“April, where’s Gordan? We need to find her—we need to stop her before she—”
April shook her head, going calm again. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you. I have to bring my mother back. If I stop Gordan, she won’t help me reinstall her properly.”
“Please. She can’t come back. We don’t work that way.”
“There are flaws in the process and her casing was damaged, but Gordan says the limits of the hardware can be overcome. We can download her to a new server. We can try again.”
“April, please, you have to stop. If you help us catch Gordan, I can make sure you’re safe. It wasn’t your fault. You were used, you didn’t understand.” I meant it, too. She could be protected. It would be hard, but root and branch, I’d find a way. I owed it to Jan.
“I . . .” She hesitated, eyes more pained than any living eyes should be. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone . . . but I need my mother. I don’t know how to take care of myself.”
“April—” I reached for her, hoping I could hold her, but it was too late: she was gone.
The stuffed rabbit hung in the air for a moment, seeming suspended. Then gravity took hold, and it fell. April didn’t reappear. I hadn’t really expected her to—she was running away, after all—and that meant I had to run after her. That’s my job. Leaving the rabbit on the floor, I bolted for the door, and I didn’t look back.
I could have disconnected her server, removed her from the playing field, but without Jan to help us turn her back on, I wasn’t sure she’d survive. I wasn’t going to avenge Sylvester’s niece by killing her only child, no matter how misguided that child’s actions had been.
The others were waiting where I’d left them. Thank Oberon for small favors. They all straightened as I reappeared, but it was Tybalt who spoke first, asking, “Toby? What’s wrong?”
“April and Gordan are our killers. Gordan convinced her that it wasn’t murder, it was an ‘upgrade.’ Only the process doesn’t work, and when April refused to help her kill Jan, Gordan did it on her own.” I wheeled on Elliot, stabbing my finger toward him. “What am I missing? What haven’t you told me? Talk fast. There isn’t much time.” I was already starting toward the futon room, taking long, ground-eating strides. “Tybalt, can you take the Shadows?”
“They’re warded against me,” he said, pacing me easily. “I can’t access them.”
“Of course they are,” I snarled.
Elliot was hurrying to catch up, saying, “Gordan and April?”
“Gordan and April,” I confirmed. “April couldn’t do it alone. Even if Peter hadn’t died during a power outage, she didn’t understand what death was. You two had better start talking.”
“Toby—” Alex began.
“No,” said Elliot, cutting him off. I stopped, turning toward him. He met my eyes, not flinching away. “No more stalling. We’ll tell you.”
“But the project—” Alex protested.
“Is over. Yui’s dead, Jan’s dead, and the project is over. We failed. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” Eyes still on mine, Elliot said, “Jan brought us here to save the world.”
“Right,” I said doubtfully, starting to walk again. “Keep talking.”
“I’ll need to give you a bit of background. Stop me if it gets too technical.”
“Fine.”
Alex was staring at both of us, looking scandalized. Elliot caught the look, and snapped, “I’m Jan’s seneschal. If April’s a murderess, she can’t take the County, and I’m in charge.” Alex looked away. Elliot continued, “It started when Jan transplanted April. She didn’t know it could be done until she’d done it, but once she had, what she’d found was obvious.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way back to what Faerie should be. Isolated, pure, eternal . . . if she had the right tools, she could change the world and save us all.” Elliot sighed. “She called us because we were the best Faerie had to offer. We came because we believed her.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Faerie is dying,” said Alex. On his lips, it became a statement of irrefutable fact. The sun shines, rain falls, and Faerie is dying. “We die faster than we’re born, and the humans are winning. The sun loves them. In the end, we’ll be stories for them to forget.”
“You’re fools,” said Tybalt, scornful. “Faerie is immortal.”
“The Gean-Cannah are almost extinct,” Alex said. I didn’t have an answer for that.
Elliot shook his head. “There will always be fae, but Faerie, as a culture and a world, can die. We’ve already lost our regents and most of our lands. We can’t survive like this.”
“We’ve lasted a long time,” I said. “Maybe we’ve had long enough.”
“Nothing is long enough,” said Elliot. I knew he was thinking of Yui. We could have argued for hours. We didn’t have them. We had to reach Connor and Quentin, and the halls weren’t helping—they seemed to be continuing to unspool, long past the point when we should have reached our destination. I was trying not to let that worry me. It wasn’t working.
“How was a computer company supposed to save Faerie?” I asked, lowering my voice to conserve my breath. I had to be missing something in all the circuitry and strangeness. I just didn’t know what it was.
“We were going to take it inside, away from everything that could hurt or change it,” said Alex, expression pleading with me to understand. “We were going to save it.”
“Inside where?” growled Tybalt.
“The machines,” said Elliot, and actually smiled. “April was the key. She’s a perfect blend of magic and technology. Whatever you do to her, she comes back whole. We have her on disk. We can bring her back to life a thousand times, and she’ll always be the same, and she’ll always keep going. Jan looked at her and knew that we could do it again.”
“That is sick,” said Tybalt, looking disgusted.
I didn’t disagree. “You were going to turn us into machines?” There’s a difference between immortality and stasis. For people who’d been so fast to embrace new mortal technologies, the inhabitants of Tamed Lightning seemed awfully fuzzy on the distinction.
“Not quite. There were problems. We—” Elliot stopped, frowning. “Where arewe?”
The room was huge, filled with filing cabinets. Conflicting views of the grounds showed through windows on all four walls, and from the skylight overhead. I’d never seen it before, and it definitely wasn’t between Jan’s office and the futon room. “Elliot . . .”
“This shouldn’t be here,” Alex said. “That hall doesn’t leadto the west sunroom. Ever.”
Elliot’s shock was fading, replaced by resignation. “Jan is dead, and April was her heir,” he said. “April is assuming her mother’s position. The knowe is changing to suit her.”
“Is she doing this consciously?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” said Elliot. “The knowe is reacting to her panic. They’re still syncing up.”
“Great,” I said bleakly, staring up at the glass ceiling. If the knowe was reacting to April, I wouldn’t be able to sweet-talk it anymore. It had a new mistress, and it wasn’t going to listen to some half-blood interloper who owed it no fealty. But somewhere in that changing landscape, my friends were in danger. “Now what?”
Elliot shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“I think . . .” said Alex, hesitantly. “I think maybe I do.”
“So speak,” snarled Tybalt.
“We go out the window.”
Right.
THIRTY
“ARE YOU SURE THIS WILL WORK?” The only window showing a ground- floor view of the grounds was large enough for us to fit through one at a time, but I didn’t trust it not to jump to the third floor while I was only halfway out. Call me paranoid. I’m frequently right.