“O-October?” he said, voice wavering a little. “What’s wrong? What has she done?”
She? She who? There were two options, and while the human girl was closer to me than the woman with the orange wings, neither of them looked hostile. “Nothing’s wrong, except someone’s decided it would be a fun time to abduct me, and of the available options, you seem like the most likely.” I kept pointing at him. “The only other person here I know is Simon, and he wouldn’t snatch me off the street. Sylvester would never forgive him if he did.”
Once I knew where I was, I could run for Shadowed Hills. Sylvester would protect me. Or I could go Home. Between Sylvester and Devin, I’d be safe. There was no one in this room who’d dare to go up against both a Daoine Sidhe Duke and a changeling crime lord in his own den. I’m good at pissing people off, but none of my enemies are remotely that powerful. Sometimes I’m still stunned that my allies are.
Tybalt’s face fell, and for a confusing moment, he looked like he was going to cry. That didn’t make any sense, but then, nothing about this day made any sense. I took a step backward, trying to put the end of the couch between me and the rest of these people. Simon grabbed my arm before I could get past him, jerking me around so he could stare into my eyes. He really did look almost exactly like his brother. Twins are creepy. Faces should be like fingerprints: one copy ever, no imitations allowed.
“October, wait.” He held me tightly, not letting go. The smell of smoke and sweet cider began to rise in the air around him, surprisingly strong. He must have been preparing one damn doozy of a spell. “No one here is your enemy.”
“Like hell, Uncle Creepy.” I jerked my arm out of his grasp. He let go, realizing I was going to hurt myself if he didn’t. I glared at him. “You’re like the evil grand vizier from a Disney movie. You only show up when you want something, and then Sylvester has to chase you away again before you get your slimy hands all over Shadowed Hills. He,” I hooked a finger toward Tybalt, who hadn’t moved, “hates me. He always has. Any room containing the two of you isn’t a room that means me well. Devin didn’t train no fools. I don’t give one sweet fuck about how much you want me to stay here. I’m not hanging around so you can hurt me.”
“October—”
The human teenager, who must not have been all that human, to be surrounded by this many fae—fuck, was I even wearing an illusion?—and not be freaking out, held her hands out toward me in a calming gesture. I reached up to feel the point of my ear and confirm that I could currently pass for human, and nearly screamed when my fingers found something much more pointed than it should have been. The entire shape of my ear had changed. What’s more, it didn’t itch; I wasn’t disguised. I backed deeper into the corner, trying not to hyperventilate.
“What the fuck did you people do to me?” I demanded.
“We loved you,” said the teenager. “That’s all. The rest, you did to yourself. I know better than anyone what you’re fighting against right now, but if you can focus, even a little, I think that will make things easier on everyone.”
There was something happening to her eyes. They were changing, going from green as a broken glass bottle to solid black from side to side, like the eyes of a shark. I raised one shaking hand and pointed at her, whispering, “Eyes like pitch and a friendly face. I know you. I know you. You’re the sea witch, aren’t you?” Greatest of Faerie’s demons. Worse even than Blind Michael, who Rode the hills and stole children away in the middle of the night. She couldn’t be here. I couldn’t be here with her. This wasn’t possible.
This wasn’t happening. The thought was strangely appealing. Simon had a flair for illusions. I let my hand drop to my side and turned on him, spitting, “Stop this.”
He looked at me like he was innocent, hurt and confused and a little perplexed. I leaned over and planted my hands at the center of his chest, shoving him. There was blood under my fingernails. Why was there blood under my nails? I always tried to have as little contact with blood as I could manage. The stuff was disgusting, and the fact that Mom used it in her magic didn’t help.
“I said stop!” I yelled, as he fell backward into the couch.
“Wow, this spell really tailors itself to the target,” said the teenager who might be the sea witch, blinking her black eyes but looking otherwise unconcerned. “August ran into the woods like nothing had changed. You went full evil mastermind and started trying to kill us all . . .”
“I would already have apologized for that if October had been in her right mind and willing to listen,” said Simon abashedly.
“Always an excuse with you,” said the teenager. She snapped her fingers, and I couldn’t move, not to shove Simon again, not even to back deeper into the corner. “I know you can’t believe me right now, but this was your idea,” she said, eyes on me. “You thought you had the answer to breaking this curse so your fucked-up branch of the family can stop passing it around like some sort of unwanted vase. Now stay here. I have to keep a promise.” She turned, heading for the door.
“What promise?” demanded Tybalt. There was an inexplicable note of panic in his voice.
“I told your lady fair that I’d unlock a door,” she said, and stepped into the hall, leaving me immobile and surrounded by people I either didn’t know or didn’t like.
“I hate it when she slings magic around like it’s nothing,” grumbled the younger Daoine Sidhe. He walked toward me, pausing to bend and gingerly retrieve a silver knife from the floor. It looked sharp. It also looked well-used; there were flecks of blood dried on the hilt, and streaks of something much fresher on the blade. “I’ll just, um, hold this for you, for now,” he said. “I promise I’ll give it back when you’re ready.”
“You can’t give it back when it’s not mine,” I snarled. At least I could talk. I tried to move my little finger, but even that was apparently forbidden. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but the sea witch isn’t anyone to mess around with, kid. She’s not your friend, and she’s not going to grant your heart’s desire just because you helped her hurt me.”
“Ignore her,” said the alchemist. “I know it’s hard when someone you love starts saying things like that, but she’s not herself right now. Literally.” He looked over his shoulder at me. “Lily would never have spoken so highly of you if you had been like this.”
“You know Lily?” I calmed a little. Lily has always had excellent taste in people. If this man was someone she knew, then he probably wasn’t working with Simon, the sea witch, or King Asshole over there, who was looking at me like I’d just killed his puppy. Assuming he’d have a puppy, or that he wouldn’t kill it himself.
“I knew Lily,” he said, and turned back to his chemistry set. “She took me in when I came to the Mists. I didn’t have a place, and she was willing to give me one, even though I offered her nothing but another alchemist with an irregular education. All the noble households—even your beloved Shadowed Hills—needed to know I’d be useful before they’d offer me more than the barest requirements of hospitality. But Lily loved you. Lily said you were worth more than the nobles around you. Please don’t prove her wrong.”
I blinked at him. He was talking about Lily in the past tense. But that didn’t make any sense. Lily was in the Tea Gardens. Lily would always be in the Tea Gardens. There’s virtually nothing in Faerie that can kill an Undine.
No one said anything. Silence fell, broken only by the pounding of my heart and the sound of Tybalt’s inexplicably labored breathing. He was still looking at me like I represented some great, heartbreaking betrayal, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why.
The teenager stepped back into the room. She nodded when she saw I was still in the corner where she’d left me. “Good,” she said. “I was half afraid you’d remember enough to break free, and not enough to know that you didn’t want to.” She stepped to the side, looking expectantly back the way she’d come. “No
t long now.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, unless they’d brought me here to be fed to some great and terrible beast. I tensed as much as I could through the spell binding me, prepared to scream my head off if that was the only option I had.
Something moved in the hall. It seemed too small to be anything really dangerous, which was ridiculous. Pixies can be dangerous when there are enough of them, and they’re basically the size of Barbie dolls. The orange woman clapped a hand over her mouth. “Awake, then?” she asked, in an accent I couldn’t place.
The teenager nodded. “Awake, and already out of bed when I came to unlock the door. Something has him all stirred up.” She glanced at me, black eyes unknowable.
I still couldn’t move. A man—a human man, by all appearances, with brown hair, tawny brown skin, and brown eyes—appeared in the doorway, looking wildly around the room. He was wearing sweatpants and a white tank top, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved in weeks. Not quite long enough to grow a full beard, long enough to look incredibly scruffy. His feet were bare, and they sank into the carpet as he stumbled toward me, not quite walking steadily.
The teenager snapped her fingers, and the spell holding me in place collapsed. All the tension I’d been gathering was released at once, and I fell forward, landing on my knees in the carpet. I barely missed knocking over the candle. The man kept staggering toward me. I scrambled to get back to my feet before he reached me.
I didn’t quite make it. He stopped in front of me, chest heaving, and reached down with one hand to gently cup my chin, tugging as he guided me the rest of the way upright. “Jenny?” he asked, in a voice filled with wondering awe. “My Jenny? You came for me? You found me, who should have been unfindable?” His eyes flicked to my ears, and he paused.
When he spoke again, he sounded older, and sadder. “No. Not my girl. The child, perhaps. She was so sure it would be a boy, but you look just like your mother. Almandine, that was the name we settled upon. Are you my Almandine?”
The teenager laughed, a little wildly, and when she spoke, she sounded dazed, like she was watching something impossible. “I knew it. I always knew my father wouldn’t have approved of naming his newest daughter after a trout dish.”
“My name is October,” I said, staring at the man. “How do you know my mother? But her name isn’t ‘Almandine,’ it’s ‘Amandine.’”
“Oh, Jenny, you always were fond of shortcuts,” said the man. “Forbidden places, forbidden flowers—forbidden hearts. My girl never saw a rose she didn’t think was ripe for plucking.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know you.”
“How do you not know me?” asked the man. “You were the one who brought me home.”
The world shattered then, and fell down around me in prismatic, candy-colored shards, and everything was different, and everything was exactly the same.
TWENTY
OFFICER THORNTON—WHO HAD NEVER really been Officer Thornton; that man had never existed in the way humans think about existence, had never walked the world as an independent, mortal being, although he’d laughed and breathed and lived a life that was as much an illusion as the ones I sometimes wore—looked at me with patience and an infinitely kind acceptance, like he was waiting for me to catch up with his place in the story. It was suddenly hard to breathe. I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to stop my heart from beating too fast and breaking free.
The candleflame was roaring now, so tall that it crested my shoulder, still lambent blue.
From the other side of the not-so-human human man, the Luidaeg watched me warily, eyes black from side to side, the way they were when she was having trouble keeping her composure. I still wasn’t sure what all the little changes in her appearance meant, but I had a fairly decent grasp of her eyes at this point.
“Feeling better?” she asked, voice low.
“I was right,” I said.
She nodded, biting her lip. “You were right, and I couldn’t see it. His magic has always been greater than my own.”
“Makes sense,” I said, and held my hand out to her. “Please?”
She understood what I was asking and produced the small glass bottle from inside her shirt. When she removed the cork, my pigeon forced its way through the opening and flew unerringly back to me, disappearing into my chest. The last traces of her spell dissolved, like cotton candy in the rain, and I returned my attention to Officer Thornton—to Oberon.
“I got you home,” I said. “You were lost in Annwn, and I got you home.”
His smile was like the rising sun, radiant and bright and almost too much to look at directly. “You know me now,” he said. “You didn’t before.”
“We’ve been playing pass-the-curse around to make sure someone found you; it was my turn to have no idea who I was in the world or who loved me until I brought you home,” I explained. I still felt a little light-headed, but it was easier if I didn’t try to emotionally engage with what was happening, and if I didn’t look at Tybalt.
The Luidaeg seemed to feel the same way, minus the not looking at Tybalt part. She was still standing in the same place, not approaching her father, even though she must have been aching to put her arms around him and demand that he never leave again.
“Are you really . . . ?” I asked, as delicately as I could. He had to be: the Luidaeg’s magic is never wrong, and the curse that kept me from seeing my own way home even when it was right in front of me had started to lift as soon as he’d entered the room. And the Babylon candle I’d bartered from her as part of learning to give Simon my way home was a bonfire now, too bright to be anything but reacting to its purpose.
He shook his head, running a hand through his hair, an achingly familiar gesture that I remembered copying from my mother when I was too small to understand that no amount of pretending would turn me into the daughter she wanted me to be.
“Not quite,” he said. “Not yet. You have to say the words if you want me to be. But you brought me home, and you came here looking for me, and so I came to you.”
“What words?” I looked into his brown, perfectly human eyes, and saw no answers there. Behind him, the Luidaeg shook her head, expression helpless. She didn’t know either.
But the key to his location had been in Evening’s taunting reminder of what he’d said when I first pulled him out of Annwn, believing him to be a human man in need of saving. “Lady, let alone,” he’d said to me, in a dirty San Francisco alleyway. Why, unless he’d looked at me and seen my grandmother, the woman who’d borne his youngest daughter, the one who’d been instrumental, however accidentally, in the loss of his wives? No one had ever claimed Oberon had been kidnapped. Everything I’d ever heard had implied he left of his own free will, taking the time to put his affairs in order before walking calmly away.
And going into hiding, it seemed. It made sense. If his daughter could make herself seem so human that magic couldn’t tell what she was, why couldn’t he? The Three were supposed to be as much more powerful than their children as their children were than the rest of us, which was a horrifying thought. We were standing in the Luidaeg’s living room with a physical god, and I was casting around for the keys that would unlock the prison he’d placed himself in.
Simon hadn’t moved since Officer Thornton stepped into the room. I wasn’t even sure he was breathing. He was just staring at the man, eyes wide and jaw slack, a look of profound confusion and dismay on his face. He looked like a man who’d just lost everything, which didn’t make sense, since he had his way home back, and now he was going to get to keep it. I guess meeting the father-in-law for the first time is terrible for everyone.
I shivered as I offered my hands to Officer Thornton, resisting the urge to turn and run across the room, throw myself into Tybalt’s arms, and never think about any of this ever again. I was a hero. I had finally come to accept that. Being a hero didn’t mean I was e
quipped to handle actual gods.
But someone had to. And even if the spell was broken, the Luidaeg was standing lost and silent, waiting for someone to finish the process of bringing her father back to her. He slid his hands into mine, and they felt perfectly ordinary, perfectly human, like there was nothing strange about any of this. The heat from the Babylon candle was warming our skins, and we shared the same physical space, man and grandchild, as ourselves, for the first time.
“Tam Lin” didn’t quite feel like the answer. Maybe the ballad told the story of how my grandparents met, but Oberon wasn’t part of the narrative as it had been written down. Still, it was what we had, and if he was looking for something specific from me, I couldn’t imagine what else it would be. Maybe with a little alteration, it would work. “I forbid,” I said, voice low and level, “you maidens all who wear gold in your hair to come or go by Caughterha, for Oberon is there. And none shall go by Caughterha but they leave him a pledge, either their rings or mantles green or else . . .” I tapered off. Somehow, the idea of looking my grandfather in the eye and saying the word “maidenhead” was just a step too far for me.
Thankfully, the Luidaeg was there to pick up the slack. “Ye shall no sooner be entered into that wood, if ye go that way, he will find the manner to speak with you, and if ye speak to him, ye are lost forever. And ye shall ever find him before you, so that it shall be in manner impossible that ye can scape from him without speaking to him, for his words be so pleasant to hear that there is no mortal man that can well scape without speaking to him. And if he see that ye will not speak a word to him, then he will be sore displeased with you, and ere ye can get out of the wood he will cause rain and wind, hail and snow, and will make marvelous tempests with thunder and lightnings, so that it shall seem to you that all the world should perish, and he shall make to seem before you a great running river, black and deep.” She stopped to take a breath, and added, “The Book of Huon de Bordeaux, John Bourchier.”
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