Chapter 8
Mirage
The place Rollick calls his “desert estate” reminds me of the academy, only smaller. And with different possibilities for amusement.
The single-story house wraps around a courtyard just like the school’s reform building does, but this courtyard has not just a garden and patio but a whole swimming pool. Even though the saltwater makes my nose itch, I’m tempted to dive right in to escape the dry heat in the air.
Maybe later, when we’re finished with our Serious Business.
The extra-cozy lounge chairs look perfect for curling up on, and more comfy sofas and chairs fill the expansive living room beyond the glass sliding doors. I slink around them, considering the possibilities.
Hail opted to wait in the house’s front yard, saying he felt like soaking up some sun. I think he just wanted to show that he isn’t interested in being any nearer to the rest of us than he has to be. It’s very important to the chilly fae to keep his cool distance.
Raze prowled off on a quick hunt, and Jonah went down into the house’s basement with Rollick to check that everything’s secure before we visit the demon’s collection of shadowkind beasts.
Picturing what that room might look like makes my skin go all creepy-crawly. I shake off the unnerving sensation and turn my attention toward the most unavoidable member of our team.
Peri must like the look of the pool too. She’s vanished her sneakers and swapped her ripped jeans and T-shirt for a gold-to-blue ombre sundress. Now she’s sitting with her pale legs over the edge of the pool, lifting her bare feet in and out of the water while she leans back on her hands.
The little smile playing with her lips and her casual stance should mean she’s relaxed. But I’m starkly aware of the uneasiness winding through her and spilling out into the connection that joins us through the glowing spot on my chest.
The idea of all those caged creatures bothers her, just like it does me. We’re both too familiar with the shape of cages from the opposite side.
We both did things we’re ashamed of while captured that way.
Rollick isn’t the same as the humans who imprisoned us, of course. He’s keeping these shadowkind imprisoned for their own good, not to manipulate them. That doesn’t make the creepy-crawly feeling any better.
If he can’t figure out what’s causing their impulses to warp so they go on the attack, what will he do with them?
I don’t think Jonah can convince them all to travel back to the shadow realm and stay there. He barely managed to keep one away for ten minutes. That’s less than a lunch break.
Are other things bothering Peri? I haven’t talked to her much since she blasted her light into us in the woods. Even thinking about her sends a similarly uneasy sensation through me from throat to gut.
I want to go to her, and I want to get away from her. But I can’t do the second thing. I’m chained to her, even more constrained than I was in the experimenters’ cell.
At least the cell had a door I could hope to escape through. Peri’s trapped me right down to the essence of my being.
It shouldn’t bother me. I wanted to be close to her. My Rainbow has shone so much colorful light into my life, in ways I never imagined were possible.
I had the choice then. She didn’t mean to take it away, but she did.
As much as that fact gnaws at me, I’m still drawn to her. Maybe even more than before. The desire to go over and wrap my arms around her, bury my face in her hair and then kiss her lips, is a dull ache that never quite goes away.
She’s always pretty, but when I can get her to light up, she’s absolutely breathtaking.
I don’t have to get very close to her to brighten her up a little. Why shouldn’t I distract her from the discomfort of this situation the way only I would think to?
Yes, that’s what I’m meant to be doing. Playing tricks, bringing laughs, changing perceptions. Shaking her up a little might make us both feel better.
I duck behind a shed that holds various pieces of pool equipment and slip into the shadows. Shrinking my presence as small as I can, I wriggle through the patches of darkness along the patio stones.
Nothing to see here. Just a little shadow-worm.
As I ease closer, taking a winding route behind Peri, a spark of amusement lifts my spirits. The contrasting tension coiled in my gut resists the sensation, but I tune it out.
I’ll get a little closer, and then—
Just as the trick is forming in my head, Peri glances around. A pang of her concern reverberates through our connection. “Mirage? Are you all right?”
Who, me? No one’s here but the shadows.
She’s looking straight at the sliver of darkness where I’m lurking. I hesitate, disappointment washing through me.
Of course she sensed me coming. She’s even more aware of my mental state than I am of hers.
I’ll never be able to surprise her again. Never be able to play with her or delight her with an unexpected jolt of joy.
Her smile disappears completely with a knitting of her brow. “Mirage?”
The worried quaver of her voice and the guilt I can sense winding through her concern snap me out of my downcast spiral.
I jerk myself back into physical form and dip into a foxy bow with a swish of three of my tails. “I’m fine. Just playing around. This seems like a good place for it.”
“Oh. Okay.” Peri’s smile comes back, though it’s tentative. “You can play as much as you want around me. Especially if you’re enjoying it. I just thought—it seemed like—I’m sure you don’t have to go downstairs if you don’t want to. Rollick would understand.”
I grimace. She doesn’t have that choice. Rollick specifically wanted her to use her emotion-sensing power on the creatures.
Doesn’t he care how the setting might rattle her? She’s more than a feelings-omometer.
Someone has to be on her side.
I lift my head high with a flick of my fox ears into and out of existence. “Of course I’ll come. We’re a team.”
Peri’s stance softens. I got a bit of what I wanted.
It just doesn’t feel like anywhere near enough.
“You know—” she starts, but at the same moment, footsteps rap on the other side of the patio doors.
Rollick slides one open and peers out at us. “I think you’ll all be safe from the marauding beasties. Come down, and let’s see if we can determine anything new about these creatures.”
He’s mainly talking to Peri, not me, but as promised I amble behind her into the artificial cool of the house. Raze hasn’t returned, but Hail stands stiffly near the basement stairs.
“I don’t even have to go down there to sense that they’re upset,” he tells Rollick. “Wild creatures aren’t meant to be shut away.”
Rollick gives the winter fae a mild look. “And shadowkind aren’t meant to go showing off their strangeness in front of the mortals who’ll want to do a lot worse than shut them away. We need to solve that problem before anything else. You can go back outside if you’d prefer.”
Hail glowers at him. “I’m coming.”
As we descend the stairs and wait for Rollick to open the secure door at the bottom, Peri’s posture tenses too. This place must bring up even more awful memories for her than it does for me.
The sorcerer who caged her kept her in his basement.
I’d like to batter him with all five of my tails and shred him with my claws and fangs. If he wasn’t dead already.
Jonah casts a pained glance Peri’s way. “If it gets to be too much for you, you can take a break. I can tell Rollick’s keeping the creatures as comfortable as possible, but still…”
Our lovely Rainbow squares her shoulders with determination. “It’s okay. I want to help them, and that’ll be easier if I can see them.”
The room we enter isn’t as blazingly bright as the sorcerer’s basement or the lab where I was imprisoned.
A desk stands against one wall, stacked with papers and notebooks including some I recognize from the notes the sorcerer had tacked to the wall in his workspace. A tall steel cabinet stands next to it.
The only other furnishings in the room, if you can really call them that, are a stack of solid metal boxes along the far wall.
A prickle runs through my nerves with the impression of the unpleasant materials embedded within the cages’ steel shells. The enclosures are all quite big, enough to contain a large dog.
Rollick motions to them. “Lesser shadowkind are simpler to contain. I don’t turn on the lights inside once they’re caught, so they can stay more comfortable in the darkness.
There’s only enough silver and iron embedded to ensure they don’t go slipping out.
” He grimaces. “I know it isn’t ideal, but I have tried to give them as much room as possible.
It’s difficult to cater to them properly when they keep changing. ”
Peri steps closer to the wall of cages, her gaze fixed on their doors. “How do you know they keep changing when you can’t even see them?”
“I have devices monitoring the inside of the cages that keep track of certain types of energy and the physical space they take up if they materialize. They’re all pretty erratic, similar to the readings we’ve gotten from the rifts, but they adjust their composition on somewhat regular schedules.
Some change once or twice an hour, others no more than once a day, most somewhere in between.
That variation matches what I’ve been able to decipher from that sorcerer’s notes. ”
The demon walks up to one of the cages. “I’m going to let out one of the fastest-morphing ones now, after Jonah compels it to stay in the room.
Peri, I’d like you to monitor its internal state, especially when and after it’s adjusted its outer appearance.
The rest of you can keep watch for anything you happen to observe in your own ways. ”
As he presses a couple of buttons on the outside of one of the higher cages, Hail leans against the wall and folds his arms over his chest. His expression looks stony as a statue, but he doesn’t grumble anymore.
When Rollick opens the cage, Jonah speaks a few of those magical sounds that wobble through my nerves, louder and more emphatic than usual to get the sorcery to stick.
A creature currently the size and shape of a hamster—but covered in slick slimy skin that reminds me of a newt—hops out onto the ground. It trundles one way and then another on its stubby legs, its pin-like claws tapping against the tiles.
We all watch as the newt-ster keeps scurrying around without any clear sense of direction. Peri’s gaze stays trained on it. “Right now, it feels curious and a little nervous. It’s confused about where it is and how it got here.”
“Understandable,” Hail mutters.
It only takes a few minutes before the creature’s small body shudders and expands. It balloons to several times its previous size, puffing out like a blowfish but sprouting feathers rather than scales.
Only its legs stay the same size, leaving it to sway and rock across the floor rather than really walking, as if the hamster has become the exercise ball rather than just running inside it.
It whirls around and snaps its teeth at me. I jerk back, not sure what I did to offend it.
“As soon as it transformed, it had a surge of unhappier emotions,” Peri says. “I think that’s happened a lot of the times we’ve seen them morph.”
Jonah makes a face. “It can’t be fun constantly adjusting to a different form.”
There’s an odd urgency to the creature’s movements around the room now, though. It might have snapped, but I have the unexplainable impression that it simply wanted to latch on to something.
Maybe I can distract it from its discomforts. Even a hamster-ballfish should get to have some fun.
I release my ears and all five of my tails and crouch down close to the creature’s level. With a squeaky gurgle, it sways toward me.
Yes, it wants to join me. We can make that a joyful collision rather than a toothy one.
As it scuttles forward, I hop to the side with a swirl of my tails. When it changes direction, I make another leap. “Let’s play, little guy! Seize the day, not my nose.”
The creature lets out a snuffly-sounding snort and shoves itself toward me. Peri’s voice comes out in a yelp. “Mirage, watch out!”
It’s easy enough to dodge the little thing. It careens into the space I just left with a furious chittering.
My head droops. My invitation appears to have been soundly rejected. “I guess it’s not feeling very playful.”
Peri shoots me one of her sweet smiles. “It’s just kind of jumbled up inside. I don’t think it’s in the right mood.”
Her attention darts back to the creature. “Its temper is starting to simmer down, though. Just a little bit.”
Can I say that’s any thanks to me? I might have been keeping it stirred up rather than simmered down. That’s what I always seem to do.
I wanted to be here with Peri so I can help, but what help can I really offer? I’m not good at anything other than being ridiculous.
The knowledge niggles at me through two more of the creature’s shifts. Each time, it snarls and snaps right after the change and then gradually calms, no matter what we try.
A few minutes after the third change, Peri’s face has gone unusually solemn. The stream of emotion coursing into me from her feels even more unsettled than before.
Neither of the other men she’s marked seem willing to ask the important question, so I will. “What’s wrong, Rainbow?”
She shakes herself, but the impression of gloom doesn’t lift. She turns to Rollick rather than to me.
“It’s only a bit, and the changes are far enough apart that it’s hard for me to be sure. But… I think every time they morph, they get a little angrier.”