“What he did for Luna, too,” I said. “This is the best lead we’ve had in a while.” I glanced toward the top of the hill and frowned.
May followed my gaze, asking, “Is it safe to go in?”
“No, probably not.” I looked away. “I should call. See if I can get Quentin to come out. I just wish … ”
“I know.” May put her hand on my shoulder.
The payphone at the edge of the parking lot rang. I jumped.
May laughed, starting toward it. “It’s just a phone. Relax.”
“May—”
“It’s just a phone.” She picked up the receiver, still half-laughing. “May Daye here.” Then she paused, going quiet.
“May?” I called. “May, are you okay?”
She turned and held the phone toward me, expression uncertain. “It’s for you.”
TWENTY-THREE
THE SCENE WAS STARTING TO ACQUIRE A strange, dreamlike quality, like it wasn’t really happening. I must have been poisoned again, I thought, as I walked over and took the phone. I wonder when that happened. “Hello?”
“I see you found the salt,” said Oleander. “I have to admit, you’ve impressed me. I heard about your little game with Blind Michael, but I thought it must have been dumb luck. When did you learn how to think?”
I dug the nails of my free hand into my bandaged palm. The pain was almost reassuring. “I’m not going to let you get to me. And you’re not getting near Luna ever again.”
“How were you planning to stop me? It’s brave of you to rattle your spears in my direction, but you don’t know where I am. You don’t even know whether you’re really talking to me. I could just be a dial tone.”
“May heard you.”
“Who’d believe the word of a Fetch? She’ll see you dead, you know.”
“You poisoned me.”
“So I did; three times now. You check your car so carefully, but you never wipe the handles on your door.” She sounded amused. “Did your little Tylwyth Teg tell you about my work? Meddler. He won’t be helping you anymore.”
“What did you do to Walther?” May’s eyes widened. I waved her back. “I swear, if you’ve touched any more of my friends—”
“You’ll what, whine me to death? ‘Oh, poor me, I’m poisoned, my friends are dying, I’m a fish, oh, I should die.’ ” Her voice dropped, becoming predatory. “Don’t worry about the last part. It’s going to be arranged.”
“Oleander—”
“Is it already time for the empty threats of violence? I thought you’d go slow with me. After all, I’m going slow with you.”
“Leave us alone!” I shouted, my pent-up anger boiling to the surface. Spike yowled, thorns rattling.
Oleander laughed. “Not likely; I have unfinished business with your ‘friends’—and with you.” The venom in her voice answered a question I’d almost forgotten: whatever she had against me was bigger than I could have earned on my own. What Karen showed me—the dream she sent me—really happened. It was the only explanation. “You’re taking the fall for this one.”
“You’re not getting away with this.” It was a cliché, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I already have. Checked on Luna recently? I understand she’s about to take a turn for the worse.” The phone went dead. Spike was still yowling, and the other rose goblins were picking up the cry, creating a chorus of chirps and snarls.
“Toby? What’s going on?”
I dropped the phone. “Oleander’s coming,” I said numbly. “We’re too late.”
“What are you—” May began, but I was already running for the hill. Answering her didn’t matter. What mattered was getting to Luna before Oleander did; what mattered was finding a way to haul this situation around to a happy ending before it ended all on its own. There was no time to think.
There was only time to run.
Spike raced ahead of me. It was all I could do to keep it in sight, scrabbling for balance whenever the loose dirt of the hillside rolled beneath my feet. I fell twice, catching myself on hands that felt more and more like ground hamburger. We were skipping the normal leisurely assault of the summit; this was a full-on siege, and for all I knew, we were already too late.
Spike keened, and more rose goblins flashed out of the trees, joining my escort. They covered the hill in a flood of thorny bodies, yowling as they charted the fastest path to the summit. It always helps to have native guides. We halved my best previous time, taking small paths and hidden shortcuts I’d never seen before. I was scratched and dirty when we reached the top, and blood was seeping through the bandages on my hands, but we were there. The rose goblins flashed through the pattern to unlock the knowe, darting over, under, around and through as they forced their way inside.
I wrenched the door in the oak open as soon as it appeared, racing inside with the rose goblins at my heels. The hall was still deserted. I skidded to a stop, looking down at the goblins that thronged around me. I’d never seen so many rose goblins before. “Find Luna,” I said, gasping for breath. “Find Luna, Spike.”
My goblin rattled its thorns and turned, taking off into the depths of the knowe. Its family followed, and I ran after them, struggling to keep up. My sneakers were coated in mud, and they found no purchase on the marble, slowing me down. The rose goblins stayed in front of me, keening their distress and doubling back when I fell too far behind. They knew that something was wrong.
I knew Shadowed Hills, but they knew it better, and they knew where Luna was. I followed, and prayed we weren’t already too late.
The rose goblins stopped at a filigreed silver gate set against what looked like a solid wall. I knew that gate; it was one of the gates people didn’t try to pass without an engraved invitation and possibly a formal escort. There were very few restricted areas in Shadowed Hills, and that meant it was best to respect the ones that existed. The enchantments used to lock the doors didn’t hurt, since they made it practically impossible to violate the restrictions by accident.
I’ve always done my best to serve Shadowed Hills, and I’ve always believed the knowe could understand that. It was time to test that theory. I kept running.
The brick dissolved just before I would have slammed into it, allowing me to stumble into the private quarters of the royal family of Shadowed Hills. I stopped to catch my breath, looking frantically around. The room I’d broken into was actually a small, carefully tended garden ringed with marble benches. Cobblestone paths circled a decorative fountain before branching out to mark the way to two smaller, freestanding versions of the silver gate. The sky overhead was pristine gold, studded with two small green moons—a Summerlands sky.
Connor was seated on the edge of the fountain with his head in his hands, letting the spray wash over him. “Connor!” I shouted.
His head jerked up, eyes widening. I’ll give him this: he didn’t waste time. I’d just burst into a place I wasn’t supposed to be, panting and trailed by a dozen or more rose goblins. He didn’t bat an eye as he stood, asking, “Toby? What’s wrong?”
“Where’s Luna?”
He must have seen something in my eyes that didn’t allow for debate. He pointed to the gate on the left, saying, “In her room with Sylvester and Jin. Are you okay? How did you get in?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I started down the path. I was suddenly, unspeakably tired, and I wanted nothing more than to call a five minute time-out and huddle in his arms. Sadly, not an option. “I have to go save your mother-in-law’s life.”
“What?” He stood, falling in behind me.
“Oleander’s on her way.”
Connor made a choked noise somewhere between a gasp and a seal’s startled bark. “That isn’t possible.”
“There isn’t time to explain,” I said, and froze as the leaves in the hedge behind him began rustling. The rose goblins keened a high, warning tone, alerting me to the danger I’d already spotted.
Sometimes speed is all that saves us. The world com
es down to action and reaction, physical science becoming all-too-physical reality. I was braced to run before the archer behind Connor finished standing. It was a man I didn’t recognize, tall, thin, and scarred, with ears like a bat’s. He was one of Faerie’s shock troops, nothing more, and it didn’t matter, because he was also the one holding the crossbow.
My knives were strapped to my waist; I’d never reach them before he had time to shoot. Fighting wasn’t an option, and with Connor standing between us, neither was running away. He’d try to save the day if I gave him the chance, and he’d fail. He wasn’t made to be a hero.
I was. “Connor, look out!” I dove forward and slammed my shoulder into his chest, forcing him to the ground. He made a small, startled sound as he fell, reminding me of the last time I tackled him, just a few years and the better part of a lifetime ago, in the darkness of Goldengreen.
The momentum of my leap dragged me down with him. I’d moved fast; Connor was down before he really realized what was going on. I didn’t move fast enough.
The first bolt hit my left shoulder, penetrating just below the scar tissue left by a long-dead assassin’s bullet. The arrowhead wedged against my collarbone, seemingly without encountering any resistance from my flesh. The second bolt hit lower, sinking even deeper before hitting bone. There was barely time to turn my head, see the shafts protruding from my shoulder, and realize I’d been hit. Then the world exploded in pain, like acid flowing into my blood.
I was on fire, I was being eaten alive, and it would never end. I’d never felt that kind of pain before, but I knew what it was: there’s only one thing in Faerie that hurts like that. And I finally knew how I was going to die.
Oberon wouldn’t stand for killing in his Kingdoms. Find another way or answer to me, he said. Pain without death became the way to fight—as much pain as you could manage without causing lasting harm. They were clever and cruel, those Firstborn, especially when they were waging war on each other. They set out to make something that could hurt without killing, and they succeeded. They created elf-shot, a weapon that caused crippling pain followed by a sleep so deep it could last for a hundred years. Sleeping Beauty didn’t prick her finger on a spinning wheel; she was shot by an angry sister who refused to live another day in her shadow. Elf-shot hurt the purebloods before it put them to sleep for a long, long time. As for changelings …
Humans were still something to hunt for sport when elf-shot was created, and Oberon’s law didn’t say anything about their lives. By the time anyone realized elf-shot was deadly to changelings, it was too late; the weapons had been made.
Devin was the one who warned me about elf-shot. It isn’t used much anymore—there are fewer compunctions about killing these days, with Oberon and the Queens showing no signs of coming back—but he told me what it looked like, what it would feel like, and that if I ever saw it, I should run. I was too close to human. I’d never wake up.
Connor pushed himself out from beneath me, eyes wide. He’d seen the arrows hit me. Even if they hadn’t been elf-shot, I would have been in trouble. As it was …
“Toby, are you all right?” He pulled me into a sitting position, leaning me against his chest. “Don’t die, please, don’t die. Guards! I need some guards over here!”
The pain was fading. It hit too hard to last for long; it was burning itself out, and it was taking me with it. Devin never told me that. He never told me that when sleep comes, the pain stops.
I tried to force a smile, looking at Connor through increasingly unfocused eyes. I’d just been elf-shot, and he was yelling for the guards? He’d have been better off yelling for someone to open the windows and let the night-haunts in. “I loved you, you know,” I murmured.
“I know. I always … Toby, please.” He moaned, but I couldn’t see his face; he was gone, faded into black as my eyes stopped working. That was too bad. I would’ve liked to look at him while I was dying, to take that sight with me into the dark.
The footsteps of the guards echoed like thunder as they ran toward us, and past us, without slowing down. Past us … what was wrong with that? Part of my mind was screaming, trying to break through the peaceful mist that was wiping out the pain. That part of me demanded action, motion, resistance from a body that wasn’t paying attention anymore. Why were they running past us? Why didn’t they stay? Connor called the guards because I was hurt. They should have stayed with us, not run toward Luna’s …
Luna.
Oh.
I went limp, turning toward the choked sound of Connor’s breathing. I could feel my human disguise burn away like fog in the sun as my magic deserted me. It didn’t matter. Not if the guards ran past us to the Duchess’ chambers. Not if I’d failed.
The darkness was almost complete. Part of me was still able to look at it analytically and say, “I’m going to die.” The rest of me just wanted to beat its fists against the walls and scream. For myself, for May and Luna, and for Sylvester, because damn me forever, I’d failed him again.
“Connor … ” I whispered. “Connor, the Duch … ” And then my body, which had seen me through fire, iron, and Firstborn, finally betrayed me. I could still hear Connor crying, and the keening of the rose goblins, but even that faded, and there was nothing but the black. And then even that was gone, and I was gone with it, and I was glad.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE MOON WAS A CRESCENT in the midnight sky, the kind of moon my father used to call a “smile without a cat.” Cheshire cat moon. I stared up through the window, barely daring to breathe. I knew that moon. Not the phase, not the general shape; that exact moon. Time runs differently in the Summerlands, but the memory of that moon followed me for years, through days when the sun never rose and the stars never set. That was the moon that watched my father read me my last bedtime story, tuck me in for the last time, and give me my last kiss good night.
The fae came for me the next day, interrupting my tea party to offer me the only choice that was fully mine to make. Human or changeling-child? Was I theirs, with their pointed ears and illusions, or was I my father’s, with his easy smile and human concerns? I only got one opportunity to make my choice. In all the years that followed that night, I never knew whether I chose correctly, and I never forgot that moon.
I was tucked into bed. I pushed back the covers and sat up, unsurprised to realize that I was apparently a child of seven. My hair, which stayed baby-fine and impossibly easy to tangle until I was twelve, was braided to keep it from getting hopelessly snarled in the night. The lace cuffs of a flannel nightgown too new to be yet worn soft bit into my wrists. I knew where I was. This was what I left behind, once upon a time.
“Karen?” I called. “I appreciate the impulse to make the whole ‘dying’ thing easier, but this isn’t funny, kiddo.” There was no reply.
I climbed out of the bed, noticing as I did that my favorite doll—a felt Peter Pan made by my mortal grandmother—was on the pillow. Moving in a body I’d outgrown so long ago was strange, but my memory would have known the way even if the Luidaeg hadn’t forced me into a literal second childhood not long ago. Best of all, there was no pain. Blessedly, wonderfully, there was no pain.
The room was small and cheery, filled with familiar toys my mind insisted on viewing as old-fashioned; the trappings of my childhood. The walls were painted yellow, and braided rag rugs softened the floor. It took me a long time to realize what I gave up when I left that room behind me, but I cried for my toys from the day I lost them. They were the only mortal things I had the sense to miss.
“Hello, October,” said a voice from behind me.
I sighed. Not Karen; nothing as merciful as a niece trying to ease the pain. “Hello, Mother,” I said, and turned to face her.
She was standing next to the bed, just like she used to before everything went wrong, back in the days when she’d tell me stories, kiss my forehead, and tell me to sleep tight. This was the Amandine I knew before the Summerlands: perfectly coiffed white-gold hair, makeup done just so, j
ewelry chosen with a care that implied she might be graded later. She looked like my mother when she still was my mother, not just a lady I happened to be related to, one who tolerated my living in her house.
She wasn’t wearing a human disguise—she usually didn’t when we were alone—and her impossible beauty was entirely out-of-place against her blue cotton dress and sensible shoes. Offering a small smile, she said, “Hello, my darling girl.”
“Quick question before you start with the crazy—are you real, or a really lousy dream?” I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to hug her or hit her. Amandine has a gift for making me feel that way.
“I’m afraid that’s up to you.”
“Of course it is.” I sighed. “Where are we?”
“We’re … waiting.” She looked at me sadly. “I tried to spare you when I could, but I wasn’t fast enough.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s time to make a choice, October. More importantly, it’s time for you to choose. I won’t force you one way or the other.” Her lips drew down in a small grimace. “No one can. Not anymore.”
“You’d think I might hallucinate something more pleasant than a lecture from you, you know,” I said. “Tybalt in those leather pants would be a nice start.”
“What makes you think you’re hallucinating?”
She had me there. “I got hit with elf-shot. Pretty sure that’s fatal, and since you’re not Karen, pretty sure this isn’t real.”
“Reality aside, do you want it to be fatal? Are you ready to go?”
It was sort of funny. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about death—it’s hard not to when you spend so much time either running toward or away from it—but I’d never considered whether I’d be ready when it came. “Not really. But I don’t think I have much of a choice.”
Amandine shook her head. The air around her seemed to freeze, catching the beams of the Cheshire cat moon and holding them suspended in a sphere of slowly expanding unreality. “This is the choice. You’ve made it at least three times, even when I tried to stop you, but the only time you admit to is the one that happened the day after you saw this moon for the first time. Remember?”
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