A Killing Frost

by Seanan McGuire

  Now, I live in a house that I own free and clear, thanks to Sylvester, who gave it to me when it became apparent that my squire needed to come live with me. Houses are a weirdly extravagant gift in human circles, but the fae amass land the way some people amass little ceramic figurines. If Sylvester divested himself of his real estate holdings, he might actually crash the Bay Area markets. For him, giving me a house was a small price to pay for knowing I was safe behind a locked door and not at the mercy of a mortal landlord.

  Again, purebloods think differently than changelings or humans do. They’re so far outside the flow of time that it doesn’t matter as much to them. It doesn’t have to. There are exceptions, of course.

  Younger purebloods, like Quentin, may have eternity in front of them, but they’re still living within the limits of a mortal lifespan where experience and opinions are concerned. Their thoughts follow lines I can understand, and they’re as baffled by their elders as I am. Being the larval stage of something doesn’t mean you comprehend it. Maybe that’s why I have so many teenagers in my house. Or maybe they just figured out that I’m willing to feed them. The jury’s still out on that one.

  May is technically a pureblood, but since she was created when a night haunt consumed my living blood, she has my memories up to that point, and some of her own memories from the person she was before. I’m not sure how deep those older memories go, but I know they’re less real to her; she’s May Daye, now and forever, mixed mostly with Dare, the girl whose face she wore before mine. We’re on much the same level most of the time.

  And then there’s Tybalt. A man I never expected to call friend, much less anything more. But he loves me as much as I love him, and that’s a rare and precious thing in this world. He’s my best friend and my favorite person to talk to and the reason I’m letting May subject me to her increasingly questionable taste in wedding gowns. Although that may be partially her trying to mess with me, since she knows I don’t like dresses that are bigger than I am; she just wants me to pick something.

  Some people seem to think my disinterest in the planning process comes from a secret desire not to get married. That couldn’t be further from the truth. If Tybalt would agree to it, or if it wouldn’t cause a massive diplomatic incident, I’d drag him to the courthouse tomorrow and get married in jeans and a tank top, since those make up the majority of my wardrobe. He fell in love with me without finery or billows of lace. I’d be happy to marry him the same way. It’s just that my life is chaotic and I’m something of a magnet for people who want to kill me, take me apart and use me for my magic, or ensnare me in incomprehensible plans for world domination.

  It doesn’t matter what my wedding dress looks like because by the time the actual ceremony rolls around, I’m going to look like the lead in a high school production of Carrie. We should start out by rolling me through an abattoir since there’s no way we’re getting around it.

  I’ve learned not to be too attached to plans. They never survive contact with reality when I’m around.

  Groaning, I stood, leaving the couch, the cats, and May’s pile of magazines behind. There was a time when I would have been horrified by the thought of my wedding dress getting so drenched in blood that it was ruined; these days, I’m more resigned. My mother, who is not a very nice person, raised me to think I was Daoine Sidhe, descended from Titania, and that the reason I found blood alluring and revolting at the same time was because my magic wasn’t strong enough to handle it.

  Thanks, Mom. She’s not Daoine Sidhe, and neither am I; there’s nothing of Titania in my veins. We’re Dóchas Sidhe, and while our magic is still tied to blood, it’s not the same. For us, there’s nothing else, no flowers, no water.

  All we get is in the blood.

  It was about six in the evening, and May and I were alone in the house. Quentin was at Saltmist spending time with Dean, who’s been over less since our collective visit to the Duchy of Ships back in May, where we’d helped the sea witch keep her word by bringing back her descendant race, the Roane, from the verge of extinction. It turns out that suddenly reintroducing a long-lost type of fae to the Undersea, while removing most of the Selkies at the same time, was a little destabilizing, and as one of our coastal nobles, whose mother is a Duchess in the Undersea, Dean had been spending a lot of his time dealing with the fallout.

  Better him than me. Of the two of us, he’s the one who actually speaks “diplomacy” with something other than a knife.

  Jazz was likewise absent, since the small antique store she owned and operated in Berkeley didn’t close until seven. With wedding planning done for the day, Tybalt off at the Court of Cats, and May busy baking, I was free to go upstairs, take off my bra, and do nothing for the rest of the afternoon. Paradise is real.

  I was halfway to the stairs when the phone rang. The landline, not my cell. I stopped, blinking at the sound. It continued ringing.

  “You going to get that?” called May.

  If someone was calling the landline, it was probably a client of mine. Just what I wanted. I’m technically still a private investigator, although I don’t have nearly as much time as I used to for tracking down cheating spouses and untangling complicated paternity cases. I swallowed a sigh, walked over to the end table, and hooked the receiver out of its cradle, bringing it to my ear. “October Daye Investigations, October speaking,” I said.

  “Aunt Birdie, you need to listen to me.”

  I froze. “Karen?”

  So far, two of Stacy’s children have shown an unexpected talent for soothsaying. Karen can see the future in her dreams; Cassandra can read it in the movement of air. When they order someone to listen, listening is the only reasonable response. I caught my breath.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  “You’re going to learn something soon that makes you unhappy. I don’t know what it is because it didn’t matter to what I saw. You’re going to go looking for someone you’ve lost, and you’re going to want to take everyone you can with you. But you can’t do that. In my dream, when it went the way you wanted it to go, you had May and Quentin with you, and sometimes Spike, and no one else. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I think so.” I was going to go on another quest, and Tybalt wasn’t allowed to go with me. Oh, that was going to go over well.

  “You’re going to go to the place where the bad lady is sleeping, and you can’t wake her up. Promise me you won’t wake her up.”

  Evening. There was no one else Karen would refer to as “the bad lady.” She’d been too close to Evening once, and like the rest of us, she’d learned not to use her name. It wasn’t safe. “All right,” I said.

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  “I believe you. I’m sorry, Aunt Birdie. You can’t take Uncle Tybalt with you, or people will die. I don’t want anyone to die. Be careful.”

  The line went dead.

  I was still staring at the receiver in my hand when someone knocked on the front door. Slowly, I turned to face it.

  “May,” I did my best to keep my voice as level as possible. “Did you order pizza and forget to tell me?”

  “No,” she called back from the kitchen. “Why?”

  “Someone’s at the door.” Someone at the door almost never means anything good outside of Girl Scout season. The people who live with me, whether intermittently or full-time, don’t bother to knock; they just charge in whenever they feel like it. The people I answer to in the hierarchy of Faerie don’t usually come to the house.

  Any chance of a quiet evening at home that had survived Karen’s call slipped away as I reluctantly approached the door. I didn’t have my knives on me, but I had the baseball bat in the umbrella stand if I needed a weapon, and I had May, who had come into the kitchen doorway and was standing there with a rolling pin in her hand. If someone had come looking for a beat-down, they were about to have a l
ucky day.

  “I’ll get it,” I said, and reached for the doorknob.

  We don’t usually bother to lock the door when we’re at home. Anyone who could get through the wards we have on the place wouldn’t even be slowed down by something as simple as a deadbolt. With a simple twist of my wrist, the door was open, and I was braced for trouble.

  Trouble, in the form of one of the tallest men in San Francisco, looked down at me and blinked before raising one thick eyebrow. “Tobes?” he rumbled. “There a reason you look like you’re getting ready for an MMA cage match?”

  I relaxed, realizing as I did how much adrenaline had just been dumped into my system by the one-two punch of a ringing phone and a knock on the door. I may be under too much stress. “Hi, Danny,” I said. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  Danny McReady is a San Francisco cab driver and the owner of the world’s only Barghest rescue. There’s a good reason for that, since Barghests are hostile and venomous, with tails like scorpions built on a canine scale, and most people don’t consider them good pets. Danny’s not most people. He’s a Bridge Troll, with skin that’s literally as hard as granite. It’s also the color of granite when he’s not wearing an illusion designed to let him pass for human. I did a favor for his sister a long time ago, and he’s basically pledged himself to help me whenever I need it as a consequence.

  “Your kitty-cat sent me,” he said. “Said I should ask you to put on something nice and not too bloodstained and get in my car. Hey, May. You’re looking fetching as always.”

  “Oh, stop,” said May, before both of them laughed at his joke.

  I didn’t. Tybalt doesn’t usually send people to get me; he prefers to come get me himself, using the Shadow Roads for transportation. Maybe I was being paranoid, but given the last few years of my life, I’d earned a little paranoia. I took a step back, gesturing for Danny to come into the house.

  “Shut the door and drop the illusion, please,” I said.

  Danny didn’t look surprised. He’s known me for a while. Instead, he closed the door before making a sweeping gesture with his right hand. His human disguise wisped away with the faint but distinct scent of fresh-mixed concrete and ripe huckleberries, revealing his true face. Gray and craggy, like a boulder that had decided it would be a good idea to put on jeans and a San Francisco Giants hoodie and go wandering around the city. He seemed to get taller, and broader at the same time, until it looked impossible for him to have fit through the door. He grinned at me, exposing square, craggy teeth.

  “Do I pass inspection, princess?” he asked, in a voice like rocks being tumbled in a barrel.

  “Sorry, Danny,” I said. “You know how it is around here.”

  “I do, which is why I ain’t mad. Just get in my car, and we’re square. Only maybe change first, so the kitty doesn’t take it out on me.”

  “I’m making cookies,” said May. “Come on, Danny, you can have one while you wait for Toby to make herself decent.”

  “Never gonna happen,” he said and guffawed as he followed her into the kitchen.

  I rolled my eyes at both of them and turned for the stairs. If Tybalt wanted me to wear something nice for some reason, that was exactly what I was going to do. And I wasn’t going to look like a meringue.

  My room is warm and dark and comfortable, with blackout curtains on the windows and clothing usually strewn across the floor. Neither Tybalt nor I are much on putting the laundry away, and with as often as I get bled on in the course of my duties, I throw out as many shirts as I wash and fold. We make an effort to keep sharp things off the floor, since neither of us cares for blood on the sheets, and that’s good enough. I flicked the light on and was greeted by a chirping grumble and the sound of rattling thorns as Spike, our resident rose goblin, rose from where he’d been sleeping curled in the center of the bed.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said, pulling my shirt over my head and tossing it into the mess on the floor. “Karen says I’m going somewhere, and you can come with me. Does that sound good to you?”

  Spike rattled again, sitting down and beginning to groom one paw.

  The bra I was wearing was pretty all-purpose, and so I left it on as I made my way to the closet, where my meager store of dresses hung, waiting for another night of disuse. Well, the joke was on them for once. I started rifling through them, looking for something that fit Tybalt’s definition of “nice” while still leaving me free to run, fight, and draw my knives if necessary.

  Leaving the house without making sure I’m equipped for a knife fight is a good way to guarantee I wind up in a knife fight because the universe likes nothing more than making me regret my choices. Scowling at my closet, I pulled out a simple sleeveless dress in dark green, with a lace-covered bodice giving way to a knee-length velvet skirt. It pulled on easily over my head, with no zippers I’d need anyone else to help with, and that made it ideal despite its lack of pockets.

  My knife belt and silver knife were on the nightstand next to my bed. I fastened the belt around my waist, where the illusion I’d inevitably need to cast to make myself seem human would hide it, then slid my knife into the sheath at my right hip. The left side remained empty. That’s where I used to carry an iron knife, back when I was more human and iron wasn’t quite so painful. Faerie comes with costs.

  It only took a second to shimmy out of my jeans and step into a pair of black flats, and then I was heading for the bathroom—the nice thing about owning the house and having the master bedroom is the attached en suite, even if I mostly only use it to shower and pee without someone hammering on the door and telling me I’m taking too long. Tybalt said to put on something nice, not to make myself fancy, so I just ran a brush through my stick-straight brown-and-blonde hair before giving myself a critical look in the mirror.

  There’s not much point to makeup when I’m going to be spinning a human disguise. Illusionary eyeliner is always perfect, and I’ve never jabbed an illusionary mascara wand into my eye. Considering that, I looked pretty put-together. My hair is easy to tame, thanks to its utter lack of curl or body, and the blonde streaks I’ve been developing ever since I started shifting my blood more toward fae look like intentional highlights. The pointed tips of my ears poked through, as usual; another thing for my illusions to hide.

  Much as my hair has changed, my eyes are still the grayish, washed-out color of fog rolling across the bay in the small hours of the morning; they still look like mine, and I’m oddly grateful for that. I don’t want to look in my mirror and see someone else looking back at me. I took a deep breath, blew it out, and reached one hand toward the mirror in a beseeching gesture, snapping it closed as the smell of cut grass and copper rose in the air.

  “’Twas many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea,” I said, tone as light as I could make it. “Where there lived a maiden whom you may know, by the name of Annabel Lee. But she moved and she didn’t leave a forwarding address, and I have no idea what happened to her after that.”

  My magic gathered around me, growing heavier and heavier until it finally popped like a soap bubble, leaving me draped in the almost invisible glitter of a human disguise. The woman looking out of my mirror wasn’t a stranger, although her eyes were darker than mine, gray blue instead of blank fog. Her hair was the same, but her ears were rounded, and the bones of her face were softer, making her cheekbones, chin, and eyebrows seem gentler, less likely to cut anyone who touched them. I’m not as angular as a pureblood, but I don’t pass for human the way I used to.

  Also, she was wearing mascara. And her eyeliner was perfect, and she wasn’t carrying any weapons.

  I turned away from the mirror and left the bathroom, the faint smell of my magic clinging to my skin. Spike was in the middle of my pillow, stretched out with its thorny belly showing. I smiled at it and stepped into the hall, heading for the stairs.

  May and Danny—now back in his human disguise—were
still in the kitchen, the latter holding a napkin full of fresh chocolate chip cookies. He beamed when he saw me.

  “You always clean up good,” he said. “New dress?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Jazz brought it home from her shop. I think it’s as old as I am, and I was born in 1952.”

  “Baby,” scoffed Danny. “Come on. Your chariot awaits. Good cookies, May.”

  “Have a nice time wherever it is you’re going,” said May, beaming at me. “Here’s a tip: if someone tries to stab you, duck.”

  “Oh, ha ha, I never thought of that before,” I said, and grabbed a cookie off the rack cooling on the counter before I followed Danny into the hall, to the front door, and outside.

  His cab was parked in the driveway. One more luxury of the house we live in: we have a driveway. I could rent it to desperate tech workers for fifteen hundred dollars a month if I wanted to, and there have been times in my life when the temptation would have been almost irresistible. From the outside, Danny’s car was a standard yellow cab, the sort that crops up in most major American cities. I was relieved to see that there were no Barghests in the backseat.

  “I ran the vacuum yesterday, so you don’t need to worry about your dress,” he said, gesturing for me to take the front passenger seat. “An’ the kitty said not to stress about getting home, he’ll take care of it. So it’s cool that you’re leaving your car.”

  “Not sure how I’d bring it along, since I don’t know where we’re going.” I climbed in and fastened my seatbelt, first checking to make sure there was no one lurking in the back. It’s happened before, and a one-person car chase isn’t as much fun as it sounds.

  Several strange charms and bundles of herbs dangled from the rearview mirror. One of them appeared to be an elaborate knot made from bright green hair. I squinted at it, inhaling gingerly as I tried to feel out the magic behind it. All the charms had been enchanted by the same person; they smelled, distantly, of engine grease and coal dust. I leaned back in my seat, rubbing my nose in an effort not to sneeze.