“Sounds like fun to me,” said Danny, and grinned, showing a mouthful of teeth like broken concrete.
“Wish I shared the sentiment,” I said, and started down the path toward the cliffside entrance.
“LOOK AT IT this way, May,” said Danny encouragingly. “At least you were the first one off the cliff. Tobes or the kid woulda drowned, and I’d be walking along the bottom to get back to shore.”
May glared at him, continuing to wring the water out of her hair. “I can swim, but I still fell.”
“Yeah,” Danny agreed. “It was funny.”
“We don’t really have time for you to kill each other,” I said, stepping between them before my sodden Fetch could lunge. “So the cliff entrance has sealed itself, the garden entrance is one-way, and the entrance in the old shed is gone. The only other entrance I know of is in the museum itself, and that’s not going to work without breaking and entering.”
Quentin looked up. “Wait—you mean there was an entrance in that old shed we passed?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “That’s how I used to get in.”
“I think I have an idea.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Did you miss the part where the entrance was gone?”
“Yeah, but... ‘What’s been leaves marks on what is.’ ” He was clearly quoting something. All three of us looked at him uncomprehendingly. Quentin smiled, a little sheepishly. “I’ve actually been paying attention to my magical theory lessons.”
I didn’t have a better idea. “Okay, if you think you can get us in through the shed, let’s give it a try. It’s got to be more effective than chucking May off cliffs.”
“Not as funny, though,” said Danny.
“Hey!” protested May.
Danny kept chuckling all the way back to the shed.
It hadn’t visibly changed; it was still rickety, ancient, and choked over with rust. Quentin waved for the rest of us to stop a few feet away while he circled it slowly, the steel and heather scent of his magic gathering around him as he walked. I watched carefully, less because I wanted to see what he was doing—I’m learning to admit that the Daoine Sidhe can do things that I can’t—and more because I wanted to see how he was doing it. Quentin hasn’t used much magic beyond simple illusions in the time that I’ve known him. If he was going to start branching out, I wanted to see where he was going.
After his third trip around the shed, Quentin leaned forward to touch the open padlock, murmuring something that I couldn’t quite hear. An answering whisper echoed through the grass around us, sounding like the dying protests of the wind. Quentin said something else, dropping his hand to the shed’s rusted latch. The whisper this time was louder, and lasted longer. The smell of heather and steel was getting heavier by the second, chasing everything else away. It was just Quentin’s magic, the whispering grass, and the night.
And then the door swung open, revealing a square of blackness too profound to be anything but magical. Quentin looked back over his shoulder, sweat beading on his forehead, and offered a wan smile. “I got the door,” he said. “But we should probably hurry. I don’t know how long I can hold it.”
“You did good,” I said, motioning the others to follow as I walked quickly forward. “What did you do?”
“Countess Winterrose was Daoine Sidhe. You, um, aren’t.” He shrugged a little, looking uncomfortable. His hand never left the doorframe. “I told the knowe that I’m her. It believes me, for right now. But that’s going to change real soon.”
“That’s fine. We’re going.” I offered a quick smile and stepped past him, into the dark.
THE DOOR LED to the main courtyard, a vast, circular room with crystal panels in the domed ceiling. They let in at least a little light from the starry Summerlands sky overhead, where four lilac moons hung high. The knowe was tied to the mortal world but wasn’t a part of it. That was the issue. I don’t know about most people, but I’ve never walked into a dead woman’s house and had it order me to get out again. That sort of real estate problem is reserved for Faerie.
Danny and the Barghests were the next ones through. Iggy, Lou, and Daisy promptly scattered, tails wagging as they ran around the room trying to sniff everything at once, while Danny stopped beside me, planting his hands on his hips as he considered the room.
“You really planning to keep people in here?” he asked. “What, are you gonna sling hammocks or somethin’?”
“It’ll be a home improvement project. If it lets us start.” I turned in time to see Quentin follow May through, and stepped over to offer him my arm. “How’re you feeling?”
“Winded. Like I just ran a marathon. But awesome.” Quentin offered me a bright smile. “Did you see what I did?”
“I did. That was cool. I’ll be sure to let Sylvester know that you’re progressing in your illusions. And right after that, I’ll tell him you were visiting the Luidaeg on your own.”
“Hey!”
“Take the good with the bad, kiddo.” Inwardly, I was miffed. The Luidaeg hadn’t spoken to me in weeks. The fact that Quentin was able to casually visit stung. And besides, Sylvester Torquill is the Duke of Shadowed Hills, which makes Quentin his responsibility. If he didn’t know that Quentin was sneaking into San Francisco to visit the Luidaeg, he needed to be informed.
Quentin wrinkled his nose at me, but didn’t protest again as I turned to study the courtyard. Danny’s Barghests were still sniffing their way around the room. Danny seemed to be keeping a close eye on them, which was a relief; I wasn’t sure how many halls were connected to the courtyard, and I didn’t want to add Barghest hunting to my list of things to do today. May, meanwhile, had wandered into the center of the room and was looking up, studying the Summerlands stars through the crystal panels in the roof. The knowe wasn’t yelling at us yet. That was a nice change. Of course, once Quentin’s spell wore off . . .
“It’s too bad I don’t know where the other exits are from here,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing. Let’s see if we can’t figure out where the lights are.”
I started slowly forward, watching the shadows that collected at the base of the walls for signs that something was going to lunge out at us. Nothing seemed to be moving, but that could just be because we had yet to move far enough away from the door. If Goldengreen was truly tired of our intrusions, it might want to make sure we wouldn’t be able to escape. What a charming thought.
Sylvester always said he could “feel” Shadowed Hills, like a second heartbeat echoing the first. Every other landholder I’ve spoken to said something similar, even Countess April O’Leary of Tamed Lightning, whose ideas of “normal” are heavily skewed by the fact that she’s the world’s only Dryad living in a computer server. They can feel their territory—their knowes, and their lands, are a part of them. All I felt was the creeping fear that Goldengreen might decide to rise up and smash us at any moment. I don’t normally feel that way about parts of my own body, and on the rare occasions when I do, I tend to reach for the ibuprofen.
The floor was uneven, the cobblestones cracked and shifting in their settings. We were going to have some serious repair work to do once we managed to get the lights back on. Evening must have been neglecting her upkeep for years before she was killed—that, or the place had been sustained so entirely by her magic that when the magic was removed, the foundations began to crumble. I hoped that wasn’t the case. My magic can’t hold a candle to Evening’s, not even now that I’m starting to understand what my magic really is, and if I was supposed to power this place, we were going to have a very short residency.
Thinking back, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in this room. Evening had a small Court, almost unattended; I hadn’t heard anything about what happened to the denizens of her fiefdom after she died. They must have managed to blend into the Counties and Baronies around Goldengreen without so much as a ripple. I’d asked Sylvester if he could help me find any of them when the Queen first gave me the title to Goldengreen, and he hadn’t been able to name a single one, much less tell me where to look. If anyone out there knew the knowe’s secrets, they weren’t talking to me.