Page 20 of The Unseelie War
That took her another second to translate. “Meaning, I’m the Web, you’re the spider, and you’re sitting really still, just in case you twitch and cause a major earthquake and accidentally cause more damage?”
“Another crass but effective summary.”
Shutting her eyes, she sighed. “Great.”
“It is also useful for you to learn and adjust to this situation you have created.”
“Thatwe’vecreated.” Oh, yeah. She was still a little bitter about that. “You’re equally if not more responsible for this fuckery. I—” She paused, stopping in her progress. “Wait.” There was a ping on the radar. “I think—I think we’re close.”
The impression came to her like a half-remembered dream—fear, confusion, and underneath it all, a familiar flutter of iridescent wings. “Bitty. She's close. Very close." She turned in a slow circle, trying to pinpoint the direction. “That way. Maybe three blocks.”
Walking along in silence, she kept her focus on that strange sensation ofping…ping…ping.It felt kind of like holding dowsing rods. Or like she was following a dog. Only she was the dog.
It was odd to see people attempting to go about their business. Some people were wandering around, ignoring the oddities and impossibilities of the world around them as though there hadn’t been an apocalypse.
As if they were simply sleeping and this was just another bizarro dream after too many margaritas on Taco Tuesday. That was what Puck had said—that some humans weren’t even aware of what was going on.Weird.
They found a bookstore tucked between what appeared to be a Seelie flower shop—whose proprietor was literally a walking rose bush—and a restaurant that seemed to be serving food from all three realities…simultaneously.
The bookstore's front window was cracked, its neon OPEN sign flickering erratically, but the warm glow spilling out onto thesidewalk suggested it was still occupied. Bless their hearts. Although, Ava was beginning to suspect that all these poor people didn’t have a choice.
Shewas making them do this, wasn’t she? Pretend like everything was normal, when it clearly wasn’t?
Ava pushed open the door, setting off a tinkling bell that sounded mundane enough to be reassuring. For a moment, it almost felt like stepping into a sanctuary from the chaos outside. And that was the whole point. That was why this washere.
“Hello?” she called softly. “Is anyone here?”
A crash from somewhere deeper in the store was followed by a familiar squeak of alarm. “Ava?Ava!”Bitty's voice was high and panicked. “Oh thank thestars!Is that really you?”
Ava followed the sound through narrow aisles lined with bookcases that seemed to stretch impossibly high, their tops lost in shadows. The books themselves were a mixture of earthly volumes and others that definitely belonged to different realities—some with covers that shifted and moved, others that whispered as they passed. It was a merging of Earth and the Web—the place where she should have found that second shard, but instead had found Valroy waiting for them.
Bitty was in what had likely once been the store's reading nook, a cozy corner with overstuffed armchairs and a fireplace that was somehow still crackling cheerfully despite the lack of any visible chimney. The tiny fae was huddled in one of the chairs, her wings folded tightly against her back.
An elderly human woman bustled around her with obvious concern, stacking up books that had fallen—the source of the crash.
“There now, little one,” the woman was saying, her voice warm with a grandmotherly comfort that immediately put Ava at ease. “I’ve made some chamomile tea. It'll help with the nerves.”
The woman was exactly what central casting would order for “Cliché British Bookstore Proprietor”—silver hair in a neat bun,wire-rimmed glasses, a cardigan that had seen better decades but was clearly beloved. She moved with the efficiency of someone who had been taking care of people for a very long time.
Everything about her washystericallyand cartoonishly on the nose.
“Mrs…um…Mrs. Crumplebottom?” Bitty turned toward the woman with a frantic and desperate kind of gratitude. “These are my friends I told you about. Ava and Serrik.”
The woman—Mrs. Crumplebottom—beamed at them with the kind of crooked-toothed smile that could make anyone feel like a welcomed grandchild. “Oh, wonderful! Bitty's been so worried about you both. I'm Millicent Crumplebottom, and this is my shop. Well, was my shop. I'm not entirely sure what it is now.” She gestured vaguely at the impossible architecture surrounding them. “But it's still a place for stories, so I suppose that's what matters.”
Ava studied the woman more carefully. Her alarm bells were going off in the new Command Center in the back of her head. The familiar tingle ofsomethingnot normalwas unmistakable.
She was a dream.
As if the name alone wasn’t a giveaway that something about the woman wasn’t quite right.
Like Bitty, Lysander, and Ibin. But…but there was something different about this one.
Where the creatures she'd encountered before had feltoff, Mrs. Crumplebottom felt even somehowweirder.Like an AI-generated image of an AI-generated image.
“You made her,” Ava said to Bitty, with an astonished but not unkind laugh. “Didn't you?”
Bitty's wings drooped, and she seemed to shrink even smaller in the oversized chair. “I was just so scared,” she whispered. “Everything was chaos and I couldn't find anyone and I just…I needed someone. Like my grandmother used to, before I was taken to Tir n'Aill. Which I know is silly because none of that is even real but it feels real to me because I can remember it!” Tears began flowing down her tiny cheeks. “I didn't mean to! I didn't even know I could!”
