Tia frowned at me. “That isn’t good enough.”
“It’s going to have to be,” I said. “I just met you, and you carried in a declaration of war. I pretty much believe that you’re Madden’s sister, but since he can’t vouch for you right now, you’ll forgive me if I don’t hurry to put you in my car.”
Tybalt, bless him, didn’t say anything. I knew how hard that had to be: he was normally one of the most sarcastic people I knew, especially when it came to things like riding in cars with dogs. He just stood there, silently lending support to my position.
The side of Tia’s mouth curled up, exposing her teeth. It was less a sneer than it was a silent snarl, and it had no place on a human-seeming face. “This is unfair,” she said. “My brother isn’t a bad dog, and neither am I.”
“No, and I understand that you’re upset, but right now the best thing you can do for Madden is stay here, in the court that he loves, and make sure everything keeps working the way it’s supposed to,” I said. “Let us take care of finding Queen Windermere and bringing her home. We’ll figure out what’s going on, and we’ll handle it. It’s my job, remember? I’m a hero of the realm. Let me do my job.”
Tia continued to eye me mistrustfully for a few seconds more before her face relaxed, turning into a neutrally mournful expression. “I will sit by my brother’s bedside until you return,” she said. “I will not eat, or sleep, or stray.”
“Um, okay,” I said. “You do that. Just try not to starve yourself or anything, all right? Lowri doesn’t need another crisis on her hands.” I walked past her to unlock the car doors. She didn’t stop me, which was a relief: I had been half convinced that she was going to grab my wrist and resume demanding to come with us as soon as she had the chance.
Quentin and Tybalt got into the car without incident. The last we saw of Tia was her reflection in the rearview mirror as we drove away from Muir Woods, turning ourselves toward San Francisco.
“Where are we going?” asked Quentin.
“Borderlands,” I said. “I can’t think of any better place to start the search.”
“It’s two in the morning,” said Quentin. “They’re not going to be open.”
“I can pick locks, and Tybalt can carry us through the shadows,” I said. “I think we’ll be fine.”
When we’d first gone looking for our missing Crown Princess, the trail—augmented by some magical homing fireflies provided by the sea witch—had led straight to an independent bookstore on Valencia, less than a mile from my house. Borderlands Books sold science fiction, fantasy, and horror, which I guess made it a uniquely well-suited place for a fairy princess to go into hiding. Arden had been living in the store’s basement, in a cunningly well-concealed makeshift apartment. Her brother, Nolan, had been there too, sleeping off the slow decades of his own elf-shot poisoning.
The old Queen had been the one to have Nolan elf-shot, in an effort to keep Arden from seeking the throne that was hers by right. It sent a message: “I can hurt you.” Elf-shooting Madden sent the same message. It was difficult not to think that the messages had been penned by the same evil hand.
There was no traffic on the roads, and Valencia Street was pretty well deserted. I pulled up right in front of Borderlands, stopping the engine. “All right, here’s how we’re going to play this,” I said. “I will scout the front of the store for an alarm system. If they don’t have one, I pick the lock and we go in the front door. If they do have one, Tybalt opens a passage through the Shadow Roads, and he and I go straight through to the basement. Either way, Quentin, you’re going to stay with the car.”
My squire gave me a wounded look. “Why?”
“Because I seriously doubt Arden is going to agree to go back to Muir Woods the slow way, and Tybalt doesn’t know how to drive.” I pulled the key out of the engine and passed my keychain over the back of the seat to Quentin. “I’ll call you if I need you to move the car.”
“I think I liked it better before I had my license,” Quentin grumbled. “You didn’t make me play valet nearly as much.”
“Before you had your license, we needed to get May involved if we wanted to have a backup driver,” I reminded him. “Do you really want to go back to that world?”
Quentin blanched. “I’ll drive.”
“Good squire.” I grabbed a handful of shadows from the roof of the car, weaving them into a makeshift human disguise. The smell of cut grass and copper rose to fill the cab, only to be beaten back by the smell of musk and pennyroyal as Tybalt did the same. His disguise was much better than mine: he looked like an actual human, while I just looked blurry and somewhat less pointy than I usually did. I didn’t want to spend the magic or time to spin something more believable, not when we were going to be spending at most five minutes on the street.
“If you see anything unusual, or if the police come by and seem too interested in why you’re sitting here, drive away,” I said, before opening my door. “I don’t want you casting a don’t-look-here on the car. You may need that magic later.”
Quentin nodded. He didn’t argue. That was good. I wasn’t sure I could handle arguing with him right now.
The last thing I wanted was another war—and when I said “another,” I really meant “my first.” The only other time in my lifetime that the Mists had almost gone to war, I had managed to avert it by finding the missing sons of the local Undersea Duchess. This time, I didn’t think there was going to be an answer that easy.
Tybalt met me on the sidewalk. We moved toward the bookstore together, only to find a small, carefully displayed sign in the front window cautioning us that the property was protected by a local alarm company. “Oberon’s ass,” I muttered. “So much for picking the lock. I’d been hoping to avoid this, but—Tybalt? Could you?”
“It will be difficult, as my pride has been wounded by your hopes to avoid my contribution, but I think I can manage,” he said, with a hint of amusement. “Take a deep breath.”
I did. He took my hands and pulled me with him as he fell gently backward, into the shadows that pooled around the bookstore door. We toppled into absolute blackness, second only to the absolute cold that suddenly surrounded us. The Shadow Roads were lightless, airless, and most of all, freezing. They’re among the most accessible of the secret paths that run through Faerie, and strange as it might seem, they’re also among the gentlest: the Rose Roads are almost impossible to access, and roses have their thorns; the Blood Roads will drain you dry and leave your body as a warning to others. Nothing comes without a price. Not even passage.
We fell through another wall and back into the world of warmth and air, although not much more light: we had emerged in the Borderlands basement, where there were no windows to cut the darkness. I was just glad we weren’t standing on the stairs.
I put out my hand, finding Tybalt’s chest, and pressed my palm flat against his shirt. He froze, understanding my intent without a single word needing to be spoken. I smiled despite the situation. How I loved that man. Not bothering to close my eyes, since I couldn’t see anything anyway, I sniffed the air.
Blackberry flowers and redwood bark. Arden was here.
“Arden, it’s October and Tybalt,” I said, letting my hand fall away from Tybalt’s chest. There was no point in trying to sneak up on her. If she didn’t know it was us, we might spook her, and I had no idea where she’d go from here. If she did know it was us, well . . . we still might spook her. It was hard to say. “We need to talk to you. Can you please come out?”
There was a long pause—long enough that I began to worry that I’d misinterpreted the scent of her magic. Maybe she had been here for so many years, casting illusions in an enclosed space, that the smell had worked its way into the walls. Then the air on the other side of the room seemed to crack open, revealing a thin band of extremely low light, like the glow from a nightlight. It was still enough to make me squint and turn partially away after the darkness of the past few minutes.