Phantom Pains

by Mishell Baker

  “At the High Court,” sobbed Foxfeather. “If he’d been there, he could have slain it! But it ate through my wards, rotted all the trees, poisoned the water. We had to run, all in different directions. Dreamapple and Bellgreen didn’t make it. I saw it swallow Bellgreen whole!”

  “Did it hurt you, too?” I said, pointing to the ugly scratches on her cheek.

  She touched her own wounds, looking shocked. “No, no, Ironbones. If the manticore had clawed me, I would have no face. A nasty little common Seelie creature did that to me on my way to the Gate.”

  “A Seelie fey? Why?”

  “Because it could! The commoners will get you if you don’t keep to the roads. But if I’d kept to the road, the manticore would have spotted me.”

  I peered more closely at her wounds. They looked painful, even had the faint smell of dried blood. “It’s like Claybriar said,” I observed. “Your facade mirrors your injuries. That’s so weird.”

  “No it’s not,” she said, looking at me as though I were criminally stupid. “If they didn’t design them that way, everyone who gets a facade would be immortal!”

  I hadn’t even thought of that, when I’d killed Vivian. So, somewhere in the weird pocket-dimension where the facade got stashed, I had created a second pile of human dust?

  “I can’t take her to a hospital,” said Inaya, possibly misreading my expression. “Luis at Residence One said it’s not allowed, because the second any part of her is removed from her facade—including a blood sample—it turns fey again. But Luis is blind; he couldn’t look at her injuries, and the other lady there is just—crazy. Scary crazy. I didn’t know who else to go to; you know more about fey than I do. Is she going to be okay?”

  “Are you hurt anywhere else?” I asked Foxfeather.

  The fey took a slow inventory, running her hands over herself in a way that was a little bit distracting. “Just my ankle, where I turned it,” she said at last.

  “She’ll be fine,” I said.

  “When is Claybriar returning to Skyhollow?” Foxfeather asked fretfully. “The commoners are so much calmer when he’s there.”

  “I—I don’t know,” I said. “He’s got some business with the queen, and also here.”

  “I don’t know what’s going to happen to those other people,” said Inaya. “Nine of them; some of them didn’t even have facades. They’re all in this little three-bedroom house in Santa Monica with a Gate right there in the living room like some kind of—” She shuddered.

  “Can’t they take shelter in someone else’s estate in Arcadia?”

  “Apparently it’s not that simple to change estates; there’s rituals or something? Luis said he’d contact Residence Five, see if they can send a messenger to Duke Skyhollow, convince him to give Foxfeather’s people asylum. But I wasn’t just going to leave her there in that house.”

  “Take her to your place,” I said. “I’ll cover for you while you’re gone.”

  “God bless you,” she said. “I’ll be back just as soon as I can.”

  • • •

  The rest of the workday seemed dull by comparison, but I was surprised by a text from Tjuan around three. We’d exchanged numbers the night before so he could contact me when he had word from Claybriar. He was the only agent in L.A. who knew the entirety of what was happening right now, so between that and the manticore disaster, when I heard the unique chime I’d set up for Tjuan’s number, I almost sprained my wrist in my hurry to get my phone out of my pocket.

  do you like chinese, the message said.

  After allowing my adrenaline to dissipate, I took the plunge and assumed this was not a race-related question.

  sometimes why

  He didn’t answer. I kept checking my screen periodically for a few minutes, then figured I wasn’t going to hear back. An hour later my phone chimed again, kicking my heart back into high gear.

  nm, it said. Never mind.

  Staring at the screen, I was reminded that I didn’t understand Tjuan, not even a little. Even when he wasn’t possessed.

  tjuan what’s up, did you hear about foxfeather

  This time it only took him eleven minutes to answer.

  burbank is handling it. phil’s getting chinese later tonight do you want some or not

  yes ffs

  Over the course of another half hour, I managed to wrangle the name of the restaurant out of him and put in an order. It wasn’t exactly the warmest dinner invitation, but given my previous interactions with Tjuan I felt like he’d just given me a big mushy hug. A thank-you for de-possessing him, perhaps?

  Too late, I remembered I had group therapy after work. I didn’t want to rack up an absence over something trivial; enough of those could get me kicked out of the program without a refund, and I had a feeling that things were only going to get uglier as the wraith situation progressed. I did, however, adjust my ETA for Tjuan and then duck out of the session early by saying that I had a rare opportunity to mend a relationship with a former coworker. The session leader allowed me to leave, but only if I’d share the results with the group next week. That was problematic on several levels, but I’d cross that bridge if it ever came.

  When I finally arrived at Residence Four a little after eight o clock, Phil, Tjuan, and Stevie were already gathered around the table. Phil was the only one who greeted me, and it was more of a grunt than a greeting. I sat down and commenced to eat the most awkward dinner of my life.

  Phil, apparently having spent his limited goodwill toward me on his hello grunt, spoke only to Tjuan for the rest of the night. Stevie, a tiny brunette who appeared to be pretty deeply placed along the autism spectrum, didn’t speak to anyone, just stared at me unnervingly. Tjuan only addressed me a couple of times, mostly to have me pass him something or ask if I was going to eat that. He ate as though he’d only just remembered he had a digestive system; it was grimly fascinating.

  The worst thing though was the way Teo’s memory hung over the table. Dinners at Residence Four had once been so spectacular that Caryl would leave her luxury apartment and drive an hour in peak traffic just to sit at the table. Only twenty-two, and he’d been the best chef I’d ever met. Now Caryl was in the basement while I ate gelatinous Chinese takeout and tried not to think about how dead Teo was, how all his fire and snark and culinary snobbery had been reduced to bones in a box.

  I didn’t eat much. More broccoli beef for Tjuan.

  I waited for everyone else to leave the table before I gave up. I took my plate to the trash can by the kitchen sink and scraped it; Tjuan came in and leaned on the kitchen island.

  “Morozov’s back,” he said.

  “What? They came back already?”

  “Just Morozov. Clay’s going through entry and exit procedures like a good boy, but His Majesty bounced back like a bad check as soon as he dumped his wraith. I had to drop him off at the Omni so he’d quit hovering over Caryl.”

  I sighed and continued scraping my plate. There was a moment’s silence, but Tjuan just kept leaning on the island like he was working his way up to something.

  “You know T. J. Miller?” he finally said.

  I set my plate down in the sink, turned to look at him. The name nagged at me, but so vaguely I couldn’t even come up with a decent bluff. “Not intimately,” I said.

  He snorted. “You’re not wrong. I meant, you know the name?”

  “Yes,” I said as my brain frantically sorted it from other similar names, rejecting mismatches, frantically scrabbling for the correct data folder. “Yes, I do.”

  “Not many people could tell you who wrote a screenplay,” he said, “but I figured you being a film student, you might pay more attention.”

  Screenwriter! It snapped into place. “That’s who you are,” I said, pleasantly shocked. “I read a couple of your screenplays when I was binging on action scripts for a class project. And you’ve been on staff on a couple TV shows, right?”

  “You do pay attention.”

  “Writing was neve
r my strength, so I used to kid myself I should learn all the writers’ names, since I might be working with one someday.”

  “Well now you are,” he said.

  “Not exactly what I had in mind. But I’m guessing it wasn’t your Plan A either.”

  “My last staff writer job, I got . . . sick in the middle of the season. So now I work under the radar. Uncredited rewrites.”

  I stared at him, inferring the tale of abject humiliation that lurked between those sparse words. I felt a sudden urge to bridge the distance, give him a pat on the arm, something. But I didn’t think that would go over well.

  “I see,” I said instead. “I guess you know my story already.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nice to get a little quid pro quo.”

  “Yeah, well, if they hire you back, we’ll probably be partners, so I thought I ought to—”

  “Oh, no, no, I’ve got another job now. Full time. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.”

  His expression went strange. Very strange. Abruptly he turned away, bracing both hands on the counter.

  “Tjuan? I hope—I didn’t mean that personally. I mean I’m sure you’d be a great— Tjuan?”

  This wasn’t disappointment I was seeing; in fact I was pretty sure he was no longer hearing me at all. He shuddered and sagged against the counter, then turned back toward me, looking through me as though I weren’t there. The expression in his eyes was familiar, but it wasn’t what it looked like. It couldn’t be.

  “Tjuan. What is it?”

  He forced his eyes to focus on me, and his mouth worked a few times before he could get the words out.

  “It’s back,” he said.

  21

  “There’s a wraith in your head again?” I said, backing away a little. This time Winterglass wasn’t nearby to keep the thing off me.

  “Same one,” he said, forcing the words out as though they hurt.

  “Are you sure? Because Clay took it back to—”

  “I’m sure,” he snapped.

  “But no one’s been tortured, or—”

  “It just called me its Gate.”

  “What? Why? Because it’s been in you before? That makes you a pathway?”

  “That’s what it says.”

  “So as soon as Claybriar let go of it, it could just fucking transcend dimensions and hop right back into you? That means that every single person at Cera who—”

  “Stop. Talking. To. Me.” Tjuan put his hands on his head as though to keep it from shattering into pieces.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “God, Tjuan, I’m so sorry.” And then, not knowing what else to do, I backed out of the kitchen.

  The Seelie Court’s ritual was useless, then. How many hosts were out there, and where?

  I made a beeline for the basement, too panicked to feel guilty that Caryl had been dozing on her cot before my heavy tread on the stairs woke her. She rubbed her eyes and muttered Elliott’s summoning spell without my even having to ask. When she’d finished, she stifled a yawn with the back of her hand.

  “We’re screwed,” I said.

  “How this time in particular?”

  “Tjuan’s possessed again.”

  “What?” Now she was awake. “How is that possible?”

  “I have no idea. I’m panicking.”

  “Panic will not help us.” Caryl’s expression showed only puzzlement. “Tjuan was perfectly lucid when he briefed me about Vivian’s list of addresses, not more than two or three hours ago. Then he asked Stevie to match the addresses up with nobles’ estates. I’m assuming this possession is very recent?”

  “It just happened. Where are we with Alvin? Does he even believe in wraiths yet?”

  “When last I spoke to Tjuan, he had not yet succeeded in reaching Mr. Lamb.”

  “And now we’ve lost Tjuan. We need to go get Winterglass, see if he can help.”

  “You’re missing the more urgent problem.”

  “What’s more urgent than what’s happening to Tjuan right now?”

  “Tjuan existed in that state for four months without harming himself or others. Meanwhile you’ve just told me that the drawing ritual cannot keep the wraiths from carrying out their plan, a plan which may take place at any moment.”

  “Right.” My gut still insisted that Tjuan’s suffering was the higher priority, but that’s the trouble with guts sometimes. “Then we need to find out immediately what’s been holding the wraiths off,” I said, “and make sure it keeps holding until we can figure out a way to stop them.”

  “They may be waiting to complete the list,” said Caryl. “They would need to strike every location within a day or two of one another, since the moment the collapses begin in Arcadia their secret would be out.”

  “But their secret’s already out,” I said. “And they know it. They’ve got nothing to lose by proceeding. So what are they waiting for?”

  “I see your implication.”

  “You do? Let’s pretend I don’t, for a second.”

  “Their delay suggests they await a signal or call to action. Which suggests that someone has taken Vivian’s place.”

  “You think so? Who?”

  “Now that you have burned our bridges at Cera—yes, Tjuan briefed me on that as well—I have no idea how to proceed in identifying conspirators.”

  I let the rusty gears in my brain turn for a few. “What about the manticore?”

  Caryl lifted a brow at me. “I was not aware that the thing had leadership qualities.”

  “I don’t mean that it’s the leader. Though I suppose it could be. I just mean, maybe it knows something. Don’t you think it’s suspicious, the timing of its attacks? How long has this thing been alive?”

  “At least a millennium, as I understand it.”

  “But it chooses now to start raising hell? Foxfeather said it’s been chilling in Los Angeles awhile.”

  “Skyhollow, you mean. Manticores aren’t native to the area; this one’s very arrival decades ago could be interpreted as an aggressive act.”

  “But suddenly it’s escalated things. Maybe we should find out why it’s mad, what it wants.”

  “Wants? Millie, we’re talking about a creature the size of an elephant with three rows of serrated teeth. It wants to eat. Without chewing.”

  “But it spoke, Claybriar said. That implies higher thought. Winterglass didn’t translate, so we have no idea what it was trying to say. It spoke first, got ignored, and then attacked them.”

  “Where is His Majesty, by the way?”

  “Tjuan dropped him off at the Omni, he said.”

  “You will need to find someone to drive you there, and you will need to figure out how to get the king to cooperate.”

  “Caryl, you speak Unseelie, and you’re already on board. Is there any way you could protect yourself if the manticore tried to attack you?”

  “Yes. But King Winterglass could simply command the creature’s obedience.”

  “Actually he can’t. Claybriar said the manticore just ignored his orders.”

  Caryl sat up straighter, her eyes sharpening with what must have been, given Elliott’s presence, sheer intellectual curiosity. “That’s not possible,” she said. “Unless . . .” She traced her lower lip with a fingertip, her gaze losing focus.

  “You have a theory?”

  “It must have to do with the creature’s age,” she said. “The current power structure in Arcadia dates back to sometime in Earth’s first millennium A.D. But if the manticore was already alive before the scepters were even made, and if it did not explicitly agree to accept that shift in Arcadia’s reality . . .”

  “. . . then it’s a perfect candidate to inherit leadership of Vivian’s rebellion.”

  “There is a certain logic to that.”

  “Imagine if you were the one to find this out, to prove it. It could only help you.”

  “Not if I flout authority to do so. I am not permitted to leave this room.”

  “Alvin doesn’t even
have to know. We get Phil to sneak you across, find out what we need to know, and then once you know what we’re dealing with, we figure out some legal way to get the same information to Alvin.”

  “Arcadia Project rules are not arbitrary. Breaking them would set a dangerous precedent; I cannot agree to this.”

  “Caryl, we can’t stop the wraiths unless we cut this thing off at the head. And we have no idea how much time is left. If we wait to debate this up the chain of command, it might be too late.”

  “You could have King Winterglass here within two hours.”

  “The guy who provoked it to attack before? And who doesn’t have the queen’s champion to save his ass this time?”

  Caryl was silent for a long moment. The advantage of Elliott was that it kept her from panic, which kept her from denial, which sped things along.

  “I will go,” she said, “but on the condition that you come with me. The steel hardware in your body will make the creature think twice about eating you. And if the manticore can speak, it can cast spells. If it enchants me, I could use your help disrupting the spellwork.”

  “You want me to go—to Arcadia? How is that even possible if I explode magic?”

  “To be more precise, you disrupt spellwork. Every square inch of Arcadia is not covered in spellwork any more than every square inch of Earth is covered in power lines. It will be awkward, but not impossible. The most difficult part, I suspect, will be convincing Phil to let us through.”

  • • •

  Caryl had predicted correctly. In the tower, he stood quite literally between us and the Gate, scowling behind his unruly dark beard. Outside the windows the night was pitch black, reminding me how very late it was and that I still had work in the morning.

  It was possible that Tjuan might have been able to soften up his friend a little, as he had when we’d delayed Winterglass and Claybriar’s exit, but under the current circumstances Tjuan wasn’t likely to even leave his room, and Phil wasn’t bending an inch for either of us.

  “Do you really want to piss Caryl off?” I said to him. “She was your boss up until last Thursday, and there’s a good chance she will be again.”

  “Not likely,” said Phil. “Alvin’s next in line, from what I understand, and Alvin was really, really specific about Caryl. If she doesn’t get back in the basement I’m going to have to call London and report the both of you. Do you have any idea what time it is in London right now?”