Chimes at Midnight

May shrugged. “That’s why you should just have a little bit. Just enough to calm your body down for a while, but not enough to make you start hallucinating. We don’t have to do this for long, right? We’re fixing things.”

What she was saying made sense, and I hated it. I hated it right down to the bones of me. Most of all, I hated how much I wanted to give in.

“I—”

“She’s right,” said Arden. I looked past May to find her watching me, a serious expression on her face. “If you’re starting to get shaky from goblin fruit withdrawal, you need to have some. Otherwise, you’re going to wind up useless to me, and I’m sorry, but I can’t allow that.” My shock must have shown, because she smiled. “You said you wanted me to be your new Queen. Well, that means you have to listen to me. As your Crown Princess and presumptive regent, I am ordering you to have some goblin fruit.”

“Look, even if we had some here—which we don’t—you don’t know what it’s like,” I said. “You can’t know. You’re not a changeling.”

“I can’t know what it’s like for you, but I do know what it’s like. Being a Princess doesn’t make you immune to temptation, especially when you’re a Princess in exile in your own country, and you’re too scared to run because running would change everything, would start something you’re not sure you’re ready to finish . . .” Arden shook her head. “Father hated the stuff—he said it was cheap and unfair—but I was lonely and scared, and I knew better than to play around with mortal drugs. So I got some goblin fruit. And you know what? It helped. I don’t really remember most of the ’60s . . .”

“Neither does anyone else,” said Danny.

“Not helping,” said May.

Arden continued. “But it really did help, and Toby, I know withdrawal when I see it. You’re one sharp noise away from flipping out and climbing the nearest tall building with a sniper rifle, and that’s not going to get my brother back. You need some goblin fruit.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think I need,” I said flatly. “We’re not stopping to find a street corner drug dealer, and I don’t think Danny’s been running goblin fruit out of the glove compartment. So I’m going to just keep on the way I have been, if it’s all the same to you.”

“No, you’re not,” said May, in a very small voice.

I turned to frown at her. “May?”

She didn’t say anything. She just reached into her purse and pulled out a plastic baggie with a sandwich inside. It was white bread, cut into quarters; the crusts had been trimmed off. My eyes widened.

“May, no, don’t—”

She opened the seal, and the smell of goblin fruit flooded the car. Without my having consciously decided to move, I was taking the baggie away from her and cramming the sections of sandwich into my mouth. There was barely a teaspoon of jam in the whole thing, making it just a thin layer of sweetness between the slices of bread, cheese, and ham, but I somehow managed to stop myself from ripping the sandwich apart to get at what I wanted faster. The small part of my brain that was still capable of making rational decisions knew that this was the only way I’d get the calories I needed to rebuild what my body was burning.

That part of my brain was in the minority. Most of me had been transformed into pure wanting, and it wasn’t until I was sucking the crumbs off my fingers that my head cleared enough for me to realize what I’d done.

“Oh, root and branch,” I swore, woozily. The car was getting blurry around the edges as the goblin fruit kicked in. I fumbled for the knives strapped to my waist, not really caring which one I grabbed, as long as I got something I could use to cut myself.

May shouted something, trying to pull the knife out of my hand. The car was already starting to fade from view, and it felt like my blood was carbonated. I couldn’t feel my own fingers.

But I could feel hers.

“M’sorry,” I managed, and stabbed her in the arm.

May shrieked. Arden swore. Danny briefly lost control of the car in the commotion, sending us swerving across two lanes of traffic. I ignored them all as I clamped my mouth down over the wound I’d created.

Her blood tasted like her magic, cotton candy and ashes, as well as the copperier, more expected taste of the blood itself. The fact that I could taste her magic at all was a change, although I wasn’t sure whether it was a good one or a bad one. A stream of faces and flickers of memory tried to rise in my mind’s eye, and I forced them away, refusing to look at them. I was too busy trying to hold my focus, forcing it inward and pushing back the bubbling sensation I could feel working its way through my veins.