“Three minutes to midnight,” said Elliot.
“Good luck,” whispered Li Qin. There was a flex in the air, and I knew she hadn’t been able to help herself: not faced with the chance that, after everything, she might not be a widow after all. She had bent the luck. We would all have to live with the repercussions, whenever and however they chose to strike.
That was for later. Quentin walked over to the lights, as October picked up the ropes, hesitated, and began to chant.
“If we shadows have offended,” she said, “think but this, and all is mended; that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear, and this weak and idle theme no more yielding but a dream.”
Magic rose around her, a faint scent of green, green grass, like a freshly-mowed lawn, underscored by copper—or perhaps blood. It was difficult to tell. She was clenching the ropes so firmly that the vines had pierced her flesh, and blood was leaking from between her fingers. It did not drip to the floor. Instead, it ran along the body of the rope, from the single strand she held and into the branching strands that connected to each of the bodies in turn.
Elliot turned on the server where the bulk of the dead were stored, adding its hum to the air. I did the same with the upload device where January and Terrie’s memories were kept, before reaching through the network and triggering both devices to begin transmitting their data.
Home, I commanded the slow, sluggish stream of information. It was easy enough to identify the individual minds, the unique memories that defined each data feed. I nudged them toward the correct channels, guiding them until the current took over. Go home. You know where you belong. Go home.
The data feeds accelerated and disappeared. Small disks, attached to the foreheads of the lost, sparked with sudden power, and everything was still.
October continued talking. “Gentles, do not reprehend; if you pardon, we will mend, and as I am an honest Puck, if we have unearned luck now to escape the serpent’s tongue, we will make amends ere long!” The magic spiked. The electricity spiked as well, popping and arcing. Quentin made a short, sharp sound, and was silent.
Everything was silent. The machines had stopped buzzing. Alarmed, I reached for them, and found them still and dead, knocked off the network by the surge. October sagged, hands still clenched tight around the ropes.
“Else the Puck a liar call, so good night unto you all,” she whispered. “Give me your hands if we be friends, and Robin shall restore amends.”
Then she collapsed facedown on the concrete.
“Toby!” Quentin cried, rushing to her.
I let him. My own attention was for my mother, for the shape of her, the stillness of her, the impossibility of her. Please, I thought. Please. I was a child. Let me be redeemed. Let me be forgiven. Please. Let me have just one reset to the original specifications.
Across the room, Elliot made a choked noise, half sorrow, half joy. I glanced over. Yui was sitting up, her arms around his shoulders, her face buried in his neck. Peter was rubbing his forehead, wings fanning slowly. Colin was groaning. Barbara was gone . . . but there, beneath her cot, I could see the reflective eyes of a cat.
Terrie had rolled onto her side and was weeping uncontrollably, all without making a sound. That much, at least, had come cleanly out of the upload device.
When Li Qin gasped, I nearly missed it in the chaos. Then, slowly, I turned.
My mother’s eyes were open.
She was looking at the ceiling, frowning, obviously confused.
“I don’t have my glasses, and nothing’s fuzzy,” she said. “What the hell did I miss?”
Li Qin laughed, and the two of us flung ourselves on top of her—my mother, her wife, our miracle—together, and held her like we’d never let her go.
We were never, never letting go
ELEVEN
“This is going to take some getting used to,” said October, still pale and shaky, her hands wrapped around a large mug half full of blood and half of tea that Yui insisted had medicinal properties. If nothing else, it was warm.
“Says you,” said my mother wryly. She was wearing a robe Li Qin had found in the employee showers. It was much too big for her, and it engulfed her like a wooly white snowfall. “Last night we had a killer in our midst, and I needed glasses to find my own ass. Now . . .”
“Everything is different.”
“Not everything.” Mother looked to where I was sitting with Li Qin. My outline kept shifting between adult and child, settling on the latter for longer and longer stretches. With my mother returned, I did not have to be an adult any longer. I could be a child again, long enough to learn what I still needed to know. Long enough to understand.
Li Qin had not stopped crying since January’s return. Her tears were slow, ecstatic things, and she barely seemed to realize they were there. All her focus was for her wife . . . but her arm remained around my shoulders, and I knew that if any part of her had blamed me for her loss, I was forgiven. I was finally, fully forgiven.
“Queen Windermere is going to need to come and talk to you about what you want to do about the County, and Li Qin’s stewardship of Dreamer’s Glass, and everything,” said October.
January grimaced. “Okay, that’s different. But we’ll figure it out. We always figure it out.”
“Yeah.” October paused before saying, “It’s good to see you again.”
“Yeah.” January glanced at us again, eyes focusing first on Li Qin, and then on me. Her smile was the perfect coda to a perfect program: logical, inevitable, and so often unachievable.
“It’s good to be home,” she said, and we all were. Finally, we all were.