Night and Silence

by Seanan McGuire

  “That’s my boy.” I flexed my fingers, popping off a sheet of frozen blood, and placed it in my mouth with barely a grimace. There was a time when even the sight of my own blood would make me light-headed. Now I swear the stuff makes up more than half of my diet.

  The blood-ice melted on my tongue. A bit of the cloudiness in my head cleared. I straightened, feeling stable enough to stand on my own, and took my hand off Tybalt’s arm. His face fell immediately. I almost put my hand back, deciding against it only when I realized it wasn’t going to do any good.

  “I should have been there before you could be hurt,” he said, voice soft. “I should have been there from the beginning.”

  “Yeah.” There was no point in lying to him. He was smarter than that, and more, I respected him too much to litter the ground between us with falsehoods. We were past that point. We’d been past that point for years. “You should have been. But you’re here now.”

  He paused for so long that I began to be afraid that no, he wasn’t here. That he’d been willing to save me, but that was where it ended: he was going to return to his self-imposed seclusion, and I was going to be going on without him. Again.

  That wasn’t how things were supposed to be. They had changed, for the better, and I didn’t want them changing back. I never wanted them changing back.

  “Only if you want me to be,” he said, in a small voice. “I am—damaged, October, I am hurt in ways I have never been hurt before, that I can barely put name to, much less chart in their healing. I flinch from my own shadow. How is that fit behavior for a king? How is that fit behavior for your love?”

  I stared at him for a moment, unable to believe what I was hearing. My arm ached. My neck throbbed. Blood, both frozen and beginning to sluggishly thaw, coated more of me than I liked to consider. And none of that mattered as I raised my hand to brush his cheek, and stepped closer, and kissed him.

  In fairy tales, a kiss can fix anything. My life is not a fairy tale, and a kiss has never been enough to save my life. But a kiss can change things in any version of reality; a kiss can reorder the world. Tybalt’s eyes widened. Then he closed them, arms going around my waist and pulling me close. I closed my own eyes, letting the moment exist without observation. His lips, as always, carried the pennyroyal and musk flavor of his magic. My lips, I knew, would taste mostly of blood right now, and he kissed me anyway, kissed me like a starving man, like he’d believed the time for kissing was somehow over.

  We were both panting slightly when he pulled back, staring at me again. I immediately grabbed the front of his shirt—rough linen, like something out of a BBC Shakespeare production, and now irrecoverably stained with blood—and kept him from going any further.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “I want you here.”

  “Your mother—she trapped me, and a King who cannot run, cannot fight, is a danger, I would attract danger to you, and be unable to help—”

  “I’d like to see anyone who wanted to hurt you get through me,” I said.

  Tybalt blinked, looking too startled to reply.

  That was fine. I could talk for both of us. “If you’re hurt, you let me help you heal,” I said. “If you’re damaged, we learn the ways around it together. I don’t care whether you can be fixed. I don’t care whether you flinch at shadows. All I want is for you to be with me—and let me be a part of whatever ‘getting better’ looks like now.”

  “Perhaps refrain from using ‘fixed’ as a descriptor with your betrothed, the common cat,” he said weakly, a flicker of a smile crossing his lips. “It is unsettling at best.”

  I beamed, bright and earnest and unable to stop myself. “There you are. Root and branch, I’ve missed you.”

  In answer, Tybalt put his arms around me again, enfolding me in his embrace, and pressed his face into my hair. Voice so soft it was barely a whisper, he breathed, “I have missed you, too, my little fish. More than you can see or know.”

  It was tempting to remain in that embrace forever, to stand surrounded by flowers and let myself breathe in the scent of him until the broken places in my heart began to reluctantly heal. There wasn’t time. The rest of the world wasn’t pausing while we dealt with our problems. If only it would.

  I pulled away, letting my arms rest against his chest for a moment more as I said, “We have to go back.”

  “Back?”

  “To the house where you found me. I dropped my knife. The one Dare gave me.” And my phone, which would probably raise questions if the human insurance companies ever discovered the burnt-out old house.

  There was nothing I could do to collect the blood that had liberally painted the walls. That would be fun. The local kids would get a new “murder house” to talk about at school, and all the local parents would get a new reason to drink heavily.

  Tybalt frowned. “There are other knives.”

  “But there isn’t a Dare anymore, and everyone else is trapped outside waiting to find out if I’m all right.” I paused. “How did you get in?”

  “The barrier you found was normal for a Baobhan Sith’s denning place. They spin the world into a shell to protect themselves. They lack the authority of Oberon, and it’s a wild magic, not an intentional warding; the Shadow Roads allow the Cait Sidhe to slide through as a wind blows through a keyhole. They are . . . not fond of us, shall we say.”

  The casual nonchalance with which he said that lifted my heart. Who would have thought that one day I’d be yearning for the arrogance of the Cait Sidhe? “Is she going to attack us when we go back into the shadows?”

  “She’s no doubt escaped by now.” I stared at him. Again, he smiled, barely broadly enough to be worthy of the name. “Baobhan Sith that have recently fed have little need for breathing. She need only move through the dark until she sees the flicker of someone coming or going, and then push past them. She won’t attack, not until she’s free. It will be a grand opportunity for one of my subjects to test their wits.”

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “So can you take me back?”

  “I . . .” He paused. “I don’t want to.”

  “Not the question.”

  Tybalt stood silently for a moment before he hung his head and said, “Yes. I will return you to the monster’s lair. Why were you there to begin with?”

  “Madden picked up Gillian’s trail. It led to the house.” The image of the Baobhan Sith disguised as my daughter flashed through my mind. I shuddered. “When I got inside, she looked exactly like Gillian. Exactly. Why . . . ?”

  “If someone brought her the girl, a taste of her blood would have been enough to manage the mimicry, and she could then have lain in wait for better prey.”

  My eyes widened. “Baobhan Sith can imitate their victims?”

  “Yes.” Tybalt frowned before his eyes widened in turn. “She had far more than a taste of your blood.”

  “We need to go.”

  “Yes, we do,” he said, and swung me back into the bridal carry. For once, I made no effort to fight or resist him. This would be faster. My legs were still shaking, and I was in no condition to run an unknown distance through the freezing dark.

  “Hold fast, my love,” he said, and then he was plunging into the dark, carrying me with him. I screwed my eyes closed, holding the last breath I’d been able to take like it was the most precious thing in the world.

  The Shadow Roads are different for the Cait Sidhe than for their passengers. There’s no other way Tybalt and Raj could use them the way they do, racing from one place to another without coming out choking and wheezing for breath every single time. For me, they are always featureless, unforgiving, and cold, like running through a void that chooses to hold me up, except when it chooses to let me fall.

  It felt like he ran for less than half as long as he had run before. The shadows shredded around us, and we emerged into the mold-and-ash-scented room, now spattered with g
reat streaks of my drying blood. I sucked in a great, gasping breath and pushed against his chest, wordlessly indicating that he should put me down. He did so, with reasonably good grace, and watched as I recovered my knife and broken cell phone from the floor.

  “What possessed you to think you should enter such a place alone?” he asked.

  “I’ve never met a Baobhan Sith before,” I said. “I thought it was some sort of warding spell. We all did. And if Gillian was in here, this was where I needed to be.” I looked around, in case Gillian might somehow have appeared while I wasn’t looking. The closet had no door, and pieces of the mattress had rotted away, making it clear that she wasn’t under the bed. I scowled. “Another damn dead end.”

  “Someone is laying traps for you. Someone too aware of your limitations.”

  “Isn’t that great? I love it when the world decides to kick me while I’m down.” I took a breath. “Can you . . . can you smell anything here? Any magic?”

  Tybalt inhaled. “The Baobhan Sith’s,” he said. “Yours, although less so, and mostly, I think, because of the quantity of blood you’ve lost. This room has been practically painted.”

  “Fortunately, I don’t have to pay the cleaning bills.” I looked at him solemnly. “The false Queen’s magic was here when I arrived. I think . . . I think she’s involved.”

  His eyes widened. “But she sleeps—”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. This is Faerie, Tybalt. You know things aren’t always what they seem.” I raked my blood-sticky hair out of my face before I turned and started toward the front of the house. “Get a human disguise up. We don’t want to scare the neighbors.”

  “Perhaps you should do the same.”

  I stopped, reaching up to feel my ear. Good illusions are tactile as well as visual. They have to be. I could never have managed to sleep with Cliff if every time he’d touched me, he’d discovered angles that weren’t supposed to be there. My fingers found a tapering point.

  “Oak and ash,” I muttered. “I didn’t even feel the spell break.”

  “You lost a great deal of blood.”

  “I didn’t lose it,” I said. “I know exactly where it is.”

  I didn’t need to turn to feel Tybalt glowering at me. “Ah, yes,” he said. “I begin to remember why I missed you so. The glorious spectacle of watching a woman do her best to bully the universe into rearranging itself according to her utterly self-destructive whim.”

  “A girl needs a hobby,” I said, and grabbed a handful of shadows—or tried to, anyway. They slipped through my fingers like, well, shadows, refusing to catch or cling. I frowned. “That’s weird.”

  “Not really. Again, you lost a great deal of blood, and what remains is preoccupied with putting you back together.” Tybalt stepped around me, stopping so that we were face-to-face in the char-covered living room. “May I?”

  I wanted to tell him “no.” Other people’s illusions always make me itch, and I hate not having control over the spells I wear. Instead, I nodded, and said, “Please.”

  The smell of musk and pennyroyal rose as he leaned in and ran his thumb along the line of my cheek. Then he kissed me again, soft and slow and achingly mine. I kissed him back. The spell took shape around us, solidifying and bursting into being. He pulled away, a smile on his suddenly-human lips. I raised an eyebrow.

  “What?”

  “It’s nice to see you,” he said. “Especially when I don’t have to look at quite so much of your blood.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and so I punched him in the shoulder. To my surprise and delight, Tybalt laughed.

  Even a human disguise couldn’t conceal the fact that he was a handsome man, although it rounded his ears and his pupils, took the impossible malachite green out of his eyes and the dark stripes out of his hair. He looked like the sort of man who belonged on a stage or in a magazine, and he was right there in front of me, smiling at me like I was the most amazing thing in the world.

  There wasn’t time to appreciate him now, but oh, I wanted to. “When this is over, when Gillian is safe at home with her father, come home with me,” I said. “Don’t leave me again.”

  His smile faltered. Then, gravely, he nodded. “As my lady wishes,” he said.

  “Good.” I kissed his cheek, quick and glancing, and walked out of the house. To my relief, Tybalt followed.

  Quentin, May, and Madden were waiting on the sidewalk, and had been joined by a fourth: Walther, his hair in disarray and his glasses askew as he threw what looked like table salt at the bayberry bushes. He stopped when he saw us emerge. “Toby!”

  “Hey.” I hurried down the path toward them, Tybalt at my heels. I had scarcely passed the barrier before Quentin slammed into me, wrapping arms around my waist and pressing his face to my leather jacket. Then he pulled back, expression going from relief to suspicion in an instant.

  “I smell blood,” he said. “How drenched are you under that illusion?”

  “I genuinely appreciate your squire’s focus on the important aspects of life with you,” said Tybalt dryly.

  Quentin’s eyes flicked to him, suspicion becoming irritation. “I’m mad at you,” he said. “We all get messed up sometimes. Running away isn’t the answer.”

  “Understood,” said Tybalt. “I will endeavor to win my way back into your good graces. Now, you were asking the lady about her injuries . . . ?”

  Quentin’s attention swiveled back to me. I swallowed a groan. “Dirty pool, cat,” I said.

  “A man does not reach my ripe old age without learning the better part of the art of distraction,” said Tybalt.

  Walther cleared his throat. “Can we get back to the blood, please? You screamed, and the call dropped. I thought . . .” He stopped. “I thought you were in real trouble.”

  “I was.” I looked back at the house, which seemed so perfect, so untouched. It wasn’t hard to make my decision. I turned to the others. “Madden, you need to go back to Muir Woods and let Arden know a Baobhan Sith has been nesting here. She made this her den.”

  His eyes widened. “What? There haven’t been Baobhan Sith in the Mists since before King Gilad took the throne. That’s not possible.”

  “She tried to chew my arm off. I’d say she’s here. I can help clear her out after I find Gillian, but right now, I need to get back on the trail of my daughter, and you need to tell Arden there’s a threat hiding in Berkeley.” The Baobhan Sith could have been there for years. This was unincorporated territory, no Count or Duke or Marquis to report to when someone disappeared. Most of the fae of Berkeley treasured their independence. They wouldn’t necessarily have gone running to the crown when they had a problem.

  Or maybe they had, and the Queen they’d found had seen an opportunity where they saw a monster. The smell of cold and rowan had been so damn strong, and after Jocelyn’s note . . .

  “We need to move,” I said. “All the false trails have been here in Berkeley, which means Gillian isn’t. They’re trying to make us waste as much time as possible. Walther, if you can keep your eyes open, talk to your kids, anything. I don’t think she’s here, but if she is, I’m hoping you can find a lead.”

  “I’m not an investigator.”

  “I’m barely one,” I shot back. “We need to go to San Francisco.”

  May frowned. “Why?”

  “Jocelyn left me a note. She said I’d find her in the place I ‘gave away.’ That describes two places I can think of, and they’re both in San Francisco.”

  “What?”

  I turned. Quentin was staring at me.

  “One of those places is Goldengreen,” he said. “Dean’s there, and he’s going to be asleep right now. Why aren’t we there already? We need to warn them.” He dug for his phone, already dialing without waiting to hear my excuses.

  I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t have any excuses. I just had a
lot of fear—and the driving need to bring my daughter home. I started walking, and the rest of them moved with me, a little knot of strangers traveling through a residential neighborhood where we had no business being. It felt like eyes watched from every window, twitching curtains aside and making notes about our suspicious behavior. I knew that wasn’t really happening—if it were, the police would have come for Quentin and the rest while I was inside the Baobhan Sith’s house, fighting for my life against a terror made of teeth and hunger.

  Quentin lowered his phone, looking at it bleakly. “He’s not picking up,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll decide whether I believe you once we get there and he’s okay,” Quentin snapped.

  I couldn’t blame him for that, either. Not even a little. I just kept walking.

  We stopped when we reached the parking lot, Madden giving me a doleful look. “Are you sure you don’t want me with you?” he asked. “I have her scent now.”

  “You need to stay here and show Arden to the house,” I said. “It should be under constant supervision, for when the Baobhan Sith comes back. If she doesn’t need you standing guard, you can keep looking for more trails. I bet we find every monster in Berkeley by finding all the places where my daughter isn’t.”

  “I’ll call you if we find anything,” said Walther.

  “Call Quentin,” I replied. “I sort of killed my phone.”

  “Of course, you did,” he said. “Open roads, October, and good luck.”

  “Kind fires,” I replied, and unlocked the car.

  Tybalt settled in the front passenger seat while May and Quentin took the back. It was strangely comforting having so much of my weird little family around me. I hadn’t realized how big a hole Tybalt’s absence made until it wasn’t there anymore.

  “Quentin, before you call Dean again, can you don’t-look-here the car?” I asked. “I need to check my injuries, and that means making sure no one can see how much blood I’m wearing.”