Her brother tensed, but didn’t move to help her. Clever boy. “That’s right, I am a crazy bitch,” I said, tightening my grip. “Maybe we should start over. My name’s October Daye. Does that ring any bells?”
Her eyes widened. “Uh . . .” she said, in a voice that was suddenly much softer, and almost devoid of an accent. “Daye? Like the fish lady?”
“Yes, very much like the ‘fish lady.’ Exactly like the ‘fish lady,’ actually. Do you know what happens when you mess with someone who’s known your boss as long as I have? I worked for him before you were born. Do you think he’ll like hearing how much trouble I had getting in?” She paled, trying to yank away. I almost felt sorry for her—almost—but when you’ve just been dragged back into fae politics against your will, been cursed, and lost a friend all in one night, “sorry” isn’t high on your list of priorities. “I don’t think you’d enjoy his reaction. What’s your name?”
“Dare, ma’am, my name’s Dare,” she said, stumbling over her own words. She looked like she’d just stepped outside to find Godzilla on the lawn. I wasn’t sure which worried me more—that I’d made her look that way, or that I was enjoying it.
“Well, Dare, I have an idea,” I said, and released her arm. She backed out of reach. “You go tell Devin that I’m here, and I’ll forget about this little chat. Do you like that idea?” She nodded rapidly. I smiled. “Good. Run along, then. Shoo.”
She turned and ran for the back of the room, leaving a trail of glitter in the air behind her. It dissolved as it drifted toward the ground. I raised my eyebrows. Pixie-sweat. Some of Devin’s new flunkies had one of the pixie breeds in the woodpile; that was interesting. The Small Folk don’t interbreed much with humans, and their blood tends to run thin when they do. When you combined that with the Tylwyth Teg blood indicated by their hair and eyes, well, somebody in the family tree sure got around.
I breathed in quickly, “tasting” the wake of her departure against the innate knowledge of the fae races that I inherited from my mother. She tasted of Piskie. That made more sense; they were size-changers, after all, as well as being natural thieves, which would naturally have drawn their descendants to a place like Devin’s.
The brother was watching me, expression caught somewhere between awe and terror. I quirked a brow. “Yes?”
He flinched. I found that strangely satisfying. I guess having people die doesn’t bring out the best in me. “You’re October Daye,” he said. His voice was more lightly accented than his sister’s, reinforcing the idea that she was exaggerating for effect.
“Yes,” I said, resisting the urge to add anything else. Considering the look he was giving me, he might turn and run. That would upset Devin, and I didn’t need Devin mad when I was already in his domain uninvited, looking for favors.
“You knew the Winterrose,” the boy said, in an almost mournful tone.
I paused, reappraising him. He was taller than I was, with that thin, lanky teenage build that always seems to fill out while you aren’t watching. Overall, he looked like a movie producer’s idea of a street thug—too clean, with unnaturally golden hair bundled into a rough ponytail and his too-green eyes softened by an almost puppy dog expression. Only the pointed ears broke the image, making it seem more like he’d escaped from a game of Dungeons & Dragons than from the set of the latest teen drama. I wouldn’t have put him at more than sixteen, maybe seventeen, if you stretched the truth and squinted. “What’s your name, kid?”
He blushed under my scrutiny, but managed not to squirm as he said, “Manuel.”
“Is Dare your sister?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking embarrassed. Almost against my will, I found myself warming to him. “I’m sorry about how she talked to you. Sometimes she doesn’t do too well with people who aren’t . . . who aren’t from around here.”
“People who aren’t family” was what he meant, but I could tell he wouldn’t say it to my face. I upgraded my opinion of his intelligence a few notches, saying, “It’s not a big deal; I used to live here, and I’ve had more punks talk down to me than I can count.” He colored again, trying not to glare. The kid got points for that: even if your sister’s a brat, you should stand up for her. “Relax, okay? I said I wouldn’t tell Devin, and I meant it. She doesn’t deserve that sort of trouble just for mouthing off.”
Manuel smiled, and I smiled back automatically. He was going to be a heartbreaker when he finished growing up. “Th-that’s very kind, Ms. Daye.” Oh, he was young: I could hear the hastily avoided “thank you” in his stutter. It takes a while for certain rules to become instinctive, especially for changelings. We’re not born to them, and our mortal parents tend to drill basic manners into us long before the Choice rolls around.
I shrugged. “It’s not a problem. I screwed up, too, when I was her age, and if folks hadn’t been willing to give me a break once in a while, I’d be long gone.” I paused, choosing my words carefully before I continued. “You said that I ‘knew the Winterrose’ . . . who did you mean?” Silently, I added, And how did you know she was dead, kid?
“Countess Winterrose.” He brushed his hair out of his eyes with the back of one hand. “You’ve heard, right?” He sounded nervous again: he didn’t want to be the one who told me I’d just lost a friend. Or maybe he just didn’t want me to keep asking him questions.
“Yes. I’ve heard.” How did this kid know Evening? She would never have come this far into the changeling slums fourteen years ago. Then again, even purebloods can change. It just takes them time; maybe a decade and a half was long enough.
“I’m sorry.”
“Join the club. How did you find out she was dead?” The words were out, cold and flat between us.
To his credit, he met my eyes as he said, “News travels fast. A Glastig that lives in her building told us—Bucer O’Malley? He saw the police going into her apartment. He listened long enough to find out what was going on and he came here and told us.”
“Bucer lived in her building? How the hell did he afford—never mind. It’s not important.” I remembered Bucer. He was never one of Devin’s kids, but he’d done piecework for Devin from time to time. If he thought there was a profit in it, he would’ve carried the news of Evening’s death Home as fast as he could. “Do you know where he was going from here?”
“To the Queen’s Court, he said. To tell her.”
I grimaced. “Lovely.” That was one lead down: after he’d spoken to the Queen, there was no way Bucer would speak to me.
Manuel frowned. “If you haven’t seen Bucer, how did you . . . ?”
“I just know. All right?” I knew it all: every little detail, from the way it felt when the blood started filling her lungs to the bite of iron against her skin. I knew everything except for who did it, and that was the thing I needed to know more than anything else.
“I’m sorry,” said Manuel. “I should’ve known you’d know. They always know up there.” Up there. So they were still using that charming euphemism for the pureblood holdings in the city, were they? I hadn’t liked it when I was living in the changeling slums, and now that I was doing my best to abandon fae society altogether, I still didn’t like it. It’s not hard to marginalize people when they’ve already done it to themselves.
I came back from pondering that reminder of my roots just in time to hear him finish, “... but she was good to us, and we’ll miss her. We’ll always miss her.”
My dislike of his language slipped into my tone, making me sound harsher than I intended when I said, “We’re talking about the same Evening here, right? Daoine Sidhe, dark hair, didn’t give a damn about anything she didn’t own?”
That seemed to galvanize him. He straightened, eyes narrowing to slits. Insulting Evening was apparently worse than insulting his sister, and I once again found myself doing some rapid rethinking about someone I thought I knew. What could Evening have done to inspire that reaction in a back-street changeling kid who probably hadn’t seen the inside of a school sin
ce he was eight?
“The Winterrose was a friend of the boss. She did many things for us here . . . ma’am.” He used “ma’am” like it was a dirty word. Only the barest of margins saved it from being an insult, and that gap was shrinking.
“Cool it, Manuel,” I said, raising my hands. “I didn’t mean to piss you off. Evening and I were friends for a long time, even if we didn’t always act like it. I’m going to find out who killed her, and they’re going to pay.”
The anger in his eyes faded, soothed by the promise of revenge. “I just wish we’d known sooner. If someone had told us . . . we could’ve saved her.” He sounded so sure of himself, secure in his misplaced faith. Part of me wanted to shake him, but the rest of me wanted to swaddle him in cotton and hide him somewhere where the world would never take that faith away from him. The world isn’t a nice place—ask anyone.
Ask Evening.
“It wouldn’t have done any good,” I said. I hated myself for the words, but I wasn’t willing to lie to him, not even by omission. Not about this. “We couldn’t have saved her.”
“We could have kept her alive, gotten her to someone . . .”
“She was killed with iron.”
He froze. “Iron?”
“Yes, iron. We couldn’t have saved her.” The sound of the door opening saved me from his response, and I turned, painfully glad for the distraction. Maybe he was going to grow up someday; that didn’t mean I needed to watch.
Dare stood in the doorframe, trying to look cocky and unconcerned. She was failing. Maybe it was the red welt on her cheek that spoiled the effect, already darkening around the edges toward the bruise it would become. “The boss-man says he’ll see you now, but you better hurry if you want him to keep on waiting.” There was a panicky look in her eyes: those were Devin’s words, not hers, and she expected to be the one that got punished for them. The old bastard never changed.
Maybe that’s why I loved him for so long.
“Great,” I said, and stood, pushing past her into the back hall. The door swung shut behind me, but not fast enough to keep me from hearing Manuel start to cry. Damn it.
He would have found out eventually: if he had been Evening’s pawn, someone else was bound to grab him and keep using him in the great chess game of faerie society. Any piece, however small, is too valuable to be allowed to just walk away. Hope isn’t always an easy thing in Faerie, but I wished him what hope I could—that he would find his feet before the world found him, and that his new master would be as kind as his old one. Evening was a lot of things, but she was never cruel, not even to her puppets. Her hands were always gentle on my strings.
SEVEN
THE HALL WAS THICK WITH stale cigarette smoke, and the walls were lined with tattered concert posters. The irregularly-spaced lights didn’t so much dispel the darkness as displace it, forcing it back into the corners. The dim light and low ceiling combined to keep even fae eyes from seeing what was really underfoot. I stepped on something that squished under the heel of my shoe and grimaced. Maybe the limited visibility was a good thing.
Only one of the hall’s four doors was labeled. The doors on the left led to the bathrooms, while the first door on the right led to the broom closet. The three were identical in everything but position, and it was always fun to watch a new kid trying to figure out which he needed. Some of them always got it wrong, but that’s the way life works; you grab a door at random and hope it’s the one you want, especially if your business won’t wait.
There was a sign on the fourth door, marking it for the sake of folks who didn’t feel quite as adventurous, or maybe for the ones who wanted to play a more dangerous game. It was just a piece of tattered cardboard, with the word “Manager” scrawled in black marker. Someone had written “is a serious bastard” underneath, in crayon. Both statements were accurate, in their own ways: Devin was in charge, yes, and he was also someone you didn’t want pissed off at you. His temper was legendary, and he rarely gave second chances. He was also the first man I’d ever loved, and now that I was Home, I was starting to realize how much I’d missed him, even after everything we did to each other. I should have come to see him before there was blood between us to force my hand. Maybe we would both have been happier if I had. My eyes on the sign, I raised my hand and knocked.
“Come in,” called Devin, in the sort of rich, melodious tenor that makes teenage girls preen and swoon. I’d heard it before, of course, but that didn’t stop the hairs on the back of my neck from standing on end as I turned the knob and stepped through.
Devin’s office was lit by a dozen lamps that threw the grimy walls and aging furnishings into sharp relief. It wasn’t flattering, but it also wasn’t an illusion—he showed you what you were getting, right up front. I had to respect him for that, even as it worried me a little. Most purebloods are obsessed with light, immortal moths chasing mortal flames. They can see perfectly well without it, unlike humans or changelings; they want it anyway. Maybe the attraction is in the uselessness. Devin wasn’t a pureblood, but that didn’t stop him from following the light. I’d never been able to figure out why.
Devin himself was behind the desk, half reclining in his chair. I stopped in the doorway, just looking at him, trying to breathe.
You’d never guess by looking at us that Devin had more than a hundred years on me; he was a changeling, but his blood was stronger than mine, and the years had been more than kind. Everyone’s born to fill a certain role in life. Devin was born to rule his own private Neverland, and he came almost supernaturally well-prepared for the part. His hair was a dark, wavy gold that made my fingers ache to run through it, and his face would have been better suited to a Greek god. Only his eyes betrayed his inhumanity—dark purple crossed with white starburst patterns, like flower petals. You could fall into the crossed and counter-crossed flower-petal darkness of his eyes if you looked into them for too long, finding out what he really was even as you lost track of yourself.
No matter how hard I tried to taste the balance of his blood, I never figured it out, and he never told me. I always suspected that there was Lamia somewhere in his background; the serpent-women have been known to slow their dances long enough to love human men and it’s not impossible that there could be children. Stranger things have happened in Faerie. It would have explained the way he sometimes seemed to look deeper with those eyes of his than anyone had any right to look.
He raised his head, a smile lighting his features as he met my eyes. With a small pang, I realized that he was genuinely glad to see me. “Toby!” he said. “You finally decided to come home. I was starting to worry. I didn’t think you’d stay away this long.” He paused, and smirked before adding, “Nice dress.”
“I was a little busy being enchanted and abandoned . . . and please, for Oberon’s sake, don’t mention the dress.” I dropped myself into the chair in front of his desk. It groaned under my weight. Keeping my eyes on his face, I asked the most neutral question I could. “How are you?”
Devin sobered, frowning. “Better than you, from what I hear. Toby, what happened? Why didn’t you come back? I would have let you come back. You’re always welcome here.”
“You know why I couldn’t,” I said, glancing down. “Do we really have to go over this again?”
“Maybe if we do, we’ll finally get past it.”
I took a deep breath, words catching in my throat. Twice. I saw Devin twice after I left Home for Sylvester’s Court. The first time was cold and bitter, but it was a natural end; he knew better than to challenge Sylvester’s claim on me. The second was the day I came looking for Julie and found him in the front room, waiting for me. He grabbed my arm and asked if the rumors were true—if I was really pregnant with my human lover’s child. And I told him I was.
That was the beginning of the biggest fight we ever had. I’m sure the kids still talk about it in the hushed tones usually reserved for natural disasters. We screamed, we ranted, we threw things at one another’s heads, and in t
he end, he let me go, but not without extracting one last promise in payment for the favors he’d done for me: I wouldn’t marry Cliff until Gillian was thirteen years old. She was only a quarter-blood, and if she hadn’t been forced to make the Changeling’s Choice by then, she probably wouldn’t have to. Until then, for her sake, he wanted me to be ready to walk away. I laughed in his face and told him I’d send him a wedding invitation. I’m sure he wasn’t surprised when it never came.
Finally, head still bowed, I whispered, “I didn’t even get to see her thirteenth birthday.”
“But that’s not why you’re here today.”
“No.” He was backing off, showing mercy. For once, I decided to take it. “It’s not.”
Raising my head, I looked around the room. All the same furniture was there, although the old brown couch had a larger dip in the middle now, and the same stains were on the wallpaper; even the dent by the door was still there, marking the spot where Julie tried to shove Mitch through the wall for making a crack about her latest boyfriend. I cleared my throat. “The place hasn’t changed.”
“I didn’t want it to.”
I looked at him, arching one eyebrow. “I thought change was your hobby.”
“Not here. Never here.” He shrugged, and for a moment I could see how old he really was. All the years were in his eyes. “Why didn’t you come before now? We were thrilled when we found out that you weren’t dead. We could have helped. I could have helped. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Why? So you could remind me how stupid I was to leave? How you always knew the purebloods would just use me? I’m sorry, but I’ve never been real fond of paying for my abuse. Most people are willing to hurt me for nothing.” I was lashing out. I knew it, and I didn’t care. Evening was dead, the life I’d worked so hard to build was gone, and Home . . . Home was still where I stopped, and all the old ghosts were waiting. It wasn’t fair.
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