Epilogue

I sized up my opponents one at a time. To my left, Phil Galanis gave me a neutral look that told me he was reading me every bit as much as I was reading him. Across the table, Duke Azzone Cherto’s face revealed nothing. His waxen features might as well have been those of a corpse for all that he gave away, and I was unwilling to spend long staring into the disconcertingly lightless depths of his cold dark eyes.

The look I got from Ade Malle, seated to my right, was not nearly as cold, but the heat behind it was no more welcoming. Zarina’s father was only a few inches taller than his daughter, but his presence filled the room in a way that was all but impossible to ignore.

The fact that Phil—a perfectly ordinary human, as far as I was aware—was currently ahead by about a thousand dollars for the night, said something about the retired mariner, but I wasn’t exactly sure what it was. He’d taken it entirely in stride that both vampires and wizards were real—as well as Jinn, fairies, and a number of other creatures from myths and legends. When we suggested a poker night, though, he’d balked.

Hearts, though, was a far more acceptable card game in his eyes. This was the fourth card night we’d had, after Aubrette had finally announced that the house was sufficiently furnished that I could be permitted to entertain company.

I’d had people over on multiple occasions before then, but that didn’t really seem to matter. More specifically, the Sidhe meant something very specific by her words—my house was now officially well-furnished enough that I could use it as a stepping stone into more significant ranks of supernatural power.

The idea made me more than a little apprehensive, at first. I tended to still think of myself as one of magic’s bit players, but as both Zarina and Cindy reminded me, having the support of either of them alone would probably be enough to justify me as a person of note in certain circles, but having both the granddaughter of Amari Malle and the Sin Demon of the Deadly Seven walking at my side would open many, many doors.

If I took myself seriously, I could at least get my foot in the door of the big leagues. Holding me back was that I still didn’t really know who was who—Zarina had been in the middle of getting to know the local powers when she’d zapped herself into my service, so she was able to get me started, but when I reached out to Cherto to inquire about the auction that he’d mentioned, small talk had turned into an invitation for a weekly card night.

He’d brought a few different guests, and had been using the time to tell me about some of the locals who might be interested in my services. The maddening thing about the vampire was that he was actually pretty charming and easy to talk to, for all that he looked like he walked himself out of Madame Tussauds. It made it dangerously easy to forget that he was a literal bloodsucking monster—and that my best guess for why he was willing to take the time to meet with me this way was to ingratiate himself to me. He’d been terrified of Cindy—enough that his payout to me had probably been at least as much a bribe to keep me from unleashing the demon on him as it was to uphold ages-old treaties—but now that we were on speaking terms, he was strangely chummy.

Not so, this week. I hadn’t realized that Zarina’s father was familiar with the vampire in question, but apparently the two had a history. I’d only learned that about twenty minutes before Cherto had arrived, and since Ade was already in the living room with his daughter, it made their meeting basically impossible to avert.

Things hadn’t erupted in violence—yet—but the mildly suspicious glares the wizard had been leveling at me all week had turned into somewhat flinty stares at the vampire the whole time the two had been in the same room. I had no idea what the details of their history were—it couldn’t be that bad, or I didn’t think Ade would have been willing to even entertain the notion of the card game—but the two seemed to be sniping at each other through their plays. For the last three hands, they had taken every opportunity to push a point on the other, and hadn’t seemed to notice that doing so had left Phil and myself well ahead.

Phil more than me—I was actually trying not to push it too far, because after the game night was over, I was going to need to go back to trying to win over the man who was pretty sure I was sleeping not only with his daughter, but also with at least the majority of the six other women in my house, if not all of them.

The fact that Zarina appeared to be genuinely happy was one of three things standing in the way of the wizard—who was well over a century old, but looked as though he was in his late forties at most—and his desire to step in to protect his baby girl. The second was that harming me would physically harm Zarina as well, and the third was that I really was doing my best not to overly disrupt her life.

As far as I could tell, he’d consciously decided to treat me like a boyfriend who needed to earn his approval, so while he wasn’t exactly hostile, he’d been more than a little cool for his entire visit. The heat was a change, and the fact that it was directed at a guest I’d invited was going to be awkward enough even if I didn’t also take half of his money.

Not that we were actually playing for stakes that were anything close to significant for Ade. That wasn’t the point—I would rather have his good will than his money, and I didn’t think taking advantage of him would help.

It made the interruption when Aubrette approached me feel like a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the last thing I needed was something else adding to the already volatile situation, but on the other hand, even a moment’s distraction from the tension in the room was welcome. She’d brought a tray of drinks with her when she’d approached and passed out tumblers of an extremely expensive whisky—which was conjured, but no one needed to know that so neither of us mentioned it.

The Sidhe had finished serving drinks, and I had a short moment of panic as I realized that she was leaning in to whisper something in my ear. The fourth member at the table was usually Valentina, but she had stepped out to make room for Ade to play, and I’d noticed her talking to Cindy in the hallway early in the evening.

It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t seen either of them since and a chill ran through me as my mind raced to fill in the blanks.

“My Lord, there is a woman on the phone who requests to speak to you. I tried to tell her that you had requested not to be disturbed right now, but she insists on speaking with you personally. Before I could make my way to you to tell you, though, she hung up and said she would call back. A moment later, Zarina reported that she detected several figures crossing into the far side of the trees to the west. It may not be related, but the timing is suspicious. They are approaching on foot, but will arrive shortly.”

My eyes grew wide.

* * *

Not too long after that, Cherto made a polite but swift exit. Ade had volunteered to ‘keep an eye on him’ in case this was some kind of a trap, but the vampire had elected to simply depart rather than finish things out. I didn’t actually think he had anything to do with the people approaching, since Zarina had reported that none of them were vampires—or any kind of undead—but the fact that they pulsed with some kind of magical energy that she didn’t immediately recognize was suspicious. There were thirteen of them, three of one kind and ten of another, but aside from that we knew next to nothing.

Their approach was both halting and unhurried, though, so we hadn’t fully raised the alarm. Zarina had started work on her defensive enchantments around the land, and while they were far from finished, they would apparently provide us with a significant advantage if it turned out this was actually some kind of attack.

We also had Ade—a talented and powerful wizard with decades more experience than his daughter—which was both incredibly helpful and reassuring. Even if he wasn’t wholly convinced of my character yet, I knew there was no way he’d let anything happen to either me or his daughter. At least—not until they managed to unravel her magic.

He elected to remain in the kitchen for the time being—he was nominally on vacation, and was trying to keep a low profile—but he’d be around if shit got real.

The sun had been down for about twenty minutes before Cherto showed up, and it was full nighttime now. The floodlights at the western side of the house lit up the green grass of the meadow that had been the lawn. I’m not sure exactly what Rose did, but day after day the grass outside had transformed into wildflowers with uncanny rapidity, and I’d noticed a remarkably abundant number of rabbits and even deer wandering about it. The forest beyond, though, was terrifyingly lightless. With the floodlights on, my eyes refused to adjust to the dark beyond, and I was about to go for the switch to turn them off when Zarina spoke up.

“They’re dead ahead, and the first one will soon be stepping into sight.” Despite the tension of facing the unknown, her voice remained calm and controlled as she peered into a small crystal ball she held in one hand. “There.”

I turned in time to see the first figure stumble out of the forest and into the light. She was no taller than Cindy, and walked somewhat unsteadily forward with one hand held up as she peered into the light. “Please! Please, we would call upon the lords of this place to grant us shelter!”

Another woman emerged from the woods behind her, and then another, and then two more arm in arm to hold each other up. They all looked haggard—streaked with dirt, moving unsteadily, and with twigs and branches stuck all throughout their hair.

They were also all naked, and most of them were green. The color seemed all the starker in the bright white light from the house. When the last emerged, I faced thirteen naked women—three of them with darkly tanned skin on display and ten more in shades that ranged from mossy green-brown to chartreuse. That last was on a tall and slender woman who stepped forward in front of the group. She’d been the first to arrive, and after her announcement she had taken a few moments to check on the others as they gathered around her.

Zarina leaned over to whisper into my ear, “Dryads. The green ones, at least. It makes sense for why my magic couldn’t identify them—I didn’t put any protections into place for dryads, I haven’t heard of one in this part of the world for a hundred years. I’m not sure what the other three are.”

Just as I turned back to respond to them, Aubrette emerged from the kitchen behind us with a phone in her hand. The screen was lit up to indicate there was a call active, and she approached with determination in her steps. “My apologies, but it is that woman again—she says her name is Jessie Morgan, and that you know her. She’s at the gate asking for permission to come in.”

* * *

I hurried down the hallway towards the front door. In the end, I had simply asked Aubrette and Zarina to figure out how to get the ten dryads and three women who turned out to be nymphs settled, while I hurried to meet one of my oldest friends.

The arrival of a baker’s dozen women had been a shock, but they weren’t any kind of a threat as far as I could tell. Their leader—whose name turned out to be Maple—hadn’t had time to finish explaining why they needed sanctuary before I had needed to rush off, so I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d volunteered for when I agreed to offer them shelter for the night, but it apparently involved some kind of cult that wanted to vivisect them on a sacrificial altar.

That was the kind of thing I was happy to oppose on principle. I’d find out more about it later, and the Sidhe and wizard were more than capable of sorting out whatever arrangements were needed for the night.

I pulled the door open with a frantic jerk, just as Jessie climbed out of her car and immediately stumbled towards me. She looked as haggard as the women who had stumbled naked through the woods to reach me, and her usually slightly ruddy cheeks were pale. Jessie had always run towards being slightly plump—it had gotten her teased in high school, but hadn’t prevented me from having a crush on her for that entire time since she had worn most of that weight around her hips and chest.

She looked like she’d lost forty pounds in the couple of years it had been since the last time I saw her. Her once rosy rounded cheeks were sunken and she had visible bags under her somewhat wild eyes. She stared at me openly for several seconds when I emerged from the door without seeming to recognize me—which wasn’t actually much of a surprise, since I was half a foot taller than I’d been the last time that she had seen me. Then I rocked back as she all but threw herself into my arms and slammed against my chest.

A moment later, I realized that she was crying. I slid my arms around her shoulders and offered a gentle squeeze while I waited for her to tell me what was going on. The thought of asking floated through my head, but I dismissed it—whatever she’d been going through, she obviously needed a moment, and I was happy to give it to her.

After a little while, I started to stroke my hand up and down her back to soothe her as snot and tears soaked into my shirt. It took about five minutes before she gathered herself—or maybe just cried herself out of tears—and was able to speak.

“Chris is dead.”

The words sent me reeling. Chris was Jessie’s brother, and he had been my best friend for the five or so years that we had lived near the Morgans. I wasn’t exactly sure how our parents had known each other, but my parents had introduced me to them after a move, and the three of us had bonded more or less instantly. Their family—like mine—was Gifted with minor talents, which meant the prohibition against talking about magic didn’t apply to them. Having someone to share that part of my life had been all the cause I’d needed to want to hang out with brother and sister together, and we had quickly become inseparable.

The last time I’d talked to Chris in person had been about two years ago. We’d exchanged emails at least every month or two after high school, but it had been a while since I’d gotten the last one. With Cindy arriving in my life around that time, I hadn’t really noticed their absence—she had provided plenty to distract me—but Jessie’s words still hit me like a truck.

I was still reeling when she added, “He killed him. He stalked him and he killed him, and he’s coming for me next.”

* * *

Sleep hadn’t come easily.

I knew that, just as I knew that this was a dream.

My awareness drifted through an ocean of silver threads against a background of a starry sky. As I watched, the shining strands of light drifted slowly through the endless night, seemingly at random. Now and then, the threads would cross, and where they intersected would flash and flare in my vision like a magnesium flare, only to then continue to drift through each other unimpeded.

After some time I realized that I had no idea how I’d gotten here. My memories seemed fuzzy—I recalled getting Jessie inside, but then nearly nothing between then and now. The news of her brother’s death still felt recent, but didn’t weigh on my thoughts the way it had when she had first made the announcement.

It was actually rather pleasant here. I spent some time just letting myself drift as I watched the impossible landscape, content to let the strange dream take its course.

A moment later I realized something—several of the silver threads were drifting closer. It might have been an alarming thought, but I still knew that this was a dream. Whatever this place was, it wasn’t real, so it was hard to muster much concern.

The threads had looked thin when I had first appeared, but as they approached I realized that I had nothing in my vision to provide me with a sense of scale. The nearest strand was still approaching, and it was growing ever larger as it did so. I had assumed initially that the glowing strands were as thin as the threads they had resembled, but soon realized that I had been entirely mistaken—the one that neared was a river of flowing quicksilver that threatened to eclipse my view.

For a moment I grew concerned—even in the dream, the thought of drowning in silver light was not appealing—but then the river stopped perhaps a dozen yards ahead of me. I stared into its rippling surface and could see the reflection of the stars behind me, twisted and distorted as the river of light continued to flow.

Then I watched as features began to emerge. It was a slow process, and at first I almost thought my eyes were playing tricks on me when the shape of smiling lips formed. When eyes and a nose carved themselves out of the flowing silver, though, I could no longer deny what I was seeing.

The eyes turned to focus on me, then the face pushed free and rose out of the river of light. It was massive—easily a dozen feet from chin to forehead—and strands of silver trailed from the top like hair, only to vanish back into the river behind it.

It—she—smiled at me, and I felt the voice as though it were reaching me through my entire body, bypassing my ears entirely.

“Hello, Jack.” The words were felt as much as heard, and they seemed to rock through my consciousness like a tidal wave. I struggled to hold on to my thoughts as sounds that weren’t sounds crashed through my mind.

“I have been waiting for quite some time to talk to you-”

The second thread that had been approaching finally reached the first, and when it intersected, rather than giving off another flash of light, it was absorbed into the whole. Cascades of silver poured forth and streamed towards the face. From there it flowed down as though filling an invisible container, and I watched as first a neck, then soon shoulders and arms began to take shape.

It was ethereally beautiful, and haunting. There wasn’t quite enough liquid to form an entire body for the massive silver woman, but the approach of a third thread of silver promised soon to fix that.

“-ever since you picked up my book.”