Chimes at Midnight Read online

  We ran long enough that my eyelashes were sticking together and my lungs were one constant, aching burn, screaming out their need for air. I ignored the pain as best I could, focusing on following the firefly through the dark.

  And then it stopped moving.

  It hovered in place, turning a sad little circle in the air, like it couldn’t decide what it was supposed to do next. Tybalt and I stopped behind it. Carefully, I lifted my hand until the bug was resting on my palm. I closed my fingers around it, and finally, mercifully, Tybalt opened a door from the shadows back into the comfort of the mortal world.

  We were standing on the corner of Valencia and 20th Street, where the spreading branches of some kind of waxy-leafed tree provided enough cover that no one had seen us appear. I took a deep, gasping breath that turned into a cough at the end. Then I did it again. After three of those, I was breathing almost normally, although the ache in my chest made it clear that it would be a while before the “almost” went away.

  “You okay?” I asked, still wheezing.

  “Mostly,” said Tybalt. He released my hand. “Check your bug, I beg, while I regain my dignity.”

  I managed a faint smile before reaching up and scraping the ice crystals from my eyelashes. With that done, I opened my fingers to check on the firefly. It was glowing more weakly than before, and it willingly crawled back onto my lapel when I raised my hand and tipped it into place. “Sorry about that,” I said. “Next time, we’ll take a taxi.”

  “Ah, yes, I forget how eager modern drivers are to respond to commands like ‘pray, take direction from the bug.’”

  “You know Labyrinth, you should know ‘follow that cab.’”

  “I do.” Tybalt smiled. “I just enjoy watching the faces you make when I become overly archaic.”

  “Me and my five-hundred-year-old boyfriend.” I raked a loop of hair that had escaped its complex net of ribbons away from my face. Then I frowned, looking at the street around us. “We’re near the house. This is where the police station is.”

  “There’s more to a road than a single landmark, especially in this city. What did she say?”

  “That Arden would be in a place I never see and don’t want to go.” My frown deepened. “I see this road all the time.”

  “Then anything new should stand out like a beacon in a storm.”

  He was right. I knew this street. I walked it twice a night, at least. I remembered the way Devin hid Home from mortal eyes, using a misdirection spell anchored to a piece of Coblynau metalwork. Whatever magic Arden was hiding behind had to be something similar, and that meant she didn’t need to be in a knowe, or even a shallowing. She could be anywhere.

  Tybalt held out his arm. I took it, leaning close in an effort to borrow some of his body heat. I needed to replace what the Shadow Roads had taken. Together we walked side by side down Valencia Street.

  It was a beautiful morning. Most of the shops were open or opening, and the foot traffic was still sparse, leaving the sidewalks wide open. Dire as the situation was—goblin fruit killing changelings, missing princesses, my impending banishment and all—it was nice to just walk with him, knowing that together, we could handle anything the city wanted to throw at us. It had taken us a long time to reach the point where moments like this were possible. I wanted the moments to last a lot longer . . . all of which made it all the more important not to get my changeling ass tossed out of the Kingdom of the Mists.

  I glanced down at the firefly on my jacket. It was glowing steadily, like a tiny Christmas light pinned to the leather. Then I glanced back up again, and stopped dead.

  Tybalt took another step before the sudden drag of my arm on his pulled him to a halt. He stopped and frowned, following my gaze to the nearest storefront. “October, I love you, and I understand that we all have our quirks. I’m even willing to wait while you acquire the coffee you so obviously need. But I do not think that standing here staring at the coffeehouse will cause a beverage to appear.”

  “You don’t understand.” I glanced at him, and then back to the storefront, like I was afraid it might disappear. I was afraid it might disappear. “I know every coffee shop in a two-mile radius of my house. I know how much they charge, how good their coffee is, and what their hours are like.”

  “And?”

  “And I’ve never seen this place before.” According to the sign in the window, accompanied by a logo that looked like an ouroboros—a red snake eating its own tail—this was the Borderlands Café. I scooped the firefly off my lapel and tucked it into the pocket of my jacket. Hopefully, the little bug was sturdy enough that it wouldn’t be squashed. “Can you see anything glowing through my clothes? I don’t want to spook the locals if we can help it.”

  “Hmm.” Tybalt stepped back, taking an ostentatiously long look up and down my body. I crossed my arms, raising an eyebrow. He raised a finger to silence any objections I might be preparing and continued his study. Finally, he nodded, looking smug, and said, “Nothing but your sparkling personality.”

  “You can be a real dick when you want to,” I said. “Why am I dating you again?”

  “Leather pants,” he deadpanned.

  I laughed. I couldn’t help myself.

  “And that, too, is my saving grace: I make you laugh when you spend far too much time wrapped in the shroud of your own dignity.” He placed a kiss on my forehead. “If I may be so bold, now would be an excellent time for you to get a cup of coffee.”

  “Best hiding place ever,” I agreed, opened the screen door, and stepped inside.

  The Borderlands Café was a long, rectangular room, stretching past the kitchen area to meet with the back wall. The floor was polished hardwood, and the furniture was an eclectic mix of wooden tables, comfortable chairs, and even couches. It was surprisingly busy, considering the hour. People sat with their laptop computers, magazines, books, or in small clusters, sipping their drinks and talking. It lacked the hectic air of many of the local cafés—something that was probably connected to the signs saying “No Wifi.” People who wanted to hang out in a coffee shop would stay, people who wanted to get online for free would go find someplace more suited to their tastes.

  We approached the counter, where a large blond man in a black T-shirt proclaiming “Carnies Need Love Too” was wiping glasses with a rag. He beamed when he saw us, showing a daunting number of teeth in the process.

  “Hi!” he said, setting the glass aside. “Welcome to Borderlands. What can I get you?”

  I glanced at the menu on the wall. “A large coffee.”

  “Two large coffees,” amended Tybalt.

  The blond man nodded, smile fading as he focused on our order. “Here or to go?”

  “Here.” We needed time to figure out where Arden was, or whether the firefly had sensed my need for caffeine and simply led us to a coffee shop someone had, for whatever reason, decided to hide from most of the city.

  “Should I leave room for cream and sugar?”

  “Yes on his, no on mine,” I said, producing my wallet. “Hey—how long has this place been here?”

  “Oh, a couple of years. The bookstore was here first, and then the owner got bored and decided to open a café.” The blond man beamed again, showing, if possible, even more teeth than before. “Alan gets bored easy.”

  I paused. “There’s a bookstore?”

  “Yeah, next door.” The blond man pointed to the wall where the menu was posted. “It’s through there. Alan says he’s going to open up a door between them any day now, but he’s been busy. You know. Owner stuff.”

  “Right, owner stuff,” I said. “You know, I’d love to see the bookstore. When do they open?”

  “Oh, they just opened.” He beamed. “You have great timing.”

  “So I’ve been told,” I said, and smiled back. “Could we get that coffee to go?”

  Unsurprisingly, it turned out that we could.

  NINE

  MY COFFEE WAS HOT AND STRONG and gone by the time we’d travel
ed the five steps between the coffee shop and the bookstore. Tybalt plucked my empty cup from my fingers, replacing it with his own, which was still full. I blinked at him. He smiled.

  “I did not ‘profane’ the coffee with milk or sugar, much as I would have liked to,” he said. “Unlike you, I am capable of functioning without artificial stimulants.”

  “I like artificial stimulants,” I protested. “They usually mean nobody’s trying to kill me. Unlike the natural kind.”

  Tybalt laughed. I took advantage of the pause to study the front window of the bookstore, where a display of books about robots was arranged alongside a sign advertising the store hours. Inside, tall bookshelves were the order of the day. A woman almost pale enough to be nocturnal stood behind the register, a red kerchief tied over her near-black hair. She glanced up, saw me looking in, and smiled in the tired but welcoming way of early morning shopkeepers everywhere.

  Tybalt stepped up next to me. “Have you any idea what comes next?”

  “Yeah.” I took a long drink of coffee. I actually tasted it this time. “We go inside.”

  The bookstore was even quieter than the café, probably because it didn’t hold as many people. The hardwood floors were older, softened by worn Oriental rugs, and classic rock played from somewhere behind the counter. The woman was still smiling at us.

  “Welcome to Borderlands,” she said. “Let me know if I can help you find anything.”

  She sounded like a California native. I smiled back and raised my coffee cup, using the action to mask opening my mouth and breathing in a brief taste of her heritage. Human. I lowered the cup. “Actually, maybe. My sister was here recently, and she said she was supposed to get a call from a lady who works here? Um . . . her name was Arlene or Denise or . . . something, I don’t know. My sister’s not too organized.”

  To my relief, the woman grinned. “I’d be willing to bet you’re looking for Ardith. Give me a second. I’ll see if she’s ready to start her shift.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” I said. I’m technically allowed to thank humans. That doesn’t stop it from feeling weird. I avoid it when I can.

  “Just be glad you came in early—Ardith helps open, and then she’s gone until late afternoon,” said the woman. She moved out from behind the counter, heading toward a door at the back of the room and vanishing through it.

  Her motion, meanwhile, had startled the store’s cat, which had been curled unseen on one of the chairs behind the counter. It leaped up next to the register, where it crouched, wrapping its tail around its legs, and considered us with eyes the color of Midori liqueur.

  Tybalt recoiled, horror and shock in his face. “What,” he demanded, “is that?”

  “It’s a cat,” I said. There was a sign next to the register. “It says her name is Ripley. She’s a Sphinx. They’re hairless cats from Canada. Huh. Who’d have thought hairless cats would come from Canada?” I gave the cat another look. “I wonder if I should get one for Quentin.”

  “It’s naked,” said Tybalt.

  He was right: the cat was almost completely hairless, with only a few stubby, half-curled whiskers and some patches of fuzz on her toes and tail. Her skin was pink blotched with black and orange, like part of her remembered, deep down, that she was supposed to be calico. She was still watching us. I’d been around Tybalt and my own cats long enough to interpret her expression as a smirk.

  “She’s pretty, in a weird, alien life-form, probably steals souls in the night kind of way,” I said. I held out a hand. Ripley sniffed it with the expected gravitas before deigning to butt her forehead against my fingers. “I think she likes me.”

  “Delightful,” grumbled Tybalt.

  “You don’t get worked up over Manx cats.”

  “Missing a tail is nothing like missing all your hair,” said Tybalt primly.

  I snorted laughter, and took another drink of coffee. That was all I had time for before an unfamiliar voice from behind us said, “Oh, you met Ripley. She’s granting you a great favor, you know. She doesn’t always let first-timers see her. Now what’s this about a sister?”

  This time, when I tasted the air to feel out the heritage of those around us, I got more than just Dóchas and Cait Sidhe. The flavor of Tuatha de Dannan overlaid them both, strong and very, very close. Lowering my coffee, I turned. Tybalt turned with me.

  The voice had come from what looked like a perfectly normal shop girl. She was wearing jeans, and a black shirt with red cap sleeves and the store’s logo printed across the chest. Each of her ears had been pieced three times, something that was easy to notice, since we were almost the same height. Her eyes were two different colors, one brown, one so blue it was almost disconcerting, and her hair was chestnut brown, worn long. Her bangs overhung her eyes, and her skin was even paler than mine. She was looking at us with cheerful curiosity, like she couldn’t wait to help with our question, and for a moment I hated myself for coming here to drag this girl back into the world she’d clearly walked away from when her father died. I knew all too well what it was to have people putting their expectations of your parents onto your shoulders. It wasn’t fair of us to come here and ask this of her.

  It wasn’t fair for the Queen of the Mists to bring goblin fruit into the city. It wasn’t fair for me to be exiled from my home. The Luidaeg was right: Faerie isn’t fair. Maybe it was never meant to be.

  “There’s no sister,” I said, talking fast to get the words out before the human clerk came back. “Well. I have a sister, but she’s never been here. None of us have. Your charms made sure of that, Your Highness, and I know they’ve kept you safe for a long time, but it’s time to stop hiding. Your Kingdom needs you.”

  Her eyes widened. Then they narrowed, taking on a calculating cast as she looked from me to Tybalt and back again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now please leave, or I’ll tell Jude you’re harassing me, and she’ll call the police.”

  “Princess.” Tybalt’s voice was a slow rumble. She turned to him, expression melting toward confusion. He has that effect on most women, including me. “I knew your father. He was a good man, and he equipped you with the means to hide yourself for good reason. I was a reluctant Prince, in my own time, and I know the terror of the throne. I claimed mine when to do otherwise would have been to fail my people. Can you owe your people any less?”

  “I don’t know who you people are or what you want, but you need to leave,” she said. “Now.”

  The store was still empty, and Jude hadn’t reappeared. I decided to push things a little farther before giving up. I took a breath, and said, “Your name is Arden Windermere. Your father was King Gilad Windermere. I don’t know where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing since he died, but the Mists needs you. I need you.” I reached into my jacket pocket, relieved when the firefly inside responded by climbing onto my fingertip.

  The firefly’s glow brightened as I pulled it out into the open air of the shop. It rose on only slightly-battered wings to fly to Arden, hovering in front of her startled eyes for a moment before doing a loop around her head and finally landing on her chest like a strange, living jewel.

  “We don’t have the wrong girl,” I said.

  Arden looked down at the firefly clinging to her shirt. Then she looked up again, sorrow and despair warring in her eyes. “Don’t do this,” she begged. “Whoever you are, whatever you want, don’t do this. Leave. Walk away. Don’t make me refuse you again.”

  “We can’t,” I said. “But if you’d like to talk about it in private, we’d be happy to listen.”

  Her expression sharpened, turning almost feral. It was the sort of wary, assessing look I’d seen on the face of every child Devin had ever brought Home, the kind of look that knew there was no help coming. “How do I know you’re not working for her?”

  There was no question of who Arden meant when she said “her”: a Princess hiding in her own kingdom would have no need to refer to anyone with that much bitterness unless she was talking
about the person who held the throne that should have been hers. “The Queen of the Mists hates me more than just about anyone else,” I said. “Maybe she hates you more, if she knows you exist, but I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m not her creature. If you need proof of that, well. She banished me last night. I have three days to get out of the Kingdom.”

  “I am a King of Cats,” said Tybalt. “My loyalty is first to my people, second to my lady, and lastly to myself. The Kings and Queens of the Divided Courts have no power over me.”

  Arden shook her head. Then she turned to the office and shouted, “Jude, I need to spend some more time with these folks, okay? Tell Madden I’ll be downstairs if he needs me.”

  “Okay . . .” Jude’s answering call sounded dubious. Arden clapped a hand over the firefly on her chest just before the mortal woman emerged from the back room, wrapping her fingers around it. She put her hand behind her back, offering Jude a sickly smile. Jude blinked and then frowned, giving us a suspicious look. “Ardith? Is everything okay?”

  “I’m fine. I just have the things I promised to give to her sister downstairs.” Arden shot me a panicked look as she realized she didn’t know what to call me.

  “I’m October, by the way,” I said, to Jude. I tried to make it look like a normal introduction. I probably failed.

  Tybalt, naturally, was cool as ever. “Rand,” he said, smiling. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Jude. She was looking more suspicious by the second. “Ardith, are you sure you don’t want me to keep your friends company up here while you go get whatever you need from the basement?”

  “I’m sure,” Arden said. “Just tell Madden where I am.”