Like I didn’t know what to do with this.
I sat there on the steps, the sun on my face, but my thoughts dark. He’d condemned Dorina and me to a half-life, but what else was he supposed to do? What would I have done, in his place? Kept looking for another solution while the fits tore my kid apart, fits I could stop with knowledge I already had?
It reminded me of those parents with a troubled pregnancy, the ones forced to select one child to die so that the other might live. Lose one, or lose them both; a horrible choice.
But how much worse was it when the one selected out knew it? When she was aware that she’d been made into a sacrifice? That her life had been deemed less important; her wishes discounted; her hopes, dreams, and ambitions stifled, so that her far less talented sister might thrive? What the hell happened then?
The phone rang. I put it to my ear automatically, not even checking first. And, of course, it was Mircea.
“Dorina?”
Wrong number, I thought, half hysterically, and didn’t say anything.
“Dorina?”
His voice was as mellifluous as always. He could do wonders with that voice. Could charm emperors and kings with that voice. Could persuade master vampires into agreements they didn’t want at all, which was a lot harder than talking to kings.
“Dorina?” It was becoming more insistent.
“Sorry. Butt dial,” I whispered, and hung up.
I sat there some more. I felt dizzy, in limbo, uncharacteristically numb. I didn’t know what to do.
Not that it was up to me, or to Mircea, either. For the first time, the ball was in Dorina’s court. She could do what she wanted, and I couldn’t blame her for whatever she chose. Like I couldn’t blame her anymore for the life we’d lived. Or for the life I’d lived, I corrected, which suddenly seemed like paradise in comparison.
So now what? The thought left me feeling sick and worried, and seriously off-balance. She hadn’t banished me, but I wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign or not. She might be testing these new waters, making sure that the mental tie we had wouldn’t drag her off along with me.
Or maybe she didn’t intend to do anything at all. It wasn’t like she needed to risk it. As she’d demonstrated twice now, she could emerge whenever she chose, and wrestle control away from me, because she’d always been stronger. And that was with the wall still partially up. What would happen when the last pieces fell?
What would happen when she could trap me in the same hell that she’d been forced to endure, or banish me entirely?
I turned the phone back on and punched in a different number. Because if I couldn’t talk to Dorina, I needed to talk to someone who knew her. And better than Mircea seemed to.
“Hello?”
“Uh, hello. I’d like to speak to Horatiu, please.”
“And who may I say is calling?”
I sighed, because this never went well. Mircea’s masters were better than most, better than the ones at the Senate, who usually hissed at me unless Daddy was around, but it was a matter of degree. Mircea’s masters looked like they wanted to hiss, but were manfully holding back because they had better breeding than that.
Unlike me.
“Dory,” I snapped, because didn’t he have caller ID? “And I don’t want a problem, okay? I just want to talk—”
“Lady Dorina, is that you?”
I paused, and looked at the phone. Not because of the words, which could have been sarcasm, but because of the tone. The guy, whoever it was, had sounded . . . delighted.
“Uh. Yeah.”
“How wonderful to hear from you!”
I stared at the phone some more. I resisted an impulse to shake it. And then I did it anyway, because happy little burbling noises were coming out of it and freaking me out.
“Can I speak to Horatiu?” I finally cut in.
The burbling stopped. And was replaced by a gushing, apologetic vamp explaining to me what I should have already known, because Horatiu wasn’t a master. He was barely even a vampire, since Mircea hadn’t gotten around to changing the old man until he was on his deathbed, and those sorts often don’t take properly. Leaving the family with a doddering, mostly deaf, and almost completely blind vampire, who because of Mircea’s huge fondness for him could do whatever the hell he wanted.
Including sleep in.
“What time does he usually get up?” I almost yelled, to be heard over the effusions of joy that speaking to me had apparently brought to this vamp’s life.
There were a lot of them.
“Thank you!” I finally yelled. “Tell him I’ll be by later.”
And then I hung up, and just sat there, staring at the phone some more.
What the hell?
Chapter Twenty-nine
I was sucking on a splinter—my only relic from the fight—when I entered the kitchen. And found it deserted except for a harassed-looking fey at the sink, and Gessa sitting on a stool alongside. She looked the same as always, in a cute blue sack dress, because nothing rattled her. Including, apparently, teaching a fey how to do the dishes.
He looked up when I came in, relief flooding his face. Either he was out of the loop or he didn’t care about my supposed shaman status. All he knew was that a woman had finally showed up to do the chores, and the world had righted itself.
He started to take off his apron, and I held up my hand. “Sorry. Splinter.”
The weight of the universe came crashing back onto his shoulders, and Gessa had to turn away to hide a smile.
“You okay?” I asked her.
She nodded.
“And Ymsi?”
She sighed. “In his room. He sad.”
Yeah, I’d been afraid of that.
I added coffee to the perpetual grocery list on the fridge, and wolfed down a giant container of soup, a salad, three boiled eggs, most of a jar of pickles, and some soft cheese spread on half a loaf of fresh-baked bread. Then I headed for the basement.
Or I tried to. But young trolls make human teens look like neat freaks, and there was so much stuff piled against the basement door that I could barely . . . get the old thing . . . there! It finally allowed me a couple inches to squeeze through, so I did. And abruptly stopped, because I couldn’t see a damned thing.
That would have been bad enough on its own, without the minefield of items between me and the bottom of the stairs. But Claire’s uncle Pip had never bothered to run lights down here, and I didn’t feel like taking time to hunt for a flashlight. I slowly started to pick my way down.
Trolls are nocturnal, more often than not, back in Faerie. Not out of choice, but because their eyes don’t help them much even in daylight, leaving them at a serious disadvantage among better-sighted creatures. But at night, their superior hearing and smell put the shoe on the other foot, allowing them to hunt in pure darkness.
It was why a lot of them lived in caves. Even a well-equipped contingent of Light Fey hesitated at the idea of descending into a dark-as-pitch subterranean maze filled with creatures that didn’t need to see you in order to kill you. And over time, it had just become a thing. Caves might be cold and hard and generally unappealing—until you factored in the advantage of sleeping in safety. And suddenly, they didn’t seem so bad.
Which I guess was why the twins had chosen to live in the basement, despite being offered the guest room upstairs.
And why only one of them had adjusted to living in sunlight.
That, of course, was Ymsi, because gardening was easier during the day. But Sven was still mostly a night owl, and had taken to prowling around the neighborhood after dark, dragging back any rubbish that caught his eye. He just couldn’t get over all the stuff that people threw away here: cracked birdbaths and old furniture and random two-by-fours and a twisted bike with no back wheel and a painting of triangles and a rusted fridge and a whole box of CDs.