A Killing Frost

by Seanan McGuire

  Smelling magic, even when it’s old, faint, or distant, is another Dóchas Sidhe party trick, although it’s part of what makes me terrible at parties. I’m constantly getting distracted by things no one else can smell, although almost all fae can pick up on the broad strokes. When I was younger, I thought everyone got as much detail as I did, and I was always very confused when people didn’t know what I was talking about. Just one more thing to add to the list of ways my mother made my childhood miserable.

  If I ever find a therapist who works with changelings, I’m going to send Mom the bill.

  The car dipped as Danny climbed behind the wheel, sliding into a space too big to fit into the apparent size of the frame. Magic again, making his life a little easier. And why shouldn’t it? We live in a world that was never designed for us, where iron lurks around every corner and where hiding from the humans is both increasingly difficult and of paramount importance.

  There used to be places we could run to when the mortal world got to be too much to take. Worlds other than the Summerlands, places like Annwn and Emain Ablach, whole realities tailored to the needs and natures of the fae who occupied them. But the deeper lands of Faerie were sealed when Oberon disappeared, leaving us stranded in only two worlds, one of which is actively hostile to us, the other of which is too small to contain all of Faerie comfortably. The Summerlands are the only other realm we can get to now, and while they welcome us, they’re not home to anyone but the pixies.

  Sometimes I wonder whether Amandine would have followed in the footsteps of her older siblings if Oberon hadn’t vanished right after she was born, spinning a world of shimmering spires and endless brambles, perfectly suited to the magic and desires of the Dóchas Sidhe. But then I remember that it would be a world that owed its existence to my mother and decided I wouldn’t want to go there if it existed.

  Danny pulled out of the driveway, driving with the speed and safety of a man who not only got paid to do it, but had excellent reason not to want to be pulled over by the human police. He could always cast a don’t-look-here if he had to, to keep them from seeing how unreasonably large he was, but that wouldn’t necessarily fool a dashboard camera, and those are becoming more and more common.

  “When are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

  “When I absolutely have to,” he said jovially.

  I folded my arms and glowered at him. He laughed.

  “Try relaxing for once,” he suggested. “Me and the kitty aren’t going to hurt you, and you know it.”

  “I do, but I didn’t become a detective because I liked people having secrets,” I countered. “Please, a hint?”

  “You’ve been there before.”

  He was heading for the 101. We were clearly leaving the city; I just had no idea why. I huffed. “You people.”

  Danny laughed again.

  We kept driving for almost twenty minutes, leaving San Francisco proper behind us. When we passed the sign for the Brisbane city limits, I turned and gave him a stern look. “Are you taking me to the airport?”

  “What? No! That would be ridiculous. I didn’t tell you to get your ID.” He turned on his turn signal. “Hold tight, we’re almost there.”

  I leaned back in my seat, folding my arms again. Wherever we were going, I was going to be getting there already mildly annoyed.

  Danny pulled off the freeway and onto surface streets, driving through three intersections before he turned again. “Do you ever lighten up?”

  “Not habitually.”

  He turned onto a winding driveway, which vanished ahead of us into a patently artificial copse of trees. I sat up straighter, finally recognizing our destination. “You could have told me Tybalt was taking me to dinner.”

  “Nope. Promised him I wouldn’t.”

  I turned to glare at Danny. “I’m the hero here. You should be more afraid of me.”

  “Tell it to the boyfriend,” he said. We passed into the trees, and a low brick building appeared in front of us. It was quaint looking, like something from an old Disney movie. Ivy clung to the walls, and roses covered the trellises out front. Danny pulled up in front of the valet station, gesturing grandly to the restaurant.

  “Welcome to Cat in the Rafters, Tobes,” he said. “Now get out so I can find a paying fare.”

  “I could pay you.”

  “Nope. I keep telling you, your money’s no good here.”

  I laughed as I opened the door and got out of the cab. “Then go. Make money.”

  “Have a nice date, don’t get stabbed!” Danny drove off as soon as I closed the door, and I turned to face the restaurant, and the terrifying prospect of a normal dinner date.

  TWO

  CAT IN THE RAFTERS isn’t the best, most exclusive, or most expensive steakhouse in the Bay Area. It is, however, the only steakhouse owned by a Cait Sidhe changeling, a man named Jason Thomas. He’s chosen not to live with the Court, preferring to master the fine art of exposing meat to high temperatures and putting it in front of hungry people. He was waiting in the foyer, dark gray hair at odds with his generally youthful appearance. He smiled when he saw me, which was a nice change from all the nobles who look faintly sick when they see me, like they expect me to start throwing knives at people immediately and without provocation.

  “Miss Daye,” he said, a note of relief in his voice. “We greatly appreciate you joining us to dine this evening.”

  “I wasn’t given much of a choice,” I said. “I think this is technically an abduction. I want to speak to your manager.”

  The corner of his mouth twitched upward as he tried and failed to suppress a smile. “You’re about to have dinner with him. I’ll be sure to pass along the fact that you dislike his company.”

  “I can handle it,” I said. “How’d he rope you into this, anyway?”

  “He made a reservation,” said Jason mildly. “I may not choose to spend my days in a dusty room full of cats and ancient mattresses, but I am Cait Sidhe, and he is my King. When he calls, I’m compelled to answer.”

  “Huh. The feudal system has a lot to answer for.” I shrugged. “Better take me to my fiancé before he decides you’re trying to seduce me and comes out here angry.”

  “Is he that much of the jealous sort where you’re concerned?” Jason beckoned for me to follow him through the door into the main dining room.

  “Not usually,” I said. “He knows he’s got nothing to worry about. But you’re Cait Sidhe and only sort of under his command. If he’s going to get snitty at anybody, it’s probably you. Sorry about that.”

  “No need to apologize, just . . . try not to give him the impression he needs to be ‘snitty’ about anything.” Jason shuddered delicately.

  The dining room was surprisingly devoid of customers. It was early in the day, but reservations at Cat in the Rafters are hard to come by; according to Stacy, who actually has to make a reservation when she wants to eat there, people book tables months in advance. I gave Jason a curious look. He shook his head.

  “When certain luminaries wish to dine with us, they notify me, and I give the mortal staff the night off,” he said. “You and my King aren’t the only ones dining here tonight, but you’ll have few dinner companions, and all of them fae. You can release your illusions, if you’d prefer.”

  “Aw, but I’m not actually wearing mascara,” I said, in a tone that made it clear I didn’t care, and waved a hand dismissively, releasing my human disguise. It burst with the smell of copper and fresh cut grass, and Jason shot me an amused look.

  “If you think my King will care, you haven’t paid as much attention to his preferences as we’ve all assumed.”

  “No, he knows what he’s getting.”

  The steakhouse décor was best described as “rustic,” with rough-hewn redwood walls and quaintly mismatched tables, each topped with a candle burning in a jar of thick red glass
. The windows were stained glass portraits of cats, black and tabby and colorpoint and calico. Unlike many of the steakhouses I’d seen, there were no antlers or taxidermically preserved birds on the walls; the lighting came from chandeliers heavy with warm yellow bulbs that mimicked candlelight well enough to make my skin crawl but didn’t flicker. If they’d flickered, I would have run.

  I don’t care for candles. They always seem to get me into trouble.

  We crossed the empty dining room to a smaller door, which Jason opened to reveal Tybalt standing at attention next to a table set for two. The expected candle centerpiece was conspicuously absent, replaced by a bouquet of flowers, which, in typical Tybalt fashion, couldn’t have come from a local florist, since I doubted any of them would have out-of-season arbutus, or arbutus at all.

  Jason murmured a pleasantry I didn’t quite catch and retreated, closing the door behind him and leaving the two of us alone. I started toward my fiancé, my annoyance at the way he’d brought me to the restaurant melting away at the sight of him.

  Faerie has more than its fair share of beautiful men. Beauty is the specialty of the Daoine Sidhe, and of basically anyone descended from Titania, whose children have always been as striking as they are cruel. In the great annals of Faerie’s beauty, Tybalt barely even ranks. But as far as I’m concerned, he’s the best of them, and always will be.

  Tall, slender, well-muscled, with brown hair banded in streaks of tabby black, and eyes the color of malachite, a dozen shades of green warring for position around the cat-slit ovals of his pupils. He looks less feline than many of his subjects, with only his eyes, hair, and the faint stripes on the skin of his back betraying the fact that he’s not secretly Daoine Sidhe. His ears are pointed, but more like mine than an actual cat’s, and he has the face of a classical sculptor’s masterpiece, strong and flawless.

  There was a time when I thought he was out of my league. I still sort of do, if I’m being completely honest, but since he doesn’t agree, I try not to argue with him.

  He smiled as I approached, and my chest tightened the way it always did when he looked at me like that, like I was the only thing in the world that mattered enough to smile for. “You came,” he said, and the relief in his voice was evident.

  “You didn’t give me a lot of choice,” I said. “Danny wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. He got May on his side just by offering to take me out of the house.”

  “Well, if I’d been less forceful in my request, would you have come?” Tybalt took a step toward me. He was wearing a white button-down shirt and brown leather pants. Most of his pants are leather, either because he likes it, or because he knows how much I like it. Not the most comfortable material in the world, but the things it does for his ass should be illegal.

  “Maybe,” I said, before admitting, “Probably not. I got a weird call from Karen just before he showed up, and I was going to go upstairs and try to relax.”

  “You can relax with me instead, over a lovely dinner, and I’ll carry you home after we’re done, to enjoy less gustatory pleasures of the flesh.” He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close, planting a kiss on my chin. “If I’d asked you on a date, you would have laughed in my face, or told me you’d be happy ordering pizza. Again. For a woman with a penchant for grand, romantic gestures, you have the least interest in actual romance of any lover I’ve ever had.”

  “Yes, please tell me about your former lovers while trying to convince me to stay for dinner,” I said dryly. “That always helps me get into the mood.”

  He kissed me again, more languidly this time. “Ah, but you are in my arms, and those past loves are long gone from my life, some to the night-haunts and others to their own designs, and none of them shall warm my bed again. That pleasure is reserved for you and you alone.”

  I laughed as I pulled away. “Sometimes your tendency to talk like a romance novel is less confusing than others. Let me see these flowers.”

  “Ever the practical one,” said Tybalt approvingly, and let me go.

  It was a nice bouquet, if non-standard, mixing common flowers with things he must have gone hunting for. “Arbutus, I know,” I said. “That means ‘my love is yours alone.’ Orange blossom’s for eternal love and marriage. Little on the nose, don’t you think? And then ivy, that’s for wedded love, friendship, and fidelity. Getting ahead of yourself there, aren’t you?”

  “I know you’re faithful, as you’ve never come home covered in another man’s blood without telling me about it, and I can’t imagine any lover of yours getting close to you without someone bleeding at least a little,” said Tybalt, natural smugness showing through. He circled the table, easing out a chair for me to occupy. “Still, I applaud your sense of caution. I’m ‘getting ahead of myself’ only because of the interminable length of our engagement.”

  “It’s been less than two years!” I protested, laughing. My amusement turned to ashes in my mouth as I saw the hurt in his expression, brief but obvious. “Tybalt. You know I want to marry you. You know I’m excited to marry you. I’m not stretching this out to be cruel.”

  “I also know you’re mortal, sometimes horrifyingly so, and every day you and I remain unwed, I worry something will happen in your human world that keeps me from your side.” He stepped back from the chair. “So I bring you roses, for love, and stephanotis, to remind you that happiness awaits us on the other side of the ceremony.”

  “I’ll still be mortal after we’re married,” I said, easing myself into the chair and watching him with concern. “I don’t know when I’ll be ready to let go of what’s left of my humanity, if I ever will be.” But I had been once, hadn’t I? When Tybalt had been elf-shot, and I hadn’t been sure we’d be able to wake him up? I’d promised to strip the mortality from my blood in order to still be there when he woke up and came back to me.

  Was it selfish of me to hold onto my humanity, when there were people who loved me whose lives were going to be so much longer than mine if I didn’t let it go?

  Tybalt looked at me gravely as he walked around the table to take his own seat. Then he smiled, chasing away the shadows in his eyes, and said, “And I’ll love you regardless of how human you remain, as I have done so far, as I have promised to do forever. But you must allow me my anxieties about the length of our engagement.”

  “Things are moving,” I protested. “May and I were talking about dresses when Danny showed up to collect me!”

  “I see.” Tybalt raised an eyebrow, picking up a carafe of water and tipping it over my glass. Normally, that would have been the waiter’s job. Given that we had the dining room to ourselves, I was betting the standard of service for the evening had been set to “leave them alone, for the love of Oberon, or they might decide to eat you.” His own glass was already full. “And did you come to any conclusions that will please me?”

  “Well, no,” I admitted. “Most of the dresses May thinks would be suitable wouldn’t survive five minutes on me. Lace and blood are not friends.”

  Tybalt sighed. “Are you so determined to bleed on our wedding day?”

  “No, but I’m also a realist, and blood is going to happen,” I said. There was a breadbasket on the other side of the flowers. I pulled it toward me. If this was a dinner date, I was going to have a pretzel roll. “I mean, at least we know no one’s going to kill me with a little casual stabbing.”

  “Yes, because that makes the thought of you bleeding on your wedding dress when I’ve just confessed to the fear of losing you so much better.” Tybalt pushed the butter dish across the table before slumping in his chair, rolling his eyes. “If I didn’t know you as well as I do, I would suspect you of going out of your way to torment me.”

  “Luckily, you do know me,” I said, and buttered my roll. “I love you. I want to marry you. There’s not much in this world that I want more than to call myself your wife. Although we’re going to have to discuss last name
s at some point. I hope you don’t expect me to take yours.”

  “Why would I?” he asked, sounding honestly baffled. “I stole it from a man who was very special to me, but whose bones have long since gone to dust in his grave. William would have been glad to make it a loan, I think, but would never have expected me to keep it forever. Your last name remembers a father who was dear enough to you that you still cling to his mortality, even now that you have no intention of leaving Faerie behind. I’ll be glad to wear it on my sleeve for those times when a surname is required by the mortal world.”

  I blinked, slowly. “Most human men aren’t that cool about the idea of taking their wife’s name,” I said.

  “Then it is a good thing for you that I am not a human man,” said Tybalt, and smiled.

  He was still smiling when the door opened and Jason stepped back into the room, a stack of menus in his hand and a tall man following him, pushing a dark-haired woman in a manual wheelchair. The polished hardwood floor offered no unwanted resistance for her wheels, which rolled with an almost imperceptible whispering noise. The man’s shoes, in contrast, were new enough that his heels clicked with every step.

  Jason walked them to a table some distance from ours, but with a clear sightline, and handed them their menus before walking over to offer us the same. “Will you be wanting the wine list this evening?” he asked.

  “No,” said Tybalt.

  “I don’t really drink anymore,” I said. “My body clears the alcohol out too quickly for it to be worth the trouble.”

  Jason smiled. “Indeed,” he said. “Well, then, I’ll give you a few minutes to look over your menus before I come back to take your orders.” He went into a quick recitation of the night’s specials, all of which sounded perfectly delicious, and none of which sounded like a good enough reason for him to still be talking. I looked at him flatly. He finished describing the mushroom risotto, smiled, and walked away, leaving us with our menus.