I can carry things with me when I transit through the network. Sometimes it is a conscious choice, as when I deliver Elliot’s lunch to his office on the days when he doesn’t feel like he can handle seeing anyone. The soda is always flat when I arrive, and batteries are often exhausted, hence my refusal to transit with the upload device . . . but I can do it. Other times, it is automatic. Mother used to clip ribbons in my hair, and I would wear them for days, somehow transmuting them into pure data when I disappeared, then reconstructing them from light and pixels when I came back.
Mother always said that one day, she would figure out how I did that, and it would allow her to upload anything she wanted into infinite, flawlessly expandable storage. She called it the “Pokémon project,” and she had never had the time to begin. Death came first.
I was going to fix that. The proof was on my fingers, which were stained red and streaked with ash.
“I am working on an independent research project,” I said, tucking my hands behind my back. Judging by the expression on October’s face, out of sight was not out of mind. Upon further consideration, I did not care. “The results should be in by midnight. If they do not match my desired outcome, I am afraid I will be unable to approve this ritual.”
“Not even for Alex?” asked Quentin. He glanced at one of the cots, where a slender, black-haired woman lay unmoving. Terrie was an interesting case, as the victims of Gordan’s upload process went: by day, her body was male, and belonged to her “brother,” Alex. They shared physical space, but not mind or memory, and when the upload device had been inserted into their mutual flesh, it had drained her away, not him. By day, Alex lived. By night, Terrie died. When it happened on company property, she generally tended to wait out the hours of darkness in their shared office. She must have been carried to the basement for the ritual’s sake.
“Alex’s position is awkward, but not untenable,” I said flatly. “Merrow are bound to the water; Dryads are bound to their trees. Alex is bound to the daylight. His chains are no direr than any other’s.” The fact that Terrie’s consciousness was trapped alongside my mother’s was beside the point. I would have them both, or I would have neither.
“That’s cold,” said Quentin.
“It is necessary.”
October, who had been silent through all of this, frowned and asked, “Who lied to you?”
I looked at her. She would understand. If anyone would understand, she would, because when Gordan had taken Quentin, she had been willing to risk everything to get him back. She understood what it was to gamble the world for the sake of her family.
“Gordan,” I said.
She went very still, and I knew she understood. She had seen the blood on my hands. She could no doubt smell it as well; smell the traces of my mother’s magic lingering there.
Li Qin—who had not been here when things went wrong, who had heard about it after it was already over, when Elliot had finally tracked down a way to contact the knowe where she had been staying—looked between us, a frown on her face.
“What aren’t you saying?” she asked. “What in the world could be so important that it would make you refuse to let us bring back these people? They’re your friends, April.”
“They are my colleagues at best, and my acquaintances at worst,” I replied. “They consider me a software innovation gone too far, and who’s to say they’re wrong? My attempts at independence got them killed.”
She winced, but didn’t contradict me. That was for the best. Much as I adored my surviving mother, she was ill-equipped to argue with me in matters of guilt. She carried her own burden. I carried enough for both of us.
Instead, in a small voice, she asked, “What could possibly matter enough for this?”
“Please do not ask me again,” I said. I felt weary all the way to the core of my code. “Until I have succeeded or failed, I do not wish to tell you.”
“How is Alex?” asked October abruptly. The question was a little too loud, a little too brassy: she was trying to distract Li Qin. It was a transparent ruse, especially to Quentin, who had watched her magically-enhanced dalliance with Alex from a close, if confused, distance. He grimaced, looking at anything but his knight as his cheeks burned red.
“Well enough,” said Li Qin. “He never really sleeps anymore—he just dies when the sun goes down and Terri takes control of the body. It’s beginning to wear on him. I think he used to get the benefits you or I would get from dreaming from being his sister’s ride-along, back when they functioned as they were intended to.”
“Well, hopefully, we can fix that,” said October. “Tell me more about this ritual.”
Li Qin produced a folder and began explaining its contents, rattling through lists of steps and connections to similar, sympathetic magics. She was talking fast and firmly, like she wanted to sound so convinced of her own correctness that there was no room for a dissenting view. She did not mention the chance that October would sleep for a decade after the deed was done. I did not remind her.
There was a beep in my ear before Elliot’s voice said, “April, I have movement on the cameras in the cafeteria.”
“I see,” I said. Turning to the others, I continued, “I am needed elsewhere. I will return. Please do not raise the dead without me.”
Then I was gone, back into the network, back into the living lightning nothingness of the world where I belonged, moving like thought across the length of the building, until the outlet spit me out into the dim, smoky cavern of the cafeteria, where my piles of dried flowers still smoldered with a green, terrible light. The fire alarms had yet to go off. That was due to the magic, no doubt, and not something I could or should ascribe to maintenance.
I still made a mental note to have the batteries checked.
There was a sound above me, as of dead leaves rustling in the wind. I looked up, and the night-haunts descended, a black cloak settling gently over the room. They touched down on the floor this time, folding their wings as they looked at me. Only the night-haunt with the Selkie’s face remained airborne.
“We don’t care for blackmail, and we don’t care to be manipulated,” he said. “If you do either of these things again, we will dedicate ourselves to destroying you. Our reach among the living is limited, but there are ways. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” I said, without hesitation. I had no intention of doing this again, and his irritation was more than justified. I know what it is to be used for what I am and what I can do, with little regard for what I might desire.
“What you asked of us should have been impossible. You understand that, as well?”
“I do.” I cocked my head. “You said ‘should.’ It was not?”
“Blood is strength, especially among the children of Oberon.” The Selkie smiled, and his teeth were too sharp and too bright for the kin his face would claim. “They call themselves Titania’s now, but the blood remembers, and the blood will always win.”
“I brought you her blood.”
“You did. You brought us blood and flowers—and you are, in your own way, the truest application of flower magic I’ve ever seen, in all my centuries. An illusion that thinks, dreams, and schemes for itself. Honestly, you’re enough of a delight that I might have done this anyway, just for the sake of what you are.” He fixed me with a steely gaze, and he looked nothing like the Selkie at all, for all that he wore the Selkie’s face. “Never again. Promise me.”