Kat is.
The lean, muscled sidhe-seer shrieks, ducks, and wraps her arms around her body, trying to shield her sudden nudity.
I summon earth-power to clothe her at the precise moment Mac does, and Kat ends up bundled in multiple layers, snug enough for the iciest of winters.
Mac and Kat both glare daggers at me.
“What?” I snarl, exasperated, glowering at the librarian. Though her eyes are demurely downcast, she’s smirking faintly.
“Why didn’t you just clothe the naked-me to begin with? You’ve mastered your power,” Mac snaps.
“Why,” I counter furiously, “didn’t the naked-you just dress herself in the first place if she was able to snatch Kat’s clothing? How was I to know she’d do that?”
“You mastered the power to rearrange small elements some time ago,” Kat grits, as she yanks off the sweater Mac layered over the turtleneck I fashioned for her, then sits down on the floor to jerk at one of a redundant set of boots. I consider telling her not to bother. Mac and I created things so simultaneously I suspect the shoes are fused. Tugging at the boot, Kat continues irritably, “If you’d dressed her, I wouldn’t have ended up naked.”
“It’s been a complicated morning, and I get distracted by nudity,” I roar. I don’t know what’s worrying me more, the ramifications of the inexplicable librarian, her blatant insouciance and deliberate button pushing, or the barely banked storm in Mac’s eerie Fae eyes. “I’m a man. Shoot me for it or get over it. I did keep draping the cloth around her. She refused to keep it on.”
“Volume!” Kat exclaims, clamping her hands to her ears. “And remove a pair of these boots.” She begins wrenching at a boot too merged to doff. “And I only need one pair of jeans.”
Mac—the real one—begins to laugh. I eye her warily. There’s a touch of…not quite madness but definitely an undercurrent of…unhinged in it. “What’s wrong, Mac?”
“Not now.”
Kat cuts her a dark look. “How can you possibly think this is funny?”
“I needed a dose of absurdity, and I can always count on life in Ireland for that.”
“Technically,” I tell her, “we’re in Scotland.”
Mac glances around the chapel, crammed with the Unseelie king’s books and baubles. “Where in Scotland?”
I clarify tersely, “So we don’t further compound things, Mac, will you be removing Kat’s boots and jeans or should I?” If we both do it, we’ll be back to square one, and they’ll both be pissed at me again. I’m pissed enough myself. People I care about getting pissed at me when I’m already pissed makes me pissier.
“I will,” Mac says, and Kat’s duplicate attire vanishes with the words.
Kat sighs with relief. “Thanks. I was hot.”
“The Highlands. Draoidheacht Keep,” I answer Mac’s question. “How did you manage to sift here when you’ve never been here before?” It’s difficult for me to sift to locations I’ve never been, unless I have additional means at my disposal, like a lock of Mac’s hair.
“I was trying to sift to Kat at the abbey but got rerouted here.” Her gaze moves back to the librarian, who’s standing, eyes downcast. “Who are you?”
Gaze fixed on the floor, she replies, “You may call me the librarian.”
“Of what?”
“What used to be the Unseelie king’s Library until that inept one”—she stabs a finger at me with an accusing glare—“transported me and part of my collection elsewhere, and destroyed my method for locating things.” She’ll look my way, without discomfort, I note with interest, just not at Mac anymore.
“Are you Seelie or Unseelie?”
“I can’t answer that one way or another.”
Mac cuts me a look. “Lie-detect.”
“Ringing true somehow but with an undercurrent I can’t pinpoint,” I say.
“You are Fae,” Mac says.
The librarian shrugs.
“I asked you a question,” Mac growls.
“I didn’t hear a question mark,” the librarian says coolly. “Sounded like a statement to me.”
Mac’s eyes narrow and she grits, “Are you Fae?”
Not-Mac sneers with palpable hostility, “How am I to know anything about myself? I live in a bottle, O great queen. Unlike you, I don’t have the freedom to saunter about, indulging my royal desires.”
“Address me like that again and you’ll die in the bottle.”
“It’s the answer I have to offer.”
“You know what I can do to you.”
“Torture me. In many and varied ways. When one lives forever within a prison of glass, pain is something with which to occupy oneself.”
“Why do you resemble me?”
“I could as easily ask why you resemble me. Who was made first?”
“I wasn’t made. I was born.”
“Made. Born. Same result. We are.”
“How did you come to be here?”
Gaze centered on my sternum, the librarian replies, “That oaf broke my flask.”
My wings lift, rustling with irritation. Who is this creature that thinks to address an Unseelie prince as an oaf?
Mac glances at me. “Seal her in another flask. We have more important matters to discuss. We’ll sort her out later. Perhaps. Perhaps we’ll never uncork her again.” She cuts a hard look back at the librarian. “Unless you’d care to be more forthcoming.”
“I have answered all your questions to the best of my ability.”
“Clarify what you are and why you look like me.”
The librarian remains silent.
“Cork her,” Mac snaps.
“I could remain free,” the librarian offers hastily, “and begin sorting the mess the dullard created. I can be useful in many ways.”
Dullard. That’s it. Glowering, I grab a bottle of Guinness with a few swigs left at the bottom, wipe sticky cobwebs from the mouth of the bottle, and thrust it at her, commanding the librarian, or whatever the hell she is, to get in.