“I thought you could use a little help.” My eyes flicked to the officer and then back to her. “What’s going on?”
“It’s been long enough since Chelsea disappeared that I can file a credible missing persons report,” said Bridget.
There are times when I think I’ll never understand the human world. Maybe if I’d grown up as a part of it, but now…there’s no way. In Faerie, if a child disappears, you don’t wait forty-eight hours before you move. You go out and you get them back, unless they’ve been taken by something too powerful for you to defeat. And that doesn’t happen often these days.
“What?” asked Quentin, sounding honestly confused.
“Oh,” I said, surreptitiously nudging him with my elbow. He stopped talking. Good squire. “So she’s not sleeping over at Brittany’s house?”
Bridget shook her head. “No, she’s not.”
The officer didn’t ask who Brittany was. It’s a common enough name that it was safe to assume every girl in America knew at least one “Brittany” well enough to sleep over at her house.
“Damn,” I said.
“My thoughts exactly.” She placed a hand on the officer’s arm. “Can we finish taking my statement, Officer Daugherty? October’s been a great comfort to me.” Bridget didn’t blink or hesitate as she lied to the policeman; she kept her eyes on his the whole time, and her tone was steady. She must have been thinking of her excuse since they showed up on her doorstep.
“We can wait on the porch,” I offered.
Bridget shot me a relieved look. Officer Daugherty slowly nodded.
“If your friends don’t mind waiting, I believe we’re just about done.”
“Thank you.” Bridget took her hand off the officer’s arm, turning to me. “I won’t be a minute,” she said.
“Okay,” I replied.
Officer Daugherty didn’t say anything. But he closed the door before he turned away.
Quentin and I retreated to the edge of the porch, sitting down on the low stone wall that separated it from the rest of the yard. “Why did she call the m—” He paused, catching the word “mortal” before it could quite escape his lips.
“Kids can’t just disappear anymore; people notice,” I said, pitching my voice low enough that they wouldn’t be able to hear me inside. “One of Chelsea’s friends probably called them as soon as she went missing. It just took until now for them to take the report seriously.”
Quentin frowned again, clearly not understanding the situation. That was okay. I wasn’t sure I understood it myself. I just knew enough about mortal police work to know that this was all according to procedure.
There are times I really wish I’d joined the police force. I would have access to better materials, more backup, and a hell of a lot more forensic training. Then I realize I’d also be bound by rules like the ones that kept these officers from showing up until Chelsea had been gone for more than a day. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to handle that.
About ten minutes passed before the front door opened and Officer Daugherty emerged, followed by a black-haired female officer. They nodded politely as they passed, but that was the extent of their interaction; either Bridget had managed to really sell the idea that we were friends of hers, or they still weren’t treating Chelsea’s disappearance as a kidnapping. That was probably for the best, at least for them. There was no way they’d be able to follow her into Faerie. Not if they wanted to walk away from this case alive and reasonably sane.
Bridget appeared in the doorway a few seconds later. She beckoned us into the house. Once we were inside, she shut the door and demanded, “What are you doing here?”
“What were the police doing here?” I countered. “We said we’d help.”
“I called them when I was still trying to believe the faeries hadn’t come and carried my little girl away,” she said, glaring at me. “I couldn’t stop them coming in when they finally deigned to show up.”
I took a deep breath, counting to ten before I said, “Okay. I’m sorry they took so long.”
“I’m sorry you took so long!”
Counting to ten wasn’t going to be enough. I was actually grateful when Quentin stepped up next to me, scowling at her, and said, “We had to make sure we could catch Chelsea when we managed to find her. Unless you just wanted us to wave while she went teleporting by? Because we could do that, I guess.”
“Your parents aren’t going to thank me for what I’ve done to your manners,” I informed Quentin, not bothering to hide my amusement. Finally calm enough to turn back to Bridget, I said, “Look. We are doing the best we can. We are calling in every favor and every ally that stands even the slightest chance of helping us out here. But we’re not miracle workers.”
“Then what’s the point of being magical creatures?” asked Bridget, still glaring.
“We get a discount at Starbucks,” I said. “We’re going to find your daughter, Bridget. You need to start believing that, and you need to tell me exactly what she said when she called.”
“She said she was in Seattle.”
Sweet Oberon preserve me from the blindness of mortals. “Yes,” I said. “You told us that. But what, exactly, did she say?”
Bridget took a shaky breath, clearly forcing herself to calm down. Then: “She said she was in Seattle—Seattle, Washington—and she’d managed to get away, but only by going as far as she could in one jump.” There was a quaver in her voice. I couldn’t blame her for that. “She said they were chasing her—”
“Did she say anything about who ‘they’ were?”
“Just that there was more than one person. Not all of them can chase her—that’s how she was able to get away at all. They thought she was asleep and left her with people who couldn’t follow when she opened a door.” Bridget gave me a stricken look. “How many of you are there? I thought Faerie was fading.”
“Sometimes I want to shake J. R. R. Tolkien for that one,” I said. “Faerie never ‘faded.’ That was something Middle Earthy. The citizens of Faerie just got tired of being used for our pots of gold and magic shoes. We disappeared for our own good. There are more of us than you think.” Not as many as there used to be but, from the look on Bridget’s face, a lot more than she was comfortable with.
“So you can take our children whenever you want, and there’s nothing we can do to stop you?”
I took a breath. “I’m going to skip the part where you never told Etienne you were pregnant—which was sort of you taking his chance to be a father away, the way you’ve been afraid Faerie would take your chance to be a mother—and go straight to saying no, there’s not. There never has been. Some fae befriend the mortals; some play tricks on them for fun. Some of us steal children. Some of us get them back. Now, please. Did she say anything else? Anything she might have seen, or smelled…?” Chelsea wasn’t accustomed to being around other fae. The scent of their magic wouldn’t be background noise to her yet.
“She said she was scared.” Bridget straightened. She was still glaring at me. I was starting to think of that as her default expression. “My little girl is scared. If you’re not going to bring her home to me, what good are you?”
The fact that I was being lectured by an angry human woman who’d already hidden a changeling from her fae parent once wasn’t escaping me. I just didn’t know what I could do about it. I looked at Bridget as calmly as I could and said, “If you have information, call. We’ll do whatever we can to be sure that Chelsea is found safely, but we’re not here for you to abuse.”
“Don’t challenge me, Fair One,” she said sharply.
I sighed. “I’ll challenge you all I want. What are you going to do, call the police and tell them the faeries took your kid? You’ll wind up under psychiatric evaluation, and Chelsea will still be missing.”
“I can tell the police you took her.”
The threat was made with absolute calm. I had to pause, considering the nerve it took for her to stand in her living room, with no one to
save her if she screamed, and threaten me. She didn’t know what Quentin and I were capable of. All she knew was that we weren’t human. And that didn’t change the part where she was threatening me. One unfortunate downside of my continuing involvement in the mortal world: I’m actually vulnerable to threats in a way that, say, Tybalt isn’t. If the police wanted to come for me, they knew where I lived.
Quentin started to open his mouth. I signaled him to stop before he could say something we’d both regret. Instead, I said, “You could do that. Hell, they might even pick me up, make my life difficult for a few hours. But since there’s nothing to tie me to Chelsea before she disappeared, they won’t be able to hold me. All you’ll manage to do is endanger her further by taking me away from my work and guarantee that when I do find her, I won’t be feeling that charitably toward you. Is that really how you want this to go?”
Bridget’s face fell, bravado dissolving as she started to cry. “I just want my daughter back,” she said. “Please. Please, get me my daughter back.”
I sighed. “I’ve already told you I’ll do what I can. That’s all I can do. And you need to stop treating me like the enemy, okay?”
Mutely, Bridget nodded.
It was hard not to feel bad for her. When I played faerie bride, I always knew my child might not be human enough for the mortal world. The threat of a lifetime spent in the Summerlands was something I considered, seriously, before I slept with Cliff. Bridget didn’t have that. She thought she was going to have her child forever, and once she realized there was a risk—once she realized Chelsea wasn’t human—she took the steps she thought she needed to take in order to protect her daughter.
Reaching a hand into my pocket, I produced the jar of power dampener. “This is why we came. If Chelsea teleports home, dump this on her. It will nullify her powers temporarily—long enough for you to call me and let me come to make things right.”
“It stops fae magic?” asked Bridget, a new light in her eyes as she reached for the jar.
I didn’t give it to her. “Let’s be clear about this. You have one shot. One. If you don’t take it, if Chelsea comes here and you’ve used this stuff for something other than stopping her, you will never see your daughter again. Do you understand? This isn’t a tool you can use to get your revenge. This is a way to save your little girl.”
The light went out again. Bridget nodded. “I understand.”
“Good. Don’t make me regret this.” I placed the jar in her hand before I turned to Quentin. “Let’s go. Bridget, we’ll call you if we learn anything. Until then, don’t do anything stupid.” I paused, a thought occurring to me. “Have you warded your house against the fae? You know, with things like your frying pan?”
“Yes, I have,” said Bridget. “Wouldn’t you?”
“Probably, but you need to take it all down. If there’s any chance you’ve hit on something that works, it’s going to keep Chelsea from letting herself in, and that’s the opposite of what we want.”
“I will,” she said.
“Good. Oh, and Bridget?” Quentin looked at me, bemused. I kept my eyes on Bridget. “If Chelsea comes back, call me. Don’t try to run. We’ll find you. I’m sorry, but you can’t hide anymore. It’s time to deal with all the things you were running away from in the first place.”
I didn’t wait to hear what she would say to that. I simply turned to the door, gesturing for Quentin to follow me, and stepped out into the cool air of the Berkeley morning. Our charms were attuned; Raj was missing; and somewhere, a group of people were working together to keep a changeling girl captive. It was time for us to find out exactly why.
TWELVE
“GET YOUR CHELSEA-CHASER OUT,” I said, once Quentin and I were safely in the car. “The Luidaeg said they’d lead us to her. Let’s see if we can figure out how that’s going to work.”
“Raj—”
“We’ll find him. Chelsea’s the one who might destroy Faerie, so we’ll find her first.”
Quentin nodded. “Okay.” He dug a hand into his pocket, pulling out the charm. He frowned at it. “Is it supposed to do something? It’s just glowing.”
“I don’t know. The Luidaeg didn’t give me the instruction booklet. Shake it or something, see what it does.”
“Shake it?” Quentin looked at me as if I’d just grown a second head before shrugging and shaking the sphere. It went from white to foxfire green. Then, with a chime like bells, it turned bright red and jerked toward the windshield, dragging Quentin’s hand with it. His seat belt pulled him up short before the charm could slam itself—or my squire—into the glass.
“O-kay, that’s new,” I said. “Which way does it want us to go?”
“That way.” Quentin pointed with his free hand. “It wants us to go that way.”
“I love really specific navigation charms,” I said, and started the engine.
The Luidaeg’s charm led us along surface streets to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, where we had to slow down to account for the increase in traffic. It kept on glowing as we took the entrance to I-880, heading toward the South Bay. I frowned. “Quentin?”
“Yeah?”
“Here.” I tossed him my phone. “Call April. I want you to ask whether she’s noticed anything unusual in the last couple of days. Weird lights where they’re not supposed to be, unfamiliar magical signatures, stuff like that.”
Quentin blinked. “You think we’re going to Tamed Lightning?”
I indicated the highway with a wave of my hand. “It’s starting to look that way.”
“Huh,” he said, and dialed.
The County of Tamed Lightning is located in the mortal city of Fremont. Like many more recently founded fiefdoms, they don’t have a proper knowe; instead, their holdings are consolidated in a shallowing, which also serves as the corporate headquarters for their software design company. It’s a County filled with crazy idealists, and they’re weird even by the most generous of Faerie standards. I met them when they had a small serial killer problem, one that got their former Countess—Sylvester’s niece, January—killed. Her adopted daughter, April, took over, and has been running the whole mess ever since.
It probably says something about me that I find dealing with April O’Leary soothing. She’s the only one of her kind in Faerie, and she thinks most of the traditions and rituals that control the other purebloods are ridiculous. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone look you in the eye and tell you that no, it doesn’t matter whether you say “thank you” or not; it matters whether you remember to pay the DSL bill. Really, I like just about everyone at Tamed Lightning, even Alex, despite the fact that he once used his Gean-Cannah fascination powers to seduce me.
My relationships are complicated, even when they’re with people I think of as allies.
Quentin lowered the phone. The Luidaeg’s charm was still glowing red. “April says things have been moving around when no one was looking for the last several days, and she wants to know how we knew. She also says they’ll set up two of the employee break rooms for us, in case we need a place to crash.”
“Last time we slept there, you got kidnapped and nearly thrown off a catwalk. Oh, and shot. We mustn’t forget the part where you got shot.”
“Yeah, but they had really good donuts, so I guess it balances out.”
I snorted laughter. My stomach grumbled, reminding me that while Quentin might have had breakfast, I still hadn’t. “Donuts would be awesome right about now. I’ll hit a drive-through as soon as that thing takes us off the freeway.”
Quentin looked at the glowing charm. “Do you think this thing will lead us to Raj, too?”
I hate lying to him. I try not to do it when I have any other choice. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m hoping so. If not, it should lead us to Chelsea, and that means we’ll be able to get her to help us figure out where he wound up.” I took my eyes of the road long enough to shoot him a reassuring glance. “I’m sure he’s fine. Raj is tough, and he managed to get away from B
lind Michael without my help. He’s not going to let a little unexpected teleportation throw him.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“So do I,” I said. I started to look back to the road, and paused, the rearview mirror catching my eye. I frowned. “Quentin? That car behind us. How long has it been there?”
880 between Berkeley and Fremont is always a mess. Most people change lanes frequently, trying to win those few extra seconds. All of them were behaving normally…except for the neutral-looking white sedan following us at the exact recommended legal distance. He’d been there long enough that he should have passed me, or at least changed lanes when he realized I was never going to speed up. Instead, he was just tooling along down the road, following at an unvarying distance.
“I don’t know.” Quentin looked at the rearview mirror rather than twisting in his seat. I was proud of him in that moment. There was a time when he would have turned his whole body around, telling our tail—if it was a tail—that we suspected we were being followed. “Want me to cast a don’t-look-here on the car?”
“Too risky. If he is following us, he’s going to notice us vanishing, and we don’t know if he’s human or not. Do you think you can manage a hide-and-seek?” Hide-and-seek spells are what come after the don’t-look-here in the arsenal of magic aimed at hiding in plain sight. They’re a bitch to cast, but when they work, they’re almost impossible to notice.
I can cast hide-and-seek spells if I have to, but they take a lot out of me, and they’re not the sort of magic you should attempt while driving. Quentin, on the other hand, is Daoine Sidhe. The spell would be easier for him, and there wasn’t the additional risk of him losing control of the car. With a hide-and-seek, anyone who was looking at the car would continue to see it…right up until they lost sight of us for some reason. It didn’t matter if they looked away or we went around a curve, the end result would be the same: we’d vanish, and we wouldn’t be visible to them again until the spell was broken. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but if we were actually being followed, it was better than leading our pursuer straight to Tamed Lightning.
Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel Page 14