Seanan McGuire - A Local Habitation

“So even though this is a second- floor window, it’s actually on the ground floor.”

“Yes.”

“That makes no sense.” I shook my head. “I’ll trust you, though—it’s not like I have a choice. Which brings me to my next issue—it’s night out there.”

“Yes,” Elliot said. “It is.”

I glanced to Alex. “What’s going to happen to . . . ?”

“Guess we’ll find out,” said Alex, wanly, and slid out the window.

It was a six- foot drop to the ground. We heard a thump as he hit the ground, followed by silence. Elliot and I exchanged a wide-eyed glance, rushing to lean out the window. Tybalt stayed where he was and yawned.

“Perhaps he’ll stay dead this time,” he said, nonchalantly.

“Tybalt,” I snapped. He gave me a look, as if to say “what?” then began studying his nails.

Terrie was lying facedown in the grass. I grabbed the windowsill with my good hand and vaulted outside, landing next to her and checking her wrist for a pulse. It was weak, but it was there. “She’s alive,” I reported, looking up.

Elliot was leaning out the window. “What happened?”

I slid my arms under Terrie’s shoulders and stood, balancing her limp form against my knee. “Alex is alive, and Terrie isn’t. I guess he’s going to be having a lot of early nights.”

“We could put her back inside . . .” said Elliot, sliding awkwardly out the window.

“The shock might kill her again,” I said. “Tybalt, get down here and help me with her.”

“Ah, it’s time for the ‘here kitty, kitty’ again,” he said mildly, and jumped from the window, making it look effortless. He grabbed Terrie’s legs. “What shall we do with her? Is there a wood chipper available?”

“Tybalt, behave.”

“Why?” he asked, sounding honestly interested.

“I don’t have time for this. Come on.” With Tybalt’s help, I was able to shift her into the brush along the building, looking back at Elliot as we got her out of sight. “How is it night out here? The sun just came up.”

“The land is suggestible in a Shallowing. If we went back in and came out a door, it would be daylight.”

“Right.” I straightened, stepping out of the bushes. “Lead the way, and keep talking.”

Elliot started to walk. “I mentioned that there were problems, yes? They were mostly in the upload process. We were planning to copy people into the machines without killing them or changing them in any way. We’d just have an extra ‘version’ of them, and of everything in Faerie, that would live inside our computers.”

“How would that save Faerie?” asked Tybalt, pacing me.

“Our ideals and culture would endure, even if nothing else did.” He shook his head. “It didn’t work. Yui was in charge of magical integration. She said the system refused to release the data. She could make it copy, but she couldn’t make it interact.”

“It was frozen?” I asked.

“Basically. I don’t quite understand where things went wrong—I worked in an administrative capacity, and I never used the actual equipment.”

Cats were slinking out of the bushes, falling into formation behind Tybalt. I ignored them, saying, “Somebody might have come up with a new process.”

“It’s possible.”

“Would Yui have volunteered to test it?”

“Absolutely not. Barbara died before Yui; even if her death was caused by the development team, Yui wouldn’t have agreed to test a process that had already killed someone.”

“What was Terrie’s involvement?”

“She worked on the software with Jan, creating the virtual environment. Gordan designed the hardware interfaces.”

“Gordan’s the one who determined how the machines hooked up to the subjects?”

“Well, yes.”

“I see.” The pieces of the puzzle were fitting together. I didn’t like the results, but they were the ones that fit. “That’s where you had the most problems, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was.” Elliot stopped walking, staring at me. “Oh, Oberon’s teeth . . .”

I glanced to Tybalt, trying to read his expression. It had gone completely neutral, but his eyes were locked on Elliot. Still, I pressed on. “You tried with cats first, didn’t you? They remember everything. They were perfect.”

“I knew there was a plan to try with feline test subjects, but I was never involved.”

“Yeah, well, if you ask the cats, the ones who went to be ‘tested’ never came back.”

Elliot licked his lips nervously. “Barbara was very upset.”

So was Tybalt. His shoulders were locked, and the smell of pennyroyal and musk was rising in the air around him. Reaching over, I took hold of his wrist, keeping my eyes on Elliot. “And you never asked?”

“I . . . it didn’t seem . . .”

“Did you know that half the cats in a Cait Sidhe’s entourage are changelings?”

“No. I never . . . no.” Elliot seemed to realize he was on thin ice, even if he wasn’t sure how he’d ended up there. “Barbara never said . . .”

“You broke Oberon’s law, whether you knew it or not,” I said. Glancing up to Tybalt, I asked, “Is the Court of Cats going to demand recompense?”

“That remains to be seen,” he said, in a voice that was surprisingly level.

I let go of his wrist. “Okay. Elliot, start moving. We need to get inside.”

“We did it for Faerie,” Elliot protested, as he began to walk again.

“Will that make it easier for you to sleep at night?” asked Tybalt.

I couldn’t blame him for his anger. I shared it. “What happened after the problems were brought to light?”

“We were going to rebuild the physical interface,” Elliot said, in a small voice. I could finally see a door on the wall ahead; it took everything I had to stay calm and keep walking.

“Was Gordan still going to be in charge of the project?”

“There was going to be a review.”

“Did she know?” He nodded. “Was that when the deaths began?” He nodded again. “Did the recording device always connect at the wrists and throat?” So help me, if he said yes, I was going to throttle him.

“No.” He opened the door. The familiar hall past the cafeteria was waiting on the other side. Quietly, he added, “The wounds are new.”

“You know it was Gordan, don’t you?” I asked, as we walked slowly down the hall.

“Yes. I do.” He sighed. “I just don’t want to believe it.”

“Did you know all along? Did you suspect?” I wasn’t shouting; I was too angry. My voice was quiet, calm, and level as I asked, “Did you even care ?”

“Look at Yui’s body, or Jan’s, and ask me if I cared,” said Elliot, wearily. “We screwed up. We made mistakes. But we were here of our own free will, and we made those mistakes on our own. Everyone I love is dead. Is that enough? Or should I grovel?”

“It is enough,” said Tybalt, as gravely as a judge passing sentence. He was a King of Cats. The people of Tamed Lightning wronged his people. In a way, he really was passing judgment on what Elliot had done.

Elliot met his eyes, and nodded, accepting the sentence. “We’re almost there.”

“Good. I—” My foot hit something damp and I slipped, nearly falling before I caught myself against Tybalt. I looked down, and went cold.

“Are you all right?” asked Elliot.

“No,” said Tybalt. “She isn’t.”

The blood I’d slipped in was still fresh enough to be wet and red. There wasn’t much of it, and I hadn’t been expecting it; that explained why I hadn’t caught the smell of it before. Now that I was “looking,” it was everywhere, almost overwhelming me.

Pulling away from Tybalt, I sprinted down the hall toward the futon room with an energy I hadn’t realized I still had. Dizziness and panic fought a brief war for control of my actions, and panic won, spurring me to run even faster. I’d told myself Connor and Quentin would be safe where they were . . . and we had a killer who killed her best friend, working with an accomplice who could walk through walls. I’m an idiot. All I could do was hope that I wasn’t already too late.