A Killing Frost Read online

  DAW Books presents the finest in urban fantasy from Seanan McGuire:

  The October Daye Novels:

  ROSEMARY AND RUE

  A LOCAL HABITATION

  AN ARTIFICIAL NIGHT

  LATE ECLIPSES

  ONE SALT SEA

  ASHES OF HONOR

  CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

  THE WINTER LONG

  A RED-ROSE CHAIN

  ONCE BROKEN FAITH

  THE BRIGHTEST FELL

  NIGHT AND SILENCE

  THE UNKINDEST TIDE

  A KILLING FROST

  The InCryptid Novels:

  DISCOUNT ARMAGEDDON

  MIDNIGHT BLUE-LIGHT SPECIAL

  HALF-OFF RAGNAROK

  POCKET APOCALYPSE

  CHAOS CHOREOGRAPHY

  MAGIC FOR NOTHING

  TRICKS FOR FREE

  THAT AIN’T WITCHCRAFT

  IMAGINARY NUMBERS

  CALCULATED RISKS*

  The Ghost Roads:

  SPARROW HILL ROAD

  THE GIRL IN THE GREEN SILK GOWN

  *Coming soon from DAW Books

  Copyright © 2020 by Seanan McGuire.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Jacket illustration by Chris McGrath.

  Jacket design by Adam Auerbach.

  Interior dingbats created by Tara O’Shea.

  Map by Priscilla Spencer.

  Edited by Sheila E. Gilbert.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1862.

  Published by DAW Books, Inc.

  1745 Broadway, New York, NY, 10019.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

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  Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780756412531

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  For Manda.

  For cake and support, but most of all, for her car’s heated seats.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by Seanan McGuire

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  October Daye Pronunciation Guide

  Map

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Bonus Novella: Shine in Pearl

  About the Author

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Here we go again. Every time I get to write one of these, it gets a little harder to come up with something new to say, and a little more amazing, because so few urban fantasy series—or series, period—will ever make it to book fourteen. Fourteen volumes of October’s adventures! How is that even possible? It doesn’t seem like it should be, and yet here we are, moving blithely into a misty future, still fighting our way through the brambles and briars of an often-hostile Faerie.

  I am so, so grateful that all of you are still here. As I’m typing this, my home in Washington State is under lockdown as we fight to win out over a global pandemic; these are frightening times, and being someone who tells stories for a living can be hard when it feels like reality weighs more than the atmosphere of the entire world. Biggest of thanks to everyone who’s supported and tolerated me through this process, including my D&D group (We blend! We really do!), the Machete Squad, the entire team at DAW Books, and the cast and crew of The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical, who helped me to celebrate one of the best birthdays of my life. Thanks to Kayleigh and Betsy, for Broadway ridiculousness, and to my little sister, whose first Broadway show got canceled by the shutdown.

  Thank you to my dearest, most darling and beloved Amy, who has finally agreed to meet me in the corn; to Vixy, who stands up against an onslaught of email with compassion and grace; to Jude and Alan, who keep the doors open and the fires burning despite endless obstructions; and to Dr. Gawley, for her incredible veterinary medical care. Thanks to everyone who hosted me when travel was still possible, especially Scotchy and Marnie, whose incredible driving made the second half of 2019 infinitely easier, and to Geralyn, who went well out of her way to help me find a dance machine. Thanks to Shawn and Jay and Tea, to Margaret and Mary and a whole list of people, all of whom I adore utterly.

  My editor, Sheila Gilbert, makes so many things possible, as does the patient work of Joshua Starr, who emails me to nag when I let things slip. Diana Fox has finally learned how to use Discord, while Chris McGrath’s covers just get better and better. All my cats are doing well: Elsie, Thomas, and Megara all thrive on my being home constantly, and spend most of their time glued to my side. Finally, thank you to my pit crew: Christopher Mangum, Tara O’Shea, and Kate Secor.

  My soundtrack while writing A Killing Frost consisted mostly of The Lightning Thief, Beetlejuice: The Musical, The Musical, The Musical, Instar, by Nancy Kerr and the Sweet Visitor Band, The Hearth and the Hive, by Talis Kimberley, endless live concert recordings of the Counting Crows, and all the Ludo a girl could hope to have (eternally waiting for a new album). 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.

  Let me show you what’s waiting down by the edge of the water. I think you’re going to enjoy it.

  OCTOBER DAYE PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

  THROUGH A KILLING FROST

  All pronunciations are given strictly phonetically. This only covers races explicitly named in the first fourteen books, omitting Undersea races not appearing or mentioned in the current volume.

  Aes Sidhe: eys shee. Plural is “Aes Sidhe.”

  Afanc: ah-fank. Plural is “Afanc.”

  Annwn: ah-noon. No plural exists.

  Arkan sonney: are-can saw-ney. Plural is “arkan sonney.”

  Bannick: ban-nick. Plural is “Bannicks.”

  Baobhan Sith: baa-vaan shee. Plural is “Baobhan Sith,” diminutive is “Baobhan.”

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

  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.”

  Cu Sidhe: coo shee. Plural is “Cu Sidhe.”

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

  Djinn: jin. Plural is
“Djinn.”

  Dóchas Sidhe: doe-sh-as shee. Plural is “Dóchas Sidhe.”

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

  Folletti: foe-let-tea. Plural is “Folletti.”

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

  Glastig: glass-tig. Plural is “Glastigs.”

  Gwragen: guh-war-a-gen. Plural is “Gwragen.”

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

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

  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.’

  Puca: puh-ca. Plural is “Pucas.”

  Roane: row-n. Plural is “Roane.”

  Satyr: say-tur. Plural is “Satyrs.”

  Selkie: sell-key. Plural is “Selkies.”

  Shyi Shuai: shh-yee shh-why. Plural is “Shyi Shuai.”

  Silene: sigh-lean. Plural is “Silene.”

  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.”

  Urisk: you-risk. Plural is “Urisk.”

  ONE

  October 11th, 2014

  The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,

  And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely

  His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,

  And then he falls, as I do.

  —William Shakespeare, Henry VIII.

  “WE’RE GOING TO HAVE to discuss dresses eventually, October,” said May, holding up a bridal magazine and waving it at me like a weapon. “Something pretty. Something lacy. Something—and this is the part I can’t stress enough—that you’re actually willing to wear.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I wear to the wedding, we both know it’s going to be completely covered in blood before we reach ‘I do,’” I said scornfully. “Do purebloods even say, ‘I do’?” Having never been to a pureblood wedding before, I was woefully uninformed about their customs. Thanks to my mother, my wedding knowledge is much more romantic comedy than formal fairy tale.

  My sister—technically my retired Fetch, but that’s not a relationship that’s easy to explain, and she’s family either way—rolled her eyes. “Of course not,” she said. “That’s a Christian thing, which means it’s a human thing. Purebloods don’t do Christian wedding vows.”

  “Got it,” I said, even though I didn’t. I didn’t “got” any of this.

  May snorted before pushing her hair, currently streaked in electric blue, out of her eyes and dropping the magazine onto the pile that had come to dominate our coffee table. “Liar,” she said. Like most of our furniture, the table had originally come from Community Thrift, and like every other flat surface in our house, it had been immediately covered in a thick layer of junk mail, books, and generalized clutter. We’re not tidy people.

  It doesn’t help that we have a constant stream of teenagers flowing in and out of the house, which is huge by San Francisco standards. We have a dedicated living room and a dining room, and four bedrooms, most of which are in use on any given afternoon. Tybalt and I share one, despite his occasional protests that it’s inappropriate for us to cohabitate before the wedding; May and her live-in girlfriend Jazz, share a second, which is far enough down the hall from mine that we can all pretend to be untouched paragons of virtue.

  The third bedroom belongs to my squire, Quentin, and will until the day his parents call him home to Toronto to take up his place as Crown Prince of the Westlands, which is what Faerie calls North America. We steal human words with gleeful abandon, but we don’t like to use their names for things when we have any other choice in the matter. We’re sort of like the French that way.

  The fourth bedroom is currently a guest room and plays host to a rotating cast of people with nowhere better to spend the day. Usually, it’s either Quentin’s boyfriend Dean, who prefers to sleep alone, my friend Etienne’s daughter Chelsea, or my friend Stacy’s middle daughter Karen. Like I said, a constant stream of teenagers. Tybalt’s nephew Raj is in Quentin’s room what seems like three nights out of five, and I continue to hold out hope that my own daughter Gillian will eventually decide she’s tired of hating me and take her turn at using up all the hot water. I like having a full house. It feels safer than the alternative.

  Although that might be an artifact of my childhood. When I was alone with my mother in her tower, that was always when things got bad. When I was with Uncle Sylvester and my friends in Shadowed Hills, I was safe, and fed, and cared for. For me, home never happened in the building where it was supposed to live. I guess that’s why I’m so determined to keep my doors open, and to keep the kids who tumble through my life as safe as I can. I want to be the kind of friend to them that my uncle was to me, back before he became my liege, back before I understood what we really were to one another.

  Growing up doesn’t mean getting over everything that happened to us as children. It just means calcifying it and never letting go.

  May grabbed another bridal magazine, flipping it open to a picture of a bride who was wearing so much lace and beadwork that it was a miracle she could stand under her own power. Wait. Maybe she wasn’t standing. Maybe the dress was doing it for her. It certainly looked stiff enough.

  “How about this one?” she asked.

  “If you want to open a bakery, I won’t stop you, but I’m not walking down the aisle looking like somebody’s grandmother’s prize meringue,” I said.

  May wrinkled her nose. “You’re no fun at all.”

  “If you want a dress with its own zip code, you get married.”

  To my surprise, she sighed heavily, turned the page in her magazine, and said, “I want to. Jazz isn’t sure.”

  I blinked. “Why isn’t she sure? You’re amazing. Any girl would be lucky to marry you.”

  “Try telling her that,” said May. She put the magazine down on the table and stood, stretching. “I think I’m done with this for the afternoon. I’m going to go bake some cookies.”

  “That’s your answer to everything.”

  “Better than your answer to everything.” She made an exaggerated stabbing gesture. “There’s a reason I don’t go through as many pairs of jeans as you do.”

  “Brat.”

  “Proud of it.” May cracked a smile, although it lacked her usual intensity. “I’d bake your wedding cake if you hadn’t promised the job to Kerry when you were six.”

  “She’ll do an amazing job, and you know it.”

  “I do,” May agreed. “But my buttercream is better.”

  “Questionable.”

  She laughed as she walked out of the living room, leaving me alone with a pile of bridal magazines and the two geriatric half-Siamese cats sleeping on the other end of the couch. I gave them a worried look. Cagney and Lacey can sleep through virtually anything these days. They’re cats, so sleep was always a strong suit of theirs, but for the last few years, they haven’t wanted to do much of anything else.

  Age comes for everything mortal. Everything except for me, assuming I can play my cards right.

  My name is October Daye because my mother should never have been allowed to name her own children. My mother should never have been allowed to have children. She’s a Firstborn daughter of Oberon, absent Lord of Faerie, and nothing about her is human. She used to pretend she was, once
upon a time, and that’s how I happened, because my father was as human as they come. I’m what we call a changeling, a blend of two worlds, magical and mortal at the same time. It’s an awkward place to stand since we don’t belong anywhere, not really. We have to fight for our place every day of our lives, and it can be exhausting. A lot of changelings break under the strain.

  Sometimes, I’m not sure I haven’t. I spent my childhood as my mother’s shadow, dogging her heels and trying desperately to make her love me, even when it was clear she didn’t really want to. I didn’t know it then, but I wasn’t the daughter she wanted to have. No, that honor was reserved for my missing sister, August, who had decided to play the hero and go looking for our grandfather.

  She didn’t find him. She lost herself in the act of trying and stayed lost until I went and brought her home. But nothing in Faerie is ever that straightforward. I’m the daughter of a fae woman and a human man, and I’m holding onto my humanity by my fingernails. One day it’s going to slip away, and I’ll be immortal like my mother, my sisters, and my daughter.

  I’m not ready for that. I can’t hold it off forever but giving up my mortality feels like betraying my father, who never asked to get swept up in any of this.

  August’s father is as fae as they come. He’s a man named Simon Torquill, twin brother to my liege lord, Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills. He’s also the man who turned me into a fish for fourteen years and destroyed the life I’d been trying to build outside of Faerie. He did it to save me from something even worse, because fae don’t think about time the way humans do—as a pureblood, spending a decade or so as a fish would have been inconvenient, not devastating. It took me a long time to forgive him. Part of me never will. The part that will always be human, no matter what my blood says. The rest of me says I wouldn’t have what I’ve got now if I’d stayed where I was. I didn’t choose to lose my human fiancé, or my then-mostly-human daughter. I would never have chosen that. But I also wouldn’t go back if someone could offer me the choice. Not now.

  Now, I’m a knight errant and a recognized Hero of the Realm, thanks to Queen Arden Windermere in the Mists, who was able to reclaim her family’s throne and get her brother back because of my chronic inability to mind my own damn business.