12.06
“I feel like I aged ten years, going through that,” Peter commented.
“Kathryn did most of it with one working hand,” Roxanne said. “Not even a hurt hand. One of her arms is broken or something.”
Eyes turned to Kathryn.
“Dislocated,” Kathryn said.
Alexis approached her, which meant she came closer to me in the process.
I found myself stepping back and away. Not entirely because I wanted to give Kathryn and Alexis some space.
Alexis gave Kathryn’s arm some attention, moving it and prodding the joint. Evan was perched on Kathy’s other shoulder, and leaned forward to watch.
“Eva’s gone,” Ty commented. “Moment I opened the portal, she just charged through, her brother over her shoulders.”
“Probably thinking she can get a practitioner to figure out what poison it was,” Alexis said.
“Bezoar treatment,” Tiff said.
“Something like that. We’ve lost our witch hunter. We’re going it alone.”
I was hearing the words, but only just putting them together into proper thoughts, before the next sentences came.
My head was full of the fluttering and noise and chaos and general heatless fury that had followed the vision.
“I really want out of here soon,” Tiff said. “One of those windows we passed, the room inside looked like my house, growing up. The people inside looked familiar, too.”
“I don’t remember seeing any room with people,” Ty said, looking away from the gate.
I wanted to open my mouth, but I was having trouble dealing. They’d looked me in the eye, talked to me, pretended to be my allies, and all the while, they’d been secretly nursing the idea that, hey, if I got too hostile with Rose, they’d have to kill or bind me.
I looked down at Alexis and Kathrn. Alexis had told me not to trust my instincts… because my instincts were going to tell me to go after Rose?
“Maybe they’re your Black Fish,” Green Eyes said. She had passed through the gate and was lying in the snow, almost submerged, her chin at the bottom of the circle.
“Black fish?”
“Yeah,” Green Eyes said. “It’s more like an eel than a fish, but it follows me, and it has for a long time. Even here, I can hear it whispering through the cracks in the walls.”
“Um,” Peter said. “That sucks, I guess?”
She might have sounded a little crazy, to someone without context.
“You okay, Blake?” Alexis asked.
I’d been lost in thought, and she’d caught me staring.
Her look of concern seemed genuine. Was that the case, or was she better at lying to me than I’d thought?
I couldn’t really feel the thread of spiritual connection to her anymore.
Evan looked back at me, then flew from Kathy’s shoulder to mine.
The movement caught our resident sewer-mermaid’s eye.
“Look at you,” Green Eyes told me. Her tail was limp on the ground, and her arms were now propping her upper body up, wrists together, upper arms incidentally covering her breasts. As multiple lights flickered within the hallway, there were periods where her skin appeared almost normal, then translucent as she was lit only by the moonlight above. Now and again, when a cloud was over the moon and the lights flickered out, only the orbs of her namesake eyes were visible.
“Look at me?” I managed.
I could still feel the birds stirring inside me, agitated and angry.
“I haven’t seen you since we first met. It’s too bad you need to stay in the mirrors,” she said.
“Um, about that,” Alexis said.
My ‘friend’ turned her body my way. She reached to her throat and raised the twine that was attached to the mirror.
The mirror was broken.
The fluttering inside me became more agitated.
“That’s inconvenient,” I said, very simply. My voice and tone were badly out of sync with how I felt. I wasn’t going to betray what I knew. Not here, not now.
“It makes sense that this place would try to keep us from leaving,” Tiff said.
Except it’s only affecting me.
Alexis nodded slowly, staring down at the mirror. She spoke after a delay. “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”
Each of the three statements were statements that could be entirely true while not ruling out that she or they had damaged the mirror on purpose.
And, god, I hated thinking that way about people who were so damn important to me.
It was all I could do to stay still when it felt like every bird that had once been content to roost on the branches was now actively moving within me. If I’d been holding a jar with this much activity inside it, I probably would have dropped it as it shook itself free of my grip.
Yet somehow I managed to keep my body in place.
“It’s not a problem,” I said. “The last time I left, I was able to just walk out. It sent me to the mirror as a matter of course.”
“Oh,” Tiff said. “Oh, that’s great!”
“Yeah,” Ty added.
Was it all in my head, that they sounded less than genuine? Alexis was only staring up at me.
“Then what are we waiting for?” Roxanne asked. She couldn’t make eye contact with anyone, and her arms still hugged her body. “Let’s go.”
“Waiting until the coast is reasonably clear,” Ty said. He stepped closer to the gate, then stepped back, sticking his hands into his sweatshirt pockets. “And I just realized that there’s a critical flaw in our plan.”
“Which is?” Peter asked.
“Clothing,” Ty said. “We weren’t exactly in a position to grab our coats, hats, and gloves.”
I looked at the others. Sweaters, sweatshirts, long-sleeved shirts and blouses, jeans… everyone had boots on, but a sweater and boots weren’t so useful when the temperature was at minus ten.
“No way,” Ellie said. “We don’t have… I thought we were going back to the library?”
“Are we going to head back to the library?” Peter asked.
“It was broken into,” Ty said. “The ward should do something, and hopefully they won’t keep trying if we aren’t in there.”
“Hopefully,” Tiff said.
“It’d be nice if the books were there when all of this was done with. The books are supposed to be protected, so…” Ty finished his sentence with a shrug.
“So where are we going?” Peter asked. “Church? Ask for sanctuary?”