Night and Silence Read online

  “I wish that were a surprising request,” he muttered, and waved his hand, mumbling a verse of a song I didn’t recognize. As was usually the case with him, it was about boats. The air thickened, and the don’t-look-here dropped on us with the force of a wave.

  I started the car. “Tybalt?”

  “Remind me what attracted me to your side in the first place because, at the moment, I have a difficult time bringing it to mind,” he said. He snapped his fingers. The illusion shattered into the smell of pennyroyal and musk.

  In the back seat, May gasped. “October Christine Daye, why is there a hole in your neck?” she demanded.

  “It’s never a good sign when you use my full name.”

  It was difficult to see my own throat in the rearview mirror while driving, but with a little twisting around, I managed it. The sight wasn’t pretty. The wound was fairly superficial at this point, consisting mostly of some tears in the skin surrounding a raw spot that was barely larger than a hickey. That wasn’t the alarming part. The alarming part was that it existed at all. I should have healed long since, wiping everything away except for the blood, which would always remain to betray me.

  “What happened?” she demanded, leaning forward.

  “The Baobhan Sith tried to eat me. She got more blood than I like to think about. That’s probably going to be a problem later. Right now, I just need something to eat and I’ll be fine.”

  “Wait.” The note of alarm in May’s voice wasn’t fading. If anything, it was getting stronger. “You’re telling me there’s a Baobhan Sith out there running around with a stomach full of your blood? That’s . . . that’s not good, Toby.”

  “Tell me about it,” I muttered. Like the Daoine Sidhe, the Baobhan Sith are blood-workers. Unlike the Daoine Sidhe, that’s all they are. They don’t do flower magic, they don’t do blood magic, and unlike the Dóchas Sidhe, they don’t generally use their own blood for castings. They do it all with the blood of others. That’s also what sustains them. Some people think the human vampire legends began with the Baobhan Sith, and honestly, I can’t say those people are wrong.

  As long as she had my blood, the Baobhan Sith who had attacked me would be able to access powers that mimicked my own—meaning she’d be able to recover from supposedly mortal wounds and track people by the scent of their magic. Not good.

  “Why did she attack like that?” asked Quentin uneasily. “I’m a blood-worker, and I don’t try to chew people’s throats out.”

  “She looked like she was starving,” I said. “If she’d somehow been held there, unable to hunt . . . it could have been pure hunger that had her going for me like that.” It didn’t make me feel any warmer or fuzzier toward her, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be inviting her over for dinner any time soon, but at least there was a chance there had been no malice in her attempting to eat me.

  That didn’t explain why she’d looked like Gillian when I’d first found her. Nothing was going to explain that. Nothing good, anyway.

  “Your throat—” insisted May.

  “It’s healing,” I said brusquely.

  “You’re not supposed to be healing,” said May. “You’re supposed to have already healed, past tense, no delays. This isn’t normal, and I don’t like it.”

  “Nothing about today has been normal,” I countered. We were nearing the bridge. I glanced at the rearview mirror. “Quentin, try Dean again. If he still isn’t picking up, try Marcia. She’s thin-blooded enough to be mostly diurnal.”

  “She stays up as late as she can so that she can do her job as seneschal correctly,” said Quentin, even as he started poking at his phone. “I’ve tried her twice. No one’s picking up.”

  Tybalt and I exchanged a glance.

  Goldengreen is the name of both a County and the knowe that serves as its heart. They were founded at the same time, by the same woman: Evening Winterrose, also known as Eira Rosynhwyr, Firstborn of the Daoine Sidhe. Being part of the local nobility made it easier for her to control them . . . at least until she “died” and the false former Queen gave Goldengreen to me in order to discharge the Kingdom’s debts. Oh, and shift my fealty from Sylvester Torquill to her, thus ensuring that when she wanted to charge me with treason, my liege wouldn’t be able to do anything to save me.

  Nice lady, our former Queen. So nice she almost killed me. “Almost” only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, as Devin used to say, and when I wasn’t put to death for crimes against the crown, I offloaded my title and lands as quickly as I could, using them to avert a war between the Kingdom in the Mists and the local Undersea. As the son of a Merrow Duchess and a Daoine Sidhe Count, Dean Lorden was perfectly positioned to hold Goldengreen and make it a symbol of peace and cooperation.

  Of course, that also meant that if anything ever happened to him, his mother, Duchess Dianda Lorden of Saltmist, would march her army right up our beaches and start swinging. Dean was a great kid. He seemed to be a good first boyfriend for Quentin; the boys were happy, and that was all I really cared about. But if he was actually hurt, things were about to get a lot worse.

  “Drive faster,” advised May.

  I did.

  It was a testament to how urgent things were that Tybalt didn’t complain, at all, about how my driving was likely to get us killed; he just hung onto the handle above the door and closed his eyes, doing his best to endure this madcap modern transportation without making a fuss. That was a good thing. Normally, I found his disdain for cars cute, endearing even. Right now, I needed to floor it.

  I made it from the toll booths to the city in what felt like record time, tearing through several red lights and several more near-misses as I raced toward the San Francisco Art Museum. Knowes require an anchor to stay connected to the mortal world, and Evening had always liked to be thought of as someone who was cultured, connected to the most modern developments in human art and music. Having a museum built atop her connection point must have seemed perfect.

  There were several cars in the lot when we arrived. A glance at the clock confirmed that the museum had already opened for the day. I grimaced. There are entrances to the knowe located outside the museum—there have to be, given how often people need to come and go after operating hours—but most of them aren’t exactly subtle, and we needed to get in unseen.

  I pulled into a space under the eucalyptus trees that circled half the lot, turning off the engine and announcing, “We need to go for the cliffside entrance. The shed’s too visible this time of day.”

  “Perhaps you have forgotten, but the last time you went over a cliff in this place, you nearly drowned,” said Tybalt.

  I didn’t correct him. I was pretty sure I had drowned, and that sort of thing isn’t soothing to announce. “That was when the wards had been locked down and the doors had been sealed,” I said. “There’s a chance that’s happened again, so May can go first. She’s indestructible.”

  “Here’s a song we’ve sung before,” muttered May.

  “You know you’re my favorite sister.”

  “Because your only other sister is a raving—”

  “We’re wasting time,” snapped Quentin as he got out of the car, forcing the rest of us to hurry if we wanted to keep up with him and hence stay within the sheltering confines of the don’t-look-here.

  Evening had a vicious sense of humor when she designed the knowe. The easiest, most secluded entrance is straightforward, as such things go: all you have to do is walk the right path to the right spot on the towering cliff that is the museum’s thin slice of coast, and step over it without hesitating. Do it right, your feet hit the floor of the hall and you’re home free. Do it wrong, it’s a long fall to a cruel sea, and most people don’t survive that sort of thing.

  May caught up with Quentin right before he was about to step over, grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him back. “No,” she said. “Fetches first.” Th
en she turned, stepped off the cliff, and disappeared into thin air.

  “Oh, thank Titania,” said Quentin, and charged after her.

  Tybalt and I were close behind, his hand clasped so firmly over mine that it ached a little. I didn’t mind. He was scared, but he was trying. He was staying with me. Right now, that was all I could have asked and more.

  We stepped over the edge of the cliff together. The world twisted and bent around us, spinning wildly for a few precious seconds before it settled into the hallway of Goldengreen. I staggered, and Tybalt held me up. No matter how far I pushed myself toward fae, as long as I was holding onto the shards of my humanity, that kind of transition was going to be hard on me.

  I got my breath back and straightened, looking around. I don’t think Evening would recognize her own knowe if she saw it. That’s a good thing. Under her, Goldengreen had been sterile and static, devoid of clutter, of people—of life. She had grown herself a perfect flower and then she had frozen it like a rose in ice, keeping it exactly the way she wanted it to be. That had started to change while I held the County, if only because I’d taken in the displaced residents of my friend Lily’s knowe after she died. The presence of people always changes things.

  Now, under Dean’s leadership and Marcia’s gentle hand, the knowe was blossoming. The hall seemed to have grown wider, accommodating the bookshelves and low tables lining the walls. Some of the shelves were laden with sunken treasures, no doubt dredged from the bottom of the San Francisco Bay. Tapestries showing scenes from the surrounding Summerlands hung above the tables, interspersed with the coats of arms of the people who resided here, when applicable. Not every resident of Faerie has their own crest, but those who do are often very proud of them.

  Multicolored lights glimmered from the tops of the shelves. The knowe’s pixie population was asleep, dreaming the day away. I relaxed when I saw that. If the pixies were still sleeping peacefully, there probably wasn’t anyone here who shouldn’t have been.

  At the same time, much as I would have liked to know that Dean was in no danger, I would have been equally happy to find and save my daughter in these familiar halls, where I knew the territory and it knew me. Knowes are alive. Goldengreen might not be mine anymore, but I like to think I was kind enough for it to remember me fondly.

  Quentin exhaled, his own relief mirroring mine. Then he started swiftly forward, not pausing to see if the rest of us would follow. We did, of course, hurrying behind him until a noise from one of the rooms caught my attention. I stopped, pulling Tybalt to a halt, and pointed. He nodded, understanding what I was signaling, and we turned away, leaving May to follow Quentin toward his final destination.

  I just hoped Dean liked to sleep clothed, or May was probably about to see a bit more than either of us had any desire to.

  Tybalt and I moved closer to the noise. It was coming from the main kitchen, I realized, and it wasn’t the only thing: I smelled cinnamon rolls and fresh-brewed coffee. My stomach rumbled, reminding me that I had been hauled out of bed, hadn’t stopped for breakfast, and had lost a remarkable amount of blood at the hands of the Baobhan Sith.

  Marcia looked up as we stepped into the room, blinking at us blearily but without surprise. She was wearing a green housecoat with reeds and rushes embroidered around the edges, turning it into a cloth recreation of a swamp, and her always tangled blonde hair was piled atop her head in a messy bun, giving her the overall air of a slightly flustered cockatoo.

  “Toby,” she said. “Tybalt. To what do we owe the honor at this uncivilized hour of the day? My cinnamon rolls aren’t that good.”

  My stomach growled audibly, as if in argument. “How long have you been up?”

  “I don’t know. Not long. Long enough to bake, but I made the dough yesterday and had one of the girls put it under a stasis spell.” Marcia’s gaze sharpened as she looked at us, taking in Tybalt’s discomfort and my overall condition. She frowned, looking more bewildered than upset. “Why are you covered in blood?”

  Trust Marcia to treat my exsanguination as another minor inconvenience. “I got into a little argument with a Baobhan Sith. She thought I was a breakfast buffet. I thought it was rude to eat someone to whom you hadn’t even been introduced. I guess we both sort of won. She got a good meal, I got away with all my limbs.”

  “Your definition of victory will never cease to shock and horrify me,” muttered Tybalt.

  “You need cinnamon rolls,” said Marcia, and grabbed a spatula. “You probably also need bacon, but I’m not safe to fry anything until I’ve had another cup of coffee. I think there’s some sliced beef left from last night’s dinner. I can check the pantry.”

  I raised an eyebrow and waited. Marcia dished out two cinnamon rolls, then paused.

  “You didn’t tell me why you were here,” she said. “Toby, why are you here?”

  “My daughter’s been kidnapped from her college.” The words didn’t become less painful with repetition. If anything, they got worse. Someone had my daughter, and I wasn’t saving her.

  Marcia’s eyes went wide and round. “Gillian’s missing? Again?”

  “Yeah. We think her roommate, a thin-blooded changeling named Jocelyn, may have been involved.” I paused. “Actually, that reminds me. Marcia, do you know how to make anti-fae charms? Herbal sachets and the like?”

  She shook her head violently. “No, I don’t, and I wouldn’t want to learn if someone offered to teach me.”

  “Why not?”

  “You think changelings are only allowed to be a part of the community on the sufferance of their ‘betters’?” It was impossible to miss the sarcastic twist in her voice. “Talk to the thin-blooded sometime. They’re a step above merlins, but there’s a lot of prejudice there, and they’re not covered by the Law. In fact, some people think the Law should be interpreted to mean all thin-blooded changelings should be killed on sight, because they’re so close to being merlins. If they marry human, the bloodline goes into the mortal world, almost undetectable, and magic emerges later, dangerous and unpredictable and not within the purebloods’ control. Too many of the old ones remember the war against the merlins. They remember how many purebloods died. Thin-blooded changelings are only a part of Faerie because it would be too much trouble to kill them all. Learning how to work magic that actively repels the fae is a good way to make it seem worth the trouble after all.”

  I frowned. “Are you in touch with any of the other thin-blooded fae in the city? Do you know if any of them might not agree with you?”

  “I have more power and more privilege than any other person I know who wears the fairy ointment,” said Marcia. There was an unusual chill in her voice. “Half the thin-blooded changelings in the city are here in Goldengreen, Toby, because I’ve asked them to be, and the Count is happy to have me handle staffing if it means he doesn’t need to think about it. They sweep floors and polish furniture and sleep in real beds and eat real food, and they’re happy. There’s no conspiracy brewing.”

  “I didn’t think there was,” I said firmly. “We found anti-fae charms in Gillian’s things, and the letter Jocelyn left for me said she’d be in the place I ‘gave away.’”

  “And Goldengreen fit the bill,” concluded Marcia. Her cheeks reddened. “Sorry if I jumped to conclusions a little bit there.”

  “There’s no need to be sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to sound like I was accusing you of anything. We just needed to be sure everything was okay. We needed to be . . .” I faltered. With everything happening so fast, I had yet to tell anyone but Tybalt what I’d smelled in that burnt-out old house. I wasn’t sure I wanted to open that can of worms without more evidence. Awkwardly, I finished, “We needed to be sure.”

  “I’m sure I’m going to need to make more coffee, if your squire is waking Count Lorden,” said Marcia wryly. “I know you don’t drink coffee anymore, Toby, but what about you, Tybalt? Would you like a cu
p?”

  “Much as I would love to linger over your hospitality—and see my lady consume a good breakfast to replace what she’s lost—I doubt she’ll allow that sort of indolence under the circumstances,” said Tybalt, with what sounded like genuine regret. “Another time, perhaps? You can explain the art behind your fabulous icings, and I can look attentive and ask unclever questions.”

  “Flatterer,” she said. Then she looked to me and sobered. “You were the first people to come through the wards since sunrise. I don’t know where your daughter is, but she isn’t here, and neither is this ‘Jocelyn’ girl. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. My stomach snarled again. I finally picked up my cinnamon roll. “We’ll find her.”

  Footsteps behind us heralded the return of my Fetch, who walked into the kitchen, picked up Tybalt’s cinnamon roll, and announced, “Dean has an incredible fastball for a guy who grew up on the bottom of the sea.”

  “Patrick must have played catch with him,” I said. “What did he throw?”

  “Conch shell. They’re pointy.” She took a bite of cinnamon roll before saying, around her mouthful of dough and icing, “Quentin’s behind me.”

  “Jocelyn isn’t here. Neither is Gillian. If Quentin is satisfied of Dean’s safety, we need to move along.”

  “To where?” asked Marcia. I glanced at her. She was watching me anxiously. “What other places have you given away?”

  “Depending on how you want to interpret it, a lot.” I had given up my apartment when I moved into the house Sylvester provided for me; I had given up Home when I left Devin for Cliff. I had even given up Amandine’s tower when I ran away from her to start my own life in the mortal world.

  The thought of Gillian’s kidnappers taking her to Amandine would have been chilling if I’d believed, even for a second, that Amandine would have allowed them to approach her tower. She was enmeshed deep in her reunion with my beloved older sister, and no one who wasn’t welcome was going to get through her wards. Give it a year or two and she might be a threat to me and mine, but right now? She was a monster on the horizon, worthy of fear and respect, but not coming to cause problems. Not yet, anyway.