Three figures approached, making their way briskly down the main avenue of the ghost town. The first to catch my eye was David Berenbaum, who for some reason was wearing classic Western sheriff garb, complete with gleaming star badge. His silvery-white Stetson shaded his face from the illusory sun. Next to him strode a blond Adonis with feathered braids and turquoise war paint, milk-white skin improbably bare except for his buckskin trousers. Viscount Rivenholt. Behind the pair of them, dolled up like a Wild West whore in bloodred satin and black lace, was Vivian Chandler.
It took me a moment to realize that they hadn’t dressed for the occasion; my mind had dressed them. They were exactly as I expected to see them in this setting.
I waited for Vivian to give the obligatory speech about what fools we were for interfering in her designs, but she just kept marching toward the town square, a look of steely purpose in her painted eyes.
Just like that, Caryl bolted. She slipped her hand free and took off like a jackrabbit into the decaying chapel.
“Caryl!” I shrieked. “Have you lost your mind?”
“She’s heading for sacred ground,” murmured Claybriar. “Unseelie can’t follow.”
Not being Unseelie myself, I was about to take off after her when Vivian’s words to Rivenholt pulled me up short.
“Toss the faun down the well, will you, darling?”
“Oh, hell no,” I said, stepping pointlessly in front of Claybriar. I wasn’t the ideal champion, but I had only just gotten him out of there.
Rivenholt started toward us, but David caught his arm with an are you nuts look.
“It’s all right,” the fey said. His voice was like satin sheets on a summer night. “The fall won’t kill him.”
“It’ll kill her, though,” said Vivian, flicking her long-nailed fingers toward the well. The rope holding Gloria frayed faster than Tjuan could move.
Gloria let loose the same free-fall scream of terror as before, but this one ended abruptly. It was echoed by the horrified shrieks of the fey still trapped in the well.
“GLORIA!” Tjuan’s cry echoed down the shaft unanswered. When he turned back to Vivian, I saw the fires of hell in his eyes. I expected him to take off after her and die horribly to a snap of her fingers. But instead he backed away slowly, never taking his eyes off her.
It was Teo who went completely batshit.
“You said you wouldn’t hurt anyone!” he screamed.
Vivian smiled. “I didn’t hurt her. I hurt the rope.”
I stood there like a poleaxed cow. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Tjuan take off toward the chapel. I should have too, but I was rooted to the spot.
“Teo?” I finally managed.
“Get Caryl, you moron!” he yelled at me, stabbing a finger toward the chapel.
“Teo, what is Vivian talking about?” Anger hadn’t quite caught up with me yet. “When did she make a promise to you and why?”
“She just wanted me to spy for her! She didn’t say anything about killing anyone!”
Vivian let out a silky laugh. “I should really thank you, Millie, for getting yourself fired and leaving him all alone,” she said. “I almost peed myself when he called me, begging me to find his Echo. Which I will do, of course; I’m a woman of my word. Sadly, I never promised to bring her to him.”
Teo stalked toward her and drew, of all things, a pathetic little pocketknife. Vivian did take an instinctive step back, though, at the sight of steel. She flicked her fingers in his direction, and I recoiled, expecting his head to explode or something. But he just stopped in his tracks and looked confused as Vivian sauntered past him, skirts swishing.
“Put the faun where he belongs, Rivenholt.”
The viscount moved faster than my eye could follow. Suddenly he was behind Claybriar, making me look even stupider for trying to intervene. Rivenholt locked both arms around the faun’s chest, pinning him. I didn’t know what else to do but fling myself clumsily at them, digging my fingers into Rivenholt’s forearm and trying to pry him loose. The viscount looked down at me in shock as his glamour dropped, revealing a creature of glass-feathered wings and blinding white eyes.
“I promised Vivian I would see this through,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
He released one arm from around Claybriar to try and loosen my fingers, but then we were both distracted by Teo’s gut-wrenching cry.
“What have you done!” Teo shrieked, staring with slack-jawed horror at his own left hand. He held it splay-fingered in front of his face.
“Teo, what is it?” A wave of dread made me dizzy.
“It’s his hand,” said Vivian cheerfully. “But good luck trying to convince him of that.”
Rivenholt used the opportunity of my slackened grip to wrench free. At the same moment, Teo fell to his knees, brandishing his pocketknife and stabbing it into his left hand again and again.