Belladonna

of us has a brain fever."
    "No, one of us has spent his life in the part of Ephemera that was shattered the most during the battle between the Guides of the Heart and the Eater of the World. And the other has probably moved through landscapes all his life without realizing it."
    He stared at the table. At some point the dishes had been cleared away, but he couldn't remember who had done it or when.
    His mind went blank, and in that moment of restful emptiness the things he'd seen recently, the things he'd said, and the things he'd been told drifted through that emptiness and came together to form a new pattern.
    "This vanishing from one place and appearing in another," he said slowly, as if feeling his way. "You don't see anything strange about it, do you?"
    "In this part of Ephemera, you gamble with your life every time you cross a bridge," Sebastian replied. "So, no, I don't see anything strange about your crossing over from one place to another. At least now we know where the Eater of the World was last seen, and that's more than we knew before." He pushed his chair back. "Come on. You look ready to fold."
    Michael nodded. "I could do with a bit of a wash and some sleep."
    "You can use our room at the bordello, since Lynnea and I will be staying at the cottage. I'll come fetch you in the morning and take you to Sanctuary."
    "Sanctuary?"
    "The next step in your journey to answer the riddle."
    Michael stood up, but didn't follow Sebastian when the other man started to walk away from the courtyard. "Sebastian Justicemaker?"
    Sebastian stopped and turned to face him.
    "Do you know the answer to the riddle?" Michael asked.
    "I should," Sebastian replied. "I'm the one who sent it out through the twilight of waking dreams."
    His heart started beating harder, faster. "Then you know how to find Belladonna."
    "I know how to find her. But whether or not you can find her ..." Sebastian shrugged. "That's what you're going to find out."

Chapter Fifteen
    M ichael looked at the creatures waiting in the street then pulled Sebastian back inside the bordello and firmly closed the door. The pushed-in faces and tufted ears made the things look like mangy but somewhat loveable critters — if a person overlooked the razor teeth, the powerful arms and upper bodies, and the curved talons that could gut a man with one swipe. And that was just the front half. The back half looked like a draft horse version of a bicycle, complete with saddlelike seat, but lacking wheels. Of course, since the things were floating above the ground, the lack of wheels wouldn't trouble them. But it was that last detail that was a little too much for him.
    "That's the transportation you arranged?" he asked.
    "Demon cycles," Sebastian replied too agreeably.
    "You expect me to straddle one of those things and put the family jewels within reach of its teeth and claws?"
    Sebastian's lips twitched as he glanced down at Michael's groin. "Is that what you're packing under your belt?"
    "You know what I mean. Don't you?" He wasn't going to make assumptions about what these people did or didn't know. Not after having breakfast with Teaser and hearing the incubus's ideas of how the world worked.
    "If they were interested in any organs, it would be your heart and liver, not your penis," Sebastian said, opening the door.
    "Come on. You've got a ways to go today."
    "Well, isn't that just grand," Michael muttered as he followed Sebastian.
    When he swung a leg over the demon cycle, he wished Lynnea and Sebastian had found him some broken-in hand-me-down clothes rather than these new ones that felt a little too stiff to be comfortable. Or maybe it was his feelings that were a little too stiff. He could count on one hand the times when he'd had a truly new garment in the past dozen years, and here they were giving him a whole newset of clothes. And he hadn't done any luck-bringing on his own behalf to bring it about!
    Then he scolded himself for being ungrateful. He was a stranger from another land who had dropped in among them with a story of a lost sister and a battle with a terrible monster. Instead of running him out of town, they had given him clothes and a place to stay, had loaned him a travel pack and filled it with basic supplies, and were cleaning up his gear from its dunking in the bog so that it would be ready for him when he got back from this bit of the journey.
    If he got back from this bit of the journey.
    None of them said it, but it was there, unspoken, under