How can the Book be so strong when it was recently so weak? I focus again on my hand, zero in on a single finger, stoking my rage. If I can affect even one finger, that’ll prove to me that I can—
A strong arm hooks my throat from behind and yanks hard, choking off my air. The Book instantly releases my grip on Jada, realizing belatedly that although it had made my body invisible, suspending her in the air had given its position away.
I seize upon the fact with interest. It’s fallible. It makes mistakes.
The Book uses my lips to shape soundless words, and suddenly a dozen duplicate versions of me spring into existence, cramming the office with identical Macs. I realize dimly that I look like hell, assuming we all look alike.
Lor and Fade go into instant battle mode, attacking versions of me.
“I’ve got the real one, she’s still invisible!” Barrons roars.
That may be true, but the other Macs are fighting like banshees, leaping on Lor’s and Fade’s backs, kicking, punching. The Book is either capable of throwing glamour that actually has substance or weaving a highly sophisticated illusion of it that convinces the others they’re actually interacting with it. Whichever it is, the end result is the same. Time seems to suspend a moment while I apply this information to my sister, Alina. Was she, too, nothing more than one of these types of illusions? Never back from the dead at all, merely an elaborate ruse that fooled everyone? If I questioned one of the duplicate Macs, would they, too, be fully programmed with pertinent information like Alina was? Now that the Book had what it wanted, did that mean Alina had already ceased to exist?
The Book doesn’t fight the arm around my throat, instead it stabs viciously back past my rib cage, and I feel the spear sink into Barrons’s body. It must have seized it from Jada’s thigh sheath at the same time it grabbed her by the throat—in the instant that, stunned by my transition, she’d hesitated and didn’t kick up into the slipstream fast enough. I’d missed that part because I was occupied destroying my box and discovering my power. I hear a soft hiss of breath, then Barrons growls and his hold on my neck loosens.
The Book ducks and twists from his grasp, scrambles away, and plasters back against the wall. I try desperately to turn my eyes to the left, to see how badly I’ve injured Barrons, but the Book doesn’t cooperate. From the corner of my eye I see him move, lunge to his feet again, and heave a sigh of relief. The last time I’d driven my spear into him, he’d died.
Suddenly the many Macs go motionless and begin to chime an ear-splitting melody that is so wrong, so painful, that everyone in the office, including the Book, claps hands to ears, wincing. The hellish, crystalline symphony builds to an excruciating crescendo. I feel the horrific vibration deep in my bones.
The glass walls of the office rumble and begin to crack with the sound of thunder rolling, the floor beneath me begins to shudder, and abruptly it collapses beneath us in an explosion of glass.
Clawing air, I plunge to the dance floor below and slam into the floor hard. My body rolls, scrambles up in the midst of a tangle of humans and Seelie who trample one another in a desperate dash to escape the shower of glass.
Barrons hits the floor a dozen feet away, landing on top of a club patron brutally decapitated by a sheet of jagged falling glass. Slipping in blood, he bounds to his feet and roars, “Where the fuck did she go?”
Lor crashes into a knot of screaming women and Fade slams into a table next to him, shattering it with his weight.
“She vanished again,” Lor snarls.
“Find her,” Jada shouts from somewhere in the slipstream. “She took the spear back. We have to stop her before it’s too late!”
They’ll never find me. I’m invisible.
And the Book already has me halfway to the door.
As I’m unwillingly steered into the night, I try once again to exert control over my body. Furiously, I will my feet to stop moving. Cast away the spear. For whatever reason, having the spear makes me more dangerous. That’s reason enough to get rid of it.
Nothing happens. I can’t influence my body at all. What am I doing wrong? What’s the missing ingredient? And what didn’t Barrons tell me? Why didn’t he warn me that the Book has some deadly plan it’s trying to implement? Perhaps I could figure out some way to stop it. If I could figure out how to move.
I shake my inner head and sigh. I know why he didn’t tell me. The same reason he didn’t tell me who I killed. He didn’t want to give me more to worry about. He figured I had enough on my plate, and I do. Either that or he anticipated what I didn’t: that the Book was simply playing me again, and any information he shared with me, the Book might get, too.
And it was playing me.