She shivered at yet another thought that made no sense. She didn’t need to breathe. She was energy and projection.
Setting her jaw, she snatched up the concubine’s long-abandoned cloak of snowy velvet and plush fur.
Pulling it close around her body, she glided toward the mirror.
MAC
I’m lying on a floor, staring at a door.
Where am I? Every muscle in my body—my body!—burns from exertion and my teeth hurt. Why do my teeth hurt?
Groaning, I take stock of myself. Can I move?
Gingerly, I extend a leg.
Fucking ow.
It feels like someone beat me from head to toe. And I need to pee badly. Whatever nefarious deeds the Book committed, it pushed my body to the extreme in the process. I stay still for a long moment, reacclimating to corporeality. The extraordinary clarity I’d attained with no body to distract me threatens to dissipate beneath an onslaught of sensation.
I press my palms to the floor, force my head up like a rearing cobra and peer into a dimly lit, chilly room furnished with neoclassical goth furnishings: a low brocade and velvet chaise, tall-backed chairs with those creepy canopies, an enormous four-poster bed draped in vintage velvets and taffeta.
I know this place.
I despise this place. And now that I’m back in my own skin, I can feel the palpable evil of the monstrous mansion wherein so many murders were committed. Evil leaves a residue, tainting and changing the very molecules of the location where it occurs.
I hear, too, somewhere beyond this room, the dark melody of thousands and thousands of Unseelie clustered close. More than I’ve felt in a single, condensed area since the night I cowered atop a belfry as the sky ran black with a horde of monsters breaking free after an eternity in prison. The discordant song of so many castes mingling nearly deafens me until I dial my sidhe-seer senses back to low volume. It appears the Book chose to surround itself with an army from the Court of Shadows. And what more appropriate place? It must have scoped it out through my eyes when I’d been here with Barrons, the night I stole one of the four stones. I wonder how much it had actually been able to see that night. I wonder if it knows everything I know. I shudder at the thought. Regardless, it knew enough to know this place was here and would suit it.
“Mallucé’s.” It comes out a fractured whisper. My throat is burning, dry, and my mouth is—oh, God. I stick a shaky finger in and pick at things caught in my teeth. Clearly the Book didn’t bother to brush and floss, and just how the hell long have I been gone, what did I do, and how did I get here?
I drop back to the floor and fumble in my coat pocket for my cellphone. After what seems an eternity of clumsy rummaging, I close my fingers on it, pull it out, squint at the date and time, and collapse back to the floor with relief.
It’s the same day, late night. Surely I haven’t K’Vrucked the world in so short a time!
I stiffen, belatedly absorbing what else I just saw. Contracting muscles that loudly protest contracting, I push myself back up and peer warily at my hands. They’re covered with cuts and abrasions, my palms crusted with blood and bits of black…I squint…feathers, I think. My nails have been torn off to the quick and there’s other stuff stuck to…ew!
I just put one of my fingers in my mouth. No wonder I have such a bad taste in it.
“Shit,” I whisper. My finger hadn’t tasted any different than my mouth. What the hell has the Book been eating? I nearly heave the mysterious contents of my stomach at the thought.
I shove the phone back in my pocket. It takes me several long, agonizing moments to push myself to my feet, where I wobble dangerously before teetering into the dimly lit suite to search for J. J. Jr.’s bathroom.
When I find it, I’m sorry I did.
Obviously the Book wasn’t interested in cleaning and tending our shared vessel. It had been far too busy doing…other things.
I clutch the sink for support, staring at myself in the mirror. Thinking there shouldn’t even be a mirror here. Mallucé was pretending to be a vampire. Why the hell did he have to put a mirror here?
I close my eyes, swaying with exhaustion and horror.
The only part of my face that isn’t crusted with blood is the white of my eyes. Even my eyelids are spattered rusty red. My hair is matted with more blood and some kind of organic matter I wish I hadn’t seen. Bits of glistening gray stuff. Unseelie, I hope. My clothing is torn and equally plastered with ribbons of flesh and more blood. What in God’s name did I do?
I open my eyes and stare levelly at my reflection.
I killed. A wave of horror threatens to engulf me. Who? What terrible things did I do? What sins do I bear?
I inhale slowly, exhale long and even, willing the sick feeling in my stomach and the palpitations in my heart to calm. Horror will accomplish nothing.
I can either give in to fear and give up—or refuse to let it touch me and go on.
I opt for the latter because the former is pointless and destructive and would make me an even greater liability to my world.
After emptying a fuller bladder than I’ve ever had, I turn on the tap, splash water on my face, gulp it, swish and spit, then begin scrubbing with the half-used bar of soap Mallucé didn’t finish before he died. I scrub and scrape, then turn and grope blindly for a towel because the blood is crusted on my skin so thickly that it’s not coming off. I scour my face nearly raw with the hot, wet towel then plunge my head into the sink and lather my hair with the bar.
A few minutes later, trembling with exertion, I flip my wet hair back and look into the mirror again.