Page 42 of Witchblood

“Shh,” I whispered. “Nicky, it’s Sebastian. The man from the bakery who gave you a cookie. Do you remember me?”

He nodded a little.

“I need you to be very quiet. I’m going to get us out of here.”

Another nod. He wrapped his arms around me, clinging. In that short minute I’d become his savior. I just wasn’t sure if I could get us both out of there alive. The drop down from the window was a long way. I could probably run past guards in my fox form if they weren’t expecting that, but couldn’t get Nicky out that way. Likely Felix would have them watching for my change if the attack at my car and subsequent change hadn’t already tipped them off.

I crawled out from under the bed with Nicky wrapped around me like one of those wire monkey dolls. I whispered soothing things to him as I checked the door and the hall. The hall was empty. I could see a set of stairs that led down into lights and movement below. Close enough that if we made a step toward the stairway the whole group would be on us. I didn’t need them to use Nicky as another bartering tool. “Is there another way downstairs,” I whispered to Nicky.

He shook his sobbing face into my neck.

There was a second doorway, but the smell of death wafted from there strong enough that I knew someone was dead in that room. Likely Nicky’s parents. Had he seen them die? Was that why he was covered in their blood and the reek of death?

His room didn’t even have a bathroom attached, it was across the hall, empty, unused and clean, at least. I wasn’t going to chance using it and bring the masses up, even though we both stank. He had a small closet for all the good that did. It was barely large enough to fit the two of us.

Robin talked about closets a lot. Doorways really. Legends of Narnia and such, which were all plays on the fae secrets. Doorways weren’t just entries to rooms, Robin had often reminded me, they were structures built into the earth allowing energy to flow, connect, and stop. I’d never been the child to be afraid of the monster in the closet. In my life they’d lived in plain sight. But I could understand the reference.

“Doorways frighten children because sometimes things come through them that are unexpected,” I’d reasoned to Robin one day.

“It’s not always frightening.” Robin motioned to himself. “Sometimes a game of trust is played.”

“Tricks,” I whispered.

“You see a child when you look at me,” Robin said to me once while I brewed tea and he sat in his youthful form on the edge of the counter, swinging his feet. “You think it’s a trick?”

I still wasn’t sure. At first when I’d seen him on the side of the road, I thought for certain he was trying to fool me. But it had been years. I’d only seen two forms. The cat and the little boy. “Why do you look like a child?” I had asked him.

“It makes you more comfortable.”

It did and it didn’t.

“Humans in general trust children. Though their innocence isn’t really a strength. A child is easily led astray, abused, or murdered. Why do you think adults trust children? Is it only because an adult can overpower a child? Are humans so broken, that trust only comes from what they feel they can control?”

I didn’t know. Trust had always been hard for me, even as a child. Too many bad memories. I’d never had a place to run. Did a lot of my running through the different worlds in books. Tales of people who could open doors and disappear into another world.

“It’s an escape,” Robin had told me. I had agreed at the time. “Not all fiction. Doors open and close all the time.”

“To other worlds?” I confirmed.

He shrugged. “Nothing is as linear as humans think. The world feels flat but appears round. In reality it’s fractured into a billion dimensions interwoven with doorways. Though it may sometimes look like a window or even a wall.”

It was the most he’d ever spoken to me about the other worlds he’d seen. That had surprised me. Over the years I’d questioned him many times, only to have him deftly avoid giving me answers. Nothing was ever direct, but what I’d devised over the years, was that the fae loved the purest of heart. Not for kindness reasons. No, the fae liked to eat them. Doors to Underhill opened for the pure of heart all the time. It was a bit like ringing a dinner bell. The pure of heart opened a door and walked right into the snare of the nearest fae. Those who made it back to write about it, or dreamt about surviving it, those were rare.

I always asked how it happened. Did the pure of heart just find the doors by accident? Did the fae seek them out? Was there a way to bring a doorway to them? Robin had been vague. My impression was that the fae couldn’t control the doors. Underhill did.

“So no one really opens a door. They just have to find them and pass through it?” I’d been thinking about it a long time. Alchemy was a set of rules, ifawas added tobthey equaledc. It was a law of the universe. The human eye could not detect atoms, or viruses, or even the true path of light without many tools of divination. Maybe that was the reason for the doors. Pure heart aside. Maybe it was more about finding the rift in dimensions, or at least a way to divine them. Doors. Physical doorways were bound in place, but opened into space. A room, a closet, whatever.

Maybe it was more than that. I could really use a door right now, even as terrifying as the thought of falling into some dark corner of Underhill and never getting out was. Certain death, or maybe a little wandering? Could I find a door to Underhill if one existed?

I was certainly not a paragon of virtue. I’d stolen to survive, among many other misdeeds. But I was desperate. Facing this pack of rogues again would be suicide. Life with Felix would be torture, and getting caught would lead to Nicky’s death. I had to at least try to get Nicky out. All of this was my fault.

I opened the closet door, examining the contents. A handful of stuffed toys were strewn across the floor. Otherwise the closet was empty. Nothing special about the closet at all. No monsters, handles built into the back, or glints of light through cracks in the wall. I nudged the toys aside until we both fit and closed the door, sitting us down in the corner.

“I need you to do something for me, Nicky.” This was all theory, and my head really hurt. Too much movement, which meant I had another concussion and would likely pass out soon. I hoped I wouldn’t have to ask Liam to share his strength to heal me again. I also hoped I’d get to see him again. “Did your mom ever read you fairy tales? Like Peter Pan or Cinderella?”

He nodded again, wiping his nose all over my shirt. I tugged up the edge of my shirt and rubbed some of the blood off his face. His tears helped wash most of it away.

“Remember the fairy godmother and Tinker Bell?” I asked. He nodded. “I want you to think really hard and ask them for help. Pick one. I’m going to think and wish with you too.”