They filled the room, hovering all around my circle. The ones near me had shapes I could name; they were all the races of Faerie, united by their shadowy pallor and their frail, fiercely beating wings. They dissolved into shapelessness as they drew farther away, becoming deep shadows and the fluttering sound of leaves on the wind. I gasped.
The figure at the front of the flock was Dare.
TWENTY
“DARE?” I WHISPERED. It couldn’t be Dare. Dare was dead. I watched her die. And at the same time, it was Dare, because it couldn’t be anyone else.
She was too slim for it to be intentional, underfed and scrawny. Her hair was vivid blonde, contrasting with her apple green eyes. Silver clips tipped her ears, and she wore a gown of dust and cobwebs, making her look like a deposed, despotic princess. The wings were new, blurred shapeless by their constant motion—the wings, and her height. Dare was small before, but now she was Barbie-sized, diminutive enough to stand in the palm of my hand.
There were other familiar faces in the crowd, similarly reduced and remade—Devin was there, as was Ross, the quarter-Roane changeling who died in Golden Gate Park—but most were unfamiliar, smudged to obscurity by the closeness of their fellows. I didn’t see any of the people who’d died on the grounds of ALH Computing.
Dare watched impassively as I stared at them, wings beating hummingbird-fast. I wanted to leap to my feet and hold her in my arms and never let go. I wanted to beg her for forgiveness. I stayed where I was.
“You called. We came,” she said. “What do you want?”
It was her voice that let me break through my shock. It had Dare’s tone and cadences, but lacked the accent and emotion behind the words. She might have Dare’s face, but that was all she had. “I called because I need your help,” I said.
The night- haunts tittered. The one who looked like Dare tilted her head, studying me, and said, “I know you.”
I froze. She continued, “The last owner of my face died with your name on her lips. I remember the feel of it. What do you want, October Daye, daughter of Amandine, who should never have called for us? This gamble is beyond you.”
“What?” I whispered.
“Don’t play coy. You know my face.” Pain bloomed like a flower behind her apple green eyes, making her expression earnest and innocent. “Can I ask you a question, Ms. Daye?” she said, Dare’s accent suddenly coating her words. Whatever she was, she wasn’t kidding. “You got out—can you get us out, too? Take us with you? Please?”
“Stop it!” I snapped, before I could stop myself. “That isn’t fair!”
“Since when has death been fair?” The innocence faded from her face, replaced by calm. “Death is how I know you. How we all do.”
Other voices called from the flock, some familiar, some not. “Yes . . .” “I remember . . .” “She has forgotten, and we remember.” “They all forget.” “Yes.” They closed around me, and I realized that my salt and juniper berries were no protection. If they wanted me, they’d have me. The mandrake tugged at the knife, slicing its palms, and I felt a brief flash of pity—maybe we were both trapped, but I had some hope of surviving the night. My newborn double didn’t.
“Every death and every drop of blood you’ve ever touched is ours.” Her eyes fixed on the mandrake and she smiled, displaying needle-sharp teeth that bore no resemblance to Dare’s. “We know you better than you dream.”
“I need your help,” I said.
The night- haunt with Devin’s face fluttered to the front of the flock. “What do you want from us?” Every word hurt. I’d been trying to summon the ghouls of Faerie, not looking for my own dead.
The night-haunts aren’t something we talk about, even inside the comforting bounds of our own knowes. They live in darkness and come for the dead; exactly what they are and why they want the dead so badly is never discussed. Most don’t know. I certainly never did. I was starting to understand them, a little bit, and I didn’t want to.
“Our help?” said the one with Dare’s face. “To what end?”
“There have been deaths here.”
The one with Devin’s eyes smiled. “We know.”
“You haven’t come for the bodies.”
“That’s sort of right. It’s also wrong. We’ve come for the bodies. We just haven’t taken them away with us.”