An Artificial Night

“Come home.”


“No.” Acacia stepped back. “Now we’ve both asked, and both refused. I miss you, my dear one. I’ll always miss you, just as I’ll always love you. And now I follow your father.”

“Mother—”

Acacia shook her head and walked back to her horse, remounting. Luna started to follow, but the Luidaeg put out an arm, stopping her. “No,” she said. “You can’t go after her.”

“But—”

“No.” Acacia was already riding away, fading as she gathered speed. The Luidaeg lowered her arm. “We can’t save them if they don’t want to be saved. It doesn’t work that way.”

Luna stared at her for a long moment, then whirled with a small, choked cry and hugged me fiercely. I realized with vague surprise that she was crying. “I thought I let him take you forever,” she whispered. “After everything he’s taken . . . I thought he took you too.”

I shivered and leaned against her, closing my eyes. After everything that had happened, I wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t.





TWENTY-NINE



THE STRANGENESS BEGAN BLEEDING out of the night, seeping away bit by bit, until the world outside the shining border of the Luidaeg’s circle looked like the world I remembered. A brisk wind blew by, carrying the Halloween scents of dried leaves, burning pumpkin, and impending rain. The Luidaeg was still standing on the circle’s edge, moving her fingers in small, seemingly random gestures that were probably all that kept us hidden. No one had exactly been focusing on their illusions in the chaos of breaking Blind Michael’s Ride.

The kids that had been saved were stumbling around the circle, disoriented and confused by what had happened. Only the ones who had someone capable of claiming them—“friends, family, or blood-tied companions,” as the Luidaeg said—had been pulled out of the Ride. Time in Faerie is a funny thing. Some of the kids from the Children’s Hall were mixed into the crowd, clinging to their parents or their suddenly grown-up siblings and crying, or laughing, or both. The Centaur who’d spent so much time taunting me was there, his scales and strangeness washed away by the changes he’d gone through. He had his arms around the waist of a tall female Centaur with a strawberry coat. They were sobbing bitterly, and neither looked inclined to let go anytime soon. His Piskie companion was nowhere in sight. I was sorry to see that. She’d been as horrible to me as she could, but it wasn’t her fault. A little cruelty didn’t mean she should never get to go home.

Of all the horses that had accompanied Blind Michael’s Ride, only Katie had been pulled inside the circle. She’d reverted to her human form after the cycle of transformations was finished, but that didn’t seem to have done anything to heal her mind. She was curled into a ball, sobbing. As I watched, Quentin tried to touch her upper arm, murmuring something that I couldn’t hear. She screamed, loudly and shrilly enough that if not for the Luidaeg’s spell, we would have had every security guard in Golden Gate Park on us in minutes. Luna winced and finally left my side, hurrying over to guide Quentin away from his huddled girlfriend.

Katie stopped screaming and balled back up again, shivering. Poor kid. She was home, but she was still lost. Maybe we all were. I could still feel Blind Michael at the back of my mind, a light, fluttering presence trying to find a way back in. I shuddered.

“When does it end, Luidaeg?” I asked, voice pitched low.

She glanced over her shoulder at me. “That’s your choice to make, Toby. Go reassure your friends. They’ve been a little worried.”

“I—”

“We’ll talk about it later. Now if you’ll excuse me?” She smiled mirthlessly. “I need to hold this circle a little longer, and that does take a little bit of focus.”