“It’s like we’re in a big zombie movie,” said May.
I glared. “I was trying really hard not to have that thought.”
Her smile was visible even through the gloom. “That’s what I’m here for.”
I started walking a little faster, making May hurry to keep up. She snickered as she quickened her pace.
“Oh, c’mon, Toby. If you just watched a few more horror movies—” The hall shifted around us.
It wasn’t a big shift—just enough to knock me off balance, sending me stumbling into May, who caught me easily. She looks like a changeling, but she’s a pureblooded Fetch, and her balance is much better than mine.
“What was that?” she demanded.
“Oh, now you’re not making jokes?” I straightened, tilting my head toward the join of wall and ceiling as I snapped, “Cut that out! I am the new Countess of Goldengreen, and I’m here by right of Crown and Claiming.”
Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.
The hall shuddered, for all the world like a dog trying to shake something off its back. This time, May and I both staggered backward, stopping only when we hit the wall. Doors were slamming deeper in the knowe, and dust and cobwebs were beginning to rain down from the rafters. Unlike the first shift, this one showed no sign of stopping—although it did show signs of getting worse. If we didn’t move, the knowe was going to bring itself down around our ears.
Being buried alive didn’t sound like a great idea, and with Lily’s subjects camped in the entry hall, I couldn’t take the risk that the entire knowe would fall in. The Queen might approve—it would take out a lot of troublesome riffraff in one “regrettable accident”—but I certainly wouldn’t. I didn’t know why the knowe was objecting to us and not to them. That was something to worry about later.
I grabbed May’s arm. “I’ve learned something from horror movies, too.”
“What’s that?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard above the shaking.
“When the house tells you to get out, you get out!” I took off running, hauling her in my wake and banking on the exits being easier to find than the entrances were. The knowe continued to shake around us, more and more detritus showering down from the ceiling, the few remaining furnishings and ornaments toppling to the floor. Then a door was in front of us, and I hit it shoulder first, sending us both into the cool night air of the mortal world. We went sprawling, May in a patch of ornamental ground cover, me into a sign that identified our location as the San Francisco Art Museum garden.
The door swung shut behind us, but not before I saw the knowe stop shaking.
May sat up, beaming as she brushed her hair away from her face. “That was awesome! What now?”
I groaned, sagging backward against the sign. “I have no idea.”
MY ALLIES ARE a motley bunch, defined more by their stubborn refusal to stand back and let the professionals deal with things than any other characteristic. Danny showed up half an hour after I called, his cab roaring into the parking lot at a speed that would have been suicidal for most people. With Danny behind the wheel, it was just stupid.
He parked sideways across three parking spots before climbing out of the car, a process that took longer than would have been necessary for almost anybody else. Danny is a Bridge Troll—basically eight feet of mountain that walks like a man, with skin like concrete and hands large enough to wrap around a grown man’s head. He wasn’t bothering with a human disguise, probably because it was almost two o’clock in the morning, and stood revealed in all his craggy, gray-skinned glory. He would have looked right at home guarding the gate at a Renaissance faire, if not for the blue jeans and size 5X San Francisco Giants sweatshirt.
“Tobes!” he declared jubilantly, spreading his arms in greeting. “An’ May! How’s it going, girl?”
“Pretty good,” said May, walking over to hug him. “Jazz sends her love. She’s off with the flock this weekend. Something about the annual migration.”
“That’s, uh . . . that’s special.”
May grinned. “You get used to it once you’ve been dating a bird for a little while.”
The two of them continued exchanging pleasantries as I walked around Danny’s car and peered in the passenger-side window. The bronze-haired teenage Daoine Sidhe sitting in the front seat with a Barghest sprawled halfway across his lap offered me a timid smile. I knocked on the window.
Quentin obligingly rolled it down. “Hi, Toby.”
“Don’t you ‘Hi, Toby’ me. What are you doing here?”
“Danny said he was coming over, and I asked if he’d bring me along.”
There were so many issues with that sentence that I barely knew where to start. I settled for asking, “Why were you with Danny to know that he was coming over?”
“He picked me up from the Luidaeg’s.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Do I want to know why you were at the Luidaeg’s?”
“Just visiting.”
It’s a sign of how much time Quentin has spent with me that the idea of “just visiting” the Luidaeg didn’t seem to strike him as odd. Most people refer to the Luidaeg by her title: the Sea Witch. She’s Firstborn, almost as old as Faerie itself, and tends to be viewed as one of the bogeymen under our collective bed. No one “just visits” her. No one but me, and now, apparently, Quentin.
Quentin and the Luidaeg met when his human girlfriend was kidnapped by Blind Michael and transformed into a horse to serve his unending Ride. We got the girlfriend back, Blind Michael’s Ride was stopped for good, and Quentin wound up forming a personal relationship with one of Faerie’s greatest monsters. Nobody can say our friendship hasn’t been educational for him. I just hope his parents—whoever they are—will agree. Quentin is a blind foster at Shadowed Hills, which means I don’t know where he’s from, beyond “somewhere in Canada.”
If he doesn’t come from a really liberal family, I am eventually going to have to do some serious explaining.
“Get out of the car,” I said, dropping my hand. “You’re here. You may as well make yourself useful.”
Quentin grinned, scrambling to open the door. Danny’s Barghests poured out before Quentin had his seat belt undone, swarming around my feet making the weird yodeling noises that passed as their happy-to-see-you bark. I took a step backward, trying to maintain my balance. “Danny!”
“Aw, heck, sorry about that,” said Danny, and planted two enormous fingers in his mouth, giving an earsplitting whistle. I winced, waiting for the museum security guards to put in an appearance.
Luck was with us for a change; no guards appeared as the Barghests stopped circling my ankles and went racing over to dance around Danny, scorpion tails wagging in wild delight. There were only three of them, if only is the appropriate word when talking about corgi-sized semicanine monsters with venomous stings and retractable claws. Danny runs a Barghest rescue service, and they tend to go everywhere with him when he’s not driving mortal clientele. I don’t think he’s ever managed to adopt one out. I also don’t think he cares.
I shook my head. “Which ones are these?”
“Iggy, Lou, an’ Daisy,” Danny said proudly, bending down to pet his venomous charges, who yodeled more in their delight. “Daisy’s the smart one. She figured out how to open the door on the mail truck. You shoulda seen the mailman’s face.”
That was another line of thought I didn’t really feel like pursuing. I shook my head. “Okay, great. Come on. We need to find a way to get into Goldengreen without the knowe deciding to kill us all.”