Late Eclipses od-4

by Seanan McGuire

  Luna was connected to the roses in her fiefdom. The signs were there all along, if I’d just been paying attention . Spike’s listlessness, the way the roses in the knowe died when she got sick—everyone must have assumed that her health was affecting them, but what said the health of the roses couldn’t affect her?

  “You’re not an idiot, you didn’t know,” said May. The reassurance rang hollow. I should have stopped to think, not gone haring off after half-leads and possible answers.

  My head was throbbing. “It doesn’t matter now. Come on.”

  “What?”

  “I have to get back to Shadowed Hills, and you’re coming with me.” I shoved Spike into her arms. It chirped softly. “Someone needs to be with Spike.”

  “Why can’t I stay here with Spike?” May asked, cradling the rose goblin.

  “Because Sylvester should see it, and it might be stronger on home ground.” Spike’s roots ran through Shadowed Hills, just like Luna’s. I wasn’t going to count on anything saving it at this point, but I had to hope.

  May sighed. “I should stay with you anyway.” She didn’t need to say why. She was my Fetch. She’d be with me when the end came, whether she wanted to or not.

  “You’re right,” I said, touching her shoulder. “You should.” Then I turned away, crossing to the phone as I rummaged through the pocket of my jeans.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Calling for help.” I balanced the phone between my cheek and shoulder, dialing the number off Walther’s business card with my free hand.

  Jack answered. “Professor Davies’ office, Jack Redpath speaking, how can I help you?”

  “Jack, hi. This is Toby Daye. Is Walther—I mean, Professor Davies—in?”

  “Oh, hi!” He sounded positively gleeful. “He’s in the lab working on that project you gave him. Hang on, I’ll go get him.”

  “No problem.” May was staring at me. I put my hand over the receiver, saying, “Walther’s Tylwyth Teg. He’s doing some toxicology work for me.”

  “You have weird friends.”

  “I know.”

  There was a clatter from the phone, and Walther said, “Toby? Are you there?”

  “I’m right here, Walther. How are those antitoxins coming?”

  “I’ve finished the serum for the Cat’s Court. It needs to mature for about an hour, and then it should be ready. Yours is more complex. I need more time.”

  “That’s fine.” I doubted he’d have time to cure me before the end. That didn’t really matter. Rubbing my temple with one hand, I asked, “Did you test the cup?”

  “I did.There’s no poison.I found a lot of Phenobarbital—a sedative that probably helped with the whole ‘passing out’ thing—and some salt, but nothing that should have made her seriously ill.”

  “Would it make the drink taste bitter?”

  “That much Phenobarbital would make sugar taste bitter.”

  “Can the antidote for the Cat’s Court travel?”

  “There’s no reason why not.”

  “Good. I want you to bring it with you, and come meet me at Shadowed Hills.”

  “What?” He sounded taken aback; apparently, random women didn’t usually call his lab and ask him to drive to Pleasant Hill. Well, he’d learn.

  “I may have some leads on Luna Torquill. Listen.” I outlined the situation with Luna and the roses, giving a quick explanation of Luna’s heritage. This was too important to confuse with polite falsehoods. The only thing I left out was my encounter with the Queen’s guards—there was nothing he could do about it, and he’d find out about my pending arrest soon enough.

  Walther was silent when I finished. I paused before asking, “Well? Will you help me?”

  “What are we going to do? Why do you need a chemist? They’re not going to let me take blood samples from the Duchess.”

  “I don’t want you to take blood samples.” I’d been trying to approach things too linearly; that was my problem the whole time. Faerie isn’t linear. “We’re taking soil samples.”

  “Why would we—oh. I see. Yes, that makes sense.”

  “Do you know how to get to Paso Nogal Park?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good; meet us there, in the parking lot. We’re not going into the knowe. Bring whatever you’ll need to get a quick answer on what’s in the dirt.”

  “All right. See you soon.”

  “Count on it.” I hung up briefly before dialing again. This time, the phone only rang once.

  “Hi, Auntie Birdie,” said Karen, skipping the unnecessary “hello.” “I don’t know anything else. I’m sorry. I’ve been trying. I even tried dreaming for the mean girl, to see what she knew, but … ” Her voice faltered. “I don’t like her dreams.”

  The mean girl? She had to mean Rayseline. “What did she dream about?”

  “Only the dark.”

  I winced. Definitely Rayseline. “Okay. If you think of anything else, no matter how small, call May, okay? She’s going to be with me.”

  “I will … but you need to be careful. Something’s coming. Someone’s dreaming you a new dream, and whoever it is, I can’t quite see them.” On that encouraging note, she hung up.

  “Great,” I muttered, hanging up the phone. “Okay. Come on. Walther’s starting from Berkeley. We need to get moving if we want to beat him to Shadowed Hills.”

  “Who’s Walther again?” asked May.

  “Tell you in the car.” We crossed the living room together. The sky outside was that ludicrously cheerful blue that seems to haunt California summers. It should have been raining. Considering everything that was going on, the sunshine seemed unfair.

  I locked the door, pressing my hand against the wood and reciting, “Ring around the rosies, a pocket full of posies; ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” The wards flared and writhed, becoming a web of thin red lines as the smell of cut grass and copper rose around us. If anyone broke into the apartment, we’d know. A bolt of pain lanced through my temples, making my lingering headache worse. The poison was gaining on me. “Damn,” I muttered.

  “What is it?”

  So May wasn’t getting my headaches in real-time. That was good to know. “Just the headache. Can I get you to throw a don’t-look-here on the car? We don’t have time to deal with a speeding ticket.”

  “Sure.” She gave me a sidelong look. “You’ve been using a lot of magic while you’re driving lately.”

  “I’ve been in a hurry,” I said, brushing past her on my way to the parking area.

  May followed, silent as I performed my usual check of the backseat and unlocked the doors. She climbed into the passenger seat, shifting Spike into her lap. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. I’m just concerned.”

  “Don’t be. It’s not like my chronic migraine is going to kill us.”

  “Right.” She closed her eyes and pressed her hands against the dashboard, reciting, “There’s a man who lives a life of danger. To everyone he meets, he stays a stranger. With every move he makes, another chance he takes.” The smell of cotton candy and ashes filled the car.

  “‘Secret Agent Man’?” I asked, amused.

  May slumped back in her seat. “Not everyone shares your lousy taste in music.” She wrinkled her nose. “Ugh. Now I have your headache and my own.”

  May was pureblooded. If she was starting to get magic-burn, her condition was even more synchronized with mine than I’d thought. That wasn’t good.

  “You relax,” I said. “I’ll drive.”

  May nodded, slumping in her seat as I started the car. We drove in silence. It was close enough to rush hour that traffic was picking up; once we were on the freeway, most of my attention was taken with avoiding an accident. We made good time, but there were a few points—especially at the freeway interchange on the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge—where I was forced to drop to a crawl or pay the consequences. Going through the Caldecott Tunnel when none of the other drivers could see me is one of the most harrowing things I
’ve ever done of my own free will.

  There was only one other car in the parking lot when we arrived at Paso Nogal: a battered but serviceable silver Toyota that looked familiar enough to have been made before I wound up in the pond. Walther was standing next to it, attention on the small glass vial in his hand.

  I pulled up beside him and killed the engine. He didn’t look up. I glanced to May. “Okay. That’s a good spell.”

  Even May looked impressed. “I didn’t realize it was that good.”

  “Well, drop it. We need to talk to him.”

  “Right.” She clapped her hands, bobbing her head a la Barbara Eden. The spell burst like a soap bubble, leaving us visible to anyone who was looking.

  Like Walther. He jumped, nearly dropping the vial as he whipped around to face us. “Toby!”

  “It’s me,” I said, sliding out of the car. May followed. I gestured between them, saying, “May, Walther Davies. Walther, May Daye, my—”

  “Your roommate. You said. A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Daye.” May looked surprised but pleased as Walther tucked the vial into his pocket, turning his attention back to me. “I only got here a few minutes ago. Did you drive the whole way invisible?”

  “Yeah, we did. It’s faster. Sort of.” I took Spike from May, holding it toward Walther. “This is Spike.”

  “The rose goblin? Marcia mentioned things might get odd around you.” I gave him a quizzical look. He shrugged. “I asked her to fill me in on what to expect when I started working with you.” Quickly, he added, “You were right; it doesn’t look healthy.”

  I decided to let Walther’s digging into my background slide. I would have done the same thing in his shoes. “It was fine until Luna got sick.”

  “May I … ?” He reached for the goblin.

  “Be my guest.” I passed Spike to him, wincing as I saw how shallowly it was breathing. I wasn’t sure it actually needed to breathe—it was as much plant as animal—but that didn’t mean good things would happen if it stopped. May settled beside me, shifting her weight uneasily from foot to foot. I put a hand on her shoulder, and waited.

  Walther cradled Spike against his chest, listening to its breathing before putting a finger on its throat to test its pulse. Finally, he said, “This is a very sick goblin.”

  “We know. That’s why I want you to take soil samples here.”

  “Because of the connection between the Duchess and the goblins?”

  I nodded.

  To my surprise, he chuckled grimly as he passed Spike to May. “Faerie never fails to stay interesting, does it?”

  “Like a Chinese curse,” I said. “Let’s go find some roses.”

  We didn’t have to look for long. The bush was half-dead, its few surviving flowers liberally mottled with brown. I stopped. “Here’s one.”

  “Got it.” Walther pulled a spoon out of his pocket and knelt to dig around the roots of the bush. He stopped after only a few seconds, frowning. “That’s not right.”

  “What isn’t?” May asked.

  “The texture of this soil is all wrong.” He pulled a small jar from his coat pocket, dumping a spoonful of dirt inside. Then he uncapped the vial he’d been studying when we arrived, pouring its pale red contents into the jar. The resulting mixture fizzed and turned clear. Walther’s frown deepened.

  “I don’t like that look,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s no poison here. Something’s still not right.” Walther waved his hand over the jar, muttering in Welsh. The liquid turned gold and started fizzing again.

  “He’s weird,” said May. “If he pulls out a Bunsen burner, we’re leaving.”

  I bit back a smile. If she was feeling well enough to be snide, we were doing better than I’d thought. “He’s Tylwyth Teg,” I said, like that explained everything.

  Apparently it did, because May looked satisfied with that answer. Walther kept chanting as the liquid changed colors, finally settling on a glittering white.

  “Ah,” said Walther, and stood.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

  “Salt.” He held up the jar for my inspection.

  “What do you mean, ‘salt’?” I squinted at the jar like I expected his words to start making sense. “Isn’t there always salt in dirt?”

  “A little bit, but plants die if they get too much. This dirt has too much salt. Think of it as dosing a person with a little bit of arsenic at a time. It’s essentially slow murder.” He shook his head. “The only way to get rid of it is to leech it out, and the plant still might die if there’s enough damage.”

  “Leech it? How?” I demanded. The implications were sinking in. The damned drink was a red herring; the salt was our real culprit. There could be another poison involved, something to knock her out once she’d been weakened, but poisoning the roses would be enough to incapacitate her.

  “The soil needs to be flushed with water and treated with gypsum. Uh, that’s a mineral that pulls salt out of the ground.”

  “How fast can we do that?”

  “This isn’t something you can just snap your fingers and do. It takes time for the soil to recover, and that doesn’t take into account how long it’ll take the plant to get better.” He shook his head. “I might be able to speed things up, but it won’t be instantaneous. I’m a chemist, not a horticulturist.”

  I shrugged. “You’re all we have.”

  Walther paused. Then he held his hands out to May. “Give me the goblin.”

  She glanced to me. I nodded consent, and she reluctantly handed Spike over. Walther pulled it to his chest, cradling it as he reached into his pocket for another vial.

  “If this doesn’t work, there’s nothing else I can do,” he said, not looking up.

  “I understand,” I said.

  Prying Spike’s jaws open, Walther uncapped the vial and poured its smoky purple contents down the rose goblin’s throat. Spike went limp, and Walther began chanting in rapid Welsh.

  May grabbed my arm, hissing, “What’s he doing?”

  “Trying to save us.” I put my hand over hers. The air crackled with the scent of yarrow and the cold, bitter tang of ice as Walther’s human disguise started to waver, flickering around him like a bad special effect. That wasn’t a good sign. Everyone has their limits, and I didn’t know where Walther’s were.

  I stepped forward, putting my free hand on his shoulder to steady him as his chanting took on a more frantic pace. He flashed me a grateful look, finishing his chant with a string of repeated syllables. The magic shattered, and Walther sagged into my arms.

  Spike opened its eyes, making a small, bemused sound.

  “Spike!” cried May, rushing to embrace the rose goblin. It chirped and scrambled onto her shoulder, holding itself in place with three paws as it started grooming the fourth.

  I was occupied with keeping Walther from knocking us both over. He wasn’t a small man, and he was heavier than he looked. I wound up locking one knee and shoving, supporting him against my shoulder. “You okay in there?”

  “I’m fine,” he managed, trying to stand. “Ow. My head.”

  “Magic-burn. It’s not pleasant, but you get used to it.” I glanced at Spike. It looked perfectly normal. “What did you do?”

  “Something I shouldn’t have?” he said, rubbing his forehead as he managed to get his feet back underneath him. “I’d rather not get used to this, if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Seriously, what did you do?” If he’d cured Spike, he might be able to cure Luna.

  He must have guessed what I was thinking, because he shook his head, expression grave. “I pulled the salt out of its—sap, blood, whatever—and replaced it with gypsum.”

  “So you couldn’t do that for Luna,” I said, letting go of my fragile hope. Even I know that mammals need salt, and even if Luna was part-plant, she was still a mammal.

  “It would kill her,” he said. “As it is, I don’t know how long this ‘fix’ will last. The salt�
�s still in the soil. Your goblin’s probably going to get sick again.”

  “If we don’t fix this, you mean,” I said.

  “If you don’t fix this, a sick rose goblin is going to be the least of your problems.”

  “True enough.” Something rustled in the bushes, and two more thorny heads poked through the leaves. One had electric pink eyes; the other’s eyes were a mossy green. Rose goblins. I smiled. “Looks like your spell was more effective than you thought.”

  “That explains my headache,” he said, wincing again.

  “Toby gets those all the time,” said May, reaching up to pry a thorn out of her shoulder. Spike chirped, annoyed. “Usually after she does something stupid.”

  “I’m not normally this dumb,” he said wryly.

  May flashed a smile. “Toby inspires stupidity.”

  “Hey!” I protested, not really minding. Walther got dragged into things by Lily’s death, and May was involved as long as I was; if they could relax, even a little, more power to them. “I do not. Walther, are you safe to drive?”

  “I should be. I have some aspirin in the car.”

  “Good. I want you to head for Golden Gate Park. Find Tybalt; give him the antitoxin and tell him what to do with it. Get things started.”

  “Right.” He gave me a sidelong look. “And you?”

  “I’m going to send a message to Sylvester. I’ll meet you at the Tea Gardens in a little while.” Assuming I got out of Shadowed Hills alive.

  “Your wish is my command,” he said, and smiled, a trace of impish humor showing in the set of his jaw.

  “Good. Let’s get moving.” Spike rode on May’s shoulder as we walked back to the parking lot, watching with interest as our train of rose goblins increased. There were more than a dozen of them following us by the time we reached Walther’s car.

  “There’s something you don’t see every day,” I commented.

  Walther laughed. “Maybe you would if you gardened more.” He opened the car door. I suppressed the urge to tell him to check the backseat. “See you soon?”

  “Count on it.” He waved to May, then climbed into the car and drove away.

  “He’s nice,” May said, lifting Spike from her shoulder and putting it on the top of my car. “Weird, but nice. And what he did for Spike, I mean, that was really cool.”