A Study in Drowning(39)

Preston led her up the stairs and into the house. Ianto was still nowhere to be seen—a small miracle—but Wetherell glowered at them from the threshold to the kitchen. He looked as dour as ever, skin washed gray in the watery light.

The stairs to the second floor were more difficult. Effy leaned heavily on the railing as Preston watched her with a tight mouth, shoulders tensed as if he expected her to topple over at any moment.

The portrait of the Fairy King looked fuzzy and kaleidoscopic, the paint colors swirling into an unreadable blur. His face was a pale smudge, featureless.

Maybe this was her punishment for betraying Myrddin, for planning to trample all over his legacy. She choked out something that was almost a sob, too low for Preston to hear.

The Fairy King had never appeared to her in the daylight before.

When they reached the study, it took all of Effy’s strength not to collapse. There was a bright, staccato beat of pain behind her temples. She looked around at all the papers scattered on the desk, the splayed-open books, and the battered chaise longue and felt, for some reason, a quiet thrum of relief.

“Effy,” Preston said again, his voice grave. “What did you do?”

“I jumped out of Ianto’s car,” she replied.

Hearing herself say it out loud made the fog dissipate. She was suddenly aware of how mad she sounded. How mad she had been. She raised a hand to her mouth and felt her swollen lip, wincing.

Preston looked despairing. “How did the blueprints factor into that? I didn’t think your mission would require such daring heroics.”

“There was nothing heroic about it,” Effy said. She was flushing profusely. “I wish there had been. Ianto had already given me the blueprints. I just—I couldn’t stand to be in the car with him any longer.”

That was all she could bear to tell him. What would Preston say if she confessed what she had seen—if she had really even seen it at all? It would be no different than it had ever been, with her mother and her grandparents, with the doctor, with the teachers and priests.

At best Preston would blink at her bemusedly, certain she was making some sort of joke. More likely he would scoff and secretly regret that he had tethered his academic future to some mad girl who needed pills to tell what was real and what wasn’t.

Surely there was no worse ally than Effy in a quest to uncover objective truth.

But all Preston did was shake his head. “And he just left you there? Looking like—like this?”

As Effy had watched Ianto’s taillights vanish in the distance, all she’d felt was relief. She’d been afraid he would pull over and drag her back inside. The vision of the Fairy King, his wet black hair and his horrible, reaching hand, was still playing on the inside of her eyelids.

“I don’t blame him,” she said, voice hollow. “It was a stupid thing to do.”

Preston let out a long breath. “I really didn’t think he’d try to take you out of the house. I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for?”

He blinked, glasses slipping down his nose. “I’m not sure.”

If she’d been in a more coherent state of mind, hearing Preston admit to uncertainty would have pleased her. At last there was something, however trivial, that he didn’t know.

Effy finally had the courage to look down at herself. Her white sweater was damp and smeared with mud. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel her elbow throbbing under her sleeve, blood sticking to the woolen fibers. And though her skirt had emerged relatively unscathed, her hip ached.

Her stockings had suffered the worst: torn beyond repair, both of her knees scraped bloody and stinging enough to make her gasp. Flecks of dirt and tiny pebbles were caught in the mangle of her skin like flies trapped on flypaper. Her nose hurt and she was glad she couldn’t see her face.

There had been no mirrors in Ianto’s car. She was sure of that. In fact, ever since she had arrived in Hiraeth, she had not seen her own reflection once. She could not even see herself in the mirror of Ianto’s cloudy, roiling gaze.

“Here,” Effy said weakly, thrusting her purse at Preston. “I have the blueprints.”

Preston took her purse and set it down on his desk. He didn’t open it or even peer inside. “Effy, why don’t you sit?”

“Why?” A bolt of panic shot up her spine. “I don’t want to.”

“Well,” Preston said, “that’s going to make this a lot more difficult.”

And then he knelt in front of her, and Effy was so shocked that she nearly did topple over. She had to put her hand on the desk to steady herself.

“What are you doing?” she choked out.

“If you don’t wipe away the dirt, your cuts will get infected. Infections can lead to blood poisoning, which, if it remains untreated, will eventually necessitate amputation. And in a way, it would be all my fault if you had to have your legs amputated at the knee, because I was the one who asked you to get the blueprints in the first place.”

He said all this with complete sincerity.

Effy took a breath—partly to steel herself, and partly so she wouldn’t laugh at him. True to his word, Preston began delicately picking the pebbles from her wounded knees. His touch was so gentle, she felt only the faintest nips of pain. His eyes were narrowed behind his glasses, as focused as he’d looked when poring over one of Myrddin’s books.