“Nothing about infestations, so I don’t think it really matters right now.” I was nearly shouting by now, because I could see more spiders sliding through the cracks between the bricks in the wall. I grabbed Pan’s hand. “We have to go!”

He frowned. “Blood pudding? Is that what they’re using your blood for?”

“Pan, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but we’ve got to—”

“Yeah, I’d say that is cannibalism,” he interrupted me.

He was looking straight at me, but it was like he couldn’t see me. I let go of his hand and waved in front of his face, but he only stared blankly forward.

“Pan?” I said plaintively as the room rapidly became a furnace. The once-cold stone floor tiles scorched the bottoms of my feet.

“An elk heart?” Pan asked, and he was backing up, toward the bench overflowing with arachnids.

“Pan!” I shrieked, but he just sat back on the bench. His expression never changed, not even as dozens of spiders crawled over him.

“Sorry, a white elk heart,” he said, as a spider languidly crawled across his eyeball. “Is the heart white or is it the heart of a white elk?”

It was so hot, the spiders started to burst into flames. The tinier arthropods on the floor were popping like popcorn all around me, and all I could do was scream.

42

Manipulations

I was screaming into the ice water, then I surfaced, gasping for air, and Pan was kneeling beside the metal tub.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Let her breathe, Pan,” Elof said, and I saw him standing just behind Pan.

“Did I get too hot?” I asked.

Pan nodded. “Heat was radiating off your body, and then you started to scream, so I dumped you in the ice bath.”

“Do you remember anything?” Elof asked me.

“I think. Sorta.” I looked over to the Ögonen, staring placidly at me. “They implanted something.”

“What do you mean?” Pan asked.

“Spiders. They filled a room in the dungeon with spiders and then the spiders burst into flames.” My teeth started to chatter, so Pan took my hand and helped me out of the tub.

“How do you know that didn’t really happen?” Elof asked. “That it wasn’t some kind of bizarre torture by the Älvolk?”

Pan handed me a towel and I wrapped it around my shoulders.

I shook my head adamantly. “No. The Ögonen used spiders to scare me before.” I glanced over at Pan, thinking of the moment he’d confessed he loved me—a moment he no longer remembered. “And Pan was there, and he started acting strange when the spiders showed up.”

I dried my face with the towel, and I looked up to Ur the Ögonen. “Why did you do that? Why did you infiltrate my memories?”

Ur blinked at me, then looked to Elof.

“What are they saying?” I asked Elof.