Chương 248: eyes yet to open - 22.1

Blessed by the benefit of seven brains: one human, cradled within the hot, dark, osseous cavity of our skull, cushioned by the triple-layer of tissue-soft meninges, floating in a clear soup of cerebrospinal fluid, wrinkled and grey and flaring with invisible electricity; and six imitation-cephalopod, spongy ladder-structures running up and down with distributed thought, interlaced with the fibres and muscular hydrostats of our tentacles, woven from pneuma-somatic dreams and euphoric self-image. Seven brains!

Surely more than enough to conceive and contain any measure of plan, to master any level of multitasking, to keep an iron grip of willpower on the self, and never forget a single thing. But, no. Alas. Being Heather Morell, times seven, did not work like that, not in practice. It was still all too easy to have too much on one's mind. Too much to think about. Too much responsibility.

Which is why, on the morning which followed our meeting with the last, sad, wet, half-dead dregs of the Sharrowford Cult, I gently but firmly declined to get out of bed. I didn't actually have to say anything to achieve this goal of luxuriant refusal, of course. We could just lie there, wrapped in my blankets, tentacles coiled about myself, face down on the pillow, pretending we didn't feel the trickle of cold drool oozing from the corner of my lips.

But I did feel it; I'd woken up at four or five o'clock in the morning, bestirred by the first distant hints of sunrise beyond the closed curtains, the first intrusion of the day's light into the static grey gloom of our bedroom. I had been trapped in dozy purgatory ever since, teetering on the edge of sleep, so eager to slip back down into the darkness of unconscious oblivion — but dragged back up again and again as some new angle of anxiety grasped my thoughts and shook me like a snow-globe in a giant's fist.

So I lay there, half-conscious, sliding back and forth, tapped by the occasional hypnagogic jerk, murmuring as a dreamer trapped in an endless hallway. Zheng rose first, as she almost always did, before the sun had finished peeking over the horizon and flooding the city of Sharrowford. She'd joined us last night after a long soak in the bath. Never showers for Zheng, always the scalding hot dip beneath the waters; she was lucky that Number 12 Barnslow Drive possessed such a large bathtub.

A bath, a bottle of mouthwash, and a brand-new toothbrush had seen her clean enough to do certain things with Raine, which had helped me stop thinking, at least for a little while. I felt Zheng get up, felt her bulk and weight and size leave the bed, felt the sudden absence of her furnace-heat skin. I heard her grunt and purr and make her spine go pop-pop-pop. I felt her brush my hair away from my forehead with gentle fingers, then felt her lean over and do the same with Raine.

I could have escaped purgatory by simply opening my eyes — Zheng would have noticed, invited me to join her, and I would be free. Free to not think. Free to procrastinate. So I didn't; a couple of my tentacles disagreed, grumbling in the back of our mind, but the consensus was still against that selfish impulse. I pretended I was truly asleep, breathing deeply, still as untouched waters.

I heard Zheng leave the room, stalking off into the dark corridors of the house to find herself some animal flesh to shove into her mouth. She moved with all her usual big-cat stealth. The sound of her footsteps vanished before she even reached the stairs. An hour later — or two hours, or three? My sense of time was a hallucinatory dream, a fugue state, not yet real. Had I slept a little or been awake the whole time? Well, whichever it was, Raine woke up.

She was louder than Zheng, slightly less graceful, heavier on her feet. And much more physical. Raine snuggled close to me for a while, kissed me on the back of the neck, and touched me in ways which queried if I wanted certain kinds of attention. But I didn't move. I was 'asleep'. Eventually Raine got up properly, sliding out of bed and leaving me in my puddle of warm lies. She stretched with big cat-like motions and deep breaths and more than a few whiny grunts — which made me regret declining her attentions.

Then she threw on some clothes and checked her phone. She'd showered last night, a shared shower with myself, during which she had pinned me to the wall and helped me to stop thinking for a significant period of time, several times. I wanted that right then, I wanted it badly enough to flirt with betraying my intentions. Several of us even twitched beneath the covers, tentacles aching to be touched. But that was not what we needed, only what we wanted.

I needed something very different, very specific, very difficult. Something with which Raine could not help — at least not at first. But then she whispered my name: "Heather? Heather, love, you awake?" Try as I might, I couldn't lie with my words, however much I might tell falsehoods with my body.

"No," I grumbled. Raine laughed softly, then spoke even softer: "It's nearly ten, squid-princess. You want me to bring you breakfast in bed? I was gonna get some stretches in, downstairs, some real stretches, do a bit of a routine. I'm, uh, a little sore after last night, if you know what I mean. But I can get breakfast on first. You want some?"

"Mmm, no thank you."

"You gonna sleep in?"

"No," I said. Raine chuckled again.

"My beautiful little paradox. Do you want me to get you up? Is that it?"

"No."

"Hmmmm," Raine made an exaggerated thinking sound, like purring. She pressed a hand against my back, through the covers, and used her thumb to knead the muscles between my spine and shoulder blades. I almost groaned into the pillow. Raine purred again: "You being a bad girl and lazing around in bed is gonna come back to bite you, right? Is this a tactic to make me force you? Gonna be a brat?" That purr was enough to tug at the base of my guts.

Maybe if I got really, seriously, irritatingly bratty, then Raine would make it so I wouldn't have to think at all for the rest of the day. Maybe this swamp which was bubbling and seething in my mind could be put off until tomorrow, until— No. No more procrastination. Maisie could not afford my procrastination.

"No," I said — not cutely and sweetly any longer, not with a little purr of my own, not a teasing refusal to bait Raine into peeling me out of bed and out of my clothes and out of my skull, but 'no', clear and open and a little too hard. Raine's hand paused.

"Ah?"

"No thank you, Raine," I said, even clearer.

"I need to think. Let me think. You've done nothing wrong, it's fine. Thank you for the offer. I'll … I'll be down later." Raine nodded — I couldn't see, but I felt the seriousness in her expression, the instant acceptance of whatever I needed to do. She said, "You can totally just go back to sleep if you want. You've earned it, after yesterday. You gotta take care of yourself, Heather."

"I won't sleep," we said.

"I can't. I need to think. But thanks, Raine. I love you." Raine leaned down and kissed my forehead. I caught the scent of sleep-sweat and feminine flesh.

"Love you too, tentacle-girl. Seeya in a bit?"

"Mm," I grunted.

"In a bit." I wasn't being petulant. I simply knew that I wanted — no, I needed — to be alone, with myselves, to think. Raine padded out of our bedroom on bare feet and gently closed the door behind her, sealing me back inside the warm, grey, gloomy bubble of walls and curtains and bed covers, at the core of my building-cocoon of secret thoughts. I lay there for a long time. Minutes, hours, I wasn't sure.

Hoping against hope that sleep might creep up on me from behind, take me unawares, and leave me with no choice but to submit. But it didn't; sleep was uninterested in little old me. We felt more and more awake with every passing moment. Eventually we sighed and rolled over and stopped pretending to be asleep. Our bedroom was a nest of friendly shadows. Grey light crept around the edges of the curtain, offering shape and form and definition to the shades within.

The summer heat had broken overnight, dialling down to merely hot, instead of thought-searing; the sky outdoors was blanketed with high layers of thickened grey cloud, a crust upon the all-seeing blue beyond. Sharrowford lay sleepy and lazy below, a muted land of concrete and asphalt, brick and metal, buzzing to itself at the threat of chilling rain. We stretched out our tentacles and sat up in bed, clinging to headboard and pillow and mattress, as if the anchors would serve to stall the task ahead.

We tried hugging ourselves, then making ourselves very wide, all tentacles thrust outward. Then we flopped back again and sighed a very big sigh. There was no escape.

"We have to do this properly," we murmured to ourselves.

"There's no way to organise all this. Not without pen and paper." We laughed an absurd little laugh.

"Really? Pen and paper, Heather? Like you're outlining an essay?" Most of my tentacles agreed. It felt ridiculous, but it was the only way we knew.

"No," we corrected ourselves gently, waving our tentacles in the air as we thought.

"It's not the only way we know. It's just one of the few things we're actually good at. One of the few skills we've developed." We sighed again.

"Always so bad at planning." I had always been terrible at making plans, and even worse at seeing them through; intellectually I knew I was not to blame for that. When you are a teenager assaulted by otherworldly nightmares and missing time and exhaustion and inexplicable monsters around every corner, it is exceptionally difficult to think ahead more than the absolute minimum required for survival. I had never learned to plan. But I had learned how to write an essay.

Reluctantly, slowly, like an octopus in her den, we peeled ourselves out of bed, made sure we were reasonably decent — not half-naked, at least — and then stumbled to the bathroom, hoping not to run into anybody out in the corridor. The upstairs corridor of Number 12 Barnslow Drive was as grey and shadow-drenched as our bedroom on that day; the bathroom was pitch dark, a windowless chamber. We used the toilet with the light off. That was nice.

We flirted oh-so-temptingly with the notion of just staying there in the dark, no thinking, no responsibility, no light. Run a bath and lie there in the lightless cavern, comfy and quiet and warm.

"No procrastination, Heather," we murmured into that stygian black.

"Maisie doesn't have time." We drank from the sink and brushed our teeth. Then we padded back to our bedroom and shut the door and threw all our clothes on the floor. Fresh thinking required fresh garments: a big loose t-shirt borrowed from Raine, which fell well past my hips, and a pair of bright pink pajama bottoms. No underwear. We were breaking rules today, being seven bad girls, skipping breakfast — ow, no — and wearing no knickers. Raine would have been very excited if she'd known.

But this was not for Raine's benefit. Not for anybody's benefit but mine. I sat down at my desk in the corner of the room, where the shadows were deepest. Books had piled up here over the summer break, detritus that must be cleared off before the university term could start once more. But I had earlier need of this space than I had expected, so I put most of the books to one side, grabbed one of my large, spiral-bound, A4 notebooks, and took up a pencil. No laptop.

This was not the sort of thing one wrote on a computer. We needed physical feedback. Graphite and paper. I flipped the notebook open, past lecture notes about Shakespeare and Modernism and the nature of femininity in late 18th century literature, until I reached an empty page. Then I stared at it for five minutes without writing down a single word.

"Not here," we murmured eventually.

"Somewhere else, somewhere. Just somewhere else." I grabbed the notebook and the pencil and left my bedroom, in search of a secret and shadowy nook. Number 12 Barnslow Drive possessed no lack of secret and shadowy nooks. There were simply so many from which to choose. As I stood in the upstairs hallway and chewed on my lip, I could go left — down the stairs, into the front room, and from there into the kitchen and Evelyn's magical workshop.

No doubt the downstairs would be bustling with activity by then, but that was the opposite of what I needed, no matter how much my stomach grumbled for breakfast. I would inevitably run into Raine, and Evee, and Lozzie, and everyone else hanging around the house. Besides, Evee was probably working on the Invisus Oculus in her workshop right now, putting together the great spell to hide us from the Eye. I would not be alone with myself and my thoughts.

To my right lay the shadowy depths of the upstairs corridor, vanishing into the gloom where it turned off to the left once again. I had found privacy and quiet there once before, had I not? When I had needed a space to think, the house had provided. I had no doubt that if we wandered down that way and chose an unknown door at random, I would find a dusty room with an old writing desk, and plenty of light from a large window. Nobody else seemed to be upstairs — except perhaps Tenny.

I could hear the faint sounds of video games from behind the closed door to Lozzie's bedroom. Evee's bedroom door was shut tight. As was the study. But I didn't need seclusion. Being alone was a prerequisite, not the aim. I needed something I'd never done before. I sighed and walked over to the single window in the upstairs corridor, letting the tips of my tentacles trail along the walls. Outdoors the sky was a ceiling of brushed steel, quiet and still, with light behind the layers.

The trees along the street shivered with a little caress of wind. The smell of imminent rain leaked in around the window panes, crisp and juicy and dark. My stomach rumbled again. I sighed. Shoulders slouched. Tentacles slumped.

"Oh, I can't do this. Not today. I need food. I can try again later, or maybe go Outside, or—" Click! went a door behind our back. Tip-tap! went a pair of sharp, smart, slick little shoes. We turned in surprise — but not in shock — to see the door of Evelyn's study standing open, and Praem resplendent in the doorway. Despite all the stresses of yesterday evening, Praem was perfectly turned out, perfectly composed, and perfectly elegant.

She was wearing her full maid dress, her shiny black shoes, her lace sleeves and puffy shoulders and long, layered skirts, black and white and starched all over. Her hair, as always, was tied up in a loose bun at the back of her head, with loops and coils of artfully messy blonde falling about her neck. She stared at me with blank, milk-white eyes.

"Oh!" we said, adopting a pleasant smile — for how could we not, for Praem?

"Praem. Um. Morning— I mean, good morning. I didn't hear you in there, I thought nobody else was upstairs. Except Tenny, I suppose. What were you—""Good morning," Praem intoned — and then presented me with a pair of fresh lemons on a plate, neatly sliced into quarters. My stomach threatened to throw a riot. My salivary glands mounted an assault on my mouth. All six tentacles twitched, hard.

"Oh. Oh, um, Praem, thank you, but I should really—""Good morning," Praem repeated, clear and bright.

"Yes. Good morning, again. Um, you really didn't have to bring me—""Breakfast."

"Yes, breakfast. Praem, that is very sweet of you, but I suppose I should go downstairs to—" Praem stepped to one side, interposing herself between me and the route to the stairs; with her free hand she gestured at the open door of the study. The lights were switched on, bathing the room in a soft glow amid the cloudy day. Praem's other hand continued to offer me a very lemony breakfast.

"Praem, you're really too sweet," I said with a sigh. I accepted the plate of lemons — with a hand, not a tentacle — and reached over to gently pat her on the shoulder. But then I paused and frowned.

"Wait a moment. Praem, I didn't tell anybody what I needed this morning. I didn't tell anybody what I was thinking, not even Raine, though it's not a bad secret or anything, I'm just going to do a little forward planning. How did you know I was looking for somewhere to think, and write notes, and that I was hungry for breakfast?" Praem stared right through me, those milk-white eyes framed by her unreadable, blank expression. I answered my own question: "Let me guess, because maids are perfect?"

"Maids are perfect," Praem echoed.

"And this just happens to give you perfect knowledge of everything that happens inside the house." I laughed softly. It wasn't a question.

"How to summon a lemon," Praem intoned.

"Ah?" I frowned, a bit bamboozled.

"What does that mean?"

"You have summoned a lemon." I lifted the plate and smiled.

"Two lemons, in fact. Thank you again, Praem. You're a dear and we don't deserve you. Please tell me you're going to take some time for yourself today? Yesterday was very stressful for everyone."

"Praem time," said Praem. I pulled a dubious expression at that, but I let it slide. Whatever 'Praem time' meant, she was welcome to it.

"Thank you again, Praem," we said.

"I'll … yes, the study is perfect. Perfect suggestion. I'll see you later?"

"See me," said Praem — then turned on her heel, skirts a-swish, and vanished down the corridor. She descended the stairs a moment later, the loops and coils of loose blonde hair going down, down, down, until the house swallowed her up. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. I stepped into Evelyn's study, closed the door, and sealed myself inside.

Distant grey light fell through the single, small, elevated window; soft illumination glowed from the desk-lamp at the far end of the room; the air was filled with the dusty, heady scent of paper and print; the bookcases lined the walls, stuffed to bursting with their jumble of volumes; some kind soul — undoubtedly Praem herself — had tidied up the massive wooden desk at the rear of the room, turning it into a clean expanse of dark wood, waiting for a scribe's work.

The equally ancient wooden swivel chair had acquired a cushion, awaiting my bony backside. Exactly the sort of place where an occult mastermind should write secret notes. Am I an 'occult mastermind'? Usually I leave that role to Evee, she certainly relishes it much more than I ever do. And her mind is more masterful than mine. I settled down at the desk as best I could.

Even with a cushion the old wooden swivel chair was hard and uncomfortable, though once it had probably been the height of luxurious power-statement, circa 1949. The back extended far above the height of my shoulders. The armrests formed little bulwarks of wood either side of me; we looped our tentacles through those, playing around for a moment, entwining myself with the chair. Notepad open, pencil at the ready. We took a long moment to gnaw on two of the lemon quarters, sucking down the juices and the pale flesh.

My bio-reactor purred with appreciation. My stomach stopped rumbling quite so much. Then I leaned over the notepad and got started. At the top I wrote:'Wonderland — The Eye — Maisie' Those were the non-negotiable elements. The confrontation and rescue, that was the entire point. Then I paused to eat another piece of lemon, and decided I needed a little treat. Oh yes, four words written, one line, none of the difficult parts yet tackled, and Heathers had earned herself a treat.

How I ever got my university essays written, I will never know. The treat, however, was two more words. I wrote:'Alexander' and'Edward' And with a delighted flourish, I crossed them both out, with a nice big thick line. Then I added '(Orange Juice)', though I could not justify crossing out his name. We had not defeated him, merely driven him off, and then ended our connection with the horrifying post-mage Outsider. I settled for surrounding his name with brackets.

Then I wrote: 'Sharrowford Cult, remains pending (including the unfortunate boy in the hospital)'. This neat list was about to get more complicated, with less clarity clouding my clear catalogue of enemies. But I frowned and went ahead anyway.

'Harold Yuleson (ours now)''Mister Joe King (truce successful)' There. Finished. Our list of foes, vanquished and conquered and driven away, or otherwise co-opted or brought around. Then I paused for a long, awkward moment. There was still so much page left to fill. My throat bobbed. I chewed on the end of the pencil, on the little metal part which held the pink nub of the eraser. Then I handed the pencil off to myself — to a tentacle — so I would not mutilate it any further.

I leaned back and reached for a slice of lemon.

"Need a devil on your shoulder?" said a voice like rusty nails drawn across broken ground. I flinched so hard that I banged one knee on the ancient wooden desk; the swivel chair creaked in protest as I turned too fast; all our tentacles flew outward in a protective cage — and then collapsed as I sighed with great exasperation.

A slender, person-shaped blob of shadow hung in front of the bookcases to my right, oozing darkness toward the floor in great sticky, tarry ropes, which dissipated into nothing before staining the floorboards. A suggestion of a grin floated deep in the living gloom.

"Aym," I snapped.

"Do not make me jump like that! And come out of there. Stop it. I don't have the patience to deal with you doing that."

"Doing what?" Aym purred, like a cat with terrible lung problems.

"Hiding in plain sight!"

"Tch," Aym tutted — but she obliged my request. The darkness tightened and thickened, like steam condensing on a mirror, or clothes sliding over skin and taking form. In the blink of an eye shadow turned to sprite. Aym was sitting — well, hovering in mid-air, as if perched in an invisible seat, with her chin in one hand. She was unveiled, out in the open, neither wrapped by shadows nor hidden by a clever trick of the light.

Draped from throat to ankle with dripping black lace, with only her pale hands and her weird, angular, elfish little face showing, eyes tilted at a fey and inhuman angle, framed by her long, messy, black hair. She pulled her lips back in a teasing, satisfied grin. A tiny coal-dust sprite of a girl, all sharp bones beneath her shapeless garments.

"You could have just knocked," I said.

"Instead of making me jump." She giggled — a sound like iron filings falling through a sieve.

"Might be the last chance I get, squid-girl. Well, at least for a little while. Flissy and I are off tomorrow, you know? She's had enough of sleeping in her car." I sighed and rubbed at my eyes.

"Well. Good. She's probably had more than enough of us lot. Aym, what are you doing? Where is Sevens? Shouldn't you be with her?"

"Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight," Aym said her name with surprising precision and respect, "is taking a nap. Sleeping off a little …" Aym's thin, pale lips curled upward in a nasty smile. She raised two fingers to her lips, parted them, and stuck her tongue into the gap. I rolled my eyes.

"If you expect us to blush, you're going to have to do better than that. I've seen that gesture from Raine a million times. She's done that to me more times than I can count. You're not going to embarrass me with oral sex jokes, Aym. And I think you're lying, anyway." Aym pulled a little pout, which made her face even sharper than before.

"Tch. You're still no fun.".

"What are you doing here?" I repeated. Aym gestured at the notepad on the desk. She crossed her legs beneath her layers of impenetrable lace, a motion like the shifting of midnight shadows.

"This is always the problem with polycules," she drawled.

"Sooner or later, somebody has to write up a spreadsheet."

"It's not a spreadsheet, it's a list." Aym snorted — a sound like a pocket of swamp gas bubbling the surface of a tar pit.

"Same thing."

"No, it's not! And if it was a spreadsheet I would be making it on my laptop, not by hand. You can see very well what it is from right there, stop trying to wind me up."

"Try? Nay. Do!" Aym giggled. That sound made the little hairs stand up on the back of my neck. My expression turned stony and cold; I had intended to seclude myself to think, alone.

"Aym, why are you—" Aym cleared her throat with strange delicacy, like pins dropping onto a metal plate.

"I thought you might appreciate some assistance — some expert assistance. An objective, adversarial voice, to stop you from sitting there and staring at a blank page. A devil, on your shoulder." I opened my mouth to tell Aym to buzz off — but then I paused. My brow unknitted. I sat back in realisation.

"Praem sent you. Didn't she?" Aym's cheeks turned pink, which was absolutely delightful — not because it made her look cute (which it most certainly did not), but because I'd got one over on her. She waved a hand, which was tucked deep inside the end of one sleeve all of a sudden.

"Certainly not. You think I take orders? I came entirely of my own accord. My own glowing initiative. You and Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight have been very kind to me and my Felicity. Can't I show some appreciation? Return the kindness?" I couldn't help but smile. Aym stared me down, willing herself not to blush any harder.

"Alright, Aym," I said eventually, with a little sigh.

"What exactly are you offering?" I left unsaid the real question: 'What does Praem think I need you for?'

"I already said, twice! A devil on your shoulder. You need external motivation, to keep you from stalling. Look!" She gestured at my notepad.

"You are getting nowhere. Now, you can sit here for the next eight hours and get nowhere, or you can have me provide some counter-arguments. Your choice." I controlled my amused smile; fair enough, I thought, Praem has a point. And Aym is as close to an objective observer as we could get. Observer and irritant — perhaps that was what I needed. But I didn't entirely trust her motivations, to put it lightly.

"Why do you care, Aym?" Aym's stare reminded me of an irritated stray cat.

"You could stand to be a little more polite to me, squid-face. I am your fiancée's girlfriend, after all." Then she pulled a face like she'd bitten into an unexpected taste.

"Oh, that is a confusing statement. Polycules, not even once." We sighed again. We were not going to get a straight answer out of Aym, that was obvious.

"Thank you, Aym," I said softly.

"Very well, then. I'll continue. Pull up a chair. Well, metaphorically speaking. But if you're rude about even one person on this list—""Yes, yes!" Aym tutted.

"You'll throw me in your extra-dimensional dungeon and have me tickle-tortured. I'll be polite." She batted thick, dark, heavy eyelashes.

"I'll be a good girl." I gave her a look — hopefully enough to let her know I was deadly serious — and turned back to my notepad. Aym appeared at the corner of the desk, seated on empty air. She allowed one black lace sleeve to pool on the wooden surface of the desk itself, puddling outward and turning into shadow.

"Well?" she purred, all wet and rusty.

"Who's first?" I lifted my pencil and wrote on a new line: 'Raine'"Ah," Aym said.

"Yes. Your bull-dyke." I shot her a frown. Aym raised her sleeve-covered hands in surrender.

"It's a compliment! A compliment. The woman certainly owns the butch aesthetic, I'll give her that much." I said: "Right. Well then. Obviously she's coming to Wonderland. Though I'd rather she not. Uh … here." I added a little plus symbol, to indicate that Raine was to be part of the Wonderland expedition. Then I hesitated, glanced at Aym, and wrote two words just beneath Raine's name.

'Get married?'

"Ugh," Aym made a disgusted noise.

"Really?" I blushed a little.

"Yes, really! Raine suggested we should … should … get married, for real, maybe, before we go to Wonderland." Aym sighed and blinked heavy-lidded eyes at me. The tips of her hair joined the pooling shadows on the corner of the desk.

"Isn't that just an admission of defeat?

'Let's get married because we might both die.' How sad."

"N-no, it's not, it's—""Oh it so is," Aym rasped.

"If you really thought you were both going to make it, there's no reason to rush. And you are going to make it back, aren't you?"

"Yes! We are!" I snapped at her, growing angry — though I knew I was only treating her as a substitute for my true fears. Aym snorted and sat back up straight in her intangible chair.

"Besides, you don't have time. You're going as soon as you're all ready, aren't you? You can't organise and throw a wedding in the space of, what, a few days?"

"We could do a registry office thing. Just the legal part." Aym rolled her eyes and sighed, shivering inside her lace as if hit with a vile stench.

"Really? Really? The whole point of it is just to get the state involved? Cross the I's and dot the t's? Where's your sense of romance, squid-for-brains?"

"It's plenty romantic!" Aym snorted with naked disgust, which sounded a bit like a clogged drain full of black mould.

"If you and Raine do get married, it should be a big party. You have so many people, it's not like you have to invite many others. You don't even have to pay for a venue! Hold it Outside, in that castle your tin men have built, or down in Sussex at Evelyn's estate. You can do it on the cheap, get lots of booze, and have a proper knees-up. Your family deserves no less. Or are you going to cut them out of the whole thing, abandon all the others?" I chewed on the end of my pencil. She did have a point.

"Besides," Aym drawled.

"If you get married after all this, won't Maisie be there, too?" I frowned; a low blow. But it was true. Did Raine and I getting married add anything material to our plans? No. I lifted my pencil and modified the line — I added 'AW' after the marriage question. Aym raised an elegant, dark eyebrow.

"After Wonderland?"

"Yes," I said.

"After Wonderland." Aym purred when she smiled.

"That's more like it. Now we're getting somewhere. Though, before or after, they're both death flags. I hope you don't trip them, squiddy. Carry on." I wasn't sure what Aym meant by 'death flags', but I could guess. Next I wrote: 'Evelyn', and added a plus symbol right away.

"Of course Evee is coming," we said.

"She's our mage. She's the expert. We could never do without her."

"Mm." Aym just grunted. Keeping her usual opinions about Evee to herself? Perhaps she really was trying to be polite. Below Evee's name I added: 'Pneuma-somatic prosthetic replacements.' Aym tutted and rolled back in her seat like a grumpy teenager.

"She doesn't want them!"

"We don't know that for sure," I said.

"I need to talk to her about it again." Aym groaned.

"And you don't have time! Squid-head, you don't have time. You're telling me, seriously, that you're going to pull off an untested, unexplored, dangerous magical experiment, and maybe put yourself out of action for days? You're going to expect Evelyn to stomp off into danger with untested techniques strapped to her thigh and hand? Because, please, tell me yes, tell me now, and I will stop helping you." I blinked at Aym in surprise. She added: "Look after little Saye. Look after her well.

You do not want me as your actual for-real enemy, Heather Morell." I sighed and nodded. However much I didn't want to think about this, Aym was correct. Evee's new prosthetics could wait — if she ever wanted them at all. Better to assault Wonderland with the leg she knew. Instead I wrote beneath Evee's name: 'Invisus Oculus'. Aym did not argue, just nodded along. Then I hesitated, drew in a deep breath, and added: 'Share bed? Maybe kiss.' I stared at the words, expecting Aym to snort or laugh or maybe even argue.

But she said nothing, silent as a lingering shadow. When we finally turned to her, she was grinning, wide and toothy.

"Aym!" we snapped.

"Whaaaaat? I wasn't saying a woooooord," she purred.

"Oh, whatever. We can leave that note there for now. Surely there's time for one night of … of … whatever. But you don't breathe a word of this to anybody, Aym. You understand?" Aym nodded, slowly and gracefully. Quickly, I moved on.

'Twil +' No notes for Twil; she'd made her position and allegiance clear. And I wasn't going to interfere with whatever she felt for Evee, or Lozzie, or anybody else.

'Praem +'"Well," I said, explaining to myself as much as to Aym.

"If Evee comes, so does Praem. And if anybody can pull us out of an unexpected fire, it's her. She doesn't need any notes, either. Praem is perfect. Oh! Wait a moment." I added: 'Birthday! (AW)'"There," I said.

"Something else to look forward to."

"Mmmmm," Aym purred. Next up: 'Lozzie +'"Lozzie's our emergency getaway, just in case," I said.

"And she may have insights, or ways of communicating with Maisie, once we're actually standing in Wonderland. In some ways she's more potent than me. If we can't find any other way to solve this, Lozzie's the wild card."

'Tenny''Education? (AW)' I did not add a plus next to Tenny's name. She was not coming to Wonderland. No way. Aym made a curious little sound.

"Hmmm?"

"Tenny … Tenny deserves more than this," we said, sighing and leaning back in the chair.

"She can't stay cooped up in this house forever. She deserves a real life. Friends. An education. Somehow."

"Mmhmm, if her 'friends' like meeting giant moth-girls with tentacles?" I tutted, but softly.

"Her skills at disguise are improving. Lozzie and I have discussed the possibility of sending her to Sixth Form college, next year, if her disguise is good enough. Though, uh, I wouldn't wish A-Levels on anybody, but I don't see any other way to get her into a university program. She's already smart enough, far too smart for secondary school. She's developed so much faster than a human being." Aym snorted.

"Going to uni wearing her humansona?"

"Don't mock her. Don't laugh. I'm deadly serious, Aym. Tenny deserves a life. We're going to give her that." Aym grumbled and averted her eyes.

"Sure, sure. But after Wonderland?" I nodded.

"After Wonderland." The next few were obvious.

'Lozzie's Knights +''The Cattys +'Zheng +' Then:'Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight +' I glanced at Aym. She just stared at the name, impassive, eyes dark and hard, like pebbles inside her face. I added: 'Get married (AW)', and 'Help her become herself (ongoing)'.

"Mm," Aym grunted with grudging approval.

"Aym," I said slowly.

"Are you worried that Sevens is going to get hurt, or not come back?"

"No," Aym said — and that was all. I tried a different angle: "Are you and her … I mean … with you going home with Fliss soon, she … and you …

""We've talked about that. She'll come visit," Aym said. She sounded horribly petulant, like a child who had been denied her sweets, but was trying to be oh-so-very brave and serious about it.

"Easy for her, anyway. And no, she won't get lost out there. She can run away in ways the rest of you can't." A slightly sore subject, it seemed. I decided to leave it be, for now. The rest of the list was easy enough, because from there it became a catalogue of who was not coming with us — plus a couple of additional notes. Heart - no, unless she butted in. Kimberly, Nicole Webb, Felicity? They made a tantalizing love triangle, but — no, absolutely not. Aym herself, obviously that was also a no. Jan?

Well, no, but she got an additional note: 'Maisie's vessel', which Aym did not dispute. July, no, if Jan was not coming. The Saye Fox? Only if she snuck aboard at the last moment. Grinny? No reason to include her. Sarika? Badger? Neither would be of any help. Whistle? I added him as a personal joke, just to make myself smile a little. Saldis?

We hadn't seen her in ages, we had no idea where she was at current, somewhere in the spheres of Outside, but we were absolutely certain that she didn't want to attend a trip to one of the most lethal places in all the known spheres of creation. Evee's spider servitors. Marmite. Hringewindla. The other members of the Brinkwood Church. All no, not least because Hringewindla could not move even if he wished. The Demon in Clay, still kept in a bucket downstairs in Evelyn's magical workshop — yes.

"Huuuh?" Aym grunted.

"It came from the Eye," I explained.

"Or from Maisie. We're hoping that we can leverage that somehow, as a connection. Maybe." Aym snorted.

"You still have no idea what you're doing."

"We'll get to that in a moment," we said, feeling butterflies in my stomach.

"Let me finish the list first." There was only one more name to add, one I'd been avoiding thinking about. Why was this so difficult, when I'd already faced down the dark paradox of Raine and I getting married or not?

'Natalie Skeates'"Ehhhhhh?" Aym tilted her head to the side, pooling her dark hair on the desktop once again; the coal-soot locks dissolved into tiny curls of shadow.

"What's the little girl got to do with anything?" The little girl I had rescued from Outside, from Edward's machinations. Little Natalie, who's parents I had broken to the eldritch truth. So much like me. I added: 'Check up on her. See how she's doing.' Aym waited as the tip of my pencil hovered. I hesitated, stuck.

"After?" Aym purred.

"Or …?"

"Both," I said.

"Both. Before and after. I can spare an hour to go say hi, in case we don't get another chance." Aym purred a wet, bubbly little laugh.

"How noble."

"There's nothing noble about it," I hissed. Beneath the list I turned my notes into a pair of practical summaries. First, everyone who was coming with us to Wonderland: Raine, Evee, Praem, Twil, Lozzie, Zheng, the Knights, the Caterpillars, and Seven-Shades-of-Not-There-Right-Then. I also added the Clay-Squid Demon at the end, in brackets.

Second, the list of things I need to do before we crossed the threshold to Wonderland: make sure Evee's Invisus Oculus was ready; make sure Jan had finished construction on Maisie's body — which included heading over to her hotel later today to make sure she took the necessary pictures of my own body; visit Natalie; possibly spend an unrelated night with Evee; and last but not least— My hand hesitated.

"Go on," Aym purred.

"You have to admit it." I sighed and swallowed. But I wrote the words.

'Figure out the Eye.'

"Hnnnh?" Aym grunted, as if she hadn't expected that, as if she'd been anticipating something else, something juicier. Then she snorted.

"You really don't know what you're doing, do you?" We took a deep breath and tried not to get angry. We took up another quarter-slice of lemon and sucked out all the tangy, sharp, sour juice, then bit off the flesh and chewed, to give ourselves time to think.

"No," we said eventually.

"We do know what we're doing. The plan is clear."

"Ahhhhhhh?" Aym purred. I stayed very cool and calm and collected — or at least that's what I told myself. In reality I was probably shaking.

"Yes," I explained.

"Evee completes her spell to hide us from the Eye. We test it, on me, because I'm the Little Watcher, the closest thing we have. Then, if it works, we go to Wonderland. I go first, with the magic circle, to test. If the Eye doesn't open, we set up a gateway, a protected gateway, back to Camelot. Then we have a way of standing on the soil of Wonderland without the Eye's attention."

"Mmmhmm, mmmhmm," Aym purred, mocking and amused.

"And then?"

"And then we do what we never could before. We investigate."

"Ooooooh. Investigating this, investigating that. General … investigation." I finally turned and frowned at the little lace-drowned goblin next to me. She was sitting up in her 'chair' with a twisted little smile on her face.

"Stop mocking me!" I snapped.

"Making it up as you go along," Aym said, not intimidated by my sudden temper.

"That's what you're doing. You're just dressing it up in fancy words." A smile crept across my face; Aym had made a misstep.

"A simple plan is always better than a complex one. A complicated plan, with lots of moving parts, can inevitably go wrong when one piece fails to get into place fast enough. We're not doing that, we're keeping it straightforward. We have multiple, redundant ways to leave if something goes wrong. We have multiple, redundant physical protections. We have — what do you call them? — reserves? Yes, reserves, Knights, Caterpillars. We're not going in with any expectations that certain things will work and others won't.

We're not planning to reinforce failure, but to find a weak point." Aym rolled her eyes.

"You're just repeating what Evelyn's told you."

"Of course I am!" I huffed.

"Because she understands these things, far better than I do. She's sort of good at this, when she believes in herself. So, yes, of course I'm following her. Besides, we have more information to go on than ever before — the Eye misses a twin! That's a basis for the beginning of communication!" Aym raised the dark ache of an eyebrow.

"So, a nice little chat?"

"I don't know! We might get there and spend a day or two trying to figure out the landscape, figure out if there's a physical place or location of importance, or if there's any other clues. But then, yes, I'm going to attempt communication, probably."

"Because that always goes sooooo well."

"Stop it!" I snapped again.

"It won't be able to see us! That's the point. Communication without observation. We're going to circumvent the nature of the Eye itself. It's the only thing I can think of before actually getting there and trying it.."

"And then you're just going to ask politely?" Aym smiled, thin and sharp and nasty.

"Hey, big thing in the sky, give me back my sister?" I threw my pencil down on the desk, bubbling with anger inside. Misplaced, stupid anger, covering for the worst fear of my life.

"Why are you such a little pessimist, Aym?" we said.

"Why—" Aym suddenly flowed out of her intangible seat and stood up, black-socked feet touching down on the floorboards right next to the desk. With her standing and me sitting, she had a few inches of height on me, enough to loom and scowl and cast a long, jagged shadow across myself and the desk.

"Because it keeps morons like you and Flissy alive!" she rasped.

"Because somebody has to say: no! Your ideas are shitty idiot ideas! Think them over again! Pessimism? Really? That's what you see here? I see a moth flying toward a bonfire." I was shaking now — and no longer with anger.

"It is the only thing we've come up with." Aym pointed at my notepad. She leaned in close — so close that I could see the pores in her milky pale skin, smell the strange and dusty earthen scent of the manor house where she and Felicity lived, and feel her living shadow pressing against my face.

"You never finished your list, squid-brains," she purred, like a rusty metal ladder being dragged out of a swamp.

"Isn't there one more source of precious information?" For a moment I had no idea what Aym meant — but then it dawned, and all my anger and fear left us behind, like a bath plug had been pulled inside my heart. We turned back to the notebook and took up my pencil with a numb hand. I wrote:'Mum and Dad''Talk' At my shoulder, Aym purred: "When? Little miss procrastinating octopus, hiding in your hole in the rocks — when?" Cold sweat broke out down my back. My throat threatened to close up.

All our tentacles wanted to coil in tight and seal us up inside a protective ball. We grabbed one of the remaining lemon slices, stuck it in our mouth, and sucked out all the juice in one go.

"When?" Aym repeated.

"Today," we whispered.

"Within the hour. Right now."