“In this part of Ephemera, you gamble with your life every time you cross a bridge,” Sebastian replied. “So, no, I don’t see anything strange about your crossing over from one place to another. At least now we know where the Eater of the World was last seen, and that’s more than we knew before.” He pushed his chair back. “Come on. You look ready to fold.”
Michael nodded. “I could do with a bit of a wash and some sleep.”
“You can use our room at the bordello, since Lynnea and I will be staying at the cottage. I’ll come fetch you in the morning and take you to Sanctuary.”
“Sanctuary?”
“The next step in your journey to answer the riddle.”
Michael stood up, but didn’t follow Sebastian when the other man started to walk away from the courtyard. “Sebastian Justicemaker?”
Sebastian stopped and turned to face him.
“Do you know the answer to the riddle?” Michael asked.
“I should,” Sebastian replied. “I’m the one who sent it out through the twilight of waking dreams.”
His heart started beating harder, faster. “Then you know how to find Belladonna.”
“I know how to find her. But whether or not you can find her…” Sebastian shrugged. “That’s what you’re going to find out.”
Chapter Fifteen
Michael looked at the creatures waiting in the street, then pulled Sebastian back inside the bordello and firmly closed the door. The pushed-in faces and tufted ears made the things look like mangy but somewhat loveable critters—if a person overlooked the razor teeth, the powerful arms and upper bodies, and the curved talons that could gut a man with one swipe. And that was just the front half. The back half looked like a draft horse version of a bicycle, complete with saddlelike seat, but lacking wheels. Of course, since the things were floating above the ground, the lack of wheels wouldn’t trouble them. But it was that last detail that was a little too much for him.
“That’s the transportation you arranged?” he asked.
“Demon cycles,” Sebastian replied too agreeably.
“You expect me to straddle one of those things and put the family jewels within reach of its teeth and claws?”
Sebastian’s lips twitched as he glanced down at Michael’s groin. “Is that what you’re packing under your belt?”
“You know what I mean. Don’t you?” He wasn’t going to make assumptions about what these people did or didn’t know. Not after having breakfast with Teaser and hearing the incubus’s ideas of how the world worked.
“If they were interested in any organs, it would be your heart and liver, not your penis,” Sebastian said, opening the door. “Come on. You’ve got a ways to go today.”
“Well, isn’t that just grand,” Michael muttered as he followed Sebastian.
When he swung a leg over the demon cycle, he wished Lynnea and Sebastian had found him some broken-in hand-me-down clothes rather than these new ones that felt a little too stiff to be comfortable. Or maybe it was his feelings that were a little too stiff. He could count on one hand the times when he’d had a truly new garment in the past dozen years, and here they were giving him a whole new set of clothes. And he hadn’t done any luck-bringing on his own behalf to bring it about!
Then he scolded himself for being ungrateful. He was a stranger from another land who had dropped in among them with a story of a lost sister and a battle with a terrible monster. Instead of running him out of town, they had given him clothes and a place to stay, had loaned him a travel pack and filled it with basic supplies, and were cleaning up his gear from its dunking in the bog so that it would be ready for him when he got back from this bit of the journey.
If he got back from this bit of the journey.
None of them said it, but it was there, unspoken, under everything they did say.
He might have enjoyed the new experience of riding a demon cycle if he really believed Sebastian and Teaser’s assurance that the creatures didn’t harm the people they’d agreed to transport.
He didn’t consider “they usually don’t eat their passengers” to be sufficient assurance. “Demon cycles are safer to ride than waterhorses” wasn’t much comfort either since the whole reason the horse-shaped demons gave humans a ride was to drown their victims.
But if he survived this and found his way home again, he’d have a story that would buy him a meal and a bed in any inn he chose to stay at, and an always-full glass in any pub he walked into.
When they reached an odd spot in the dirt lane, Sebastian told the demon cycles to stop, then looked at Michael. “Which way do you want to go?”
Michael studied the land ahead as best he could in the available moonlight. The dirt lane ran straight ahead, but the odd spot was nothing more than a bump of road that formed a half loop, reconnecting to the straight lane. At the midpoint of the half loop were two boulders set far enough apart to allow a wagon to pass between them.
“What’s the difference?” Michael asked.
Sebastian pointed to the straight lane. “If we go on that way for another mile or so, we’ll reach the border that connects the Den to the waterhorses’ landscape.” He pointed to the half loop. “That’s a stationary bridge that leads to Aurora, which is where we have to go in order to reach Sanctuary.”
Michael stared at Sebastian. “I’m in a part of the world that’s nowhere close to home. I know that. I can feel that. But you’re saying that a mile down the road I can pass between a couple of stones and end up within walking distance of a village I’ve stopped at once each season for the past ten years?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
He’d met some crazy people in his travels, but he’d swear by the Light that Sebastian wasn’t one of them. Which meant he could be back in Elandar, no more than a long day’s walk from Dunberry. Not that he’d go to Dunberry. Not anymore. But…
“If I make that choice, I won’t find Caitlin Marie, will I?” Michael asked.
“Probably not.”
And I’ll never find Belladonna. An unshakable certainty rang through him. If he didn’t make this journey, he would never find the woman who haunted his dreams.
“We’ll go on to Sanctuary.”
Sebastian nodded. “Best clear your mind of everything but the thought that you need to cross over to Aurora.”
“Teaser said these stationary bridges only go to specific places, so you can be certain of where you end up when you cross one of them.”
“Nothing is that certain in Ephemera,” Sebastian replied. He tapped the demon cycle on its shoulder. “We’re crossing over to Aurora.”
“Do we need to hum a particular tune?” Michael asked.
The demon cycles jerked to a stop, and they and Sebastian looked at him with the same quizzical expression.
“I had to hum a note when passing between the Sentinel Stones in order to get from the Merry Makers’ bog to the Den,” Michael mumbled, feeling his face heat as Sebastian continued to stare at him. “So I just wondered.”
“That spot between the Merry Makers’ landscapes and the Den is a border, not a boundary,” Sebastian said.
Michael’s only response was a lift of his shoulders to indicate the explanation lacked any useful information.
“A boundary requires a bridge,” Sebastian continued blandly. “A border is a place where two landscapes connect without need of a bridge. They’re usually marked with stones just to make it easier to find the spot.”
“So what was the humming all about?”
Sebastian shrugged. “They might have had a reason for you to do it, but it had nothing to do with reaching the Den.”
“That ripe—” Michael caught himself and considered the wisdom of roundly cursing one demon in the presence of another, larger demon. That he was riding. Not to mention that the man escorting him was at least part demon. “As you say, there was probably a reason.”