Chapter Thirty-Six

It seemed like Shadow had stepped up out of absolutely nowhere. But it hadn’t, nothing of the sort. I knew that, because as soon as I saw it, I realized that I’d been seeing it. Shadow hadn’t been invisible, hadn’t even been behind a veil. It was more like I just…hadn’t registered it as important. It was like I’d known that it was there, but its presence didn’t register as significant enough to even pay attention to.

Which was an impression that didn’t change as it moved, and that may have been the strangest thing I’d experienced all month, which was saying things. There was a little bit of anxiety as I suddenly realized it was there, and then a little bit of hope as I parsed what I was seeing.

But both emotions felt…muted, washed out. There was no real force behind them; I felt apathetic in a way that was obviously, deeply unnatural, and that fact should itself have been disturbing, but it wasn’t. It didn’t seem important.…

Chapter Thirty-Five

A throne room. An actual, literal fucking throne room. Because of course he had one of those. If I’d learned anything about him, and despite having never met the Sidhe nobleman I felt I had learned far more than I wanted to at this point, it was that Cormac Goldenblade was not prone to subtlety.

I was strangely but deeply glad that my kingmaker position had been better situated to side with Ekaterina. Sure, she was a bitch who took vendettas more seriously than could possibly be healthy, and her followers were violent, impulsive, and somewhat idiotic. I still found myself feeling a sort of kinship with her just on the basis of hating this guy.…

Chapter Thirty-Four

“You know, this guy really is fantastic at making me hate him without even having to meet him first,” I commented to no one in particular. “Like, top tier punchability. Five of five stars, would stab in the kidney again.”

“I did tell you it was a mansion,” Lily reminded me.

“Yeah, but that can include a lot of things,” I pointed out. “Some people, for example, do mansions that are tasteful and understated. Or at least aesthetically tolerable.”…

Chapter Thirty-Three

I still felt a little out of sorts the next day. The sunlight was too bright, the world felt simultaneously overstimulating and undersaturated, and I was an odd mixture of exhausted and restless that had more than a passing resemblance to mania. I’d gotten some sleep, and it hadn’t been troubled by nightmares for once, but I was still tired.

But I was, in several ways, out of time. It had to be tonight. So while I was feeling dissociated and strung out, I was still a little bit southeast of Homestead Cemetery.

I didn’t have an exact address; Toby had only been able to narrow it down to this neighborhood. I didn’t think that was going to be a problem. It would be, if I were planning a surgical strike or something. But for what I had in mind, it was plenty. I just went to the right general area and started wandering around.…

Shadow’s Vision

Shadow describes itself as achromatic rather than monochrome; this is, as discussed in the notes on that chapter, an accurate distinction. I kept it brief there, but thought I’d go into more detail separately. I think people often conflate the two terms, in part because humans cannot have monochrome vision. Or, well, maybe; it’s hard to say whether what someone sees is grey or they’re subjectively seeing everything as a single color. Because monochrome means exactly that, that only shades of a single general color are going to be in use in an image. It gets used to refer to black and white but that’s not quite right; monochrome would be more that, say, all of the parts of the image are different hues of red.…

Chapter Thirty-Two

Somewhat to my surprise, the odd, supernatural poet actually was outside. They hadn’t simply vanished when they walked out the door, and were in fact walking at a casual pace through the snow. They weren’t dressed for this weather; just a black t-shirt and tattered black jeans, beat-up old sneakers, nothing like sufficient for a January night in Pittsburgh. They didn’t seem to care, or even notice.

I caught up to them easily enough, since they were moving at a pretty relaxed speed. I made a point of moving up beside them rather than directly behind them, giving them time to register my presence before getting close. People who had any involvement with the supernatural often ended up…jumpy.

“Hi,” I said, once I was close enough. “You want some company?”…