Tjuan didn’t get home until around nine thirty that night. I desperately needed his take on what to do about my suit, because I knew until I solved that problem my dysphoria was just going to escalate, but I knew better than to jump right on him the second he walked in the door.
Phil knew better too, but didn’t seem to care. Phil was the grouchy bearded pianist who’d been dating Tjuan’s previous partner when she died. He was also the second-highest ranking agent in the house, after Tjuan. Tjuan and Phil seemed to have a long history, but as neither was particularly fond of opening up to me, I didn’t know much about it. Their familiarity made them talk in elliptical half thoughts to each other, making eavesdropping pointless.
“Did you sign them?” Phil asked, literally before Tjuan had even finished putting his keys back in his pocket. I was sitting patiently on the living room couch, scratching behind Monty the cat’s missing ear.
“Fuck off,” said Tjuan.
“It’s been three weeks, Teej.”
“Sign them your own damned self.”
Ah, that’s what this was all about. Alvin had promoted Tjuan over Phil in October, and Phil was still pissy about it.
“Just file an X-2,” said Tjuan.
“X-2s aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on right now.”
“Deal with it, Phil. Find a way. I don’t have time for this shit.”
I had no idea what they were talking about—Caryl had known better than to assign me to paperwork duties—but whatever it was sent them both back to their separate rooms in a huff. Phil shut his door pretty hard.
I looked down at Monty, who was purring fitfully, like an old-timey pencil sharpener. “This seems like a good moment to hit him with my thing, right?” I said to him. I’d taken to talking to the cat recently, since Caveat was usually bound to his collar and I figured she got lonely.
I waited a few moments, then put Monty on the floor, headed back to Tjuan’s room, and gently knocked on the door.
“Go away,” Tjuan said.
“It’s me.”
“I know.”
“Tjuan, how do you pee in Arcadia?”
There was a moment of silence. Then he said, “I whip out my dick, like everywhere else.”
“Tjuan, I’m serious.”
The door opened just wide enough for my partner to glare at me with merciless obsidian eyes. “Millie,” he said very slowly, in the sort of three-deep-breaths tone you use with children. “I . . . do . . . not . . . have . . . time . . . for . . . your . . . shit . . . this . . . evening.”
“I’m having a bad spell, Tjuan, and I just—I just feel like if I had an answer to this problem I would sleep better. I’m chewing on it and I can’t let go. I’ve tried, but I just—I’m stuck on it.”
He exhaled, rubbed a hand over his eyes, and leaned against the door frame. “Stuck on what exactly?”
“They’ve made me a suit, like a diving suit, sort of, that I can wear to keep spellwork safe in Arcadia. But . . . you know, it zips up the back, and I—it—”
“You’d have to peel the whole thing down,” he said. This was a thing he’d started to do recently when I was fumbling. Part of me hated being interrupted, but another part of me liked being understood, anticipated.
“Also,” I said, “I can’t really . . . squat? Not anymore.”
“Get one of those portable toilets hikers use, fold it up and carry it with you in a backpack or something. They’re like thirty bucks.”
“Oh.” I looked at him in astonishment. “But . . . I’d still have to get naked.”
“Why’s your suit gotta be all one piece? Just grab some scissors, snip snip, pants and a shirt.”
We stared at each other for seven cold seconds.
“Okay,” I said.
“Now will you leave me the fuck alone?”
I smiled a little. “Hard day?”
He snorted. “When I showed up at the writers’ room, someone had taped a sign above the door that said ‘Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here.’ ”
“That’s . . . pointed. What’s going on?”
“The usual. Ever since that demon-dog of Naderi’s kicked the bucket, she’s grown three rows of teeth to replace his.”
“Oh, she’s always had those.”
Tjuan and his boss, Parisa Naderi, had never been best buddies; neither had she and I, for that matter. If not for their connection via the Arcadia Project, Tjuan would probably still have been making unsteady money doing uncredited script rewrites. Naderi herself certainly wouldn’t have been elevated to partnership in Valiant Studios if we hadn’t found her Echo—and then promptly gotten him killed. Technically it was King Winterglass who’d exploded Brand, but if you traced the tragedy back far enough, it was pretty much my fault. My sickening guilt over it had kept me from being the comforting friend I’d hoped to be to her afterward.
Unsurprisingly, relations between Naderi and the Project had been tense after that. But Tjuan, better known in Hollywood as T. J. Miller, was a damned good writer, and Naderi hadn’t risen to the pinnacle of power in the biz by failing to recognize talent.
“Any chance of you taking the day off on Monday?” I asked him.
He let out a sharp “ha” that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just heard ‘any chance of you taking your thumb off that grenade?’ Why the hell would you ask me that?”
“Caryl’s arranged a meeting with King Winterglass,” I said. “She wants me there, but—” I felt my eyes start to sting, gritted my teeth, fought it. “Tjuan, I’m really not doing well. I know it seems like I’m okay—”
“It really doesn’t.”
“—because I’m not bursting into fountains of tears and self-diagnosing fatal illnesses like the new girl—”
“She’s been here two months; you know her name.”
“—but inside I’m a series of small constant explosions. I’m afraid that if something goes wrong in that meeting—”
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll be there. Now please leave me alone.” And he closed the door in my face.
• • •
Just before dawn on Sunday I woke to find a gorgeous Greek woman in my bed. I was less excited about this than I might normally have been, because I recognized the facade. It had been made by Prince Fettershock of the Unseelie Court just before that fateful meeting with Dame Belinda when everything had gone pear-shaped. It belonged to the improbably named faux-human Phrixa Vourdoulas, a.k.a. Shiverlash, Beast Queen of the Unseelie Court.
She was sitting on the edge of my new queen-size mattress—which had until this moment never had an actual queen on it—staring at me with unsettling lichen-colored eyes. Her true form was blind, and so she hadn’t quite gotten the hang of polite eye contact. I think visual input unsettled her, though she’d learned to use it to help navigate our world. In her own world, she sensed things much as her friends the spirits did, but without magic, our world was a wasteland to those extra senses.
Aside from the staring, she wasn’t actually being rude. Not that she gave a damn for Arcadia Project protocol anyway, but monarchs were allowed to come and go through the Gates whenever they pleased without filing paperwork. And my door hadn’t been locked, since it wasn’t usually necessary. I was going to have to reexamine that assumption.
A slender and slightly paler version of Elliott appeared on the Unseelie Queen’s shoulder. Caveat. I felt a frisson of unease.
The little spirit had caused everyone in the house to shit bricks a month ago by almost perfectly copying the construct spell Caryl had invented to contain Elliott. She’d used it to escape Monty’s collar when he fell asleep for too long. The only difference was that she’d replaced Caryl with Monty as the center of the construct’s travel range. This was beyond astonishing. We’d already known she had a particular talent for copying spells, but constructs weren’t supposed to be possible for fey at all, only for humans. Caryl had told me this when I first met Elliott, and it had been reiterated in my basic training.
“I just copied Elliott” was Caveat’s only explanation. She hadn’t even realized it was supposed to be impossible. And even after we told her so, she didn’t seem bothered or motivated to explain.
“I’m here to translate,” she said now. Even her voice was similar to Elliott’s, but she used a more casual cadence—I assumed because it was the kind of English she heard most often at the Residence. “Queen Shiverlash wants to talk to you.”
I didn’t have to ask why Caveat was suddenly doing the queen’s bidding; Shiverlash had always had a deeply intimate relationship with all of the spirits, and Caveat was Unseelie to boot, which gave her no choice but to obey any command the queen gave her.
“What can I do for Her Majesty?” I asked Caveat, pretending my stomach hadn’t just tied itself into a sailor’s knot.
“If it’s okay,” said Caveat, “I’ll transmit your words into her mind and help her answer you directly.”
“Whatever you prefer,” I said, rubbing the gook out of my eyes and trying to claw my hair into order.
Caveat seemed to vanish, and Queen Shiverlash took on a distant, intent look that reminded me of the alien way she’d scented the air when I’d first released her into this world.
“You are in danger,” she said at last. Even her human facade had a mesmerizing voice, deep and smooth. “The human queen prepares to strike.”
She meant Dame Belinda. “What have you heard?”
“Only whispers,” she said. “But the time to act is now. We must free the spirits, and put an end to the sidhe.”
I sighed and massaged my forehead. I had to be careful here, and I was still barely awake. “What exactly is it you want me to do?” I asked.
“You are to release, with your iron touch, every spirit the usurper Winterglass and his ilk have imprisoned.”
“Wait, what?” My spine straightened. “We’re starting in Darkest Unseelie Wherever? I figured you’d go after Dawnrowan first.”
“I trust your faun Claybriar to deal with the Seelie Queen,” said Shiverlash. “But there is no one fighting the usurpers in my land but I. I need you, and so you will be under my protection. Together we shall make of the false king’s realm a shattered ruin.”
“That sounds great,” I said, remembering the way she’d ripped open Parisa Naderi’s face a few months ago. “I’m all for it, absolutely. I love shattered ruins. But here’s the thing. I kind of need Winterglass to think I’m on his side for the next little while.”
Something cold and terrifying flashed through her pale eyes. “To deceive him?” she said. “I envy humans this power. But to what end? Do you have a plan to betray him?”
“Sort of,” I said. “It’s complicated. But basically, if Dame Belinda thinks that both you and he are on our side, she’ll have to negotiate with us.”
“The usurper Winterglass will never join you unless you renounce me and support the enslavement of spirits. And if you throw in with the sidhe, our alliance is at an end.”
“Yes, I remember our deal,” I said. “But all I need is for Dame Belinda to believe that the whole Unseelie Court is behind us. I swear on my life, my goal is to free the spirits. It’s just that humans sometimes have to do things a little more indirectly. You’re thousands of years old or something, right? Can you not wait a little while longer?”
“It is not my lifespan that is in question,” said Shiverlash, “but the lifespan of my trust in you, human.” She rose, and I could almost see those great oily black wings of hers spreading menacingly behind her. But she was only human, for the moment. “Watch for my return,” she said. “This is the second time I have allowed you to defer my vengeance. There will not be a third.”
And then she left me there wishing, not for the first time, that I had never let Caryl Vallo tempt me out of the loony bin.