Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
The search for their scattered companions proved to be more difficult than Ava had anticipated. Sure, she could kind of sense them…but it wasn’t a skill she was used to trying to wield. Even with Serrik’s help.
“Close your eyes and pretend you are dreaming of them.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?” She tapped her fingers on her thighs. “Aren’t I liable to damage something? Rip a hole through space?”
The arched eyebrow on his face said it all.
Yeah. She’d done about as much damage to the world as she was probably liable to do, wasn’t she?” Letting out a sigh, she shut her eyes and…pictured her friends in her mind’s eye.
Using her connection to the Web to sense their locations felt like trying to tune into a radio station through static—she could catch glimpses of familiar presences, but the signals kept shifting and distorting as the merged realities continued to settle around each other.
It was dizzying. Which she didn’t realize until he put his hand on her shoulder to keep her from toppling over backwards.
“Sorry.” She chuckled. “I still don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Nor should you be expected to.” He moved to stand behind her, draping his arms around her to hold her gently to his chest. “Go ahead. Try again.”
The feeling of him at her back, the warmth of his presence, the smell of him—like a forest, the citrus sharpness—it gave her something to hold on to. Literally and figuratively. Leaning back against him, she rested her head against his chest and took a deep breath.
“It’s like scanning for a signal on an old radio. Too much static.” She realized he probably didn’t even know what a radio was. Whatever. “There’s too much noise, all at once, layered on top of itself. If I try to pay too much attention to it, it’s overwhelming.”
“The Web was never meant to exist in a physical space. Your consciousness is having to adapt to processing reality on multiple levels, simultaneously. Never mind the simple fact that adjusting to becoming the Weaver would be problematic enough.” He kissed the top of her head.
“You are doing just fine. Breathe. And focus on the one who is closest to you.”
The one that was closest to her?
Well.
That question had a complicated answer.
None of them were real. So that made it a difficult conversation. She supposed Nos was the exception there, but he…also kind of hated her. Or at least didn’t trust her, or want her around—and it turned out for a damn good reason.
But when she’d needed someone there with her, when she’d needed anyone?
There.
That was the answer.
She tried to visualize it. Maybe it was some part of her going back and latching on to Ibin’s military story, she wasn’t sure.
She used the radio metaphor—tried to picture herself sitting at the console of Mission Control.
Switches and knobs and screens that displayed green text on a dark green background.
There, blinking on the radar, was a blip.
It wasn’t much, but it was a direction. “That way.” She opened her eyes and pointed. “Whatever is that way, we’re going that way.”
He was smiling down at her with a mix of pride and…could she even say it? Did she dare?
Love.
He picked up her hand and kissed her knuckles. “My Weaver, you never cease to amaze. Lead the way.”
Her cheeks went a little warm as she headed off down the street.
It quickly devolved into the Back Bay area, far faster than it had any right to.
It was a surreal mixture of Victorian brownstones, stacks of library books that jutted from sidewalks like crystalline growths, and patches of trees and overgrowth from Tir n’Aill that had claimed entire sections of city blocks.
“So. We can assume Valroy is gathering for war. Seeing as he now has his chance to eliminate humanity and enslave the Seelie.” She tucked her hands into her pockets. “I guess my question is…what’re your plans?”
“For now? I suppose I will say that I have none.” He stepped carefully around a tree whose roots had grown through and split the asphalt. “If you are asking after my motives, which I believe is the root of this conversation—”
“Yay, pedantry.” She sang out but smirked at him playfully.
He hitched at the interruption but kept talking. “—then I am forced to concede they will remain the same, if the actions of the fae remain the same.”
Ava took a moment to consider his words. “If Valroy is waging a war, you’ll try to kill him. If the fae do…fae stuff, you’ll try to kill them all.”
“A crass, if effective summary, yes.” He looked off, thoughtfully. “As we have already addressed. Though, I am attempting to withhold any large works of magic or shows of power as it may…upset the tenuous situation that we have found ourselves in.”
That took her another second to translate. “Meaning, I’m the Web, you’re the spider, and you’re sitting really still, just in case you twitch and cause a major earthquake and accidentally cause more damage?”
“Another crass but effective summary.”
Shutting her eyes, she sighed. “Great.”
“It is also useful for you to learn and adjust to this situation you have created.”
“That we’ve created.” Oh, yeah. She was still a little bitter about that. “You’re equally if not more responsible for this fuckery. I—” She paused, stopping in her progress. “Wait.” There was a ping on the radar. “I think—I think we’re close.”
The impression came to her like a half-remembered dream—fear, confusion, and underneath it all, a familiar flutter of iridescent wings. “Bitty. She's close. Very close." She turned in a slow circle, trying to pinpoint the direction. “That way. Maybe three blocks.”
Walking along in silence, she kept her focus on that strange sensation of ping…ping…ping. It felt kind of like holding dowsing rods. Or like she was following a dog. Only she was the dog.
It was odd to see people attempting to go about their business. Some people were wandering around, ignoring the oddities and impossibilities of the world around them as though there hadn’t been an apocalypse.
As if they were simply sleeping and this was just another bizarro dream after too many margaritas on Taco Tuesday. That was what Puck had said—that some humans weren’t even aware of what was going on. Weird.
They found a bookstore tucked between what appeared to be a Seelie flower shop—whose proprietor was literally a walking rose bush—and a restaurant that seemed to be serving food from all three realities…simultaneously.
The bookstore's front window was cracked, its neon OPEN sign flickering erratically, but the warm glow spilling out onto the sidewalk suggested it was still occupied. Bless their hearts. Although, Ava was beginning to suspect that all these poor people didn’t have a choice.
She was making them do this, wasn’t she? Pretend like everything was normal, when it clearly wasn’t?
Ava pushed open the door, setting off a tinkling bell that sounded mundane enough to be reassuring. For a moment, it almost felt like stepping into a sanctuary from the chaos outside. And that was the whole point. That was why this was here.
“Hello?” she called softly. “Is anyone here?”
A crash from somewhere deeper in the store was followed by a familiar squeak of alarm. “Ava? Ava!” Bitty's voice was high and panicked. “Oh thank the stars! Is that really you?”
Ava followed the sound through narrow aisles lined with bookcases that seemed to stretch impossibly high, their tops lost in shadows.
The books themselves were a mixture of earthly volumes and others that definitely belonged to different realities—some with covers that shifted and moved, others that whispered as they passed.
It was a merging of Earth and the Web—the place where she should have found that second shard, but instead had found Valroy waiting for them.
Bitty was in what had likely once been the store's reading nook, a cozy corner with overstuffed armchairs and a fireplace that was somehow still crackling cheerfully despite the lack of any visible chimney. The tiny fae was huddled in one of the chairs, her wings folded tightly against her back.
An elderly human woman bustled around her with obvious concern, stacking up books that had fallen—the source of the crash.
“There now, little one,” the woman was saying, her voice warm with a grandmotherly comfort that immediately put Ava at ease. “I’ve made some chamomile tea. It'll help with the nerves.”
The woman was exactly what central casting would order for “Cliché British Bookstore Proprietor”—silver hair in a neat bun, wire-rimmed glasses, a cardigan that had seen better decades but was clearly beloved.
She moved with the efficiency of someone who had been taking care of people for a very long time.
Everything about her was hysterically and cartoonishly on the nose.
“Mrs…um…Mrs. Crumplebottom?” Bitty turned toward the woman with a frantic and desperate kind of gratitude. “These are my friends I told you about. Ava and Serrik.”
The woman—Mrs. Crumplebottom—beamed at them with the kind of crooked-toothed smile that could make anyone feel like a welcomed grandchild.
“Oh, wonderful! Bitty's been so worried about you both.
I'm Millicent Crumplebottom, and this is my shop.
Well, was my shop. I'm not entirely sure what it is now.” She gestured vaguely at the impossible architecture surrounding them.
“But it's still a place for stories, so I suppose that's what matters.”
Ava studied the woman more carefully. Her alarm bells were going off in the new Command Center in the back of her head. The familiar tingle of something not normal was unmistakable.
She was a dream.
As if the name alone wasn’t a giveaway that something about the woman wasn’t quite right.
Like Bitty, Lysander, and Ibin. But…but there was something different about this one.
Where the creatures she'd encountered before had felt off, Mrs. Crumplebottom felt even somehow weirder. Like an AI-generated image of an AI-generated image.