then the scream came again, and this time, it was possible to tell the direction. We looked at each other, but we’d come this far. We cautiously followed some stairs down to a basement.
It seemed intact, if dank, with water spots on the walls and suspicious scurrying in the corners. It would have been perfect as an old, horror movie set. All it needed was a monster.
Only, it had one of those, too.
“See? See?” There was a creature on the floor, at the far end of the large space, but the acoustics were good enough for the voice to carry. “There they are! Just as I promised. My creatures didn’t manage to find it at Hassani’s court, but they have it. They have it! They think the girl is here, so they must have brought—”
“I don’t care about the device!” a woman hissed.
“But—but you must. Isn’t that what all this has been about?” The voice turned angry. “You’ve been beating me up for half an hour because I lost the damned thing and now you tell me—”
A large fey stepped forward, and the creature put its hands over its head, cowering.
The woman who had been standing over it turned, and I froze. Long, floor-length blonde hair, beautiful, sweet face, faint silver light spilling everywhere. I knew her.
But . . . that was impossible.
“Efridis,” I whispered, and felt Louis-Cesare stiffen beside me.
She looked at me blankly for a moment, then turned back to what she was doing. Which appeared to be torturing who or whatever was on the floor. There were some fey around her, healthy, normal looking ones, maybe a dozen.
They didn’t react to our presence, either.
I looked at Louis-Cesare; he looked at me. “Stay here,” he told the others.
“Gladly,” Zheng said.
We walked forward.
Efridis was looking a little worse for the wear herself. Her usually perfect hair was tangled and wild, and her normally silk clad body was dressed in a woolen tunic and leggings, much like those that the male fey wore. But there was something else, something . . . almost raw on her face. I couldn’t describe it; didn’t understand it.
But it was not the look of a well woman.
Which was fair, as she was supposed to be dead.
“Please,” the creature on the floor said plaintively. “Please, I don’t understand. I did all that you asked—”
“And more.” Her voice, too, was a rasp, so different from her usual, melodic tones. She knelt down, and turned his face up to the light. “I saw your creatures,” she whispered.
I gasped; I admit it. Because that was also someone I knew. And someone else who was supposed to be dead.
Jonathan.
I glanced at Louis-Cesare. I didn’t know what expression I’d expected, when he came face to face with his old nemesis again, but it wasn’t that one. He’d looked blank for a moment, and then a succession of emotions had flashed across his face, too fast to read. But in the end, he settled on . . . puzzled.
Okay, I guessed that . . . was an emotion. It wasn’t the one that I was experiencing, though. Not even close.
My hand went to my knife, because I wanted to feel this kill. No easy gunshot, simple and bloodless, at least if you managed to stay out of the splatter zone. No, I wanted—
And then I stopped, my hand still on the hilt of my weapon, because I’d begun to understand my husband’s expression. This wasn’t the man I remembered. That man had been frighteningly talented, brash, more than a little crazy, and above all, scary. This . . .
What the hell was this?
He looked more like the shambling, possibly-zombies outside than anything I remembered. His face was sallow and heavily creased; his eyes sunken and dull; his hair thin and gray, as if he’d aged decades since we saw his body in the Circle’s dank holding cell. That had been the man I remembered; this—
“No,” I said, the word bursting out of me on a puff of air, a single, visceral reaction.
Efridis glanced at me. “Yes, he hurt you, too, did he not? You may have him when I am done, if there is anything left.”
I looked at Louis-Cesare. I understood exactly nothing, but I knew he would have at least one answer for me. “Is it . . .?”
He didn’t immediately reply. He knelt down, putting him and maybe-Jonathan’s head on a level, and searched those too-dull eyes. Then he did what I couldn’t have, and leaned in. And sniffed