“I’ll call us a cab. Danny will be thrilled to drive us, as long as we don’t bleed on the seats,” said May. Moving with surprising speed, she leaned over and grabbed my wrist, jerking me toward her. I somehow managed not to fall over as I stumbled across the floor. “Come on, Toby. You’re the one who has his number memorized.”
I knew the half-murderous, half-grim look on her face. I had to go with her, or she was going to start swinging. “Tybalt, keep an eye on Jazz,” I said, letting myself be pulled out of the living room and across the hall into the kitchen.
May let go of me long enough to close the kitchen door. Then she turned to face me, slowly looking me up and down. “How bad was it?” she asked finally.
“If you were still my Fetch, you’d probably be feeling pretty shaky,” I said. “And if Amandine hadn’t shifted my blood, I’d definitely be dead. I think I saw my own intestines.”
“You sure do know how to have a good time.” She rubbed her face with one hand. It was a gesture so familiar that it hurt. I know May’s memories don’t just come from me—she has Dare’s memories, too, and the memories of the night-haunt she used to be—but sometimes looking at her is like looking in a slightly sideways mirror. “How much danger are we in, October? And how much of it is your fault?”
“I…what?”
She dropped her hand. “You’ve been trying to find a cliff to throw yourself off of since Connor died. I won’t pretend I’ve been cool with it, but I remember dying so many times—I remember being the one mourned for and the one in mourning so many times—that I’ve been willing to let it slide. I figured you’d find your way back to yourself. Only now you’ve finally found a cliff that might actually stand a chance of killing you, and you’re going to take us right over the edge with you. Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you warn us?” She took a heavy breath, let it out, and asked, “Are you mad at us for surviving when he didn’t?”
Fetches are created when a night-haunt drinks the blood of a living person. It’s Oberon’s way of keeping the night-haunts from getting out of control and killing everyone they meet. One of the first things I did when I came back from my fourteen-year absence was go up against my former mentor, a man named Devin. He’d replaced me with two new kids, Manuel and Dare. Dare said I was her hero. I got her killed. But somehow, that didn’t change her mind, and when the night-haunt with her memories had the opportunity to help me, she took it. In the process, she got herself called as a Fetch. My Fetch.
She’d already died for me once. If she thought I was mad at her for not dying for me a second time, I was doing something unforgivably wrong.
My silence had lasted too long. Something hardened in May’s eyes, and she started to turn away from me. “Yeah. I thought so.”
“May, wait.” I grabbed her shoulder, stopping her. She didn’t look back at me. That was okay. She could hear me whether she was facing me or not. “I didn’t call because I didn’t think of it. That was stupid, and I’m sorry. I honestly didn’t think Samson would come here.”
“Are you going to try telling me you haven’t been attempting suicide every day since Connor died?” She looked over her shoulder without turning around, so that only a half-crescent of her face was visible. It was enough to let me see her eyes. They were the foggy no-color gray that had been in my mirror for most of my life, but the look in them wasn’t mine. It was the look I saw once in the brilliantly green eyes of a teenage girl who died because I couldn’t save her.
“No,” I said quietly. “I think you’re right. You’re all right. Tybalt accused me of the same thing, and I couldn’t even get mad, because you’re all right. But I’m done now. I’m done throwing myself off cliffs and hoping I won’t be there after I hit the bottom. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that to you. I’m sorry.”
The corner of May’s mouth pulled into a smile. “You just said you were sorry like three times.”
“It bears repeating. I have a lot to be sorry about.”
“Yeah. You do.” She finally turned to face me. “You’re sure you’re done being an idiot?”
“Well. I’m sure I’m done being more of an idiot than I normally am.”
“That’s a start.” May removed my hand from her arm. Then she stepped closer and hugged me, hard.
I’ve never been much of a hugger. There have always been people that didn’t apply to. I wrapped my arms around her, returning her embrace. Her skin smelled like cotton candy and ashes, the remnants of the magic she’d called up during the fight with Samson. Even fae who don’t have access to combat charms will tend to call their magic under that kind of duress. It’s instinctive, a way of grabbing the thinnest straws of hope the world has to offer. Since none of our races began knowing what they were capable of, it makes sense; one day, you might call your power and learn that you were capable of something you never guessed you could do.
May sighed against my shoulder, and said, “This is all fucked up.”
“Yeah, it is. But it’s going to get better.” I pushed her away. “We’ll call Danny and get him to come pick you up. Jazz will be safe at Goldengreen. Samson won’t be able to get past Dean’s wards, even if he’s dumb enough to try—which I doubt. You weren’t his target.”
“And what are you going to do?” May asked.
I managed a smile. “I’m going to eat a box of Pop-Tarts and drink all the milk in the fridge, because if I don’t give my body something else to work with, I’m going to collapse. Then I’m going to put on different clothes. What I’m wearing right now isn’t going to inspire much confidence in the people around me.”
“Those jeans are trashed,” said May. “There isn’t enough hydrogen peroxide in the world to deal with that much blood.”
“I know,” I said dolefully. “I’d just managed to get them broken in, too.”
“The true tragedy of the day is at last revealed,” said Tybalt from the doorway. “Not the assassination attempts, the injuries, or the betrayals. The loss of a pair of denim trousers.”
“Hey, man, I worked hard to make these jeans fit exactly how I liked them,” I said, turning. Tybalt was holding the kitchen door open. Jazz was standing behind him, still clutching her injured arm. “What’s going on?”
“We grew concerned when your disappearance was not followed by the sound of screaming, and I wanted to be sure our Lady Fetch had not elected to bury one of the kitchen knives in your eye.” Tybalt offered a bow toward May. “I appreciate your failure to stab her. I doubt she has any blood left to lose.”
“I took some of that Canadian Tylenol Quentin keeps in the medicine cabinet,” said Jazz. “It’s helping a little, but I’d still really like to get to Goldengreen.”
That was a hint if I’d ever heard one. May and I exchanged a look before I nodded and started toward the kitchen phone. “I’m on it.”
I dialed and handed the phone to May, not waiting for Danny to pick up. She was the one who needed the ride, and if I tried to explain what was going on, he’d want the whole story. We didn’t have time for that. Technically, I’d been wasting time by stopping to talk to May in the first place, but that part hadn’t been optional. It was my fault she got hurt. It was my fault Jazz got hurt. If she wanted me to explain myself, I owed her that.
May was still talking when I grabbed a pack of Pop-Tarts from the box and left the kitchen, heading for the stairs.
Tybalt followed me out of the kitchen. “Where are you going?”
“To my room,” I said. “I need to change my clothes. I would wash the blood out of my hair, but then it would freeze solid when we went back to Tamed Lightning. I’ll have to be a redhead for a little longer.”
“Charming.”
“Hey. I work with what I’ve got.” My stomach rumbled. I opened the Pop-Tarts, looking back at him as I climbed. “You probably need fresh clothes, too.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you about to tell me you have a pair of sweatpants in just my size sitting in a drawer somewhere? Because I thin
k I would prefer to be naked.”
We still had all of Connor’s things in a box in the attic, but he and Tybalt weren’t the same height; Connor had actually been a few inches taller than Tybalt, probably because he was born more recently, and people are taller now than they were three or four centuries ago. I’m not sure why the human-form purebloods have continued getting taller along with the human population of the world; maybe it’s an automatic thing, one more form of subtle camouflage. Regardless, Tybalt would have looked like an idiot in Connor’s pants.
Even as I had the thought, I realized that it didn’t hurt. I was thinking about Connor, and it didn’t hurt. Maybe I was getting better after all.
“No, but if you want to run back to the Court of Cats, I can wait for you here.”
A shadow flickered across his face, there and gone in an instant. “Would that I could, October, but that door is not open to me at the present.”
I stopped as I reached the landing. “What do you mean? You’re the King.”
“Yes, I am. And if I return to the Court, I will need to begin the process of resolving the dissent Samson has so industriously sown.” Tybalt paused, rubbing his hand across his face before he added, “I don’t know when I’d be able to come back, Toby. I’d be leaving you when you need me the most—and while I wouldn’t normally put your welfare above that of my Court without true agony, this time, the two are the same. Whatever Samson has against me, he has against you as well. I will not leave you vulnerable to him.”
He sounded so tired and so earnest. I worried my lip between my teeth before asking, “Does this have anything to do with what you told me before?”
Tybalt blinked. Then he snorted a brief laugh, and asked, “October, in the years since your return…has anything not been in some way related to what I told you before? You handed me a hope chest in a dark alley. You took my heart as collateral, and you’ve never returned it.”
Things always get messed up when I think about them too much. So this time, I didn’t let myself think. I took a few quick steps down, closing the distance between us, and planted a kiss on Tybalt’s mouth. His eyes widened in surprise. Just as he was recovering enough to kiss me back, I stepped away, and said, “I’m going to get changed. Go make sure May and Jazz go off with Danny, okay? I’ll be down as soon as I can.”
“Yes,” said Tybalt, sounding slightly dazed—and then he turned and went.
It wasn’t until I was in my room with the door securely closed between us that I realized that this was the first time I had kissed him. He’d kissed me, sometimes for show, sometimes because he truly meant it…but I’d never kissed him before. Things between us really were changing. With that thought weighing heavy on my mind, and the fate of Faerie potentially hanging in the balance, I went to get changed.
TWENTY
IT TOOK ME LESS THAN TEN MINUTES to strip off my shredded, bloody clothes and replace them with a clean black tank top and jeans. I wiped the worst of the blood off my face and hands with some wet wipes I’d snagged from KFC the last time I took Quentin out for junk food. By the time I was done, I looked, if not respectable, at least marginally less like I’d just survived one of May’s trashy horror movies. For a finishing touch, I brushed most of the blood out of my hair and skimmed it into a ponytail. Any Daoine Sidhe who got within ten feet of me would smell it, but most other people would assume it was a weird dye job and move on.
At some point during the process, I ate the first Pop-Tart and most of the second. It says something about how low my blood sugar was that I neither noticed nor cared what flavor they were. I shrugged my leather jacket back on, stuck the last piece of Pop-Tart in my mouth, and opened the bedroom door.
Tybalt was downstairs, leaning against the wall and looking at Cagney and Lacey, who were sitting by his feet with oddly dejected looks on their furry faces. All three of them turned toward me as I stopped on the bottom step.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Your resident felines were explaining how they could allow Samson to burst in without sounding the alarm,” said Tybalt. Catching my expression, he added, “There was nothing they could have done. I am reassuring them, not scolding them.”
“You know, every time I think my life can’t get weirder, it ups the ante.” I started walking again, heading for the kitchen. Tybalt paced me. I gave him a sidelong look. “Did May and Jazz leave?”
“Yes. Danny said hello and that he would have stuck around to talk to you himself, but he was sure you already had enough to worry about, and besides, the Barghests were almost certainly working on eating the backseat.” Tybalt’s pupils narrowed to amused slits as he spoke. “He seemed oddly…unsurprised…to hear that you were unable to greet him because you were upstairs changing into something less bloodstained.”
“I have my friends well-trained.” I opened the fridge, beginning to gather the makings for a ham sandwich. “Let me just get a little more food in me, and then we can get back to Tamed Lightning.” I paused. “Do you want a sandwich? You haven’t eaten anything all day, and you lost a lot of blood, too.”
“I would love a sandwich,” said Tybalt, with enough gravity to make it sound like a formal proclamation. Resolved: that we will have ham and cheese sandwiches.
“Just get the bread out of the cupboard, and I—”
The doorbell rang before I could finish my sentence. I frowned, bumping the refrigerator door closed with my hip before dropping the ham, cheese, and condiments on the counter.
“None of the people who want to kill us right now would use the doorbell,” I said. “It’s probably neighborhood kids selling something.”
Tybalt snorted. “Your range of options is very specialized.”
“Yeah, well. Welcome to my world.” I shook my head, grabbing a handful of air. The smell of cut grass and copper rose around me, mingling with the smell of the blood in my hair, as I wove a quick human disguise. “Wait here. I’m going to go get rid of whoever it is.”
“Certainly,” said Tybalt. He was opening the cheese when I left the kitchen. I closed the door behind me—no point in explaining the pointy-eared man making sandwiches if I didn’t have to—and made my way to the front door.
When I opened it, Officer Thornton of the San Francisco Police Department was standing on my porch. I blinked at him, briefly too surprised to speak. He blinked back, looking almost as surprised to see me as I was to see him. Then he cleared his throat.
“Good evening, Ms. Daye,” he said. “Do you have a moment?”
“I—” When dealing with the mortal authorities, there is no answer to that question that doesn’t begin with “yes.” When dealing with the mortal authorities who had followed me to Fremont, all the answers I wanted to give began with slamming the door in his face.
If I did that, I might as well start packing my things, because I would be moving to the Summerlands full time shortly afterward. I swallowed my panic and stepped to the side, holding the door open wider. “Of course, Officer. Would you like to come in?”
“Yes, thank you.” Officer Thornton looked around with unabashed curiosity as he stepped into the foyer. Fortunately, there was nothing really incriminating in view. We’re an inhuman household, but the detritus that builds up around the edges of our lives is reassuringly normal. It’s the lives themselves that tend to be a little weird.
My stomach sank. Tybalt was in the kitchen without a human disguise on, and the living room was totally destroyed. Unless I could convince Officer Thornton that he wanted to go upstairs with me, I was screwed—and I didn’t even know how to open that conversation without sounding like I was coming on to him.
“Um, Officer, what can I do for you? I thought that there were no charges against me?”
“This is an unofficial visit, Ms. Daye. I’m still in uniform because my shift just ended.”
“Oh.” And probably because he wanted me to remember that he was an officer of the law, but that was one of those things that did perfectly well wh
en left unspoken. “So, unofficially, what can I do for you?”
“Have you lived here long, Ms. Daye?”
“Um, no. We just moved in a few months ago.”
“‘We’ being?”
“Me, my sister, May, and our nephew, Quentin.” Legally, May was my sister, and calling Quentin a nephew was easier than any of the other available explanations. I’m old enough to be his mother, but I’m never going to look it by mortal standards. “He’s from Canada,” I added, in case Officer Thornton decided to follow up with a question about where Quentin’s parents were. “I don’t know, I’ve never met them” was unlikely to score me any points.
“It’s a lovely home,” he said instead, still looking around the hall.
You won’t think that for long if you see the living room, I thought. He didn’t need to ask the next logical question: I’ve lived in San Francisco for most of my life, and I knew what it was going to be. “Yeah, we got really lucky,” I said. “Our Uncle Sylvester inherited this place from his parents, and it was just sitting empty until we needed somewhere to live. He lets us stay here for utilities and maintenance costs.” And would gladly sign the deed over to me if I asked. That was another thing I didn’t need to tell the nice officer.
“You sound like you’re close to your family.” Officer Thornton turned to face me. There was something in his expression—a certain calculation—that I didn’t like. Then again, I didn’t like the fact that he’d been following me. “Family is important, don’t you agree?”
“Yes, Officer, I do. If I can ask, what is this all about?”
“Ms. Daye, what were you doing in Fremont earlier today?” The calculation in Officer Thornton’s face became suddenly coherent, resolving into suspicion. “I ask because an associate of mine from the Berkeley Police Department informed me that she had encountered you at the site of a recent disappearance, and as you had been brought into my station the night before…”
I blinked. “I’m a private detective. I specialize in kidnappings and divorce cases. Bridget called me.”
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