“Mmh, we went through this.” He picked up her TV remote and, turning it over a few times, began pushing the little rubber buttons. When the electronic clicked to life and lit up, he cackled in joy. “Oh! Glorious!”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Exploring. Learning. You could say I don’t get out much.” He jammed a few more buttons, and after a long moment of staring, seemed to master what the little symbols meant and turned the TV back off. He put the remote down and kept rifling through her things. Charge cables, her headphones, anything that resembled technology seemed to attract him like a moth to a flame. He even picked up her TV, snickered, and muttered something about them not weighing nearly as much as they used to before setting it back down.
“Who are you?”
“We’ve been through this. Simon, the Puppeteer.” He glanced over at her with an eyebrow raised. “Are you challenged, Ms. Glass? I’m not judging. I’d simply like to know so I can show extra patience with you.”
“I’m not stupid! Don’t come in here, invading my—whatever this is—and insult me!”
The shadow on the wall near her silently laughed. He reached out for her, the pointed talons of his hand sliding against the surfaces and onto the wall near her. She ducked away from him, moving away from the wall to keep the shadow from reaching her.
“Get away from me!” She dropped one hand from the handle of the knife to steady herself on a piece of furniture, pointing the blade at the shadow with the other.
“Oh, don’t mind him. He’s harmless,” Simon said from very close to her.
She jolted. She whirled and slashed at him with the knife.
Or tried, anyway.
Her hand froze in midair.
Something had caught it, but she had no idea what. At first, it looked like there wasn’t anything there. But now and then, light seemed to catch a thread that ran from somewhere in space to her wrist. It shone like silver, like sunlight on a spiderweb. Sometimes there, sometimes not. A dozen or more, running at bizarre and nonsensical angles, had her wrist and hand caught firmly in its grasp.
Simon was standing there, only a foot away, smiling like the cat who ate the canary. His left hand hovered in space near hers, his fingers crooked at odd angles. Like he was holding a puppet that was not there.
No, he was holding a puppet.
He was holding her.
“Let go of the knife, Cora dear.” He had the patient tone of a teacher. Or someone trying to coax a jumper off a bridge. Calm and soothing. “There’s no reason to frighten yourself any further.”
“This is just a dream…this isn’t real.”
“Who are you trying to convince, you or me?” He took a step toward her, halving the distance between them. He was so close now, nearly touching her hand. He carefully took the knife from her fingers with his free hand. She let him. She was shaking too hard to fight him. “Good girl. Now…yes, this is a dream. But I’m afraid to tell you that this particular gift of mine, my strings, are very real. Perhaps when you come to see me tonight, I will show you.” He grinned. “What fun that will be!”
“I’m not going anywhere near you. There’s no way in fuck I’m setting foot in that carnival ever again.”
His expression fell. Deflated like a popped balloon. He looked almost comically disappointed. It was one of the few times she’d seen him without a smile of some kind. “What? Why?”
“You!”
He glanced over his shoulder as if she were accusing someone who wasn’t there. When he looked back to her, he pointed at his chest. “Me?”
“Yes, you.” Christ, he was a lunatic.
“What on Earth did I do to you?”
“This, for starters.” She yanked on her wrist, and nothing happened. The strings, whatever they were, might as well have been aircraft cable. She couldn’t budge them and, because of how tiny they were, only succeeded in digging the threads into her skin. It hurt. She hissed in pain.
“Ah, I wouldn’t recommend that. You’ll rip your own arm off before you manage to break my strings.”
“Let me go.”
“M’kay.” He flicked his fingers, and she felt the threads release. She shook her wrist and took a step away from him, rubbing her hand with her free one. “I would like to remind you—” He pointed the knife at her, waggling it in the air like a pencil as he talked. As she took another staggering step back from him, he looked down at the blade. “Hm. Yes. Sorry.” He walked over to the kitchen block and slipped the knife into the empty slot. When his back was turned to her, she dashed to put the coffee table between them.
When he turned back to where she had been, he opened his mouth to keep talking. He paused upon seeing her missing then quickly found her again. He smiled. “Jumpy thing, aren’t we?”
“Go the fuck away!”
“I want to know what you think I’ve done to you that’s so terrible.” Simon strolled into her kitchen as he talked. “If anything, the gremlin at the front gate is to blame for all this, not me.” He opened the fridge and began poking around. Picking up each container of everything and reading the labels. “Barker talked you into going through the Dark Path. I was merely the lucky winner to whom the Faire gifted your seity. Why am I to be blamed for that?”
“The Faire doesn’t eat people.”
“Oh, yes.” He grinned at her, sadistic and cruel. His voice dropped to a low, husky sound that sent a shiver up her spine. “It does. It very much does.”
“None of this is happening. None of this is real.” She was shaking, and she wanted to sit down. She felt like her legs were going to give out. But she didn’t dare put herself in a position where she couldn’t run. Even if the freak in her kitchen had gone back to rifling through her apartment. His new target was her fridge.
His shadow was still up on the wall near her, smiling. The ends of his cartoonish, drawn-on smile were curled into tight spirals that would be comical if they weren’t just a bit too pointy.
“Poor thing. Well. Let me explain it to you slowly, hum?” He pulled out a container of limeade, and after reading the label, began rooting through her cabinets for something. A glass, she assumed.
“I just want you to leave me alone. Please.”
“Afraid not. Besides,” he smiled at her slyly, “I thought you found me tall and sexy.” He located the glassware and poured out a glass of limeade. He put the bottle back in the fridge. Walking up to her, he offered her the glass. “Drink something and sit down. You look as if you might be sick. And in a dream, that is quite a trick, I promise you.”
A monster. A literal, likely murderous monster with a freaky, disembodied shadow…was offering her a glass of juice. With a trembling hand, she took it, not knowing what else to do. She had expected him to tear her to pieces. Not…be nice to her.
He gestured to her sofa. “Sit.”
Glancing nervously at him, then to his shadow, she shook her head.
He sighed. “He won’t hurt you. He can’t. He can’t even touch you, let alone harm you. Not even here.”
“What is he?”
“My shadow, of course.”
“I know that, but…”