I don't know why the bells should fill me with such immediate terror, but they do. "Get them out," I say to Trow immediately.
"What?" asks Trow, a question that's echoed by the older girls.
"Get all of them out," I say. "Now." And I give him a little shove to get him moving.
Trow gestures, and babies are grabbed and stuck into arms and everyone scurries out of the room, toward the front of the apartment. I assume there is another exit that way, which is good, so I throw open the back door and recklessly fling myself out onto the staircase.
Which puts me immediately face-to-face with…creatures I have never seen before. I can't describe them. They look like humans. But I know unerringly that they're not. They are taller than humans, lithe and slender, and they are all very pale, with white-blond hair and eyes that have no color to them. They look astonished to see me, just as astonished as I am to see them.
My instinct is apparently to turn into some kind of wry spy chick, like in a movie. "Hi," I say like this is perfectly normal and we're all going to chat.
And then my brain catches up and says, What the hell are you doing, idiot? and I leap backward into the apartment, slamming the door shut and reaching out to turn the deadbolt. Oh, good, I tell myself hysterically. That'll definitely keep whatever those things are out. Good job.
I turn and run as the bells seem to knock right up against the door, just as Trow appears in the kitchen doorway.
"Merrow, what—" he begins.
I grab his hand as I rush past him. "Let's go," I say, tugging him, and then suddenly we are flying through the air.
Not in a good way.
I scramble for the ground. You know what's not awesome? Losing gravity. Gravity really is one of those things you don't appreciate until it's gone.
I dimly register that Trow is thrown against the wall. I am not so lucky. I go straight through the window, splintering glass all around me, and then I wheel desperately, clutching for the windowsill before there's no hope left and I go plummeting to the ground and die.
Trow suddenly leans over the windowsill, grabbing my hand at the very last second.
I stare up at him, wide-eyed, and he starts to pull me up and gets me halfway over the windowsill before he's flung backward again. The creatures are in the room—they're in the room—and Trow, having somersaulted into the far wall, has cracked his head against the mirror there. The mirror breaks, and it's smeared with blood when Trow slides down to sit on the floor.
The creatures move fast. One is on Trow before I can blink, and the others seem to be flooding out the apartment's front entrance after Trow's sisters.
I do the only thing I can think of to do, since no one seems to be paying attention to me. I finish clawing my way into the apartment, and I pick up a book and throw it at the thing that's menacing Trow, who's apparently unconscious on the floor. The book deflects off the creature as if it's wearing armor. All it manages to do is attract the creature's attention. Which I guess is better than nothing, getting it away from Trow.
It narrows its transparent eyes at me as I scramble my way up and toward the kitchen, stumbling over my own two feet. The thing is coming very slowly, as if it knows I'm trapped and it might as well take its time.
"You must be Merrow," it says in a voice with perfect diction, just like a human voice, except when it says it, pain chases through me, and I almost lose my balance, doubling over.
I grab at the kitchen counter and I stare at the salt that happens to be in front of me. I can tell prophecies through salt. It's the only thing I can think of to do. I straighten and fling the entire shaker of salt against the far wall, where it shatters.
The salt doesn't spill down the way you would expect it to. It floats in the air like dust motes, dancing all around us. The thing that has been pursuing me looks at it in apparent surprise and then back at me with interest.
"You read prophecies," it remarks.
I look at the salt all around us. "Not really?" I say, even though I know this is apparently a lie these days.
"What does it say, Merrow?" it asks me, its eyes hard and cold, exactly like ice.
I wince as if he's reached out and slapped me, and I stare at the salt, feeling helpless. "Nothing," I say. "It doesn't say anything." But even as I say it, I look at the salt and I can see it. I can see it. Trow is what it says. Trow who was written in the stars. And what the stars is that supposed to mean?
"Liar, you are reading it right now," says the thing. "You think I cannot make you tell me the truth, you foolish, delusional fay?" it demands, stalking me slowly.
I back up against the wall and throw the pepper shaker at it, because I can't think of anything else to do. It catches it with lightning-fast reflexes and throws it back to me. I duck out of the way of it as it goes whistling by my ear, and I wish I weren't fresh out of ideas.
"Hey!" Trow shouts from somewhere behind the thing in front of me, and for a moment, I am surprised that he regained consciousness so quickly.
The thing doesn't even register him, continuing to move forward toward me.
Then Trow launches himself onto the thing's back, going for a stranglehold. The thing shrugs him off effortlessly, with enough deceptive force that Trow staggers back into the kitchen table, which skids into the wall with a sharp crack.
And then the thing shudders, shrinking back a step—again, and again, and again, until suddenly it disappears right in front of us.
I stare before collapsing into a heap, unable to keep myself upright any longer.
Trow says, "What the hell?" and Roger Williams comes striding into the kitchen, looking at us sharply.
"Are you all right?" he asks, looking between us.
Trow and I, both collapsed on the floor and panting for breath, give him do we look all right? looks.
"Take a deep breath," says Roger. "You're hyperventilating."
"Don't you tell me to chant shanti or something," I shout at him. "What the stars was that thing?"
"Unfortunately for you," says Roger grimly, "that was your family."
· · ·
There are bells ringing as we make our way out of Trow's building—church bells, from the church next door, chiming the hour. Except that they've been chiming the hour for a while now. Certainly since Roger showed up in the kitchen. I am bruised and battered, and my head aches. The bells are annoying; I can feel them reverberating through my skin.
Trow must be rattled by them too, because he checks his watch and then looks up at the church. "What's the matter with that thing? It shouldn't be chiming at all."
"That's the only way to keep the Seelies out," Roger responds simply. "They hate church bells."
"You're doing that?" I say.
"Of course. Do you think church bells just ring?"
I did, actually. Roger Williams clearly thinks I'm an idiot. "Well, can they stop now? They're driving me crazy."
He looks at me for a moment, curious and close, and then says, "Oh. Yes. Of course. They would, wouldn't they? Sorry about that, but it can't be helped for the time being. Until I get you somewhere with actual protective enchantments built in, this is the best I can do. Hello, children." He says this with a smile to the crowded assortment of Trow's seven sisters.
All of the younger ones are crying, and I don't blame them. The older ones are glaring, and I don't blame them. And they are all crowded around Mark's car. Mark is out of the car, and he is pacing tightly around it, exclaiming, "Did you see that? Did you see that?"
"What happened?" Trow asks, looking at him warily.
"I ran this thing over!" exclaimed Mark. "It jumped right in front of me! Then it disappeared!"
"It's perfectly all right," says Roger smoothly. "Don't worry about it."
Mark boggles at him. "Who the hell are you?"
"Would you be so kind as to transport all of us back to my house?" asks Roger.
Mark looks around at the entire motley crew of us. "All of you?" he says faintly.
"We'll fit," Roger assures him and then gets confidently into the car.
"We don't have car seats for the babies," says one of Trow's oldest sisters.
"I feel like that's the least of our problems right now," says the other one, glaring at me.
As if I caused any of this! I don't really want to be on bad terms with Trow's sisters, but I think that is super rude of her, considering I just got violently knocked around by one of those things.
"Come along," Roger calls out the window of Mark's car, as if it's totally normal for the founder of the state of Rhode Island to be sitting in a muscle car.
Well. I guess for the time being, it is totally normal. So we all get in.
