I blinked. “Does she do this often?”
“Every time,” he said, winking. For some reason, I felt my cheeks redden. Quentin scowled.
“You can set your clock by it,” Colin added.
“If you bother to set a clock at all,” said the brunette. The shouting stopped and she looked at her watch. “Twenty-one minutes, eight languages. She’s right on schedule.”
Talking to the entire group at once was making my headache worse. “Is there somewhere we can go to wait for the Countess?”
“Sure—have you eaten? You’re welcome to wait in the cafeteria.” Elliot glanced to the brunette, who shrugged and offered another brilliant smile. “You can get something in your stomachs while you wait for January to come talk to you.”
“Great,” I said, and realized I meant it. Headaches make me hungry. Next to me, Quentin perked up. Teenage boys are almost always ready for another meal. “Food would be wonderful.”
“All right, then. Follow me.” Elliot started down one of the paths into the maze, waving for us to follow. I shrugged and did as I was bid, nodding to the others as I passed. I had nothing else to do, and Quentin was looking almost pleasant for the first time since we’d arrived. Maybe after he ate something he’d stop glaring all the time.
“Later, Elliot,” called the blond, joining Colin at the water cooler. The brunette had gone back to her notes, and Peter was wandering calmly down one of the aisles. It seemed this really was just “business as usual.”
“See you,” Elliot said, waving again. “Keep walking,” he advised, more quietly. “They can smell fear; they’ll be on you like hawks if they know they make you nervous.”
“You’re pulling my leg . . . right?” Quentin glanced to me, anxious.
“He’s kidding,” I said. People who stand around taking notes while their friends scream usually aren’t dangerous to anyone but themselves.
“Yes, I’m pulling your leg,” Elliot said. “You both look so serious.”
“I’m on official business,” said Quentin, tone going stiff and formal.
I shrugged. “I just have a headache.”
“Some food and a nice cup of coffee will clear that right up.” Elliot stopped at a blue steel door and pushed it open, letting sunshine flood into the area. From behind the wall, the woman that had been swearing earlier shouted, “Turn off that damn sun!”
“Sorry, Gordan!” Elliot called back, leading us outside. The door slammed behind Quentin, vanishing into the brick wall like it had never existed. If I squinted, I could just make out the handle. Elliot caught my expression, and smiled. “We like things tidy.”
“Right,” I said. Quentin was standing as close as he could manage, nearly touching my elbow. Shaking my head, I turned to consider the grounds—and froze.
The landscaping was better than the interior decoration, possibly because it didn’t exist in the real world. The sky was a nonoffensive shade of blue, and the lush green grass was studded with a froth of tiny white flowers that I recognized from my mother’s estate. Only the cats were the same. They were everywhere, watching us from picnic tables and the crooks of the carefully trimmed trees. At some point between entering and leaving the building, we’d crossed into the Summerlands. That did explain at least part of why the place seemed to be so deserted—someone inside the knowe would be invisible to someone outside of it, and vice versa. I doubled my estimation of the local feline population. If half of them were inside the knowe and half of them were outside . . . that was a lot of cats. They probably avoided the buildings because they didn’t want to transition between worlds again.
Why would a computer company have an unannounced gate between their mortal and fae locations and a cat population the SPCA would envy? I glanced at Elliot. He was continuing blithely, not seeming to see anything strange. Right. If he wanted to play things that way, that was how we’d play them, for now. Keeping my voice level, I asked, “Is everyone here so . . .”
“Weird?” Elliot asked. “Oh, professionally so. If you don’t mind my asking, when was your last shower?” I stared at him.
Quentin’s mouth dropped open, and he sputtered, “How . . . how can you . . .”
“Relax, relax!” Elliot laughed, holding up his hands. “You just look a bit frayed around the edges. May I clean you?”
“What . . . oh,” I said, catching on. The Bannick are bath-spirits; they’re obsessed with cleanliness, and Faerie being what it is, they can sometimes enforce their own ideas about hygiene. Nothing cleans a person like a Bannick. “Sure.”
“Toby . . .”
“Go along with it. This is interesting.”
“So I have your consent?” Elliot asked, looking between us. We both nodded. “Excellent. If you would close your eyes and hold your breath?”
Right. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and held it. Heat and moisture broke over me in a lye-scented wave. I understood why Elliot asked: it was like being scrubbed by hundreds of swift, impartial hands, and I might’ve taken it the wrong way if I hadn’t been prepared. The feeling of damp heat abated after about thirty seconds, and I opened my eyes, looking first at Quentin, then myself. We looked like we’d just received the deluxe treatment at an upscale spa; my tennis shoes were white and clean, and even a small hole in the hem of my jeans had been patched with tiny, near- invisible darns. I pointed at it, glancing curiously toward Elliot.
He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I can’t fix clothes on purpose, but if you’re wearing them when you have your ‘bath,’ they end up mended. All part of being clean.”
“Cool,” I said.
“So that’s what your hair looks like when it’s been brushed.” Quentin grinned.
“Stuff it,” I said.
“Now that you’re presentable, if you’ll come with me, Ms. Daye, Mister, well, Quentin?” Elliot said, opening the door into the next building. We followed him. This one looked more like a dorm, with long halls equipped with dozens of doors. “I hope you like donuts. Our cafeteria staff is out this week, so we’re having to make do.”
He continued to chatter as he led us through a series of increasingly mismatched halls. Some stuck with the dormitory model; others looked like they’d been stolen from hospitals, high schools, or government buildings. I dropped back a bit, drawing even with Quentin, and murmured, “Keep an eye open.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’ll explain when we’re alone.” Elliot looked back and waved, urging us on. I flashed a false smile, calling, “We’re coming!”
“Just don’t get lost!” he called, and turned a corner. I exchanged a glance with Quentin, and we hurried to catch up, meeting him just in front of the cafeteria door.
He held the door open for us, offering a shark-toothed grin as he said, “After you.”
“Great,” I replied, and slipped into the cafeteria. It was a vast, echoing cavern of a room, studded with oddly-shaped white tables. Vending machines lined the walls. Quentin and I wound up seated with Elliot pressing coffee and donuts into our hands. That kept us distracted for several crucial minutes, giving him time to murmur vague reassurances and dart out the door.
He’d been gone for several minutes before I put down my coffee, saying, “All right: did you notice anything odd about the landscaping?”
“You mean the part where it’s in the Summerlands?”
“That would be it, yeah. We’re in a Shallowing.” I shook my head. “I think the bawn is at the front door of the other building. We didn’t cross back while we were on the lawn, either.” The bawn of a knowe, any knowe, represented the point where you crossed between worlds. Usually it’s pretty well marked, at least to fae eyes. This one hadn’t been.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. But I think we should be careful. They didn’t tell us we’d entered their knowe, and that’s a little bit suspicious.” I looked at my freshly cleaned hand. “They’re being too friendly without actually telling us anything.”
“Right.” He poked in the box until he found a powdered donut. “Toby?”