“I did something really stupid,” I say, out of breath.
That makes her push herself up, sliding off the bed and onto her feet. “What happened?”
“I stole a human girl—a human servant—from Prince Balekin, and I need you to help me get her back to the mortal world before anyone finds out.” As I say this, I realize all over again how ridiculous it was for me to do that—how risky, how foolish. He will just find another human willing to make a bad bargain.
But Vivi doesn’t chide me. “Okay, let me put on my shoes. I thought you were going to tell me you’d killed someone.”
“Why would you think that?” I ask.
She snorts as she searches around for boots. Her eyes meet mine as she does up the laces. “Jude, you keep smiling a pleasant smile in front of Madoc, but all I can see anymore is bared teeth.”
I am not sure what to say to that.
She puts on a long, fur-trimmed green coat with frog clasps. “Where is the girl?”
“In the stables,” I say. “I’ll take you—”
Vivi shakes her head. “Absolutely not. You have to get out of those clothes. Put on a dress and go down to dinner and make sure you act like everything’s normal. If someone comes to question you, tell them you’ve been in your room this whole time.”
“No one saw me!” I say.
Vivi gives me her best fish-eyed look. “No one? You’re sure.”
I think of Cardan, riding up as we made our escape, and of the guards, whom I’d lied to. “Probably no one,” I amend. “No one who noticed anything.” If Cardan had, he would never have let me get away. He would never have given up having that much power over me.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” she says, holding up a forbidding, long-fingered hand. “Jude, it isn’t safe.”
“I’m going,” I insist. “The girl’s name is Sophie, and she’s really freaked out—”
Vivi snorts. “I bet.”
“I don’t think she’ll go with you. You look like one of them.” Maybe I am more afraid of my nerve running out than anything else. I worry about the adrenaline ebbing out of my body, leaving me to face the mad thing I have done. But given Sophie’s suspicion of me, I absolutely think that Vivi’s cat eyes would be enough to send her over the edge. “Because you are one of them.”
“Are you telling me in case I forgot?” Vivi asks.
“We’ve got to go,” I say. “And I am coming. We don’t have time to debate this.”
“Come, then,” she says. Together, we go down the stairs, but as we are about to go out the door, she grabs my shoulder. “You can’t save our mother, you know. She’s already dead.”
I feel as though she has slapped me.
“That’s not—”
“Isn’t it?” she demands. “Isn’t that what you’re doing? Tell me this girl isn’t some standin for Mom. Some surrogate.”
“I want to help Sophie,” I say, shrugging off her grip. “Just Sophie.”
Outside, the moon is high in the sky, turning the leaves silver. Vivi goes out to pick a bouquet of ragwort stalks. “Fine, then go get this Sophie.”
She is where I left her, hunched in the hay, rocking back and forth and talking softly to herself. I am relieved to see her, relieved she didn’t run off and we weren’t even now tracking her through the forest, relieved that someone from Balekin’s household hadn’t ferreted out her location and hauled her away.