Chapter 7 In Which New Friends Renovate My Room
In Which New Friends Renovate My Room
A woman in a golden diadem sat before a blazing fire. The rising smoke shifted into rotating planets around a flickering sun.
She looked up and met my gaze. Before I could speak, she’d moved—uncanny, graceful—and stood before me. I felt her gaze on me. Weighed and divided. Found wanting.
Her right arm came up, the rotation of her wrist sketching the curve of a ship’s bow. She extended her hand, palm down, and pressed a single finger to my forehead. I felt my skin start to burn, radiating outward from where she touched me—
I woke up screaming.
No one came to take me to the cafeteria for breakfast, which was fine since I still felt aches in my stomach from the heaving of the night before. So I skipped breakfast. I skipped clothes, too, and logged into our morning meeting, camera off, wearing my baggy nightdress.
Was it only Thursday?
Good lord.
Jeff didn’t call in to our morning meeting, so it was truncated and unexciting.
After the meeting, I messaged Corey.
Miriam Geld: Hi.
Corey Tucker: Hi
Corey Tucker: what’s up?
Corey Tucker: busy day for me
Miriam Geld: just wanted to say thanks…
Corey Tucker: nothing to thank me for. Same team, remember?
I sat back and stared at the chat. That was all he planned to say about punching a faerie in the face and then bullying him into offering me lifelong protection?
Miriam Geld: Sure. Same team.
My head was pounding. I needed to talk to someone, so even though the workday had already started, I called Thea.
“Miri?” she asked when she picked up. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I croaked, surprised by the sudden pressure behind my eyes when I heard her voice. “I was just… calling to say hi. What’s up?”
“Oh,” she said. I could picture her leaning back in her chair, one foot pushing against a desk drawer. “Nothing really. I’m going to a ping-pong bar after work. Apparently, there are just thousands of ping-pong balls, and you never run out.”
“That sounds really fun,” I said, staring out my window at what appeared to be one faerie teaching another how to fly a kite.
“Yeah, it should be,” she said. “Do you wanna come with? Jordan will be there.” She paused. “Please come, Miri. I know I just saw you, but you ran out on dinner, and I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” I said. This was my opening. I would love to come to the ping-pong bar, but I relocated. I relocated permanently. I live in a magic Renaissance faire.
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. “Work is really busy.”
Why couldn’t I tell her?
She sighed. “This job is eating you alive, Mir. I’m glad you’re passionate about it and all, but make sure they value you, okay? Because you’re smart and amazing.”
I didn’t feel smart and amazing. I felt like a sand castle in the middle of a dog park: uncomfortably damp and falling apart.
“I know,” I lied. “But you forgot something. I’m lucky, too. Because you’re my friend.”
She snorted, and I closed my eyes, trying to remember what it felt like to sit next to your best friend while she laughed. Somehow, it was already slipping away.
Around midday, someone knocked on my door.
I stood, not sure who to expect: Sahir would be in the office.
Would the Gray Knight come to go over the contract in person?
I couldn’t stop the butterflies in my stomach at the thought.
And then I hurled myself at the suitcase, which I’d relegated to the floor, and started a frantic search for clothes.
“Who is it?” I called, flinging my nightgown into a pile of clothing and yanking a gray cotton dress over my head.
“Lene,” the reply came.
I froze, and breathed in. Lene?
Oh. Cat lady Lene. Why was she here?
“Coming,” I said, starting for the door.
She, in the grand faerie tradition, opened it and entered.
“Hello—” I said, but she wasn’t looking at me. She’d gotten onto her knees and started crawling toward the bed, over heaps of shirts.
“Pssssst pssssst pst,” she said, crawling past me, and then “Tsk tsk.”
“I’m sorry, are you looking for something?” I asked, nonplussed.
“Of course,” she exclaimed, and stood. “The cat who inspired such affection! I must see this creature.”
“Oh… uh, Doctor Kitten is by the window,” I said, pointing.
I stared over her head at Doctor Kitten, who sat in a loaf on the windowsill, staring back at me. Doctor Kitten is a cat and doesn’t have telepathy, but from the look he gave me, I knew in the depths of my soul that he suddenly despised my existence.
Lene leapt over the bed in a ballet split and landed on all fours on the far side.
“Hello, cat,” she said, and followed it up with a torrent of sounds that I could neither describe nor transcribe.
Doctor Kitten stood up, his back arching, and hissed at her.
I started toward the two of them, bumped my thigh into a bedpost, growled a curse, and stepped between them.
“Lene, I don’t think he likes that,” I said, putting my hand palm down toward his nose.
“Shush,” she said, and made another type of sound. I watched her face; her reflective eyes were intent on him.
Doctor Kitten unbowed his back and straightened his ears. Then he opened his mouth—so wide I could see all of his teeth—and yowled.
I put a hand on his back. “It’s okay,” I said.
Across from him Lene had opened her own mouth and started yowling, too.
“Please, Kitten,” I started.
“Shush!” Lene said again, somehow without ceasing her own yowl or closing her mouth. I scooped Doctor Kitten into my arms but the noise didn’t stop.
“Please, what are you doing to him?” I gasped, hugging him to my chest.
They both quieted.
“We’re talking,” she said, frowning at me.
“At the same time?”
Lene sighed. “Obviously at the same time. May I?”
She held out her hands for my cat. I didn’t move. Doctor Kitten wriggled in my arms.
“What, you want to go to her?” I asked. Lene came closer, and I carefully tipped him toward her. He calmed down.
“What did he say?”
She blinked slowly at me. “He likes chin scratches,” she said. “There are many birds here. He wonders how they taste. He told me that he exposes his stomach and you try to pet him and he bites you.”
“Oh,” I said, and stared at Doctor Kitten. “Does he do that on purpose?”
Lene appeared not to hear me. “And he likes the window. I will provide him with a larger window.”
What? I didn’t say, because she had already gone back to the door and opened it.
Gaheris, the fiery guy from last night, stood there, lurking.
“Bigger window?” he asked, in a voice that indicated he often trailed Lene, widening apertures for cats.
“A comfortable window seat as well,” she said. “And perhaps a long hallway to run up and down? And a few crinkle balls?”
Gaheris stepped inside and closed the door.
“A long hallway,” I repeated.
Gaheris glanced at me. “We can borrow space,” he said. “The land above the hill will not miss a few meters of forest. The humans do not use it anyway.”
“You’re going to borrow space from a forest and put it in my room?”
He shook his head. “No, we will put a small passage into the mortal realm here.”
He must have interpreted the look on my face as one of annoyance and not one of disbelief.
“It will be self-contained,” he added. “Like those shark tunnels humans love at the aquarium. Two entrances, here”—he pointed, and a golden flame shot up along the inner wall—“and here.” Another flame, about a foot farther along.
Then, misinterpreting my expression, he added reassuringly, “They will dim at night!”
I stared at him. He stared at me. Doctor Kitten stared at Lene. Lene stared at Doctor Kitten.
“Aquarium?” I said.
Gaheris shrugged. “My sister works in a human hospital and took me to an aquarium a few years ago. I like them a lot.”
“I just—I have to do work,” I sputtered. “Will this take long?”
Lene carried Doctor Kitten to the bed and curled around him, her bushy brown tail flicking. “We will nap,” she announced. Doctor Kitten had lain down in the decadent pose of an emperor, on his back with his legs splayed.
“You look like a possum,” I muttered, but he chose to ignore me.
I sat down at the desk, hooking my legs outside the legs of the chair. My computer was still unlocked, the Excel model on the screen.
I looked over at the second screen, with the latest comments from the Gray Knight, and found the line where I had stopped.
Inputs, B36: change “operating expense” to “operating expenditure.”
Behind me there was a noise like a sheet of paper going up in flame.
I glanced back, unconvinced that anyone would warn me if there was danger.
The left portal now looked like a crack in the wall of the bedroom, and through it I could see a tangle of roots and grass.
Had he really just opened a way home? Would a new portal still kill me?
I forced myself to take a slow breath. I couldn’t mess up this chance—there might be a portal in my bedroom that could take me back to New York. But I had to play it cool.
I unhooked my legs from the chair and stood up. Lene and Doctor Kitten didn’t move on the bed.
Doctor Kitten. I was an idiot. They’d trapped me with my cat. If I took him through the portal and exploded in transit, then he’d be trapped outside in some godforsaken forest and covered in viscera.
Doctor Kitten, bless him, was a very spoiled indoor cat. He didn’t like the decorative fern in my apartment and would strongly dislike a real forest.
I sat back down, clicked into cell B36, and made the change. Then I tabbed back to the Word document where I kept my notes, tabbed until I had selected the line, and struck through the line so I knew I’d completed it.
I’d keep an eye on this potential portal, but it was too soon to make any moves.
Another knock at the door. I looked up, but this time Gaheris answered.
A moment of complete silence and then, “My lady.”
I stood up and turned to see the Gray Knight in the doorway.