The Luidaeg looked at him serenely. “She did an excellent job of recreating you,” she said. “If I didn’t know . . . Well, that’s a matter for later. We come claiming sanctuary.”
“Home is a place for the runaways and the castoffs of the Courts,” said Devin, voice mild. “But only one of you qualifies for the kind of help we have to give. We’ll take her.” He indicated me. “The rest of you can take your trouble somewhere else. This isn’t the place for it.”
“All we need is—”
“A place to hide? Yeah, we hear that about once a season, from someone who’s managed to get on the wrong side of the Queen. The streets are buzzing with the news that a changeling from Shadowed Hills broke the Law and disappeared. Seems to me you’ve got her, and you want us to shelter you all while you wait for the problem to blow over. Well, guess what? It’s not going to blow over. Murder is one of those things that tend to linger in the air for a while. Can’t just wish it away and hope things will go back to normal. We can hide the changeling. The rest of you should run.”
I fingered one of the blood gems in my pocket, wondering how dense the web of pink lines around him was going to be when I finally got the chance to check. And I was pretty sure that was where this was going, from the way he was challenging the Luidaeg. I hoped the real Devin, whoever he’d been, had more common sense than that. Defying the Firstborn is never a path to a long and healthy existence.
The Luidaeg snorted. “I am the sea witch, shadow on the tides and monster at the bottom of the sleeping sea,” she said. “I don’t run. I’m the thing people run from.”
“Yet here you are, asking me for sanctuary.”
“Because you’re the only one here to offer it.”
Devin crossed his arms. “What can you give me?”
The Luidaeg scowled.
The two of them seemed likely to keep going for a while, and so I drifted away, moving toward the Daoine boy with the purple hair. He eyed me mistrustfully.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m October.”
“Good for you. Parents couldn’t afford a name book, had to use a calendar?”
“I’m named after my aunt.”
“How kind of them, to make sure you’d never be able to outrun them. My parents did that, too. Gave me a bullshit name no real person would ever use for themselves.” He looked briefly disgusted. “I left that behind when I split. You can call me Carl.”
“Carl?”
“Yeah. A good honest real-people name that real people use without wincing. You should try it.”
“I don’t think I’d like to be called ‘Carl.’”
“Not my name, you doofus. You’d pick a new name for yourself, something modern and mundane, something that helps you blend in with everyone else.”
The Luidaeg was waving for me to come back. I nodded politely to Carl.
“Not the goal, but I appreciate the advice,” I said, and moved to rejoin the group.
Negotiations did not appear to have gone well. Devin was smiling smugly, while the Luidaeg was glowering at him. “I need you to check for the scope of Titania’s spell and remove it,” she said, curtly.
“You know I can’t just—”
“Now.”
Her tone didn’t leave a lot of room for argument. I popped one of the blood gems into my mouth and closed my eyes, unsurprised by the dense tangle of pink threads that appeared where Devin was standing. It outlined him completely, just like the one I’d seen around Blind Michael—or around the Luidaeg herself, when she’d been a tree.
She’d been a lot less bossy when she was a tree.
Bracing myself, I slipped another blood gem into my mouth and reached out magically, “grabbing” handfuls of the threads wrapped around Devin. His scream was immediate and blood-chilling. Around the room, more clusters of pink shifted as the watching teens began to move in my direction. If I’d been alone, my goose would have been well and truly cooked. As it was, the people I was traveling with fanned out to surround me, protecting me from the advancing figures. I kept pulling.
It was amazing, how quickly this had become almost routine. A small part of my mind noted, analytically, that “can’t lie” wasn’t the same as “has to tell us everything.” The Luidaeg had known this Devin guy was dead before we came there, and that we’d be dealing with an enchanted imposter taking his place. She’d only made a very loose stab at what I could refer to as “diplomacy,” if it had even been that, and then pivoted straight to ordering me to unbind him. Whatever she was playing at there, she clearly had a plan and just as clearly wasn’t overly interested in sharing it with the rest of us.
I pulled with freezing fingers, feeling the first tendrils of pain uncoil behind my eyes, like flaming worms beginning to burrow into my brain, and ground my teeth together as I forced myself to keep pulling. Even with the Luidaeg’s blood in my mouth, this process wasn’t fun. Oh, it was easier than it had been in the beginning, but that was such a small change that I couldn’t really credit it, not now, with my hands full of threads that didn’t exist and the cold creeping steadily toward my elbows.
“I hate this,” I muttered, and bit my tongue hard enough to draw blood.
That was the little extra bit I needed to rally and sink my fingers all the way into the spell, wrenching it away with an effort that left my head pounding and my jaw aching, and not a trace of pink in front of me. Panting, I unkinked my fingers and opened my eyes, just in time to see a much, much smaller figure crumple to the floor. It was a boy, with untidy, pale blond hair, no more than nine years old.
“Andrew,” said the Luidaeg, with weary fondness. She moved to scoop the boy off the floor, holding him as easily as if she handled children every day. He dangled in the gawky, totally limp manner of a sleeping child, showing no signs that he was aware of his surroundings.
I bent forward until my hands were resting on my knees, waiting for the room to stop spinning. The teens were still advancing, although they had yet to push the situation to an actual fight.
“What did you do to the boss?” demanded Carl.
I couldn’t answer him. I wasn’t sure I could talk if I tried. I shook my head, leaving it for the Luidaeg to answer.
“I know you won’t like this answer, but she didn’t do anything to ‘the boss,’ because you’ve never met Devin,” she said. “He died six years ago, and Home burned to the ground shortly after. Everything you remember about this place is a lie, planted in your heart like a seed to blossom and grow into a poisonous flower. This isn’t your life. This is a cruel joke played on you by someone with so much power that it never occurred to her that she might be doing harm even if she wasn’t hurting people directly. And it’s all going to be over soon.”
“For one of us,” he said, and there was a dangerous note in his voice.
Ginevra growled. It was a low, primal sound, and something about the resonance it set up in my bones made my teeth ache while also, paradoxically, chasing away some of the pounding in my head. I stood up straighter, sneaking another of the blood jewels out of my pocket at the same time. I wouldn’t have them forever; I didn’t want to get addicted. At the same time, I wouldn’t be unweaving Titania’s spells forever, and I wouldn’t need them anymore.