“Is she okay?” Quentin, somewhere off behind me.
“I forgot how badly the Shadow Roads used to treat her.” Tybalt sounded guilty, like this was somehow his fault, and not the Queen’s for sending someone to hit me in the face with a pie full of goblin fruit.
A pie. Sweet Oberon, could we get any more slapstick if we tried?
Giggling made breathing harder, but it made me relax, which helped. I sat up straighter, scraping the ice from my eyelashes. “I’m okay,” I said, the wheeze in my voice revealing my words as lies. I coughed again before offering my hands to Tybalt, letting him pull me off the floor. “Really. I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. I realized with a start that I couldn’t make out his expression through the gloom. Humans aren’t equipped to see in the dark the way fae are. I really was running blind.
“I’m sure,” I said, looking around the defunct bookstore. It was, if anything, even more decrepit-looking in the dark; the shelves were just blurs. Even the pixie dust was gone. Its faint glow would have been a real blessing, but humans can’t see pixies, either. Not without fae ointment. Maybe Marcia would give me some. “Quentin, can you get the door? I’m never going to find it on my own.”
“On it,” he said, and moved past us, a pale smudge against the dark bookshelves.
Tybalt took my arm. I didn’t pull away. In my current condition, I needed the help.
“Are you truly sure that you’re all right?” he murmured, pitching his voice too low for Quentin to hear.
“No,” I whispered back. “But for right now, I have to be. So let me be all right. Please.”
“Ah.” He sighed, hand tightening on my arm. “As you say.”
I flashed him a smile—he’d be able to see it, even if I couldn’t see him—and let him guide me to where Quentin was waiting for us. I could see the bookshelves behind him, but no matter how much I squinted, there wasn’t even the glimmer of an illusion.
“Here,” he said.
“Yeah.” I stopped walking, pulling Tybalt to a halt. “Tybalt, you’d better pick me up.”
“Why?” I could hear his frown.
“Because I can’t even tell there is an illusion here, which means it’s probably going to be really hard for me to walk through the spell that covers the doorway. Faerie doesn’t like it when humans wander in willy-nilly. It’ll be easier if you carry me.”
There was a moment of silence as we all considered the ramifications of my current condition. I was just this side of out of Faerie. Then Tybalt shifted his hold so that his arm crossed my back, and hoisted me up into something uncomfortably close to a parody of a bridal carry. I closed my eyes. He stepped forward, and the world did a sickening dip and weave around me while what felt like thousands of gnats gnawed at my skin, creating an itching, stinging sensation that made me want nothing more than to rip myself free and run like hell.
I wanted to run more than I wanted another bite of goblin fruit. That realization was a relief—I could still find things I wanted—and I held to it tightly as he took another step, carrying us out of the thin barrier zone between the mortal world and the Summerlands. Then we were inside the knowe, and the biting sensations stopped, replaced by the familiar disorientation of breathing air that had never been touched by the Industrial Revolution.
At least it was better lit here, even if I couldn’t see a direct source of the illumination. That meant pixies, or witch-light, or something else my eyes couldn’t handle. Tybalt put me down without being asked. I kept hold of his elbow as we walked, afraid of being lost in the stacks. Somehow, I didn’t think the Library would be very open to helping me. Not now. Not as I was.
We stepped out into what I couldn’t help thinking of as the Library’s living room. Mags was there, sitting on a stool that allowed her to fan her wings without worrying about hitting them against anything. She was flipping through a photo album, but looked up when she heard our footsteps. Heard my footsteps, really; Tybalt was silent, and Quentin was only a little louder. Her eyes widened and she set the photo album aside, sliding off the stool.
“What happened?” she breathed, staring at me.
“I got hit in the face with a pie,” I said.
Mags stopped, blinking. “You got . . . hit in the face with a pie,” she repeated. “I . . . what? I’m sorry, but I’ve been in charge of this Library for a long time. I’ve seen a lot of really ridiculous things. I lived in Wales. And there is no way being hit with a pie should have turned you human.”
“It was a really evil pie,” I said. Mags looked at me blankly. I shook my head. “It was a goblin fruit pie, and it turns out that since goblin fruit is more addictive and effective for humans, and lucky me, I come from a race that can change the balance of fae blood—normally, anyway, I can’t do a damn thing right now—so since I’m part human, I turned myself more human while I was drugged out of my mind, in order to enjoy the goblin fruit more. Now I’m stuck. I’m addicted, I’m starving, but the idea of trying to eat anything but goblin fruit makes me want to throw up. We could really use a miracle right about now.”
“Miracles aren’t exactly a Library specialty,” she said. “Could you . . . what do you mean, can change how human you are?”
“Remember that thing about Mom being Firstborn?”
Mags nodded.
“That’s what I got out of the deal. I’m Dóchas Sidhe. We’re blood-workers, to the point where we’re basically living hope chests. Only Mom never taught me anything, so I was hoping you’d have a book on hope chests that could help me understand what I do and how it works. I guess that’s more important now than ever, since I need to find a hope chest. If I don’t get less human in a hurry, I’m going to have problems.” I already had problems.
“Oh.” Mags took a step backward. “I pulled the book for you earlier. Let me get it.” Then she was gone, running into the stacks. I knew that she had to be leaving a trail of pixie-sweat behind her, but I couldn’t see it, and part of my mind kept trying to insist that her wings were fake, just cellophane over pipe cleaners. That wasn’t good. The human mind instinctively rejects Faerie, because it’s safer that way. Only if I started rejecting Faerie, I was going to be in a world of hurt.
“We need to find me some fae ointment,” I said, directing the comment toward Tybalt. “Can you go to Goldengreen and—”
“No.” The word was said flatly, and with absolute conviction. There was no getting around it. “I will not leave you again. Do not ask me. When we are done here, I can take you there. But I will not leave you.”
“Okay.” I touched his arm. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” Tybalt shook his head, and for a moment, I wished for the dimness of the bookstore. At least there, I wouldn’t have been forced to see the anguish in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I should never have left you.”
I was trying to formulate an answer to that—one that would explain how wrong he was without making light of his obvious distress—when Mags came trotting out of the stacks, a blue volume in her arms. “Found it!” she called. “Sorry about the wait. I had it in your pull, but well. Sometimes the books migrate when they feel they’ve been out of their sections for too long, and then I have to figure out where they’ve shelved themselves.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Also, I wish that didn’t make sense.” I took the book she offered to me, looking at the cover. There was no illustration. There wasn’t even a title. It was just plain blue silk—no. I rubbed my thumb over the spine. Plain blue samite. Metallic threads wove in and out of the blue, adding liquid glints of platinum and silver. “Who’s the author?”