Impostor Syndrome Read online

  “Any chance of you taking the day off on Monday?” I asked him.

  He let out a sharp “ha” that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just heard ‘any chance of you taking your thumb off that grenade?’ Why the hell would you ask me that?”

  “Caryl’s arranged a meeting with King Winterglass,” I said. “She wants me there, but—” I felt my eyes start to sting, gritted my teeth, fought it. “Tjuan, I’m really not doing well. I know it seems like I’m okay—”

  “It really doesn’t.”

  “—because I’m not bursting into fountains of tears and self-diagnosing fatal illnesses like the new girl—”

  “She’s been here two months; you know her name.”

  “—but inside I’m a series of small constant explosions. I’m afraid that if something goes wrong in that meeting—”

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll be there. Now please leave me alone.” And he closed the door in my face.

  • • •

  Just before dawn on Sunday I woke to find a gorgeous Greek woman in my bed. I was less excited about this than I might normally have been, because I recognized the facade. It had been made by Prince Fettershock of the Unseelie Court just before that fateful meeting with Dame Belinda when everything had gone pear-shaped. It belonged to the improbably named faux-human Phrixa Vourdoulas, a.k.a. Shiverlash, Beast Queen of the Unseelie Court.

  She was sitting on the edge of my new queen-size mattress—which had until this moment never had an actual queen on it—staring at me with unsettling lichen-colored eyes. Her true form was blind, and so she hadn’t quite gotten the hang of polite eye contact. I think visual input unsettled her, though she’d learned to use it to help navigate our world. In her own world, she sensed things much as her friends the spirits did, but without magic, our world was a wasteland to those extra senses.

  Aside from the staring, she wasn’t actually being rude. Not that she gave a damn for Arcadia Project protocol anyway, but monarchs were allowed to come and go through the Gates whenever they pleased without filing paperwork. And my door hadn’t been locked, since it wasn’t usually necessary. I was going to have to reexamine that assumption.

  A slender and slightly paler version of Elliott appeared on the Unseelie Queen’s shoulder. Caveat. I felt a frisson of unease.

  The little spirit had caused everyone in the house to shit bricks a month ago by almost perfectly copying the construct spell Caryl had invented to contain Elliott. She’d used it to escape Monty’s collar when he fell asleep for too long. The only difference was that she’d replaced Caryl with Monty as the center of the construct’s travel range. This was beyond astonishing. We’d already known she had a particular talent for copying spells, but constructs weren’t supposed to be possible for fey at all, only for humans. Caryl had told me this when I first met Elliott, and it had been reiterated in my basic training.

  “I just copied Elliott” was Caveat’s only explanation. She hadn’t even realized it was supposed to be impossible. And even after we told her so, she didn’t seem bothered or motivated to explain.

  “I’m here to translate,” she said now. Even her voice was similar to Elliott’s, but she used a more casual cadence—I assumed because it was the kind of English she heard most often at the Residence. “Queen Shiverlash wants to talk to you.”

  I didn’t have to ask why Caveat was suddenly doing the queen’s bidding; Shiverlash had always had a deeply intimate relationship with all of the spirits, and Caveat was Unseelie to boot, which gave her no choice but to obey any command the queen gave her.

  “What can I do for Her Majesty?” I asked Caveat, pretending my stomach hadn’t just tied itself into a sailor’s knot.

  “If it’s okay,” said Caveat, “I’ll transmit your words into her mind and help her answer you directly.”

  “Whatever you prefer,” I said, rubbing the gook out of my eyes and trying to claw my hair into order.

  Caveat seemed to vanish, and Queen Shiverlash took on a distant, intent look that reminded me of the alien way she’d scented the air when I’d first released her into this world.

  “You are in danger,” she said at last. Even her human facade had a mesmerizing voice, deep and smooth. “The human queen prepares to strike.”

  She meant Dame Belinda. “What have you heard?”

  “Only whispers,” she said. “But the time to act is now. We must free the spirits, and put an end to the sidhe.”

  I sighed and massaged my forehead. I had to be careful here, and I was still barely awake. “What exactly is it you want me to do?” I asked.

  “You are to release, with your iron touch, every spirit the usurper Winterglass and his ilk have imprisoned.”

  “Wait, what?” My spine straightened. “We’re starting in Darkest Unseelie Wherever? I figured you’d go after Dawnrowan first.”

  “I trust your faun Claybriar to deal with the Seelie Queen,” said Shiverlash. “But there is no one fighting the usurpers in my land but I. I need you, and so you will be under my protection. Together we shall make of the false king’s realm a shattered ruin.”

  “That sounds great,” I said, remembering the way she’d ripped open Parisa Naderi’s face a few months ago. “I’m all for it, absolutely. I love shattered ruins. But here’s the thing. I kind of need Winterglass to think I’m on his side for the next little while.”

  Something cold and terrifying flashed through her pale eyes. “To deceive him?” she said. “I envy humans this power. But to what end? Do you have a plan to betray him?”

  “Sort of,” I said. “It’s complicated. But basically, if Dame Belinda thinks that both you and he are on our side, she’ll have to negotiate with us.”

  “The usurper Winterglass will never join you unless you renounce me and support the enslavement of spirits. And if you throw in with the sidhe, our alliance is at an end.”

  “Yes, I remember our deal,” I said. “But all I need is for Dame Belinda to believe that the whole Unseelie Court is behind us. I swear on my life, my goal is to free the spirits. It’s just that humans sometimes have to do things a little more indirectly. You’re thousands of years old or something, right? Can you not wait a little while longer?”

  “It is not my lifespan that is in question,” said Shiverlash, “but the lifespan of my trust in you, human.” She rose, and I could almost see those great oily black wings of hers spreading menacingly behind her. But she was only human, for the moment. “Watch for my return,” she said. “This is the second time I have allowed you to defer my vengeance. There will not be a third.”

  And then she left me there wishing, not for the first time, that I had never let Caryl Vallo tempt me out of the loony bin.

  4

  The meeting took place at the Omni hotel in a small meeting space they sometimes made available to us during off hours. The Arcadia Project only had a couple dozen official employees in Los Angeles, but since we sometimes had random needs like fake uniforms, on-site medical care, crime scene cleanup, et cetera, we were of necessity supported by a network of businesspeople willing to not ask too many questions.

  The recessed lighting and pastrylike color scheme of the meeting room were incongruously soothing as we waited at a white-draped table for the monarch to make his appearance.

  Alvin Lamb was newly arrived from New Orleans, and from the look of him he’d taken a red-eye. His silver hair and goatee were perfectly groomed and his pinstriped button-down pristine, but his face looked as though it had been punched gently in a few places. He sat next to me, Tjuan on my other side, making Alvin seem even shorter by comparison.

  The King of the Unseelie Court was fashionably late. Despite my irritation, I had to resist the impulse to rise to my feet when he entered. Whatever variety of pain in the ass he’d been to me, he’d reigned for a century and a half, and before that he’d been Dostoyevsky’s Echo.

  His scepter of office was disguised as an antique walking stick, and as always he wore a dra
matic dark coat. He used the facade his son had designed for him in the fall; Prince Fettershock lived mostly in Hong Kong and had made his father into a wuxia hero with flowing raven locks.

  “We meet again,” Winterglass said to Caryl, because God forbid anyone from the Unseelie Court should sound like anything other than a Bond villain.

  Tjuan and I remained seated, but across the table from us Caryl rose, elegant as always in a trim charcoal-gray blazer.

  “Your Majesty,” she said. Wisely she’d requested that Elliott take over his old role for the meeting. He was not currently visible other than via the complete lack of emotion showing on Caryl’s face.

  “Please be seated,” said Winterglass as though it were he who had called the meeting.

  Once the king ascertained that the chairs were made of wood and therefore unable to disrupt his facade, he lowered himself gracefully into a seat at the opposite end of the table from Alvin. As soon as Winterglass had settled, Tjuan got up to close the door; it had been propped open so that the fey wouldn’t have to touch it. The handle seemed to be made of brass rather than spell-shattering steel, but I’d been led to understand that most metals gave fey a bit of a queasy feeling regardless.

  Winterglass did not wait for Tjuan to return to his chair before speaking.

  “I shall not waste time,” he said. “I am here to warn you, as acknowledgment of my part in the chaos that was released into both worlds last autumn, that this meeting is the last chance you will receive to come back to the Project peacefully.”

  “We had hoped,” said Caryl, her voice like dark velvet, “that you would come back to the Project.”

  Winterglass arched a brow, giving Caryl the most elegant bitch, please look I’d ever seen.

  “Let’s look at this logically,” said Alvin in his warm, friendly way, his eyes crinkling at the corners as though he and the Unseelie King were old friends. “London has historically been the center of the Project’s operations, but only because no one has ever questioned it. For you, it makes no sense. London is just a Gate away from the seat of Seelie power. Los Angeles is every bit as powerful an international travel hub, just as profound a center of popular culture, but without the geographical bias toward one Court or the other.”

  “Your Gates open onto Skyhollow,” said Winterglass coolly.

  “That land was granted to a Seelie duke by Queen Dawnrowan. Who is, again, based in Daystrike. The Daystrike/London monopoly has slanted the entire Project in favor of the Seelie. Wouldn’t you like to see that change?”

  “The Seelie are a nuisance at worst,” said Winterglass with an air of weary patience. “They are not my largest problem.”

  “Because they’re led by sidhe,” I said. “As long as the sidhe control everything, you’re happy.”

  Tjuan cleared his throat; that was enough to shut me up. But the king’s wintry gaze came to rest on me, making me shiver.

  “It is easy to demonize those who hold power you feel you deserve,” he said. “It is easy to ignore the ordered backdrop that those in power have wrested from chaos. You pretend outrage at the sidhe method of spell casting even as you reap benefits that would have been impossible without it.”

  “You can ask spirits, you know,” I said, taking care to keep my voice calm, deferential. “They can do all sorts of wonderful spells when they aren’t coerced.”

  “And they can abandon those spells whenever they choose. In some cases this could be disastrous.”

  “We’re getting a bit off topic,” said Alvin uneasily. “We’re not here to solve the spirit problem right now. We’re here to try to find common—”

  “But isn’t that the whole reason we split off in the first place?” I said incredulously. “Because we realized London was fine with enslaving an entire species?”

  “I can’t speak for everyone,” said Alvin, “but the reason I split with Dame Belinda was that she ordered the abduction and prolonged torture of a human infant. You’re aware of this, King Winterglass?”

  “I am aware that she has been so accused by your faction. But I am not particularly skilled at working out which humans are lying.”

  My blood pressure suddenly skyrocketed. I turned my focus to Tjuan sitting next to me, glanced at his still, impassive face, tried to keep my mouth shut.

  “Your Majesty,” said Caryl, her voice smoothing over the tension in the air. “Have you truly allowed Barker to convince you that she, and not I, would tell you the truth?”

  His eyes turned to her and held; something in his expression snagged at my heart.

  “Your people started this war,” he said quietly. “Every other Gate city across the world stands with London. All of the Arcadia Project’s most valuable resources are under London’s control.”

  “Including you,” Caryl said gently. “Do you not see? You could be an even more powerful resource for our side. Millie has earned the loyalty of Queen Shiverlash by freeing her, and if you joined us, we’d have the whole of the Unseelie. The other nations would have no choice but to negotiate with us.”

  Winterglass hesitated for a moment. “Understand,” he said finally, “that your words are persuasive. Know that while I think you are foolish to traffic with the sorts of creatures you have begun to befriend, I respect your intelligence, and I do believe that you mean no harm. It grieves me personally that we are on opposite sides of this. I wish—”

  “If it grieves you so much,” I interrupted, “why refuse? Are the fucking sidhe politics more important to you than what happened to a girl you supposedly—”

  Tjuan laid a hand on my forearm, just briefly, arresting me mid-sentence. It was the first time he had ever touched me voluntarily, and only after that shocked me out of my anger spiral did I notice that the king had risen from his seat.

  Winterglass stared me down. My blood pounded in my ears.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  I wasn’t even sure what I was apologizing for, but when I lowered my eyes, the king once again took his chair.

  “If it were merely my politics,” he said dryly, “I might be swayed. I have not reigned as long as I have by refusing to adapt. But among Dame Belinda’s resources are two things I hold dear.”

  “What things?” I asked carefully when he didn’t elaborate.

  “Suffice it to say I cannot anger her any more than she can anger me while I have the Unseelie nobility united under my command. What was the phrase Americans used, when your people and mine threatened to annihilate each other?”

  His people? The Russians, he had to mean; his palace was located at the Arcadian equivalent of Saint Petersburg.

  “Mutually assured destruction?” ventured Alvin, who’d been alive at the time.

  “Precisely. Even if Dame Belinda were not destined for victory, I still would not dare betray her.” He turned, then reached across an empty seat for Caryl’s gloved hand.

  To my surprise, she gave it to him, her face expressionless.

  “Child,” he said to her softly, in a way that suggested that everyone else in the room had disappeared. “Come to my Court. Do not make me watch what she will do to you.”

  “You already have,” said Caryl calmly. “Does the lingering magic of my blood not allow you to remember? A filthy wooden crate? A seven-year-old child screaming until her throat bled? That was my childhood, and Dame Belinda its architect. You betrayed her, without knowing it, by rescuing me. If you stand with her now, I cannot stand beside you.”

  Winterglass squeezed his eyes shut as though a fire truck were roaring past, then bent over Caryl’s hand, pressing it fervently to his lips. By the time he released her, his expression was cool, distant.

  “So be it,” he said. He rose and turned for the door, not even waiting for one of us to open it. There must have been some steel in the handle after all, because for a moment we saw his true form, great pallid antlers rising from the smooth round skull, skeletal wings folded neatly against his naked ribcage. Then his hand was on the wood of the door, sle
nder and beautiful once again, and he was gone with a swish of his black coat.

  “Well,” said Tjuan. “We’re fucked.”

  “I’ll confess that was disappointing,” said Caryl.

  Alvin seemed deep in thought.

  “What about Queen Dawnrowan?” I said. “She’s not against us so much as she’s for Dame Belinda, and one of her dukes has already pledged himself to our cause. If we can turn her, wouldn’t having the entire Seelie Court serve the same purpose?”

  Alvin narrowed his eyes at me. “What motivation could she or any of the sidhe possibly have to betray Dame Belinda? Duke Skyhollow and Baroness Foxfeather only swore fealty to Claybriar because the guy happens to be staying at Skyhollow Estate, and it would have been awkward otherwise.”

  And, I was pretty sure, because they were all sleeping together, but that was neither here nor there.

  “Can’t we just explain to the queen that we’re the good guys, freeing slaves and whatnot?” I said. “Aren’t Seelie supposed to be good?”

  “They’re creatures of beauty and joy,” said Alvin, “but that doesn’t mean they’re selfless. Fey on the whole are driven largely by self-interest.”

  “The queen’s also very interested in Claybriar,” I said. “We could use that.”

  Tjuan snorted. “You just want to see your Echo.”

  “I do. But it’s worth trying, isn’t it? Winterglass isn’t the only one who’s making it sound like Dame Belinda’s about to go on the attack. Queen Shiverlash said the very same thing yesterday. What could it hurt to try?”

  “It could hurt my job,” said Tjuan. “I’m working half a day today, and now I ask for more time off?”

  “I wasn’t saying you should come.”

  He and I were both aware how improbable it was that he had gotten a job in entertainment again, much less landed supervising producer on a hit series, after his last writers’ room had witnessed his possession by an evil spirit.