Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie

I glared at him.

“Something wrong, Paul?” Sullivan asked.

“He—” I started.

“I hear the king of the dead,” Paul blurted out.

Well, that was just ace. I put my chin in my hand and tapped my fingers on the side of my face.

Sullivan glanced at me and back at Paul. “What’d he say?”

“It’s a list of the dead,” Paul said. With just his fingertips, he held onto the edge of table, white knuckled. He squeezed his fingers like he was playing a tune on the table. “Not the currently dead. The futurely dead. Do you think I’m, like, certifiable now?”

“No.” Sullivan went to the window and heaved his shoulder against it. It creaked and then gave. He slid it up a few inches; cold air rushed in along with the song. It tugged at my bones, urging me to rise up and follow. It took all my willpower not to jump up and run outside. “Lots of people—well, not lots—many people hear him in October, up until Halloween.”

“Why?” Paul asked. “Why do I have to hear it?”

Sullivan shook his head. “I don’t know. He says different things to different people. It doesn’t mean you’re crazy.” Somehow, though, it wasn’t reassuring. He said it like being crazy might be a more appealing alternative. He went to his counter and got a notepad; he laid it down in front of Paul’s face.

Paul obediently picked up the pen from next to our papers. “What’s this for?”

Sullivan shifted the window open a bit more and looked at me again before he answered Paul. “I’d be very grateful if you’d write down the names he’s telling you.”

James

The lobby of Seward was an immensely safe sort of space, and I was definitely needing womb-like security in a major way by that point. It had four of the world’s most comfortable chairs, which is important in a safe space, and four squashy ottomans to go with each of them. It also had four alcoves in each of the corners, each containing a wonder of the world. North corner: a piano older than Moses, that sounded like a calliope. South corner: a reproduction of a Greek statue—some headless chick with perfect boobs. East corner: a bookshelf with every piece of Important Fiction That You’ll Never Read in Impressive Hardcover. West corner: vending machine (because sometimes Doritos were all the breakfast you were going to get).

It was two o’clock in the morning. Down the hall, Sullivan was behind his closed door, oblivious to my wandering. Somewhere on the fourth floor, Paul was snoring. I envied his ability to sleep. I felt like I ought to pace or scream or something; I couldn’t stop thinking about Halloween. Every time I did, my hair stood on end again and fresh goose bumps spread along my shoulders. Sleep was out of the question.

The lobby held its breath, silent and dark, tinted weirdly red-orange by the streetlights outside the front windows. The world’s most comfortable chairs cast shadows that stretched and grew to ten times the size of the chairs themselves. I crashed in one of them and sat there, so motionless that it felt like I had forgotten how to move.

I felt alone.

I didn’t have a pen. I took the worry stone out of my pocket and ran my thumb over it until the urge to mark my skin faded.

Nuala, are you here?

“I’m here,” she whispered from one of the other chairs; she sat on the very edge of it, as if ready to jump up and run if she had to. I don’t know why she bothered whispering if I was the only one who could hear her, but I was too glad to see her to tease her about it. I hadn’t seen her since the practice on the hill, and I’d almost thought she’d gone for good. Sort of half-standing, I dragged my chair across the wood floor until our chairs faced each other and our bare knees were touching.

I looked into Nuala’s face. I didn’t really want to ask her the question out loud. Do you really think we’re going to die, like Paul thinks? And do you think it’ll be Them that does it? I mean, not a freak dorm fire?

In the dim light, Nuala’s pale eyes were black and I could see dark circles beneath them. “They’re killing faeries. Solitary faeries, like me. The ones that have a lot of contact with humans. I saw the bodies. Maybe they think we’ll warn you of something. Not that they’ve told us shit.”

It was weird to think that she looked tired. She looked very human and vulnerable, dwarfed by the sheer size of the chair behind her. If it had been Dee, I’d have needed to comfort her or make a joke, but with Nuala, I didn’t have to pretend. She could already see what was inside my head, so there wasn’t any point in showing her anything but the truth.

And the truth was I was starting to feel like things were getting out of control. I dropped my face into my hands and rubbed my eyes until I saw sparks of color.

“Haven’t you already seen it, though? You’re supposed to be super-great-seer-guy.” Nuala’s voice was bitter, as if she thought I’d deliberately withheld tales of imminent death and destruction from her.

“Nuala, all of Paul’s revelations, you telling me there’s worse than you here, something weird going on with Dee—it’s all news to me. I’m just not a good psychic. I can tell when something’s not right, sometimes, but I can’t tell what it is, or when it is, or if I’m supposed to do anything about it. I’ve tried to make it make sense, but I can’t. It’s just feelings instead of words. And you want the honest-to-God truth? There’s so much weirdness going on I can’t even pick out what makes my hair stand on end. I’m just—” I stopped.

“ … overloaded,” Nuala finished for me, reading my thoughts. “Whatever’s happening has to be something big as hell.”

I jerked, thinking I heard sounds in the night. Both of us froze, sitting quietly, listening, until we were sure there was only the sound of trucks rushing distantly by on the highway and that it was just us.

Even though the dorm was silent, I didn’t speak out loud again. Instead, I rubbed my thumbs over Nuala’s slender, bare knees, tracing the lines of her bones and the place where her kneecaps pushed against my kneecaps. I stared at the shadows we cast on the floor. What the hell’s going on, Nuala? Why won’t They leave us alone? What could They possibly want from us?

She was silent a long moment, watching my lettered fingers on her skin. Her voice was a little uneven: “Power. She wants power. I think she’s made an alliance with the daoine sidhe.”

Those are the ones called by music, aren’t they? I thought they were enemies of the queen.