As soon as my head broke the water’s surface, I became myself again. No mane of silvery hair, no iridescent tail. My legs thrashed for a moment until I remembered how to use them. I treaded water and looked around.
“Over here, child,” Mab’s voice called. She sat on the shore, no more than thirty yards away. I swam toward her in a slow breaststroke. Too slow. But when I dove beneath the water, my mermaid form didn’t return. Pity. Swimming as a mermaid had been like flying. Now, I was reduced to clumsy thrashing.
Still, I made it. I got my feet under me and waded to my aunt. She sat on the sand, her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around her shins. Water dripped from her hair and ran down her face in rivulets. Her scowl remained in place. She looked funny, but her expression killed any urge to giggle.
“Are you on some kind of drug?” she asked, her voice cross.
“It’s just a sleeping pill, the kind I give clients.” I conjured a towel and handed it to Mab so she could dry her hair. “Bedtime isn’t for hours, and I needed to talk to you.”
“I’m certain you realize the effects of trying to communicate while under the influence, so I’ll spare you the lecture. Here’s your towel.” She handed me a pizza.
“Oh.” Suddenly the giggles welled up again, and this time I couldn’t suppress them. “Good thing you didn’t rub your hair with this.” The idea of Mab, her hair coated with tomato sauce and draped with strings of cheese, was just too much. I dissolved in a fit of laughter, dropping the pizza. It sprouted four legs and a head and grew a hard green shell, then lumbered into the water. My laughter subsided to hiccups, and I felt a little mournful watching the towel/pizza/turtle go. I was hungry, and that pizza had looked good. A whiff of oregano and garlic hung in the air.
“Enough nonsense,” Mab snapped. Kind of like a turtle, actually. I covered my mouth with both hands to hold the laughter inside. She was still dripping, and the phrase mad as a wet hen came to mind. I’d never thought about what it meant before; now I had a very vivid picture to last me for life. I fought the smile that tugged at my mouth. “I’m assuming that you had a reason for contacting me,” she continued. “Unless you’ve taken up recreational drug use—in which case I’ll be on my way.”
“No, Mab, don’t go. I’m sorry. There was a reason, an important one.” I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was. My mind was crowded with mermaid tails and furious wet hens and snapping turtles and towels that turned into pizzas. I stalled while I tried to find the thread that brought me here. “Why are you all wet?” Her scowl deepened. “No, wait. What I mean is . . .” I concentrated, feeling like I was hunting for words in a bowl of alphabet soup. “How come you’re here, inside my dream?” Usually, dream-phone conversations took place on neutral ground, a kind of borderland between the participants’ psyches. In a typical dream-phone call, I could see my aunt in her own surroundings (day or night—Mab was the only person I knew who could place and receive calls while awake). In the same way, she could see me in mine. Tonight’s situation was entirely new to me.
“It’s the strength of the magic supplementing the pill you took. It must have been very well spelled. That’s good when you enter a client’s dreamscape, but not so good for this form of communication. The signal of your call came as usual—your colors rose up in a mist—but when I answered I found myself deep underwater, swimming beside a mermaid with your face.” A tiny twitch that might have been a smile tugged at her mouth. “Most unexpected, I assure you. It took me several seconds to regather my wits.”
I wished I could regather mine. I stared at my bare feet, trying to remember why I’d called Mab. I counted my toes. When I get to ten, I promised myself, my mind will clear. Deep breath. Okay, this little piggy went to market . . . that’s one.
I wiggled my toes and moved on to the next one. This little piggy stayed home . . . two.
My toes seemed to be wiggling of their own accord. I watched, fascinated. This little piggy had—My toes turned into pigs. Miniature ones. They remained attached to my feet, but they made a racket with their squealing.
Cool.
“Mab, do you see that?” I pointed at my wriggling, squealing toes. A thought made me snicker. “I’ve heard of pigtails, but not pigtoes.”
“Child.” The sharpness of Mab’s voice silenced the pigs and turned them back into toes. “Look at me.”
I did. She wasn’t wet anymore, but she still looked mad. I lowered my eyes, ashamed of my spaciness.
Mab held my face in her hands. “Look at me,” she repeated. “Look in my eyes.”
All right. I could do that. Mab’s eyes are blue, not amber like mine. In her irises, I could see both the blue and the silver that make up her colors. Pretty. My aunt had been a beautiful woman once upon a time.
A spark flared in Mab’s eyes. I felt a snap, like a tight-stretched rubber band breaking. My gaze locked onto hers. She reeled me into a world of blue and silver. For a moment, I had an image of a mermaid caught on a fishing line, but then all images, all thought exploded in one great blue-and-silver flash.
I blinked, and the colors cleared. I felt my aunt’s cool hands on my cheeks. I blinked again, and her face came into focus.
“How do you feel, child?” She watched me closely.
I considered. No aches, no pains. No bubbling wellspring of giggles. My head felt clearer, too.
“Better. Good, actually. What did you do?”
“I drew out some of the magic that was clouding your thoughts.”
“You did? Are you okay?”
“A bit dizzy, but I’ll be fine. However, with its magic removed, the pill you took will be less effective. So let’s get down to business before you wake up.”
Business. Right. With that word—business—I remembered. Part of my message had to do with my new job as a police consultant. “The Morfran is back.”
Mab put a hand to her forehead and closed her eyes, as though waiting for some dizziness to pass. “It’s attacking the previously deceased again?”
“Yes, but with a difference.” I explained how the Morfran had possessed two zombies, driving them to kill, before consuming them.
“You’re certain the Morfran is doing this?”
“I saw it. When the second zombie exploded, the room was full of Morfran. I used Hellforged to stow it in that slate plaque you gave me.”
“Good.” She rubbed her temples, frowning. “Good that you caught it, I mean. It’s very bad that this is happening, however.”
“That what is happening, Mab? What’s going on?”
“Have you received any information about this from the book?”
I shot her a look to show her I didn’t appreciate the way she avoided answering my question. But when I saw how she was holding her head, I softened. I’d been drunk with magic—enough to transform my normally empty dreamscape into Hallucination Street in Psychedelic City—and Mab had siphoned off the excess and taken it into herself. She was probably feeling way more off-kilter than “a bit dizzy.” Yet she barely showed it.
I glanced at my toes, which remained toes. I almost wished they’d turn back into little piggies so I could giggle at them and not think about that damn book. “Nothing about zombies and the Morfran. But I had a new vision.”
“Tell me.”
“It started off like the others. Boston burning. Dead bodies everywhere. Huge demons running rampant. Same old story. Yadda yadda yadda.”
I kept watching my toes, studying their shape, to block out the picture of Boston become Hell. Mab’s cool hand touched my forearm and gave it a light squeeze. Mab wasn’t the touchy-feely type. She knew this was hard for me. I swallowed the lump that seemed to be stuck in my throat.
“I fought, Mab. In the vision, I fought on the wrong side. And I . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to say the truth, that I’d enjoyed it. I shrugged. “In the vision, it felt right.”
“Child.” Mab’s voice was so soft, so gentle, like I was some fragile object that would shatter if you breathed on it too hard. That scared me almost as much as the vision did. “You must never forget the book’s malevolence. It’s trying to shake your resolve, make you dispirited and unsure.”
Something wet ran down my cheek. I wiped it away. “It’s doing a good job.” More wetness, more wiping. “Mab, I’d rather jump in front of a train than have that vision come true.”
“Of course you would. Don’t you see, child? The book fears you. It would like nothing better than for you to believe you have only two options: jump in front of a train, as you put it, or join the demons in the coming apocalypse.”
“Apocalypse?” I don’t know why the word surprised me; it was the only way to describe the devastation I’d seen in those visions. Still, it sent a shiver along my limbs.
“The end times foretold in The Book of Utter Darkness. The final struggle between demons and our kind. The book wants you to believe this struggle will end in the devastation of humanity, but remember, child: Many paths stretch forward from where you stand now. It’s up to you to choose the one you’ll take.”
Mab was trying to rouse me, give me confidence—I knew that. But I didn’t like her metaphor. Yes, I was standing at a crossroads with multiple paths leading in different directions. But from here, I couldn’t see where any of them led. What if I started down one, with the best of intentions, only to find the Destroyer at its end, waiting with open arms?
Beside me, Mab rose to her feet. I tilted my head to look up at her. She swayed and stepped sideways to steady herself, a residual effect of the magic, I guessed. But her expression was determined. “I’d hoped for a little more time to gather my strength,” she said, “but that is not to be. The signs are too strong.”
“What signs?” I squinted as my aunt’s form thinned. A deep rumble shook the ground, and Mab staggered. Earthquake? No, it was coming from the outside. My sleeping body was snoring—and that meant I was about to wake up.