A Killing Frost

by Seanan McGuire

  Berkeley is not a city built on level ground. Little hills and uneven sidewalks dominate even the most over-priced and gentrified of areas. I had barely gone two blocks before my arms started to ache in earnest, making the rest of my journey feel insurmountable. I took a deep breath, focusing on how worried I was about Quentin, and resumed pressing forward.

  By the time the familiar outline of campus loomed ahead of me, my arms felt like they were going to drop off, and there was a deep, throbbing pain in my lower back that spoke to strained muscles and severe overexertion. My body was patching itself back together as quickly as it could, but the injury was ongoing, and would be until I found a place where I could set my sister down. That place was hopefully somewhere up ahead.

  Maybe it wasn’t fair of me to assume Walther would be at work—he must have had a life outside of being my alchemist on call, and I sort of thought he might have something going on with my honorary niece, Cassandra, who definitely wore shorter shorts and tighter shirts when she knew he was going to be around—but to be fair, in my experience, he was almost always in his office when there wasn’t some terrible disaster happening. Also to be fair, the terrible disaster was usually either my fault or happening to me.

  Thoughts of terrible disasters past distracted me enough to make it onto campus without tripping over my own feet or allowing May to tumble from my increasingly numb arms, and once I was actually on campus, it was easier to tell myself I only had to take ten more steps and I’d be to the next landmark. Ten more steps and I’d be to the parking garage. Ten more steps and I’d be to the stairs that led to Walther’s building. Ten more steps and I’d be at the door. Come on, October. You’re not injured enough to be unable to take ten more steps.

  Just ten more steps.

  By the time I reached the door to the chemistry building, I couldn’t feel my arms, my hands were having trouble keeping a proper grip on May’s body, and my back was screaming so loudly that it was a miracle no one could hear it. The door suddenly seemed like an insurmountable obstacle. If I put May down, I was never going to be able to pick her up again.

  No one else was in sight. Unless there’s a football game happening, or a concert at the Bear’s Lair, or one of those weird live-action games where people run around pretending to be vampires, the Berkeley campus tends to be fairly deserted at night. I took a deep breath before bending forward, ignoring the screaming in my back as much as I could, and putting May gently down. I propped her against the wall so that it would look like she was sleeping, possibly drunk, but not in any trouble at all, if anyone happened to see her.

  Fortunately, the spell making us look human was anchored to us individually, not shared the way the hide-and-seek spell had been. I straightened, brushing my hair away from my apparently rounded ear, and waited for the pain in my back to subside enough that my hands would stop shaking. Muscle pain always takes longer to fade than stab wounds or broken bones, probably because whatever factors control my body’s healing don’t see it as life-threatening the way they do active bleeding or a snapped femur. If Tybalt and I ever have kids, I’m going to sit them down and teach them every single thing I’ve managed to piece together about my whacked-out magic. They won’t have to learn the way I have, through trial and error and agonies.

  As the pain slipped away drop by terrible drop, I straightened further, wiping my hands on my jeans, and tested the door. Locked, of course. The campus was closed, and anyone with a legitimate reason to be in the building would have a key.

  Or, in my case, a set of lockpicks. I produced them from the inside pocket of my jacket and got to work. If there were security cameras pointed at this door, we’d have a problem, but that was something for future-Toby to deal with. Present-Toby needed to get inside and see her alchemist, and she didn’t care if that created issues for an hour from now. Worrying about the future has never been my strong suit.

  The security at UC Berkeley has improved since I was a teenager running around campus and trying to avoid anyone who might ask what I was doing there, but it’s still pretty primitive, thanks to the budget allotted by the state for facilities upgrades, which hasn’t been increased since before I went into the pond. In less than three minutes, I heard the distinctive click of a lock yielding to the inevitable, and when I tried the door again, it swung open easily. One problem down.

  I looked morosely at May as I tucked the lockpicks back into my pocket. So many problems yet to come. My back wasn’t howling anymore, but it still ached, telling me that my body wasn’t finished dealing with the soft tissue damage, no matter how much I needed it to be. Still, I couldn’t leave her out here; illusion making her seem human or not, someone would eventually notice the unconscious woman on the chemistry building steps, and then things would get a lot more complicated.

  Moving slowly in anticipation of pain to come, I knelt and scooped her into my arms. Even with my body rebuilding itself as quickly as it knew how, this was getting harder every time. Soon enough, I wouldn’t be able to do it anymore without at least an hour to rest.

  “Oof, May, we need to talk about how many layers you wear,” I said. She couldn’t hear me, but it helped me remind myself that she was still my Fetch, my sister, and an integral part of my life.

  She dangled in my arms, limp and seemingly lifeless, only the shallow rise and fall of her chest confirming that she was still breathing. I sighed and gathered her closer to me, staggering through the open door and into the darkened hall.

  Most campus buildings are either built to be as straightforward and linear as possible, or to challenge students with the Labyrinth of Crete before they can attend the office hours of their favorite professors. Fortunately, the buildings more likely to catch fire or be evacuated due to chemical spills tend to follow the first model. The hallway was long and straight, lined with closed doors leading to empty classrooms. My footsteps echoed dully as I plodded along, heading for the only door with a narrow band of light slipping out from the crack along the frame. Almost there. Ten more feet, and then another ten, and I’d be finished with this part of my problems.

  There would be new problems ready and eager to show their faces in no time, and this wasn’t the only problem darkening my door, but taking care of it would be a start. It would be a start, and all I had to do was travel ten more feet.

  Walther’s door was closed when I reached it, and I couldn’t bear the thought of putting May down and trying to pick her up one more time. I heal like it’s a competition, but all the healing in the world can’t keep me from getting tired. I leaned forward until my forehead touched the wood, then used my head to knock three times, not terribly hard. Cracking my skull on top of everything else didn’t seem like the smartest idea I’d ever had.

  Someone inside the office startled, knocking something over. It smashed when it hit the ground, and a squawk of distinctly feminine dismay followed, along with Walther’s voice shouting, “Just a moment!” I straightened, swallowing the powerful urge to smirk. Yes, everything was awful, and I needed to get my squire back, but the rest of the world was as confusing and complicated as it had ever been. Something about remembering that my problems don’t actually stop the world can be remarkably comforting.

  Seconds ticked by, and the door was wrenched open, revealing Walther Davies, hair mussed, glasses askew, and human disguise firmly in place, making him look like an average, if attractive, college professor in his mid-thirties. It wasn’t enough to dull the unnaturally piercing blue of his eyes, which shone through any illusion not designed to render him actually invisible, thanks to his Tylwyth Teg heritage, but it was enough to let him pass for mortal.

  He blinked those too-blue eyes in surprise, looking first at me and then at May, before he mustered up the presence of mind to ask, in a querulous tone, “T-Toby? Is that you?”

  “It is,” I replied, and he relaxed slightly. I guess he’d been asking which of the two people was me and was relieved t
o know I was the conscious one. That made a certain amount of sense. Unconsciousness is so frequently my fault. “Can we come in?”

  “Um . . .” He hesitated long enough to confirm my conviction that he wasn’t alone in his office. Finally, he said, “Sure. Cass and I weren’t doing anything important.”

  There was a sound of protest from behind him, but his body blocked the source from view. He managed a strained smile, still hanging off the door with one hand. “So what’s going on?”

  “Long story,” I said, and pushed past him into the office, where my niece was sitting in his desk chair, a sullen expression on her face as she finished doing up the buttons on her shirt. “Hi, Cassie.”

  “Hey, Aunt Birdie,” she said, and squinted at the body in my arms before she asked, “Who hurt Aunt May?”

  Cassandra is the eldest daughter of my oldest friend, Stacy Brown, and her husband Mitch. Like many changelings, the pair of them have proven to be substantially more fertile than your average pureblood: they have five children, an unthinkable number when compared to a couple like Sylvester and Luna, who tried to have a child for literal centuries before Raysel came along. Like all her siblings, Cassie’s hair started blonde at the crown of her head and darkened along its length, finally turning black for the last few inches. Coupled with the lynx-like tufts at the tips of her ears, it gave her a vaguely feline air that I found ironically amusing, given how much time I spent with Cait Sidhe.

  Like Walther, her eyes were blue. Unlike Walther, they were an ordinary, middle-of-the-road shade that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in a human face. They were also fixed on May, studying her with a surprising degree of intensity. I blinked, carrying May to the desk and using my elbows to nudge aside a half-empty pizza box before laying her down among the papers and office supplies.

  “How did you know it was May?” I asked.

  Behind me, Walther closed the office door and walked over to join us.

  “The air around her, it’s all,” Cassie made a frantic gesture with one hand, like she was trying to mime a hailstorm. She stopped after a few seconds, a frustrated expression on her face. “It’s agitated.”

  “Can you see the illusion I cast on her?” Mitch and Stacy have never shown much in the way of magical talents, but it’s not that unusual for mixed-blood changelings to display strengths their parents never did, and thanks to Mitch’s contribution, Cassie was more fae than her mother. Like Karen, Cassandra could see the future, although she did it by reading the movement of air, not through dreams.

  “No.” Cassie shook her head. “She looks human. I just know it’s May because of the way the air is moving.”

  “Okay, well, this is fascinating, and I should ask you more questions about it later, but right now, I need to move.” I wove my hands together, pulling the illusions away from myself and May and shaking them off my fingers like cobwebs.

  Both Walther and Cassandra gasped when May was revealed. Cass clapped a hand over her mouth, looking revolted. Walther’s reaction wasn’t as dramatic. He just moved to straighten May’s legs and tuck a folder of newspaper clippings under her head as a makeshift pillow.

  “What happened?” he asked, voice soft.

  “We went looking for Simon, because I can’t get married unless I invite him to the wedding, or there’s a chance he’ll claim insult against my house and try to use that to wake up his patroness,” I said. “Karen had a dream and saw me succeeding if I went with only May and Quentin, so we did that. Well, we found the place where he kept Luna and Rayseline, when they were missing. We fell into it, and May got a little bit impaled. She’s mostly recovered from that at this point, but that explains most of the blood.”

  Walther nodded, eyes still on May. “It does. Toby, I don’t know if you understand how much blood normal people have, but there’s no way she should still be alive, not if her injuries were as severe as this amount of blood loss indicates.”

  “I do understand how much blood normal people have, since I used to be one, and I nearly bled to death at least once before my body got with the program and started making more as quickly as it does now, and May’s a Fetch. She can’t die unless the person she’s here to be a death omen for dies first.”

  I could feel both of them looking at me, trying to figure out how serious I was being. Let them wonder. Waking May up was more important.

  “We got out of the bubble Simon created, and we managed to track down the man himself,” I said. “He was in the sub-realm where his mistress is sleeping. He knows about the elf-shot cure, although he hasn’t been able to get his hands on a sample of it, or he would already have tried to wake her. Instead, he grabbed Quentin and elf-shot May so he could make his escape.”

  Walther visibly relaxed. “Oh, this is elf-shot, not shock? I can fix elf-shot—”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,” I said. When Walther raised his head to blink at me, I said tightly, “This is elf-shot brewed from ingredients grown in the presence of a sleeping Evening Winterrose. It’s a lot stronger than anything we’ve had to deal with here, where everything’s a little washed out and further away from Faerie.”

  “I can take some blood samples, compare them to what I have, and start working from there,” said Walther. “You look antsy. Do you need to go somewhere?”

  “He has Quentin,” I said. “He took my squire and he leapt through a hole in the world, and there’s no telling what he’s going to do in his attempt to ransom Quentin for his mistress’ life.” It was safe to say Eira’s alias here—“Evening Winterrose” was three perfectly ordinary words strung together, there was nothing about it to attract her attention, much less mystically wake her up—but I didn’t want to get back into the habit. Caution was still important.

  That might be the first time in my life that I’d even thought that sentence, much less meant it. Maturity comes for us all. I flipped open the pizza box I’d shoved aside to put May down.

  “Are you done with this?”

  “Our date is well and truly ruined now, thanks to the blood-drenched sleeping woman in the middle of the room, so go for it,” said Cassandra.

  I ignored her sarcasm. “That’s really nice of you,” I said, and gathered three slices from what remained in the box, stacking them on top of each other. “My car’s back in Pleasant Hill, I haven’t seen Spike since I got to Berkeley, and I don’t want to call Tybalt and tell him everything went to shit as soon as he let me have five minutes to myself. Can I borrow your phone? The Rose Roads drained my battery.”

  Walther looked at me blankly before slowly nodding and producing a cellphone from the pocket of his jeans. It was larger than mine, with a slippery black screen that came alive when he pressed his thumbprint to the bottom of it.

  “Who are you calling?” he asked, offering it over.

  “Who do you think?” Summoning the keypad was easy enough. Once that was done, I tapped the keys necessary to spell out the opening line of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” pressed the pound sign, and raised the phone to my ear.

  There was a distant ringing sound, like a bell tolling underwater, in submerged canyons no human eyes have ever seen. Its echoes reverberated as if from a million miles away, and I kept the phone where it was, refusing to be dissuaded. The bell stopped ringing, replaced by the sound of glass shattering against rocks, thrown up like so much chaff by a wave like the hand of an angry god. I barely breathed.

  There was a click, and then the Luidaeg said, “You haven’t called for a while. What’s going on?”

  “Simon kidnapped Quentin and is planning to use him as leverage to get the elf-shot cure in order to wake your sister up,” I said, going for “tell the truth as openly as you can and hope it doesn’t get you killed” as a solution to my current predicament.

  The Luidaeg inhaled sharply enough that it sounded like chastisement before saying, flatly, “What the hell are you talking a
bout?”

  “Simon kidnapped—”

  “No, I got that part. What I want to know is why you were in a position where he could do that. Did you go looking for him?”

  I said nothing.

  “You did,” she said, accurately interpreting my silence as an answer. “October. Why didn’t you call me first?”

  “Because Karen saw me succeeding if I went with just May and Quentin, and there were enough prices I didn’t want to risk you naming that I thought it was better to do this on my own.”

  There was a long pause before she said, in a softer voice, “I’m sorry you have to think of me that way.”

  “Luidaeg, I—”

  “I didn’t say you were wrong to think of me that way, just that I’m sorry you have to. Be glad your sister, spoiled brat that she is, doesn’t have the power to curse you for her own amusement. Once a family starts slinging curses and geasa around like party favors, it’s all over but the screaming. So Simon has Quentin. Is he going to hurt the kid?”

  I hesitated before saying, “I don’t think so. He seems to think he can use Quentin as leverage to get the elf-shot cure for his mistress.”

  The Luidaeg sighed. She knew who I meant as well as anyone could have, and why I was avoiding saying the woman’s name as much as possible. “And how did he decide Quentin was leverage?”

  “I told him Patrick Lorden was alive. He bled me to confirm it.”

  She made an indignant noise.

  “I didn’t think he’d assault me! When you took his sense of home, you took any chance that he’d remember Patrick hadn’t died in the earthquake. He didn’t want to believe me, so he took my blood to prove it, and he knew I didn’t have the strength to edit my blood memories. He . . . saw things. Things he maybe shouldn’t have seen.”

  The Luidaeg groaned. “So you gave the failure what he wanted most in the world—you gave him proof his friend was still out there to find—and you gave him the identity of our prince in hiding at the same time. Good show, October. Sometimes I wonder how you haven’t gotten us all killed just yet.”