Very Good Guessing

Remember that dream I had with Bran? The vision where he’d been pulled into some creepy room? Well, Death’s sister’s directions led me right to the door from my dream.

There it was. Same dirty lanterns. Same poor people trying to stay warm in garbage, slowly starving in a world that had enough to feed them but not enough care to try. You have no idea how weird it was to see a thing from my dream in real life. I mean, I knew it was real. Of course I did. But it was still weird to see it.

It wasn’t the only door in this alley. Identical to all the others, it was somehow crowded, somehow dirty, though the paper lanterns overhead spoke of a different time, of some kind of hope that had at least passed briefly through here.

Don’t get distracted, Katie.

So, I wondered. Should I walk up and knock? Try to find another entrance? Attempt to sneak in?

I had my wand, but Bran’s magic hadn’t been enough to protect him. Neither had his physical strength.

I backed out of the alley and circled the block.

This whole place was nasty, an abandoned place for abandoned people. There were so many doors; I had no way of knowing if they all led to one huge room or what. Pulling out my wand, I tested lightly, trying to see through the walls around that specific door, but of course, they were warded. At least I could see through the walls on either side of that protection; normal humans lived here, surviving, barely hanging on, conducting their blessedly ordinary lives.

They didn’t have to know about the dragons in the sky. I mean, maybe they believed in dragons in the sky of some kind or another, but they didn’t have to actually know about them. Lucky bastards.

Okay. The whole place was warded, so there was only one way in. Here’s where I had a weird choice to make, and I had to wonder if it was the one Death’s sister meant: did I blast the door down and go in, bluffing? Or did I take it for granted that this, like so much else, had something to do with me, and that I could offer myself as trade and get Bran out that way?

Ah, but both were deadly. If I bluffed my way in and got killed, time would get loose and do who knows what to the world. If I traded myself and was summarily sacrificed ... same difference.

The clock was ticking. The Hush had eaten what spare time I had. And no, I wouldn’t call them for help. Seriously? No. They were just as likely to lock me up instead of whoever had taken Bran. Besides, I was pretty sure they were busy dealing with the mess of the coronation. I was on my own.

Screw this. If I went in blasting, they’d be likely to blast back, and that was no good. While it might not be glamorous, I had only one reasonable step in front of me, and I was going to take it.

Even though it made me shake.

Even though my stomach and back and heart were all still burning (was that time, eating from the inside out? Maybe! Today was full of fun surprises).

Even though I could never hold my own against powerful things that held someone like Bran prisoner.

Damn this. Damn them.

Katie Saves Her Own Damn Self had expanded to three-point-oh: Katie Does What Needs Doing.

Because nobody else could.

“Hope you’re proud of me now, mom,” I said for reasons best left unexplored, and knocked on the damn door.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Katie.

Katie who?

Katie who doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing. Punchline!

The door swung open, absolutely silent even though an eerie creak would have been better, and it swung into absolute darkness.

But Katie had her wand! That provided options. “Hello in there,” I murmured as I raised my helpful magic-stick, its tip glowing bright red as though just taken out of the fire. It cast light on a claustrophobic room that hadn’t seen occupation in at least ten years. I assumed that with confidence because it takes a while for bodies to turn into bones.

Skeletons lay along the walls, neatly lined up skull to toe, their pale white radiuses and ulnas crossed over their rib cages as if folded gently at rest.

Sure. Why not. If you’re going to be creepy, you might as well be fastidious about it.

I waved my wand in a wide circle, over my head and before my feet, checking for traps (as if I could detect anything powerful enough to grab Bran), checking for dangers (as if I could defend myself against anything powerful enough to grab Bran), but I found nothing except a risk of fungal infection from breathing in here.

I was Kin. I could handle this air for a while, even if the proverbial canary died.

The boards creaked ominously under my feet, but what really freaked me out was there were no signs of a struggle. The dust rose in puffs, no matter how slowly I walked. Where was the mess Bran must have made? He went down fighting; I saw him do it, and I knew—

Oh, dear.

The bones were clean, and I’d assumed old, but those streaks on the walls were definitely not. Some kind of dark green color—blood comes in all shades among the Mythos—and it seemed more fresh than not. None of it glistened or anything, but the few bugs that had made the mistake of coming in here to taste it (and die, because of course whatever had bled in here bled poison) lay in leg-tangled repose beside the skeletons. They were also lined up, by the way, wing-tip to multi-faceted eye.

Okay. Definitely creepy. They should have gone with the door-creak.

“I’m coming in now,” I said, gripping my wand so tightly that my hand hurt. “I’m not here to cause a fuss. I just want my friend back.”

The back wall opened.

I mean ... opened. Not like a door. It parted in the middle, rolling away from its center like weird rugs, and behind it was bubbling, silent darkness.

Umbra? No, Umbra never leaked like this, with edges of quiet shadow nipping along the rolled-up walls as if hungry or greedy or both.

Complete silence. No Step into my parlor statements. Nothing. Not even the “use the time” voice in my head was speaking.

I was holding my breath, I realized. That had to stop.

“I’m just here for my friend,” I said again, stepping closer.

Nada. Just bubbling, hungry darkness.

“I don’t want any trouble,” I said, as though I could cause any.

I checked the rolled up wall with my wand. According to my little investigation spells, it was a portal. A portal to a black hole, maybe.

So I put my left hand in it.

I had to test it on living flesh, okay? And I’m right-handed, and I needed my feet to run. What other option did I have?

I put my left hand in, and that darkness licked along it like gentle caresses, like something terribly cold and terribly dry that should have been soft and warm. Something that seemed to be pulling the life out of it, out of my hand, leaving it aching and old and stiff.

I yanked my hand back and shook it, briefly freaking out—only to see it was fine. It tingled, but it was fine.

Gut instinct said it shouldn’t have been fine. I think if I hadn’t been infected with Time, it might have become a neatly cleaned skeleton-hand.

“I should let you know, mystery-host, that if Bran is not in there, I am personally going to cave your head in with my wand,” I said.

Empty threat, but for some reason, the darkness listened. It roiled apart, boiling and bubbling, to reveal Bran on his knees on a flagstone floor, arms chained behind his back, horns jagged as if broken, though at least the flickering in his cracked form seemed strong and vibrant.

Just as quickly, the darkness closed in, hiding him from view.

Okay. That was really clearly a tease.

You know, I’d thought it was silly to consider this could possibly be about me. Now I knew it was. No, I was not comfortable with it, but my comfort didn’t matter.

I sighed, slowly. Deeply. Nobody thinks they’re going to die at twenty-three.

Survive where canaries die, I ordered myself, and stepped into the boiling dark.

It was like being swallowed by a thousand dead tongues.

Everything was touched. Everything. Gag-worthy, putrid, strangely dead, like stumbling on a desiccated corpse in the woods that you tell yourself is just a deer, when you know it’s not.

I screamed, gagged, spasmed in disgust as if I could just shed my flesh and run away. But I couldn’t, and instead, I landed on cold, hard stone next to Bran.

He had no power left in him for illusions. His true self stared back at me, horrified, fractured, trembling, stunned at his lack of ability in the face of ...

Three women?

I can’t say they sat on thrones, because that isn’t quite true. But I can’t say they sat on chairs, either, because that exsanguinates the grandeur. Whatever they sat on, it was older than chairs and older than thrones. Maybe older than the rocks people first called chairs, older than the logs they claimed from old forests to rest their bottoms above the earth.

The seats were old. They were old. And a single, solid pulse banged through this hollow, compressing my eyes, slowing my own pulse, forcing everything to follow its old, sick will.

“We are the Norns,” spoke the middle of the three.

The Norns? The puppet-masters? The ones pulling Kanon’s strings?

Yes. They weren’t gods, no, they were not, but what they’d become was worse. Old, ancient, powerful and crafty, and with every pulse, their alternate vision tried to force itself upon me, a weird reality where a thousand thousand threads all converged on this one snarled spot, knotted and frayed and fragile.

Not gods. Spiders, seated in the tangled heart of the Tapestry.

“Weavers,” disagreed the left-most woman—no, female. She might have held a nearly human form, but she wasn’t even close to what human means.

That moved me. Faced with something inhuman, with creatures intricately enmeshed in the mess of eternity and forever-holding, I saw the beauty and preciousness of short-lived frail human life even more sharply.

“You lie!”

“Enough!”

“Fool!” they cried all at once to my appreciation of mortality.

A very large part of me wanted to believe their words. No, not believe. Become. Become what they said: a liar, too much, a fool. Their fingers danced over the weft and weave of who I was and barely slid off before changing things. They nearly made me what they said, just by the power of their words.

No one should have that power. Certainly not them.

“We have brought you here,” said the first.

“Brought you,” said the second.

“Here,” said the third, and I knew their words were true—at least, in that.

The wrongness of this impossible room and its string-bending boundaries tore at me, stretching, threatening to rip me in two. “Why?” I said, because who I am would not be silent, not accept fate, would not let them run rough-shod over everything I’d fought so hard to be.

“Why?” they answered back, distressed at my pushing, at my fighting, at my insistence on being me.

And that’s right about when I had enough with all the dramatic and poetic and epical baloney. “For frick’s sake, just give me my friend, and let us leave!”

It was like the world stopped turning.

No one ever spoke to them like this, not since they’d figured out how to read the signs and choose the right threads, the right paths, directing and controlling and commanding at the center of their nasty web. Well, they weren’t controlling me, bucko. Never me. “So. We can go?” I said.

They shrieked.

The heat in my belly rose again, searing through my whole system. My eyes boiled, my womb sizzled, the hidden places between my toes and at the roots of my hair burned. Burned, but did not burn up; I was being ... consumed? Becoming something new? I didn’t know, but it was terrible.

And wonderful.

And terrible.

“Katie!” Bran couldn’t look at me anymore, and he seemed stark, cast in the light of my selfness, and I was so bright that the flickers in his flesh were hidden.

“Give it to us!”

I looked toward them, toward these three whose fingerprints I could now feel on everything, in everyone I knew, yet I knew they weren’t truly gods any more than I was. “Why should I?” I demanded.

And they showed me.

They showed me the world since the First War, split in two and hidden on either side of a curtain.

Showed me how hard they’d fought and how strong they’d struggled to keep the magical out of view of the Ever-Dying humans, to keep us safe, to keep all the Mythos safe.

Showed me what they’d surrendered, the paths taken and eschewed, the choices made.

And they showed me something coming soon.

Tonight, the dragons would fight with no more care who saw them, with fear of losing their agency, with hate for one baby white dragon.

Tonight, the Vedic pantheon, bereft of elders who’d been insulted and harmed at a party, would choose sides at random because they did not know whom to blame.

Tonight, the Night Children, long under quiet siege for the freakish uniqueness that made them them, would face Kanon, who came against them with the might of all Umbra beside him.

Tonight, humans would stare up with their cell phones at things so fantastic that disbelief kept them from scurrying to safety, while television crews and internet podcasters and grandmas with dusty eight millimeter film recorded things the world had never seen in their living memory.

Tonight, governments would rise in panic to debate whether this was World War III and to question whether anyone would or should drop a bomb on a hugely populated country out of raw paranoid fear.

Tonight, the curtain would be torn.

And none of this had happened yet.

“We knew this would come!” the first fate shrieked, her young hands like claws.

“All will end!” The second.

“Comes to a mistake, a single mistake.” Third.

“We can repair it.” First.

“We can rewind it.” Second.

“We can make it like it never was.” Third.

Hands, claws, talons reached toward me, reaching for me, beseeching and commanding and threatening and warning.

“Give to us that which was stolen.”

“Give to us that which was lost.”

“We will give to you what you desire.” The third tried so hard to wheedle with her tone, to whine, to simper, to smile.

But they were out of the loop now, and I knew all.

I’d never be able to hold onto time, and that was okay. I didn’t want to hold onto it. But I could see now—see how delicate threads lead to thicker twines and stronger braids and, at last, an end to what was. I could see how this was the moment when everything changed between the people of the Mythos and humankind (the curtain torn), and yet the genesis of this was not now.

It all went back to one single choice.

To a moment thousands of years ago—

Notte—young Notte, standing and grieving and wailing over a battlefield of ash and blood, of bodies he’d loved, of those he’d created as family, and those he simply knew.

His enemy, Kanon, on the battlefield’s other side, wearing armor made of magic rocks and glowing runes and all manner of evil souls and sacrifices, coming for him with glee, glee, glee that Notte should grieve because Kanon had killed the ones he loved.

A choice.

What. The hell. Was this.

“That is the time!” shrieked the first.

“The moment of decision!” shrieked the second.

“The moment to be changed!” shrieked the third.

Why was this the moment why was this the moment why was this the moment

I couldn’t ... I couldn’t keep it. I could almost grasp the pattern in my thoughts, almost follow the threads and the many ways they wove, but no. I couldn’t retain it in my silly mortal mind.

That was all right. I didn’t need to. I got the picture.

“Give it to us!” they cried.

They had used me. As a vessel. They were no gods, and even these Norns could only control a few paltry strings at a time—not enough to counteract something this big. But there was a bank of time available, wasn’t there, in the Guardian World? Time they could use to reverse the damage, time they couldn’t reach on their own.

They used Kanon and his hatred of Notte to do this. Somehow, reversing that moment in Notte’s life would erase tonight—and erasing tonight meant that there would be no moment of revelation for humankind.

They wanted to keep the curtain whole. I got it. I understood. I knew what they wanted.

“We will give you what you want!” And they dared show me images of my father (that’s what Dis was talking about) as if they could give him back to me, returning my childhood happiness the way it used to be before I realized he was scum.

I was not that little girl anymore. “You picked the wrong vessel.” I raised my arms, glorying in this moment, struggling to seal it in my mind, because pretty soon, I wouldn’t remember anymore. “My father? You’re going to hold my father in front of my face as trade-off for something I want anyway?”

And I could see how they’d gotten lost in the whole, lost in the knots, lost in the ideas of nations and Peoples and eras, and missed the teeny, tiny thread of independent thought.

They had no idea who I was, just what I was. And that was their expensive and foolish end. I wanted the curtain torn.

This power was nice (and terrible). I’d never feel like this again—so eternal, so immortal, so all-knowing.

I didn’t want to. I liked being simply Katie.

I pointed at the left Norn. “Screw you.”

At the middle. “Screw you.”

At Bran. “You’re okay.”

And the right Norn. “And screw you.” And then I took Bran and went away.

I just knew how to do it, how to access all the natural power I refused to acknowledge because of the problems it would bring. But right now, using it only made sense.

The burning extended even to my tears now, which felt like searing red paths down my cheeks.

“Katie!” Bran called me, but I could barely hear him. We were outside. We were in a public square. There were people. Fountains. Statues. Why had I chosen to be here? I couldn’t remember anymore. I’d chosen to come here, to this place, but why?

We were not alone.

A crowd stood around us, shouting and pointing as the sky tore overhead and as dragons warred, as magical beings cried out and wove protection spells around themselves and clusters of humans, as everyone feared and stared and bled and trembled. Dis waved at me from the edge of the crowd, in her little-girl form, bouncing on her toes.

“Get down!” shouted Jonathan from somewhere, and so help me, I ducked.

Purple power flew over my head, distorting the world like strange glass made and melted right in front of my eyes. It hit the ground, somehow missing everyone, and exploded. Stone and dirt sprayed; everyone ducked, screaming.

“Why won’t you die?” bellowed Kanon.

They were all here. My uncle. Baby Suvi, trying to flap out of his hands and get to me. Notte. Jonathan. That guy who freaked Jonathan out. Ravena. Jaden. Aiden. Quinn.

People. So many people. So many threads, thousands, millions, billions of tangles and weavings and frayed ends and I—

I couldn’t—

I couldn’t hold it together for much longer.

“I can’t much more!” I screamed, grammar be damned.

“He’s coming!” someone cried, I don’t know who.

Kanon marched toward me with a big curved thing like a dinosaur’s claw, aiming for my middle to tear me open and release the time, and I saw the threads: Notte would be caught up in it, but it wouldn’t be like the three Norns thought, oh no, it would reverse him, it would rewind him, it would turn him into something he’d been back before anyone could even remember and that would be the end because he would eat the world.

I screamed and fell to my knees, gripping my abdomen, and my arms glowed like heated bronze as I held the world’s death in.

And it all happened so fast—

Suvi pulled lose from my uncle and clawed Kanon’s face.

Kanon batted him aside with a roar and swung the claw down.

Jonathan got in the way—must have moved before Kanon even started—and then it was Jonathan gutted, Jonathan split in the middle with that big wooden hook, and me screaming and that guy-friend of Ravena screaming and Kanon screaming—

I blacked out for a moment. It was burning in my brain now, and getting hard to concentrate.

Hold it in, Katie.

All my will, my stubbornness, my essential bull-headed self leaned against the door to time and kept the damn thing closed.

Wind swirled, dust whipping aside to reveal Jonathan in the arms of that other guy, who poured his own blood from a self-inflicted wound into Jonathan’s mouth murmuring nomu, nomu, nomu—

Kanon panted like a bull, hook raised and bloody, but he did not bring it down again.

Notte stood between us.

“You have broken the truce, my old friend,” Notte said, and his soft voice carried and hurt and pounded.

“He’s alive! He’s fine!” Kanon snarled. “You know you were my target!”

“Yes,” said Notte calmly. “But you did not harm me, did you?” And the next words sent ice-nails up my spine one sharp, frozen syllable at a time: “You. Hurt. My. Child.”

And Notte gusted at him, Notte surged at him, Notte became dust and wind and hunger, and enveloped Kanon with so much raw power that pieces of flesh went flying off into the screaming crowd in chunks and goblets and plates.

I couldn’t hold it anymore.

The door inside me burst open, shattered, nothing left for my will to push against—

And the wings came down. Black wings, and time splashed against those wings and stopped like a breeze against a brick wall.

Cool darkness rushed through my veins, replacing. Repairing. Relieving.

Time for a nap.

Boy, was it nice to find thoughts parading across my mind in an orderly and ordinary fashion when I woke.

The walls were a sort of faded yellow paint. Cracked plaster made up my low ceiling. Traffic sounds—engines, horns, voices—rose in the distance.

It felt so ordinary, so human, so normal. Everything hurt, which wasn’t normal. But I could think clearly, and nothing burned, so that was okay.

It sure sounded to me like the world was still alive.

Bran’s warm, strong hand touched my forehead, stroking my hair. “There’s the hero,” he said softly.

My muscles had apparently turned to leather while I was out, and I found myself surprised my neck didn’t creak as I looked at him. “You’re alive, too, huh?”

“Yeah. Thanks to you.” He stroked my hair again, gently, but did not smile. Then he held out his hand, and Suvi leaped off it to land on my chest.

“Baby!” I said, and kissed his little head. We spent a few minutes like that, reuniting, baby dragon and the lady who hatched him, but even during this, I couldn’t avoid the truth: something was different.

I couldn’t place it. Something just felt strange; not bad, necessarily, but abnormal. “What happened?”

“You did the impossible. You held time itself back until Adam could come to contain it.”

“Who called Adam?”

“I did.” Bran shuddered. “Went there first. Thought we’d need a backup.”

“You went to Meginnah alone? Are you crazy?”

“Not anywhere near as crazy as you. And I think it’s my turn to ask what happened now.”

“So the Norns are probably out to get me,” I said.

His jaw fell open. It turns out he hadn’t been able to see the three beings who held him. Which probably meant that without time inside me, I couldn’t, either.

It was time for explaining.

I talked, and Suvi curled up under my chin like a kitten, purring in his sleep. I couldn’t remember everything—those future glimpses were gone—but I remembered enough. “I don’t know what happened to them,” I said. “It’s probably too much to hope they just blew up or something.”

Bran leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “I’ll find out.”

“It’s not on you to find out. So what happened with the dragons?”

He eyed me. “The Red and Black clans were brought to heel by the Hush and the Sun. Half the Vedic pantheon broke the law. Numerous members of the Darkness followed Kanon and panicked when he died. A lot of people are waiting trial now.”

“Geez,” I whispered. “And Suvi?”

“Officially crowned. He’s the king of both clans; but that’s beside the point. It’s out. Magic is revealed. There’s no way it couldn’t be after that. No amount of magic could cover up a mess like this.”

Time could have. But I’d stepped all over that chance.

Traffic continued its noisy current, people going about their lives, probably a lot more scared than they’d been before. But I heard no mobs. No unseasonable storms. And we were clearly still in the human world, so that seemed good.

I know I made the right decision. “Where’s Merlin?”

“Your uncle? He’s on TV.”

If I’d had a drink, I would have sprayed it. “Television?”

“And computer screens, and phones, or whatever.” Bran smiled slightly. “Someone had to be a negotiator, and ... well, he’s pretty likeable. He also has a good handle on Ever-Dying cultures, which is something very few of us have.”

“Finally admitting there’s something you don’t know?” Apparently, my internal filter was still bluescreened.

His eyes widened. “Maybe,” he allowed.

He was getting used to my bluntness. Score one for Katie Lin.

“The Ever-Dying are being told part of the truth.” Bran bent over and rummaged for a moment. I recognized the hold-all bag I’d brought from his apartment. Judging by the empty bottles and wrappers, he’d been enjoying the bounty I’d brought. 

And then, he handed me my cellphone.

My phone! My very own phone! The one he’d taken from me in New Hampshire! “I could kiss you,” I said to the phone.

“Really?” said Bran dryly.

“Hush.” I checked the news.

Boy, he was not kidding: this was a mess no one could contain.

Emergency meetings of the UN and NATO and every other organization. Crazy laws being passed, demagogues rousing the rabble. Protests, violent outbreaks, at least a dozen buildings firebombed or burned down out of fear that they were secret magic headquarters.

But so, so many were preaching peace.

I blinked away tears as I scrolled, reading article after article of Ever-Dying humans risking their short, weak little lives to build bridges with the magical strangers. Of humans getting between mobs and fairies, humans hiding Fey who’d been attacked, humans pointlessly trying to protect dragons who could protect themselves just fine, but were so shocked at the gesture that they let it happen.

Yes, there were plenty of crazies with guns or pitchforks or whatever, but far more humans were trying for peace.

Wow.

“We don’t know yet if there will be war,” Bran said, leaning back so his wooden chair creaked. “Or even if there should be. We’re in talks—maybe we should just withdraw from this world completely. It’s not like the Ever-Dying could bomb Umbra.”

“Maybe.” I wouldn’t put anything past humans. All they needed was time. “Quick question: are all the seers dead? Did their heads explode? Do they still know anything that’s coming, or is it all up for grabs?”

“Ask her yourself,” said Bran, and put Cassandra in my hand.

“Beware,” squeaked Cassandra. “Beware the teeth that drop!”

I groaned. “Good to see all is normal.”

“The teeth that drop?” said Bran.

“Long story. Maybe you should ask her yourself.”

He laughed.

Apparently, I’d survived the pointed tongue and the orange eyes. Kanon and Jaden, maybe? So Ravena was still on the prowl, or ... Honestly, I had no idea.

Maybe it didn’t matter. Cassandra may be an echostone, but I’d seen how time really looked. Her guesses were good, but they were still just guesses.

And for no reason, I was done with illusion and mystery. Just done. “Bran?” I said.

“Yes, Katie?”

“Gimme your real face.”

He froze.

I pointed at him. “Don’t try to out-stubborn me, Bran. I’m sick. I demand succor. Give me your real face.”

He exhaled slowly, morphing up as he did, changing, growing, until his real form sat where the “human” one had. Cracked, horned, frightening. “Weird woman. Happy now?”

His horns were still broken.

I did something I’d wanted to do forever: I reached up and palmed his cheek, sliding my thumb over his lips. Soft lips; I hadn’t expected that, what with the plates and cracks and infernal fires, or whatever they were. Beautiful. “Happy. Are you gonna be okay? Those horns look like they hurt.”

He just stared at me like I’d grown six heads.

“Earth to Bran? Fine. Subject change. Is Kanon dead for real?”

And he grinned like a kid in a candy store. “More than dead. My grandfather lied.” He leaned in. “He never had the strength to open a portal to the Guardian world at all, never mind prying a stone from the freaking Wall of Time.”

“What? Then how did he get it?”

“Ha! I don’t know. He bought it off someone. I’ll find out who. Ha!”

“But you opened the portal.”

“I did! Ha!”

“So you really are stronger than he was.”

“Ha!”

I laughed with him. What a hell of a revelation. “What was his problem with Notte, anyway?”

Bran snorted. “Hell if I know. He thought that if he released that time, Notte would no longer have the mental wherewithal to fight back. My fool grandfather thought he could win. Fight him down. Kill him. That’s why he brought that wooden hook to the final battle. Wood is the only thing that reliably hurts vampires, you know.”

I shook my head. “And what happened to all that time that was in me? Please don’t joke about this and tell me it’s the year eight thousand twelve, because I don’t think I could handle it.”

“Adam took it back.”

“Took it?”

“Just drew it out of you.” He made a motion like pulling taffy, gaze distant. “Said ‘greetings, old friend,’ to Notte, and then just ... flew away.”

“Great. Well. Okay. Wow.”

“It was eating you, Merlin said.”

“Ew. Well, I hope I was tasty.”

He made a face.

I made one back at him, then sobered. “I’m sorry about your grandfather.”

“Are you really?”

“No. He was crazy. And a jackass.”

“And weaker than I am.” Bran couldn’t stop grinning.

Suvi nibbled my fingers, my chin, the ends of my hair, evidently reassuring himself that I was alive and well. Oh, and he’d been “crowned”—a silver collar sat around his neck, elegant, pointed in a downward-v and utterly royal. I loved the way it sat against his teeny-tiny barrel chest. “I’m okay, baby,” I told him, petting his little head.

“You’ll be back to well soon,” Bran said with a slow, wicked grin. “Your uncle’s been working on you. You should’ve seen yourself six hours ago. Wrecked, filthy. You smelled.”

I flattened him with my expression before moving right along. “Is Jonathan okay? That creepy guy had him, last I saw.”

“Yeah, they. Well ... .” Bran leaned back, chair creaking as he crossed his massive arms. “They’re a couple of weirdos.”

Something about the way he said that made me laugh. “Excuse me?”

“They’ve got this love-hate thing going; it’s miserable and unsatisfied on both ends. Maybe because now Notte has Jonathan, while Ravena has that guy—whose name is apparently Seishiro.” He shrugged again. “Anyway, he was keeping Jonathan alive. They parted ways after. It was messy. Yelling. Crying. Gesturing. You’d have loved it.”

Wow. Funny how your life crosses paths with other people, and sometimes you forget that they have a whole other life outside of whatever adventures you had together. “Complicated, huh?”

“Complicated.”

He wasn’t wrong. I realized something right then, though I didn’t say it: Jonathan’s painting had come true. Notte had become that ... that nightmare Beast while killing Kanon. What’s more, Jonathan probably knew that would happen when he threw himself in the way of that weird wooden hook thing.

That little sneak. I sincerely hoped he wouldn’t use his powers for evil.

Bran sighed slowly and looked out the window. It was such an ordinary room; nothing on the walls, just a bed and a dresser and blinds covering the window. Late daylight filtered through, accompanied by hints of traffic beyond.

“Not all of us are exposed,” said Bran suddenly, “but enough. And the revelation definitely did not happen the way any sane person would have chosen to do it. Everything is different now.”

“A dragon war probably wasn’t ideal, no.”

“Yes. A dragon war—all over this.” Bran pointed at Suvi.

Suvi bit him.

I laughed.

“Brat,” Bran said, shaking his hand. “Anyway, it’s a mess.”

I didn’t doubt that.

Things were going to happen. It would get bad for a while, but the thing is, they were already bad. We’d been strangled, living in fear of being found out, paranoid and punishing our own People for existing.

This had to happen. My few glimpses of the knotted, tangled mess of time kept slipping from my mind like buttons off broken threads, but I still knew that with the curtain torn, in time, things would get good again.

It’s funny: a while ago, my uncle had told me enormous trouble was on the way. He also told me I wouldn’t see it coming.

Well, he’d been wrong, very good guessing or not. I saw it all. I could only wonder where else he’d been wrong and where that would lead. Very good guessing is still only guessing, after all.

“To the future,” I said at random, and touched the back of Bran’s hand.

And the big scary monster blushed. The light flickering in his cracks turned purple.

I could live with that.

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● Extras ●