Chimes at Midnight

I stared at her.

Slowly, Jin nodded.

“Oh, no. No, no, no.” I grabbed a hank of my hair and pulled it in front of my face. It was a colorless brown, the noncolor of tree bark and faded dye jobs. “No.” Dropping the hair, I felt for my ear, and breathed a sigh of relief. It was still pointed. Less than it should have been, but enough that I knew I hadn’t turned myself completely human.

“It’ll be okay,” said Jin awkwardly. She patted me on the shoulder. “We’ll figure something out. We always do.”

“So what, I’m addicted to something that’s killed every changeling who’s ever tasted it, and my body is trying to turn itself human so it can enjoy dying more, and we’re going to ‘figure something out’?” I glowered at her, glad to have something to focus my ire on. “How’s that going to work?”

“I didn’t say it would be easy, now, did I?” Jin stood. “I’m going to go let everyone know that you’re awake. When you decide to get dressed—against my recommendation, but that’s never stopped you before—there are clean clothes in the top drawer of the bureau. But I really wish you’d stay in bed.” With that, she was gone, shutting the door behind herself.

Jin was probably right: I needed to stay in bed. I needed to keep moving even more. The Queen had sent the man who hit me with that pie. I knew that was true, even if the Karen I’d seen in my dreams turned out to have been a goblin fruit-induced hallucination. The Queen was scared of me. It was the only explanation. And as to why she hadn’t killed me . . .

Killing me would have been like killing Nolan. Elf-shot took an opponent out of the picture for a century. Getting me addicted to goblin fruit proved that I was incapable of resisting temptation, turning me into someone to be pitied, not rallied behind. She didn’t want a martyr, and so she was trying to discredit me in a way my critics would believe.

“To hell with that,” I muttered. I licked my palm again, worrying the last flecks of drying blood loose with my tongue, and reached as deep into myself as I could, looking for the place where my fae and mortal heritages met. It was hard, slow work, like trying to swim through quicksand, but I found it, an intangible line drawn across the substance of my self.

I had done this before. Never intentionally to myself, but on Gillian, when I turned her mortal, and on Chelsea, when I turned her fae. I knew how the process worked. Reminding myself of that as firmly as I could, I gathered the tatters of my magic and wrapped my mental hands around the line, yanking hard.

The pain was immediate and intense. The line didn’t budge, but I did, falling off the bed as I screamed, clawing at my own head in an effort to make the hurting stop. It didn’t help. I kept screaming, and was still screaming when the door slammed open and Sylvester was there, gathering me into his arms.

“October!” He cradled me, looking back toward what I could only assume was Jin. “What’s wrong with her? Fix her!”

“I can’t.” Jin stepped into view behind him. I barely noticed. I was too busy screaming. “The air smells like her magic. Just a little, but enough that I think I know what happened. Toby! Did you try to shift your blood?” My screams must have been answer enough. “She only stopped sliding toward human when she got too weak to change herself that way. If she tried to do it on purpose . . . no wonder she’s screaming. She doesn’t have the strength to do that, especially not with the goblin fruit still in her system.”

“So get it out of her system!”

“Your Grace, if I knew how to do that, I would be rich beyond even your wildest dreams, and have a Duchy of my very own.”

Then she was stepping past Sylvester, and her fingers were grazing my temple, as gentle as spiderwebs. The pain dropped away, and I dropped with it, falling back into the dark.





THIRTEEN