The Brightest Fell Read online

  “Call Li Qin,” I said. “Tell her I am willing to proceed with her plan, and that she should contact October. I have changed my mind; she does not need to come here now. I will be in the workshop.”

  Then I vanished, leaving him no time to reply. The code flashed around me, every color and no color at all, and I was back in my mother’s office, where the upload device waited, unmoving, unchanging, as it had waited since the day it had been left here. It was only a tool. It was not to blame. But within it, frozen and unaware, my mother was held captive, needing to be freed.

  “I will save you,” I whispered, picking up the device and cradling it against my chest. It was cool to the touch. I unplugged the USB cable. “I will find a way, and I will save you.”

  The device did not reply. I had to fight to keep myself from dipping my fingers into the dying sphere of its battery, tasting the flicker of power that was my mother’s frozen world. I needed that battery to last until I could replace it. What would happen to the data if the memory died? Most machines could keep their data secure and uncorrupted even after losing power, but not all, and this one had never been intended for long-term storage. I had been involved in a race against entropy for years; I simply hadn’t known it. Now, the finish line was nearing, and I had little time to decide whether I would win or lose.

  My mother was not alone in there. Terrie, Alex’s sister, was also trapped, uploaded without transfer to the server for storage. What could save my mother would further restore Alex to a complete life, rather than prisoning him in the daylight hours. And I did not care. In this moment, in this place, only my mother mattered.

  My hands were still flickering between sizes, my grip changing in strength and dimension to match them. I willed myself to settle, and was grimly unsurprised when I froze in my preteen dimensions, short and slight and looking to be led. I held the device tighter and ran for the door, unwilling to carry it with me through the code. Small items could survive the transit, but it, like me, was known to drain power sources. I needed this battery to last.

  I ran.

  I ran down the deserted halls of the company my mother built, the County she built for me, the dream that had never recovered from her death. There were people who had been willing, even eager, to serve under the daughter of a noble bloodline pushing into the modern world. Those same people—the ones who had survived our first great disaster—were less inclined to serve under her adopted child. Yes, I was noble, daughter of January, niece to the line of Torquill, but their blood had never touched my veins, and all Faerie had to say about the Dryads was that we were flighty, shallow, unsuited to rule. I was the first Dryad of any kind to hold a title, and there were many who would have been happy to take it from me, finding me unfit on the basis of my blood.

  Not that I had any blood, or ever would. Even when my heart had been wood instead of glass, my body had been more of an idea than an actuality.

  The upload device was heavy in my hands, wanting to drop through them to the floor below. It would have been so easy to turn intangible, to let it go. No one knew about this but me. It wasn’t a failure yet. Until I told someone else that I was trying to bring my mother back, I couldn’t let anyone down. I could only bear the burden alone.

  I thundered down a flight of stairs, each impact unfamiliar in the bones of my feet, the length of my legs. I would normally have skipped them, vanishing at one end and reappearing at the other. Instead, I ran, and prayed I wouldn’t fall. A hard knock against the floor might be enough to kill the faltering battery for good.

  There it was, the door to Gordan’s lab, looming ahead of me like the next level in a video game. There would be a boss battle on the other side, something complicated and chaotic and distracting. There would be power-ups and potions and—

  And none of that was true. There would be a lab, deserted and dusty, left to rot while the County sought a way to heal. There would be nothing but the shattered hopes and dreams of a changeling who had reached too far and found she could not grasp what she desired. It was difficult to feel bad for Gordan. She did so much damage, and some of it will never heal. Still, she was my friend, once, and I could not forget that. However much I sometimes want to.

  The door was locked. That was easy enough to get around. I set the upload device carefully down and allowed myself to turn insubstantial, hazy as a sunbeam. Then I vanished, reappearing on the door’s other side.

  The lab was as dark, dusty, and cold as I had expected. My mother’s office had been shut up out of grief. This room had been sealed out of rage. The anger still hung in the air, tainting it.

  What I was about to do would cleanse it. It had to. I unlocked the door, only distantly surprised by how weak the security really was, and opened it, scooping the upload device from the floor. The battery’s pulse was growing weaker by the second. I slammed the door, casting wildly around until I spotted the charging station, half-obscured by drifts of blue paper. The green light at its base was still on. It was still functional.

  Sparing a grateful thought for our Summerlands-side wind generators, which kept us from needing to worry about the electrical bill, I raced across the room and nestled the upload device into the docking port. There was a soft beep, and the green light was joined by a second, amber light.

  Cautiously, I reached out and felt the buzz of electricity streaming into the battery, refueling it faster than it could drain. I sagged, my outline flickering and returning to its adult dimensions. The storage system hadn’t failed. The data was intact. Terrie was intact. My mother was intact.

  Her body, however, was not.

  The phone lines hummed, whispering my name. I glanced around, settling on Gordan’s abandoned desk phone, and dove into the wires.

  “April?” said Li Qin. “Elliot said you wanted me to call.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Have you spoken to October yet?”

  There was a pause. “I haven’t been able to reach her. I left a message.”

  “Do you believe she will do it?”

  “She’s a hero.”

  It was a tautology. It was also true. In Faerie, heroes do the things they do because, on some primal level, they have no choice. Once the heroism has them, they can’t refuse. No matter how much they try, the weight of it will always fall upon their shoulders.

  “Quentin may not be pleased with the notion of sending his knight to sleep for an extended period of time.”

  “All the blood-workers in our records are Daoine Sidhe or Baobhan Sith. None of them possess October’s regenerative capabilities.” A half-amused note crept into Li Qin’s voice. “We may need to host another company blood drive and pump half of it into her as her reward for bleeding on our behalf, but I think we can mitigate the exhaustion described in the stories. Assuming it is a description of exhaustion, and not some magical penalty for raising the dead.”

  “I hope you are already preparing your explanation,” I said. “Quentin will be displeased. Tybalt will be furious.” October’s suitor was a King of Cats, and while he was not a hero, he was perfectly willing to play the villain when he felt there was a need. I had a great deal of respect for his straightforward nature, and for his willingness to pick people up by the throat. It seemed efficient.

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” said Li Qin. “I’m very glad you’re willing to allow this, April. It shows maturity on your part.”

  She was only saying that because she believed neither of us would be getting what we really wanted. As far as she was concerned, January was gone forever; we were restoring the sleepers out of duty, not because we would profit from it in any way. Our penance was to see those we were responsible for reunited with their loved ones, while the one we loved was lost.

  It didn’t have to be that way. It didn’t have to be over. I simply couldn’t tell her that—not until I was sure. Not until—

  Wait. “When was the previous company blood drive
?”

  “Shortly before Barbara died,” said Li Qin. “It was Yui’s idea. We don’t have—didn’t have—a resident healer, and it’s easier to brew unique restorative potions, or to cast healing spells, when there’s blood on hand. If the blood was taken before the injury, the sympathy it contains will be with the uninjured form. It makes things easier.”

  “Did many participate?”

  “Almost everyone.” There was a pause. “I suppose you wouldn’t have noticed. It wasn’t like we could ask you to donate. You don’t have blood, after all.”

  And if it had been before Barbara’s death, I would still have been leaving the world to my mothers to manage. January kept the company and Li Qin kept everything else, and all that was asked of me was that I better learn how to fit into this world that was theirs, and was slowly becoming mine. If I looked back, I could remember cheerful red-and-white posters on the walls, exhorting people to make a donation. I had never considered what they might be donating.

  Blood. They had donated blood.

  “What was done with those donations?”

  “They’re in storage. Blood can be frozen for a long, long time, and still be useful for spell purposes, even if it couldn’t be used for a transfusion.” There was a pause. “Why?”

  “That is unimportant.” I had never dismissed her questions so bluntly before. “Contact October. Arrange her visit. Arrange for their resurrection. I will organize things here.”

  I terminated the connection before she could ask me anything further. The upload device was still charging, the green-and-amber lights burning steadily. I cast them a wistful glance, wishing I dared dive into the code to brush my mother’s edges once again. Then I disappeared, back into the wireless signal, looking for . . . what?

  The blood had to be stored somewhere. The blood had to be kept cold, and close, or else it would do little good in the face of a true emergency. I spread myself throughout the company, bouncing from relay to relay, until I sketched out the shape of a large emptiness, a place where no boosters or direct connections had been installed. But it was still connected to the power grid. It had to be, to keep its contents cold.

  I spilled myself out of the network and into the middle of a walk-in freezer. The ping of nearby connections told me I was behind the cafeteria, in the kitchen. Which made sense: this was not a part of the company which has ever held much of a draw for me. I do not eat. I do not drink. I live on light. The easiest way to hide something from my eyes is to stick it in the refrigerator.

  A small black chest sat at the back of the freezer, out of place among the larger shelves, all of which were plain gunmetal gray. I blinked and was standing in front of it, the echo of my disappearance hanging in the air. I wasn’t used to appearing and reappearing in such an enclosed space; I hadn’t been prepared for how loud it was.

  Ears ringing, I opened the chest, and beheld the blood.

  It was contained in small, sealed bags, each one labeled with the name of the person who had donated it, and the date of the donation. I dug into the pile, pushing bricks of red ice aside until I found the bag I wanted, the bag I needed.

  JANUARY O’LEARY—4/6/10.

  The bag was cold enough to freeze my fingers, but I clutched it tightly, hands shaking, unwilling to let go. This had come from my mother, from her body, before Gordan had killed her, before we’d burned the shell she’d left behind. If there was any hope of getting her back, it was in this bag.

  A thought, and I was wearing a coat, long and thick, with insulated pockets. I slipped the bag into one of them. There was a latch on the inside of the freezer door. I twisted it, and the door opened, and I ran.

  SEVEN

  Back in my room—small and bright and decorated for a child much younger than I had allowed myself to be since my mother died—I placed the bag of blood on the nearest counter and flung myself into the dance of data all around me. Devoid of the need to remain physical, I could manipulate everything in my virtual world, unrestrained by the limits of the interface.

  It only took a second to find the archival security footage. I called up the date and time I needed, and replayed it once, twice, a dozen times before I was sure it contained the elements I was looking for. Then, and only then, did I reach into the intercom and trigger a connection to a specific employee.

  There was a pause. Then Elliot said cautiously, “Yes, April?”

  “I need you to get some things for me.”

  The pause was longer this time, laced with confusion. I have few needs. I need power; I need disk space; I occasionally need new movies or video games, but I have a company credit card, and I understand how Amazon works. Things I can’t obtain for myself are rare.

  “What?” he asked finally.

  “I need sea salt, juniper berries, a mandrake root, several raven feathers, six unmatched candles that have been previously lit, and—”

  “Dried flowers,” he finished. “April, what are you intending to do?”

  “Do you ask out of curiosity or out of the inaccurate and misguided belief that you can somehow influence my actions?”

  “Both,” he said. “Neither. Where are you?”

  “I am in the network.”

  “Can you come here, please?”

  When I was my mother’s heir—when becoming a Countess was unthinkable, because she was never going to die—I served as the County intercom system. I had been taught to come when called, the better to collect and relay messages. I didn’t think. Instinct took over, and I was no longer in the wires, but standing in front of Elliot’s desk, a scowl on my face.

  “I was occupied,” I said.

  He took a deep breath, standing to put us on a more even level, and asked, “Why are you trying to summon the night-haunts?”

  I blinked. “What brings you to this conclusion?”

  “Don’t play with me,” he said. “I’m the one who got the flowers for Toby when she did the same ritual. It nearly killed her, and she used her own blood to power the circle. You can’t do that.”

  “I can do something similar,” I said.

  “You haven’t told me why.”

  “If I do, you must swear you will not tell Li Qin.” I looked down my nose at him, trying to summon every ounce of nobility I had inherited, however impossibly, from the woman I was trying to restore. “Swear upon your fealty that until I grant permission, you will not reveal my secrets.”

  Elliot blinked, clearly taken aback. I think he sometimes forgets that I sat at my mother’s knee for days that seemed without end, until they ended without fanfare. I may not be my mother, but I learned from her. I learned more than anyone understood.

  “I swear,” he said.

  “Gordan lied,” I said.

  Elliot went very still. Finally, after a pause so long that I began to fear he would lose consciousness, he said, “Explain.”

  “She told October my mother could not be saved because her data had not been backed up to the server,” I said. I cocked my head. “Perhaps she did not intend to lie. The buffer of the upload device was configured to store a limited amount of data, and it contained both my mother and Terrie when she spoke to October. Had she been able to upload Quentin, as she intended, some or all of their data would have been overwritten. I would prefer to think of her as a liar. Anything else would be sloppy.” Gordan, for all her failings, had never been sloppy. She had been cruel, angry, and misguided, but she had been admirably tidy in her obsessions.

  “April . . .”

  “I had not considered whether she had been entirely truthful prior to today,” I said. “I found the upload device. I checked the storage area. Mother’s information is still present, as is Terrie’s.”

  Elliot sat down.

  “Alex has kept the body he historically shared with Terrie in working order. The absence of Mother’s body is, however, an issue,” I said. “W
ithout a place to put her, she is no better than an echo in a cavern. I believe that, by negotiating with the night-haunts, I might be able to resolve this conundrum.”

  Elliot began to laugh.

  I frowned, cocking my head to the side once more. “Why are you laughing? This is a perfectly viable agenda.”

  “You’re telling me Jan . . . you’re trying to say that we could bring Jan back from the dead?” He shook his head. “The others always seemed a little far-fetched, but hell. What isn’t far-fetched around here? Oberon’s eyes, April, you can’t summon the night-haunts and ask them to build you a body. You’d need something for them to build from.”

  “I have it,” I said calmly. “The company blood drive. Mother donated. I have her blood. If the night-haunts are as powerful as they are said to be, they should be able to synthesize a functional body from what I have to offer.”

  “I . . . April, this is madness.” Elliot raked his hands through his hair, giving me a plaintive look. “You can’t just ask the night-haunts to make a new Jan. It won’t work.”

  “Nothing works if it’s not tried,” I said. “I want the things I’ve asked of you. I intend to make the attempt.”

  “They’re not going to do this for free. What will you—” Elliot went still.

  I waited. He had been my mother’s seneschal and close companion for more than a century. If anyone knew how she thought, it was him. While I could not truly claim my thoughts mirrored hers, she was the one who had taught me to look past the logical solution to find the illogical, ideal one.

  “You can’t,” he said.

  “I intend to,” I said.

  “But . . .” He raked his hands through his hair again, giving me a helpless, hopeless look. “What if they call your bluff?”

  “It will not be a bluff.” I felt oddly serene. “You, yourself, agreed that it was reasonable to prioritize one resurrection above the rest. If the night-haunts will not restore my mother so that we might attempt her awakening, I will not permit the others to be returned to their bodies. Without my consent, given that they are my subjects, Li Qin will be unable to approve October’s intervention. The night-haunts will never be granted access to their deaths. They will go hungry when they could have been fed.”