A Local Habitation

by Seanan McGuire

  Quentin nodded. “Now what?”

  “Now we start to work.” I turned toward Jan. “Is there any other way into this room?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Just the one door.”

  “Could April have gone inside without using it?”

  “Not while the power was out,” said Jan firmly.

  “Right. Quentin, set the wards.” He turned to blink at me, surprised. I smiled thinly. “Call it practice.” Practice, and avoiding a headache. As a pureblooded Daoine Sidhe, Quentin’s wards would be stronger than mine, and they’d cost him a lot less.

  Nodding with sudden enthusiasm, Quentin stepped over to the closed door and raised his hands. The smell of steel and fresh-blooming heather rose around him, and the outline of the door flashed red, then white. Lowering his hands, he turned to look to me, as if for approval. I flashed him a thumbs-up, and he beamed, looking briefly, deeply, pleased. That was apparently exactly what he’d wanted. At least one of us was happy.

  I turned my attention back to Jan. “We’re going to need to move the body, but we can’t do it alone. Let’s go find Elliot.”

  “All right,” she said, nodding.

  We’d only gone about ten yards when we heard someone running down the intersecting hall ahead of us. I pulled Jan to a stop, signaling for Quentin to get her against the wall, and started forward alone. It could be just another of the locals—but it could also be something worse, and none of us were armed. The best I could do was try to find out without getting us killed.

  I had almost reached the corner when Gordan ran into the open, skidding to a stop as she spotted us. She’d obviously left whatever she was doing in a hurry; grease stains smeared her shirt and arms. “What are you doing here? And what are you doing to Jan?”

  “Keeping her out of the basement,” I snapped.

  “Gordan, it’s all right,” said Jan. “I don’t want to be wandering around alone.”

  Gordan’s hands were clean, unlike the rest of her. “What happened?” she demanded. She was glaring, but the bulk of her fury seemed reserved for Quentin. Poor kid.

  “Peter’s gone,” Jan said. Gordan’s scowl collapsed, eyes going wide in a suddenly young face. I couldn’t ignore the question there, no matter how much I wanted to.

  “He’s dead,” I confirmed, moving to join Jan and Quentin against the wall. “We found him in the generator room just after the power went out. The killer wanted him found.”

  “And what are you going to do about it?” Her voice had gone shrill and brassy. “That’s two of us since you got here! There’s almost no one left! Why haven’t you stopped this?”

  I put my arm out to stop Quentin even as he started moving forward. “Down, boy.”

  “But, Toby—”

  “I know. Calm down. I’ll handle it.” He glowered. I turned to Gordan. “We can’t do anything until we know what’s going on. If you’re not going to help, I suggest you leave.”

  Gordan stared at us, shivering. I stared back, outwardly calm and inwardly seething.

  Finally, Gordan shook her head. “You’re right. But these are our friends . . .”

  “And we’ll do our best. But I need to know that we’ll have whatever help we need.”

  “You will,” said Jan. Stepping forward, she took Gordan’s hand with surprising tenderness and led her down the hall.

  “Come on, Quentin,” I said, and followed, Quentin half a step behind. That was how we progressed through the knowe: Jan at the lead with Gordan leaning on her arm, me just behind, and Quentin following. Three of us jumped at every shadow, while Gordan just walked blindly on. Two deaths in a day seemed to have been a bit too much for her.

  Terrie was in the cafeteria when we arrived, standing by the vending machines. Her hair was tousled, and she was yawning, still marked by sleep. Quentin perked up, smiling and waving as if we hadn’t just found a body on the floor of the generator room. I repressed a bolt of bitter irritation, aimed more at her than him. How dare she rest while people were dying?

  Jan let go of Gordan’s arm, calling to Terrie, “Peter’s dead. Stay here while I reboot April and get Elliot.” She turned and left, moving too quickly for me to tell her to stop.

  I considered the value of running after her and shouting. It didn’t seem likely to do any good. “You people and the walking blithely into certain danger. It’s got to be something in the damn water.”

  Terrie stared after her. “What?” She turned toward us, repeating, “What?”

  “Peter’s dead,” I said, walking over to get a cup of coffee. Gordan moved to a table and sat, burying her face in her hands.

  “But—what—when? How?”

  “During the blackout,” said Quentin.

  “They cut the power, killed the generators, and then killed him. Probably to get our attention.” I sipped my coffee. “They got it.”

  “Oh,” whispered Terrie, eyes wide. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. I know what dead looks like.”

  “Oh, Maeve, Peter . . .” she said. “He was such a wonderful engineer . . .”

  I opened my mouth to snap, and stopped as I saw the look on Quentin’s face. He was watching Terrie with utter adoration, caught up in her pain. That made even less sense than my anger. He’d been temperamental but sane through this whole ordeal, facing everything with calm equanimity. So why was he getting involved now? They’d flirted, but they hadn’t had time to fall in love, and something in his expression reminded me uncomfortably of my own when I was looking at Alex.

  I was saved from following that thought to its logical conclusion when the door swung open and Jan and Elliot stepped into the room. Elliot was shaking and glassy-eyed. At least his voice was steady: he answered when I asked if they’d seen anything in the hall. They hadn’t. Not a damn thing.

  Explaining what we knew didn’t take long; there wasn’t much to tell. Elliot crossed the room and put his hands on Gordan’s shoulders, but didn’t interrupt. Jan nodded, confirming my story, then offered some useful information—I hadn’t thought to check the generators for loose wires, or realized that their internal systems would record and time stamp the power outage.

  Elliot, Quentin, Jan, and I went back to the generator room, leaving Terrie and Gordan behind. Even with the power on, the knowe didn’t seem any friendlier. Some kinds of darkness have nothing to do with whether there’s light.

  The wards on the generator room were undisturbed. Quentin released them, and I stepped inside, taking a moment to study the scene before I let the others in. Peter was still intact; the night-haunts weren’t coming. The forensic tests I could perform—checking for footprints, tracks, and blood trails, noting the wounds and their locations on Peter’s body—took only a few minutes. Jan ran the tests on the equipment; there were no loose wires, and the generators time stamped the power outage at 7:49 PM—not exactly the witching hour. No leads there.

  I looked to Jan, frowning. “Could he have turned the generators off as he fell? Could this have been a coincidence?”

  “No way,” Jan replied. “You have to trip three breakers and press a button on the back of the main generator if you want to shut the system down. Failsafes.”

  “Why do you know that?” She’d rattled off that chain of actions a little too glibly for my tastes.

  Tiredly, Elliot said, “Jan does a lot of our hardware maintenance, especially now that we’re on a skeleton crew. She has to be able to kill the power in case of an emergency.”

  “Plus, I designed a lot of these systems,” Jan said.

  Elliot smiled wearily. “That, too.”

  “Right,” I said, raking my hair back with both hands and sighing. “So it was intentional.”

  “Looks like it,” Jan said. “Unless a dying man knows what fuses to pull.”

  “Okay. Let’s get moving.”

  The four of us wrapped as much of Peter’s body as we could in a sheet, careful not to break his wings, and we carried him down to the basemen
t, clearing off a counter before laying him down. Elliot shuddered the whole time. He was starting to look rumpled; I was worried that our Bannick was going to pieces.

  “What do we do now?” he asked, not looking at me.

  “Now we hunt,” I said. I looked to Jan, expecting an argument, but she nodded. “Elliot, you’re with me; Quentin, with Jan. If you see anything, don’t investigate. Just run.”

  “All right,” said Quentin. And we were off.

  The halls of ALH were snarled like Möbius strips, bending back on themselves in strange and implausible ways. Some rooms were brightly lit, while others were illuminated only by the dim light lancing in from outside. We searched room by room, hunting through closets and cubbyholes and finding more secret routes than I wanted to believe. Tracking anyone would have been a nightmare, but tracking a native—and that was what we had to be looking for—was going to be all but impossible. Thanks to the recent personnel losses, I couldn’t even be sure that the person we were looking for was one of our known suspects.

  We found nothing. And I kept thinking of Terrie’s exaggerated mourning and Gordan’s too-clean hands.

  Elliot and I had just stepped into the reception room when Quentin and Jan came around the corner. They stopped when they saw us.

  “Anything?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” said Quentin.

  “Right.” Whoever killed Peter was cocky, and the cocky are frequently good; that’s how they live long enough to get that way. Unless our killer could walk through walls, we were finished. “Come on, Quentin. We’re going back to the hotel.”

  Elliot stared at me, eyes shell-shocked and pleading. “Can’t you stay?”

  “Stay in groups. No one’s been attacked when they weren’t alone. Quentin and I need to go back to the hotel and get our things.” Mainly, we needed to get my weapons. “We’ll be back before dawn.”

  “Be careful,” said Jan.

  “We will,” I said. Somehow, I couldn’t be angry with them anymore. Their world was falling apart, and they knew it. “Quentin, come on.”

  We walked into the cool night air together, letting the door slide closed behind us. We were halfway to the car when Quentin said, “Toby?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are we coming back?”

  “Yes, we are. We have a job to do. Are you holding up okay?”

  “I’m scared.” He said it like he expected me to yell at him.

  I shook my head. “So am I, Quentin. Believe me, so am I.”

  TWELVE

  THE DESK CLERK CRINGED when we stormed through the lobby. Quentin had crafted his human disguise during the drive from ALH, and I’d slammed mine into place in the parking lot. It wasn’t very well sealed, but I didn’t care. It was just there to keep us out of the tabloids until we’d reached our rooms and taken what we needed. Colin’s sealskin was slung over my arm, disguised to look like a slightly dingy towel; I wanted to keep it out of harm’s way, so that it could be returned to his family when everything was finished—if we survived.

  We could probably have done without the disguises; the desk clerk was the only one in sight, and he was a pale, worried man who’d never have recognized what we really were; a child of the modern world, raised to think of faeries as pastel creatures dressed in flower petals and bathing in moonbeams. If he saw us undisguised, he’d think he was looking at a kid playing Star Trek games and a giant Tinker Bell knockoff with PMS, and he wouldn’t understand why he wanted to run away. I glanced at him as we passed, and he flinched. Looking away, I shook my head. It never gets better. I don’t think it ever will.

  The humans aren’t stupid, no matter what the purebloods say; they’re just blind, and sometimes, that’s worse. They put their fear in stories and songs, where they won’t forget it. “Up the airy mountains and down the rushy glen, I dare not go a-hunting for fear of little men.” We’ve given them plenty of reasons to fear us. Even if they’ve almost forgotten—even if they only remember that we were beautiful and not why they were afraid—the fear was there before anything else. There were reasons for the burning times; there’s a reason the fairy tales survive. And there’s a reason the human world doesn’t want to see the old days come again.

  Neither do most of the fae, myself included. Faerie didn’t need changelings to bridge the worlds in those days: her children ruled the night, and they were going to live forever. It didn’t last—it couldn’t last—but they didn’t know that then. Time made Faerie weak while it made the humans strong; that’s the reason people like me can exist. Faerie is finally weak enough to need us. So, no, I don’t want the dark years back; I don’t want to rule the night or cower in the dark, and those would be my choices. But there are times when I want to drop the illusions and say, “Look, I’m a person, just like you. Can we please stop hiding from each other? We have better things to do. ”

  I want to. But I never will.

  Quentin and I stepped out of the elevator on the fourth floor. “What now?” he said.

  “Get what you need—some clean clothes, any weapons you have. You did bring some kind of weapon, didn’t you?” He shook his head. I sighed. “What are they teaching you?”

  “Etiquette, heraldry, how not to offend visiting dignitaries . . . that sort of stuff,” he said.

  “Unless you’re planning on dining with Kings and Queens on a regular basis, none of that’s as important as having something sharp to put between yourself and whatever’s trying to kill you. Understand?” When I got done shouting at Sylvester, we were going to have words about Quentin’s education. Shadowed Hills had plenty of knights; one of them would be able to start teaching Quentin to fight properly. Etienne, maybe. I’d have to talk to him, assuming we made it back.

  “Sorry, Toby.”

  He looked so repentant I couldn’t stay annoyed. It wasn’t his fault they weren’t teaching him properly. Shaking my head, I said, “Get your things and meet me in the lobby in ten minutes. We’ll see what we can do about getting you something resembling a weapon.”

  “Got it,” he said, and headed off down the hall at a fair clip. I watched him go, shaking my head. If nothing else, we could raid the cutlery section at the local all-night grocery store or something. There’s always an option if you’re willing to be creative. When he was out of sight, I turned and walked the short distance to my own room, digging the key out of my pocket.

  Housekeeping had been through while I was out, replacing the wet towels with fresh ones and folding down the covers on the bed. It’s nice to have someone play Brownie for me—that’s one faerie service changelings can’t sign up for, and I really need it. The word “slob” doesn’t even start to cover my household skills.

  My duffel was on the floor of the closet. I dropped the sealskin and scooped the bag onto the bed, rummaging through my wadded-up clothes until I found the velvet box at the bottom under my spare jeans. The ribbon fell off as I pulled the box free; not that it mattered. I’d been using it to keep things closed. It was time to open them.

  We don’t get to redo the past just because we don’t like the way things turned out. Dare died for me. It was up to me to survive for her.

  I pulled out the knife she gave me, sliding it into my belt and anchoring the hilt through one of the loops before tugging my shirt down to cover it. It was a standard faerie fighter’s blade, hardened silver sharpened to a killing edge. It was also the best talisman I had. Silver doesn’t burn the way iron does, but it comes closer than anything else.

  The baseball bat was under the bed, tucked away where it wouldn’t upset the cleaning staff more than was necessary. I picked it up, hefting it thoughtfully, and let out a breath I’d barely known I was holding. Being armed always improves my mood, especially when something’s been killing people. Maybe a dead girl’s knife and a stick of aluminum aren’t “mighty weapons,” but they’d have to do.

  I picked up the phone after cramming my clothes into the bag, dialing the number for Shadowed Hills. Melly answered on the sec
ond ring. “Shadowed Hills, how may I be of service?”

  “Is Sylvester there?”

  She paused. “October? Child, you sound exhausted. What’s the matter?”

  The sound of her voice—of any voice that meant I had a chance of reaching my liege—was like sunlight through the clouds. I sat down on the edge of the bed, closing my eyes. “Just put Sylvester on, Melly. Please. It’s sort of urgent.”

  “All right, dear, all right. Just hold on a moment.”

  “I’ll be right here.”

  There was a click as she put the call on hold; Sylvester picked up less than ten seconds later, tone vibrating with concern. “October?”

  I took a deep breath, letting it rush out before I said, “Hey. Did you get my message?”

  “What message?” He sounded honestly perplexed. “I’ve been waiting for you to call. Is everything all right? What’s going on?”

  “No. Everything’s not all right. Everything’s not even a little bit all right. Listen.” And I told him what was going on. There was a lot of ground to cover, especially since he kept breaking in with questions. I did my best to answer them. In the end, there was a moment’s silence, both of us waiting to hear what the other would say.

  Finally, subdued, Sylvester said, “I want to call you home more than anything. You know that, don’t you?”

  “But you can’t. I know that, too.”

  “No, I can’t. Toby . . .”

  “I want to send Quentin back to Shadowed Hills. It’s not safe.”

  He hesitated. “If this is some sort of political attack, as you say January fears, it isn’t safe to send him back alone. I’ll have to find someone who can come and collect him without angering Riordan. Can you make sure he stays alive until then?”

  I laughed bitterly. “I’m not sure I can keep myself alive until then, but I’ll try.”

  “Do what you can,” he said. “Just do me the favor of being careful?”

  “I will. Check your phones, okay? I don’t know why our messages aren’t getting through, but it’s freaking me out.”

  “I’ll keep someone by the phone night and day. Call every six hours.”