We were reflections of one another? Maybe her paralysis was my path to action.
I grabbed the back of the chair with both hands, lifting the chair over the desk.
On my way to the window, I twisted my entire body to swing it at the door frame. Wood splintered, the chair back largely detaching from the base, four prongs of sharp wood sticking out.
“Here we go, blood to seal the deal,” the priest said, “and a prayer, hm.”
I slashed my palm with the wood. The tattooed flesh didn’t cut.
I grabbed my sweatshirt, lifting it, and slashed at my hip instead.
Dropping my sweatshirt and wiping my hand in the same motion, I slammed my blood-wet hand against the glass.
“Come, Evan!” I shouted.
The timing was as ideal as it could get. The maenad Metrodora was in the process of putting him in the ‘box’ of books.
“My power for you!” I said. But Evan was already free, flying through the gap in between the box and the approaching lid. He plunged past the border of the circle, stray feathers scattering as if he were scraping against something that wasn’t even there. The ensuing flight was ungainly, devoid of coordination and straight lines, like a sloppy paper airplane that just happened to be flapping its wings.
He made it through the doorway from the library to the hallway, though.
Connection, I thought. Our connection had been cut, but that didn’t mean new and different ones couldn’t be formed.
I was a hollow Blake-shaped thing, all the gaps filled with Drains-stuff and spirits.
Evan was a dead little boy’s soul, molded into a bird body by the familiar ritual, the gap from our missing connection stuffed with more spirits.
If I was, as Faysal said, instinctively devouring spirits to shore up the gaps, then Evan was probably doing the same.
I knew he’d be receptive to taking anything I had to offer. I just had to give.
And now he was free, flying under the influence.
The connection I’d just forged, giving him a bit of myself, apparently drew him toward me. A moth to a candle.
“Stop,” I said. “Don’t-”
He turned, flapping wildly in some attempt to stop or stall his forward movement. He succeeded in only making a sharp right, sharp left, and then hit the mirror. He dropped out of my field of view.
“Fuck,” I said.
Jeremy was striding our way, flanked by maenad and satyrs.
With one hand, he swept the frame off the wall.
I moved before it could shatter. Other pieces of glass were falling, leaving me no place to go but down.
The second floor had only a few pictures and windows. Less than there had been the last time I’d been there. I headed straight for the first floor, instead.
When I looked, craning my head to see, I could make out the patches of light, distorted because I was viewing them from the wrong side, winking out, one by one.
I’d apparently made myself enough of a nuisance that he wasn’t interested in talking.
My hand was still bloody, though the gash at my waist was closing, knitting together like knotty wood, an instant scar of sorts.
Evan was an escape artist, so to speak, he’d evaded the Hyena, and spirits of freedom and survival and whatever else had been attracted to him, shoring up his soul in a kind of anti-wraith way.
If someone was going to help here, it would be him. But he couldn’t even fly straight.
I heard Evan’s voice, growing louder on the approach
“Crap, crap, crapcrap, crahp, craahhhhppppp…”
Evan turned, bumping the wall as he rounded the bend in the staircase. He managed to fold his wing in before he collided, keeping it from snapping or breaking. He didn’t start flapping until he was far enough away from the wall, and his reactions were slow. He nearly hit the ground before he managed to fly again.
A satyr and maenad jumped down to the landing behind him, not wasting a second in continuing down the staircase, chasing him.
“Oh crap!”
“Over here!” I shouted.
He clipped the couch as he turned, spiraling violently before he managed to get his bearings. Having learned from his mistake upstairs, he didn’t try to perch or stop abruptly. He set himself down, legs pulled up against his body, and coasted on the hardwood, spinning in a half-circle as he slid. He came to a stop with his back to me.
He was darker around some of the edges, as though feathers were stained. He really had taken in a bit of me. A bit of the Drains.
“Stay put,” I said.
He pulled his wings and feet tight against his body, shortening his neck.
I held the Hyena in plain sight.
The satyr cleared the couch with an easy jump, one hand on the back of the piece of furniture. The maenad slowed, pacing with a kind of menace in her eyes.
“Crap,” Evan said.
Both the satyr and the maenad had stopped where they were.
“Here, birdy, birdy, birdy,” the satyr said, singsong.
“Nuh uh.”
Whatever else was going on, they were spooked by me. That counted for something.
Evan was flying poorly and wasn’t successfully putting together any words longer than a syllable. Even those lone syllables weren’t that well put together.
We had to make do.
A book flew through the air. I dodged to the front window, where a single pane was intact enough for me to stand in.
It had been thrown by the maenad. The satyr was free to lunge for Evan.
“Crap!” Evan dodged out of the way.
I pressed my hand against the window. I closed my eyes. “Spirits, I know I’m not a practitioner, but I could use help. As you managed the giving, please take. Give me the poisons that course through Evan Matthieu’s-”
Another thrown book. It hooked on the curtain, losing much of its momentum, and glanced harmlessly against the window.
“-body. Let me be the one who is drunk on the priest’s illusions. I offer power, and I offer it knowing I might permanently change as a consequence.”
Nothing.
Fuck you, spirits, I thought.
Too complex. I couldn’t manage the complex stuff. Simpler stuff only.
Options. There would be no convincing these Others. I couldn’t reach them to hurt them. Something in the environment?
“Evan,” I said.
“Gah!” he shouted, turning less than sharply in an attempt to avoid the satyr’s reaching hand.
“Did Rose set up anything? Countermeasures? Ready summons?”
“Ahhhhh!”
“Evan!”
“Yes! Crap! Help!”
Great. There was possibly an option, but Evan wasn’t in a state or a position to spell it out.
We needed breathing room, but these creatures wouldn’t stop anytime soon, if my brief skirmish with the maenad earlier was any clue.
He veered toward the maenad. She didn’t glance his way as she picked up another book.
But I saw muscles tense in her legs.
“Back!” I shouted.
Evan steered himself back and away. His reactions were slow.
The maenad twisted on the spot, reaching for him.
He managed to stay out of the reach of her arms, dodging the satyr. The maenad had to move around the satyr to chase, which gave Evan a chance.
He managed to wedge himself into the one-and-a-half inch gap between the tops of the bookshelves and the ceiling.
The satyr leaped onto the bookshelf, hands and feet on the individual shelves. The maenad wasn’t far behind. One hand groped in the gap for Evan. I saw only the paleness of his feathered belly as he squirmed his way to the side, moving to the far end of the long row of bookshelves.
He couldn’t make a daring escape like this, I couldn’t necessarily help him, and if we waited, things wouldn’t get much better for us.