Chimes at Midnight

by Seanan McGuire

  “What are you talking about? It’s a drug, not a disease.”

  “Yes, except that your body seemed to treat it as a combination of the two. Goblin fruit is tricky, Toby, and you have the power to make it . . . better . . . for yourself.”

  From the way she said “better,” I didn’t think she was referring to the process of kicking my unwanted habit. “What do you mean?”

  “Humans enjoy goblin fruit more than fae do. It’s part of why it kills them. It’s why it kills changelings, too, although it takes longer. You may be the only changeling who’s ever tasted the stuff and had the power to make things . . . more enjoyable.”

  I stared at her.

  Slowly, Jin nodded.

  “Oh, no. No, no, no.” I grabbed a hank of my hair and pulled it in front of my face. It was a colorless brown, the noncolor of tree bark and faded dye jobs. “No.” Dropping the hair, I felt for my ear, and breathed a sigh of relief. It was still pointed. Less than it should have been, but enough that I knew I hadn’t turned myself completely human.

  “It’ll be okay,” said Jin awkwardly. She patted me on the shoulder. “We’ll figure something out. We always do.”

  “So what, I’m addicted to something that’s killed every changeling who’s ever tasted it, and my body is trying to turn itself human so it can enjoy dying more, and we’re going to ‘figure something out’?” I glowered at her, glad to have something to focus my ire on. “How’s that going to work?”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy, now, did I?” Jin stood. “I’m going to go let everyone know that you’re awake. When you decide to get dressed—against my recommendation, but that’s never stopped you before—there are clean clothes in the top drawer of the bureau. But I really wish you’d stay in bed.” With that, she was gone, shutting the door behind herself.

  Jin was probably right: I needed to stay in bed. I needed to keep moving even more. The Queen had sent the man who hit me with that pie. I knew that was true, even if the Karen I’d seen in my dreams turned out to have been a goblin fruit-induced hallucination. The Queen was scared of me. It was the only explanation. And as to why she hadn’t killed me . . .

  Killing me would have been like killing Nolan. Elf-shot took an opponent out of the picture for a century. Getting me addicted to goblin fruit proved that I was incapable of resisting temptation, turning me into someone to be pitied, not rallied behind. She didn’t want a martyr, and so she was trying to discredit me in a way my critics would believe.

  “To hell with that,” I muttered. I licked my palm again, worrying the last flecks of drying blood loose with my tongue, and reached as deep into myself as I could, looking for the place where my fae and mortal heritages met. It was hard, slow work, like trying to swim through quicksand, but I found it, an intangible line drawn across the substance of my self.

  I had done this before. Never intentionally to myself, but on Gillian, when I turned her mortal, and on Chelsea, when I turned her fae. I knew how the process worked. Reminding myself of that as firmly as I could, I gathered the tatters of my magic and wrapped my mental hands around the line, yanking hard.

  The pain was immediate and intense. The line didn’t budge, but I did, falling off the bed as I screamed, clawing at my own head in an effort to make the hurting stop. It didn’t help. I kept screaming, and was still screaming when the door slammed open and Sylvester was there, gathering me into his arms.

  “October!” He cradled me, looking back toward what I could only assume was Jin. “What’s wrong with her? Fix her!”

  “I can’t.” Jin stepped into view behind him. I barely noticed. I was too busy screaming. “The air smells like her magic. Just a little, but enough that I think I know what happened. Toby! Did you try to shift your blood?” My screams must have been answer enough. “She only stopped sliding toward human when she got too weak to change herself that way. If she tried to do it on purpose . . . no wonder she’s screaming. She doesn’t have the strength to do that, especially not with the goblin fruit still in her system.”

  “So get it out of her system!”

  “Your Grace, if I knew how to do that, I would be rich beyond even your wildest dreams, and have a Duchy of my very own.”

  Then she was stepping past Sylvester, and her fingers were grazing my temple, as gentle as spiderwebs. The pain dropped away, and I dropped with it, falling back into the dark.

  THIRTEEN

  I WOKE AGAIN TO FIND SYLVESTER sitting next to my bed. He smiled when my eyes opened, but there was something forced about it, like he was smiling because the alternatives were too unpleasant to be considered. I’d known him long enough to see the screaming in his face.

  “Hi,” I rasped, and stopped, surprised by the sound of my own voice. I’d screamed my throat raw, and I wasn’t recovering the way I expected. This “healing like a human” thing was going to take some getting used to.

  “Welcome back,” he said. He started to reach for me and hesitated, looking uncertain.

  Sylvester has always been one of the few people in this world who could make me feel completely safe. I sat up, opening my arms, and whispered, “Please? I really need a hug.”

  That was all the encouragement he needed. He gathered me close, and I smelled the faint, familiar dogwood and daffodil scent of his magic. It was barely there: one more sign of how human I suddenly was. I barely had time to register it before he pressed his face against my hair, holding me like a father holds a child. He’d been holding me like that for most of my life.

  “Oberon’s grace, October, I am so sorry,” he said, voice muffled by my hair.

  “Don’t be sorry yet,” I said. “We can beat this.” We had to beat this. We didn’t have a choice.

  “Toby?”

  I looked past Sylvester to the doorway. Quentin was there, looking anxious. I managed to force a smile, despite the pounding in my head.

  “Hey,” I said. “Did you carry me up the hill? Kiddo, I gotta tell you, I’m impressed . . .” I stopped as I realized his eyes were brimming with tears. Disentangling one arm from Sylvester, I gestured. “Come on. Get a hug.”

  Quentin all but dove for the bed, and for a few moments, it was just the three of us clinging to each other, looking for a shred of hope in the comfort of one another’s arms. Hope seemed to be in short supply at the moment. My throat still hurt, and I could feel the beginnings of hunger twisting in my stomach. Hunger that wouldn’t be satisfied by anything from the mortal world. A slice of pie, on the other hand . . .

  I shoved the thought aside, squeezed Sylvester and Quentin a little more tightly, and then pulled away. It was difficult to do, because none of us wanted to let go. They were my stability in a chaotic world, and I was more scared than I could allow either of them to see. It wouldn’t have been fair.

  Speaking of stability . . . I frowned, suddenly realizing who was missing. “Where’s Tybalt?”

  “Um.” Quentin let go, taking a step back from the bed. “He . . . he doesn’t know.”

  “What?!” I hadn’t realized my torn-up throat would let me yell until I had already done it. I regretted it immediately. Glaring, I repeated, “What?” in a raspy whisper.

  “There was nothing he could have done by being here, October, and I’m sorry, but his temper isn’t precisely steady when it comes to you. When he came, we sent him away. Told him you were finally getting some rest, and he should go about his business.” Sylvester looked at me with genuine apology in his expression. “I wanted you awake before we told him of the . . . situation.”

  “What, you mean the part where I’m a jam-junkie now, and oh, right, I tried to turn myself human so I could enjoy it more while it’s killing me?” I shook my head, shoving the covers aside. “Where are my clothes? Where is my phone?”

  “October, please.”

  I whirled, fighting a wave of dizziness as I pointed at Sylvester and snapped, “Don’t you ‘October’ me. He is my family. Even if you couldn’t respect that, I don’t understand how th
e hell you got Quentin to go along with you.”

  “I was so scared,” said Quentin quietly. I turned to him. He met my eyes without flinching. That may be the only thing that kept me from yelling. “I didn’t know what was going to happen, and Jin needed us to stay away so she could work, and Tybalt . . . there wasn’t anything he could do. The Duke sent him away. I didn’t interfere.”

  I took a deep, slow breath, holding it as long as I could before I blew it out through my nose and said, “This isn’t over. But right now, I need my phone.”

  “You need your rest,” said Sylvester.

  I swung back around to face him, grateful to have a target again. “This isn’t your fault—if it’s anyone’s, it’s mine—but I’m not going to sit back and play invalid while you all wring your hands about how horrible it is. I’m going to find a way to fix it. Because I’m a hero. And that’s what heroes do. Now where. Is my. Phone?”

  “I’ll get it,” said Quentin, and stood, scampering to the dresser with a speedy grace I envied. Even under my dizziness and steadily growing hunger, my body felt clumsy and strange, like I was moving through cotton.

  It was almost funny. When Amandine changed the balance of my blood—I’d been elf-shot, and I would have died if she’d left me as I was—I’d wound up feeling like my body wasn’t mine anymore. It was too quick, too strong, and too fae. Now, I’d managed to shift myself in the opposite direction, and I was having the exact same problem. This body, my body, didn’t feel like home anymore. It felt like I’d been transformed into a stranger. And it was something I was going to have to deal with, because it wasn’t going to change any time soon.

  Quentin came back with my phone, pressing it into my hand without a word. I flipped it open, punching in the number for home on something that was just barely this side of autopilot.

  May picked up on the first ring. “I told you, she’s not here.”

  “Hi, May,” I said shakily. “How’s it going?”

  “Toby!” Her voice was like an ice pick in my ear. It was all I could do not to drop the phone. “Oh, thank Oberon. Did Sylvester finally wake you up? Did they spike your drink or something? Because I gotta tell you, girl, this was not a good time for an all-day nap.”

  “All-day . . . May, what time is it?”

  “About eight o’clock. Tybalt’s been skulking around here since they threw him out of Shadowed Hills, and when he’s not skulking here, he’s visiting Goldengreen or making annoying phone calls to find out whether I’ve heard from you. Can you maybe ask Sylvester never to do this again? Because while I like Tybalt and all, having an agitated Cait Sidhe checking in every twenty minutes isn’t doing anything for my nerves.”

  “Yeah, see, normally, I don’t think Sylvester would have asked Tybalt to leave the Duchy while I was unconscious.” I rubbed my face. “There were extenuating circumstances.”

  “Extenuating circumstances meaning . . . ?” she asked.

  “Meaning I got hit in the face with a pie.”

  “A pie?” Now she just sounded dubious. “Was it an evil pie?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it was.”

  There was a horrified pause as May worked her way through the implications of that statement. Finally, she whispered, “Oh, oak and ash, Toby, are you okay?”

  I laughed, high and shrill, before I could stop myself. “No, not really. Anyway, next time Tybalt checks in, can you ask him to get over here? We need to talk about what happens next.” And I needed to tell him his girlfriend was now both mostly mortal and addicted to goblin fruit. That was a conversation that was practically guaranteed to not go over well.

  “Okay,” May said, voice barely above a whisper, and hung up.

  I lowered my phone, hope and anger warring for control of my emotions. As always, it was easier to let anger win. I turned back to Sylvester. “You threw him out?” I asked, in a low, dangerous tone. “I was asleep for almost eleven hours, and you threw him out?”

  “October, I told you we had asked him—”

  “No. ‘We asked him to leave so you could rest’ only works if I was asleep for four hours, or six, or maybe, maybe eight, although me sleeping for eight hours when I’m not injured or drugged is such a perishingly rare event that he should have been sitting next to the bed with a bowl of popcorn. Do you understand me? I was poisoned. This stuff is poison to changelings, and the man I love wanted to be with me, and you sent him away. You kept him away from me for eleven hours, and you didn’t tell him what was going on. I know you meant well. But can either of you tell me how in the hell you could believe that was right?”

  Sylvester’s mouth moved silently as he struggled to respond. Finally, he bowed his head, and said, “No. I am sorry. I was scared. We were both . . . we were all scared. And I apologize for this, October, but I didn’t have the energy to deal with his fear while I was fighting with my own. I may not love you the way he does, but I love you as if you were my own daughter, and I would have done the same had you been my flesh and blood.”

  I glared at him for a few seconds more, but the first heat of my anger was already dying, replaced, however reluctantly, with understanding. What he’d done wasn’t right. It was still the only thing he could think of to do. In his position, I might have done the same thing.

  “I’d like you both to leave now, please, so I can get dressed,” I said. “Tybalt will be here soon, and then we’re going to need to get moving. I don’t have a lot of time.”

  “October—”

  I raised my hand. “Please. Not now. I just want to get dressed, so that I can leave.”

  “Okay,” said Quentin quietly. He started for the door. After a painfully long moment, Sylvester followed him. They both looked back at me before stepping out of the room. I didn’t say anything. Yelling at Sylvester had been emotionally exhausting on top of everything else, and I simply didn’t have the energy to deal with them any further.

  “We’ll be right outside,” said Sylvester, and shut the door.

  This time, when I stood, I did it slowly, letting my body adjust to its condition before I tried to move. The room swayed a little, but it didn’t spin, and I didn’t fall. That was going to have to be good enough, for now. Still taking my time, I walked to the dresser and opened the top drawer, revealing a pair of jeans, fresh undergarments, and a cable knit sweater made of dark gray wool. My sneakers and jacket were there, too, scrubbed clean of traces of goblin fruit.

  My stomach growled at the thought of goblin fruit, a thin ribbon of hunger snaking through me like the root of some poisonous flower. I put a hand against my belly, willing the hunger away. It didn’t do any good, and it wasn’t going to. I may be renowned for my stubbornness, but if “stubborn” was all it took to kick goblin fruit, it wouldn’t be a death sentence. I was going to get hungrier and hungrier, and I was going to give in.

  The thought made me furious. I welcomed the anger. Half the things I’ve accomplished in my life have been because I was too pissed off to realize that they weren’t possible. I yanked my borrowed nightgown off and dropped it on the floor, beginning to pull on the clothes that had been left for me. My knife was at the bottom of the drawer, along with a new belt to hold it. I strapped it into place, wishing I had a rubber band or something for my hair. Well. Beggars can’t be choosers.

  I was turning to leave when I heard a loud sound from the hallway, like, say, a six-foot-two Daoine Sidhe being slammed into a wall by a furious King of Cats. I somehow found it in myself to run to the door, wrenching it open to see Tybalt holding Sylvester off the ground by the front of his shirt. Several of the Ducal guards were there, hands on their swords, but they weren’t moving. Sylvester had his hand raised, gesturing for them to stay back.

  I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My fear was a hard knot in my throat, mingling with my growing need for more goblin fruit. Tybalt hadn’t seen me yet. His lips were drawn back from his teeth as he snarled at Sylvester, holding my liege like he weighed nothing at all. He hadn’t noticed my hair, or realized ho
w human I’d suddenly become.

  What if he didn’t want me once he knew? Of all the endings I’d envisioned for our relationship—and there had been more than a few—me turning mortal was never on the list.

  Quentin glanced toward the door. He was holding the flask of fireflies the Luidaeg had given me, and he looked miserable. He relaxed a little as he saw me. “Tybalt?” he said.

  Tybalt snarled, starting to turn, and froze when he saw me. I fought back the urge to wrap my arms around myself and retreat. Instead, I met his eyes, bit my lip, and waited.

  Slowly, Tybalt lowered Sylvester to his feet and stepped away from him. The guards moved in, helping the Duke stay upright. Sylvester raised a hand to his throat, coughing. Tybalt didn’t seem to notice all this commotion behind him. He was focused on me, and only on me. He took a step forward.

  “October?”

  He sounded puzzled, not disgusted. That was a start. I nodded, saying, “In the too, too solid flesh.” A bubble of laughter rose unbidden to my lips. It probably made me sound slightly unhinged as it burst into the air. I managed to swallow before it could happen again, and said, “I’d quote ‘Goblin Market’ if I knew the words, but all I can remember is the part that goes ‘we must not look at goblin men,’ and it’s too late for that . . .”

  Then, to my shame and surprise, I started crying.

  Tybalt didn’t say a word. He closed the space between us in two long steps, gathering me into his arms and holding me as close as if none of this had happened. I clung to him and cried, not caring who saw me. I was past giving a damn if someone wanted to say that I was a weak little changeling who couldn’t handle her own affairs. If there had ever been a time when I needed allies, this was it.

  Finally, the tears slowed, and I pulled myself away. Tybalt let go reluctantly, and kept one hand against the curve of my waist, providing me with an anchor. I blinked up at him, waiting to hear what he would say. He narrowed his eyes, looking at me. I bit my lip.