“Sixty-two,” whispered Darla, not looking at me. “Dancers, that is.”
Fourteen dance in their locked rooms, added Stitches.
“That is not entirely helpful,” I noted. I rose. Huldra or no, Elf or no, I’d had enough sitting there stirring the world’s worst soup while my junior partner danced to a cursed trinket’s tune and my best friend died a second time from sheer grief.
Darla’s breath caught in her chest and she moved away from me. I looked around, saw Buttercup running, laying the rope I’d finally untangled out in a circle around us.
It was a game Mama had taught her when we first took Buttercup in. Run and lay string on the floor, in this door and out another. We’d reel it in, her screeching and giggling, until we caught her up in a hug.
Hey, it kept her from jumping through walls.
“Buttercup!” I bellowed. “Stop that.”
The banshee laughed and scampered on. I caught up the end of the rope and tugged, halting Buttercup long enough for Darla to scoop her up.
“Honey,” said Darla, her eyes wary as I gathered up the banshee-hair rope. “What are you planning to do?”
“I’m calling off the dance.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Stitches to try and get the Regent’s lady friend to help?”
“I’m tired of waiting for the Regent to pry himself away from his game of whist. I’m going to see if I can tie this rope around the music box and pull it close to the shadow. We’ll see how the bone-men like dancing. Evis, will you keep everyone back?”
He just nodded.
I stomped away while Darla had her hands full. Mama looked up as I passed.
“It ain’t a half-bad idea, boy,” she said. “You ought to let me do it, though. I’m protected from all manner of hex-craft.”
“Not this time, Mama, but thanks for the offer.”
The halfdead parted to let me through, and I zigged and zagged between sweat-soaked dancers. Gertriss saw me as she passed, and her eyes went instantly wide, though she could not bring herself to speak. The Lady Rondalee kept singing, her voice showing no signs of strain.
Gertriss spun away.
“If you’ve got any river magic to spare, I’m about to need it,” I shouted to the stage.
The Lady smiled and started a new song.
Mean ol’ love, she broke my heart,
though I was always true,
Mean ol’ love, she broke my heart,
and now she’s comin’ for you…
I kicked a chair out of my way and put a small loop in the end of the rope. My intention was to slide the rope over and around the music box and hope some magical quality in Buttercup’s banshee hair would allow the rope to take hold. Then I’d drag the damned thing close enough to chuck it as far back in the shadow-realm as I could throw.
The miniature dancers circled the lid, bowing and spinning. I could barely hear the tinkling of the music box as it played.
“This isn’t your world,” I said, holding the rope just above the box and adjusting the diameter of the loop. “You don’t belong here and these people don’t belong to you. Now let go, damn you.”
I dropped the rope and yanked it tight.
Damned if the box didn’t jerk halfway off the table.
I pulled. The box moved. Its apparent weight was far in excess of what it should have been, as though it were twice its size and full of lead, but it moved.
The halfdead scattered about me and began to shout. I turned and barely dodged a blow from a man dressed in the male toy dancer’s elaborate costume.
A trio of shots rang out. Puffs of lace and velvet blew off the man’s waistcoat. Another fusillade of rifle fire sounded, bullets whizzing a hand’s breadth from my face, and I managed to step away from a slashing blade just as the female dancer, now full-size and furious, charged at my back.
If she was struck, she didn’t show it. Neither did her partner, who also failed to bleed or fall.
Halfdead flew past, converging on the dancers, swords flashing, rifle butts rising and falling. Both dancers went down flailing, but down they went.
More halfdead arrived. The dancers never made a sound. As they lost clothes to the struggle I saw complicated metal workings appear-gears and cogs and levers turning uselessly against the ferocity of two dozen determined halfdead.
I gave the rope a mighty heave and the music box, still playing, crashed to the deck.
The tiny dancers still danced, although the automatons lay smashed and still on the floor.
I heaved and struggled. The box slid across the carpet, leaving gashes in its wake. The thin rope cut into my palms, and I marveled at its strength.
Evis appeared at my side, took hold of the banshee-hair rope, and dragged the cursed box easily. I matched his pace until we reached the ranks of grinning skeletons, who clacked their dry teeth and smacked their long swords against their hip-bones in greeting.
“Cut them down,” shouted Evis. He smiled for the first time all night. “Cut them down and keep firing. We’re going in.”
The guns erupted with smoke and thunder. Halfdead closed ranks around us, adding rifle fire to the noise. Darla came to my side and emptied her gun into the dark.
The last of the bone-men fell.
Stitches strode up, hood thrown back, her ruined eyes aimed right at the shadow. She produced a handful of what looked like dust and pitched it out over the shattered heaps of bones.
Nothing happened, but she seemed to be waiting. A pair of fresh skeletons stepped out of the shadow and were brought down before they took another step.
Evis bent, took the music box in both hands, and lifted it.
I’d never seen a halfdead strain with exertion before. Evis clenched his jaw and his lips curled back and I could hear vampire joints popping and creaking against the effort.
But he picked the thing up, and held it aloft, and took a pair of steps forward.
Bones crunched beneath his boots. I followed, Toadsticker at the ready.
Hurry, said Stitches. They are massing beyond the dark.
“Dance, you bastards,” growled Evis. He bent his knees and bunched and threw the box forward right into the heart of the shadow.
The shadow exploded, bursting with harsh white light.
In that instant, I saw through the shadow and the Queen’s hull. Saw through to somewhere else-somewhere blasted and ruined and savaged. Nightmares roamed there, by the tens of thousands, by the hundreds of thousands. The ranks of the bone-men were the least of them.
Before the intensity of the light blinded me, I saw great vast, oily bulks writhing and shuffling, all making their way toward us. Some crawled. Some walked on legs that towered up far and away into the sky. Some oozed and slithered and rolled.
But all were bearing down on us, waiting for the darkness to take root and admit them.
I reached out, grabbed what I hoped was Evis, and yanked him back. I heard Darla shouting as from a great distance. Something out in the dark bellowed and something answered with a roar, and then hands fell upon me and hauled me out of the shadow.
I blinked, stumbling, bones crunching with every step. Darla was shouting at me, but my ears were ringing and I couldn’t make out her words.
Someone pushed a chair under me. I sat, rubbing my eyes, waiting for the bell in my ears to stop its damned pealing.
When I could see faces through the after-images left by the light, I knew we’d failed.
Darla was fighting back tears. Mama was muttering cuss words and laying into her blunted cleaver with a whetstone. Evis sat, head bowed, unmoving.
I could just make out the shapes of the ensorcelled dancers, still spinning and bowing. One went limp as I watched, but could not fall. Instead his body bumped and swayed, as though held upright by a rope around his neck.