“There are stories of entire worlds the fae created for their own amusement, grew bored with, then basically lost the keys to, only for someone else to rediscover the place centuries later by accident.” An amused expression crossed her face. “Of course, then bloody wars were fought between the person who discovered this new world full of treasures and the person who forgot it existed but wanted their toy back rather than let someone else play with it.”
“You’re saying we can cut it loose, but that someone else might find it later?”
“Assuming the archive works the way Vasco claims. I would have to enter it to tell for certain.”
As a creature of deepest Faerie, and a rare one at that, a dunk in the archive ought to be along the same lines as Remy dipping her toe into familiar waters. It was also not Faerie, but an offshoot created and maintained by the coven. That dark origin might affect her more than me, who already had a blight on my soul. In addition to the fact I had two souls, essentially, sharing space in my body.
Thanks to Ambrose, I was topped out spiritually. The souls harvested by the coven and stored in the archive couldn’t enter my body. I didn’t have enough room left. The same might not apply to Remy, and I didn’t want to find that out the hard way.
Careful not to insult her delicate pride, I hedged, “Do you think that’s safe?”
“I have a lot of soul.” She grinned, cereal in her teeth. “As long as I go in fully loaded and don’t split myself too far apart for too long, I should be fine.”
“You should be fine?” I rubbed my arms, recalling the photos of that yawning void, the ravenous creatures who inhabited the place. “That’s living dangerously, don’t you think?”
Stubborn glare on her face, she swept her gaze up and down me. “You’re going in, right?”
“Yeah.” I carried my bowl to the sink while Midas finished his. “Vasco gave me the okay.”
“Do you really think we’re going to let you go in alone?”
“I hadn’t gotten that far,” I admitted, washing and drying it. “I was still working on that part.”
“That’s because your plans suck.”
“They do not.”
“They always go something like this.” She pretended to shade her eyes against a nonexistent glare. “I’m going to locate the bomb,” she said in a syrupy drawl. “Oh! There it is.” She pointed a finger. “Let me throw myself on top of it.” She flung herself into a chair. “Now everyone will be safe.” She put a hand to her mouth. “Except me. Oops. Hope I don’t die!”
“Work on your Southern accent,” I grumbled. “That doesn’t sound like me.”
“She’s right.” Midas refused to quail under my glare. “You have done that, literally, several times.”
“There was only the one time.” I heaved a sigh. “The others don’t count.”
The bomb in my old apartment had taken me by surprise, so that one wasn’t my fault.
The bomb at the restaurant after the wake was an OPA-approved trap, so not totally my fault.
The bomb in the pit during the skirmish with the coven, okay, that was pretty much all my fault.
By my math, I was a victim two out of three times. That practically made me innocent, in my opinion.
“A dozen coven members are exiting vans on the corner of Peachtree Street Northeast and Spring Street Northwest,” Reece reported from the other room. “They’re receiving backpacks and their marching orders.” A tick, tick, tick filtered to me followed by a click. “Countdown to the next group begins…now.”
“I recommend you be in position before the next batch exits the archive,” Anca added softly, aware how her voice carried in the small space. “The drive to Buckhead will take that long, but if you beat them, you can set your phone’s timer to make sure you don’t cross paths with anyone while you’re in the archive.”
There was a quicker way to reach the warehouse, but Midas’s grim expression told me he wanted to risk traveling Bishop’s winter road again about as much as he wanted to get waxed in his other form. Our saving grace was, if we burned him out, he couldn’t bring our backup to us. That gave us a valid excuse for avoiding that trek twice in one night.
“Good thing I drove,” Remy said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “We’ll plan the nitty-gritty on the way.”
Leaving a clean kitchen behind us, we entered the control room to join the conversation in progress.
“What should we bring with us?” I checked with Midas. “What do you suggest?”
Time moved differently in Faerie, and then differently again from Faerie in its individual pocket realms, a phenomenon I experienced firsthand with Bishop earlier. What would it mean for hunger? Thirst? Other biological requirements? Would our bodies stay on track with this time zone? Quicken? Slow? Pause?
“There are backpacks stocked with energy bars, water, power banks, and basic survival gear in the first closet on the right.” Anca pointed in the general direction. “Bring one for each of you.”
“I’ll get them,” Remy volunteered. “Six, right?”
“Six works.” A spare never hurt anyone. “Unless…do your other selves require their own?”
“Nah.” She patted her stomach. “It all goes to the same place.”
“Anything else?” I tugged my hair back into a loose tail. “Weapons? Clean undies? Prayers?”
“We have no idea what’s down there,” Midas rumbled. “Less might be more in this case.”
“Lighter packs make for faster sprinting.” Remy agreed. “We shouldn’t be gone longer than a day.”
“A day?” I flung out an arm to steady myself against Midas. “A whole day?”
“Chill,” Remy soothed. “That much time won’t pass out here.”
For all our sakes, I hoped she was right. The odds were fifty/fifty, to my way of thinking, for or against us.
“There are other exits,” Reece reminded us. “Worst-case scenario, get out wherever and however you can.”
The other tethers. Right. We would have to snip those too. The last one could still be an emergency exit.
“You can always resupply and reenter if you must,” Anca agreed. “Your safety is our priority.”
As much as it warmed me to hear her say so, I had to disagree. I was the least important variable here.
As we finalized our plans, I found my attention sliding to the closet. “Remy?”
No answer.
Surely Anca would have sent Remy off with a map or a compass if the room was a jungle.
“Remy?” I crossed the room and reached for the knob. “Did you get lost in there?”
The door swung open before I could do the honors, and she barreled past me. “Get moving, slowpoke.”
Keys in her hand, Remy bounded out of HQ, and we followed her downstairs into a parking deck.
“I’m one block over at Peachtree Parking Deck. Since I don’t rate access to the Faraday’s private lot, I figured I might as well invest in a monthly pass near home.” She jingled as she walked, the contents of the packs jostling against her back. “We just need to be careful…”