Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

Jesse.
    â€œSlave,” I answered. “You know when someone is enthralled with a movie or a boyfriend—that’s from the same root word.”
    â€œFollow her,” said Ariana. “The kitchen should be at the heart of Elphame.”
    We jogged after her, passing by a young man in a police uniform, a woman in a jogging suit, and an older woman carrying a steaming teapot, all wearing silver collars, and all moving with unnatural intentness. The floor switched from cobbles to stone tiles, and the ceiling rose again until it was fifteen feet or more above our heads.
    The gems that had lit the passage we had been in were lining the walls and dangling from the ceiling from something that could equally well have been fine silver wire or spiderwebs. Whatever it was, it didn’t look strong enough to hold them. Samuel’s head would hit the lower gemstones once in a while, sending them swinging.
    We came into the kitchen, which could have been imported from a 1950s TV set—a very large cooking set, since there were two six-burner stoves in a room that was bigger than my now-deceased trailer. I looked around, but none of the people in the kitchen was Donna Reed or June Cleaver . . . or Gabriel Sandoval, either. The glistening white appliances were rounded in a manner my eyes found odd, and the three refrigerators had silver latching handles and Frigidaire stenciled in silver across the top. People with silver collars were preparing food and drink—and didn’t seem to notice our presence at all. The woman we’d followed here put the cutting board on the counter next to one of the sinks and began to fill the sink with water by working the hand pump that it had instead of a faucet.
    â€œExcuse me,” said Ariana, walking up to a man who was stirring something in a pot that looked like oatmeal.
    â€œStir the pot seventy times seven,” he said.
    â€œWhere are they keeping the prisoners?” Samuel asked, putting the push into his voice that the really dominant wolves could. His voice echoed oddly in the room.
    Slowly, all the action in the kitchen came to a stop. One by one, the six people wearing silver circlets around their throats turned to look at Samuel. The man Ariana had spoken to stopped moving last. He pulled his spoon out of the pot and pointed to one of the seven rounded doorways. The others, one by one, pointed the same way.
    â€œForty-seven steps,” the oatmeal stirrer said.
    â€œTake the right tunnel,” said a man who’d been chopping turnips.
    â€œEighteen steps and turn,” said a girl kneading bread. “The key is on the hook. The door is yellow.”
    â€œDo not let them out,” said a boy who looked about thirteen and had been filling glasses with water from a pitcher.
    â€œResume your tasks,” said Samuel, and one at a time they did so.
    â€œI think that’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,” said Jesse. “Are we just going to leave these people here?”
    â€œWe’re going to get Gabriel out and Phin,” said Ariana. “And then we’ll take this to the Gray Lords, who have forbidden the keeping of thralls. Only the fairy queen can release her thralls, and the Gray Lords are the only ones who have a chance of making her do that. In the Elphame, she rules utterly.”
    â€œWhat if she’s enthralled Gabriel?”
    â€œShe won’t have,” said Ariana positively. “She promised Mercy, and breaking her promise would have dire consequences. And my Phin is protected against such a thing.”
    The path we took from the kitchen was less grand than the one we’d taken into it. The floor was made of those small white octagonal tiles with a line of black tiles running about a foot from either wall. Forty-seven paces from the kitchen, the tunnel widened into a small room. The black tiles formed a complicated Celtic knot in the center of the room. There were passageways that opened across from ours, and one to either side.
    We took the one to the right. Here the floor was rough wooden planks that showed the marks of being hand hewn. It creaked a little under Samuel, who was the heaviest of us.
    â€œEighteen,” he said, and there was a yellow door with an old-fashioned key hanging off a hook—the first door we’d seen in the Elphame.
    Samuel took the key from the lock and opened the door.
    â€œDoc?” said Gabriel. “What are you doing