Late Eclipses od-4 Page 2

  “Toby—” began Danny.

  “Wait.” I almost had it. The trace was slippery, probably because the person was invisible, but it was there. I grabbed for it, pushing as hard as I could … and caught it.

  For a moment, I was too surprised to make sense of what I tasted. Part of me hadn’t expected that little trick to work. Then I swallowed, focusing on the point where the blood seemed strongest, and said, “We know you’re there. I didn’t think the Daoine Sidhe were into sneaking up on people.”

  The taste of cardamom flared in my mouth, chasing my magic away and leaving a pulsing headache in its place. I winced, blinked, and missed the point where a man replaced the empty air.

  He was tall, slender, and movie-star handsome, with dark hair and sharp-chiseled features that were about as natural as my own round-curved ears. The flicker of an illusion spell colored the air around him, hiding his fae nature from anyone who might glance out the Safeway window. And he didn’t look happy about being caught. “October Daye?” he asked.

  “Correct,” I said. “You are?”

  “The Queen of the Mists has sent me to inform you that your presence has been requested,” he replied. His expression smoothed as he spoke, becoming the still, calm mask of a properly trained courtier. “You are to come at once.”

  “Still not answering my question.” I dropped my hand from my knife, disgusted. I don’t expect manners from the Queen of the Mists, or from anyone who works for her. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t appreciate them. “Did she give a reason?”

  “My name is Dugan Harrow. As for the other, Queens are not required to provide reasons to their subjects.” His condescending smile barely concealed his irritation.

  “Is this an order or a request?” I hadn’t seen the Queen since I finished settling the affairs surrounding the death of Evening Winterrose, Countess of Goldengreen. I doubted she’d been any more broken up about my absence than I was.

  He raised an eyebrow. “I was unaware the two differed. Your arrival is expected within the hour. I don’t recommend disappointing Her Majesty.” He left that dire proclamation hanging in the air as he turned on his heel and stalked away. The smell of cardamom rose again, now mixed with cinnamon, and he was gone.

  Since Daoine Sidhe aren’t teleporters, he was probably walking invisibly to whatever he was using to get home. The illusion was his way of making a big exit. That’s the purebloods for you: always going for the special effects.

  It was effective in this case, because we all just stood there, staring after him. May finally broke the silence, asking, “Do you think we have time to take the ice cream home and get it in the freezer before she gets really mad?”

  Danny and I exchanged a look, and I groaned, pinching the bridge of my nose.

  “Looks like we’ve got a date with royalty,” I said.

  “Well, crap,” said Danny.

  I lowered my hand. “My thoughts exactly.”

  TWO

  WE REACHED A COMPROMISE and drove back to the apartment, where May and I shoved all the perishables into the refrigerator while Danny waited in the car with the engine running. There was no question of whether he’d be coming with us—Danny’s been driving taxis in San Francisco for fifty years. If anyone could get us to the Queen’s Court before she decided to get mortally offended, it was him. Of course, she could also decide his driving us meant he was officially “on my side,” and include him in her long-standing grudge against me and mine. Danny was willing to take the risk. I was grateful. I don’t go out of my way to endear myself to the Queen of the Mists, but I try not to antagonize her when I can help it.

  I hung the belt that held my knives on the rack by the door while May stowed TV dinners. I don’t always think things through, but I’m not stupid, and going into the Queen’s presence armed might be the last thing I’d ever do. After a pause, I shrugged out of my leather jacket and hung it next to the knives. I love that jacket. It used to belong to Tybalt, the local King of Cats. I wear it almost every night, which meant wearing it to the Queen’s Court would be a terrible idea. The woman has an unfortunate fondness for transmogrifying my clothes.

  My fingers were oddly reluctant to let go of the jacket’s collar. Wearing it would be a terrible idea, but this was a type of combat, and I hated the idea of going in without either my weapons or my customary armor.

  “Toby?”

  I jumped, twisting around to find May standing right behind me. She looked concerned.

  “You ready to go?” she asked.

  No. “Sure,” I said, dropping my hand from the jacket and reaching for the door. “Let’s hit the road.”

  Danny gunned the engine as we approached, and hit the gas before I finished buckling my seat belt, sending us rocketing out of the driveway at a speed that would have seemed unsafe with anyone else behind the wheel. Since it was Danny, it was almost soothing. I trusted him not to kill us, and if we were moving at these speeds, nobody was going to catch us in an ambush.

  “Don’t taxis have speed limits?” asked May, leaning her elbows on the back of my seat. She hadn’t bothered with her seat belt. There was no point in nagging her about it, since the only way to hurt a Fetch is to hurt the person they’re bound to. As long as I didn’t get smashed up, she’d be fine.

  “Mine doesn’t,” said Danny, and tapped the muslin bag that dangled from his rearview mirror. The brief, sharp smell of sea salt and mixed herbs wafted through the car. “Friend of mine runs an auto shop, makes these for her customers. I don’t show up to the cops as long as I get it refreshed every few months.”

  I studied the bag with new interest. “Gremlin?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Now I get to ask you a question.”

  “Why does that sentence always make me shiver?” I settled back in my seat, folding my arms over my chest. “Go ahead.”

  “What’s the Queen got against you, anyways? Last I heard, you’re the reason she’s got a knowe. She should be grateful or some such shit, not treating you like trash.”

  I took a breath. Let it out. Took another breath, and said, carefully, “It’s complicated.”

  “So un-complicate it.”

  “Toby wasn’t supposed to take the credit,” said May. I shot her a withering look. She shrugged.

  “It’s the truth.”

  “I don’t care. I still don’t like talking about it.” I looked back to Danny. “The Queen’s knights were looking for the person who killed Evening’s little sister, Dawn, and the Queen’s seers and scouts were looking for a place to open a new knowe. I got lucky. I found both.”

  Sweet Oberon, that was an amazing moment. Everything came together for what seemed like the first time in my life. I’d been just one of Devin’s kids before then, another changeling street rat fighting for survival. The search for Dawn’s killer showed me I might be capable of something more important; something that didn’t leave me going to bed every morning feeling like I’d traded in another little piece of my soul.

  It was never supposed to get out, of course. The Queen made that clear. She called me to a private audience in her chambers, praised my ingenuity, flattered my mother’s name, and even offered me a place in her household staff. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut and let her guards take the glory that would have been theirs to begin with, if I hadn’t gotten lucky. Only it wasn’t luck, damn her. It was hard work.

  And I was going to let her take it away from me anyway, because growing up changeling in a pureblood world did an excellent job of teaching me my place. Sylvester was the one who insisted I take the credit I was due. The Queen never forgave me for listening to him … and I never forgot that he was the one who was willing to speak up.

  “Luck?” Danny eyed me dubiously, seeming to ignore the road he was blazing down at twenty miles above the speed limit. “Didn’t think you traded much in luck.”

  “Oh, she’s super-superstitious,” said May. “She just mostly believes in the bad kind. How are the Barghests? Are they still chew
ing up the furniture?”

  I know a conversational save when I’m offered one. I shot May a grateful look and settled back into the seat, trying to pay attention to Danny’s cheerful stories of Barghest mayhem rather than dwelling on what the Queen could want me for. Danny runs a “rescue service” for Barghests—nasty, semi-canine beasts with horns, claws, fangs, scorpion stingers … basically everything but wings. Only a Bridge Troll could love something like that. Danny adores them.

  All the Barghest mayhem in the world couldn’t keep me from dwelling on what the Queen might have planned. But it was a nice try.

  It was late enough that Danny was able to find a spot right at the edge of the parking lot, leaving us with only a short walk to the water. At least that meant we could get back to the car fast if we had to leave in a hurry. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  “Don’t look so gloomy,” said May, bouncing out of the car to open my door before I had the chance. “I think I’d know if you were going to be executed.”

  “That somehow doesn’t make me feel better.” I shoved my hands into my pockets, trudging across the pavement to the beach. Danny and May followed. Of the three of us, I’d navigated this particular path the most. Given my attempts to avoid the Queen, that was almost sad.

  Knowes are the reality behind the old stories of faerie mounds and hollow hills: Summerlands estates connected to the mortal world by hidden, magicallymaintained doors. The door to the Queen’s knowe is tucked into a cave on a small stretch of the public beach that rings the San Francisco Bay. It’s not the easiest place to reach, especially when the tide is in, and it seems like the Queen somehow always manages to call Court at high tide. Funny thing, that.

  The sand made walking harder but provided plenty of traction, at least at first. It was replaced all too soon by wet, slime-covered rocks, forcing me to scramble if I didn’t want to take a dunk in the Pacific. Danny and May navigated them more smoothly than I did, moving with the grace that comes so easily to the purebloods. Neither of them was going to wind up with a salt shampoo. It was hard not to resent them for it, especially when Danny grabbed my shoulder to keep me from falling and said apologetically, “I think maybe I should go first. It’s sort of dark up there.”

  My night vision is incredible compared to a human’s, but I’m running blind next to a pureblood. Not a desirable quality when you’re basically nocturnal. I stopped to let Danny go ahead, trying not to show how annoyed I was, and almost certainly failing.

  “It gets slipperier up here,” Danny called.

  “Oh, goody,” I muttered, climbing over the last kelpcovered rocks between us and the door to the Queen’s knowe. There was no sand here, just gravel, spindrift, and seaweed. “I can’t believe we’re doing this. I’ve got to be out of my mind.”

  “Answering a summons from the Queen ain’t crazy, even if she is,” said Danny.

  “True enough.” There was a splash behind us, and I turned to see May slogging out of the water, soaked to the hip. I raised an eyebrow.

  May lifted her chin defensively. “The rocks are slippery.”

  They were slippery, but were they slippery enough to make a pureblood fall when I’d been able to make it to the other side? May’s fall looked suspiciously like a sop to my pride. “I told you to be careful,” I said, a smile tugging at the corner of my lips.

  “I was careful. Gravity won.” She grinned. “You need to lighten up before you worry yourself into an early grave.”

  “It’s not worry that’s going to put me in an early grave.” I started for the cave, gesturing for her and Danny to follow. “Come on.”

  Wisely, Danny let me lead this time.

  The entrance to the Queen’s knowe is always dark, partly to dissuade human beachcombers, and partly, I think, because she likes watching changelings walk into walls. If there’s a way to make it from the beach to the entry hall without wading through stagnant, ankle-deep water, no one’s ever told me about it. I gritted my teeth and stepped into the muck, putting a hand against the wall to keep me on a straight line.

  The dim light provided by the moon outside faded less than four feet into the cave, leaving me effectively blind. I kept going until a faint gray glow began coloring the air. The wall turned misty, my fingers dipping below the surface of what had been solid rock only inches before.

  I closed my eyes and stepped into the light.

  The more an entrance to the Summerlands is used, the more seamless the transition becomes. After two steps, I couldn’t hear the ocean anymore. After three steps, the air stopped tasting like salt. The water around my ankles thinned out, first becoming mist, then fading entirely. The ground leveled out, and the wet jeans clinging to my ankles were replaced by heavy skirts swishing around my legs—the Queen was up to her old tricks again. When the last of the wall wisped away I stopped, opening my eyes, and looked around.

  The cave was gone, replaced by a vast, white-walled hall. Ivory pillars filigreed with intricate carvings stretched up to meet a ceiling of faintly reflective ice-white marble. The floor was made from the same stone. People who spend a lot of time at the Queen’s Court learn not to turn their heads too quickly, since an unexpected shift can cause a nasty case of vertigo.

  “Hey, awesome!” said May, her reaction confirming that the Queen’s sense of propriety extended to reclothing everyone, not just me. Steeling myself against the inevitable, I looked down.

  My T-shirt and blue jeans were gone, replaced by a low-cut silk gown the color of dried blood. May’s dress matched mine in everything but color; it was an odd shade of purple, complementing the streaks in her hair. Danny, meanwhile, was wearing a basic brown gentleman’s suit of the sort that was fashionable in the early 1800s. He looked totally comfortable that way, like he’d always been a bouncer for the Fairy Tale Mafia in his spare time.

  Their human disguises had vanished along with their street clothes. May didn’t change much. Her eyes had bleached from blue to their natural shade of almost colorless gray, while her features acquired a more delicate cast and her ears became visibly pointed. Danny appeared to have gained a foot in both height and breadth. His skin was gray, with the rough, craggy texture of granite, and his hair looked more like moss. I raised a hand to tuck my hair back, feeling the point of my own ear. No illusions for anybody tonight.

  “At least she has a sense of color,” I said, and turned back to the ballroom.

  The place was packed with fae from a hundred different races. They thronged around us, moving in slow eddies, like a living tide. Several of them stared shamelessly in our direction. I resisted the urge to flip them off.

  The stares turned shocked as May stepped up beside me. She was gawking without a trace of shame, even going so far as to lean back on her heels and study the chandeliers. She looked too much like me to be anything but my Fetch, and while bringing her to Court was technically allowed—she was fae, and she lived in the Kingdom of the Mists, at least until she blipped out of existence—it wasn’t what most people would consider proper.

  “I was never a big fan of propriety anyway,” I said reflectively.

  May stopped gawking to blink at me, bemused. “Huh?”

  “Never mind.” The crowd was turning away, buzzing about the tackiness of May’s presence. They didn’t even bother to pretend they hadn’t been staring. Why should purebloods—purebloods associated with the Queen’s Court, no less—care if they were rude to a changeling?

  “Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” said Danny. The last of the spectators sniffed and turned away, patently snubbing us. Danny ignored them, slanting a glance toward me as he asked, “How long you think we’ve got before she shows?”

  “I don’t know.” The dais at the center of the room was untenanted, the throne sitting empty. That wasn’t a surprise. The Queen knows the value of a dramatic entrance. “Go ahead and mingle. We’ve probably got a while to wait.”

  May frowned. “So why did we hurry?”

  “When the Queen’s late, it�
��s fashionable. When we’re late, it’s an insult. Now go on, go get on people’s nerves by existing.”

  May laughed and grabbed Danny’s arm, tugging him into the crowd. I smiled and shook my head, turning to walk in the opposite direction. The courtiers whispered as I passed. Louder whispers in the distance told me where May and Danny were. I let my smile become a grin. My Fetch makes an excellent distraction, and I have no problem using her as one. What’s the point of having a personal incarnation of death if you can’t confuse the locals?

  I found a clear patch of wall and settled against it, watching the Court return to its normal routine. Immortality makes ennui status quo, and not much is interesting enough to disrupt a gathering of purebloods for long. Apparently, traveling with your Fetch isn’t in the right league. Good to know.

  People moved in short arcs, shifting from group to group as they shared information, spread gossip, and looked for juicy bits of blackmail. Someone moved up next to me, waiting a few seconds before clearing his throat in a polite request for my attention. I turned and found myself looking into a pair of inhumanly green eyes set in a sharp-featured face.

  I blinked, trying unsuccessfully to hide my surprise. “Tybalt.”

  “It’s good to see all those blows to the head haven’t impaired your ability to identify faces,” he said, the hint of a smile crossing his lips. His pupils contracted against the light, taking on a feline cast. “They haven’t improved your manners, either. In case you weren’t aware, ‘hello’ is typically what comes next.”

  “I—what are you doing here?” The Cait Sidhe are the only race in Faerie with their own independent aristocratic hierarchy. Tybalt has been San Francisco’s King of Cats for years. He’s not exactly forbidden to visit the Queen’s Court, but he definitely isn’t someone I’d expected to see there.

  His smile became real. “Picking wallflowers.”