Quentin didn’t argue, just pulled the phone out of his pocket and passed it to me. There was a new picture of him and Dean on the lock screen, this time of the two of them riding the carousel at the Yerba Buena Gardens, looking disgustingly cute. I barely glanced at it before swiping my thumb across the image, pulling up the keypad, and dialing.
I had no idea what time it was. Quentin’s phone, despite being modified to work in the Summerlands, didn’t seem to know, either; the time on the display was eighty-nine o’clock, and I was pretty sure that was wrong. Walther might not even be in his office.
The phone rang once, twice, and I was resigning myself to trying to find a way to leave a neutral but urgent voicemail when there was a click, and Walther said, “Professor Davies here.”
“Walther, it’s me.”
“Toby! Did Raj get the formula to you in time?”
“He did. That’s sort of the problem. We got hit by some kind of pixie knock-out powder and shrunk down to their size, woke up, got re-enlarged, and now Simon’s asleep again and I can’t wake him up. Is there any chance their knock-out dust interacted badly with your elf-shot cure?”
There was a long pause. Too long.
“Hello? Walther? Are you there?”
“All those things were words, and they all left your mouth, but I’m having trouble with the idea that they form any sort of coherent sentence.” Walther took a deep breath, the inhalation clearly audible through the phone. “Okay, first question: is he alive?”
“He’s breathing.”
“Good, that means it’s not the sort of spell interaction where you need a resurrection to fix it. What do his pupils look like?”
I leaned forward and pried Simon’s left eyelid carefully open. His iris had been reduced to a thin ring of honey gold around the enormous black circle of his pupil.
“Dilated,” I said, letting go.
“Right. Last question. What does he do when you cause him pain?”
“I slapped him. He didn’t wake up.”
“Cause him more pain.”
“I’m not going to knee him in the nuts just to see what happens.”
“So stick him with a pin or something. I need the sort of shock that a normal person couldn’t sleep through.”
I sighed. “Hang on. Quentin, hold this.” I handed the phone to my squire and pulled the knife from my belt. Leaning carefully forward, I dug the tip of it against the skin of Simon’s hand until it broke the surface, sending a trickle of smoke-scented blood running down the channel between his knuckles.
Simon didn’t stir.
I leaned back, reaching for the phone. Quentin returned it to me. Bringing it to my ear, I said, “He didn’t wake up.”
“Okay. It’s a bad interaction. Based on his pupils, I’d say he’s basically stoned. It may wear off on its own. It may also mean he’s out for a while.”
“How long?”
There was a pause before Walther said, “I don’t know. If he doesn’t wake up soon, bring me a blood sample and I’ll see what I can find. Try not to let him get exposed to anything else.”
“Right. I’ll talk to you soon.” I hung up the phone and handed it back to Quentin.
“What did he say?”
“That we’re screwed. Hang on, I’m going to do something stupid.” I stood, cupping my hands around my mouth, and called up to the tree, “Hey, Poppy, can you come down here for a second?”
A bright orange mote of light zipped from one of the high branches and descended to hover in front of my face, where it resolved into the pixie woman who had been so happy to show me around. She waved, expression shy.
“Hi,” I said. “You can understand me, right?”
Poppy nodded, wings chiming.
“Great. So here’s the deal. Simon was elf-shot. I had him woken up to help me find my sister, but the countercharm was still in his system, and I think the stuff you used to knock us out is interacting poorly with it. I can’t carry him the way he is right now. Is there any chance you can shrink him again, so I can stick him in my pocket until we figure out a way to wake him up?”
Poppy clapped her hands over her mouth, looking alarmed. I shook my head.
“I’m not mad, I just need to get moving. So can you?”
She hesitated before nodding and zipping away, back into the trees. I waited impatiently until she reappeared, and started flying circles around me and Quentin, trying to move us away from Simon’s body.
I took a big step back, reaching forward to haul Quentin after me. Poppy gave one approving ring before she darted forward, pulling something from her belt, and threw it into Simon’s face. There was a burst of bright orange glitter.
When it cleared, Simon had dwindled to the size of a pixie. That was expected.
Poppy, standing there, still barefoot and glowing bright orange, but suddenly built to human scale, was less so. I blinked. She blinked. Then, looking absolutely delighted, she did a little jig step and clapped her hands together.
“It worked, it worked, oh, I’m a miracle and no mistake! Look what I did! Look what I’ve done!”
“I can see what you’ve done, I just don’t understand it,” I said. “Why are you big?”
“Because your friend’s small,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Not a good enough answer,” said Quentin.
“We don’t have big outside magic like you wingless do,” said Poppy. “If we did, you wouldn’t go in for swatting us half so often, because we’d swat you right back. Pow!” She paused to giggle before adding, “We make an inside magic. All of us together, we can small the wingless down by all giving a little. If you want someone to be small without you calling on the whole flock, somebody has to give a lot. That’s me! I’m giving a lot!”
I blinked. “So you can make someone else small if you use, what, all your magic?”
“Not all,” she said. “Most, though. Not too much left for me. If you said ‘Poppy, make yourself to look like a human-kind,’ I couldn’t do it.”
“What about your natural magic?” asked Quentin. Pixies normally have a sort of passive “you can’t see me” field that keeps them from being noticed by mortals. It’s handy. Sometimes I wish I had one.
Poppy shook her head. “Not that neither, which is why we don’t do it for much anymore. Used to be, someone kicked our mushrooms and squished our children, we’d small them right down for a while, maybe let a cat bat them about. Teach them a lesson and send them back to their parents not believing. Ha! But now, looking like we do . . .” She indicated herself, glowing skin, wings, and all. “If I smalled somebody down out in Human, I’d get found straightaway, and taken for a freak, or arrested by the wingless for endangering us all. I can’t hide myself from human eyes when I’m the same size as they are.”
“Hopefully, it doesn’t come to that,” I said. “This is a very big favor, Poppy. I won’t forget it.”
“’Course you won’t, because I’m coming with you,” she said blithely. She laughed at my blank look. “You don’t think I’d be letting you walk off with all my magic, do you? I’ll want it back as soon as he’s awake, no mistake of that. But this is an adventure, and we don’t have so many of those.”