Текст книги "Home Improvement: Undead Edition"

Автор книги: Сьюзан Маклеод

Соавторы: Seanan McGuire,Rochelle Krich,Toni Kelner,Simon R. Green,E. e. Knight,S. J. Rozan,Charlaine Harris,Melissa Marr,Stacia Kane
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

Through This House
SEANAN MCGUIRE

Now until the break of day,

Through this house each fairy stray.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

“So this is Goldengreen.” May stared around herself with undisguised curiosity, taking in the high weeds choking the footpaths and the brambles that did their best to conceal the drop-off to the Pacific Ocean waiting a hundred yards or so below the cliff. Not one of California’s finer views, although at least it wasn’t raining. “It’s a fixer-upper, that’s for sure.”

“Shut up,” I snapped. I kept circling the rusted-out old shed that used to link the field behind the San Francisco Art Museum to the knowe of Goldengreen, Seat of the County it was named for. The door connecting the mortal world and the knowe had been created and maintained by the former Countess, Evening Winterrose.

Trouble was, Evening had been dead for nearly two years, and few enchantments are strong enough to last that long in the mortal world without maintenance. Goldengreen was sealed when she died. No one maintained the connections, figuring, I guess, that someday there would be a new regent, and it would be their problem.

Guess who the new Countess of Goldengreen was?

Good guess.

I gave the shed an experimental kick. It shook slightly, but that was all. No magical sparks leaped out to char my shoe, no lingering wards activated—whatever magic Evening had used here, it was long gone. I sighed, stepping back. “Come on, May. We’re going to need to try one of the other doors.”

“Awesome.” May walked over to me, beaming. “It’s an adventure.”

“Yeah,” I said dryly, and started walking toward the edge of the cliff. “That.”

A LITTLE BACKGROUND,before this gets too confusing: My name is October Daye. I’m a changeling, which means my father was human and my mother was fae. I’m less human than I used to be, also thanks to my mother, who used blood magic to push me more toward fae in order to save my life. I’m still not sure whether to be pissed off about that.

About two years ago, Countess Evening Winterrose was murdered by my former mentor. I was the one who proved he’d done it. In the process the Queen of the Mists—current regent of Northern California—wound up in my debt. It was a position neither of us found particularly comfortable, since she thinks I’m changeling scum and I think she’s dangerously insane. As soon as she had the opportunity to discharge that debt, she did . . . by giving me the title to Goldengreen. Yippee.

I never wanted to be a Countess, and I definitely didn’t want the responsibility of reclaiming an entire fallow knowe. Faerie hills get weird when they’re untended for too long, and Goldengreen had been empty since Evening died. Unfortunately, I also had a few dozen new subjects to worry about—the former denizens of the Japanese Tea Gardens, who were left homeless when their regent, my friend Lily, was murdered. They’d been camping in the entry hall, a huge, empty space that offered neither warmth nor comfort. It was the only place in the knowe close enough to the mortal world for us to access without actually prying a door open.

Reclaiming Goldengreen wasn’t something I could afford to put off. We just had to find a way to get inside.

May stopped at the edge of the cliff, teetering on her tiptoes as she looked down to the rocks far below. “Whoa. That first step’s a doozy, huh?”

“Something like that. Can you take a step to the left?”

“Huh? Oh, sure.” May took an exaggerated step sideways, offering me a bright smile at the same time. “How’s that?”

“Good. Good.” To the mortal world, May’s my sister. Faerie knows her for what she really is: my Fetch, a death omen summoned into existence by my impending demise.

That was several impending demises ago. May’s been living with me since the first time I failed to die, and she makes a pretty good roommate. Best of all, being a Fetch, she possesses one trait that was about to come in extremely handy.

Fetches are indestructible.

While she was peering down at the waves beating themselves against the base of the cliff, I positioned myself behind her, checked my footing, stepped forward, and shoved. May screamed as she fell—more with surprise than actual fear—but the sound was cut off after only a few feet, when she vanished into thin air.

“I thoughtthis was the back entrance,” I said, and jumped after her.

MY FALL ONLYlasted a few seconds. Reality did a dizzying dip-and-whirl of transition as I passed from the mortal world into the Summerlands, and my feet hit the solid stone floor of Goldengreen’s main hall. May’s palm hit my cheek about five seconds later.

“A little warningnext time?” she demanded.

I’m not fond of being slapped, but I had to allow that she’d been justified. “Would you have let me push you if I’d warned you?”

“What? No!”

“Well, that’s why you didn’t get a warning.” I waved a hand to indicate the hall around us. It was twilight-dim, saved from absolute darkness only by fae vision and the traces of a distant glow from somewhere up ahead. “We’re here. That was the goal. And what’s the worst that could have happened?”

“I could have been eaten by a giant shark swept out of its natural habitat by freak ocean currents caused by global warming.”

I let my hand drop back to my side, eyeing her. “That’s it. No more late-night horror movies for you. Come on. Let’s see if we can’t find the light switch.”

May fell into step beside me, sticking a little closer than was strictly necessary as we walked along the darkened hall. I couldn’t exactly blame her. The air had a sepulchral quality to it, like we were walking into a tomb that had been sealed since time began. Even our footsteps failed to echo, dampened and deadened by the shadows pressing in around us. In Faerie, the regent is the land. By leaving Goldengreen untended, the Queen had left the land without a regent . . . and that’s never good.

“It’s like we’re in a big zombie movie,” said May.

I glared. “I was trying really hard not to have that thought.”

Her smile was visible even through the gloom. “That’s what I’m here for.”

I started walking a little faster, making May hurry to keep up. She snickered as she quickened her pace.

“Oh, c’mon, Toby. If you just watched a few more horror movies—” The hall shifted around us.

It wasn’t a big shift—just enough to knock me off balance, sending me stumbling into May, who caught me easily. She looks like a changeling, but she’s a pureblooded Fetch, and her balance is much better than mine.

“What was that?” she demanded.

“Oh, nowyou’re not making jokes?” I straightened, tilting my head toward the join of wall and ceiling as I snapped, “Cut that out! I am the new Countess of Goldengreen, and I’m here by right of Crown and Claiming.”

Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

The hall shuddered, for all the world like a dog trying to shake something off its back. This time, May and I both staggered backward, stopping only when we hit the wall. Doors were slamming deeper in the knowe, and dust and cobwebs were beginning to rain down from the rafters. Unlike the first shift, this one showed no sign of stopping—although it didshow signs of getting worse. If we didn’t move, the knowe was going to bring itself down around our ears.

Being buried alive didn’t sound like a great idea, and with Lily’s subjects camped in the entry hall, I couldn’t take the risk that the entire knowe would fall in. The Queen might approve—it would take out a lot of troublesome riffraff in one “regrettable accident”—but I certainly wouldn’t. I didn’t know why the knowe was objecting to us and not to them. That was something to worry about later.

I grabbed May’s arm. “I’ve learned something from horror movies, too.”

“What’s that?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard above the shaking.

“When the house tells you to get out, you get out!” I took off running, hauling her in my wake and banking on the exits being easier to find than the entrances were. The knowe continued to shake around us, more and more detritus showering down from the ceiling, the few remaining furnishings and ornaments toppling to the floor. Then a door was in front of us, and I hit it shoulder first, sending us both into the cool night air of the mortal world. We went sprawling, May in a patch of ornamental ground cover, me into a sign that identified our location as the San Francisco Art Museum garden.

The door swung shut behind us, but not before I saw the knowe stop shaking.

May sat up, beaming as she brushed her hair away from her face. “That was awesome! What now?”

I groaned, sagging backward against the sign. “I have no idea.”

MY ALLIES AREa motley bunch, defined more by their stubborn refusal to stand back and let the professionals deal with things than any other characteristic. Danny showed up half an hour after I called, his cab roaring into the parking lot at a speed that would have been suicidal for most people. With Danny behind the wheel, it was just stupid.

He parked sideways across three parking spots before climbing out of the car, a process that took longer than would have been necessary for almost anybody else. Danny is a Bridge Troll—basically eight feet of mountain that walks like a man, with skin like concrete and hands large enough to wrap around a grown man’s head. He wasn’t bothering with a human disguise, probably because it was almost two o’clock in the morning, and stood revealed in all his craggy, gray-skinned glory. He would have looked right at home guarding the gate at a Renaissance faire, if not for the blue jeans and size 5X San Francisco Giants sweatshirt.

“Tobes!” he declared jubilantly, spreading his arms in greeting. “An’ May! How’s it going, girl?”

“Pretty good,” said May, walking over to hug him. “Jazz sends her love. She’s off with the flock this weekend. Something about the annual migration.”

“That’s, uh . . . that’s special.”

May grinned. “You get used to it once you’ve been dating a bird for a little while.”

The two of them continued exchanging pleasantries as I walked around Danny’s car and peered in the passenger-side window. The bronze-haired teenage Daoine Sidhe sitting in the front seat with a Barghest sprawled halfway across his lap offered me a timid smile. I knocked on the window.

Quentin obligingly rolled it down. “Hi, Toby.”

“Don’t you ‘Hi, Toby’ me. What are you doing here?”

“Danny said he was coming over, and I asked if he’d bring me along.”

There were so many issues with that sentence that I barely knew where to start. I settled for asking, “Why were you with Danny to know that he was coming over?”

“He picked me up from the Luidaeg’s.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Do I want to know why you were at the Luidaeg’s?”

“Just visiting.”

It’s a sign of how much time Quentin has spent with me that the idea of “just visiting” the Luidaeg didn’t seem to strike him as odd. Most people refer to the Luidaeg by her title: the Sea Witch. She’s Firstborn, almost as old as Faerie itself, and tends to be viewed as one of the bogeymen under our collective bed. No one “just visits” her. No one but me, and now, apparently, Quentin.

Quentin and the Luidaeg met when his human girlfriend was kidnapped by Blind Michael and transformed into a horse to serve his unending Ride. We got the girlfriend back, Blind Michael’s Ride was stopped for good, and Quentin wound up forming a personal relationship with one of Faerie’s greatest monsters. Nobody can say our friendship hasn’t been educational for him. I just hope his parents—whoever they are—will agree. Quentin is a blind foster at Shadowed Hills, which means I don’t know where he’s from, beyond “somewhere in Canada.”

If he doesn’t come from a really liberal family, I am eventually going to have to do some serious explaining.

“Get out of the car,” I said, dropping my hand. “You’re here. You may as well make yourself useful.”

Quentin grinned, scrambling to open the door. Danny’s Barghests poured out before Quentin had his seat belt undone, swarming around my feet making the weird yodeling noises that passed as their happy-to-see-you bark. I took a step backward, trying to maintain my balance. “Danny!”

“Aw, heck, sorry about that,” said Danny, and planted two enormous fingers in his mouth, giving an earsplitting whistle. I winced, waiting for the museum security guards to put in an appearance.

Luck was with us for a change; no guards appeared as the Barghests stopped circling my ankles and went racing over to dance around Danny, scorpion tails wagging in wild delight. There were only three of them, if onlyis the appropriate word when talking about corgi-sized semicanine monsters with venomous stings and retractable claws. Danny runs a Barghest rescue service, and they tend to go everywhere with him when he’s not driving mortal clientele. I don’t think he’s ever managed to adopt one out. I also don’t think he cares.

I shook my head. “Which ones are these?”

“Iggy, Lou, an’ Daisy,” Danny said proudly, bending down to pet his venomous charges, who yodeled more in their delight. “Daisy’s the smart one. She figured out how to open the door on the mail truck. You shoulda seen the mailman’s face.”

That was another line of thought I didn’t really feel like pursuing. I shook my head. “Okay, great. Come on. We need to find a way to get into Goldengreen without the knowe deciding to kill us all.”

“Sounds like fun to me,” said Danny, and grinned, showing a mouthful of teeth like broken concrete.

“Wish I shared the sentiment,” I said, and started down the path toward the cliffside entrance.

“LOOK AT ITthis way, May,” said Danny encouragingly. “At least you were the first one off the cliff. Tobes or the kid woulda drowned, and I’d be walking along the bottom to get back to shore.”

May glared at him, continuing to wring the water out of her hair. “I can swim, but I still fell.”

“Yeah,” Danny agreed. “It was funny.”

“We don’t really have time for you to kill each other,” I said, stepping between them before my sodden Fetch could lunge. “So the cliff entrance has sealed itself, the garden entrance is one-way, and the entrance in the old shed is gone. The only other entrance I know of is in the museum itself, and that’s not going to work without breaking and entering.”

Quentin looked up. “Wait—you mean there was an entrance in that old shed we passed?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “That’s how I used to get in.”

“I think I have an idea.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Did you miss the part where the entrance was gone?”

“Yeah, but... ‘What’s been leaves marks on what is.’ ” He was clearly quoting something. All three of us looked at him uncomprehendingly. Quentin smiled, a little sheepishly. “I’ve actually been paying attention to my magical theory lessons.”

I didn’t have a better idea. “Okay, if you think you can get us in through the shed, let’s give it a try. It’s got to be more effective than chucking May off cliffs.”

“Not as funny, though,” said Danny.

“Hey!” protested May.

Danny kept chuckling all the way back to the shed.

It hadn’t visibly changed; it was still rickety, ancient, and choked over with rust. Quentin waved for the rest of us to stop a few feet away while he circled it slowly, the steel and heather scent of his magic gathering around him as he walked. I watched carefully, less because I wanted to see what he was doing—I’m learning to admit that the Daoine Sidhe can do things that I can’t—and more because I wanted to see howhe was doing it. Quentin hasn’t used much magic beyond simple illusions in the time that I’ve known him. If he was going to start branching out, I wanted to see where he was going.

After his third trip around the shed, Quentin leaned forward to touch the open padlock, murmuring something that I couldn’t quite hear. An answering whisper echoed through the grass around us, sounding like the dying protests of the wind. Quentin said something else, dropping his hand to the shed’s rusted latch. The whisper this time was louder, and lasted longer. The smell of heather and steel was getting heavier by the second, chasing everything else away. It was just Quentin’s magic, the whispering grass, and the night.

And then the door swung open, revealing a square of blackness too profound to be anything but magical. Quentin looked back over his shoulder, sweat beading on his forehead, and offered a wan smile. “I got the door,” he said. “But we should probably hurry. I don’t know how long I can hold it.”

“You did good,” I said, motioning the others to follow as I walked quickly forward. “What did you do?”

“Countess Winterrose was Daoine Sidhe. You, um, aren’t.” He shrugged a little, looking uncomfortable. His hand never left the doorframe. “I told the knowe that I’m her. It believes me, for right now. But that’s going to change real soon.”

“That’s fine. We’re going.” I offered a quick smile and stepped past him, into the dark.

THE DOOR LEDto the main courtyard, a vast, circular room with crystal panels in the domed ceiling. They let in at least a little light from the starry Summerlands sky overhead, where four lilac moons hung high. The knowe was tied to the mortal world but wasn’t a part of it. That was the issue. I don’t know about most people, but I’ve never walked into a dead woman’s house and had it order me to get out again. That sort of real estate problem is reserved for Faerie.

Danny and the Barghests were the next ones through. Iggy, Lou, and Daisy promptly scattered, tails wagging as they ran around the room trying to sniff everything at once, while Danny stopped beside me, planting his hands on his hips as he considered the room.

“You really planning to keep people in here?” he asked. “What, are you gonna sling hammocks or somethin’?”

“It’ll be a home improvement project. If it lets us start.” I turned in time to see Quentin follow May through, and stepped over to offer him my arm. “How’re you feeling?”

“Winded. Like I just ran a marathon. But awesome.” Quentin offered me a bright smile. “Did you see what I did?”

“I did. That was cool. I’ll be sure to let Sylvester know that you’re progressing in your illusions. And right after that, I’ll tell him you were visiting the Luidaeg on your own.”

“Hey!”

“Take the good with the bad, kiddo.” Inwardly, I was miffed. The Luidaeg hadn’t spoken to me in weeks. The fact that Quentin was able to casually visit stung. And besides, Sylvester Torquill is the Duke of Shadowed Hills, which makes Quentin his responsibility. If he didn’t know that Quentin was sneaking into San Francisco to visit the Luidaeg, he needed to be informed.

Quentin wrinkled his nose at me, but didn’t protest again as I turned to study the courtyard. Danny’s Barghests were still sniffing their way around the room. Danny seemed to be keeping a close eye on them, which was a relief; I wasn’t sure how many halls were connected to the courtyard, and I didn’t want to add Barghest hunting to my list of things to do today. May, meanwhile, had wandered into the center of the room and was looking up, studying the Summerlands stars through the crystal panels in the roof. The knowe wasn’t yelling at us yet. That was a nice change. Of course, once Quentin’s spell wore off . . .

“It’s too bad I don’t know where the other exits are from here,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Let’s see if we can’t figure out where the lights are.”

I started slowly forward, watching the shadows that collected at the base of the walls for signs that something was going to lunge out at us. Nothing seemed to be moving, but that could just be because we had yet to move far enough away from the door. If Goldengreen was truly tired of our intrusions, it might want to make sure we wouldn’t be able to escape. What a charming thought.

Sylvester always said he could “feel” Shadowed Hills, like a second heartbeat echoing the first. Every other landholder I’ve spoken to said something similar, even Countess April O’Leary of Tamed Lightning, whose ideas of “normal” are heavily skewed by the fact that she’s the world’s only Dryad living in a computer server. They can feel their territory—their knowes, and their lands, are a part of them. All I felt was the creeping fear that Goldengreen might decide to rise up and smash us at any moment. I don’t normally feel that way about parts of my own body, and on the rare occasions when I do, I tend to reach for the ibuprofen.

The floor was uneven, the cobblestones cracked and shifting in their settings. We were going to have some serious repair work to do once we managed to get the lights back on. Evening must have been neglecting her upkeep for years before she was killed—that, or the place had been sustained so entirely by her magic that when the magic was removed, the foundations began to crumble. I hoped that wasn’t the case. My magic can’t hold a candle to Evening’s, not even now that I’m starting to understand what my magic really is, and if I was supposed to power this place, we were going to have a very short residency.

Thinking back, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in this room. Evening had a small Court, almost unattended; I hadn’t heard anything about what happened to the denizens of her fiefdom after she died. They must have managed to blend into the Counties and Baronies around Goldengreen without so much as a ripple. I’d asked Sylvester if he could help me find any of them when the Queen first gave me the title to Goldengreen, and he hadn’t been able to name a single one, much less tell me where to look. If anyone out there knew the knowe’s secrets, they weren’t talking to me.

“Toby?”

May’s voice was soft but still pitched to carry. I turned toward it, starting in her direction. “What is it?”

She was standing next to one of the decorative crystal fixtures on the wall. They were shaped like ice cream cones, held to the wall by thin copper loops. I remembered them lit, burning with a calm white light that never flickered or dimmed. She didn’t say anything. She just pointed a quivering finger at the fixture, face gone pale. I blinked at her, confused, before reaching out and unhooking the offending fixture from the wall.

There was a glass dome tucked inside, where it would be normally hidden from view. I unscrewed it carefully, tipping the cone so I could see what was inside.

The dried-out husk of a pixie fell out.

It hit the floor before I had a chance to try catching it, shattering on impact and sending tiny, broken limbs and bits of wing in all directions. I jumped in surprise, cone and dome slipping from my hands and shattering next to the pixie’s remains. Given what they’d contained, I couldn’t find it in myself to be sorry that they were broken.

Raising my head, I gaped at May in horror. “How do you think it managed to get trapped in there? The poor thing must have starved to death. And why didn’t the night-haunts come?”

“They couldn’t get through the glass,” said May. Her voice was just as soft as it had been before, and her eyes were distant, not quite focusing on me. “I don’t think it got trapped in there by accident, Toby. I’m still a Fetch, even if I’m not exactly yours anymore, and I can feel their deaths all through this room. Dozens of them . . .”

Her words sank in slowly. I swept my horrified gaze along the wall, taking note of the crystal fixtures set at regular intervals. She was right; there were dozens of them, once you made a full circuit of the courtyard, and if they’d all contained live pixies at one point . . .

“But the knowe’s been sealed since Evening died,” I said. My words seemed distressingly loud. “She would never have allowed something like that.”

“You always saw the pretty side of the nobles, Tobes,” said Danny, looking back to us. He paused, then added, “No offense, kid.”

“None taken,” said Quentin faintly. He had walked over to stand next to me, staring down at the broken pixie on the floor with horror that mirrored my own. “I’ve . . . I’ve heard of people doing this. Before. It . . . they . . .”

“Pixies aren’t covered under Oberon’s Law,” I finished for him. He nodded, very slightly.

Oberon’s Law forbids the fae to kill each other. It’s the only absolute rule he ever made, and it’s enforced in every Kingdom. Of course, there are loopholes. Killing is allowed during an officially declared war. Changelings aren’t protected by the Law. Cait Sidhe are allowed to kill each other, since that’s a major part of their succession process, and the Law is enforced on the killer of a Cait Sidhe only if the local King or Queen of Cats requests it. Monsters, like Danny’s Barghests, and small folk, like the pixies, are completely exempt from the Law. Kill them all you want. No one will stop you. No one will punish you.

Most of the fae won’t even care.

Kneeling, I scooped the remains of the pixie into my hand. There was no way to avoid all the broken glass. A chunk sliced my forefinger. I stood quickly, hissing through my teeth. I wasn’t fast enough to keep from bleeding on the floor—just a few drops, but every one of them seemed to glow like a tiny star. The Daoine Sidhe work with blood. The Dóchas Sidhe areblood, in some way that I still don’t quite understand.

“Hold this,” I said distantly, pouring the pixie’s dusty remains into May’s hand. It didn’t occur to me to question how she knew to be ready. She was my Fetch for a long time before the bond between us was broken, and she knew how I was likely to react to almost anything. Even things that had never happened to me before.

Kneeling, I lightly pressed my fingertips against the blood that had spilled onto the floor. I was still bleeding, gleaming, sluggish drops that fell to widen the stain. I still didn’t feel the knowe, not really, but when I reached through the blood, I felt something. It was as if Goldengreen were stirring, becoming aware of our presence on a conscious level for the first time.

Of course, I had no way of knowing whether that was a good thing. I pressed my fingers down with a little more force, speeding the flow of blood. The knowe was definitely waking up, some deep, slow process that was too strange and too old for me to really understand.

“Uh, Toby?”

“Hang on, Quentin. I think I’ve got this.”

“No, I don’t think you do,” said May, voice carefully lowered.

I turned toward her, raising my head just in time to see the flock of pixies that had been massing in the hallway door swoop down on us, their wings buzzing in the confined chamber like a million pissed-off mosquitoes on the warpath. I had time for a startled, wordless shout, and then they were on us, blocking out even the faint ambient light with the pressure of their bodies.

NO ONE REALLYknows where the pixies came from. Unlike Faerie’s larger races, all of whom trace their ancestry back to Oberon, Maeve, or Titania, the pixies simply are. Some people say they’re the natural by-product of magic, and I can believe it. Not much else explains the existence of an entire species of tiny, semisentient humanoids with a fondness for roast moth and clothes made out of candy wrappers.

Most pixies are wild and occasionally vicious, but it takes a lot to goad them into actually attacking something the size of a Daoine Sidhe, much less someone as big as Danny, who practically qualifies for his own ZIP code. These pixies were something else. Their clothes were made from scraps of silk and pieces of old tapestries, not garbage scavenged from the mortal world. Their weapons looked handmade, carved from pieces of ash and rowan wood. We had no way of knowing if they were dipped in equally handmade poisons, and I didn’t want to find out.

The pixies chattered rapidly in high-pitched voices as they swept down on us, incomprehensible words almost drowned out by the buzzing of their wings. Danny’s Barghests barked at them for a few seconds, distracting the flock. Then the Barghests turned, running full-tilt for a door in the far wall.

“Get back here!” Danny bellowed, swatting at the pixies that were dive-bombing his head.

“I have a better idea!” I shouted, straightening up and grabbing hold of Quentin’s hand. “Follow those Barghests!” I ran after them, towing Quentin in my wake. May and Danny followed close behind, the pixies diving and weaving around all four of us as they lashed out with their tiny but potentially deadly weapons. The fact that we were running away didn’t seem to be lessening the fury of their attack; if anything, it increased their enthusiasm, since now they were winning.

The Barghests ran through the door and down the hall, making a sharp left after about twenty yards. The four of us followed, speeding up as best we could in our effort to escape the flock of pixies, which seemed devoted to stabbing us. May yelped in pain but kept running. Good girl. When we reached the place where the Barghests turned, we did the same, and found ourselves in a small, rounded room with tapestry-cushioned walls. There was another skylight set into the ceiling, filling the room with cool moonlight.

It was pretty, but I was more concerned with getting the massive oak door shut against the pixie influx. I shoved against it; it didn’t budge. “Danny, a little help here?” I asked.

“On it.” He reached over and gave the wood a small, almost dismissive shove. It swung away from me so fast I nearly fell, and slammed shut with a concussive boomthat echoed through the entire room. “Better?”

“Much,” I said, and turned to study the others.

Quentin and May were both bleeding from a variety of small cuts, and one of May’s barrettes was missing, making the hair on that side of her head stick out at an odd angle. Only Danny looked relatively unscathed. He leaned against the door, folding his arms.

“You didn’t warn me about the attack pixies,” he said. “I woulda brought a flyswatter. Maybe a can of Raid or somethin’, too.”

“You can’t use Raid on pixies!” said May, looking horrified. “It’s . . . it’s . . .”

“Probably messy.” I shook my head. “I didn’t tell you about the attack pixies because I didn’t know they were here. I thought the place was empty.”

“The cliff exit,” said Quentin. We all turned to look at him. He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “There was that time right after Evening died, when you fell? Remember?”