she said finally, and looked down. Something in her had changed, something more than her new depth of emotion. She looked, for lack of a better term, real. “Where is she now?”
How do you explain the concept of the soul to someone whose immortality is kept in electrons and wire? You can’t. So I told her the truth: “I don’t know.”
“She won’t come back? Not ever?”
“No, April, she won’t. Not ever.”
“Oh.” She vanished, the air rushing into the space she’d occupied, and then appeared again. “Gordan has left the network. Elliot has not.” Almost timidly, she added, “I secured his wounds to stop the bleeding, when Gordan was waiting for me. Was this right?”
“It was perfect,” I said. I needed the confirmation about Gordan, but I hadn’t wanted it. No death is pretty, or fair; Faerie wasn’t born to die, and neither were her children.
“Good,” she said, and looked up at me, eyes wide. “Who will take care of me now?”
“You’re going to have to take care of yourself.”
“Can I?”
“I don’t think you have a choice.”
“Oh,” she said. Then, quietly, she asked, “For right now, until they come and take Gordan’s hardware . . . can we pretend that you’ll take care of me?”
“We can,” I said, and smiled sadly, shifting Quentin onto my left arm so that I could offer her my hand. She laced her fingers through mine, flesh cool and slightly unreal—not that it mattered. Reality is what you make it.
We needed to get Quentin down; we needed to get Elliot someplace safe. But for just a moment we stood together in the dark, looking out across the darkened room, and the sound of our heartbeats mingled with the hushed whispering of the night-haunts’ wings.
THIRTY-THREE
IN THE END, THIS is what happened:
April turned to me as the sound of wings faded, pulling her hand out of mine. “How do we get him down?” she asked timidly, indicating Quentin. “Elliot must be retrieved.”
“That’s true,” I said, studying her. She was small, but she looked sturdy. “Can you carry live people when you disappear?”
“Only if I can lift them.”
“Try.” I stood, hoisting Quentin and passing him to her. She was able to support him, barely, by looping his unwounded arm around her neck and wrapping her own arms around his middle. A haze of static rose around them, and they were gone.
I raced to the edge of the catwalk and looked down, keeping my eyes away from the place where Gordan fell. Elliot was a dark shape on the floor, and in its own way, looking at him was almost as bad as looking at her would have been. I glanced to the side and saw April appear near the door, looking almost comical with Quentin hanging unevenly from her shoulders. When she saw me looking, she waved. Blinking back tears I hadn’t realized were there, I waved back.
It took almost ten minutes to descend the ladder: my left hand was only grasping weakly, and it was harder to go down exhausted than it had been to go up panicked. But in the end, there was solid ground under my feet, and I was standing on my own. I nodded to April, leaving her to support Quentin as I went to kneel by Elliot’s side.
His shirt was drenched with blood, and his pulse was shallow, but he was breathing. If we got him to a healer soon, he’d live. I slid my arms under him and lifted, straining until I got back to my feet. Elliot was smaller than I was: I could carry him, if I took it slow. Nodding to April, I turned, and we carried our respective burdens out into the afternoon sunlight.
Things ended quickly after that. April left me halfway across the lawn, teleporting herself and Quentin to the futon room before her strength gave out. I walked through the knowe with Elliot in my arms, accompanied by a cascade of cats. Justice had been done. They’d scatter soon, but for the moment, they still belonged at ALH. I don’t know whether it was April or the cats who told Tybalt it was over, but he met me in the hall, scooping Elliot out of my arms without a word. That was good. I wasn’t certain I could talk without starting to cry.
Riordan’s men could only hold Sylvester for so long. He arrived at ALH almost an hour after Gordan fell, finding us clustered on the lawn in the midst of a sea of cats. Connor