Chimes at Midnight Page 18

  Fig. XIX: Goldengreen.

  For a moment, we both sat quietly, considering the picture. Finally, in a soft voice, I said, “The key didn’t have anything to do with the knowe.”

  “What?”

  “When Evening died, I rode her blood. That’s how I found the hope chest in the first place. I let her tell me where to go.” The experience damn near killed me. Her blood was too strong for me, and I was too human to handle it. I glanced at my hand, lips pressed into a flat line. I was more human now than I was then. No blood magic for me. “One of the things she, um, ‘said’ was that the key would open my way in Goldengreen.”

  “I see,” said Tybalt, sounding puzzled.

  “No, you don’t, and neither did I until now. Tybalt, the hope chests have names, and the key did nothing to help me get into the knowe, or to guide me while I was there.” I twisted to face him, the book still open in my arms. “The key got me to the hope chest, because it was taking me to Goldengreen. This is Goldengreen.” I gestured to the illustration.

  “They named the knowe for the treasure it contained?”

  “I guess so.” I turned the page, and read aloud, “‘The seventh chest to appear was Goldengreen, made of oak, ash, rowan, and thorn, carved by no fewer than seven hands, and no more than thirteen. The exact number is unknown, but it is unique among the hope chests in that no trace of apple or rosewood was used in its making, nor willow, nor pine. The wood was soaked in blood before it was lain into place, and the hope chest itself does not sit easy in the hands, making some suspect the crafters died in the making of it’ . . . charming.”

  “Who was its bearer?” asked Tybalt. “Perhaps we can determine where the others might be by eliminating at least one of the possibilities.”

  “Let me see . . .” I turned a few more pages before I found a passage I wanted. “This says it was given to Eira Rosynhwyr for safekeeping. Why do I know that horribly unpronounceable name?”

  “It’s Eira Rosynhwyr, and if you’ve heard of her, it’s because she’s the Daoine Sidhe Firstborn,” said Mags, emerging from the stacks with empty hands. My heart sank, and only rose slightly as Quentin came into view behind her, carrying several books.

  “Okay,” I said. “Is she one of the ones who’s still around? Do we have a directory or something?”

  “No, there’s no, ah, ‘directory’ to the Firstborn, and as for Eira, I don’t know. Maybe she’s alive, maybe she’s not. There are no records of her death, and even if there were, it might not have stuck. Her particular parlor trick had to do with playing Snow White.”

  “She hung out with Dwarves?” I guessed.

  Mags smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes. “She never stayed dead for long. Firstborn are notoriously hard to kill, and Eira was always the hardest of them all.”

  “Okay.” I looked back at the book. “So she was the Daoine Sidhe First, and she left the hope chest with her descendants. Maybe we can find the others by figuring out which races they parented, and then going door to door.”

  “I’m not sure you’re physically prepared for a search . . .” Tybalt began.

  I cut him off with a tight shake of my head. “Don’t say it. Please. I am begging you. Don’t say it.” My stomach growled. I pressed my hand against it, trying to silence the need, and cast a pleading look at Mags. “While I’m begging . . . please tell me you have a suggestion about what might make this a little easier to bear. Just long enough for me to find a hope chest.”

  “We could put you into an enchanted sleep . . .” she began.

  “No,” I said, before she could continue. “Elf-shot kills humans just as dead as goblin fruit does, and anything else would take too long to put together. I can’t just sleep this off.”

  “I don’t have any other suggestions. What I do have is books.” She gestured at Quentin and the books that he was holding. “This is the sum total of what we know about goblin fruit. I’ll begin looking for any sort of treatment known to work for humans. If anything has ever been written down, I’ll find it.”

  “I’ll help,” said Quentin. I blinked at him, and he looked at me, finally letting all his anguish and terror show. “I shouldn’t have walked ahead. I should have been there. This is something I can do to help you. Please. Let me help.”

  “Of course.” I held up the book on hope chests. “Go through this, too. See if there’s anything that might help you figure out where these damn things are now. So far, I’ve got nothing. The index tells me who had the chests when they were divided, but it uses names, not titles, and the only Firstborn I’m on a first-name basis with is my Mom.” And Acacia, but she was beyond my reach at the moment. If the Shadow Roads were hard, the roads it would take to get to the skerry where she lived would probably kill me.

  “Okay,” he said. Then he smiled, a little awkwardly, and said, “You’re not really on a first-name basis with her, are you? You call her ‘Mom.’”

  “See, now you really understand why I need you going through this book. We’re going to go see the Luidaeg. I may not be on a first-name basis with her, but I don’t think that matters. Maybe she knew this Antigone lady, and can point us in the direction of another hope chest. But first . . .” I shook my head. “We’re going to go to Walther first.”

  “Walther?” asked Mags blankly.

  “He’s a friend of mine. An alchemist. He’s been trying to find a way to make goblin fruit less addictive, or at least come up with a treatment for the people who are already addicted.” Walther was a pureblood Tylwyth Teg alchemist masquerading as a human chemistry professor at UC Berkeley. He’d been trying to isolate the addictive properties of goblin fruit, working under the assumption that since the addiction was magical, the treatment would be too. I’d been supplying him with the goblin fruit I confiscated from the dealers I cleared off the streets. I was happy to do it. At least I knew that whatever I gave to him was removed from circulation for good.

  “And you think he can help you?”

  I shrugged. “It’s a long shot, but so is everything else. He’s been working with the goblin fruit for months, trying to find something to cut the craving. It’s time for us to see how far along he really is.”

  Quentin nodded. “I’ll call you when we find something helpful. And I’ll call Goldengreen if I need a ride anywhere. Raj can come and pick me up.”

  “It’ll give him something to do other than hanging around making Arden uncomfortable.” I turned back to Mags, opening my mouth to speak, and stopped as I saw her staring at the flask of fireflies. “The Luidaeg gave those to us,” I said, perhaps unnecessarily. “She thought they’d help us find King Gilad’s missing kids. They did, so I guess she was right about that.”

  “They’re from Annwn, aren’t they?” She drifted closer, a wondering look on her face. “I used to chase sparks like this across the moor when I was a child, before I’d ever seen the human world—or ever seen a human, even. Back when we lived in Annwn, and everything was going to be wonderful forever . . .”

  Watching Mags approach the fireflies felt weirdly intrusive, like this was something I wasn’t supposed to be seeing. I cleared my throat and stood. “Yeah,” I said. “They’re from Annwn.” I decided not to mention that we’d been to Annwn ourselves, not that long ago. From the way she was looking at the fireflies, hearing that might break her heart.

  “That’s amazing.”

  “Well, we don’t need them right now, and it’s probably best if we’re not carrying anything extra, so why don’t I leave those here with Quentin? That way you can keep looking at them, after you finish looking things up.”

  Mags was close enough to touch the glass of the flask with one trembling fingertip. She looked up, and nodded. “Yes, that sounds like it would be wonderful. I promise I won’t let anything happen to them. They’re so beautiful . . .”

  “Yeah, they’re pretty neat.” I glanced to Quentin. “You sure you want to stay here?”

  “Tybalt doesn’t need to be carrying us both right now,”
he said. “I’ll be fine. And it’s like I said, if I need you, I’ll call.”

  “Okay, kiddo. Just stay safe.” I wanted to hug him. I wanted to tell him he’d always been an amazing squire, and one of the best kids I’d ever known. He was definitely better than I deserved, on both counts. But that felt too much like saying good-bye—maybe because saying good-bye was exactly what it would have been—and so I didn’t say anything. I just turned, offering Tybalt my hands, and let him pull me first into his arms, and then down, down, into the dark.

  FIFTEEN

  TYBALT DIDN’T LET ME RUN with him this time. He hoisted me into his arms as soon as we were on the Shadow Roads, carrying me through the darkness. I didn’t protest. I knew as well as he did what we were up against, and if we were going from San Francisco to the UC Berkeley campus, I needed all the help I could get. Instead of fighting, I just curled there, trying to borrow what warmth I could from his body, and held my breath, waiting for it to be over.

  I hate being helpless even more than I hate being hurt. I spent too much of my life thinking I couldn’t take care of myself, and having that condition thrust upon me was not making me a happy girl. The steady rumbling in my stomach wasn’t helping. If this went on much longer, I was going to be just like every other goblin fruit addict in the world: out of my mind with wanting, ready to do anything for a fix.

  My lungs were burning by the time Tybalt stepped out of the shadows and into the cool night of the mortal world. I coughed, wiping the ice from my face, and tried to scramble down. He bent to make it easier for me. I cast him a grateful look before catching myself on the nearest surface—a brick wall—and vomiting. I didn’t have anything in my stomach, but that didn’t seem to matter to my body. It was unhappy, and it was going to make sure I knew it.

  Tybalt put a hand on my back, resting it in the space between my shoulder blades. “Are you all right?”

  “Not on this or any other planet.” I straightened up, looking around. We were under the old bridge spanning the creek that cut through the middle of campus. I sighed. “See, if I’d just realized where we’d come out, I could have thrown up in the water. Less mess.”

  “Yes, but won’t you think about the frogs? I’m sure they receive enough unwanted vomit from the student body.”

  I blinked. And then, to my surprise, I laughed. Tybalt smiled toothily.

  “Good,” he said. “You’re still you.”

  “You’re stuck with me,” I said.

  His smile faded, replaced by a quiet uncertainty that I’d come to recognize an inch at a time, picking it out of his more common expressions like a secret that was just for me. Kings of Cats aren’t supposed to be weak; they’re not supposed to be uncertain or worried. Those are emotions for people who don’t have Kingdoms to run.

  Or for people standing alone with their suddenly mostly-human girlfriends, wondering if they put off saying, “I love you” for too long. I put my hand against the side of his face. This was the first time we’d been alone since I woke up. If I couldn’t afford a few seconds for this, it was already too late. I was already lost.

  “Hey,” I said. “I mean it. You’re stuck with me. I’m not going anywhere. If there’s an answer, we’ll find it. And if there’s not an answer, we’ll create it. We’re going to talk to Walther, and then we’re going to ask the Luidaeg if she knows where to find a hope chest, and we’re going to fix this. I’ll be back to normal before you know it.”

  “Your life is in danger. You’re stubborn, pigheaded, and refusing to admit the gravity of your situation. I’d say you’re normal right now.” His tone was light, but it couldn’t disguise his relief.

  “Don’t make fun of me while I’m in the middle of a crisis.”

  Tybalt peeled my hand away from his face, holding it as he stepped closer. There was no space left between us. “My sweet little fish. If I refused to make fun of you simply because you were in the grips of a crisis, I would never have the opportunity to make fun of you again.”

  “I’d be okay with that,” I said.

  He laughed and started to lean forward, clearly intending to kiss me. I raised a hand, stopping him. He blinked at me.

  “I just threw up,” I said.

  “October, given the circumstances—”

  “All I can possibly have had in my stomach was goblin fruit. I don’t need to deal with you going on a magical mystery tour while I’m trying to cross campus. Let me rinse my mouth, and then you can have all the reassuring kisses you want, okay?”

  Tybalt sighed. “Loath as I am to acquiesce to your request, it does have merit.”

  “You could have just said ‘okay,’ you know.”

  “Ah, but then, would you have smiled?”

  I laughed, and held his hand as we walked out from under the bridge, heading for the dirt trail cut into the hillside by generations of students coming and going. The campus was mostly deserted this late at night. A few students walked the pathways, but they were few and far between, as were the homeless people sleeping in the shelter of the school’s patches of carefully preserved natural vegetation. I realized with a shiver that I couldn’t tell whether the people remaining were human or fae, and walked a little closer to Tybalt. My current condition could come with a lot of nasty surprises if I wasn’t careful.

  “Are you cold?” he asked, looking down at me.

  “Just facing a few unpleasant realities,” I said. “Walther’s office is this way.”

  As a junior faculty member, Walther rated a proper lab less because he was valuable, and more because he had a tendency to cause unexpected and odd-smelling explosions. I was pretty sure he’d used some persuasion spells, and maybe a glamour or two, to convince the administration to give him as much leeway as he had. He was in a better spot than some people with much more seniority, and nobody seemed to mind.

  Then again, this was Walther. They probably just assumed he’d blow himself to kingdom come and they’d get his space without having to waste precious political favors.

  The back door to the chemistry building was never locked, to accommodate the hours kept by the graduate students and some of the faculty—again, Walther. Tybalt and I walked through the empty, echoing building to the one door with a light shining through the glass. I knocked.

  Something clattered. Footsteps followed, and then the door opened, revealing a tall blond man with disturbingly blue eyes only half-hidden by a pair of wireframe glasses. He was wearing a welders’ apron over his carefully professorial slacks-and-button-down-shirt combination, and he looked confused.

  “Hello?” he said. Then he paused, squinting at me. Tybalt didn’t normally visit, or deign to wear a human disguise; my usual human disguise actually looked a little less human than I did at the moment. Still, some things carried over, because Walther said, incredulously, “Toby?”

  “We sort of have a problem,” I said. “Can we come in?”

  “Sure. Jack’s not here.” Jack Redpath was his very friendly, very human grad student. Without him, the lab was clear.

  I walked inside, Tybalt close behind me, and promptly froze, swaying on my feet. Tybalt was right there to grab my shoulders, preventing me from lunging for Walther’s workbench.

  “What in the world—?”

  “If you would be so kind as to put the goblin fruit away, we can discuss the current situation,” said Tybalt, in a tight, clipped voice.

  It took everything I had not to fight against his hands. The smell from the open jars of goblin fruit filled the room the way blood normally would, obscuring and overpowering everything with need, need, need. I needed to fill myself with sweet fruit and sweeter dreams, forgetting all this nonsense about a lost Princess, a banishment, all of it. The goblin fruit would take it all away. Everything would be wonderful if Tybalt would just let me go—

  I was held captive by a mad Firstborn once. Blind Michael, whose magic was a lot like goblin fruit in the way that it could remake your perception of the world. I fought him, even if I couldn
’t beat him. I did it with my own pain and with the smell of blood in the mist. “Tybalt,” I managed, gritting the word out through my teeth. “I need you . . . to scratch me.”

  “What?”

  “Just . . . pop your claws and . . . break my skin. Please. I need you to hurt me.”

  He hesitated, his grip slackening as he warred against himself. The hungry part of me saw that as an opportunity. I ripped myself halfway out of his hands before he clamped down, claws coming out as an automatic response. They drew a thin line of pain across my left wrist, and the smell of blood was suddenly hot in the room, overpowering the smell of the goblin fruit. That may have been because Walther was frantically capping the jars, but I didn’t think so.

  “Let my left wrist go,” I whispered. “Just that. Hold tight, but give me that.”

  Cautious now, like he was afraid I would run again at any moment—and he was right to be cautious, because I was ready to bolt—Tybalt released my left wrist. I raised it to my mouth. He hissed when he saw me bleeding, but I ignored him, clamping my mouth down over the wound so my lips created a virtual seal. Blood filled my mouth, hot and salty and so absolutely real that I wanted to cry. I didn’t cry. Instead, I swallowed, and swallowed again, and kept on swallowing until Walther turned to face us.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. He had thrown a sheet over the goblin fruit, apparently trying for “out of sight, out of mind.”

  “’S okay,” I mumbled, around a mouthful of my own wrist. The bleeding had almost stopped; the scratches weren’t deep. Reluctantly, I pulled my hand away, swallowing one last time before I said, “We didn’t call first.”

  “Still.” Walther removed his glasses, dispelling the hasty illusion that made him look human at the same time. His eyes were even bluer this way. All Tylwyth Teg have eyes like that, making it seem like they’re looking straight through you. “What happened?”