The magic snapped solid with a painful flash, the blood suddenly rushing out of my mouth, and off of my body, like it was being pulled into a whirlwind. I could feel the heavy stickiness being pulled from my hands and arms, leaving them clean. I tried to pull away, and the Luidaeg’s arms closed around me with impossible strength, holding me fast.
I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t pull away; I couldn’t breathe. So I bit her, and the cold strength of her blood filled my mouth, strangely devoid of memories. I swallowed it anyway, trying to use it to break free. It didn’t work. Black spots were beginning to swim in front of my eyes as I struggled ineffectually against her hold. I could hear Tybalt shouting something in the distance, but he was too far away to help me; only the ghosts of his hands could reach me where I was, scrabbling uselessly at the edges of the world. I shouldn’t still have been bleeding, but I was, and the Luidaeg was somehow taking it all.
There’s only so much blood a body can afford to lose, and the hammering pulse of my heart warned me that I was rapidly running out. Then, abruptly, the Luidaeg let me go, and I was shoved away, collapsing like a rag doll into Tybalt’s waiting arms.
“October?” He sounded closer now. That was a good thing, since he was holding me. I raised my head, and found him staring down at me. “What just happened?”
My headache, almost gone before, had blossomed anew like some perverse flower, spreading to fill my entire skull. I groaned as I forced myself to turn toward the bed, squinting against the candlelight. “I don’t know,” I said. “Hopefully, something good.” My vision cleared and I sighed, half from relief, and half from simple exhaustion.
The Luidaeg was sitting up.
Whatever force had cleaned up the blood that had been covering me had done the same for her; her clothing, while torn to the point of uselessness, was spotless, and her hair fell in its usual heavy curls, shining and unsnarled. She was staring in awe at her hands, looking at them like she’d never seen them before. Her wounds were gone. Even the bruise on her cheek had vanished.
“Hey,” I said, trying to pull away from Tybalt and stand on my own two feet. I stumbled, and he caught me, lending me the stability I needed. My head was pounding. I did my best to ignore it. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”
The Luidaeg raised her head, focusing on me. Her eyes were a clear, simple driftglass green. “What did you do?” she asked.
“Do?” I echoed. There were still black spots dancing around the edges of my vision. I tried to shake them away. Bad move; shaking my head just made the black spots double while my headache throbbed.
“Do,” said the Luidaeg, holding her hands out to me like they were all the answer I could possibly need. There was a thin white line of scar tissue on her left arm, where the deepest of the cuts had been. I was willing to bet that, given time, even that would fade away.
“I . . . you weren’t responding, but I thought there was a chance you weren’t quite dead yet, and so I . . .”
“You brought me back.” There was no mistaking the quiet wonder in her tone. “I was dead.”
“Not quite.”
“Yeah, Toby, I was dead.” She shook her head. “I know what dead feels like. It’s cold there. It’s very cold. And I was dead.” She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering hard.
“I couldn’t let you go,” I said. It was a small statement, too awkward to encompass everything that it meant: I didn’t have the words to encompass everything that it meant. Then again, I had just brought her back from the dead, so she probably had some idea of what I was trying to say. “I just . . . I couldn’t let you be dead.”
“Thank you,” she said. She sagged backward on the bed. “I can’t . . . I didn’t stay dead long enough. The geas still holds.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I didn’t . . . I wanted you to be okay not because you could help, but because you’re my friend. I couldn’t just let you die.”
“There are people who won’t be very happy with you for this.” The Luidaeg closed her eyes. “You have to hide me. I can’t stay where I am.”
“Okay, Luidaeg. Just rest, okay?” I was saying “okay” so much that the word was losing all meaning. Maybe that was more accurate than I liked to think. It felt like the world was never really going to be “okay” again.
The Luidaeg sighed. “I can’t tell you what’s coming, Toby, even though I want to. But I can tell you one thing that might help.”
“What is it?” I pulled away from Tybalt, moving to stand closer to her. Everything still smelled like my blood. That helped, a little, even if it wasn’t enough to chase the black spots entirely away.
“Your mother,” said the Luidaeg. “She told you to beware the Lady of the Lake, but to be more afraid of Morgane. Do you remember?”
I blinked. “I do, but I don’t remember telling you.”
“Your lover was a Selkie; he told me quite a bit, after he died,” said the Luidaeg. “My name . . . my name is Antigone. But there was a time when they called me Viviane. When everything was swords, and stones, and so simple . . . your mother feared the wrong woman. I think I’m going to sleep now. I’ll trust you to survive what’s coming.”
“Wait—what?”
Tybalt’s hand closed on my shoulder. “‘Viviane’ was one of the names for the Lady of the Lake,” he said.
I stared at the Luidaeg. “You cannot drop this on me and go to sleep. Luidaeg? Luidaeg!”
She didn’t wake up.
ELEVEN
MY PHONE RANG. I stiffened, instinctively pulling away from the Luidaeg before I recognized the sound and pulled the phone from my pocket. “Hello?”
“I’m parked on the street,” said Quentin’s familiar voice. He sounded like he was scared out of his mind, which was only to be expected, given the circumstances. “Toby . . . the shadows that should be blurring the Luidaeg’s alley aren’t there. It’s like she dropped all her illusions.”
“She did,” I said. “Come on in. Make it quick, we’re not going to linger here long.”
“Okay,” he said, and hung up.
I lowered the phone. “Quentin’s here,” I said. “He says the normal defenses are down. I was sort of hoping he’d be smart and go straight for Arden instead of following instructions and coming here.”
Tybalt chuckled. There was an edge of strain to his voice, but it was fading; I had saved the Luidaeg without killing myself in the process. He could stop worrying about me for a few minutes, at least until he figured out how much blood I’d lost. As long as I didn’t try to stand up ever again, he’d never know. “He simply puts great stock in your ability to survive even the most ridiculous of situations. To be fair, you have yet to prove him wrong. Also to be fair, it is not as if seeking the assistance of the Queen is something you have encouraged him to do. It will take some time to adapt to the idea of the monarchy as an ally, not an enemy.”
“Whose side are you on, anyway?” I demanded peevishly. I recognized my own relief, spreading through me and trying to make me giddy. I pushed it aside—we weren’t out of the woods yet. We still didn’t know who had attacked the Luidaeg, or whether they were coming back. Raising my voice, I called, “We’re in the bedroom, Quentin. Did you crash the car?”
“I’m a better driver than that,” my squire protested, steps coming faster as he hurried down the hall to the open bedroom door. “Did you see the apartment? The place is trashed. Where’s—” He stepped inside and stopped, going statue-still as he took in the scene in front of him. Finally, quietly, he said, “Oh.”
“Yeah, ‘oh,’” I agreed. “She was almost dead when we got here.” No need to tell him that “almost” was understating the case. “I managed to bring her back, but she’s still in pretty bad shape, and she’s not waking up. We need to move her someplace safe before whoever came here and did this to her realizes that they need to finish the job.”