A Killing Frost

by Seanan McGuire

  “What’s that?” she asked, warily.

  Good for her. A little wariness was justified, under the circumstances. I took a deep breath, refusing to allow myself to look away.

  “I need you to tell me how to give Simon my way home,” I said.

  SIXTEEN

  DANNY MET ME in front of the museum, seated in his car with the window down and a worried look on his face. “What’s going on?” he asked, not bothering to say hello. “Why’d you call sounding so upset?”

  “We need to go to the Norton house right now.” I ran around the car and flung myself into the passenger seat, managing not to recoil from the smell of Barghest that rushed out when I opened the door. “Fast as you can. Break some laws.”

  “Cops won’t see me,” Danny promised, tapping the bundle of herbs hanging from his rearview mirror with one massive gray hand. I blinked. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized he wasn’t wearing any illusions to make him seem human. He smirked, catching the look on my face. “Upgraded the aversion charms,” he said. “Clover thought I was takin’ too many risks when I took the kids out for their nightly drive.”

  Clover was his mechanic, a Gremlin woman I’d never met, but whose work came highly recommended, mostly by Danny himself. The “kids” were his pet Barghests. “What kind of risks?” I asked, as he hit the gas and threw the car into a tight, tire-squealing turn. Humans tended to either overlook the Barghests completely or see them as some weird new breed of designer dog. Like the pixies, they had their own simple magic that hid them from mortal eyes when necessary.

  “Sometimes they get outta the car and I have to crank the windows down, and they don’t like the makeup,” he said, waving a hand vaguely in front of his face. Just in case I’d missed what he meant, he added, “You’re not wearing any. S’a nice change, seeing your face the way it’s supposed to be. I don’t like the way you change it, but unlike the Barghests, I don’t bite.” He laughed uproariously, stopping only when he saw that I wasn’t smiling. “Tobes? What is it? Kitty-boy get himself hurt again?”

  “Not so far as I know, although I guess that’s something I should add to the list of things I’m worried about,” I said. Danny was mashing the pedal all the way to the floor, sending us careening along the road at a speed that seemed likely to end with at least one corpse, and probably a lot of insurance companies getting involved. Since he wasn’t going to get pulled over no matter what he did, and had been driving professionally for years, I wasn’t as worried about it as I maybe should have been.

  The drive between Goldengreen and Half Moon Bay, where the Norton house is located, normally takes about forty-five minutes. Simon had at least that much of a head start, and unlike many purebloods, knew how to drive. He could easily have stolen a car and made it most, if not all the way, there already.

  But he didn’t necessarily know that most of the Nortons had been permanently bonded with their skins, giving up their place as Selkies in exchange for becoming a much rarer and more permanent part of Faerie. The Roane were back, and even if he’d seen them in the memories echoed by my blood, he was still walking into a situation he didn’t fully understand.

  I touched my pocket, where I had tucked the stub of a hastily shaped candle pulled together from things the Luidaeg had scavenged in Marcia’s kitchen. Walking into situations we don’t fully understand is virtually the family business, after all.

  “Simon’s back,” I said tightly. “He’s kidnapped Quentin. He went to Goldengreen, and when he didn’t find what he was looking for there, he turned everyone in the knowe into trees and left, we presume for the Norton house, because he’s trying to reach Saltmist. He’s armed, he’s dangerous, and I’m going to stop him. Any more questions?”

  “Yeah, where’s Tybalt? I don’t normally see you rushing into danger without the cat standing by to make sure you get out of danger on the other end.”

  It was a fair question, and no matter how fast he drove, he couldn’t entirely eliminate the distance we had to travel. I sighed. “I told him to stay home before I knew how dangerous this was going to be, and I haven’t quite worked myself around to calling and telling him I was wrong.” Or that May was injured and elf-shot and maybe not waking up, or that I’d lost Quentin, or that I was about to do something monumentally stupid for the sake of potentially saving Simon.

  Simon Torquill. The man I’d once considered to be my greatest enemy. The man I was now willingly risking everything I had for the opportunity to save. Faerie isn’t fair, and the world doesn’t make sense.

  “You sound scared.”

  “I am.”

  “If this is somethin’ that scares you . . . I know it’s not my place to pry, Tobes, but maybe this would be a good time for you to go ahead and make that phone call.” Danny shot across a four-way intersection against the light and barely ahead of a truck that could have crushed us without so much as breaking a headlight. “If not for your sake, or for his sake, for my sake. You really think your cat won’t gut me like a fish if he finds out I let you do something that scared you without involving him? Think about me if you can’t think about yourself. Think about my kids. Who’s going to feed them if your boyfriend kills me for the crime of helping you kill yourself?”

  “If I call him, he’ll come, Danny.” My phone was a heavy weight in my pocket, impossible to ignore. Sometimes I miss the days where people were out of touch if they weren’t at home, where we’d have to go hunting for a payphone to reach out. It’s a human way of thinking. No matter how fae I become, I figure I’ll always have a few of those. “I don’t want him here. Not for what I’m about to do.”

  Danny slanted an alarmed glance across the car at me, keeping most of his attention on the road. “I didn’t mean it about helping you kill yourself. You know that, right? If that’s what you’re planning, I’m out. I’m happy to be your personal chauffeur—I smile every time you think to call me, even when you’re screaming, or covered in blood, or a fucking fish—but I’m not going to sit by while you do something that can’t be taken back.”

  Oh, no. What I was planning could absolutely be taken back, either by passing around a curse like some sort of evil hot potato, or by finding Oberon and bringing him home to the children he’d chosen to abandon. No big deal. But either way, there were more people who cared enough about me to try than Simon had, and I would be better off than he was.

  I thought. Probably. At least Evening and I had never been close enough for me to make waking her up my new life’s mission—even when I’d considered her an ally, I wouldn’t have gone that far. Again, probably.

  “I’m not planning to do anything that can’t be taken back, but I’m planning to do something that could save a lot of people, Quentin among them,” I said. “It’s worth it. I’ve made up my mind. I can do this.” And if I forgot I was supposed to be planning a wedding, maybe people would stop nagging me about when it was actually going to happen. That would be a nice change.

  That’s me, looking for the upside of everything, even the things that have no upsides.

  “I worry about you, October,” said Danny, passing two cars that were going too slow, at only fifteen miles over the speed limit, for his current tastes. “Sacrificing yourself isn’t the only answer to every problem you come across. It would be nice for the rest of us if you realized that someday. I don’t want to have to bury you.”

  “I don’t want to be buried,” I assured him. “I’m doing the best I can. I want to get married. I want to see Quentin grow up, and what kind of king Raj is going to be. I want to meet my own kids. Me and Tybalt . . . we’re going to have incredible children. And all those things mean I need to stay alive long enough to get there.” They were ridiculous dreams for someone like me to have. I was never going to get a happy ending. Heroes never do. Just look at Sylvester; he found the woman of his dreams, married her, settled down, had a daughter, and lost it all because of all the secrets that he
and the people around him had been keeping for years.

  Camelot never endures. No matter how shining the castle on the hill seems, it’s still capable of falling. Falling is what every shining city seems designed and destined to do.

  Danny gave me another worried look before returning his attention to the road. I hated the thought that we might be driving into another aftermath, but Etienne hadn’t answered the phone when I tried to call him, and the Luidaeg and I agreed that this wasn’t a favor to ask of Arden. She had a kingdom to care for. As her pet hero, protecting it was my job. Playing taxi for me all over the Bay Area wasn’t hers.

  As for calling Tybalt . . . that would only hurt us both, and I wasn’t entirely sure he’d be willing to take me where I needed to go once he realized what I was planning. Faced with a choice between my safety and the safety of the Mists, I couldn’t promise he wouldn’t choose me. He loved me, and he wasn’t a hero.

  The road ran by outside the window, lights blending and blurring together until they were nothing but a sparkling stream. To Danny’s credit, while he was clearly unhappy about what he saw as driving me to my doom, he didn’t slow down or veer off our chosen course, and in less than twenty-five minutes, we were pulling off the freeway into Half Moon Bay.

  We had to slow down once we reached the residential streets, if only because they were narrower and twistier, winding past homes and businesses. The sidewalks were mostly deserted this late at night, although some people were out walking their dogs. One of them stepped obliviously in front of us, unable to see our enchanted car. Danny swore, hauling the wheel to the side and hitting the brakes at the same time, sending us into a stomach-wrenching spin. I grabbed the handle above the door, hanging on for dear life, suddenly grateful that I hadn’t eaten anything since Walther’s pizza.

  The screech of the brakes split the night like the crack of thunder, Danny grimacing as he pulled the wheel, the car shuddering to a stop against the far curb. Miraculously, we’d managed to avoid hitting anything, including the woman and her dog. She was looking around in confusion, probably trying to figure out where that noise had come from. Her dog, on the other hand, was looking directly at us, front paws braced in a defensive stance. He was ready to challenge the car for the sake of his mistress, which would have been more impressive if he hadn’t been a Corgi.

  I’ve never seen a Corgi fight a car and come out the victor, but this one was clearly ready to try. The woman leaned down and patted his head, trying to calm him. He cast her a look full of heartbreaking adoration, and she said something I couldn’t hear through the closed windows or over the sound of Danny’s labored, stress-laced breathing. The woman laughed and continued across the street, dog by her side.

  A kelpie stepped out of the shadows of an alley right where she’d been standing. Like the dog, it looked directly at us. Unlike the dog, it knew what it was looking at. We locked eyes across the road, and it began to trot daintily forward, probably assuming we were in more distress than we were.

  “Danny, you need to drive,” I said. The woman was in no danger—kelpies will stalk humans, but they almost never attack them, and I’ve never heard of one attacking a human with a dog; they’re cowardly creatures at heart, and they don’t want to go up against anything that might fight back. A kelpie vs. a Corgi wouldn’t end well for the dog, but the kelpie wasn’t going to push the issue if it thought there was easier prey around.

  For all that they have big appetites and the teeth to match, kelpies usually content themselves with fish and garbage scavenged from human dumpsters. I’d say they were no better than seagulls, if that wouldn’t be such a massive insult to seagulls.

  “I almost hit her,” Danny moaned, hands shaking where they gripped the wheel. “She never woulda seen us coming. How could she?”

  “Danny . . .” The kelpie was getting closer, head down and ears up, scenting the wind for signs we were as helpless as we appeared. Rolling down the windows to release the smell of Barghest might have dissuaded it, but even a kelpie could tell the small predators weren’t in the car. I didn’t want to start gambling on the problem-solving capacity of kelpies. “How much actual steel is left in this car?”

  “Huh? None. I had it stripped and replaced with spelled wood years ago. It’s perfectly safe. How have you been drivin’ with me this long, and you don’t know that?”

  “Then you need to drive, because there is a kelpie coming toward the car,” I snapped.

  Danny sat up, hands still clutching the wheel, and turned in the direction I was facing. “Huh,” he said. “Wouldya look at that. I’d figure the Selkies would do a better job of keepin’ the kelpies off their front porch, but I guess they don’t mind murderous water horses as much as the rest of us. That lady and her dog clear? We’re not going to be handing them over to the kelpie if we leave?”

  “She’s gone,” I said. “Come on, drive.”

  “Tobes, I’m made of stone, and every time I ask you to be more careful, you take great joy in reminding me that you’re basically indestructible. What’s that kelpie gonna do, break its teeth on us?”

  “I’m indestructible, but pain hurts.” No one likes kelpies. They’re dangerous predators, invisible to humans, which makes them even worse. But they only come out at night, when the streets are close enough to empty that there’s not a lot of damage they can do, and killing them for following their natures has never seemed entirely fair. Plus, every time there’s been a major cull, the kelpies that inevitably escape react by going on a murderous rampage through the surrounding cities. Fewer humans die when we just leave them alone.

  But oh, it stung sometimes. It stung even now, as Danny restarted the car and began driving, much more slowly and cautiously, down the street. There was a rattle in the engine that hadn’t been there before. Danny grimaced as the kelpie dwindled in his rearview mirror.

  “Clover’s gonna yell,” he said. “She always yells when I do somethin’ stupid to the car.”

  “Not hitting a woman and her dog wasn’t stupid,” I said. “If anything, it was smart, since a hit-and-run with no vehicle would have attracted attention.”

  Danny brightened. “You really think so?”

  “Yeah.” We were passing out of the city limits, onto the even more twisty, winding residential streets that led to the beachfront homes. Those houses came in one of two varieties: either so nice that no one outside of tech millionaires and celebrities could afford them, or old, somewhat rundown, and in the same family for generations. About a mile outside of town, we came to the curling driveway leading to one of the latter houses.

  It was massive, almost large enough to compete with some smaller knowes, and had the distinct appearance of having been built up over the course of several decades, with each new architect ignoring whatever blueprints the former might have left behind. Porches and cupolas sprouted almost at random, and windows bristled on every possible surface.

  But the shutters were all painted the same cheery shade of blue, and the white paint covering the house itself was fresh and new. The roof was freshly shingled, and none of the many porches sagged. About half the windows were lit up from inside, although there was no porch light. The fae wouldn’t need one. A variety of cars were parked out front, filling what would otherwise have been the yard and clogging the drive. I waved for Danny to stop the car, rolling down my window and sniffing the air as I listened for the sound of screams.

  Instead, I heard someone playing the violin, distant and sweet and drifting through the night air like some sort of promise. I smelled saltwater and seagrass and all the freshest parts of the ocean. And clam chowder, coming from the open kitchen window. I didn’t smell smoke or oranges.

  Maybe we’d been wrong. Maybe this wasn’t Simon’s destination after all.

  “Stay here,” I said, unfastening my belt. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “What, you’re gonna make the strong guy ma
de of living rock sit in the car ’cause you think it’s too dangerous?” Danny demanded.

  No sense in lying. “Yes,” I said.

  Danny scowled at me. “I hate you sometimes.”

  “I hate me sometimes, too,” I said, and opened the car door, sliding out into the cool night air. I didn’t look back as I started toward the house.

  The smell of smoke and rotten oranges had yet to put in an appearance by the time I reached the porch and rang the doorbell. Someone shouted inside; someone else shouted back. There was a brief scuffle before Diva, daughter of the former Selkie clan leader, opened the door. Her hair was disheveled, hanging mostly over her strikingly green eyes and also—more importantly—hiding the points of her ears. She blinked at the sight of me, in all my own uncovered glory, and shoved her hair back with one hand.

  “It’s Toby!” she yelled over her shoulder. “Told you no one human would be ringing the bell after midnight!” Laughter and some good-natured grumbling answered her pronouncement. She lunged over the threshold and caught me in a tight hug.

  “Oof,” I said, and patted her back with one hand.

  I like Diva. She’s about Gillian’s age, but unlike my daughter, she grew up within Faerie, aware her parents weren’t human and that that meant she wasn’t either, not entirely. Because her mother had been a Selkie when Diva was born, she’d technically been a changeling until we’d sat down together after the Duchy of Ships, to have me shift her Roane heritage into dominance. Now, she’s as fae as they come, and has a much better grasp of what it means to be Roane than most of her cousins, who didn’t have the advantage of being halfway there before the Duchy.

  Diva let go, stepping back and beaming. “I told Mom you’d be coming by,” she said, voice bright, betraying no sign she thought anything was wrong. “She said you had better things to do with your time, but I said that boy was your squire, and there was no way you wouldn’t come to pick him up.”