Tyler threw himself to the floor as they opened fire and a hailstorm of bullets ripped through the air, blasting out the windows, showering him in broken glass. The nightmare was done toying with him, done torturing him.
Now it was trying to kill him.
74.
The wind whistled in Seelie’s ears as she plunged toward the street. She was tumbling, twisting in the sky as the impossibly tall office tower whipped past her. She hit the glass, bounced off it, helpless and out of control. She fought to focus, to fight through her terror.
Has to be a way out, has to be a trick. What did Aislin do when she needed help? She called on her coven. But I don’t have a coven. Or she prayed.
But I don’t have a god. I don’t even have a name.
It all blurred together in her mind, a jumble of moments and words and names as she hurtled toward the ground. Mothers. True names. Aislin said I’m a witch. Even though I barely know anything, I’m a witch. What do witches do?
Learn things. Know things. Make their own rules.
A distant flame sparked, like the strike of a lighter’s wheel.
She thought back to Patty’s dining room and her own fascination with the retired witch’s statuette. “Hekate,” Patty told her. “The mother of all witches.”
Seelie took a deep breath and let it out in a full-throated shout: “Hekate!”
A distant gaze, cool and curious, fell upon her. She felt it. It felt like dark, smoky eyes, red lips and red nails, vintage grace, an iron key.
“I don’t have anything to offer you,” Seelie said. “I don’t have anything to sacrifice. I don’t know any secrets. I’m just…me. This is presumptuous and arrogant and—”
An invisible finger pressed against her lips, silencing her.
Ask your boon.
“Hekate, goddess…” Seelie swallowed, hard. “…will you be my mother?”
The presence became a distant and playful smile.
Foolish child, I’ve only been waiting for you to ask. I’ve only been waiting your entire life.
Floor after floor flew past her in a blur. Seelie was diving, plunging to the street.
“I need a name. I need you to give me a name.”
Oh, I think Cecilia Rose is a lovely name, and fitting. It only needs some embellishment. Aislin tried to help, but I stepped in and blocked her words from your mind.
“You—” Seelie blinked. “Why? Why would you do that?”
Because with a true name, and with knowledge, comes a burden. Do you accept any burden it may place upon your shoulders, with your own free will?
The ground was coming up fast. A hundred stories to the ground, ninety-eight, ninety-five—
“Yes,” Seelie shouted. “I accept.”
Even if it means you might have to serve me as Aislin does? Forever, and ever, and ever?
She looked inside of herself, into her heart, and knew the truth.
“I would do that anyway,” Seelie said. “That’s what I want. And this is my offering to you, Queen Hekate. Me. My offering is me.”
Then claim your power, Hekate told her. A nova went off in Seelie’s brain.
Once, my lovely daughter, you taught your nightmares to fear you. Time to do it again.
She remembered now.
Seelie took hold of the edges of the world and wrenched. The nightmare city lurched, turning sideways. The skyscraper became a slope of glass. Her shoes hit it and she slid, half plummeting and half skiing, her arms out behind her. She crouched, and leaped, and laughed as gravity surrendered to her will. She felt her black curls rub the back of her neck, growing out, as she transformed herself in a cyclone of rose-gold light.
She was all-the-way-Seelie here, and she’d traded her office wear for a flowing halter-neck dress, ivory white with a delicate rose print. She’d seen it in a store window once, down on Fifth Avenue, but she couldn’t afford it. It felt like a good dress to wear into battle. She landed, wearing ballet flats, on the side of a skyscraper gone horizontal. It leveled out, a plane of mirrored glass glowing hot under the burning sun.
Shadows shifted around her, boiling, becoming meat and steel. The security guards from the office surrounded her, a dozen in all. They brandished nail-studded truncheons and rusted hooks.
The voice of the nightmare, the thing pretending to be her father, thundered from the lopsided sky: “Who do you think you are?”
Now she remembered what Aislin had whispered into her ear, punctuating it with a kiss on Seelie’s cheek. Three words of power. Three words of magic.
“My true name,” Seelie called out, “is Cecelia Rose