Ashes of Honor od-6

by Seanan McGuire

  There was a pause as she considered my words. Finally, she lowered the frying pan. “I don’t trust you.”

  “That’s fine.”

  “I won’t trust you.”

  “That’s fine, too; we’re not asking you to trust us. We’re just asking you to let us help. Please. For Chelsea’s sake, if not yours.” I hesitated, and then added, “I mean, technically, I guess we’re family.”

  Bridget barked another of those short, sharp laughs, lowering the frying pan. “Some family you are. You owe sixteen years of birthday presents.”

  “I’ll be sure to let Etienne know.” I breathed out a little, relaxing now that the frying pan wasn’t being brandished in my direction. “We were planning to walk Chelsea’s route to school. Does she go to Colusa High?”

  “Yes,” said Bridget, wariness returning. “How did you know?”

  “I have a daughter, too. She lives with her human father.” Saying the words made the tiny wounded place inside me ache even more. Gillian lived with her human father, because Gillian was human. Thanks to me, she would never be anything else. “I know there’s no way she’d be walking to school if she had to go more than a mile. Etienne said Chelsea was walking home from school when she disappeared. Colusa High was the only school that fit the profile.”

  “You have a daughter? With a human man?” Bridget’s tone thawed a little; perhaps she was finally allowing herself to believe we might be here for the right reasons. “What’s her name?”

  “Gillian. She’s a few years older than Chelsea. She was kidnapped last year, and I would have done anything to get her back. Anything. Even if it meant trusting people I wasn’t sure about.” I shook my head. “If a human kidnapper took Chelsea, you called Etienne for nothing. I don’t think you would have done that. Not after sixteen years of being careful. That means you really think it was one of us. If you’re right, don’t you need our help?”

  For a moment, I thought I might have pushed too hard. Then, reluctantly, Bridget nodded. “What can I do?”

  “Well, first, can we get off the street? I’m feeling a little exposed, and I’d like to see Chelsea’s room.” If the smell of smoke and calla lilies was this strong on the open street, I wanted to see how strong it was in an enclosed space.

  Bridget hesitated before nodding again. “Follow me,” she said, turning to march up the walk to her house.

  Quentin and I followed at a more sedate pace, neither of us all that anxious to go where the woman with the anti-fae frying pan led. “Are you sure about this?” he asked.

  “Nope,” I said calmly. “I just don’t have any better ideas, and I really want to get a look at that room.”

  “Tybalt’s going to kill me,” he muttered.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  The door was locked, even though Bridget had gone no farther than the sidewalk. She looked back over her shoulder at us as she unlocked it, saying, “You can’t be too careful.”

  A lock wouldn’t stop a truly determined Tuatha de Dannan or Cait Sidhe. For once, I thought before I spoke and didn’t say that out loud. “It’s a scary world out there,” I said.

  Bridget nodded and opened the door. The smell of sycamore smoke and calla lilies poured out, a hundred times stronger than it had been on the street. Schooling my expression to keep from giving away just how thick the smell of Chelsea’s magic was, I followed Bridget inside. Quentin was right behind me.

  It only took one look at the living room walls for me to realize there was no need to ask for a picture of Chelsea. There were pictures of Chelsea everywhere. She was a sweet-faced little girl who grew into a beautiful teenager over the course of dozens of images. Her delicate bone structure might have tipped me off to the presence of some fae blood in her lineage, but I would never have pegged her as a full changeling. I frowned, studying the pictures more closely.

  “Oh,” I said, finally. “I see.”

  Bridget looked at me. “Do you?”

  In every picture, Chelsea’s brown-black hair—something she inherited from her father—was styled to cover her ears. The lenses of her glasses were tinted, making it hard to tell what color her eyes were. “Does she need glasses?” I asked.

  “No,” said Bridget. Her expression softened as she looked at Chelsea’s picture, the hard edges going out of it until she was just a mother, scared for the safety of her child. “She started wearing them when she was six. They’re tinted glass.”

  “Rose-colored glasses. Literally,” I said. Etienne’s eyes had a copper sheen to them, glittering, metallic, and inhuman. If his daughter had his hair, the odds were good she had his eyes as well. “How long have you known?”

  “That my lover wasn’t human? I suspected from the first, but I told myself I was making up stories. I was new to the department, I missed Ireland, and here was this mysterious stranger come to argue with me and spin me yarns and be exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. I thought he had to be one of the Sidhe, come to save me from myself…and then thought I was being a fool, because everyone knows the Sidhe don’t exist.” The smile she shot my way was bitter. “I suppose that makes me twice a fool, doesn’t it?”

  “No,” said Quentin. “It makes us what you said we were. It makes us really good liars.”

  I glanced at him, surprised by his quick response. He looked at me and shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed.

  “It’s true,” he said. “We are.”

  “I just didn’t expect you to say it,” I said.

  “That reminds me.” Bridget raised the frying pan again. “I’ll thank you to take off whatever masks you’re wearing. I like seeing who it is I’ve allowed into my home.”

  Quentin and I exchanged a look. It seemed like every time I thought we’d broken all the rules, another one popped up for us to violate. “I’m not sure…” I began.

  “Please.”

  That stopped me. I sighed, once, and let my human disguise wisp away into the smell of cut grass and copper. Quentin did the same, and the smell of our mingled magics briefly overwhelmed the smell of smoke and lilies. It was a pleasant change, even if it didn’t last.

  Bridget’s eyes went wide and round. It was one thing to challenge two strangers and declare them to be part of a hidden world existing alongside her own. It was something else to have it proved. It probably didn’t help that the similarities in our human disguises were washed away by our true appearances. Quentin is Daoine Sidhe, bright and vibrant as something from a fairy tale. I, on the other hand, look as though half my color was stolen from me by the villain from some children’s TV show.

  Oh, and there were bullet holes in my jacket. Can’t forget those.

  “What are you?” she whispered, finally.

  “Quentin is Daoine Sidhe,” I said. “I’m Dóchas Sidhe. We’re…cousins, I guess.” It was close enough; both races descended from Oberon, although Titania claimed the Daoine Sidhe as her own. “What we are doesn’t matter. Finding Chelsea is what matters. Can I see her room?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Bridget, tossing the frying pan onto the couch before beckoning for us to follow her. Apparently, disorientation made her agreeable. Then again, it might also be the deep conditioning of human history at work, the old lessons that say, “mess with the fae, and you’ll regret it.” Now that she could really see us, maybe she didn’t feel she could fight us anymore. Either way, I was just glad she’d dropped the frying pan.

  The smell of smoke and lilies got stronger as we walked down the hall. By the time we stopped in front of a door decorated with the poster from the third Lord of the Rings movie, it was all I could do not to breathe through my mouth to avoid choking.

  “This is her room,” said Bridget needlessly.

  “I kind of figured,” I said. I sneezed, once, before turning to Quentin. “Wait out here with Bridget, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  Catching Bridget’s sudden irritation, I explained, “I can sort of detect magic, b
ut it works best when I’m alone.” And better still if someone has bled recently, but since Chelsea was taken from the street, that was probably too much to hope for. “I promise I’m not going to do anything to your daughter’s things. You can even keep the door open and watch me.”

  “Oh, I will,” she said…but she opened the door, releasing a cloying wave of lily-and-smoke perfume. “Don’t you dare take anything.”

  “I won’t,” I said, and went in.

  Chelsea’s room was practically spotless, especially for a teenage girl. There were no dolls or plastic horses; instead, she had rows of neatly shelved secondhand paperbacks, build-it-yourself model kits, and what looked like a working microscope. The walls were covered in Star Trek and Firefly posters, and she had posters for the first and second Lord of the Rings movies taped to her ceiling. A too-small bedspread patterned with spaceships and planets was folded over the foot of her bed, the remnant of a childhood she wasn’t willing to let go of yet. I turned slowly in place, a lump in my throat that wasn’t caused just by the difficulty of breathing through the miasma of Chelsea’s magic. She deserved better than whatever was happening to her…and she deserved better than what was going to happen to her when she was finally found.

  I closed my eyes, breathing deep as I searched for something—anything—that might help us track Chelsea. What I found was enough to make me stiffen in surprise. “Oh, oak and ash, that’s not good,” I murmured. Opening my eyes again, I looked around the room, gaze settling on the composition notebook next to the microscope. I reached for it.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Bridget.

  “I need to check something,” I said. “Both of you, stay out in the hall, please.”

  As I’d hoped, a girl who kept her room as neat as Chelsea did, and who had such an obvious interest in science, also kept very careful notes. The notebook was full of columns showing dates, times, locations, and what she called “relevant factors.” Everything was written in heavy block letters, making it easy to read, even if it took me a moment to understand.

  “Oak and ash,” I repeated, and added a human, “Fuck. Quentin, can you come in here?”

  “Sure.” He walked over to me, followed by Bridget, who seemed to have decided “stay in the hall” only applied as long as she and Quentin were both doing it. I didn’t comment on her presence. I just handed Quentin the notebook.

  He frowned at the pages, brow furrowing for a moment before it smoothed out as his expression became one of pure surprise. “Was she experimenting with herself?”

  “She was,” I confirmed. Bridget looked utterly bewildered. Taking pity, I explained, “Etienne said that you knew he was Tuatha de Dannan. What you may not know is that they’re teleporters, and so is Chelsea. Based on what’s written here she’s been opening small portals for the last year or so. She’s been testing what she can do.”

  “That’s not possible. I would have known.”

  “Have you ever encouraged her to use her magic? Or have you told her to hide it, no matter what?” Bridget’s silence was answer enough. I continued: “She wanted to know what she could do. And I think she managed to catch someone’s attention.”

  What I didn’t say was that if the locations in Chelsea’s book were accurate—and I had no reason to suspect they weren’t—she was opening portals that stretched a lot farther than she should have been able to manage. Etienne could go from Pleasant Hill to San Francisco, if he stretched. His little girl had recorded trips from Albany to Vancouver. And that wasn’t good. There are always stories about changelings with too much power. None of them end well.

  “Where is she?” whispered Bridget.

  “I don’t know. But we’re going to find out.” I held up the book. “Can I take this?”

  Clearly reluctant, Bridget nodded.

  “Okay. We have to go now. We have to go and find your daughter.” Assuming she was still alive. And that, unfortunately, was looking like an increasingly big assumption.

  SEVEN

  WE REWOVE OUR HUMAN DISGUISES before we left. Bridget didn’t argue about our leaving—I think she was too stunned to try to make us stay. She let me keep Chelsea’s notebook and even gave us a recent picture from the living room wall. I gave her my cell number, asking her to call if she thought of anything that might help us find Chelsea. She wouldn’t call. I could see it in her face. But maybe having something as concrete as a phone number would give her a little bit of comfort in the days ahead. I’m a big believer in giving comfort whenever possible. Maeve knows, it can be a hard thing to hold onto.

  Besides, there was no way she could use the phone number to track me. April O’Leary set up my account, and I wasn’t sure it strictly existed from the mortal perspective. If Bridget decided not to trust me, all she’d get from tracing my number was a headache.

  Speaking of headaches…I waited until Quentin and I were safely in the car, away from human ears, before I asked, “You realize what our next step is, right?”

  Quentin frowned. “Is this one of those questions where I’m supposed to work out the answer for myself, as a training thing, or is it one of the questions where you give me the answer, so I shouldn’t even bother trying?”

  “The latter,” I said. “We need to talk to the Luidaeg.”

  Quentin’s frown vanished, replaced by a wide grin. “I was hoping you’d say that. Do we need to go see Walther first, while we’re already in Berkeley?”

  “I’ll call him and let him know the situation, but we don’t need to go by. I still want to drive past Chelsea’s school and see whether we can find the spot she disappeared from—the human authorities may have missed something—but we can head for the Luidaeg’s after that. Maybe we can even get there before dawn.”

  “Can we stop for donuts?”

  The question wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. Yes, we were in the beginning stages of a kidnapping investigation, and yes, time was not on our side…but if we were going to the Luidaeg, a little bribery wouldn’t hurt.

  The Luidaeg is the daughter of Oberon and Maeve, which technically makes her my aunt. Maybe that’s why she hasn’t killed me yet, although it’s just as likely to be the fact that I amuse her. May says we’re reenacting The Princess Bride, one “I’ll most likely kill you in the morning” at a time. Whatever her motives, the Luidaeg is one of my strongest, and strangest, allies. If anyone would know how to handle the issue of a changeling with more power than she was supposed to have, it was the Luidaeg.

  She was also the single person most likely to let me explain things without freaking out. The Luidaeg is older than any of the laws of Faerie, and remembers a time when humans and the fae consorted openly, with no lies or illusions between us. She might not approve of Chelsea, but she wouldn’t be horrified by her the way some others would be.

  And the Luidaeg likes donuts. “Sure, we can stop,” I said. “What time is it?”

  “Almost four-thirty.”

  “Let’s get back to the right side of the Bay, park long enough for dawn to pass, and then swing by Dynamo for the early morning batch. The Luidaeg likes their salted caramel.” Quentin wrinkled his nose. I sighed. “I wouldn’t take us onto the bridge if I thought there was any chance we’d be caught out by the dawn. We have nearly an hour until sunrise. Trust me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “Don’t call me ma’am,” I said, and started the car.

  Quentin smirked.

  His concern wasn’t unfounded. Dawn is anathema to faerie enchantments. Something about the way the sun hits the land during the first moments of the day tears down small spells and weakens great ones, smashing the magic out of the world. It never lasts more than ten minutes, but that was more than long enough to have a fatal car accident if I was behind the wheel when it hit. Dawn isn’t as painful for me as it was before Amandine shifted the balance of my blood, but it’s still impossible to breathe in those few minutes when the air pushes down like a blanket made of lead and everything tastes of death an
d ashes.

  We drove down Colusa with the windows open. Patches of the smoke-and-lily scent that meant “Chelsea” appeared along the length of the street, some fresh, some faded. None of them stood out as the place she’d disappeared from, and Quentin didn’t seem to notice them at all. I stopped the car next to one of the stronger patches, frowning at him.

  “Do you smell anything?”

  “Not really,” he admitted. “Her room smelled like old magic, a little. Out here, there’s nothing.”

  “Great. One more attraction for the freak show that is my life—apparently, Dóchas Sidhe are magic detectors, not just blood detectors. Chelsea was here. She was here a lot. I think she opened some of her doors from this spot.”

  Quentin opened her notebook, riffling through the pages. “Is this the corner of Portland and Colusa?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “This says she opened a door from here to…um. To Portland, Oregon. And then back again.” He raised his head, staring at me. “Can she do that?”

  “You’ve heard the old stories. What do you think?”

  He closed the book. “I think we need to find her.”

  “Yeah. So do I.” I glanced at the sky. Our sweep of the street had taken almost twenty minutes. “I guess we’re going to be a little late to the Luidaeg’s. I’m not risking the bridge this close to dawn.”

  Quentin looked relieved. “Good.”

  I snorted and started the car again, hitting the gas harder as I angled up the hill toward Tilden Park. It’s a protected nature preserve, surprisingly wild for being so close to human habitation, and it’s full of secluded picnic areas where we could wait out the sunrise without being spotted.