An Artificial Night od-3 Read online

  An Artificial Night

  ( October Daye - 3 )

  Seanan Mcguire

  October "Toby" Daye is a changeling-half human and half fae—and the only one who has earned knighthood. Now she must take on a nightmarish new challenge. Someone is stealing the children of the fae as well as mortal children, and all signs point to Blind Michael. Toby has no choice but to track the villain down—even when there are only three magical roads by which to reach Blind Michael's realm, home of the Wild Hunt—and no road may be taken more than once. If Toby cannot escape with the children, she will fall prey to the Wild Hunt and Blind Michael's inescapable power.

  An Artificial Night

  (The third book in the October Daye series)

  A novel by Seanan McGuire

  For Vixy.

  For always.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

  An Artificial Night is the third of Toby’s adventures, and by the time I reached it, I had a decent idea of what I was doing … or so I thought, before I was tackled by the fine members of the Machete Squad, who beat some sense into me and some awesome into the book. Big thanks go to every one of them for their tireless labors. Special thanks on this volume go to Deborah Brannon, Mia Nutick, Michelle McNeill, and Jeanne Goldfein, all of whom helped immensely with the process of hacking my way down into Blind Michael’s lands. Mary Crowell took me down the scarecrow trail to show me a few things I’d missed when I was walking on my own, and Rebecca Newman was glorious, as always. A great deal of detail came from long discussions with Meg Creel-man, who was a fantastic help. I couldn’t have done it without all of them.

  Chris Mangum and Tara O’Shea made sure my web-site was as awesome and low-stress as possible, thus allowing me to stress out over other things, like what my cats were doing. My agent, Diana Fox, was supportive and clever in all the best ways—it’s good to have a superhero in your corner—while my editor, Sheila Gilbert, was a joy to work with. Marsha Jones and Joshua Starr at DAW answered my endless questions about this and the books before it, and made the process much closer to painless than it could have been. Here on the home front, Kate Secor, Michelle Dockrey, Brooke Lunderville, and Amy McNally kept me from losing my mind, and made the book better at the same time. Finally, a big, big thanks to Betsy Tinney, who rescued me from an emergency kitten shortage when she provided my latest family member, a blue classic tabby and white Maine Coon named Alice.

  My personal soundtrack while writing An Artificial Night consisted mostly of Archetype Cafe, by Talis Kimberley, Thirteen, by Vixy and Tony, Seven is the Number, by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, and Films About Ghosts, by the Counting Crows. Any errors in this book are entirely my own. The errors that aren’t here are the ones that all these people helped me fix.

  Now breath in deep, and keep hold of your candle. It’s a long way from here to Babylon.

  PRONUNCIATION GUIDE:

  All pronunciations are given strictly phonetically. This only covers races explicitly named in the first three books.

  Bannick: ban-nick. Plural is Bannicks.

  Banshee: ban-shee. Plural is Banshees.

  Barghest: bar-guy-st. Plural is Barghests.

  Barrow Wight: bar-row white. Plural is Barrow Wights.

  Blodynbryd: blow-din-brid. Plural is Blodynbryds.

  Cait Sidhe: kay-th shee. Plural is Cait Sidhe.

  Candela: can-dee-la. Plural is Candela.

  Coblynau: cob-lee-now. Plural is Coblynau.

  Cornish Pixie: Corn-ish pix-ee. Plural is Cornish Pixies.

  Daoine Sidhe: doon-ya shee. Plural is Daoine Sidhe, diminutive is Daoine.

  Djinn: jin. Plural is Djinn.

  Ellyllon: el-lee-lawn. Plural is Ellyllons.

  Gean-Cannah: gee-ann can-na. Plural is Gean-Cannah.

  Glastig: glass-tig. Plural is Glastigs.

  Gwragen: guh-war-a-gen. Plural is Gwargen.

  Hamadryad: ha-ma-dry-add. Plural is Hamadryads.

  Hippocampus: hip-po-cam-pus. Plural is Hippocampi.

  Hob: hob. Plural is Hobs.

  Kelpie: kel-pee. Plural is Kelpies.

  Kitsune: kit-soo-nay. Plural is Kitsune.

  Lamia: lay-me-a. Plural is Lamia.

  The Luidaeg: the lou-sha-k. No plural exists.

  Manticore: man-tee-core. Plural is Manticores.

  Naiad: nigh-add. Plural is Naiads.

  Nixie: nix-ee. Plural is Nixen.

  Peri: pear-ee. Plural is Peri.

  Piskie: piss-key. Plural is Piskies.

  Pixie: pix-ee. Plural is Pixies.

  Puca: puh-ca. Plural is Pucas.

  Roane: row-n. Plural is Roane.

  Selkie: sell-key. Plural is Selkies.

  Silene: sigh-lean. Plural is Silene.

  Swanmay: swan-may. Plural is Swanmays.

  Tuatha de Dannan: tootha day danan. Plural is Tuatha de Dannan, diminutive is Tuatha.

  Tylwyth Teg: till-with teeg. Plural is Tylwyth Teg, diminutive is Tylwyth.

  Undine: un-deen. Plural is Undine.

  Urisk: you-risk. Plural is Urisk.

  Will o’ Wisps: will-oh wisps. Plural is Will o’ Wisps.

  Away from light steals home my heavy son

  And private in his chamber pens himself,

  Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out,

  And makes himself an artificial night.

  —William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

  ONE

  September 7th, 2014

  ONE THING I’VE LEARNED IN MY TIME working as a private investigator-slash-knight errant for the fae community of the San Francisco Bay Area: if something looks like it’s going to be simple, it probably won’t be. Some people might consider that an easy lesson. I must be a slow learner because it’s been anything but easy. I’ve been turned into a fish, cursed, nearly drowned, impersonated, slashed, shot at, and had my car blown up—thankfully not while I was inside it, although it was a close call—and now I was chasing Barghests around Dame Eloise Altair’s feast hall, trying not to get myself hurt. Also not easy.

  “Toby! Duck!” Danny didn’t sound particularly worried. Danny’s also a pureblood Bridge Troll, which means he has skin that’s as hard as granite and twice as difficult to damage. As a half-breed Daoine Sidhe, I’m a lot easier to hurt.

  I ducked.

  A Barghest sailed overhead, impacting the wall with a pained thump. Barghests are nasty semi-canine monsters with horns, retractable claws, and venomous stingers in their scorpion tails, but there’s one thing they don’t have: wings. I glanced over my shoulder long enough to confirm that the thing hadn’t been killed by impact—it was still twitching, which made death seem unlikely—before turning to wrinkle my nose at Danny.

  “Changeling, remember? Can you at least try not to hurl spiky critters at my head?”

  “Sure thing,” said Danny blithely. Too blithely. In my experience, people who sound that calm about requests that they not throw things have no intention of changing their behavior.

  My name is October Daye; my friends call me Toby, largely because it’s difficult to call a cranky brunette changeling with a knife October and get away with it. And this is not the way I usually prefer to spend my Saturday nights.

  Every private investigator gets her share of weird calls, and the fact that I’m the only fae PI in the Kingdom means I wind up with more than most. Even worse, most of the weird calls come from the local nobility, which means I can’t turn them down. Lucky me. I shouldn’t complain. Work is work, and playing whack-a-mole with Barghests in Dame Altair’s feast hall was better than going back to checking bags at the grocery store. Not that the grocery store was likely to rehire me, considering that I’d abandoned my job without warning when a friend of mine went and got hers
elf murdered over ownership of a legendary fae artifact. Not the sort of thing I could explain to human resources. Stress on the “human.”

  Changelings rarely do well in jobs with fixed, dependable hours. We get that from the fae side of the family, while the human side makes us too stubborn not to try.

  Dame Altair called on Monday to report that “something” was trashing her pantry, frightening her staff, and generally making life more complicated than she wanted it to be. By Wednesday, I knew that we were dealing with a Barghest infestation. I could try to claim the discovery was solely due to my awesome investigative skills, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. The truth was, I stepped on one while I was searching the place.

  The fact that it was “just” Barghests was a relief—for me, anyway. It could have been a lot worse. Dame Altair didn’t seem particularly relieved, but they were nesting on her property, and that probably made them a lot more annoying. I explained the situation, requested the necessary supplies, and called Danny.

  Danny McReady possesses a lot of positive qualities if you ignore his tendency to chuck Barghests at my head, but when it comes to monster hunting, “practically indestructible” is the one that counts. He’s also a San Francisco taxi driver, which leaves him with a lot of pent-up aggression. The chance to spend the night playing whack-a-mole with Barghests was too much to pass up.

  Dame Altair had evacuated the knowe by the time Danny showed up. We grabbed the enchanted rowan-wood crates she’d provided for us to stuff them into, paused while I pulled on my gloves, and marched back inside to deal with things.

  There were a lot of things to deal with. Barghests breed about once a century, and like many of Faerie’s more monstrous denizens, they balance a high mortality rate with a necessarily high birthrate. I’d counted at least eight before I gave up and asked the Dame for a bunch of boxes. She thought I was insane for not wanting to kill them on the spot, but even Barghests have a right to live. Just not in Dame Altair’s feast hall.

  Where we were actually going to put them was a problem for later; the problem for now was catching them without being seriously injured in the process. They were only pups, about the size of corgis. They were still equipped with multiple ways of killing a person, and they were absolutely not interested in coming quietly.

  “This is the sort of thing I mean.” One of the Barghests was chewing on Danny’s leg, probably hurting itself in the process. “I ask what you’re doing on a Saturday night, and you say ‘hunting Barghests.’ Forgive me for nagging, but you should maybe try getting a social life.”

  “I’m getting paid to be here, remember?” Another Barghest charged me with its tail raised in strike position. I parried with my butterfly net, almost managing to catch it before it popped its claws and ripped through half the mesh. Swearing, I tried to net the thing again before I added, “Besides, I have a birthday party to go to after this.”

  “The Brown kid, right?”

  “Yeah.” Mitch and Stacy’s youngest son, Andrew, was turning four. “I promised to make it in time for cake.”

  “You’ll make it.”

  “Starting to have my doubts,” I muttered. One of the Barghests was slinking on its belly to my right. I leaned over, whapped it on the head with my net, and swept it into the first box. “Get that closed!”

  “Got it.” Danny plucked the Barghest off his leg, bowling it into the box after its sibling before slamming the lid. “That’s two. I’m just saying you could benefit by going out sometimes. Live a little. In ways that don’t involve maybe making yourself dead.”

  “But I’m so good at maybe making myself dead.” I whacked another Barghest. “I wouldn’t have taken this job if I’d known it was going to mean playing with poisonous things. Dame Altair thought the pantries were emptying due to theft.”

  “Well, they kinda were.” Two more Barghests were industriously worrying Danny’s ankles. A wide smile split his craggy face. “Aw, look at the cute little guys.”

  “They’re poisonous monstrosities, Danny. That’s not ‘cute.’”I swung at another Barghest. It scuttled backward, barking at me.

  “You get to keep that spiky thing, I get to think Barghests are cute,” he replied philosophically and scooped up both Barghests, cradling them. “You think Her Ladyship would mind if I took one or two of ’em home?”

  “Spike’s a rose goblin,” I said sharply. “That’s different.”

  “Maybe from where you’re sitting.”

  I groaned, swatting another Barghest and sweeping it into a box before it could sting me. “There isn’t a Barghest rescue society. I don’t think Dame Altair is going to care what we do with them as long as they’re gone when we’re done here.”

  “Good,” said Danny, dropping his two into a box and sealing it. “I’m taking them.”

  “What?” I turned to stare at him, sidestepping a Barghest intent on mauling my shins. “How many?”

  “All of them.” He grabbed another one. It twisted in his hands, ramming its stinger against his shoulder. He smiled indulgently. “I think he likes me.”

  “Danny …”

  “I’ll only keep a couple. If there’s no rescue group, somebody’s gotta look out for the little guys.” He dropped the Barghest he was holding into a box, ignoring its ongoing attempts to sting him. “How about this: instead of splittin’ the fee, you pay for my help by letting me take the Barghests.”

  “And here I thought my money wasn’t any good with you.”

  “Poisonous monstrosities aren’t money.”

  I had to laugh at that. “You win.” We’d somehow managed to stun and capture the entire litter without serious injury. Putting my net down on the floor, I turned to peer at the boxes. “Looks like fourteen of them. They’re not happy.”

  “You wouldn’t be either,” he said. “What do you think happened to their mama?” Barghests are notoriously protective of their young. A litter without a mother almost certainly meant something had gone wrong.

  “Poison and claws don’t protect you from becoming roadkill,” I said. Barghests had an unfortunate tendency to play in traffic. Thankfully the night-haunts were always there to clean up the mess before the humans saw. “She’s lucky she stowed them here, even if they did manage to cause a lot of damage before Dame Altair called me.”

  “It’s a whole new world,” he said sadly. There was no way I could argue with that.

  A few millennia ago, when Faerie was still in its ascendancy, creatures like the Barghests would have roamed the moors, not afraid of anything but hunting parties and bigger predators. Things have changed since then. With Faerie in hiding and more of her creatures becoming extinct every year, the Barghests were probably lucky to have been captured. At least with Danny looking out for them, they might stand a chance.

  Not all Faerie’s denizens have fared as poorly as her monsters. Sure, the Barghests would have been free and happy to do as they pleased,but people like me and most of my friends would have been treated like lepers. Assuming we were allowed to live. As human civilization has taken over much of what used to belong to the fae, changelings have become more integrated into Faerie culture. Call it evolution in action. We’re half-human, but our loyalties are to Faerie; that makes us useful tools in a world that includes things like iron and the Internet. Not that I’ve been able to figure out the e-mail account Countess April O’Leary set up for me, despite several telephone “tech support” sessions punctuated by April’s muffled laughter. Missing fourteen years of technological advancement has left me a little behind the times.

  Fortunately, most of Faerie moves slowly enough to make something as small as being turned into a fish for a decade and a half look positively inconsequential. Certain skills never become outdated, and that includes disposing of infestations of small, inconvenient monsters.

  Danny started carrying boxed Barghests to his taxi while I tracked down Dame Altair to sound the all-clear and collect my fee. He was shoving the last box into the passenger seat whe
n I emerged from the knowe, money safely tucked into my pocket.

  I eyed the cab. It was completely filled with boxes, making it look like he’d decided to start moonlighting as a professional mover. “I hope you weren’t planning on picking up any fares tonight.”

  “Nope.” He grinned, dusting his hands together. “I’m gonna take the babies home and see about setting ’em up a kennel. She say anything about wanting the boxes back?”

  “They’re all yours.” Dame Altair’s knowe was tucked into an elegant Victorian house in a neighborhood nice enough that our cars stuck out like sore thumbs. “I’m gonna get going before I miss the party entirely. Call me if you need any help with the Barghests, okay?”

  “Got it. And you think about what I said. Getting out more couldn’t hurt.”

  “With who? Mitch and Stacy have kids, Kerry’s always busy, Julie hates me, and you have a cab to drive.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. How about you call that King of Cats guy I used to see you with? Take him out, get him drunk, and see if you can make him sing karaoke.”

  “No.” My tone didn’t leave any room for argument.

  Danny blinked, looking startled. “Just think about it, all right? Open roads, Toby.”

  “Good night, Danny.”

  He was just trying to help, and I shouldn’t be cranky about it. I told myself that half a dozen times as I got into my car and pulled out of Dame Altair’s neighborhood, going more than a bit above the speed limit as I tried to make it to Andy’s party on time. I glanced at the clock. Fifteen minutes to midnight. I could just make it, if I managed to avoid getting pulled over.

  Human kids live their lives in sunlight. Staying up late is usually a treat reserved for special occasions. Fae kids live by a different clock. Almost all fae are nocturnal creatures, from Daoine Sidhe like my mother all the way down to the hearth-spirits and pixies. We don’t like the sun; the sun returns the favor. Of Mitch and Stacy’s five kids, only the oldest, Cassandra, was keeping anything like a human schedule. She was a freshman at UC Berkeley, and unfortunately, most of the required courses for a physics degree were held during the day.