She doesn’t want you. Don’t you see? Lily loves Richard, not you.
Of course it was true. Maybe Richard hadn’t kidnapped Lily at all. Maybe they had run off together simply to get away from him, the worthless screw-up. Why was he even searching for her? He should leave her alone, let her be happy with Richard. It was the right thing to do. Maybe if he stayed away, she could finally have the life she wanted without him around to mess it up.
You should disappear. No one wants you. You only make things worse.
Maybe he should leave.
No matter where you go, you always bring death and sorrow. The world would be a better place without you.
Maybe he should just...end it.
MERROOOW!
The furious yowl was accompanied by fiery pricks of pain across the back of his hand. Sebastian jerked away, coming suddenly out of a daze and dropping whatever he had been clutching. A knife clattered to the cracked patio and Sebastian stared down at it in frozen shock. It was one of his kitchen knives. Where in the world had it come from? How had it managed to get in his hand?
He looked up to find Sir Kipling crouched in front of him, fangs bared, fur standing on end. Looking back down at his hand, he saw four claw marks shining faintly red in the light pouring from the kitchen window. When had it gotten so dark?
With a trembling hand, Sebastian reached for his Ring of Cacophony on top of the bucket and shoved it onto his finger. Right away his head cleared, and he felt like he could breathe again.
Eyes burning, he leaned forward, propped his elbows on his knees, and buried his face in his hands. Salty wetness dripped down through his fingers and fell to the ground, watering the desiccated weeds.
What was wrong with him?
A soft, warm pressure on his knee made him glance between his fingers to see Sir Kipling standing on his hind legs, front paws braced on Sebastian’s leg and whiskered face peering up in concern. “Go away, Kip. I’m not worth the trouble,” Sebastian muttered and hid his face again.
The softness suddenly wasn’t so soft anymore, and Sebastian sat up with a gasp as claws dug into his knee.
“Holy smokes, cat! Get off me!”
Unsurprisingly, Sir Kipling ignored him and jumped up into his lap instead to wave a fluffy tail in his face, which made Sebastian splutter. Before Sebastian could push him off, the cat jumped down again and went to sit beside something white lying on the ground. Sebastian squinted and realized it was a notebook with a pencil lying on top. How Sir Kipling had managed to dig up a notebook from all the mess in his apartment, Sebastian had no idea. But the cat’s command was clear, and with a resigned sigh, he retrieved the notebook and wrote out an alphabet on one page in big blocky letters—then added a period and a question mark as an afterthought. He tried to set it back down on the ground, but Sir Kipling was having none of it. After much meowing and a few claw pricks, Sebastian finally figured out what the darn furball wanted, and they ended up with Sir Kipling sitting in his lap while he held the notebook in front of him within paw’s reach, the light from the kitchen window giving enough illumination to see by.
With slow and patient movements, Sir Kipling began to “speak.”
WHY TAKE OFF RING?
Sebastian sighed. “I don’t know. Because I’m an idiot, probably. And because I...I’m just so sick of not being good enough. I’m nothing without my trinkets and favors. I guess a masochistic part of me wanted to prove how worthless I am—and man, did I,” he said. He glanced down again at the knife lying on the cold concrete and a shiver ran through him.
STUPID.
“Yeah, I know I am.”
NO. NOT YOU. YOUR ACTIONS. FOOLISH CHOICE TO TAKE OFF RING. FOOLISH CHOICE TO LISTEN TO VOICES.
“I know, but...they’re right.” Sebastian shivered again, remembering how fully and completely he had believed them. He had felt and known every word to be true down to the depths of his soul.
NO. THEY ARE LIES.
“But...how can you be sure? They felt so real...they still feel real…”
FEELINGS CAN LIE. DO NOT PUT TRUST IN FEELINGS. PUT TRUST IN TRUTH. HAVE FAITH THAT TRUTH IS TRUE EVEN WHEN YOU DO NOT FEEL IT.
Sebastian ran his free hand through his hair, resisting the urge to pull on it in exasperation. “But how do I tell the truth from the lies if I can’t rely on my own feelings to guide me?”
FEELINGS CAN HELP. FEELINGS CAN GUIDE. BUT FEELINGS DO NOT MAKE TRUTH.
“Then how do I know what the truth is?”
IF YOU SEARCH YOU WILL FIND IT.
“Well apparently I just suck, then, because I’ve been searching my whole life and all I’ve come up with so far is that I’m useless!” He wanted to stand up and storm away, but Sir Kipling’s firm weight in his lap stopped him.
NOT USELESS. STUBBORN AND FOOLISH.
“Well, thanks, Kip. I feel so much better now,” Sebastian said, not caring if the cat took offense at his sarcasm. “Those are definitely the qualities I need to save Lily from probable torture and death at the hands of crazy, powerful wizards. Why did I ever think I needed magic or rings or fae in the first place?”
YOU HAVE VALUE APART FROM ACTIONS. APART FROM POSSESSIONS. APART FROM POWERS. YOU ARE VALUABLE.
“Pffft. Yeah, right. Are you high on catnip or something?”
YOU ARE CREATION.
“Uhhh, what?”
YOU ARE CREATED AS LITTLE CREATOR. FAE AND ANGELS ARE SERVANTS. DEMONS DISOBEDIENT SERVANTS. HUMANS ARE LITTLE CREATORS. YOU ARE SACRED.
“Okaaay,” Sebastian said, wondering if this had anything to do with his aunt’s mysterious euphemism from that morning. Was it all some weird magical metaphor? “I’m not really following, but I’d love to see you call Thiriel a servant to her face.” A weak smile lifted his lips at the thought, though the mention of the fae queen also brought on a flush of shame.
ASK HER. SHE WILL TELL YOU THE SAME. YOU ARE SACRED.
Sebastian shook his head in disbelief, dropped the notebook on the bucket, and leaned back in the chair, rubbing his face with both hands. He knew the annoying ball of fluff was wise in ways not even Lily could explain. But that didn’t make the cat any easier to understand, and part of him wanted to push Sir Kipling away and wallow in self-pity. But self-pity wouldn’t help Lily, and he hadn’t sacrificed his word and his honor just to give up now. That meant he had to listen to Sir Kipling, even if he didn’t want to. Maybe now was one of those times he needed to trust that the truth was the truth even if he didn’t understand it—much less feel it.
“Okay, I’m sacred, whatever the heck that means. So what? That doesn’t save Lily.”
Sir Kipling gave him an imperious stare, and he suddenly remembered the notebook. He grabbed it and brought it close so it was within the cat’s reach.
SACRED IS TRUTH. TRUTH IS SHIELD. SHIELD STOPS LIES OF DESPAIR TRYING TO KILL YOU. DEAD SEBASTIAN CANNOT SAVE LILY.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Sebastian muttered, following at least that part of Sir Kipling’s grammatically challenged cat logic.
TRUTH IS SHIELD, Sir Kipling repeated, his paw still moving as slowly and patiently as when he’d started. SO MAKE SHIELD. SAVE LILY.
Sebastian looked down at the Ring of Cacophony, now safely back on his finger. “A shield, huh?”
And with that small, seemingly insignificant thought, something inside him clicked into place. A shield was a tool, just like armor and weapons were tools. Sebastian thought for a minute more, turning the analogy over in his mind and trying to see where it led. Who used armor and weapons and shields? Soldiers did—sort of—but that didn’t quite fit.
Then it hit him: a knight.
Knights used all those things. They depended on them to do their job. But a knight was still a knight, whether he was in armor or out of it. A knight didn’t hide behind his shield because he was inadequate—at least the good ones didn’t. A knight used his shield to complement his training and give protection against things too powerful for him. A knight wasn’t we
ak because he was born with soft skin easily poked by arrows. A knight was weak if he neglected proper training and relied on his shield to do all the work.
So...he needed to think like a knight?
The very idea made him groan and cover his face again. Of all the horribly cliché things he could have imagined for inspiration, his brain just had to have picked a knight.
He was such a lame schmuck.
But if it worked, it worked. He comforted himself with the thought that, even if history and ever-changing culture had done a number on the ideal, it was still an ideal for a reason. He wondered if Lily would laugh if she could read his thoughts right now. Probably.
But with that mental image lighting up his thoughts—the picture of Lily’s lips turned upwards in mirth while her eyes danced with mischief—he discovered that the glow in his heart hadn’t gone out. It had simply been smothered, and now it burned away the suffocating blackness and shone stronger than before.
Dropping his hands and looking down at his lap, Sebastian met Sir Kipling’s yellow-eyed stare and gave a wan smile. “Thanks for the pep talk, Dr. Phil, and for...well, for saving my life, I guess.” He glanced at the back of his hand again and grimaced—Sir Kipling’s claws had cut pretty deep. He might just have an extra set of scars over top the ones already there. He would most definitely not be taking off his ring again. Ever. Even if he did finally have his head screwed on right—or at least no longer shoved up his butt—he had no desire to test his new “shield” against those voices.
“Well, Kip, we’ve got things to do. Hop on down and let’s be about it.”
Sir Kipling rose, stretched, and meowed in a long-suffering sort of way, as if to say, “Took you long enough.” Then he jumped down and trotted off into the darkness, probably to go catch something small and tasty for dinner.
Shivering in the deepening chill, Sebastian gathered his things from the upturned bucket. Lily’s charm bracelet clinked sadly as he lifted it, and a sudden inspiration had him hurrying inside. He still felt a wrenching pang at the sight of the empty windowsill, but he pushed the feeling away. Now was not the time to grieve.
Somewhere in the deep and unexplored depths of his kitchen drawers, he finally found what he was looking for: a paperclip and a pair of pliers. With tender care, he fashioned a link to replace the one that had been bent beyond repair when Lily’s bracelet had broken. When he was finished, he held the piece of jewelry up to examine it in the light and decided that, while he wouldn’t be taking up jewelry-making anytime soon, it would do until he had a chance to have it properly repaired. He slipped the bracelet carefully back into his pocket, lungs suddenly tight with the need to see it once again adorning Lily’s delicate wrist.
He would find her. He had to.
Still standing in the middle of his kitchen, he put his hands on his hips and looked around. If he were a knight, what would he do next? His stomach growled, providing him with the answer, and he took a few minutes to feast on pickles and ketchup—a combination he was actually quite fond of—as well as a bag of potato chips he found buried in a cabinet. More food would have to wait until later.
For about three seconds, he considered knocking on the bedroom door and asking Mallory if she’d made any progress. Then he remembered that he liked having all of his body parts whole and functioning, so he began to pace back and forth in the living room instead, hands clasped behind his back.
If he were a knight and had lost his armor and weapons, what would he do?
Well, get new ones, obviously. But what “weapons” were left to him? Demons were out—he was never going to make that mistake again—the fae were out, and he doubted he could amass enough wizard-spelled trinkets to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Roger, John Faust, and Morgan le Fay. So what other options did he have?
Stopping in the middle of the room, Sebastian unclasped his hands and looked down at them. Think. Mallory was a mundane like him, and she got by just fine with her own two hands—and feet, and knees, and elbows, and all the other parts of her she had honed into deadly weapons. Granted, she didn’t have to contend with his little handicap when it came to mundane technology, but if—no, when—they got out of this mess alive, surely he and Lily could put their heads together and figure out some way to mitigate that.
The sound of the bedroom door opening made Sebastian spin around. Mallory stood in the doorway, her face back to its imitation of stone. “Do you have any bottled water?”
“Uh, nope. But I can get you a clean cup,” Sebastian offered, heading for the kitchen. He found some disposable cups after rooting through his cupboards. He owned few dishes besides the set of whiskey glasses he used when he set drinks out on the windowsill—partying pixies tended to tip over the light disposable cups. Deciding to be extra helpful, he even filled the cup with tap water and took it to the bedroom, where he sat it down on the corner of the desk. Mallory was back in his chair, face glued to her laptop. The light from the screen gave her black hair a glossy sheen.
“So, uh, how’s it going?” he said, unable to stay silent. He just couldn’t accept that there was nothing he could do to help. If only he could get Mallory to let him.
Mallory ignored him.
“Look, I get that you’re used to doing things your own way, but two heads are better than one. If you’d just let me know what you’re working on I bet I could help speed things up. I’ve got my own computer, and I’ve done tons of research and digging in my line of work.”
She still didn’t reply.
Sebastian sighed. “I don’t know what I, or Lily for that matter, ever did to make you hate us so much. But, since you took the job and I’m available, it would be stupid not to use all the resources we have on this. Any second could be Lily’s last.” Sebastian stopped, needing to swallow before he could squeeze more words past the tightness in his throat. “So, let me help speed things up. If you’d wanted her dead, you would’ve killed her back in England.”
“Maybe I’m regretting passing up the opportunity,” Mallory said, still not looking at him.
Sebastian swallowed again, and tried to remember all the lofty things he’d been telling himself not fifteen minutes ago. All about truth and shields and knights. Mallory was probably just as messed up inside as he was—or more so, with a crazy psycho like John Faust for a dad. He needed to disregard her words and get to what was actually behind them.
“You don’t mean that,” he prodded her. “Otherwise why would you have taken this job?”
Silence. “I have my reasons.”
Sebastian frowned, mind working. “But, in that note you left Lily when you disappeared on us last September, you sounded all grateful and sisterly. Lily hasn’t seen or even heard from you since then, so what did she do between then and now that’s got you all grumpy and full of spite?”
He expected Mallory to brush him off, to insult him, or at the very least to threaten him with dismemberment. Instead, to his great surprise, she slowly straightened her back and turned the desk chair to face him. Her face was a mask, but her eyes told the story her face was trying to hide. Sebastian recognized that look—he’d seen the same expression for years in his own bathroom mirror. It was the face of trauma, the mask of someone who’d suffered so much that they’d cut themselves off from their feelings and their past just so they could endure the next moment. And the next moment. And the next.
“My personal life is none of your business, and I work alone,” she said, her voice flat. Dead. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll walk out of this room and stop asking questions before it gets you killed.”
For some reason, her words didn’t make Sebastian flinch—they threatened to make him smile.
STUBBORN AND FOOLISH, Kip had said. Sebastian realized the cat was right, in more ways than one.
Leaning against the doorframe, he took a deep breath and braced himself to do something extremely painful. It was pretty much last on his list of Horrible Ways to Needlessly Torture Yourself, right next to �
��pulling out your own fingernails” and “drinking unsweetened tea.” It had to be done, though, because in his experience, the more you pounded on someone’s walls, the higher they built them. He was guilty of it himself. But he remembered that the times when Lily had been able to draw him out were always when she herself had emerged from behind her walls and made herself vulnerable.
If this didn’t work, it was going to suck. A lot.
“When I was sixteen, both my parents were...killed in a car wreck. Did you know that?”
Mallory didn’t look like she wanted to answer, but finally she shook her head.
“Worst day of my life,” he continued, voice catching as old pain throbbed inside him like a deep bruise that never went away. He resisted the urge to hunch his shoulders, and instead shrugged, pushing past the memories. “My brother is a prick and we’re not on speaking terms, and my closest family besides him is ye old bat, Madam Barrington. She ‘raised’ me until I was eighteen, and let me tell you, those years were flat-out miserable.
“My dad was a wizard, but he hated magic, so I never knew much about it growing up, besides that I couldn’t do it. After they died, I needed something, anything to hold onto, so I made a bunch of dumb mistakes and got mixed up with demons. Got my best friend killed—second worst day of my life, by the way—tried to hunt down those responsible in revenge, and Aunt B disowned me because of it. Didn’t manage to avenge my friend, but did manage to hurt more people and make a bunch of demons mad at me. Then I made a deal with the fae and got some handy magic, only later realizing I’d basically promised them my eternal servitude, got cold feet, broke my oath, got dumped by them, and now I’m here—still haunted by demons, in case you’re wondering—and trying really hard to save my only friend in the world from your insane monster of a father.”
When Sebastian finally stopped talking, silence fell between them. He didn’t look at Mallory to see her reaction, but he could tell she was still as a marble statue. A heavy sadness had come over him while he looked back on his life. He’d been through a lot of hurt. Yet even as he felt the sadness sink into his bones, a grim determination stubbornly stuck up its head and pointed out that, despite it all, he was still here. He’d survived. That had to mean something, right?
Love, Lies, and Hocus Pocus Identity Page 11
