Night and Silence

by Seanan McGuire

  Bridget gets to be human and part of Faerie at the same time. She gets to have everything I used to think I wanted, and I can’t even hate her for it, because she’s too kind, and because I don’t want it anymore. I haven’t wanted it in a long time.

  “Did Jocelyn call you here somehow?” she asked, in a slower, more carefully measured tone. “She hasn’t got the authority to do that. I know her mum. I’ll give her a call, remind her this is neutral territory—” Her voice dropped toward the end of the sentence, automatically shielding her words from prying ears.

  I shook my head and gestured toward Gillian’s car. “I’m here for her.”

  “The missing girl?” There was no recognition in Bridget’s voice. She sounded curious, yes, but not concerned on my behalf. Maybe a bit on Gillian’s. Bridget was a professor, after all, and she had to worry about her students. “Who called you?”

  “Her father.” My mouth was suddenly dry. I swallowed, fighting the urge to look away as I said, “My ex-boyfriend.”

  Bridget’s eyes widened with sudden, if flawed, understanding. “Oh, my. He called you to help him find his daughter? It’s kind of you to be willing. I know many people who wouldn’t even try, in your position—”

  “Our daughter.”

  “What?”

  “He called me to find our daughter. Gillian’s my child.”

  Understanding faded, replaced by momentary confusion. “How can that be possible? She’s . . .” Bridget stopped, sobering. “Oh. I see.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  Chelsea Ames was born a classic changeling: fae father, human mother. Half and half. Unfortunately for everyone involved—especially Chelsea—she got all her father’s power and none of his control. She had been teleporting wildly, ripping open doors that Oberon himself had intended should stay sealed. In order to stop her, in order to save her, I’d been forced to give her a modified version of the Changeling’s Choice: did she want to be fae, or did she want to be human? She had chosen fae. I had pulled the human blood from her veins and left her immortal and weeping and safe. Finally safe.

  Chelsea was the inverse of my own daughter in more ways than one. Both had been raised by their human parents. Both had discovered Faerie in the most painful, traumatic ways possible. But Gillian had chosen to be human, to give up any trace of the fantastic in her heritage, and, because it was only a choice if I honored it, I’d done as she had asked.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Bridget, raising a hand to her mouth. “I had no idea.”

  “Most people don’t. It’s not exactly something I go around advertising.” With no fae blood, Gillian had no protection from magic. If her abduction had anything to do with me . . .

  I would carry that guilt for the rest of my life, and no one would ever be able to make it any lighter.

  “No,” said Bridget. “I can see where you wouldn’t. I’m so sorry. When I heard it was Gillian who’d been taken—”

  “Wait.” I cut her off, staring. “You know my daughter?”

  “She took my introductory folklore course this year,” said Bridget. “She has a quick mind, and an excellent eye for detail. You should be proud.”

  I wanted to be. I ached to be. Somehow, all I could feel was a numb absence of surprise. A whole college campus, and of course Gillian wound wind up in a class with one of the two professors I actually knew, of course she would share something with one of the people around me, but never with me.

  Never, ever with me.

  “I need to get a closer look at that car,” I said, stooping to collect a few smashed, muddy oak leaves from the path. It had been a long, dry December, without half the rain we should have had, but there was still mud. There was always mud. “Quentin, you and Madden stay here with Bridget. Bridget, we have something we need you to look at once I’m done.”

  “My office isn’t far from here, and I have a TA who can take my first class if needed,” she agreed, without hesitation. “Anything I can do to bring your girl home, you know I’ll do it, October. I owe you the world. I always will.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on the crowd,” said Quentin, taking Madden’s leash. I offered him a quick, tight smile and walked toward the trees that ringed the area.

  Berkeley is an urban campus with delusions of being some sort of pastoral paradise. For all that it’s surrounded by city on all sides, the architects were careful to leave space for trees and long stretches of green lawn. They even worked to maintain the natural creeks that cut across the ground where they were planning to put their school. In that regard, it’s one of the most fae mortal places I’ve ever been. They built with the land, accenting and acknowledging its features, rather than building against it. The end result was a school which, despite being surrounded by city on all sides, does its best to hide that city behind a veil of trees, bushes, and artfully designed structures that look like they belonged somewhere old-fashioned and wild. Squirrels run rampant across the campus, keeping company with less common raccoons, deer, and even hawks, which view the place as a glorious buffet. When trees fall, they’re allowed to decay in place, as long as they don’t block walkways, and even during the worst droughts, everything grows green, green, green.

  Sliding down the nearest creek bank on the sides of my feet was commonplace enough to be unremarkable—people in Berkeley do that sort of thing all the time, as a shortcut, looking for a place to have a picnic, or just because they’re goofing around—and put me at least six feet below the general ground level of the campus. In an instant and in plain sight, I had rendered myself hidden. I looked around, checking for lurking mortals, before I walked into the shadow cast by a nearby bridge. I would rather be safe a hundred times than sorry once.

  Crumbling the leaves I had gathered in my hand, I chanted, “True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air.”

  Illusions are hard for me. Having an incantation to hang them on helps. It’s not the words that matter. It’s the intent behind them, the familiarity and comfort with the idea they describe. That’s why most of my verbal magic involves Shakespeare, song lyrics, or nursery rhymes. Right now, I needed the boost. Anger makes my magic easier, but fear? Loss? All they do is slow me down, muddy my thinking, and make it harder to cast anything concrete.

  The smell of freshly cut grass and copper swirled around me, overwhelming the natural, earthy scent of creek and mud and shadowed places. I closed my eyes and concentrated on feeling the magic fill my hands, stretching and massaging it until I could drape it over myself and pin it fast. What I was casting had to be the best don’t-look-here I’d ever spun, good enough to get me through the crowd in full sunlight, to get me to the car. To give me the time to look around, gather what I needed, and get away again. It had to be perfect.

  The magic swirled through my fingers like ribbons crafted of air and shadow, slippery, trying to escape. I held it tighter, forcing myself to breathe. I will do this, I thought fiercely. For Gillian, I will do this.

  There was a time when any don’t-look-here would have been at the absolute edges of my capabilities. Now, only the scope and intricacy of this one rendered it so difficult. I bore down, grinding my teeth until there was a brief jolt of pain and the strengthening taste of blood at the back of my throat. The spell snapped into place. That pain faded—physical pain always does—and was replaced by an even sharper spike of pain behind my temples as the magic-burn settled in.

  I used to think I got magic-burn because I was so weak. Now I understand that it means I’ve pushed myself too far, and it can happen to anyone. Oberon probably got magic-burn. As a consequence of raising a continent or something, sure, but that didn’t matter. The experience itself is universal. That should probably be reassuring. Mostly, it’s just tiring.

  Opening my eyes, I tried to look at my own hands. They glittered and wavered, refu
sing to come into focus. It was an odd effect, and it would make walking interesting, but if the spell was hitting me, it would work on all of them up there. Maybe not Bridget, depending on the quality of her fairy ointment. That was fine. She could keep an eye on me.

  Climbing up the embankment when I couldn’t see my own feet was harder than I expected. In the end, I closed my eyes and let memory guide me. That was easier than dealing with my sudden excision from the landscape.

  I walked across the plaza in full view of the sun, and no one turned to watch me go, and I didn’t cast a shadow. I was finally what my mother had always wanted me to be: totally invisible, absent from the world around me. Quentin didn’t even glance my way as I walked past him, although Bridget’s head turned slightly as her eyes followed me, and Madden sniffed at the air, more curious than cautious. Every spell has its loopholes.

  None of the human authorities had access to the loopholes in mine. I walked a little faster, ducking under the caution tape and moving closer to the car.

  The smell of blood hit me while I was still a few feet away. I stopped for a moment, staggered by the reality of it, and closed my eyes to reorient myself. Bad plan: cutting off visual input only made the smell of blood stronger, since now there was nothing to distract me from it. Human blood, yes, absolutely; Gillian’s blood. It was mortal through and through, with nothing left in it for my magic to grab hold of and twist, but I could still taste the ghost of primroses on the back of my tongue when I breathed it in, the places where her magic could have been, would have been if only she had decided differently.

  If only she had come home with me, and not gone running back to the safe harbor of her father’s arms.

  I opened my eyes, trying to look at the car with an investigator’s eye. The driver’s-side window was smashed in, although there was nothing nearby that looked like it could have done the job. A rock, maybe, or a metal rod. Whatever it was, it had been more than enough. There was a spray of glass all the way across the front seat, and some of the pieces were rimed red with blood. More had splashed across the inside of the windshield. I crouched to study it, trying to see it as just another case, and not my daughter’s life.

  One good thing: there wasn’t enough blood to have killed her. Wherever she was now, she hadn’t bled out in her car. That helped a little. Not enough.

  Opening the car door was out of the question—no don’t-look-here is good enough to keep that from attracting attention—and I didn’t dare lean too far into the car. If I cut myself, I would heal almost immediately, but I’d still bleed, and any forensic tech worth their paycheck would find the evidence that someone related to Gillian had been near the car. I didn’t want to become their prime suspect, not while there was still a chance that this was a mortal crime. But I needed that glass.

  Something crunched underfoot. Glass. I paused before taking a step back and crouching, scanning the glittering debris. Gillian’s attacker had clearly broken the window before opening the door, dragging her out—conscious or unconscious—and closing the door again. Why? Because a car with a broken window and no occupant was sadly not an unusual enough occurrence to attract attention, not unless someone saw the blood. At night, without a streetlight shining directly on the bloody windshield . . .

  It could have taken hours for anyone to realize something was wrong. It was a sickening thought. I didn’t want to have it. I couldn’t push it away. I crouched further instead, squinting at the glass on the ground. That wasn’t good enough. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, following the scent of blood. Gingerly, I reached for the ground, and stopped the moment before I would have touched it. I opened my eyes.

  A chunk of broken safety glass glittered less than half an inch from my fingertips, surrounded by identical chunks—almost. This one was stained, its edges rimed red with blood. Gillian’s blood or her attacker’s, it didn’t really matter. Either would tell me things I needed to know. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a piece of tissue paper and wrapped it around the glass, careful not to wipe the blood away. I needed to protect myself until it was safe to bleed, but this would all be for nothing if I lost the evidence.

  Once the glass was tucked safely in my pocket, I straightened and took a step backward, intending to get some distance between me and the car before I started breathing normally again. I collided with something.

  “Hey!” said the something. “What are you doing here?”

  Crap.

  A good don’t-look-here will do a lot to keep you from being noticed, but the invisibility spell that could prevent someone from noticing when they’re walked into has yet to be designed. I turned to find one of the campus police staring at me, looking exactly as bewildered as I would have expected, given the circumstances. From his perspective, I’d appeared out of nowhere.

  From my perspective, I was screwed. I forced a sickly smile, raised my free hand in a small wave, and bolted.

  One of the nice things about a don’t-look-here, as opposed to true invisibility, is that people still see you: they just don’t notice you until you force them to, like, say, by backing into them while standing somewhere you’re not supposed to be. I ran, and the students who were gathered to get a glimpse of the crime scene made space for me without even realizing it, shifting a step forward or a step back. Better yet, they returned to their original positions in time to keep the officer who was pursuing me from building up any real speed.

  “Stop!” he shouted. “Come back here! Stop!”

  Call me a cynic, but no one who shouts “stop” like that has ever had my best interests at heart. I kept running until I hit the edge of the creek. There wasn’t time to skid down the side. Yes, it would have been safer, but it would also have slowed me down enough for the officer to see me before I hit the bottom, and I needed to break his line of sight.

  I jumped.

  It wasn’t a long way to the bottom, maybe eight feet, but I wasn’t braced for a solid landing, and jumping off of things has never really been my thing. My left ankle buckled as I hit the bottom, and for a heart-stopping second, I thought I was going to land face-first in the frigid water. It was shallow, a small, rushing creek rather than any kind of pond, but that would still be enough to wash the blood off my piece of stolen glass. I pinwheeled my arms frantically, fighting to keep my balance.

  For once, in a battle between me and gravity, I won. Quickly, I limped across the creek and collapsed on the far bank, the precious bundle of glass and tissue still safe and dry in my pocket. I could feel the strained muscles in my ankle smoothing themselves out, knitting every little rip and tear, and it itched like fire.

  The campus security officer ran up to the edge of the drop-off. I froze, muddy and bedraggled, on the creek’s far bank. The spell was holding. I could feel it all around me, sticky as cobwebs. It had to hide me. It had to.

  Seconds ticked by. The officer raked his eyes back and forth along the bank, never quite focusing on me. He scowled.

  “Asshole kids,” he muttered, and turned on his heel and stalked away.

  I stayed where I was for another count of ten, holding perfectly still. When he didn’t return, I gingerly rose, testing my ankle and finding it completely healed. There are some advantages to being my mother’s daughter. Relative indestructability is one of them. It’s not enough to balance out the part where she thinks she’s better than me and wishes I’d died human, but hey, every family has its issues.

  Still cautious, I moved into the shadow of the bridge and counted to ten again. When the officer didn’t reappear, I released the don’t-look-here, filling the air under the bridge with the cloying scent of cut grass and copper. Before it could dissipate, I grabbed it with both hands, twisting it back into my human disguise, modifying it until I no longer looked like the woman who’d been spotted crouching near the car. It didn’t take much—a new hair color, red instead of barely blonde, slightly sharper features—but it would h
elp if the officer was still on the lookout.

  The pain in my head came back, even stronger. I was nearing my natural limit on illusions. Tough. I’d keep casting them until I had Gillian back in the safety of her father’s arms, and my stupid skull could learn to cope.

  Once I was sure the illusion would hold, I shook the shadows off my fingers and started down the bank, looking for a place where it would be easy to climb up, yet where I wouldn’t attract unwanted attention for appearing where the officer was waiting. Every little bit helps when trying to evade the law.

  I couldn’t ride the blood yet. Not here, not when there was a chance it would overwhelm me and cause me to drop my illusions. It would need to wait until I was safely in Bridget’s office, out of sight of casually prying eyes.

  Bridget and Quentin were still on the walkway when I came back. Madden was sitting nearby, tail thumping, being cooed over by a group of students who seemed to think he was the best dog ever. Judging by the grin on his canine face, he agreed. The third bipedal member of the group was more relevant to my interests: May. I walked a little faster. Bridget and Quentin gave me guarded looks as I approached. May, on the other hand, snorted.

  “You look ridiculous as a redhead,” she said. “Mom did you a massive favor when she went off and found a new husband who didn’t look anything like her old one.”

  “Sure did,” I agreed—although having seen August, I suspected the problem wasn’t my hair being red, it was my hair being as pigmented as a normal person’s. I looked to Bridget. “I have what I needed. I’m assuming May does, too. Can we go to your office?”

  “Yes,” said Bridget, looking unsettled. “I . . . I wasn’t aware you could do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “That.” She gestured vaguely toward my face before glancing toward Madden’s little fan club. They were all human. She shook her head. “Follow me.”