Page 54 of Court of Shadows
Her voice emerged from the walls of the mind prison, from the very air. I struggled for breath, lost in a panic. Did the rules of the world apply here? Was there a way out? I squeezed my eyes shut, fighting a sharp urge to blurt out the truth. When I tried to speak I choked on it. Lying. Lying wouldn’t work here.... I thought of the girl in Bennu’s story, of her face melting off like hot, bubbling wax....
“Meeting my father!” I screamed it. My voice was raw and crazed.
“What did you discuss?”
It was like I could taste her voice, as if I were breathing herin, letting her see into the darkest, most secret corners of my soul and mind. I had to get out. I would not let her win. I tossed and flailed, hurting myself as I banged against the stabs of the table. My head turned back and forth as I tried to fight her off, but it was no use. I stopped, panting, squirming with the notion that she would at any moment have the whole truth from me. My eyes traveled down my shoulder and arm to my hand, where the two scars on my fingertips lingered and where there was also a bandage. A bandage from a spider bite.
This time I had no trouble conjuring the terror and desperation to transform. Father said it was possible. What was the rhyme again?A drop of blood, a lock of hair, lands you in the Changeling’s snare....
Please work, please work!
It was agony, becoming someone else.Somethingelse. It was like the pains of growing into an adolescent body but more intense, and in reverse, my flesh and bones too big for what my powers forced me to become. I was shrinking, skin on fire, bones snapping in my ears. But then it was over, and while I still ached everywhere, I was not myself. I was small and so, so fast, and I popped up off the table. I could jump! Lord, but could I jump.
I heard Sparrow screaming in outrage, and the light blasted through me again, and then, miraculously, I was free.
Incredibly free. Freer than I had ever been. The table and room vanished, and I dropped into the grass with a soft thump.New legs. Six new legs! The grass felt like velvet as I sped away into the night, listening with a hammering little heart to Sparrow’s tantrum. I had outwitted her, and while Finch tried to quell her and my father burst into laughter, I also heard her launch into the air. She was coming to search for me.
I did not go to the forest, but straight back to the house. There were poorly fitted doors and windows aplenty, and I would find a crack big enough for my spider body somewhere in the shadows. It was a marvelous, exhilarating trick, this transformation, but I could already feel myself growing tired. Magic came at a price, and exhaustion would soon claim me. I hurried along the edge of the house until I reached the kitchens. The yard seemed like a vast, terrible forest, everything expanded into a size I found hard to fathom. At last I crawled to the kitchen door, squeezing through the crack between it and the stone tiles. It was a tight fit, but I managed it, somersaulting out of the spider’s body and into my own, crashing into the table and rolling to my side.
Naked. Stark naked.
Of course. A spider would not need clothing or boots; it all must have dropped into the grass the second I evaded Sparrow’s Judgment. I held my banged head gingerly and stood up, grabbing the table for balance, looking over the edge of it and directly into Lee’s face.
“Oh, hello,” he breathed. He had been eating a jelly pastry and slowly lowered it from his mouth, wiping a few crumbs from his chin.
My pulse had not stopped racing since landing in that horrible white room, and now I wondered if my heart would simply implode from the strain. I carefully placed one arm over relevant areas and cleared my throat, attempting to stand nonchalantly in the shadow behind the door.
“Awfully late for tea,” I murmured, blushing so hard it hurt.
Lee put down his pastry and remembered himself, covering his eyes with one hand. “I told you, I can’t sleep with those Upworlders around.”
“Right,” I whispered. “I think I’d like to be rid of them, too.”
“Would they by any chance have something to do with, um, all this?” he asked, and I could hear the poorly restrained giggle.
“Good guess.” I sighed and sidestepped my way around the room to the door. Sparrow might be angry enough to risk Mrs. Haylam’s ire and search the house, and I was eager to put as many doors, bricks, and large dogs between her and me as I could. “And if you happen to see her or Finch in the near future, you did not see me. In fact, if anyone asks, I was not here, and I was certainly not naked.”
Lee nodded, still covering his eyes, but I could see a smile peek out from under his hand. “Shall I also forget the part where you exploded out of a spider’s body?”
I opened the door and slid around it into the foyer. “Yes,” I said with a wince, using the door as a shield. “Yes, I think that would be best.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Like Lee, I did not sleep a wink that night. Each time I closed my eyes I imagined myself back in Sparrow’s white room of pain, her voice everywhere around me, outside of me, within me. What would have happened if I’d stayed to be tortured? Lying had felt like an impossibility, and only my powers had saved me from revealing the truth to her. Now I knew why Chijioke had warned me so thoroughly; they were dangerous, very dangerous, and not to be trusted.
But then, whowasto be trusted?
The book. He wanted the book. In Mr. Morningside’s journals I had learned it was called the Black Elbion, but in my mind I only ever thought of the wordBOOKin huge, ominous letters. I reluctantly called the man I’d known as Croydon Frost Father in my head as I considered his motivations and his ultimate desire. He had come here in disguise, and he had already lied to me repeatedly about who and what he was. And he had murdered or at least incapacitated Sparrow and Finch’s third companion. Mr. Morningside had told me quite clearly that endangering the book meant endangering his existence, and that without him the world would fall into chaos. Had that been a lie, too?
I felt so, so tired, pulled in every direction. Everyone wanted something. The problem now became: Who would get whatthey wanted, and who would become my enemy? If I helped Mr. Morningside find the location of this book he wanted so badly, then I was striking a blow against my father, and perhaps even against the world I belonged to. If Father was to be believed, then there was a kingdom of Dark Fae and all sorts out there waiting to be found, cursed to sleep forever by Mr. Morningside and the shepherd. Would that place be destroyed altogether if they found the book that sustained it?
After Sparrow’s attack upon me, I certainly felt no allegiance to the shepherd. But nor did I feel any kinship toward my father. Perhaps others would want to find that their estranged family member was actually a god, but it only filled me with dread. He was embroiled in a centuries-long dispute, which meant I, by extension, was caught up in it, too. He spoke of war, and I did not belong in a war. Now I would be required to choose a side, and the most obvious side was the Devil’s. After all, we had signed a contract, one that might just see me out of Coldthistle for good. But then, my plan had to shift now, for there was no telling if I could still get so much as a penny from Father.
The safest way out, I decided, wasout. Not just for me, but for all of us. But did I really trust Mr. Morningside to honor our agreement? He had admitted that releasing all of his employees would be a major inconvenience. Perhaps he had no intention of seeing our bargain through.
There came to be only one truth I could depend upon entirely: I needed to extricate myself from this tangled web ofgrudges, deceit, and magic. That extrication, however, would require just a little more deceit. I would strike a deal, a new one, and not with the Devil but with my father: the Black Elbion for my freedom, and enough coin to get me comfortably to London, and from there? Comfortably normal.
It would be risky handing over the black book to my father, but then, how far would he really get with it on the grounds of Coldthistle? He was surrounded by enemies, and even if he wore his disguise while he tried to waltz out the door with the book, Mrs. Haylam would surely notice someone toying with her magicks.
