A Local Habitation Page 23

  The root stopped writhing, opening eyes like chips of summer ice. Before it could dodge or squirm away, I grabbed Dare’s knife and drove it through the mandrake’s body. The mandrake screamed, outer layers peeling away until a tiny, perfect duplicate of myself was writhing naked on the point of the knife. I slammed my hands flat against the floor, gritting my teeth as I said, “If I could speak with you for a moment . . .”

  The room went silent. The mandrake stopped screaming, staring past me in terror, and even the crackle of the flames faded and died. A low buzz crept into the silence: the beating of the night-haunts’ wings. I raised my head, barely daring to breathe.

  They filled the room, hovering all around my circle. The ones near me had shapes I could name; they were all the races of Faerie, united by their shadowy pallor and their frail, fiercely beating wings. They dissolved into shapelessness as they drew farther away, becoming deep shadows and the fluttering sound of leaves on the wind. I gasped.

  The figure at the front of the flock was Dare.

  TWENTY

  “DARE?” I WHISPERED. It couldn’t be Dare. Dare was dead. I watched her die. And at the same time, it was Dare, because it couldn’t be anyone else.

  She was too slim for it to be intentional, underfed and scrawny. Her hair was vivid blonde, contrasting with her apple green eyes. Silver clips tipped her ears, and she wore a gown of dust and cobwebs, making her look like a deposed, despotic princess. The wings were new, blurred shapeless by their constant motion—the wings, and her height. Dare was small before, but now she was Barbie-sized, diminutive enough to stand in the palm of my hand.

  There were other familiar faces in the crowd, similarly reduced and remade—Devin was there, as was Ross, the quarter-Roane changeling who died in Golden Gate Park—but most were unfamiliar, smudged to obscurity by the closeness of their fellows. I didn’t see any of the people who’d died on the grounds of ALH Computing.

  Dare watched impassively as I stared at them, wings beating hummingbird-fast. I wanted to leap to my feet and hold her in my arms and never let go. I wanted to beg her for forgiveness. I stayed where I was.

  “You called. We came,” she said. “What do you want?”

  It was her voice that let me break through my shock. It had Dare’s tone and cadences, but lacked the accent and emotion behind the words. She might have Dare’s face, but that was all she had. “I called because I need your help,” I said.

  The night- haunts tittered. The one who looked like Dare tilted her head, studying me, and said, “I know you.”

  I froze. She continued, “The last owner of my face died with your name on her lips. I remember the feel of it. What do you want, October Daye, daughter of Amandine, who should never have called for us? This gamble is beyond you.”

  “What?” I whispered.

  “Don’t play coy. You know my face.” Pain bloomed like a flower behind her apple green eyes, making her expression earnest and innocent. “Can I ask you a question, Ms. Daye?” she said, Dare’s accent suddenly coating her words. Whatever she was, she wasn’t kidding. “You got out—can you get us out, too? Take us with you? Please?”

  “Stop it!” I snapped, before I could stop myself. “That isn’t fair!”

  “Since when has death been fair?” The innocence faded from her face, replaced by calm. “Death is how I know you. How we all do.”

  Other voices called from the flock, some familiar, some not. “Yes . . .” “I remember . . .” “She has forgotten, and we remember.” “They all forget.” “Yes.” They closed around me, and I realized that my salt and juniper berries were no protection. If they wanted me, they’d have me. The mandrake tugged at the knife, slicing its palms, and I felt a brief flash of pity—maybe we were both trapped, but I had some hope of surviving the night. My newborn double didn’t.

  “Every death and every drop of blood you’ve ever touched is ours.” Her eyes fixed on the mandrake and she smiled, displaying needle-sharp teeth that bore no resemblance to Dare’s. “We know you better than you dream.”

  “I need your help,” I said.

  The night- haunt with Devin’s face fluttered to the front of the flock. “What do you want from us?” Every word hurt. I’d been trying to summon the ghouls of Faerie, not looking for my own dead.

  The night-haunts aren’t something we talk about, even inside the comforting bounds of our own knowes. They live in darkness and come for the dead; exactly what they are and why they want the dead so badly is never discussed. Most don’t know. I certainly never did. I was starting to understand them, a little bit, and I didn’t want to.

  “Our help?” said the one with Dare’s face. “To what end?”

  “There have been deaths here.”

  The one with Devin’s eyes smiled. “We know.”

  “You haven’t come for the bodies.”

  “That’s sort of right. It’s also wrong. We’ve come for the bodies. We just haven’t taken them away with us.”

  “Why not?”

  “If you want to know that, you must know us first. Do you want the burden?” He cocked his head. “Most wouldn’t. Pay the sacrifice, and we’ll go. We’ll let you live. I can’t make that promise if we remain.”

  Great: double or nothing. Let them leave without telling me anything, or risk everything to make them stay and tell me too much. For a moment, I wanted to let them go. I could pretend the ritual failed; Jan and the others would believe me, and there would be other ways to find the information I needed. It might work . . . and it might not. I’d paid for the right to question the night-haunts and be answered; the Luidaeg wasn’t going to forgive my questioning her if I panicked at the last minute. Faerie has little compassion for cowards.

  But even that wasn’t what settled the question. Dare did that. I looked at the night- haunt wearing her face, and I imagined Quentin and Connor hovering beside her because I hadn’t been willing to listen to what they had to tell me. That was the one risk I couldn’t take. Never again.

  “I can’t do that,” I said. “I need to know why you haven’t taken this fiefdom’s dead.”

  He smiled. “Then we’ll tell you.”

  The night-haunt that was almost Dare—almost, but not quite—folded her wings and landed outside my protective circle, closing her eyes as she breathed in the smoke. There was no small amount of amusement in her expression when she opened them again. “You’ve prepared well. Someone told you, I think, how to ready yourself for us.”

  “The Luidaeg.”

  “Maeve’s whelp? That explains much. Our mother was a sister of her blood; she watched us in our cradles and changed our swaddling cloths before they knew what we would be—before even we knew what we would be, although we suckled on blood from the first. And then we learned our purpose and devoured our mother, and fled the marsh and fen for darker havens.”

  The figure with Ross’ face landed next to her, folding his wings. “We fled to the crevices of the world, and they did not pursue, for they’d been waiting for us. How we came, and when, those were unexpected—but they knew why we existed, and why we must be spared.”

  I thought of the corpses in the basement. “Faerie flesh doesn’t rot.”

  “Of course not!” The haunt laughed. “It doesn’t need to. The fae never die, after all.”

  “But in this world, they do,” said the almost Dare. “They founder and fall. Someone had to take the bodies, lest they bury the world. The pyres blackened the sky before we came; only fire cleanses the bodies of the dead as well as we do.” An amused buzz ran through the flock. “For all that they were never meant to die, they did, and do, with such surprising grace.”

  “So you exist to eat the dead.”

  “Yes. But there had to be an incentive—you should know that. Your blood runs close to ours; we take the bodies, but you take the blood. Would you drink the lives of your kin if they brought you no revelations?”

  “No.”

  “Neither would we. We were made to eat Faerie’s
dead; that doesn’t make it pleasant. There are . . . other ways.” She motioned for one of the night-haunts from the back of the flock to come forward. It came reluctantly, a translucent, half-drawn shape of mist and shadows, wings visible only when they moved. I could feel it watching me, even though I couldn’t see its eyes; it was hungry. “Ways to force our actions, you might say.”

  “Oh, oak and ash . . .” I breathed.

  “If we do not eat, we fade,” she continued, ignoring my discomfort. “We learned quickly, and made a bargain with Oberon our father. We no longer touch the living, but the dead are ours. We eat their flesh, drink the memories in their blood, and use their shapes in lieu of our own. That is how it is. That is how it shall be. Do you understand?”

  Did I understand that I was surrounded by cannibals who thought they had a divine right to eat my flesh? Oh, yeah. “I think so.”

  “Good. Then you understand why we do not eat the dead of this place.”

  Huh? “No.”

  “The blood remembers, and the memory is what keeps us alive—not just the flesh, but the life that wore it. We drink the memories and they give us shape, for a time. There are always more dead waiting when the memories fade.”

  The Ross-haunt nodded, snapping his wings open. They made a sound like ripping silk. “We drink their lives and live their hours, and we remember them. It’s a small thing, and it ends, but we remember.”

  “We always remember,” said the one with Dare’s face.

  Understanding hit. That was why their leader wore Dare’s face, and why I recognized other members of their flock; they pretended to be the dead because they had no choice. No; that wasn’t right. They were the dead. “You don’t have shapes of your own.”

  “That’s right. And something’s beaten us to the bodies of this place. There’s nothing here that can sustain us.” She shrugged. “We don’t work for free.”

  “Do you know what drained the . . . the memory of the blood?”

  “No. This has never happened before.” For a moment, she looked almost gentle. “If we knew why, we’d stop it ourselves. There aren’t so many deaths in Faerie that we can afford to see them wasted.”

  “I understand,” I said, trying to justify this with what I already knew. The blood was dead; this confirmed that it wasn’t supposed to be. The night-haunts are a natural part of the faerie life cycle. If this had happened before, they’d have known.

  “Do you understand why no one must know the why and how of what we are?” She looked at me sharply, waiting.

  I nodded. “If all of Faerie knew, some people would burn the bodies to keep you from taking them.”

  “That is so. We would fade to nothing but the sound of leaves on the wind.” She fanned her wings, closing them with a click. “Will you keep your silence, daughter of Amandine?”

  “I will,” I said. I meant it. Faerie has reasons to be the way it is, even if I don’t always understand them. The night-haunts have as much right to be what Faerie made them as the rest of us do; if ignorance preserved them, I’d keep their secrets.

  “You’re wiser than most who deal with us. Is there anything else you would know?”

  “No. That’s everything I needed. We can end this now.”

  The night-haunt with Devin’s face smiled. “What makes you think we’re done?”

  I went cold. “What more is there to do?”

  “The matter of payment remains.” He kept smiling, and I realized he didn’t really care whether they took the mandrake or me. He wanted blood—any blood. The night-haunts hadn’t survived by being picky.

  I pulled the knife out of the mandrake’s chest and picked it up. It clung to my fingers. I felt a brief, sharp pang of guilt. It was part of me, blood of my blood, and I was throwing it to its doom. Still, sentimental as I can sometimes be, I’m not stupid; if the choice was it or me . . . “I’m sorry,” I murmured, and held it out toward the night-haunts. “Blood is all I have. I’m offering it to you, if you’ll leave me my life and leave this place in peace.”

  “Why should we take it? You reject the blood and all it gives you.” The almost- Ross looked at me, eyes cold. “We could take you.”

  “The Luidaeg wouldn’t like it,” I said, trying to sound confident. For all I knew, she’d laugh—especially if they meant it when they claimed to be her sister’s children.

  “She’d think you performed the ritual wrong,” Devin’s haunt said. “She’d blame you, not us.”

  Uh-oh. “Are you willing to risk it?” My heart was beating too fast, and I was sure they could hear it. If they decided to take me, there was nothing I could do.

  “Take the offering,” said Dare’s haunt. “Let her dismiss us.”

  “But—” the Ross-haunt protested.

  Dare’s haunt moved too quickly for my eye to follow, seizing the larger night-haunt by the throat. It fell silent, watching her. “I found the last kill. I. Remember?” she snarled. The haunt she was holding nodded, sullenly silent. “I brought us blood and bone and memory, and until another kill is found, I rule. Is this not true?” She shook her victim again, glaring at the other haunts. “Is this not true?” They whispered agreement, drawing away from her.

  She released her captive. It collapsed to the ground before slinking into the shadows of the flock. “I rule here,” she repeated. The whispering night- haunts agreed. She walked back to the circle’s edge, holding out her hands. “Give it to me.”

  Carefully, I reached past the salt, putting the mandrake down even as it scrabbled to hold onto my fingers. It was almost as large as she was. She placed one hand on its shoulder, and it froze, watching her with terrified eyes. “The dues are paid; you have given proper courtesy. We’ll let you live.”

  “Why?” hissed the not- Devin. She turned, and he fell back, cringing.

  “Because I said so,” she said. “My most recent memories say she is a hero. Not just any hero; my hero.” She looked back at me. “You will fade from my mind. If we meet again, I may not be so kind—but today, you are my hero. I’ve had few enough of those, in all my lives. Good luck to you. I’ll find your body when you fall, and wear your face with pride.” Her smile was small and amused. “It’s the greatest gift I can offer.”

  Then the night-haunts rose as one body, dragging the mandrake into the air with them. It shrieked, voicing its terror. I clapped my hands over my ears, sagging forward in the circle as a shallower, more natural darkness filled the cafeteria. The sound of the fire slowly returned. The night-haunts were gone.

  The emergency sprinklers finally registered the smoldering remains of my circle and switched on, dousing the room. I tilted my head back, cradling my wounded hand against my chest as the water poured across my face.

  I didn’t save Dare, but she’d managed to save me twice. I wasn’t a very good hero, but I was the only one she had, and there’s power in that. There’s power in information, too, and I had all the information I could have wanted. I’d never wanted to know what the night-haunts really were, and I knew I’d never be able to forget. That could wait. For the moment, I sat in the falling water, surrounded by the cloying smell of burnt flowers, and cried.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “TOBY?” THE DOOR OPENED, sending a shaft of light into my damp, comfortable darkness. I wasn’t sure when the sprinklers had stopped; I also wasn’t sure I cared. Connor called again, more loudly this time: “Toby, can you hear me?”

  I tilted my face forward, wincing as my head started throbbing in earnest. Connor was in the doorway, with Quentin casting a dark silhouette on the wall behind him. At least they weren’t wandering around alone. “Hey, guys.”

  “It smells like smoke in here,” Quentin said, tone radiating relief. He probably hadn’t been sure they’d find me alive. That was all right; I hadn’t been sure, either.

  “Can we turn the lights on?” Connor asked.

  “If they’ll work. They shorted out when the flowers caught fire.” I forced myself to stand. It wasn’t easy. My legs we
re threatening to abdicate from the rest of the body, and I wasn’t coming up with any good reasons why they shouldn’t.

  Elliot spoke from behind Quentin. “I’ll turn on the backups.”

  Backups. They had backups for the backups in this place. It was amazing anything had been able to go wrong: they should’ve had backups for the people, too. “You do that,” I said.

  Elliot leaned past Quentin, flipping a switch, and a set of yellow-tinted lights came on overhead. All three of them turned toward me and gasped, almost in unison. It would have been funny if I hadn’t been so damned tired.

  “Toby?” Connor whispered.

  “That would be me,” I said, wiping the water off my cheek. “In the flesh, as it were.”

  “You look . . .”

  “I know.” My hair was plastered to my head. My hands were black with ash. “But I’m still here.”

  Elliot glanced at the mess covering the floor. “I’m not going to ask.”

  “Probably for the best,” I said. Quentin had pushed past the other two and was approaching, almost timidly. I turned to him, mustering a faint smile. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” he replied. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m alive. That’s all I hoped for.” He still looked profoundly uncomfortable. I sighed. “Look, I’d hug you, but I’d get blood all over you.”

  “I don’t care,” he said, and threw his arms around my neck. I slung my right arm around him, letting my unwounded hand rest on his shoulder. Connor followed his lead, hugging me from the other side, and for a moment, the three of us just stood there, holding on to one another.

  It was Elliot who broke the silence, saying uncomfortably, “This is . . . rather untidy. May I clean you?”

  I pulled away from Quentin and Connor enough to look down at myself. Blood, ash, and streaks of muck stained my clothes and Tybalt’s jacket. I was sure my hair looked like a dead animal stapled to my head. Still. Holding up my hand, I asked, “Is it safe when I’m still bleeding?”