An Artificial Night

“Just bleed.”


“All right.” I curled my fingers around the rose, stopping when the pain told me that the thorns had found their mark. “Now what do I . . . do . . . Luna? What’s happening?” The world was suddenly hazy, like I was staring through a fog. The woman with the rose-colored hair stood in the middle of it all, bloody hands clasped to her breast.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, but it’s the only way. Go quickly . . .”

“Is drugging me a new hobby for you people?” I asked, and fell. Part of me was screaming; the Garden of Glass roses is mostly made of glass and stone and has very few soft places to land. That was only a small part—the rest of me was sinking in rose-scented darkness, falling farther and farther from escape. Luna was crying somewhere behind me in the dark. I wanted to shout at her, but there were no words. There was nothing but darkness and the smell of roses.

And then even that was gone.





TWENTY-SIX



KAREN SAT BENEATH THE WILLOWS, combing the hair of a Kitsune child. “Hello, Aunt Birdie,” she said, looking up. “You’re coming back for me.”

“I know where you are now,” I said, hearing the faint echo of my voice against the wind. I was dreaming. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Hoshibara,” Karen said. “She died here.”

“Why?” I looked at the girl, who offered me a small, shy smile.

“Blind Michael stole her, but she got away; she wouldn’t let him change her. She ran to the woods.” Karen pulled her hands away from Hoshibara’s hair, hiding them in her lap. “She died, but the night-haunts never got her body. Someone else did.” She pointed past me. “See?”

I turned. Hoshibara was there, lying under a willow tree. There was someone—a girl, barely more than a child herself, with yellow eyes and hair that fell to her waist in a riot of pink and red curls. She crept out of the trees with one hand over her mouth, staring at the Kitsune.

Hoshibara lifted her head, looking at the girl; looking at Luna. The movement was weak. There wasn’t much movement left in her. “I won’t go back,” she whispered.

Luna knelt beside her. “You don’t have to.”

“I don’t feel good.”

“You’re dying.”

Hoshibara nodded, expression unsurprised. “Will it hurt?”

“It doesn’t have to.” Luna held out her hand, showing Hoshibara the thorn she held. “I can make it stop hurting right now. But you have to do something for me.”

The Kitsune looked at her distrustfully. I couldn’t blame her. “What happens then?”

“You die.”

“Is there a way for me to not die?”

Luna shook her head. “Not unless you go back to him.”

“What do I do for you?”

For the first time, Luna looked nervous. “You let me take your skin. I found . . . I know how the Selkies did it. Let me be Kitsune. Let me go free.”

“All right.” Hoshibara raised her hand and clasped it over Luna’s. She whimpered once as the thorn cut into her skin. Then she closed her eyes, movement stilling. Luna looked at her for a moment, then leaned down, pressing a kiss against her forehead.

“I wish there’d been another way,” she whispered, and slammed her hand down over Hoshibara’s, binding them together with the thorn. Then she threw back her head and screamed. There was a blast of light so bright that if I’d been watching it with anything other than dream-eyes I wouldn’t have been able to face it. When it faded, both Hoshibara and the rose-girl were gone. A dainty teenager stood in their place, slender hands covered in blood. She had chestnut hair and silver-furred tails, and looked like neither one of them. She stood unsteadily, clutching the hem of her suddenly too large dress, and staggered into the woods, vanishing.

“She got out,” Karen said behind me. “Can we?”