A local habitation

“I don’t know,” I said. Her hands closed around my throat again, and the black spots surged back.

“I hate you!”Gordan screamed. I closed my eyes, going limp, and waited to die.

The sound of splintering wood made me open my eyes. Gordan’s hands loosened, losing their grip as she spun toward the source of the sound. April was standing behind her, holding the remains of a folding chair in both hands. I’d never seen the Dryad look so solid, and for once the look on her face was something more than a pale mimic of the people around her. It was bone-deep and weary, and very real.

“Let her go, Gordan,” she said.

“Go back to your computer, April,” said Gordan. “This isn’t your concern.”

“You hurt Mommy,” April said, sounding puzzled. “You said she’d come back like the others. But now you say she won’t, and I think you’re telling the truth. Why did you lie to me?”

“Go home,April!”

“You killed my mother!” April brought the chair down again, hard enough that it shattered against Gordan’s back. Gordan released me, swinging at her instead. I pulled away, moving along the catwalk, stopping to catch my breath once I was out of reach. I still had the gun—a fact that Gordan seemed to have forgotten.

“April, you don’t want to start with me,” Gordan said, ripping the remains of the chair out of the Dryad’s hands and grabbing her by the hair, using it as a lever to sling her away. April yelped and slammed into the wall next to Quentin, going down in a crumpled heap. I couldn’t see her breathing, but that didn’t worry me: the impact hadn’t been that hard, and I’d never seen her actually breathe.

Gordan had turned while I was watching April fall. I didn’t see her move until she was on top of me, trying to grab the gun away. I shoved her as hard as I could before I had a chance to think. She stumbled away, falling toward the gap in the catwalk rail.

“Gordan, look out!” I shouted.

The warning seemed to startle her. She stumbled back another six inches, heels leaving the catwalk. She teetered on the edge, glancing over her shoulder and going white as she realized how far she had to fall. I dropped the gun and rushed forward, holding out my hands. “Gordan, quick! Grab hold of me!”

There was a choice there. It was a brief one, and a hard one, but it was still a choice. Faerie justice isn’t kind—there’s very little mercy in the immortal—and we both knew they’d never kill her. Death is too much of a stranger to the Fair Folk; they never kill if they can help it. If I saved her, she’d stand before a fae Court and be judged by immortal standards . . . forever.

Gordan looked at the differences between her possible fates, weighing an eternity of punishment against a moment of pain, and she chose the mortal option. In the end, her humanity won. Her arms stopped pinwheeling and dropped to her sides. I saw the moment of decision and lunged, still reaching for her hand, and for an instant she was almost, barely in reach. I grabbed for her . . .

. . . and caught nothing but air. She fell in silence, eyes open all the way down. I looked away just before she hit the concrete. It didn’t change a thing. Maybe I didn’t see her hit the bottom, but I could still hear it. She never made a sound; gravity did it for her, and the silence that followed told me that she hadn’t survived the impact.

Wearily, I moved to kneel beside Quentin, reaching for his wrist. His pulse was weak but steady; he probably hadn’t even realized he wasn’t in the futon room anymore. I lifted my head, calling, “Elliot? Can you hear me?”

There was no reply from below. I winced, offering my hand to April, and said, “It’s done now. You can get up.”

She lifted her head. “Will everything be better now?”

“No. It won’t. I’m sorry.”

“Will Quentin remain on the network?”

“I think so, yeah. Elliot, too.” It was over now. If Elliot was alive, Sylvester’s healers would wipe away the damage like it had never existed. He and Quentin would be fine. I wondered if they’d keep the scars, or if the scars they carried inside would be all that was left to remind them.

She stood slowly, asking, “Will my mother come back on-line now?”

There were no words to answer that. I gathered Quentin into my arms and rose, waiting for her to understand.

“Oh,” she said finally, and looked down. Something in her had changed, something more than her new depth of emotion. She looked, for lack of a better term, real. “Where is she now?”

How do you explain the concept of the soul to someone whose immortality is kept in electrons and wire? You can’t. So I told her the truth: “I don’t know.”

“She won’t come back? Not ever?”

“No, April, she won’t. Not ever.”

“Oh.” She vanished, the air rushing into the space she’d occupied, and then appeared again. “Gordan has left the network. Elliot has not.” Almost timidly, she added, “I secured his wounds to stop the bleeding, when Gordan was waiting for me. Was this right?”

“It was perfect,” I said. I needed the confirmation about Gordan, but I hadn’t wanted it. No death is pretty, or fair; Faerie wasn’t born to die, and neither were her children.

“Good,” she said, and looked up at me, eyes wide. “Who will take care of me now?”

“You’re going to have to take care of yourself.”

“Can I?”

“I don’t think you have a choice.”

“Oh,” she said. Then, quietly, she asked, “For right now, until they come and take Gordan’s hardware . . . can we pretend that you’ll take care of me?”

“We can,” I said, and smiled sadly, shifting Quentin onto my left arm so that I could offer her my hand. She laced her fingers through mine, flesh cool and slightly unreal—not that it mattered. Reality is what you make it.

We needed to get Quentin down; we needed to get Elliot someplace safe. But for just a moment we stood together in the dark, looking out across the darkened room, and the sound of our heartbeats mingled with the hushed whispering of the night-haunts’ wings.

THIRTY-THREE

IN THE END, THIS is what happened:

April turned to me as the sound of wings faded, pulling her hand out of mine. “How do we get him down?” she asked timidly, indicating Quentin. “Elliot must be retrieved.”

“That’s true,” I said, studying her. She was small, but she looked sturdy. “Can you carry live people when you disappear?”

“Only if I can lift them.”

“Try.” I stood, hoisting Quentin and passing him to her. She was able to support him, barely, by looping his unwounded arm around her neck and wrapping her own arms around his middle. A haze of static rose around them, and they were gone.

I raced to the edge of the catwalk and looked down, keeping my eyes away from the place where Gordan fell. Elliot was a dark shape on the floor, and in its own way, looking at him was almost as bad as looking at her would have been. I glanced to the side and saw April appear near the door, looking almost comical with Quentin hanging unevenly from her shoulders. When she saw me looking, she waved. Blinking back tears I hadn’t realized were there, I waved back.

It took almost ten minutes to descend the ladder: my left hand was only grasping weakly, and it was harder to go down exhausted than it had been to go up panicked. But in the end, there was solid ground under my feet, and I was standing on my own. I nodded to April, leaving her to support Quentin as I went to kneel by Elliot’s side.

His shirt was drenched with blood, and his pulse was shallow, but he was breathing. If we got him to a healer soon, he’d live. I slid my arms under him and lifted, straining until I got back to my feet. Elliot was smaller than I was: I could carry him, if I took it slow. Nodding to April, I turned, and we carried our respective burdens out into the afternoon sunlight.

Things ended quickly after that. April left me halfway across the lawn, teleporting herself and Quentin to the futon room before her strength gave out. I walked through the knowe with Elliot in my arms, accompanied by a cascade of cats. Justice had been done. They’d scatter soon, but for the moment, they still belonged at ALH. I don’t know whether it was April or the cats who told Tybalt it was over, but he met me in the hall, scooping Elliot out of my arms without a word. That was good. I wasn’t certain I could talk without starting to cry.