to shut up. “What is it?”
“Humans have come, who intend to take the changeling into their keeping. The Unseelie are not ready to let him go, and so they will kidnap him. Soon.”
Reinforcements, at last—just in time to provoke the Unseelie into action. I had to warn Julian. “Thank you,” I said to Falcon, and I meant it.
“Be wary. I will come again if I learn more.”
“You be careful. If those people catch you, I don’t think you’ll like the result.”
A mocking grin. “I will attempt to be discreet.” And then he slipped away into the darkness, leaving me alone outside Stuart Hall, trying desperately to collect my scattered wits and think of a plan.
I had to talk to Julian, and now. Where the hell was he? My hand dove to the plunging neckline of my dress. Liesel had objected, but I’d insisted on wearing my focus. Paranoia paid off. But even with it, my seeking mind failed to find Julian. Of course he was shielding. He wouldn’t leave himself open like that. And this dress had no pocket for me to keep my port in. Dammit!
Liesel was still inside, and my first instinct was to tell her about the warning. I stopped myself, though, before I’d gone more than two steps.
This would break her. To be reaching so desperately for normality, and then to have this dropped on her—
She was safer at the ball than anywhere on campus. Half our professors were in there. In the meantime, Grayson’s office wasn’t far away. That was the most likely place to find her and whoever had been sent—and if they weren’t there, a public screen was.
Hiking up my skirts and grabbing my athame from beneath them, I set off across the grass.
The dress was surprisingly easy to run in. I supposed it made sense; Persephone had done plenty of running in the movie, trying to flee Hades, so she needed to be able to move. I felt like I was going to fall right out of the bodice, but my concern for Julian made me ignore it and run on. Time enough for that later. Time enough for everything later.
Campus on my left, Arboretum on my right. I knew which one I was used to thinking of as holding danger. But I saw shadows slipping between the buildings, and a quick probe ran me up against a wall of not human. Fear twisted deeper into my bones.
The Unseelie were already here.
Footsteps, pounding down the slope from the Arboretum. I veered away, athame coming up in defense, but it was Falcon again. I stumbled over my skirts. He grabbed my bare wrist, and all my skin tried to crawl off my body at once—Julian’s touch, magnified three-fold. “Come! Quickly!”
“The Unseelie—”
“I know,” he said grimly, facing the campus buildings, scanning for the threats we both knew were there. “I must get you away.”
“But they’re going after Julian—”
Falcon dragged me into a run, and for once I didn’t resist. “They let that slip on purpose. The changeling is not their target, not yet. You are. To lead him into the open.”
Something brushed across my telepathic senses, a feeling like the howling of wolves. I threw a glance over my shoulder and saw figures loping towards us.
I was an iron idiot. What better way to provoke Julian into reckless action than to threaten a friend? To threaten me?
The Unseelie hunters had spread out in an arc. They were herding us toward the Arboretum.
Every divinatory instinct I possessed screamed a warning at me. This was it, this was the moment all the omens had pointed toward—but I had no choice. If we broke away from the trees, we’d be caught. And whatever threat waited for me under those branches, I’d take it over the certainty of capture.
I allowed Falcon to lead me into the Arboretum.
Darkness closed in on me like a trap. I’d been through the place a thousand times, I knew every path of it inside and out, but within ten steps I was lost. Falcon plunged down the trail, hand still clamped on my wrist; I could only follow blindly and hope he knew where he was going.
Moonlight flashed in and out as we darted across open patches of ground. Once I heard the sound of rushing water and realized we were near a particular rivulet that fed the Copper Creek, but then Falcon made an abrupt turn and I lost my bearings. Were the Unseelie responsible for this confusion? I wanted to ask, but it was impossible when we were sprinting pell-mell down a rocky path.
And then we were off the path and into the trees. A silly part of my brain yelped a protest for Ceridwen’s gown, but the complaint never made it past my lips. I followed Falcon as best I could, trying with my athame hand to keep my skirts gathered in so they wouldn’t catch on the branches. I failed, and felt the cloth rip in a dozen places. And still Falcon ran.
Until at last we broke into the moonlight, and ahead of me I saw an irregular patch of darkness. We were at the center of the Arboretum, the cavern around which the university was founded. There was power here, and a defensible opening. Stumbling slightly, grateful I’d had the sense to wear reasonably solid shoes regardless of costume, I jogged across the uneven ground with Falcon and ducked into the cave.
Stalagmites loomed around me like teeth as we reached the back of the cave. The darkness was nearly absolute. I opened my mouth to ask Falcon to make a light—
—and he threw me contemptuously to the ground.
A witchlight flared overhead as I pushed myself up to a sitting position, wincing at what would certainly become bruises. “What the hell—”
The words died in my throat. For as the light blossomed, I remembered there were no stalagmites in this cave.
Mocking laughter came from all sides.
The rock formations vanished, leaving graceful forms in their place. Eight sidhe stepped forward, and even as I looked up I knew what I would see.
Golden eyes.
How had this happened? It was inconceivable that Falcon could have betrayed me; sidhe were either Seelie or Unseelie, and would never turn traitor to their Courts. It was impossible. Yet he’d brought me here, and thrown me to the ground like a rag too filthy for him to touch.
Had he lied?
“I trust your confusion is resolved,” a taunting voice said from behind me.
I rose to my feet before turning to confront him. I refused to continue cowering on the floor like the helpless maiden this damn dress made me resemble.
The face was Falcon’s. The body was Falcon’s. But the eyes—the eyes I hadn’t seen, because he’d turned away from me too quickly and had never faced back again—were not his. Because a glamour could not disguise eye color, could not make me mistake gold for green.
He grinned wickedly and let the illusion drop. “An excellent trick, is it not?”
I’d been warned. Gods. Falcon, the real Falcon, had told me—but it hadn’t helped, because I was too goddamned panicked to look.
Pure fury drove me to raise my athame, but a deft flick of power from one of the surrounding Unseelie staggered me before I could use it, and then the blade was ripped from my grasp. The sidhe who was not Falcon had backed up a step, but now he smiled again.
“It wasn’t you both times,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even.
“Both times? Were you visited by him tonight? What wonderful irony.”
“They moved as quickly as we expected, then,” one of the others said.
My deceiver nodded. “Indeed. How obliging.”
“Which one of you attacked me in the library?” I asked abruptly. I knew the drill; I had to stall. Someone had to be looking for me. I hadn’t told Liesel where I was going; she would be getting worried soon.
Gods, please let her be worried.
“It was I,” someone behind me said.
I whirled and leapt to attack him, but this time I was frozen mid-motion and held there. The sidhe I’d been facing, who seemed to be leading this ring, clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “We’ll have none of that.” The back of his hand cracked me across the face; the magical hold on me dropped just in time for me to be knocked to the floor by the blow. “Or we’ll have more of this.” And, before I could roll away, he planted his boot in my ribs.
“Patience,” one of the other Unseelie said as I curled up in agony. “You can kill her if it fails.”
If it fails. They had a plan.
I had to get out of here.
I threw myself at the cave’s exit. They dragged me back into its depths by my hair. “No more escape attempts,” one of my captors warned me. “You will not be treated so gently next time.” My scalp was bleeding where hair had come out, and my sides ached from more blows to my ribs.
“I shall put this to you simply,” the leader said, standing in front of me with his arms crossed. “You have a choice. We believe you can be one of us if you choose it willingly. Do so, and you will be spared pain.”
Knowing it was stupid, but lacking any other options, I spat on the rock at his feet.
He ignored it. “Very well. We shall see if you are more pliable than your friend.”
Rough hands slammed into my back and I fell to my knees on the unforgiving stone. Blocking pain and fear from my mind, I tried to lash out magically, to strike at any of them with my excuse for a levinbolt. I failed, of course; I’d been shielded since I came in here. A shove from behind sent me to my face on the floor, and my focus dug into my chest.
My focus.
I closed my eyes and sent everything I had through the crystal, slamming at the barriers around me, trying to generate just enough of a break to get out a telepathic scream for help, and they laughed at me. To them, I was nothing but a helpless child.
A hand tore my focus from around my neck. It fell to the stone with a clink.
Two Unseelie grabbed my arms and held them out wide so I was strung between them. A third grabbed my hair again and yanked my head back.
In front of me I could still just barely see their leader, watching this all with calm, cold eyes.
Two more Unseelie came forward with a long, slender pipe and a small bowl. My eyes tearing up in pain, I watched in apprehension as one tamped a small measure of powder into the bulbous end of the pipe.
And then he brought it toward my face.
I tried to throw my head to the side, but the one holding my hair merely tightened his grip and clamped a hand down on my chin, holding my jaw shut. Head immobilized, I could only watch, straining in vain to escape, as he lined the end of the pipe up at my nose and put his mouth to the other end.
His cheeks puffed once.
My scream echoed off the walls of the cave. I barely felt those holding me tighten their grip; my blood was on fire, and that surpassing agony drowned out everything. My body convulsed uncontrollably. Had they not been holding me, I would have cracked my skull against the stone floor. I wanted to tear my own skin off. The powder burned like acid, tracking with wildfire speed into my throat and lungs and brain, and I could only thrash in their grip, and scream, and scream, until at last the blackness stooped on me like a bird of prey and carried me away.