Given the circumstances, there was no other way at all.
Ten minutes, maybe less, passed before we heard the distant sound of ragged wings beating against the night. That was our only warning: immediately after that, the flock descended. They were a ribbon of smoke and dead leaves against the night, an impossible swirl of half-realized bodies and charcoal-sketched faces. Individually, they were about the size of Barbie dolls, but they didn’t travel that way; they moved as an all-consuming cloud, too organized to be natural.
They landed between us and the body, the more solid members of the flock standing closest to us, folding their wings behind their bodies and watching us with wary hunger. Several of them had faces I knew. Devin, my old mentor; Oleander, the woman who’d been partially responsible for my spending fourteen years as an enchanted fish . . .
. . . and Connor, the Selkie man I’d loved, once upon a lifetime ago. My mouth went dry. Connor had been alive the last time I’d seen the night-haunts. Somehow, I hadn’t allowed myself to consider what his death would mean.
He met my eyes, and then looked away without saying a word. There was nothing left for us to say.
Devin’s haunt felt no such restraint. He launched himself into the air with a maddened buzzing of his wings, flying forward to hover in front of my nose. Face contorted with anger, he gestured at the girl in the trash and demanded, “Well, Toby? Well? Is this good enough for you?”
“What?” My eyes widened, temporary shock over seeing the night-haunt wearing Connor’s face forgotten. “Devin, what the hell are you talking about?”
“For over a hundred years, I kept that shit out of this city, and you—” He laughed, a bitter sound with no amusement behind it. “You may as well have invited it in. Rolled out the red carpet, told the dealers that San Francisco was ripe for the taking. Are you happy now? All these dead kids are on your head.”
“What? Devin—”
“You could have stopped this!” He flew even closer, close enough that I could feel the breeze generated by his wings. “You could have done something!”
“Egil, you forget yourself,” snapped May, her words suddenly overlaid with an accent that I had never heard before. Devin’s haunt and I both turned toward her. Her eyes were fixed on him, and so cold. You could freeze to death in those eyes. “Chastising the living? Really?”
“As if you have any right to judge me, Mai,” he snapped. The difference between the name he used and the one I knew her by was subtle, but I could hear it. “You’ve joined them.”
“Yeah, well,” she said, the accent slipping from her voice to be replaced by her normal Californian lilt. “That’s the way the cookie crumbles. Now stop shouting and help.”
“You said ‘all these dead kids,’” I said, slowly. “Devin . . . how many have there been?” I knew that “Devin” was the name of the face the night-haunt wore, and not the name of the night-haunt himself, but I was pretty sure that I didn’t have the right to call him “Egil.” “This girl is the first one we’ve found.”
He turned in the air to look at me impassively. Then he snapped his fingers. Figures began to separate themselves from the flock, flying forward—not as close as he had come, but close enough for me to make out faces, hair colors, the points of their ears. Some were more human-looking than others, but all of them were changelings. They just kept coming. By the time they stopped, there were more than a dozen night-haunts hanging in the air, wings a blur as they stared at me.
The blood ran out of my cheeks, leaving me pale and lightheaded. “So many?” I whispered.
“Goblin fruit is a killer,” snapped Devin. “You may as well have put a bullet in their heads. It would have been more merciful.”
“Your memories are of the man who killed me,” said May mildly. “Maybe you should watch the murder metaphors, huh?” The last person whose face and memories May had consumed when she was still a night-haunt was a girl named Dare, who’d seen me as her hero. Devin had killed her. That had to be making this pretty awkward for both of them, now that May saw the world as herself, and not through the death-hungry veil of the night-haunts.
I couldn’t really appreciate her quipping. I was too busy looking at the night-haunts. Some of them were wearing faces I recognized, changelings I’d seen in Golden Gate Park or at Home before Devin died. Others were strangers to me, and always would be, now. They were dead. These were just their echoes, and all too soon, they’d fade away.
This had to stop.
“Devin . . .”
“Don’t you apologize to me,” he said, fluttering back, until he was flying just in front of those silent, doomed children. “If you want to make this right, make it stop. The dead are dead. Worry about the living.”
“I thought the night-haunts appreciated death,” said Tybalt. I glanced at him, startled. I’d almost forgotten that he was there.
“We do,” said Devin’s haunt mildly. “It doesn’t make us monsters. Now leave, all of you. This is not for you to see.”
“Not even me?” asked May. That strange accent was in her voice again, turning it plaintive—almost lonely. Just as I’d never considered that Connor would be among the night-haunts now, I’d never thought about how much she had to miss them. One adopted sister wasn’t exactly a fair trade for a whole flock of blood siblings.
“Not even you, Mai,” said Devin’s haunt, his voice softening slightly. “You made your choice.”
She nodded, eyes oddly bright, before she took Jazz’s hand and turned to walk away. She didn’t say good-bye. Maybe that wasn’t a thing the night-haunts did.
I stayed where I was for a few seconds more, forcing myself to look at the entire flock—even Connor’s haunt, who still wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I knew the goblin fruit problem was bad. I didn’t know it had reached this point. And I’m going to make it right.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, girl,” said Oleander’s haunt, still standing safely on the ground.
“I never do,” I said.
There was nothing left to say after that, and too much left to do. Blinking hard to keep myself from starting to cry, I turned and followed after May and Jazz. Tybalt paced beside me, a silent shadow.
Even when I heard the sounds of the flock beginning to eat, I didn’t look back. The night-haunt with Devin’s face was right: there are things in Faerie that are not for me to see. Not if I ever want to sleep again.
I had work to do.
TWO
THE CAR WAS PARKED behind a convenience store, draped in an illusion to keep it from being borrowed by some enterprising joyrider. May snapped her fingers to release the spell as the four of us approached. None of us spoke, and we held our silence as I unlocked the doors, checked the backseat for unwanted visitors, and slid behind the wheel. My hands were shaking and I was afraid that I was going to run us off the road, but that didn’t matter. May doesn’t drive, largely because no one is willing to get into a car with her anymore. Jazz can fly. Tybalt mostly uses the Shadow Roads to get around. Unless I wanted to call a taxi, I was driving.
Tybalt grimaced as he got into the passenger seat. I didn’t say anything, but I knew how uncomfortable he was, and I appreciated that he was willing to put himself through this for my sake. Faerie: where it’s only a little weird to realize that my boyfriend is older than the internal combustion engine.