“By then I had already made up my mind. When you made the news last year, I researched you. I saw your films.”
“You’re . . . a fan?” I barked a laugh. “Hey, guess what, you can run unopposed for president of the club.”
“Don’t make it sound like that,” she said irritably, making as if to pull her hand away. I held on. “I saw The Stone Guest,” she said. “It said things about growing up all wrong and too fast, things I didn’t know how to say, or even really how to feel. You seemed . . . insightful. Complicated. Passionate.”
“Holy shit. You have a crush on me.”
This time she did manage to yank her hand away, but I caught it again. “I’m finished talking about this,” she said, doing a damn good impression of her normal icy self.
“Caryl—”
“I want to find that Gate,” she said. “Not only to save the prisoners, but because I want to know how Vivian did it. You have no way of appreciating how impossible it is to arrest something between worlds.”
“Like falling halfway down a hole . . . but sideways!” I mimicked Foxfeather’s lilting cadence, her little torso tilt.
“Just so,” Caryl said dryly, and then stopped. Her grip nearly broke my fingers, and she stared at me with her mouth hanging open. No, not at me. Behind me.
I turned and found myself staring at the picturesque old well. As I followed her train of thought, my mouth fell open too.
“This is why you stopped here,” Caryl said. “You led us right to him.”
We approached the well and leaned over, looking down into its depths. It was darker inside than it should have been with the sun so high in the imaginary sky, as though here alone the glamour didn’t penetrate. The bottom wasn’t visible, but I could faintly see what hung at the end of the rope. Not a bucket, but a flat wooden platform, just big enough for someone to sit on. I tried to turn the crank, but between having only one arm to use and no good legs to stand on, I didn’t get far.
“You’re not thinking of going down there, are you?” Caryl said, squeezing my hand.
“Are you bonkers?”
Caryl moved to the edge, peering down. “Is anyone down there?” she called. Her rough voice reverberated against the smooth round walls of the shaft.
The staggered assortment of hoarse whimpers and moans that rose up to answer her made the fine hairs rise on the back of my neck.
“Millie?” came a faint voice then. I knew that voice.
“Clay,” I said. “You bastard. Just hold on, okay? We’re going to get you out of there. And then I’m going to kick your ass.”
There was a long silence, and then he just said, faintly, “Okay.”
“They’ve literally just turned it sideways,” said Caryl, her voice soft with horror. “A tunnel they can’t climb out of, and they’re forced into continuous contact with it. If they were human, they’d have gone mad within a few hours.”
“Fey can’t go mad?”
“Fey are mad already.”
“WE FOUND IT!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “EVERYBODY GET YOUR ASSES OVER HERE!”
Caryl winced. “Is that how you address your film crews?”
“Whatever works,” I said. As if on cue, all three of them came sprinting for the square, Gloria lagging behind.
“Where is it?” Teo asked, skidding to a dusty stop in front of me. Tjuan was close behind.
“They’re at the bottom of the well,” I said. “Vivian and company built a Gate sideways, so there’s no way out. They’re awake down there.”
They all peered down, as Caryl and I had done, listening to the pitiful moans from below.
Gloria started taking her shoes off. “Someone lower me down,” she said.
“Oh hell no,” said Teo.
“I’ll have to bring ’em up one by one,” she said, already straddling the lip of the well. “If they’re awake, all I have to do is help ’em onto the platform. Tjuan?”
Tjuan glanced skyward, then moved to assist.
“Gloria,” I said numbly. “Wow.”
“Not doin’ it to impress you, sugar.”
The platform swayed sickeningly as Tjuan helped her -settle onto it, and she let out one little “Whoa,” before locking the rope between her thighs and giving Caryl a salute. “Let ’er down,” she said with a cheery grin.
Tjuan reached for the crank.
“Wait!” said Gloria. “Teo, can I have your lighter? It’s awful dark down there.”
Teo hesitated, the bastard, but finally had the decency to hand it over. Tjuan set his teeth and began to turn the crank; it says something about me that even under the circumstances I noticed the flexing of his muscles.
“Everything all right?” called down Caryl after a moment.
“Yeah,” answered Gloria in a thin voice. “I can see them. Yours first, Millie?”