Page 21

Crispin

A s Crispin stared at his brother, a complex stew of emotions worked its way through his gut and made him fear he’d throw up .

He had always harbored a curious blend of feelings toward Aspin, the perfect fae who was everything their mother expected Crispin to be.

“Aspin.” He nodded at his sibling rival, but Aspin’s attention was tightly focused on Leo.

“I know you.” Aspin walked over to them with the grace and implied danger of a panther, stopping before the hapless human.

Leo, for his part, seemed much less impressed with Aspin’s image of refined masculinity. “This one’s your brother? I would have guessed that one over there.” He jerked his thumb toward a corner of the room.

Crispin followed the gesture to where Uncle Epilen snored in a gilded chair, thick glasses resting on the bridge of his overly long nose, hands clasped over a bulbous belly.

The rest of the courtiers were staring at the newcomers, the room suddenly gone silent.

“Um, thank you? I think?” It was certainly a mixed compliment. Epilen was very smart and handled all of the family finances, but he was not the most attractive of the family fae.

“Oh, you’re much more adorable.” Leo pecked him on the cheek, making him blush and earning a shocked gasp from the crowd. Humans rarely entered his mother’s Estate, and when they did, she was usually the object of their affections.

His mother, for her part, wore an expression Crispin had rarely seen—genuine shock. Whether due to her unexpected human guest or the prodigal return of her son, it wasn’t clear.

Crispin wiped his cheek, as if he could just rub out what had happened, and then straightened his rumpled vest. He was glad he’d taken the time to spruce Leo up a bit, but now he wished he’d done the same for himself.

He felt every inch the desk fae among these fancy folk, and worse, a somewhat disheveled and grimy desk fae, likely confirming everything they already thought about him.

“You look so familiar.” Aspin was still staring at Leo. He reached out to touch his cheek and jerked his hand back when a spark stung him. “What in Hades’ dark halls?” Aspin glared at his own hand as if it had offended him.

This was going to escalate fast if Crispin didn’t find a way to shut his brother down and get Leo somewhere private.

The lights flickered, and Thea unexpectedly came to his rescue, blaring out a strange “song” that sounded like a mix of car horns and electric guitars played by zombies on acid. Crispin had collected just such a song once, for work.

“Sorry. I broke my transport device.” He pulled out his damaged electronic best friend and glared at her, though he was secretly glad for the interruption. “Not now, Thea.”

The screen went black, and the music cut off abruptly.

Before Aspin could recover, Crispin grabbed Leo by the elbow and dragged him past his brother and over to the glorious, all-knowing, world-enchanting Queen of the High Holy Fae. “I need a moment with you alone, Mother .” He knew just the tone that would push her buttons.

She blinked and sighed. “Of course you do.” She turned to her adoring courtiers. “I am so sorry, but a familial matter has arisen that requires my immediate attention.” The look she gave Leo told him she knew exactly what he was. “I will return anon.”

Crispin grinned. He’d startled her into an anachronism. She’d always been fond of young Shakespeare, who had somehow escaped—mostly unscathed—from his two-week visit to her realm. And had gone on to write an entire play based upon it.

She waved her hand and the room and the rest of the casino dissolved. All of her guests disappeared, except for Leo, Crispin, and Aspin.

Leo gasped. “Are the rest of them… dead?”

Crispin gave a low chuckle. “They only wish they were.” Being in the presence of the Queen was like a drug for mere mortals, and her sudden absence hurt like the worst kind of withdrawal. “They will be fine when she returns.” He looked around, surprised to find himself in her private bower.

This version of it fit with the fancy casino theme—a huge suite, wallpapered in a shimmering pattern that recalled cottonwood trees, their leaves shifting as if blown by a breeze.

He recognized it as an enchanted wall covering, of course.

In the middle of it was the omnipresent Red Door, which Crispin avoided looking at. Too many implications there.

The Queen’s bed was held up by four massive oaks which disappeared into the sky—or was it just a ceiling?—where clouds shifted slowly across the plaster. He’d never been able to decide if they were actual clouds or just a fancy painted illusion. Neither would have surprised him.

“Why did you bring that here?” Cerillia was staring at Leo with a combination of fear and distaste. But it was her appearance that startled Crispin. She looked… older.

Cerillia Ailedrin Moss’caladin never looked older.

She was agelessness personified , an ethereal being who made all others around her feel old and inferior.

But now he saw fine lines around her eyes and mouth, skin pulled so tight across her cheekbones that it was almost translucent, and silver hair that looked more leaden-gray than the color of freshly refined ore.

Aspin frowned prettily. “What is it?”

“You don’t recognize it?” She patted her older son on the head as if he were five years old.

“You dragged it off to Earth all those gods-forsaken years ago.” She turned away to pour a fine sparkling brandy into a crystal goblet and then swallowed it entirely, without offering any of them even a drop.

“Leo… Leopold is not an it .” Crispin slipped his arm around Leo’s waist and pulled him closer, eliciting a yip . “He’s a human, regardless of how he was….” He’d been about to say formed , but that would just make his mother’s point. “Born.”

Leo turned to look at him. “Thank you, Crispy.”

Light dawned on Aspin’s face. “You’re that bit of Chaos Elly here let out of The Door.” He gestured at the red portal, which seemed to grow a little.

Crispin Eladrin blushed at the nickname. But although Aspin had tortured him mercilessly with Elly Elly Elephant as a child , Crispin had seen too many scary things across a thousand worlds to fear a bully as petty as Aspin Vellain Moss’caladin—or as Crispin had named him, Velly Ugly.

“The Office sent me to collect him, so he must be important,” he said.

Leo pushed away, breaking contact. “About that. What happens to me when we get to Oodle?”

Crispin frowned. I’ve never collected a person before. “I’m… not sure. They’ll probably find a nice place for you to live?—”

“Without you?”

The Queen was watching them with narrowed eyes. “You’ve become enamored of him.” It was a statement, not a question, and sent a shiver up Crispin’s back. It was almost never a good idea to draw the Mother of Fae’s attention.

“What I may or may not feel is?—”

Aspin leered. “Elly’s got a boyfriend. Elly’s got a —”

A single smoldering look from his mother shut Aspin up.

“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s just…” Crispin stared helplessly at Leo. What were they to each other? There was a spark, to be sure, but was it any more “real” than the one that had stung Aspin? They’d had no time to sort things out between them.

Leopold’s eyes were fixed on his as Crispin said, “He’s just the thing I was sent to collect.

” It wouldn’t do to confirm his mother’s suspicions.

“I need your help to get him back to the Office. When the Chaos Cloud attacked us in Leo… Leopold’s apartment, I dropped Thea and a little Chaos got inside, I think, and ever since then we’ve been jumping from world to world, trying to get home. Minkis must be worried sick, and….”

Leo’s shoulders sagged. “He’s right. We don’t mean anything to one another.” He chewed his lip until he drew blood. “I am just a thing , after all. ”

Oh, Leo, I didn’t mean it.

Then his mother’s cold hand was on Crispin’s cheek, the full weight of her attention upon him. The rest of the room—Leo included—faded from his awareness.

“It’s good that you brought him here. Left to run about in the world, he could become… quite dangerous.”

But you’re the one who put him there. Well, Aspin did. Still, no point in dredging up the past. It could wait. “So you can help?”

She nodded, every bit of her presence urging him to trust her.

He blinked. She’s trying to glamour me. He twisted away from her touch, and the bower returned with a crash that sounded like glass breaking. “Don’t try to get inside of my head, Mother.”

It was her turn to blink. Another emotion she rarely displayed moved across her face. Surprise. And perhaps just a touch of respect. “You’ve grown into a man since the last time I saw you.”

“Elly’s no man?—”

“Quiet.” She turned a fierce gaze on her elder son, who literally froze in mid-protest.

“Whoa.” Leopold stepped forward to touch Aspin’s cheek, apparently forgetting momentarily to be angry at Crispin.

Aspin didn’t move, though Crispin swore his cheeks reddened.

“This place is trippy.” Leo stepped back, and his gaze returned to Crispin. He clearly remembered he was mad, because his eyebrows re-knotted themselves like a pair of angry yarn socks.

Crispin sighed. “So, will you help us, or not?”

A slight smile ghosted his mother’s lips.

“Of course I will help.” She turned back to the bar, suddenly filled with a selection of the finest crystal decanters from a thousand worlds—neat trick, that—and selected three of them seemingly at random.

“Your… friend’s presence here represents a substantial danger to the Connected Worlds.

So much Chaos in one place… and up until now, it has been contained in this vessel.

But something must have happened to loosen its hold. ”

“Why didn’t you just… send him back through The Door? When… when I opened it?”

She poured a sparkling green liquid into a crystal glass trimmed with gold that was probably worth the economic output of a small planet.

“If we had re-opened The Door at that time… Chaos ebbs and flows, like the tides under the moon. You’re lucky Aspin was able to close The Door at all. It was at its strongest then.”

Crispin frowned. He hated owing his brother for anything.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know.” She poured a bit of blood-red something into the green liquid.

For all Crispin knew, it might actually be blood. “What do you mean?”

“You were always drawn to that Door, even before you could speak. I think the Chaos was calling to you. It’s why I sent you away to the Office.” She swirled the liquid around in the glass.

“ You sent me?” That’s not at all how he remembered it. He had departed after a horrible argument with his mother over the way Aspin treated him. His mother had wanted him to follow in Aspin’s hunting-booted footsteps, but Crispin had refused, had opted for a more orderly career. “I left?—”

“I pulled a few strings for them to take you.” She poured the final ingredient from its decanter into the potion, a deep blue liquid capped in white foam that reminded him of the sea. The mixture bubbled and foamed.

It was a blow to his ego. “You… made them take me?” It had been his proudest moment, his act of rebellion, walking away from his family and all their power, finally earning something on his own merits.

“Holy shit. I’m so sorry, Crispy.” Leo’s eyes conveyed comfort.

This strange human, this bit of Chaos embodied in a clumsy man from a sleepy Earth city, somehow understood him better than his own mother.

“You’re a horrible woman, Ms. Cladin,” Leo concluded.

“That’s Cerillia Ailedrin Moss’caladin. Seriously, Crispin, why do you allow it— him to address me that way?” Her arched eyebrow was sharp enough to cut cloth.

Crispin fought to restrain his runaway emotions.

So what if her influence had helped him win the job of his dreams?

She’d had nothing to do with his once-pristine perfecality score.

She hadn’t gotten Leo halfway across the connected worlds safely.

She had never even had to leave her protected little Estate.

His mother lifted the potion to look at the now-white mixture inside. She nodded, satisfied, and leaned in to blow on its surface. “Earth, fire, water, and air.”

The glass flashed with an intense silver-blue light, like lightning, and the liquid turned black as the darkest night.

“Here. Drink this, and all your troubles will be gone.” She handed it to Leo, who, mesmerized, put it to his lips.

Earth, fire, water, and air…. “No!” Crispin leapt forward with an athletic prowess that would have done Aspin proud and knocked the glass out of Leo’s hand.

It shattered against the wall, the dark liquid immediately eating a hole through the phony trees and exposing the stone behind them.

The gap in his mother’s manufactured reality grew rapidly larger, as if consumed by a hungry beast.

“Elly, what have you done?” Aspin was frozen no more and stood staring at the transformation of the queen’s bower.

Crispin ignored him. What would that potion have done to Leo? “Do you trust me?”

Leo’s mouth hung open. “What in tarnation was that?”

Crispin had no idea where Tar Nation was, but that didn’t matter at the moment. “Nightsmaiden. It would have undone you, permanently.”

“Holy guns and roses.”

Crispin risked a glance over his shoulder. His mother was glowing with a golden light, her eyes closed, as she fought the spell her own actions had unleashed. He hoped she would get it under control—he really did—but she was dead to him now.

He took Leo by the shoulders and shook him. “Do. You. Trust. Me?” They had one place left to go, somewhere Cerillia Ailedrin Moss’caladin couldn’t—or wouldn’t—follow. And if he was right, they might find the answers they sought.

“Of course I trust you, you pointy-eared idiot.” Leo looked as though he wanted to say more, but there was no time.

“Then come on.” Crispin took Leo’s hand and dragged him toward the wall.

“Elly, don’t! You’ll kill us all, you stupid little goblin-get!” Aspin started toward him, but he was too late.

Crispin grabbed hold of the doorknob and flung open The Door to reveal a sea of writhing nothing. Caught up in the moment, he kissed Leo hard, eliciting a surprised yelp that Crispin hoped sounded at least a little pleased. “Come on, then!”

He dragged his human charge through the opening and into, at this point, a technicolor soup. The Door slammed shut behind them.