“The canteen— Oh God!” I’d worked it out of the side, but abruptly dropped it.
“What?”
“You oozed on it!”
I sat back against the tree trunk, closed my eyes, and just breathed for a minute. It could be worse, I told myself. We were here. Once these guys passed by, we’d get back on the road and should be at court by morning. I’d find out what Pritkin had learned about the staff, and where it might be in my time. And then, as soon as the cursed soul showed up, we’d be out of here. Out and back and everything would be just . . . well, not perfect, all things considered, but much better.
God, so much!
After a moment, I felt my spine relax and find a space for itself against the tree’s rough bark. The ground was wet from the perpetual Wales weather, and the air was chilly enough that I could see my breath when I could see anything. But it was also weirdly soothing. The tramp, tramp, tramp of all those feet, the sigh of the wind, the peaceful darkness.
The clap of a slimy hand over my mouth.
My eyes flew open to see Rosier’s horrible proto face staring into mine, the usually green eyes milky, the noseless nostrils flaring—
“Mmphh!”
“Shut. Up,” he hissed, and a second later, I understood why.
Because a hooded fey was standing there, a dozen yards off, holding out some kind of glowing sphere. It was slightly bigger than a softball, and sloshed like liquid when he moved. Which he did when a twig cracked behind him, and he spun to meet another fey, whose spill of dark hair gleamed in the moonlight.
Which was what the light was, I realized, as the second fey crouched down to the ditch and came up with his own handful of water. It stuck together in the same way it might have in space, forming a wobbly orb that seemed to glow from within, catching and enhancing the beams filtering through the trees. Enhancing them into a good approximation of a flashlight, I realized, mentally cursing as the twin orbs threw shadows our way.
“See something?” the second fey asked. The spell I’d picked up on my previous visit to this era was still translating for me, but it looked weird, seeing his lips move out of sync with the words. Like a video gone wrong.
“Smell,” the first fey said. “An odd scent. I don’t know it.”
They paused to breathe for a moment, looking oddly like a pair of vamps scenting the air. And my eyes focused on Rosier’s still-lit cigarette, lying on the ground where he must have dropped it. Until his webbed toes crushed it into the mud.
“Your nose is better than mine,” the other fey said, swinging his orb around. And causing Rosier and me to try to climb inside the tree trunk. Luckily, the never-trimmed foliage hung low, casting a dark shadow. And we didn’t move, didn’t breathe; I think my heart might even have stopped.
Until the first fey smiled, a brief glint of white in the darkness.
“Always was,” he said, and the two melted away like part of the night.
I contemplated throwing up, not least because Rosier hadn’t released me.
“Wait,” he whispered, so low that it might have been the sigh of the wind.
But it wasn’t. Like it wasn’t another shadow that moved just beyond the tree limbs, visible only because the misting rain was suddenly missing. In a man-shaped void.
I wasn’t going to throw up, I decided calmly. I was going to pass out. From lack of air and from a general sense from my nervous system that it had had enough. It couldn’t do this shit anymore.
But then the bastard moved off, too, as silently as he’d come, and I fell softly into the muck.
And just stayed there, trying to breathe quietly, while the rest of the troop trouped on by.
It was getting to me, I decided. All of this. It just was.
Not just shifting a ridiculous-sounding fifteen centuries, but everything. I thought maybe Caleb had been right: I needed a vacation. Somewhere sunny. Somewhere with a beach. And warm sand instead of perpetual mud, and a soft chaise instead of more freaking tree roots, and a hot guy—
“Which one?” somebody asked.
“What?”
“I didn’t say anything,” Rosier informed me.
I vaguely realized that I was on my back, and that he was wiping my face with what looked like a moist towelette.