“—fox.”
For a moment, Emma thought she must have said the word aloud. But the Librarian’s sister was looking at her expectantly.
“Can you remember, girl? How you came to be a fox?”
“Came to be a…” Emma repeated dazedly. “You’re saying—I was really a fox? Not dreaming, or—”
“Or mad?” The Sister snorted. “No. Where do you think you got those charming teeth-baring habits from, hmm? We saw you ourselves. I was in my workroom—the spell I was trying to nail down was the finicky sort, you know—when the aftershock of some magic rolled in from outside. Blasted my working to pieces, it was so strong. Henry felt it just the same. It quite upset his books. So we ran out to the street, and there you were. Flickering in and out of fox form on those cobblestones.”
Spells. Emma couldn’t remember if she had been the kind of person who believed in magic. Perhaps she was. And for a moment, it all made sense. Shehadbeen a fox. She knew it. Her mind shivered with sense memories: paws on frozen ground; head lifted in a song to the moon; the warmth of sun on her pelt. But then a tide of disbelief surged. It was nonsense.
She was Emma Curran. She lived at Gabriel College. She could see it, with her window seat and her leaf-patterned bedding. She’d picked that pattern with someone. A warm voice over her shoulder, calloused fingertips that brushed hers as they strokedthe fabric. A scent like sun-warmed earth, and rosemary crushed in her palm.
Her mother. Forgotten, until now.
Horror stiffened Emma’s joints. With the memory of that scent, her mother’s face swam into focus. And Emma saw that face crumple, frantic with fear. How long had she been away? A day? A whole week?
Emma clenched her hands to still their shaking. What would her mother do, if she hadn’t heard from Emma in a week? She had never gone more than a few days without a message. And Nat, and—more faces came back with a rush—Julia and Venetia, Hugo and Richard. Her friends. What would they have thought? She winced against the onslaught of memory now. Her lecturers, the University officials, they would all have been notified. They probably would even have called her father. Little as he might care.
She had no explanation for where she had been. Her chest was searing. Emma realized that she’d been holding her breath.
“I have to go.” Brandy spilled over her skirt, the glass rolling to the floor. “My friends, they’ll be—”
“You cannot, child.” There was an unbearable sadness in the Librarian’s voice. She thought it might be pity.
“You’re going to keep me here? Are you—Is this some sort of kidnapping?”
“No. We would not keep you against your will.”
“Speak for yourself,” muttered the Sister. “She doesn’t believe any of it yet, that’s plain to see, and she’ll be a danger to herself wandering out there with no more sense than a mortal on a moonless night.”
With an air of decision, she dragged a footstool opposite Emma and sat upon it.
“I am going to explain a few things to you. I am sorry if this comes in too direct a form, girl. It’s important you understand quickly, as there’s no saying how much time we have before—But no, we won’t begin there.”
Behind her, the Librarian smiled encouragingly at Emma. But as he then proceeded to smile at the fire, the doorway, and his own shoe with equal amiability, Emma was not as reassured by his support as she could have been.
“There are some things you must believe, girl, and believe fast if you wish to survive,” the Sister said. “The first: You were a fox. Not ten minutes ago, you were lying on the street with ears and a tail. But when you regained your human shape, my brother and I knew we had seen you before. So we also knew that you were not always a fox. It is a thing that can happen, girl. A magic. A transformation. Those who call upon a power in the dark may be answered.”
“What power in the—”
“Nothing picked you off while you were a fox, so I can only assume the shape hid you. A small mercy. But now I’ve loosed you from the shape, it’s only a matter of time before something sniffs you out. And then they’re bound to come and take you—”
“Who?”
The Sister could be quite selectively deaf, it seemed.
“That’s the thing about magics like yours,” she went on. “They come at a cost. A wish made, a bargain struck: There’s always a price.”
“A bargain? But I didn’t, I don’t remember—”
“I am afraid there is no other possibility. You made a bargain, as many others have before you. And with this kind of bargain, you cannot pay what you owe with gold.” The Sister shifted on the footstool. “You pay with yourself. With the mortal part of you, the part that anchored you in the human world. That is gone now.”
Gone. Strange how certain the word sounded in the Sister’s gruff voice.
Emma looked down at her forearms. Right there, the scar from when she was five, stealing her mother’s rose shears to cut her own hair. The familiar sprinkle of moles on her left elbow. Her body might feel strange right now. But it looked extremely normal to her.
“You may look like a mortal, but that is just a skin over what you are. Those of us who have been touched by magic, we belong to the power that claimed us. That saved us, or granted our wish, and changed us in so doing. You belong to the Night City now.”
