“And that means?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But I can tell you this: in four millennia, I have never been anywhere that did not permit me to shift back to my home. Therefore this is either somewhere I’ve never been, or it’s some type of illusion.”
I looked up at the ceiling, where a Cassie-shaped blob looked back at me. This place wasn’t mirrored, but it was vaguely reflective. Meaning that I saw indistinct versions of me and Rosier everywhere.
This one looked disapproving.
I looked away. “You can’t see through illusions?”
“With my power intact, certainly. Without it . . .” He looked around. “I would still expect to be able to.”
“But you can’t.”
“No. If this is an illusion, it’s a damn fine one.”
“Then you’re voting for real?”
“If it weren’t for that one thing, yes. But it doesn’t take power for me to shift home; it takes a certain amount of effort for me to stay in your realm, and resist the pull back to mine. Therefore the dam the council put on my power should make no difference.”
“Then . . . maybe she’s blocking you somehow. Gertie, I mean. Or the Circle—”
Rosier laughed. It was scornful. “The Circle. They rather overestimate their abilities, particularly in regard to my kind.”
“They’ve trapped demons before—”
“Not a member of council,” he said shortly. “And not in bodily form. In any case, this doesn’t feel like a trap—not the magical variety.”
And no, it didn’t. It didn’t look like one, either, and I should know, having spent time recently in one of the Circle’s little snares. It had been featureless inside, too, but just black, to the point that I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or not. Like floating in a sea of nothingness, which had been damn disturbing.
But less so than this, because I could shift out of those. I couldn’t shift out of this. I didn’t even know what this was!
I felt my fingers try to dig into the surface of the floor beneath me. It was cool, and smooth as glass, showing me back a vague reflection of my palm. Like the Cassie-blob that resided in the opposite wall.
It looked defeated.
And I couldn’t be that, not when there was still a chance.
I got up and began pacing, as far as the maybe eight-by-ten space would allow. I didn’t usually suffer from claustrophobia, but this . . . was getting to me. I felt like a caged animal. To the point that I could see myself throwing my body at the walls before long, beating my hands against them until they were bloody, yelling myself hoarse. Until I eventually went crazy, because who wouldn’t in a place like this?
Maybe that was what Gertie had meant, when she said I might prefer death to my fate otherwise. Stuck in some featureless void, abandoned and forgotten. Conscious but unable to do anything, to help anything, while Pritkin died and the world went to hell and I waited for the gods to return and rip it apart, freeing me right before they killed me!
Goddamn it!
A ghostly knife speared the opposite wall, flung there out of sheer frustration, but it didn’t help. Any more than it had helped the last time I did it, more deliberately, shortly after waking up. It also didn’t bounce around, making a hazard for the two of us, or even so much as crack the surface.
It just . . . disappeared.
“This can’t be real,” I told Rosier. “My knife would have dinged it if it was.”
“Then you’re voting for illusion.”
“I don’t know what I’m voting for. I just want out.”
I let my forehead rest against the wall for a moment, staring at my reflection, trying to think.
This time, it looked surprised.
I frowned.