Holding my breath, I jerked the knife across my hand.
The blade was sharper than I thought. I dropped it, swearing. It didn’t matter; my part of the bargain was fulfilled. Blood was already welling up, running in hot ribbons down my arm. I unwrapped the mandrake shakily with my right hand, letting it roll onto the floor before cupping my hands together, letting my blood pour over it. The root writhed, soaking up the blood as fast as it fell. Drinking it in.
“My name is October Christine Daye, daughter of Amandine, and I am here to petition for your attentions,” I said, concentrating. The air hummed with the copper and cut grass scent of my magic as the flowers piled around my ritual circle burst into blue-green flame. The candles lit themselves, and the overhead lights crackled, sending out sprays of sparks before going dark. A stabbing pain hit me behind the eyes. Magic- burn. I was going to pay for this night’s work. I just hoped it would be worth it.
The room began to fill with thick, sweet smoke as the flowers burned. I kept letting my blood fall across the mandrake, trying to ignore the way the temperature was dropping, despite the fires. “I’ve brought you blood and flowers and salt from the sea. All our Courts together here support my plea.” The mandrake whimpered. I raised my hand, bringing my bloody fingers to my lips and kissing them. “I bring you life.” Reaching down, I pressed my fingers to the mandrake’s “head.”
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 wasDare, 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.”