Kaye wobbled on her feet, trying to shore up her knees, trying not to fall into blackness.
Her ankles and wrist burned, and all she could taste or smell was iron.
Then Roiben was pulling her through the crowd with a blood-soaked hand. He tugged her into a run, and Spike was beside them, running too.
As they stepped outside the brugh, a figure stepped in front of them, but was cut down before she caught more than an impression of something awkwardly tall and pale gray in color.
Then they were in the graveyard, running down the tumbled quartz path, past plastic flower grave markers, and flattened soda cans, stepping on cigarette butts, and they seemed like talismans that might actually keep the monsters at bay.
Until she realized that she was one of the monsters.
Chapter 11
"But lest you are my enemy,
I must enquire."
"O no, my dear, let all that be;
What matter, so there is but fire
In you, in me?"
—Yeats, "The Mask"
Kaye trod up the driveway, her mother's Pinto looking both familiar and strange, as though it was part of a painting that might suddenly be turned on its side and revealed as flat. The door to the back porch seemed like a portal between worlds, and, even close as she was, she wasn't sure she would be allowed to step through to the kitchen beyond.
More than tired, she felt numb.
Roiben leaned against an elm tree and closed his eyes, unsheathed sword dangling limply from one hand. His body was trembling lightly, and next to familiar things, the blood soaking his arm and thigh looked ghastly.
Right then, Lutie swooped down from one of the trees, circling Kaye twice before landing on her shoulder and scrabbling to press a kiss against the damp skin of her neck. It surprised Kaye, and she flinched back from the sudden touch.
"Scared, silly-scared, scared, scared, scared," Lutie chanted against her neck.
"Me too," Kaye said, pressing her hand against the buzz of the tiny body.
"They'll be a score of songs about you by nightfall," Spike said, eyes gleaming with pride.
"There would have been twice as many if I had died like you planned, wouldn't there?"
Spike's eyes widened. "We never…"
Kaye bit her lip, forcing herself to swallow the hysteria that threatened to bubble up her throat. "If Nephamael was going to take the glamour off me, he was going to take it off my corpse."
"Dismiss me, pixie," Roiben said. His eyes had a hollow look to them that made her stomach clench. "I was careless. I will hold no grudge against you or yours, but this foolishness ends now."
"I didn't plan this—your name. I never meant to use it for anything." Kaye reached out her hand to stroke the edge of his sleeve.
The effect was instantaneous. He circled her wrist with his hand, twisting it hard. Lutie squealed, springing from Kaye's shoulder into the air.
There was no anger in his voice, no sarcasm, no heat. It was as strangely hollow as his eyes. "If you wish me to endure your touch, you must order me to do so."
Then he dropped her hand so quickly it might have been made of iron. She was shaking, too scared to cry, too miserable to speak.
Spike looked at her wide-eyed, as though he was reasoning with a lunatic. "Well then, Kaye, tell him he can go. He says he won't hold a grudge—that's a generous offer."
"No," she said, louder than she intended. They all looked at her in surprise, although Roiben's gaze darkened.