Roses,he thought.That explains why I’ve gotten a hard-on every time I’ve smelled roses for almost four hundred years. Huh. I thought it was a floral kink.He winked and turned on one heel, running for the basement.
I wheeled around to see everyone looking at me, like I was going to tell them what to do. Like I was prepared to lead a realm, or a battle. I wasn’t even qualified to do laundry here.
Hope sidled up to me and whispered, “Fake it till you make it, girl. They need hope. Give them some.”
Now that was a good idea. I smiled tightly at her. “Everyone listen to Hope,” I announced. “She’s my right-hand birch, and what she says goes. Got it?” Most of the crowd nodded, still looking slightly dazed.
Hope lifted an eyebrow at my quick hand-off, but she stepped up. “Right, The Merge isn’t far. We’ll head there, secure both doors, and prepare for casualties. When we pass the Dining Hall, we’ll gather supplies. Let’s go!”
“Yeah!” I added, giving a rah-rah fist pump as everyone launched themselves into the air. Arabella held out her arms, and I jumped into them.
She was still laughing at me when she asked, “What were you thinking, taking his position?”
“I wasn’t.” I winced. “I had no idea. I must have done it accidentally.”
“You are accident prone,” she agreed as she followed the others. “In the Well, do you remember? You kept knocking into me.”
“I remember falling a lot, mostly from you tripping me. I was out of balance.”
“The feather inside you made you list to one side,” she mused. “You had to grow around it. I’m afraid I need to apologize. I, um, may have ended up with the lion’s share of the base material when we were drawn out of the Well together.”
I sucked in a breath, realizing what she meant. “Your wings. They’rehuge.”
“Sorry,” she squeaked. “I didn’t know until I woke up.” She sounded truly distressed. Honestly, it was cute.
“I forgive you. But you’ll have to fly me around places to make up for it. They didn’t have palanquins to carry me in the Celestial Realm.”
“Really?” Her gorgeously straight nose wrinkled. “When I was there, the senior Celestials loved to dress up and act outall sorts of silly fantasies. They had a whole palanquin schtick for newcomers at one point. Feeding them fruit and using these ridiculous ostrich feather fans.”
“Dress up?” I snorted. “Listen, that place has changed. They didn’t have enough cloth between them all to cover a picnic table.”
Arabella laughed so hard I thought she was going to fall out of the air. “Did Sabriel do the nude greeting routine again? What a—” She broke off as she saw something below, and banked sharply downward. “Start singing. And maybe use a little of that Sanctuary power to call up a weapon?”
Sanctuary power? Oh yeah!“What kind of weapon?” I demanded, just as I saw what had attracted her attention. There was a group of Guides right outside the Dining Hall, their robes bulging oddly. Percy, Truth, and the others were there, trying to sing and use the weapons they had, but they were being attacked by a shadow creature every bit as big and lethal as the one Gavriel had fought.
They didn’t stand a chance.
I watched Percy fall to one knee, soul knife in his hand, but the creature looming over him was massive. It had a head shaped like a cobra, and was made of layers of shadows, stacked upon each other. One knife wasn’t going to be enough.
“Not on my watch, basshole,” I shouted, as Arabella landed and set me down. I knelt so that both of my hands touched the ground, pulling at the energy there. Sanctuary felt a lot stronger than it had the last time I’d touched it, as if it knew I needed the power more than it did right now, but it was weakening quickly. Still, it answered my call with as much force as it could spare.Good girl, I praised, and felt the realm shudder a tiny bit. Hmmm. Nice to know. Sanctuary had a praise kink.
The ropes of power practically leaped into my hands, and I gave a martial arts scream, throwing myself in front of Percy.The shadow hesitated, then loomed even larger. I threw the ropes at it, unsure what to do. Parts of the shadow were peeling off, like disgusting fruit leather or thin bark. I needed to catch them all. Tying it up seemed like a good solution, so I wrapped it up with the ropes. Well, I supposed they were more like strings actually. The lengths I had were about the size and consistency of thick paracord, but I had to use a lot of it.
While I worked, Percy and the others kept singing, which chased off a bunch of the small shadows that had gotten loose. Those little buggers moved fast, like stray cats, toward the places where natural shadows would be.Crud.The realm was going to be hard to get clean. They would be impossible to see.
But then one of the little ones darted out, and from the corner of my eye I noticed it had flecks of glitter on it. The craft projects I’d done here had left their mark. I bet they’d swept this hall a thousand times, but there was no getting rid of glitter, not completely. I panted, trying to catch my breath, as I finished tying up the shadow beast… which hadn’t fought all that hard to get free, actually.
And hadn’t cut at me. That seemed peculiar.
I shook off the sensation that I was missing something significant, and looked up. Truth and the others had gone back into the Dining Hall to get food, but Percy and Hope were standing with four Guides, holding their arms in grips that I could tell were painful.
“Show the leader of Sanctuary what you have there. What you’ve done,” Hope spat out. She shook the Guides as she spoke, and what they’d been up to was immediately apparent: grapes and cheese cubes began dropping from the bulges in their robes and rolling across the floor.
“Where is High Angelus Gavriel?” one of them asked, their tone dismissive. “I’ll explain to him. Not to some filthy—” At thatmoment, the Guide lifted their head and looked at me. Their jaw dropped as they took in my prism lightshow.
“Yeah, not so filthy now, am I?” Raising an eyebrow, I stepped up to the Guide.
“Who are you to question your superior?” they demanded, all false bravado. Their hood had fallen back, and their watery blue eyes darted from the bound shadow monster to me. I was a little dirty from fighting, but I was still Celestial-shiny in plenty of places.
