Chapter Twenty-Three

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We met up again at a motel, very similar to the one Lily had picked. It was cheap, it was convenient, and perhaps most importantly, it wasn’t something I’d done before. That, I had observed, seemed to be a common factor. I could get away with something once, but this Sidhe assassin learned quickly. I had met with Toby in a public park safely, but when I did the same with Johnny, there was a sniper waiting. The second time I went back to my house, it got burned down. My best bet currently seemed to be to keep moving, keep changing up my patterns.

Strictly speaking, Saori could have just met me at the Blackbird. We would be going back there tonight, anyway. But I didn’t want to sit still for that long. It would be too obvious, too predictable. It would also, I thought, make that sanctuary almost useless. The whole reason I was relatively confident in my safety there was that the attacker would likely wait for me to be more vulnerable. If I didn’t actually make myself a better target sometimes, they would have no reason to wait. This was…tidier.

Raincloud was flopping across my lap pretty much the moment I sat down on the bed, squirming around so that her head was in Saori’s lap. I could feel the excitement and pride in her like a burbling spring, a phrase I rarely had cause to use but which was undeniably the correct one for the moment. There were no words in it, but the emotion was very clear.

“She managed to go better than even,” Saori explained. “Which is pretty damn good, considering who was playing.”

“I am suitably impressed that my dog is better at cards than I am.” I wasn’t even being sarcastic when I said that. There was a deep, albeit surreal, feeling of pride in seeing Raincloud flourish like this.

“Also better at dice,” Saori informed me. “And I was right. Camellia knows Ekaterina personally, as it turns out. Not exactly friends, but not exactly enemies, either. Associates, I guess, is the word I’d use.”

I grunted. “Did she know anything useful?”

Saori shrugged. “Maybe? I don’t know how useful it will be, not really anything tactical. You were right about her being a maenad, so that’s something I guess. And I heard a little about her personality. She has a quick temper, but it’s just as quick to die back down. If you manage to actually make a personal enemy out of her, though, she’ll hold a grudge.”

“How much of a grudge are we talking about?”

Saori grinned at me. “Let me put it this way. From what Camellia said, Ekaterina will not only kill you and dance on your grave; she’ll go back every now and then to dance on it again, for years afterwards. Literally.”

I blinked. “Wow. That’s hardcore.”

“I know, right? I have to respect the hustle.” Saori shrugged again. “Anyway, that’s pretty much all I got. A few anecdotes, apparently she’s fantastic at billiards but only when she’s drunk, that kind of thing. But that’s about it.”

“Still might be useful, though,” I said. If nothing else, that note about her being vindictive was…interesting. And I was almost sure, from how she’d talked to me when we met, that she wasn’t really upset at me. The kind of spite that would go back to dance on someone’s grave for years wasn’t easy to reconcile with apologizing to that person for one of your minions disrespecting her competence. Ekaterina might want me dead, but it wasn’t personal.

“Hope so! Plus, seeing Camellia’s face when ’Cloud came out ahead of her? Priceless.”

I could feel Raincloud agreeing with this sentiment, as well as a sort of smug eagerness to do so again. She really was fitting right in with the rest of us; I wasn’t sure who all was included in that “us”, but I was sure she belonged in the group.

Saori laughed at my expression and curled into me a little more. “So what’s new on your end?” she asked.

“Well, the good news is that I know what Dusk was talking about,” I told her. “The bad news is that I know what Dusk was talking about.”

“How bad are we talking?”

“It’s, uh. It’s pretty up there. On the bright side, I get to go to a party, and I’m told there will be a buffet.” I took out the invitation, being careful not to crease it, and handed it to her.

Saori read it. Then she read it again. Then she looked up at me, with a grin that didn’t quite cover up the underlying unease, and set it on the bed. “You know, you might actually be better at getting yourself into trouble than I am,” she said. “And that’s saying things.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “I’m not thrilled about it. But I think turning down the invite might be an even worse idea now than going to this.”

“Oh hell yes.” There was no hesitation in Saori’s response at all. “That…I mean, even ignoring the fact that Dusk would turn you into something unpleasant for spoiling her fun, it would still be stupid. It would be an insult to decline now, especially for someone in your social standing, and I kinda doubt you want to insult Nephele’s hospitality.”

I shuddered. That prospect was…well. Archaic rules of hospitality were kind of a big deal among the supernatural crowd, probably tying in with the intense focus on oaths. I’d picked that one up myself just from hovering around the periphery of the local supernatural crowd, and as far as I was aware it was essentially universal. Similarly, a fixation on hospitality, on the rights and responsibilities of guest and host, was widespread.

I did not want to tell a nigh-deific nymph that hers wasn’t good enough for me. I really didn’t want to do that. That was the kind of insult where if the punishment was simply death, you could count yourself very, very lucky.

“Pretty much my thoughts, yes,” Saori said, clearly able to read that dread in my body language. It probably helped that she was currently cuddled up close enough to feel me shuddering. “So yeah, you’re going to want to make at least a token appearance.”

“The temptation to just shoot myself now and get it over with is great,” I sighed. “Ugh. I…don’t suppose you’d be willing to go as my plus-one?”

Saori gave me an odd look, one I couldn’t read well. It didn’t help that I was looking at her face upside down, and I had no idea how her spine could even do that. Then she glanced at the invitation resting on the bed. “Capinera’s like. A thousand times better equipped for this kind of thing.”

“Yeah, she was my first pick, no offense intended. But when I asked, she uh. Gave it better than even odds that being seen with her would be enough to get me put on someone’s hit list.”

“Wait, what?” Saori looked like she was trying to decide between being impressed and unsettled, and landing on reckless fascination. “She thinks someone will whack you for that? Being seen in her presence one time in a setting where everyone has someone more important to do than you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t really get it either, but she seemed pretty serious about it.”

There was a moment of silence as Saori processed this. Raincloud was thinking through it, too; I could feel it, even if I couldn’t feel the shape of the thoughts. Saori hadn’t put music on yet, so it was actually silent, too, rather than just surreal.

“You know,” the kitsune said at last, “one of these days, I’m going to have to hear what she fucking did. Like, I get it, she killed people, sure. But how the fuck did she make that many people want revenge on her?”

“Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction. She’s a workaholic who barely sleeps, but it’s still hard to believe she even could murder that many people. Or anyone powerful enough for most of these people to care.”

“For real. Okay. So the girl who actually knows what she’s doing is out. And you’ve never even been to the Otherside. You are so far out of your depth I don’t even have words for it.” Saori paused. “Though I suppose at the rate you’re going I should invent some. Not going to stop needing them.”

“Pretty much!” I was grinning now, and I wasn’t sure if it was sincere. “And you’re the only other person I know with any relevant experience at all, so. You wanna come? I’m guessing the buffet will be excellent.”

Saori was grinning too, and that, I was confident, was sincere. She was scared, underneath; she wasn’t an idiot, and you’d have to be one hell of an idiot not to be nervous about this. But the fear was solidly drowned out by her trademark devil-may-care enthusiasm, and her wide thrillseeker’s grin was definitely an honest one. “Fuck it, why not. Someone has to keep you from getting yourself defenestrated. And I’m a sucker for a buffet.”

“First exsanguinated, now defenestrated. You have a very high opinion of my ability to die creatively.”

“I have a list of these,” she said. “Because, as noted, not going to stop needing them. Okay, let’s see if this works.” She flipped the invitation over to show blank vellum, and rested one hand on the back of it. I felt a faint, subtle stir of magic, something that smelled like Saori but also had another element in it, something that smelled like mist and hummed with birdsong. I’d never encountered that signature before, but it was pleasant.

Moments later, writing started to appear on the back of the invitation. It was strange, written in a mixture of familiar Latin characters and another script I didn’t recognize, all in a very small print that still managed to be beautiful, each character perfectly formed.

“What’s that?” I asked, staring.

“Travel instructions and such,” Saori said absently as she read. “It’s not displayed by default, mix of aesthetics and etiquette. Don’t want to waste your time if you aren’t going, or insult you by suggesting you don’t know the way. I’ve never done something quite like this, but I’ve done a few Court events before. Apparently they use the same system for this.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “You did Court events?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, a few. Sketchy ones for the most part. One or two mixers like this, but not for a special occasion like this one is, nothing this classy.”

“When you say sketchy,” I said after a moment, “I get a distinctly bad feeling.”

“Yeah, uh, you don’t want to know,” Saori said. “When the Sidhe do sketchy, it gets…let me put it this way. They made me go ‛what the fuck is wrong with you people’, and this was before I got all soft and squishy.”

I considered, for a moment, what it would take to get that response from Saori now. Then I considered what she’d been like back then, for this to count as soft and squishy. I only knew a very little bit about what she’d done when she was younger, but I knew it was fucked up enough that she didn’t like to talk about it, and that spoke volumes.

I think I’m willing to take her word for that, Raincloud commented, while also nuzzling Saori to solicit ear scritches, successfully.

Agreed. I was pretty much certain she was correct. And it wasn’t like when she’d said the same thing about the grenades, either; then I’d been certain Saori was right that I wouldn’t enjoy knowing, but not confident I didn’t want to. With this, though, the details really didn’t matter to me. Nothing I did was going to change the Sidhe, and it wasn’t like Saori was still going to those parties. I didn’t want to know what they’d been like when she did.

“So what’s it say?” I asked instead.

“Well,” Saori said with the same devil-may-care grin on, “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that it will be very easy to get there. The bad news is that’s because one of the Ways being used is just outside the city.”

“Um. I take it that’s important?”

The kitsune laughed and rubbed her cheek against me in much the same way Raincloud was nuzzling at her. I stroked her hair obligingly. “Yeah, little bit” she said. “Okay, so there’s basically two ways to move between domains, right? One is a direct portal, which is what I use.”

“And those suck.” It wasn’t a question. I’d seen what she looked like afterwards.

“Yup! They’re also hard to make, you have to know exactly where you’re going in great detail, and if you fuck up then bad things happen to you.”

“What does that mean, anyway?” I asked, driven by a sort of morbid curiosity. “I’ve heard it a bunch now, but I don’t have a clue what ‛bad things’ really means.”

Saori considered that for a few moments. “There are a few possibilities,” she said eventually. “Option one, it just flat doesn’t work. You don’t have a clear enough target to establish a connection at all. Option two, you get contact, but it’s not stable enough to form the actual portal. If that happens, it’s like any other spell getting interrupted.”

“Which means what?” I interjected, while Raincloud wriggled further into my lap. She felt curious too, which was interesting to me. “Keep in mind I’m solidly in the remedial studies class here.”

She shrugged. “If it happens early on, it just dissipates, you don’t have much real power in the working yet. Once you’ve already pulled a fair amount together it starts getting risky, though. If you lose your grip, you might take some backlash when the structure you’re trying to put it into collapses. Usually bleeds out as heat or force. Worst case, you already have the structure of the spell fully established, but something goes wrong before you release it.”

“So instead of feedback as a simple force, the energy is structured enough to do something?”

“Yeah. It’s the equivalent of bumping someone’s elbow while they have their hand on the bomb’s detonating mechanism. Usually blows up in a way related to what you were trying to do, but not targeted right or something similar. Pretty rare with quick and dirty magic, since the window is really brief, but complicated stuff it’s a risk. With a portal that backlash usually means either kinetic force, or weird mental effects. You lose your mind, go comatose, stuff like that.”

I absorbed that for a few moments. “Okay,” I said after a few moments. “I think that all makes sense.”

“Cool. There is a third option, though.” Saori hesitated a moment, and I got the impression she was trying to phrase something. “You can get the portal working, but something goes wrong while you’re using it,” she said eventually. “And nobody really knows what happens to someone then. But nobody’s come back from it to tell us, either, and nobody’s in a hurry to find out firsthand.”

“Considering how awful portals sound even when they work, I can see why,” I said dryly.

“Trust me, it’s worse than it sounds,” she assured me. “Anyway, that’s how those work. Miserable, limited, and hard. Like, I’m good at portals, always had a knack for that kind of magic, and it still takes a solid fifteen minutes to open one. Traveling through a Way, on the other hand, is easy, painless, and very safe.”

“I’m sensing a ‛but’ coming, given that people still use portals.”

She laughed. “Yeah, because Ways only connect two set points, and they’re ridiculously hard to establish. Anyone can use a Way once it’s set up, but actually making it in the first place is more complicated and takes much more power than a portal.”

I was getting a sinking feeling in my stomach, which was impressive given how low this prospect had already sunk it. “When you say more power,” I said, “how much are we talking?”

She shrugged. “For a permanent Way, one of the major players. Gods, Sidhe Queens, a few other fae heavyweights, maybe a couple of human mages could pull it off, people on that level. Temporary ones are easier, but still way out of reach for people like you and me. For something like this, because most of the people who are invited won’t know the place well enough to open a portal, they have a couple dozen Ways listed that are either permanent or set up for this specifically.”

“Ah,” I said. “A couple dozen, across the entire Otherside. And one of them just happens to be right here.”

“Yep! Like I said, we’re going to need to invent new words to describe how screwed you are. On the bright side, I guess it means you don’t have to sample portal sickness yet.” She was still grinning.

I sighed. “Silver linings, I guess. Anything else I need to know?”

She glanced back at the directions, then shrugged. “Not really. Truce agreement is pretty standard. Do try to wear something nice.”

I snorted. “You’ve seen my wardrobe.”

“Hence why I emphasize ‛try’, yes. New Year’s Eve, so you’ve got today and tomorrow to find…something. Maybe you can at least manage to look slightly less like a drowned rat than usual.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Anytime.”

---

Shows at the Blackbird Cabaret were always an exercise in surrealism. But the degree varied. The building and audience were always enough to get some amount of surreal and bizarre, but some shows were much stranger than others.

Synchronized sleeping was about as strange as I’d heard of. I could have stayed in Capinera’s room again, but that phrase was just so damn weird that I had decided to watch instead, and was now sitting in the audience. It was a small crowd tonight, only about fifteen people, and I recognized over half of them.

Three were regular attendees, all of whom had been there the first time I came, back in September. The man in the absurd silk opera cloak burned with dark crimson magic, pulsing in time with my heartbeat; so soon after meeting Lily, I could easily recognize it as a vampire’s signature, though he was considerably stronger than Lily was. The woman who always wore a mask made of stained glass and the woman whose nails were a constantly-shifting flow of metallic color seemed to attend the same events often, though I had no idea what either of them was. A few of the others I’d seen around, here or at Softened Dreams, and if I tried I could probably have dredged up some of their names.

With the crowd so small, there was plenty of space. Some nights it was standing room only, but either because it was in the awkward week between Christmas and New Year’s or just because the basic concept of the show was so weird, there was plenty of open space tonight. I ended up sitting on the floor in the back corner with Capinera, Saori, and Raincloud, losing at cards while listening to a dozen or so people snoring in harmony.

The strangest part might have been that it actually sounded pretty good. I had legitimately heard choirs less melodic than this. When I glanced at the stage, the coordinated sleepwalking was better than some dance recitals, too; they made the shuffling, stumbling gait associated with sleepwalking look intentional and graceful, and they weren’t tripping over each other or bumping into each other at all. I was certain they were genuinely asleep, too. I had no idea how that worked, and was guessing there was some form of creepy magic involved, but the end result was pretty impressive.

“Call. So where do you even find these people, anyway?” Saori, as expected, had not been hurt by recent developments. In fact, she had already escalated far enough towards affectionate herself that she was currently draped across Capinera’s lap, and seemed quite pleased with that state of affairs. I frankly had no idea how she was keeping her cards concealed well enough to play poker effectively. Then again, I also had no idea how Raincloud was pulling it off, and I was the one holding the cards for her, so I had to admit I was the least equipped person at the metaphorical table to understand these things.

“Raise five.” Capinera slid a blue poker chip into the loosely defined area of concrete between us. They didn’t represent any actual currency, because I couldn’t remotely afford the fortune I’d lose otherwise, but they made it easier to play the game, and tracking the size of that imaginary fortune was entertaining. “And mostly they find me. At first I contacted a fair number of people I knew from my time among the Court, but at this point people seek me out looking to perform.”

At a mental nudge from Raincloud, I set her cards down to show that she had folded. I’d already dropped out of this hand a while ago, because a pair of threes was just not impressive enough to be worth playing out. I would lose regardless, but it seemed more sporting to at least put up a token resistance while the other three bled me dry.

“Call.” The kitsune slid a chip into the pot, then laid down her hand. Flush in diamonds. “It’s impressive, honestly. Not every day someone manages a genre of music I’ve never heard, but I have to say, this is a new one.”

Capinera laid down a straight. Not quite enough to beat Saori’s hand, but they were both very strong hands, far better than mine. It was not only because of my atrocious bluffing skills that I always lost these games. I had no idea how Saori was able to cheat this effectively, and I was dead sure I would never know all the different methods she had, but she was very good at it. “Thank you,” the half-fae woman said, starting to gather up the cards, “but I can’t take much credit. Their manager called me; I had never heard of such a thing before that.”

Saori grinned, and raked in the pile of chips. It was a little awkward, given that she was currently sprawled over Capinera’s lap, but they were both graceful, and they made it work. Capinera was obviously bewildered at how abruptly her social life had shifted, but had raised no objection at all to Saori’s affections. “Can you get me their number? Because this is fantastic.”

“I should be able to,” Capinera said, passing the deck to me. It was my turn to deal; we were rotating around the table, though I was the one actually handling the cards for Raincloud’s turns for obvious reasons.

I started shuffling, while on stage a whistling contralto went into a brief solo. There was definitely magic involved in that performance, though I wasn’t sure whether the sleepers were the ones doing it, or were being used as an instrument by someone else. I wasn’t planning to ask, either. There were some things I was happier not knowing, and even my neurotic fixation on understanding things wasn’t enough to overcome that in this case.

Between that, shuffling, and petting Raincloud, I was distracted enough that I didn’t notice someone walking up behind me. The first I was aware of it was when I noticed Saori looking over my shoulder, and for a moment it felt so much like the moment last week at Softened Dreams that I was already tense and starting to reach for a weapon.

But no. This time, a glance back just showed Melissa. She had a loose, easy smile, and she didn’t look perturbed by my reaction, which was good; sudden movements could startle her, at times. She must have come in late, because I was sure I’d have seen her otherwise, particularly given how empty it was.

“Hi!” she said, in a bright, cheery tone.

“Heya, honeybee,” I replied. As usual, I kept my voice softer and more subdued than hers, and not only because of the venue. “It’s nice to see you.”

“Yeah, glad to run into you.” Saori, too, had a much more subdued tone than usual. The kitsune had consistently done well about that, something I’d worried about at first with how much of a prankster she was. Then again, Saori wasn’t entirely heartless. Earlier I’d been thinking about what it would take to leave her truly appalled. I was pretty sure what happened to Melissa would have tipped the scale even before Saori went soft.

“Likewise! Deal me in?” Melissa was smiling. Which didn’t mean much with Melissa, given that she was usually smiling regardless of what was underneath, but this one seemed like it reflected genuine happiness.

“Sure,” I said, scooting over to make room. That left me, Saori, Capinera, and Raincloud more or less in a pile, but we were all fine with that, and it left Melissa with enough personal space that none of us would touch her by accident.

Sometimes I felt guilty about doing things like this in front of her. It felt like I was flaunting something that she couldn’t have. Melissa had made a lot of progress, and had even managed a few careful hugs with me at this point. But this kind of casual, affectionate touch just was not something she was likely to have in this lifetime. She had way too many memories of…less affectionate touch for that. Melissa had said that she didn’t object to affection being displayed around her, but then again, given the nature of the damage her mind had sustained, she wouldn’t know it if she did.

Probably Capinera was right. Probably I worried too much.

“So what’s the game?” Melissa asked, jolting me out of that line of thought. I resumed shuffling, a little more awkwardly now that I was in a cuddle puddle with the bulk of the other players.

“Five card draw. Do you know the rules?” Capinera’s voice was also soft, though in her case that was a default state rather than something she did specifically for Melissa’s sake. For a moment, I idly wondered whether this was another area in which she was limiting herself as some strange form of penance, but then dismissed the thought. I suspected it was more that Capinera’s voice was a weapon when she wanted it to be, and Capinera wasn’t the type to brandish a weapon for no reason. Even at her most violent, I was guessing she had still been the kind of person who didn’t draw a weapon of any kind unless she were planning to use it. She had just…planned to use those weapons often.

“Yep! Stakes?”

“Nonexistent,” I said dryly. “Because I want to be able to eat tomorrow. But we have some chips for tracking how large of a fortune I would have lost if this was real money.” I was confident that Melissa, too, would kick my ass. Bluffing by its nature requires one to mask outward expressions of emotion. That was a lot easier when her emotional expression was so badly damaged that it could be hard to read even when she was actively trying to be open.

She was smiling now, though, and something about her spine as she leaned forward to take her cards made me think there was genuine happiness to that smile. It was usually easier for me to read her emotions in her posture and movement than her expression, maybe because those cues were less conscious. I was pretty confident she was happy.

But if you asked her, she wouldn’t know. Not for sure.

That, in some ways, was the deepest tragedy of what had happened to her. It wasn’t just that fear had been pushed to such extremes that now she didn’t notice anxiety until it became a total panic. That was disruptive, and the events that led to it had been terrible. But in terms of the scars, I tended to think it was the positive emotions that were most tragic. It was her inability to recognize, experience, and enjoy the good things in her life.

Melissa had told me, during one of our more maudlin conversations, that sometimes she wanted to go back. That she missed being subjected to that kind of psychological torture. I didn’t blame her, no more than I blamed any other addict for their suffering—less than most, because she hadn’t had any choice in developing that addiction.

She had experienced feelings of joy, of loving affection, of curiosity and pride and satisfaction, that she would never find again. There was no drug, no experience, no relationship that could provide them. She might get a glimpse now and again, just enough to be reminded of what she’d lost, but she had to push herself to the extremes of natural experience just to get close to what she’d once had for weeks on end.

Of course she sometimes wanted to go back so much that she woke up in the middle of the night shaking and crying. I imagined it was the equivalent of going from my overclocked sensory inputs to being nearly insensate, and the idea of that was disturbing enough to me that I couldn’t remotely blame Melissa for that longing.

I couldn’t give her those feelings. But we spent the evening playing cards and listening to a truly surreal choir, with laughter and friendship, and the night was as happy as I knew how to make it.

When the show was over, and the small crowd had left, it was quiet again. Just the four of us, which was still three and a half more than could comfortably fit in Capinera’s usual living space. We slept in a pile of tangled limbs on the stage again instead. Capinera joined in this time, though I knew she would only actually sleep a short time.

My dreams were disjointed and confused, a blur of bright laughter and broken glass, lost homes and absent friends, bloody snow and dark fires and wind that sounded like the keening song of mournful wolves as it rustled the leaves of trees I couldn’t see. They were not sweet, but they felt clean, and that was better than I usually got.

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