Borderline

by Mishell Baker

  “You came,” he said.

  “I did.”

  Claybriar graciously accepted Gloria’s help getting out of the well, though he was probably three times her weight. He approached me warily, his hooves soundless on the sand, as though I might bolt. “My sister,” he said to me. “My sister’s down there.”

  “She’s the missing girl you were talking about?” I felt a tightening inside me that was at least two parts fear as he came closer. Something must have shown in my face, because Caryl squeezed my hand. Everyone was watching us.

  “The viscount,” Claybriar said, stopping in front of me. “He came to our glade, spoke to us.” His ear twitched. “We weren’t the first commoners he’d talked to. Something about needing volunteers for a rebellion. I got a bad feeling, so I told her not to go, but the minute I fell asleep, she slipped away.”

  I couldn’t hurt him any worse, so I reached my hand out to him. When he touched it, his eyes took on a sharp focus.

  “It’s you,” he said, in the same wondering way Inaya had. But to me, his hand just felt like a hand, albeit slightly fuzzy on the back.

  “I’m your Echo,” I said.

  “I knew it as soon as you told me about your fall.” Suddenly his words seemed to come fluently, lacking his former awkwardness. “It was obvious I had an Echo—I could do math, plan events, learn languages—they even let me assist at court. Then a year ago I just lost it. Lost everything. For months. I thought you’d died.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “But why didn’t you just tell me the minute you knew?”

  “You said you were friends with the viscount and his Echo. For all I knew you were part of their plans. I’m sorry. I should never have thought that.”

  “All righty!” Gloria distracted us by saying. Her voice was sweet and forced, like icing from a decorator’s tube. “Back down I go!”

  I pulled away from Claybriar. “Wait,” I said to her. “What happened down there?”

  “Well, honey, I had to get off the platform so Mr. Claybriar could get on. I don’t have to tell you what that felt like; you’ve touched a Gate yourself.” Was it the light, or was she a little pale?

  “Are you sure you want to go back?”

  “Who else is gonna do it?” she said. “Tjuan can barely lift the thing as it is.”

  “You are not wrong,” Tjuan said, squeezing his own shoulder with a grimace.

  “I’ll get your sister next, sweetheart,” she said to Claybriar with a wink. Claybriar gave her a lopsided smile that didn’t come anywhere near his eyes. I was having a hard time looking at him.

  Tjuan gave Gloria a lift back into the well, helping her ­settle onto the platform again. He gave the crank several turns, lower­ing Gloria into the shaft, then suddenly stopped. “Oh, shit,” he said calmly.

  “What is it?”

  He was staring behind us, so we all turned to see what he was seeing.

  “Oh, shit,” I concurred.

  47

  Three figures approached, making their way briskly down the main avenue of the ghost town. The first to catch my eye was David Berenbaum, who for some reason was wearing classic Western sheriff garb, complete with gleaming star badge. His silvery-white Stetson shaded his face from the illusory sun. Next to him strode a blond Adonis with feathered braids and turquoise war paint, milk-white skin improbably bare except for his buckskin trousers. Viscount Rivenholt. Behind the pair of them, dolled up like a Wild West whore in bloodred satin and black lace, was Vivian Chandler.

  It took me a moment to realize that they hadn’t dressed for the occasion; my mind had dressed them. They were exactly as I expected to see them in this setting.

  I waited for Vivian to give the obligatory speech about what fools we were for interfering in her designs, but she just kept marching toward the town square, a look of steely purpose in her painted eyes.

  Just like that, Caryl bolted. She slipped her hand free and took off like a jackrabbit into the decaying chapel.

  “Caryl!” I shrieked. “Have you lost your mind?”

  “She’s heading for sacred ground,” murmured Claybriar. “Unseelie can’t follow.”

  Not being Unseelie myself, I was about to take off after her when Vivian’s words to Rivenholt pulled me up short.

  “Toss the faun down the well, will you, darling?”

  “Oh, hell no,” I said, stepping pointlessly in front of Claybriar. I wasn’t the ideal champion, but I had only just gotten him out of there.

  Rivenholt started toward us, but David caught his arm with an are you nuts look.

  “It’s all right,” the fey said. His voice was like satin sheets on a summer night. “The fall won’t kill him.”

  “It’ll kill her, though,” said Vivian, flicking her long-nailed fingers toward the well. The rope holding Gloria frayed faster than Tjuan could move.

  Gloria let loose the same free-fall scream of terror as before, but this one ended abruptly. It was echoed by the horrified shrieks of the fey still trapped in the well.

  “GLORIA!” Tjuan’s cry echoed down the shaft unanswered. When he turned back to Vivian, I saw the fires of hell in his eyes. I expected him to take off after her and die horribly to a snap of her fingers. But instead he backed away slowly, never taking his eyes off her.

  It was Teo who went completely batshit.

  “You said you wouldn’t hurt anyone!” he screamed.

  Vivian smiled. “I didn’t hurt her. I hurt the rope.”

  I stood there like a poleaxed cow. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Tjuan take off toward the chapel. I should have too, but I was rooted to the spot.

  “Teo?” I finally managed.

  “Get Caryl, you moron!” he yelled at me, stabbing a finger toward the chapel.

  “Teo, what is Vivian talking about?” Anger hadn’t quite caught up with me yet. “When did she make a promise to you and why?”

  “She just wanted me to spy for her! She didn’t say anything about killing anyone!”

  Vivian let out a silky laugh. “I should really thank you, Millie, for getting yourself fired and leaving him all alone,” she said. “I almost peed myself when he called me, begging me to find his Echo. Which I will do, of course; I’m a woman of my word. Sadly, I never promised to bring her to him.”

  Teo stalked toward her and drew, of all things, a pathetic little pocketknife. Vivian did take an instinctive step back, though, at the sight of steel. She flicked her fingers in his direction, and I recoiled, expecting his head to explode or something. But he just stopped in his tracks and looked confused as Vivian sauntered past him, skirts swishing.

  “Put the faun where he belongs, Rivenholt.”

  The viscount moved faster than my eye could follow. Suddenly he was behind Claybriar, making me look even stupider for trying to intervene. Rivenholt locked both arms around the faun’s chest, pinning him. I didn’t know what else to do but fling myself clumsily at them, digging my fingers into Rivenholt’s forearm and trying to pry him loose. The viscount looked down at me in shock as his glamour dropped, revealing a creature of glass-feathered wings and blinding white eyes.

  “I promised Vivian I would see this through,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  He released one arm from around Claybriar to try and loosen my fingers, but then we were both distracted by Teo’s gut-wrenching cry.

  “What have you done!” Teo shrieked, staring with slack-jawed horror at his own left hand. He held it splay-fingered in front of his face.

  “Teo, what is it?” A wave of dread made me dizzy.

  “It’s his hand,” said Vivian cheerfully. “But good luck trying to convince him of that.”

  Rivenholt used the opportunity of my slackened grip to wrench free. At the same moment, Teo fell to his knees, brandishing his pocketknife and stabbing it into his left hand again and again.

>   “Get it off!” he screamed. “Get it off me!” Vivian burst into a cascade of delighted laughter.

  I started toward Teo, but that bastard Rivenholt delivered a swift kick to my AK from behind as soon as I’d turned, making me fall back into the dust. I felt my suspension slip as my ass hit the ground.

  Claybriar cried out my name but was quickly muffled by, from the sound of it, a punch in the mouth.

  I twisted around just in time to see Rivenholt push Claybriar over the side of the well. I let out a growl and rolled over onto my good knee, dragging myself over to Rivenholt intending to—I don’t know—bite his ankles? He saw me coming, snatched up my pricey prosthetic by the socket, and swung it in a wide arc, smashing it against my cheekbone. I saw a white flash, and my ear started ringing. I fell over onto my back with a moan.

  The sky was so bright. David’s white Stetson looked dark against it as he loomed over me, his face shaded from view.

  Rivenholt appeared beside him. “I promised to see this through. You know I can’t let her leave.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ll do it. You shouldn’t watch; I know you care for her.”

  David laid both his hands on Rivenholt’s shoulders. “And you know how much I care for you, I hope,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  “Good.”

  And then David started to push Rivenholt, hard. I rolled onto my side; everything looked dim and disjointed, like a silent film. Berenbaum kept pushing his wide-eyed Echo back and back, a clumsy tango, until he sent the poor bastard toppling over the side of the well after Claybriar.

  I must have grayed out for a second, because suddenly Sheriff Berenbaum was kneeling next to me—he smelled like Christmas and coffee—and trying to pick me up in his arms.

  “What the hell are you doing, David?” Vivian’s voice, sharp.

  “The chapel,” I murmured, slinging an arm around David’s neck. “Vivian can’t go in there.”

  “I’m sorry,” David whispered. “I’m so sorry for all this. I just wanted to make great movies again; I didn’t know they were people—”

  “The chapel,” I repeated curtly.

  He lifted me, and Vivian called out to him again. “David, what are you doing?”

  David ran as fast as a near-septuagenarian can run carrying a grown woman. I guess without my left leg I was lighter than most; it was still lying where Rivenholt had dropped it.

  “This isn’t a real chapel,” I mused as we crossed the threshold. “How is it supposed to keep her out?”

  “She didn’t make the illusion,” said David. “Johnny did. So it feels real to her.”

  Inside, a few beams of smoky sunlight from the decaying roof lanced downward to illuminate a dozen pews and a small altar. I didn’t see Caryl as we entered, but I could hear her labored breathing somewhere toward the front of the room. My heart thrilled; she was still alive. David quickly helped me sit on one of the back pews.

  “Find Caryl,” I said. “Bring her to me.”

  For a man not used to taking orders, he responded with impressive alacrity. He helped Caryl up off the floor where she’d collapsed, and half dragged, half carried her over to me. The strain apparently wasn’t good for her, because by the time he got her to the pew she’d stopped breathing altogether, and her face was turning corpse gray. I seized her hand and was rewarded with the sight of color rushing back to her cheeks, the sound of air flowing back to her lungs. She looked worn out, though; her eyes were at half-mast. David supported her with his arm, uncharacteristically silent.

  “Well, that was a close one,” I said. “What possessed you to run off without me?”

  “What possessed you not to follow?” she countered weakly.

  “Stuff like my Echo being thrown down a well and Teo stabbing a knife into his own hand.”

  “Oh.”

  “Look, Caryl. Vivian is here. All we have to do is lop off her head or whatever it takes to kill a fey, and you’ll be fine.”

  “You can’t kill her,” Caryl said.

  “She’s immortal?”

  “No, I mean, you may not kill her. Not until she has been interrogated.” As annoying as I found her argument, I was relieved to see her taking charge, returning to an adult state.

  “I have some information that might help,” interjected David, “but not much.”

  “Talk,” Caryl said.

  “Vivian promised not to cause me harm—in return, Johnny had to promise that he would do everything in his power to see the project through. That’s why I had to, uh, take murder out of his power just now. Vivian was deadly serious about this project because she has some beef about the class system in Arcadia, and she said the studio was the first step in leveling the field.”

  “How, exactly?”

  “Honestly, that’s as much as she said to me. I assumed she just meant giving everyone equal access to inspiration. Is that such a bad thing?”

  “Regardless of the end’s virtue,” Caryl said, “you can be sure you would not approve of her means.”

  “Just kill the bitch,” I insisted. “Problem solved.”

  “It isn’t just Vivian,” Caryl protested. “We’ve known for some time that she’s the head of a network, but we’ve yet to identify any of her conspirators.”

  “Other than David and Teo, you mean?”

  David had the decency to cringe. Caryl blinked, and tears started to her eyes. “Teo?”

  Right. She’d missed that bit. Also Gloria dying, but I thought now would be a bad time to bring that up. “Yeah,” I said gently. “I think it was Vivian he was calling when we were planning this little trip.”

  “Teo?” she said again, faintly. “No. No, not Teo. He taught me to play hopscotch.” Her eyes took on a glassy look, and she slipped her thumb into her mouth.

  “Aaand we’ve lost her,” I said flatly. I looked around. “Where the hell is Tjuan? Didn’t he come in here too?”

  Still staring vacantly, Caryl took her thumb out of her mouth to point toward a place by the altar where the flimsy wood exterior had fallen away. It left a triangle-shaped gap just barely large enough for a person to squeeze back out into the desert.

  “Why the hell did he leave you alone?” I wondered aloud. “All right then. David, help me and Caryl to the doorway.”

  “What for?”

  “Just do it,” I snapped. “I’m the director now.”

  David had the decency to shut up and let me lean on him so I could hobble one-legged to the door with Caryl clinging to my other hand.

  “What’s the matter, Vivian?” I shouted melodramatically toward the square. “Afraid of a little make-believe holy ground? Why don’t you just haul Johnny back up so he can de-glamour it for you? Oh, that’s right, because you cut the fucking rope just to hear someone die, you psychotic moron.”

  I could see her through the doorway as she strode onto the sagging porch. She stopped just short of entering but stood where I could almost touch her, one hand on her hip. Her ­satiny red skirts were dulled with dust.

  “Is this where I charge furiously into the chapel because you so skillfully taunted me?” she said. “Instead of that, how about I stand here filing my nails while you starve to death?”

  “If that was your Plan A, you’d be filing your nails, not talking. You want something from one of us.”

  “Well, darling,” she said amiably, “that backstabbing geezer of yours seems to have pushed my GPS down a well.”

  I started to laugh. “Oh, this is fantastic. You don’t know your way out of here either.”

  “So, what do you say?” Vivian batted her eyes. “Can we be pals? Let bygones be bygones? A fey’s word is bond, and I will promise not to cause you harm if you will in return promise to dispel the ward on this soundstage and keep your cold little hands off me. Do we have a deal?”

/>   Caryl popped her thumb out of her mouth and leaned into me. “Say yes,” she whispered in my ear. I could smell blood on her breath.

  “Promise to undo what you did to Caryl and Teo,” I said. “Cause no harm to them, or Tjuan either.”

  “Bah,” said Vivian with a little wave of her hand. “It isn’t worth leaving four witnesses just to save myself a few days of trial and error. You have five seconds to take the deal I offered, or I am walking away.”

  48

  Vivian actually started to count down. “Five,” she prompted cheerfully.

  I stood there, feeling anger clouding my higher thought. She’d killed Gloria, maimed Teo, broken Caryl. I hadn’t gotten far enough in my therapy to swallow the bitter rage that rose up in my throat. “I’m not negotiating with you,” I said.

  “Four.”

  Caryl tugged my hand. “Do it, do it, do it!”

  “Three.”

  “Please, Millie.”

  The childlike desperation in her tone almost undid me, but I violently shook my head. “She’s asking me to let her kill you all—”

  “She can’t kill me,” David reminded me.

  “Shut up,” I snapped.

  “Two.”

  I didn’t care. Nothing in this world, even fear of starving to death and rotting on a soundstage, could make me deal with her. But then I saw Tjuan approaching cautiously behind her, holding my prosthetic.

  “All right!” I said to Vivian. “Stop counting. You have a deal. But first . . .”

  “First what?”

  Tjuan gave me a questioning look from behind Vivian. He pantomimed tossing the prosthetic to me and raised a brow.

  I shook my head emphatically.

  “What?” prompted Vivian irritably, just as Tjuan gave me a very similar look.

  “Something just hit me,” I said to Vivian.

  “What?” she said impatiently.

  “I mean, hit me figuratively, as in a realization. Not the way your friend Rivenholt hit me earlier with my own leg.”