by Jen Ponce
Her smile broadened. “You’ll be even gladder if you try that sausage on your plate. It’s like a bit of heaven in your mouth.”
I put aside my worries and popped the meat into my mouth. She was right, it was like heaven and as I chewed, I closed my eyes and forced myself to enjoy the explosion of flavor and worked hard to be grateful I could.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Kroshtuka sat close to me as I sank down into my control room to see if I could transform into my Wydling self. It was too ridiculous to sit around being scared and that, at least, I could try without feeling too terrible if it didn’t work. I wasn’t as wed to my Wydling self as I was to my Scriven magic. I used to wish I’d never gone through the hook, met Arsinua, or experienced the explosion, but I knew now what I didn’t know then—that I would have discovered my magic eventually. I wasn’t human, though I still thought of myself as one.
Would I be able to change with this new body? Was my bird self connected to my physical form or to my soul? Or had my soul brought over all the information I needed from my old form to this one, like some sort of ephemeral memory stick? Too many questions and no answers until I made myself go looking for them. Damn it.
“Do you want me to help you change?”
“You really think I still can?”
“Of course.”
His faith in me was flattering. I didn’t even see my bird self in my control room. Yeah, I’d let it out of the cage it had been stuffed in, but usually I saw evidence of it fluttering around. A feather here or there, for instance. There wasn’t anything to indicate it lived inside me anymore, though, just that vast expanse of clean chrome.
This is your imagination, Devany, I thought at myself. You think about this body as being shiny and new, so of course you imagine your control room being the same. That’s all this is, a trick of imagination.
It almost helped. It almost made me see my true control room, the one I’d conjured up so long ago with its dented metal and burnt wires. I grasped the controls I hadn’t used in a while to transform and pulled the lever, hoping that something would happen when the metal hit the bottom of its track.
Feathers exploded from my skin. I changed with a squawk of surprise and pain. It hurt, oh lord did it, but then I was staring at the ground with my predator eyes and then at Kroshtuka, who was grinning at me with hyena teeth.
‘Let’s run,’ he said in my head and I flapped my wings exultantly.
‘No, let’s fly!’ I took off into the sky and was soon joined by Liam and his mentor. We soared high above Kroshtuka, his sister, and a few other Wydlings who had decided to join us on this frolic. The air was warm and felt amazing as it ruffled my feathers and buoyed my body. I could see for miles and miles, could catch the smallest movement with my keen gaze. I could fly, which meant I was more me than I’d hoped.
Liam passed close on one side, diving and darting at me. I shrieked back at him and we raced on the air currents until we both were exhausted. We fluttered down to the edge of the Meat Clan’s boundary line and changed back, exhilarated by our time in the air and the time spent together. I had to find something I could do with my daughter, something that involved magic and girl time. She and I both needed it.
“We should go hunting together next time,” Liam said, his eyes gleaming with the thrill of the flight. “We could catch dinner!”
“Yeah,” I said, though I wasn’t as keen on hunting down a fluffy bunny rabbit to rip to shreds and munch on as he was. “Or we could, you know, just go exploring.”
He snorted. “Yeah, I guess. Gonna go find Beni, kay?”
I nodded and he ran off as Kroshtuka and his sister returned. Mina was beautiful in her animal form and Krosh, well. Krosh was gorgeous. He and Mina both joined me where I sat basking in the sunshine. “It worked.”
“Yeah. I’m glad.”
Krosh looped an arm around my waist. “You should try your Skriven magic.”
I sighed. I didn’t want to. Everything else had worked but I was certain something had to be broken. I couldn’t just step back into my life without consequences, could I? It seemed too propitious. I’d died and come back. Didn’t that mess with the balance of the universe or something? Wouldn’t fate demand payback?
“What if I can’t?”
“What if you can?”
That hadn’t been the question I’d been asking myself. If I could hook, then I would. I would be able to go to the Slip and … Oh. “I’m avoiding dealing with Gaius.”
Krosh shrugged. Mina was the one who took my hand in her own and said, “It’s okay to be afraid. It’s okay to rest.”
I nodded. I knew that but it seemed wrong when Gaius was out there, probably killing the world or ripping holes in the Slip to make it collapse in on itself or something. He was always up to no good because that was his nature. Just like it was my nature to try to fix things, no matter what. “Fuck.”
“I think she’s remembered who she is,” Krosh said to his sister with amusement in his voice.
“She Who Fixes,” Mina agreed, her laughter warm and bubbly in the morning sun. “I should make you another dress with that on the hem.”
I made a face. “I think you mean, She Who Fucks Things Up. That would be closer to the truth.”
Krosh kissed me on the temple. He didn’t discourage me from saying mean things about myself, he just worked to remind me there were good things too. He usually did this silently, with actions instead of words. I’d recently figured that out and looked back at all the small things in wonder. He’d loved me a long time.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll try.” My stomach tied in anxious knots as I stood and readied myself. I didn’t want to get trapped in the Slip again, stuck in a cage with a monster. I wanted to be here with Krosh and my children, pretending like there weren’t bad things out there that wanted to hurt me.
I took a deep breath and reached for my magic, taking my time, postponing either the inevitable or the absence of it. I wasn’t sure what I wished for: for it to work, or for it not to.
The energy around me shifted, moved, curling up my legs and over my shoulders. The hook formed but it was shinier than before. Sparkling new like my control room? I gazed at Kroshtuka for a long moment, wanting to memorize his face before I stepped through into lord knew what. “Love you.”
“I love you too.”
I disappeared into the hook.
I had a protection bubble around me before I even set foot in the Slip, but Tytan’s manse was quiet. No Nex to greet me, no Kali either. After the initial spike of fear, this was a letdown, and I wondered where everyone was hiding. Were they looking for Gaius? Had the asshole already snagged them all? I popped over to Vasili’s hovel, though I didn’t appear inside. He had a girlfriend and I certainly did not want to accidentally catch them … doing whatever it was Vasili and his girlfriend did when they were alone.
He scowled at me when he saw me, which was so typical and normal I hugged him. “Thank you.”
“For what?” he said, trying to disentangle himself from me.
“For not acting like I’m a broken thing needing coddling.”
He smoothed down his vest and frowned. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
“Thank you for that, too.” He didn’t invite me in and I didn’t push, though I felt awkward standing on his stoop. “Where’s Ty?”
Vasili’s tentacles curled around his head, slithering against one another. A few of them edged toward me almost as if they wanted me to touch them. I thought of my daughter and her yearning looks toward Nex’s guts. Did I have that same look on my face now? “He’s hunting. Last I knew, he was at the ruins of Reach searching for answers.”
I shivered. How much power did Gaius have to be able to destroy an entire island? I didn’t want to see Hipster Grandpa ever again, but I knew he would never leave us alone. Not until he got what he wanted—which was never going to happen. “How’s Mal?”
“Elizabeta says he’s getting stronger, though he s
till hasn’t woken yet. She thinks he has some injuries in his brain that will take longer to heal. Zephyrinia won’t leave his side so now we have two people to care for.”
He sounded so put upon and yet so pleased, I had to turn my head to keep him from seeing my smile. “Thank you for doing that. And for helping save me.”
“Oh! I have something else, too.” He left the doorway, but I stayed in place since he hadn’t invited me in. When he was gone longer than ten minutes, I poked my head inside. He appeared with a small baggie that held a round, waxy ball. “If you do manage to find the bastard, feed him this.”
“What is it?” I held it up to the light.
“A baozaball. Never, ever touch it. It’s designed to bring pain to Originators. Don’t touch it, don’t inhale the air in the bag, don’t touch the inside of the bag, nothing. Even a speck can cause agony. The whole ball? Gaius will be writhing for eons.” He flicked the bag with his finger. “We all made this. Everyone. That crazy chythraul. Arsinua. Your brother. Everyone. The blood of the wronged and the blood of the family. Powerful stuff. Elizabeta figured out what the last ingredient needed to be to make it last and last. He’ll be too busy screaming to chase you. That is, if you can get him to touch it. Once you get him to touch it, he won’t be able to help but eat it. Part of the charm Elizabeta worked into it.”
“You really like her, don’t you?”
He scowled at me again. “Go find Tytan or that asshole Hipster Grandpa. I’ve done all I can.”
He shut the door in my face.
Fine then. I hooked to the shore of the lake Reach used sit in the middle of and the destruction stunned me. There was a bridge made of debris now, stretching from the shore to the mound of rubble that used to be Ravana’s tower. My tower. Tytan’s tower, I guessed, once I died.
I hooked to a spot near the top of the rubble and eased myself to the edge. Way down at the bottom I could see Ty. He was pacing back and forth, obviously agitated, but why?
I hooked down and stood waiting for him to notice me.
“What are you doing here?” Not exactly the words I’d been expecting.
“I had to see if I could still access my magic.” I held out my arms. “Voila!”
“Why wouldn’t you be able to?”
“Well,” I said, walking to the wall to gaze at the runes. “I’m not in my own body anymore, now am I?”
He huffed, impatient, as always, with my ignorance. “It’s yours now. Your soul is in it. That’s all that matters. Don’t start getting all weird about it.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “I’ll be as weird as I want, thank you very much. Anyway, I came here too because you aren’t connected to me anymore.”
He rose his eyebrows and then I saw the shift as he went into his Magic Eye, though he didn’t call it that. “Interesting.”
“Interesting? Gee, thanks.” I felt a twang, low in my belly and my gaze flew to him, but he was turned away from me gazing at another section of wall. “What was that?”
“What?”
He wouldn’t tell me until he was ready to spill the beans, damn him.
“Fine. Tell me what those memories are, the ones of us … kissing.” And other things more involved and sweaty and … I blew out a breath.
“Kissing?”
“You know what I mean. Why am I seeing us doing the horizontal mambo in my memories? I know you didn’t bang me while I was a fleshcrawler. You’d have fewer limbs and more bite marks probably.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You didn’t, did you?”
“With a fleshcrawler? Please.”
I decided now was a great moment to try a bit more of my magic. I sent a push of energy that banged into the backs of his knees and almost made him tumble before he caught the energy and flung it back at me. I ducked, my hair ruffling as it passed. “What is it, Ty? What happened?”
“Nothing happened between you and me. Not of the lovemaking variety.”
He was telling the truth, I could hear it in his voice. I could also hear the lie … not lie, really, no, just misrepresentation. “Tytan, please? I have to know why … I’m seeing us together. Why I’m having all these flashbacks to a moment I don’t remember, yet remember?”
He was still and then his shoulders rounded and he looked almost … ashamed. Oh dear god, what had he done?
“Nothing like you’re thinking,” he said with a bit of snarl in his voice. “I merely visited Devany Two.”
Devany Two. Oh. Oh. “You …?”
“Losing you was … more painful than I expected. I went often to look in on your doppelganger because she looked like you.” He wouldn’t turn to look at me and this felt too momentous to listen to alone. And alone is how I felt with him refusing to look me in the eye. “The night before we brought you back I went to her, and she was waiting for me. She opened the door and she brought me in and she—”
She had enjoyed every second of it, I was sure. I was sure because I could recall the feel of his hands on my breasts—her breasts. His kisses. His … oh dear.
“I stayed with her until dawn. And then I had to go back and tell her what we needed, what you needed, and she gave herself up to it.”
I shut my eyes. It was as worse as I thought. Just like with Lucy, I’d taken over Devany Two’s personhood, taken over who she was to benefit me. Instead of moving another’s soul into her, I’d moved in my own. Had Arsinua had memories like this to contend with?
“I’m sorry.” I was, too. Sorry I couldn’t be the person he wanted, sorry I couldn’t ever quite trust him after the things he’d said about my children, about what he’d done to Tom.
“I am too.” He turned then, sorrow in his eyes along with a gleam of something I didn’t understand. “There is something connecting us though. Look again.”
I narrowed my eyes at him and then dropped into the Magic Eye. I wasn’t going to argue with him about it. I’d sifted through all the strands and his wasn’t one of them. I’d know it anywhere and it wasn’t … A shimmering blue thread spooled outward from low on my belly and shot through his chest over his heart. The strand he’d plucked earlier, that feeling I’d had.
Cold dread shivered through me and I opened my eyes. “No.”
“No, no, no, no, no. No! Gah!” I wasn’t sure if I’d kill him first or kick him in the nuts. Okay, I wouldn’t actually kick him in the nuts, but I wanted to, mainly because he’d just fucked up an epic-mega ton. “Shit. Ty. Shit.”
“I didn’t even think about the possibility,” he said, the only thing saving him was the sound of genuine regret in his voice. Though, in a perverse way that annoyed me too. Everything was annoying, probably because I was—
“Nope.” Wasn’t going to think about it. “It’s probably just a mistake. Some sort of weird, Sliptastic mistake. Right?”
He strummed the line again, which made me feel all funny in all the right/wrong places and I pointed a finger at him.
“Knock it the fuck off.”
His smile was not contrite, but it didn’t linger, giving me no excuse to revisit my more violent impulses. He said, “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known. I didn’t think there would be any harm …”
I snorted. “You’ve lived here how long, and you didn’t think it would be harmful? How could you not? Oh! That smug bastard sat there and said we’d … you know … and I was so sure he was wrong. Damn it!” I was pacing, muttering, in turns upset, weirdly excited, scared, guilty, all those things in a big fat grumbly jumble that sat in the pit of my stomach, gnawing.
Oh god.
“We can’t let him anywhere near it. Ever. We have to destroy him before he finds out.” I suddenly felt way too exposed even at the bottom of the pit. “Let’s go somewhere safer.”
He hooked us both away before I could say more, which was annoying but also a relief that we were not in the ruins of Gaius’ cell anymore. We were in Baow’s field and the testy tree was silent at the far end.
“Why here?”
“
It’s about the only place the Originators will honor a truce. He can’t grab you here without major magical backlash. The recoil would pulverize him. So hope he tries it.” He had moved away from me, almost as if he were afraid to touch me. I wished he’d been afraid to touch Devany Two. It had been that kiss in the kitchen so long ago. He’d kissed her to make me want one too and she’d remembered that and yearned for it. Why? Because she had my memories and all the conflicted feelings with it. Of course, she also had my anger at him and fear of him too, the memory of his threats against my kids. No, I wasn’t going to forget that one anytime soon.
She’d only been lacking my soul. Apparently, the drive for sex outweighed memories that weren’t your own. I could understand that, I supposed.
It hadn’t been me. I had to remember that.
I hoped Kroshtuka would understand. Hell, I wasn’t sure I understood. And maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe something else was going on and I go home, take a pregnancy test, and it would all come out negative. Maybe it was a magical tumor.
“Magical tumor?”
“Could be, and stay out of my head.”
“Sorry.”
I arched a brow at him. Was that the first time he’d said sorry to me? Little late now that we’d given Gaius exactly what he’d wanted. The bastard. “Anyway, we have to figure out how we can keep me out of Gaius’ hands. How do we stop him? I can hide, but for how long? And if he doesn’t get this one or if it is just a magical tumor, he won’t stop coming after us until he has what he wants. We have to stop him.”
Tytan was silent, which probably didn’t bode well.
“You’re going to say he has too much power, blah blah blah. Last time I took him on I got my neck snapped, blah blah blah. I could take out my soul—”
“No.”
I eyed him. The rapidity of his reply made me nervous. “Why?”
“The fleshcrawler venom shredded it. It needs time to heal. If you remove it from your body … your body becomes the construct again. It will take time for it to fully integrate, to make this shell you’re wearing you. Really you.”
