Chapter 23

"What," Neve managed to get out, "was that ?"

Nash whirled on me, spitting mad. "Of all the foolish things, Tamsy! Did I not teach you how to spot a pooka years ago?"

"Uh, no," I said when I found my voice again, "you didn't."

"Oh—" His anger deflated, only to surge again. "Well, I meant to!"

"That was … what?" Neve began. "That was a pooka?"

"Blistering boils," Nash said, tugging a hand back through his hair. "I should have known they'd be spying on you lot."

"Who?" Neve asked. It came to her a moment later. "You mean the Council of Sistren?"

"Who else deploys pookas as spies and companions?" Nash said. "How long has that cat been with you?"

"Since Avalon," I said. "Before the merging."

He swore and began to pace, his face twisted with indecision.

Neve stomped toward the stairs. "That thing slept with us, and ate our food, and—he watched us change! I'm going to squish that little spider until he's a splat on the ground—"

She stopped, shaking her head. "I mean, no, I'm not going to do that, it's still a living creature. But I am going to trap him under a glass until he suffocates—no, I'm not going to do that, either." Neve considered it another moment, then snapped her fingers. "I'm going to have Tamsin catch and release him over the ocean so the wind can decide his fate … and I'm probably not going to watch."

"I'd be happy to," I said.

Caitriona came through the door a moment later, breathless. "I tried to follow him, but he scaled a wall and disappeared up over the roof."

"Ah, don't trouble yourself," Nash said, retrieving his coffee mug. "If it wasn't a pooka, they would have found another way of assessing the situation from afar."

The thought was too chilling for his cavalier tone. "How did you know what he was?"

"The way the light caught in his eyes," Nash said. "There's a hint of aquamarine in the gleam."

"Is it possible the pooka was sent by Lord Death?" Neve asked, her face anxious.

"He'd use a ghost, more like," Nash said. "Something he can completely control."

Caitriona had been silent until now, her face reddening as she absorbed what it meant.

"That kitten was a gift to my sister Mari," she said, barely mastering the fury in her voice. "Are you telling me that the pooka took its place?"

"I think it's been with you all along," Nash said. "Since Avalon."

"That would make sense," I said carefully. "I wondered how it had survived when the Children—" I couldn't say the words. "It could have shifted into something else and escaped, returning when we did."

"Let me ensure that I understand what you're saying," Caitriona began, trembling with the force of her quiet fury. "They had a way of sending this shapeshifter through the boundaries between the worlds to gather information for them. They therefore knew Lord Death had returned. They knew Avalon was dying. But they did nothing … nothing … to help us."

It was a damning assessment, but likely true .

"We don't know that," Neve tried. "By the time they found out, it could have been too late—"

"Don't." Caitriona held up a hand. "These beings left Avalon to wither and die. There is nothing you can say to redeem them."

" I'm one of those beings," Neve said, squaring up to her. "After all this time, you're still so quick to see sorceresses as the enemy—well, then, maybe I'm your enemy too."

Caitriona took a step back, her lips parting.

"Ladies," Nash said, smoothly inserting himself between them. "I'd remind you that what's said in the heat of the moment cannot be unsaid."

He put a hand on Caitriona's shoulder. "I need to have a word with Librarian, but after, I'd like to bring the Mirror of Shalott to the Bonecutter, to ask for her thoughts on how to adjust the spellwork to trap the hunters. Perhaps you should join me and catch your breath?"

It was the best advice he'd given, but the thought wrenched something deep in my chest. "I don't think we should separate—"

"Fine," Caitriona said to Nash, turning her back on us.

"Fine," Neve said. "Then go."

Nash stooped to pick up his bag, waiting as Caitriona did the same, tucking the covered mirror under her arm. That feeling was back, grinding me down into someone smaller, someone helpless.

"When are you coming back?" I asked, following them out to the stairs.

"Stay here, Tamsy," Nash said. "You and Neve will be safe. We won't be gone for more than a few hours."

That's what you said before, I wanted to scream.

Neve's hand gripped mine, drawing me back into the attic and shutting the door behind us, as if to cut off the temptation to follow.

"What just happened?" I asked faintly.

"I cannot believe her," Neve raged, hugging her arms to her as she strode across the attic, angrily laying out her blankets. "After everything, she still believes the worst— "

"Neve," I said, unable to move from that spot near the door. "What just happened?"

She looked up, her hands stilling. She understood, the way she always did. "It's all right, Tamsin."

"How is it all right?" I asked, rubbing at my throat, trying to dislodge the pain there. "We lost Olwen and now we just let Caitriona go?" "They'll be back by morning," she said, as if she had any way of knowing that for certain. She patted the spot on the blanket next to her. "Come here." Seeing me hesitate, she added, "I'm not going to hug you. Unless you want a hug, in which case …" "A hug's not going to fix anything," I said. "It's not supposed to," she answered.

I sat next to her, looking to where Emrys lay prone on the floor, oblivious to all of this.

"… Do you want a hug?" I asked finally.

"Yes," she said.

I tried my best, looping an arm around her shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. Neve leaned into me, resting her head against my shoulder.

"I don't understand her," Neve said quietly. "She'll act like we're strangers one moment, and the next …"

There was a faraway look to her eyes, as if she'd gone back to that moment and wanted to linger there.

"What did she say to you?" I asked. "When you came to at Rivenoak?"

Her cheeks warmed with color.

"Now you have to tell me," I insisted.

She drew herself upright, mimicking Caitriona's intonation. " Don't ever do that again, I cannot bear it. What does that mean?"

Finally, something I was an expert in. "I believe that's Emotionally Repressed for ‘I care for you and love you.' "

Neve groaned, pressing her face to her hands. "I thought she hated me … "

I gave her an incredulous look. "Are you serious? I have the emotional intelligence of a toddler and even I can see that when she's not keeping a protective eye on you, she's gazing at you with wonder. It would be sweet if we weren't in danger of being killed by undead hunters at any given moment."

"She doesn't love me," Neve whispered, more to herself than to me. "How could she love me when she doesn't even respect who I am?"

"I think she sees you separately from the other sorceresses," I said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Emrys's limp hand curl against his stomach. "And as far as I can tell, hearts can be total idiots."

"I don't know if I can accept that," Neve said. "I can't change what I am any more than she can—no matter how hard she tries."

"Something's changed, though," I told her. "When you were knocked out and we were surrounded, she tried to use her magic and it wouldn't come."

"What?" Neve gripped my arm, forcing my gaze back to hers. "When were any of you going to tell me that?"

"When we weren't lurching from crisis to crisis," I said. "So … now."

Over the last few days, I'd watched the light that always seemed to radiate from her face dim, and now it was happening again. She looked troubled, but more than that, devastated.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"I don't know," Neve said. "Nothing good. The Goddess isn't cruel. She wouldn't take it from Cait the moment she needs it most, or when she's in pain. But we call our magic from the heart, and if she can't summon it … I'm worried about what that means. If the walls she puts up are so high that none of us can climb over them …"

She trailed off, sighing.

"I can't stop thinking about Olwen," she said. "The fact that we aren't going after her right now feels like a knife to the heart. I told Madrigal what had happened to her, asking if the Council could try to find her, too, but she's never written back. I don't even know if she's receiving my letters. "

I didn't really know, but I nodded for her to continue.

"It's just … everything is moving so fast around us, it feels wrong to stop, to be here sitting still."

"Morning will be here soon enough," I told her. "And we can start looking for the sword then."

"There it is again, that note of hope in your voice," she said.

"A little mawkishness is good for the worms that live in my rotting heart," I told her. "Gives 'em a reason to squirm."

I managed to get a small smile out of her. "And you think I'm the weird one in this friendship?"

"Just trying to get on your level," I told her.

She looked down at Emrys, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead. Checking for fever. She drew the blanket down over him, inspecting the loose bandages we'd wrapped around his chest.

"Caitriona told me what happened," she said. "That was very, very brave of Emrys to push you out of harm's way."

I grunted in acknowledgment, resting my chin on my palm.

"Just checking in on if we still hate him," she said casually. "And if we're angry because we still can't trust him, or because he broke your heart."

Heat rushed to my face. "He didn't break my heart—"

"Tamsin," she said. "He did. "

I swallowed, fighting the burn in my eyes. "He didn't."

"He did," she repeated. "You asked me before if I thought he was acting differently, and now I see it too. Something's going on with him, and if it's confusing me, it has to be confusing you."

"No," I said, feeling the sting of his endless rejections yet again. "This is who he truly is."

She looked doubtful.

"He did it to ease his conscience," I said. "That was his whole purpose in coming back. To make himself feel better about what he did."

"I doubted his motivations in Avalon," Neve said. "But I never doubted his feelings for you— "

"Please," I interrupted before I threw myself down the stairs to escape this conversation. "Can we talk about anything else. Fungi. Your creepy bone collection. Anything."

Neve looked disappointed by the dodge, but she didn't push. "How about Nash? Did you have a chance to talk to him?"

"Yeah, a bit," I said. "He's still being cagey. But you're going to love his explanation for how he beat death."

And she did, hanging on every word of the story.

"What about your parents?" she asked. "Did you push him on that?"

"I tried," I said.

Neve nodded, one hand drumming her fingers against her crossed legs, the other absently slipping beneath the collar of her T-shirt to grip her pendant. "Do you ever try to imagine what your parents looked like?"

"All the time," I said. Sometimes I genuinely envied the ease with which people could point to their eyes and say, I inherited them from my father, or brush their hair and know it had been a genetic gift from a grandparent.

"Come on," I said, hauling us both up from the floor. "Let's get washed up and try to steal a few hours of sleep."

I led her downstairs to the bathroom, and the single shower stall that had been preserved after the town house had been converted to the library. Listening to Neve sing a low, soft song, I let the hot water and thick steam welcome me into their comforting grasp.

The clock in the foyer said it was half past two by the time we emerged, clean and settled. For a moment, I was tempted to check in with Librarian, to see if he'd found anything about the Mirror of Beasts in his research, but Neve drew me back toward the stairs.

"No," she said. "Sleep."

It was a relief to return to the scratchy wool of my rumpled blanket, to lie out across even a hard floor and know I was safe.

Neve tapped my shoulder from beside me, offering me one of her earphones. I scooted closer to her so I could press it to my ear and she could keep the other pressed to hers. The disc player whirred softly to life, and the ethereal synthesizers of Cocteau Twins drifted through us, making my whole body feel like it was floating.

Eventually, I found sleep.

But not before the dream found me first.