“I’ll make you a ring, too,” I whispered, pressing myself against his chest. “A heavy copper one, with oak leaves etched all around.” I twined my arms around his neck. “Or is it not proper for Micah Silverstrand to wear a copper wedding ring?”
Before he could answer, movement caught his eye. Silently, Micah turned me around, and I saw Max conversing with another creature, their heads bent toward each other. The creature was short and stout, with waxy yellow skin that reminded me of a half-burned candle.
“Goblin?” I whispered, and I felt Micah nod.
“One of the enforcers,” he breathed. “Has your brother always dealt with such unsavories?”
“Max thinks he is one of the unsavories,” I replied, shaking my head at the sight of my scrawny brother trying to act tough. Well, since no one had bothered to kill him when he was a kid, he probably wouldn’t get killed today.
“You father’s reach must be far and strong,” Micah observed. “Like as not, the enforcers have been ordered to leave Max be.”
“I wonder if Max realizes that,” I mused.
“Doubtful.” Micah pressed his hand over my mouth to muffle my laughter. “Look, he’s being led away.”
Across the market, Mom and Sadie stepped out of the shop, brushing away a few stray webs in the process. The four of us exchanged a look, then we were off after my brother.
22
The four of us followed Max as he wended his way through the market. After a few minutes, the first goblin had melted into the crowd, and another took its place. This little replace the bad guy routine repeated itself until a grayish creature beckoned Max into a narrow stretch between stalls. He went, all but disappearing into the shadows.
“Max,” Mom called, the rest of us close behind her. “Maximilien, do not—”
Then the world tilted, and everything went dark.
I was vibrating, slow and steady. Earthquake? Slowly, stickily, my eyes opened, and I learned that the vibration was caused by Micah. His hands were on my shoulders, and he was gently shaking me awake.
“Hey,” I mumbled. I noticed the faint shimmer in Micah’s eyes, a telltale sign of his dreamself. And, he was naked, an unexpected but not unpleasant development. “When did we go to bed?”
“We did not. We were captured.”
“Captured?” For a moment, I thought he was joking. Not that he was being funny.
“Um, when did this happen?” I ventured. I felt like hardly any time had passed, but then I had been unconscious. “Any, who exactly captured us?”
“We were captured by whomever Max made contact with at the fountain. That was yesterday afternoon, and it is now two hours before dawn.” Fountain, fountain… Dimly, I remembered a shiny black monstrosity, filled with stagnant, stinking water, and my brother standing before it. It felt like all of that nonsense had happened a thousand years ago. As I struggled to a sitting position, Micah put his hands on the sides of my head, his features creased with concern. “Are you well?”
“Yeah. I guess.” I pressed my hand to my forehead; I wasn’t in any pain, but I felt like I had the hangover of the century. “My brain’s fuzzy.”
“You are being drugged.” Micah indicated an incense burner belching sweet smoke into the room, which explained my lack of both memory and consciousness. I mumbled something about putting it out, but Micah shook his head. “No. As long as the three of you remain here, you are safe.”
Three of us? I turned around, and saw that myself, Sadie and Max were heaped upon a ridiculously ornate bed. It seemed that Micah wasn’t the only one dreamwalking here. Then I took in the rest of the room; it was full of brightly colored cushions and drapes, bedecked with all sorts of tassels and fringe. And wouldn’t you know it, not a speck of metal in sight. “Is this a harem?”
“More like a brothel.”
Cold dread filled my stomach. “Micah, tell me why you’re naked.”
“I was stripped before being escorted to a cell,” he replied, as nonchalantly as if describing checking his coat at the opera. “Nothing untoward has happened to my body.”
Nothing untoward? “You’re in a cell?” He nodded. “Take me there. Now.”
In the blink of an eye, our dreamselves went from the lush harem to a dank, dark cell. Crumpled against the far wall was a corpse. It twitched and I jumped; so, not quite a corpse, not yet, anyway. Whoever it was had been badly beaten, his skin covered in bruises and sticky clots of blood. Then the body twitched again, into the light, and I noticed a thatch of hair like a dandelion gone to seed; Micah had once warned me that a glamour would dissolve if its wearer fell asleep. Or was beaten to a bloody pulp.