by ‘Zareen,’ I said, clearly and warily, as she approached me with that odd, jerky gait. Whoever was wearing her skin hadn’t had to operate a real, living body in a long time, I judged. She’d lost the knack of it. ‘Zar. Snap out of it. Please.’
There was a definite pause, or at least a slowing of the inexorable approach. Zareen was still in there somewhere. Good.
I danced back a few steps, searching my weary brain for an idea. Dealing with misbehaving spirits is Zareen’s job; what are we supposed to do when she’s the one who gets possessed?
‘Jay,’ I said. ‘I have no idea what to do here.’
‘Then it’s time for some of your trademark brilliant improvisation, because neither do I.’ We were backing up together, which worked fine until we ran out of street.
Zareen was closing on us, and— here came Indira and Emellana, neither of them in their right minds either.
‘We need Zareen back to fix this,’ I muttered to Jay. ‘Can you keep the other two busy while I work on that?’
‘Right.’ He took off at a run.
I didn’t see how he chose to carry out my somewhat peremptory request, because Zareen was getting in my face and I had more urgent problems. ‘Zareen, come on,’ I said, sharply clapping my hands. ‘You’re a boss and a queen and you’ve got this.’
She hadn’t got it. I could tell from the way she tried to grab my face with her red-lacquered fingernails (rather chipped).
Merlin time. What do I do, Ophelia, what do I do?
Go deep? Somewhere inside Zareen’s commandeered head my friend was still lurking, but how could I reach her? I didn’t have time to sit and commune with the elements, not while she was determinedly trying to claw out my eyes.
I tried anyway. I focused and I listened, and for a few seconds, I thought I had it. An echo of the Zareen I knew, something that felt like her. Yes. I grabbed hold of Zareen and I pulled.
And when that didn’t work, I lost my shit for a moment and tried the age-old art of headbutting. Why, you might ask? Did I think I could shock the ghost out of her by sheer brute force?
Hey, it was worth a try.
She shrieked, so did I (headbutting hurts), and nothing changed, except that on the next swipe she got hold of my face. Her thumb shoved into my mouth and her fingers were in my eyes and I was mad.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake—’ I spat, and bit.
She shrieked again, and released me.
I took immediate advantage.
I opened my mouth and, with a wisp of Merlin-magick, amplified my typically dulcet tones to impossible volume. ‘SILVESSEN!’ I roared, and the syllables split the air with the force of a thunderclap, echoing off the bowl of the sky. ‘THIS IS SOMEWHAT CONTRARY TO THE SPIRIT OF OUR AGREEMENT, DON’T YOU THINK? PLEASE RECALL YOUR ESTEEMED COLLEAGUES TO A SENSE OF DECORUM OR WE DO NOT HAVE A DEAL.’
Jay shot past, high-tailing it to gods-knew-where. Pursued, a moment later, by Emellana and Indira, and then Jay came back around again.
Okay. Playing chicken with the glaistigs. That’s one way to distract them.
‘SILVESSSSSEEEN,’I screamed again, because Zareen wasn’t much daunted by my voice-of-the-gods routine and was coming at me again. ‘Don’t make me hurt Zareen or I WILL HURT YOU.’
I would have, too, in that mood. It had been a difficult day, I was tired, and worst of all, I was hungry. And the carrier bags containing my carefully chosen repast were lying scattered in the street getting rained upon because Silvessen’s miserable cronies fancied a possession party, I mean, who’s got time for this?
Thankfully, I wasn’t obliged to do either of those things because she’d heard me. Well, she could hardly help it.
Another voice rolled through the heavens, almost as thunderous as mine. ‘Alaiona. Celaena. Fanessel. Desist.’
Zareen stopped dead. Behind her, Indira and Emellana came to an equally abrupt halt, so sharply they almost toppled over. All three shuddered convulsively, and then all three screamed, which was super fun.
And then all three of my colleagues and friends collapsed in the dirt.
‘Thanks,’ I muttered weakly, and dropped to my knees beside Zareen.
She was already coming around; her eyes were open, and when she looked at me I knew it was Zar because she was angry.
She came up spitting with fury. ‘Bitches tricked me,’ she snarled. ‘And they teamed me, too, because they knew I was the threat. Let me at them.’
‘Nope,’ I said, planting a palm on her chest when she tried to jump up. ‘Silvessen recalled them because walking your carcasses around rather contravened the terms of the deal we just made. I’m afraid forcibly exorcising her only friends would have much the same effect.’
Zareen’s only response was a wordless snarl, but she made no further attempts to tear off in a murderous rage, so I let her be while I checked on Emellana.
‘Why does my head hurt,’ I heard Zareen mutter as I left her.
Em was on her feet by the time I reached her, brushing mud off her coat.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I feel like we shouldn’t have left you.’
Unruffled as ever, she twinkled at me. ‘Food was important. Where is it, by the way?’
‘Over there.’ I pointed. ‘You seem remarkably unperturbed for a recently possessed woman.’
‘It’s happened before. Never pleasant, but you can get used to anything.’ With which wisdom, she ambled away in the direction of food, leaving me to unhappy contemplation of her words.
What do you have to go through to get used to malevolent possession?
Did I want to know?
I did not.
I turned in search of Indira.
No need. Her big brother had her in a big hug, which was good, because even from here I could see she was drawn and shaking. Poor girl. She was so young, she’d had none of the experience Emellana benefited from.
‘I shouldn’t have left you,’ Jay was saying, echoing my own words. ‘If I’d been here—’
‘If you’d been here, what?’ Indira interrupted, and pulled away from him. ‘What were you going to do?’
Jay seemed at a loss for an answer. Fair, because it was a really good question. ‘I don’t know,’ he finally said. ‘Something to protect you—’
Indira became icily dignified, unconsciously mirroring Emellana’s gestures as she brushed herself down. ‘Bad things happen sometimes. You can’t prevent that.’
‘Even so—’
‘No. It isn’t up to you to protect me from the world, and it wouldn’t help me much if you could. How am I supposed to become competent myself if you never let me experience anything that might be challenging?’
‘There’s challenging, and then there’s forcible possession by a dangerous spirit—’
‘Jay.’ Indira looked him dead in the eye, ice-cold. ‘Resilience is the product of encountering adversity, and surviving. You do want me to grow into a strong and capable adult?’
There was no good comeback to that, and Jay didn’t try. Wise man. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I hear you. I’m sorry.’
She nodded, and that was that.
‘Thanks for the hug,’ she said. ‘It helps.’ And then both of them were looking around for me, and for food, possibly in that order or possibly not.
The mood as we tore through our repast was subdued. I don’t know what had led any of us to expect a nice, easy mission; when did that ever pan out? But we had, and instead we’d been emotionally tortured, our wits were tested, our physical bodies were pushed to their limits (and beyond), and finally several of us had been used as sock puppets.
And we hadn’t eaten all day. At least that was a problem we could fix.
We ate huddled inside one of the more intact of Silvessen’s cottages, which at least kept the rain and some of the wind off us. But a half hour sitting in one place left us shivering with cold and very ready to be going home.
I made the last morsel of my second eclair last, savouring the sweetness and the cream.
And when it was finished, and the last drops of cooling tea drained, I — and Jay and Zareen and even Emellana — turned a hopeful look upon Indira.
‘Let’s have a look,’ said she, rising (a little stiffly) to her feet.
She crossed the street and sat in the dirt next to the regulator, sat there for a while with her palms to the earth and her brain on some other plane of reality. I don’t know what she was doing, but after ten minutes she stood up, made a hopeless and ineffectual attempt to wipe the mud off her trousers, and shrugged. ‘It seems to be okay,’ she said.
Which is as good a way of tempting fate as any I’ve ever heard, and she really ought to have known better.
Because that was when the horde of carnivorous unicorns showed up.
Okay, just kidding about the unicorns. What actually happened was nothing, which at that point could scarcely have surprised me more.
‘It’s okay?’ I repeated dumbly.
Indira nodded. ‘I think so. Nothing anomalous is going on, and it seems stable.’
‘Can you… get it out of there?’
‘No.’
‘Milady won’t be happy.’
Indira looked pained. ‘I know, and I would prefer to remove it, but I can’t.’
‘So we leave it here.’
‘Yes. It’ll have to be checked regularly for a few weeks to monitor the results, tweak and recalibrate as necessary, but for now it’s fine.’
‘And we can go home.’
‘Yes,’ said Indira, and added, fervently, ‘please.’
