FOUR
CAGNEY AND LACEY were curved on my pillow like sleeping commas when I opened the bedroom door. Either the chaos in the kitchen hadn’t filtered up the stairs—unlikely, given Jazz—or the cats hadn’t cared. I leaned over and pulled the pillow out from under them, sending them sprawling. They opened their blue Siamese eyes and squalled, protesting this rough treatment.
“I needed you awake, and I don’t have time to be polite,” I snapped, throwing the pillow on the floor. I started yanking off my nightclothes, letting them fall where they landed. “Simon Torquill was just here. That name doesn’t mean anything to you, but it’ll mean something to Tybalt. I need you to tell him I’ve left for Shadowed Hills, and that he should find me as soon as he can.”
The cats stopped complaining and simply looked at me, assuming the classic sphinx poses practiced by felines around the world. I shook my head.
“He’s at Court. I’ve intruded enough there recently.” I knew he’d be angry at me for leaving before he could join me, but this was part of the balance we had to strike. Sometimes, I had to take care of myself, no matter how much it upset him, just like sometimes, he had to take care of me, no matter how much it upset me.
The cats kept staring at me. I shook my head again, digging through the mess on the floor until I found a pair of reasonably clean jeans. “I don’t care how mad he’s going to be. He can be mad at me. Just tell him, all right? Tell him Simon is back. Tell him Simon came to the house. Simon hurt Jazz. Tell him . . .” I hesitated. None of the things I wanted to say felt right, and so I shook my head and said, “Just tell him to hurry.”
Cagney meowed once, a sharp, almost disdainful sound. Then she jumped off the bed and ran out the bedroom door. Lacey followed her. I looked after them for a few precious seconds. They were both indoor cats; I’d never caught them outside the house. They still had a way of getting to Tybalt when they needed to. The Court of Cats is open to all felines, and they all know how to get there. He would hear. He would find me.
I got dressed as fast as I could, yanking on my shoes and belting my knife around my waist. After a moment’s hesitation I grabbed my sword from where it hung on the closet door. I still wasn’t good with it, despite Sylvester’s many patient hours of training, but it would keep the fight farther away from me, if it came down to that. The way I was feeling right now, anything that kept the fight at a distance was a good thing. The last thing I put on was my leather jacket, shrugging it over my shoulders and taking a small degree of reassurance from its familiar weight.
“I can do this,” I said. “He isn’t going to be there, and even if he were, he’s not the bogeyman. He’s just a man. I can beat him.”
They may have been lies, but even lies have power if you repeat them often enough. I took a breath to steady myself, turned, and opened the bedroom door.
Quentin was leaning against the hallway wall, already dressed to go, with his own sword belted by his side. He raised his head and looked at me coolly. His bronze hair was wet and slicked back from his face, a concession to the shower he hadn’t had time to take. “I thought you might forget to wake me, so I got ready,” he said. There was no quarter in his expression: he knew damn well that I’d been thinking about leaving him behind, and he wasn’t having it.
Tough. “I didn’t wake you because you need to get some sleep. As your knight, it’s important for me to look out for your health.”
“You didn’t wake me because you don’t want me coming with you.”
“Oh, right, silly me. I didn’t want to drag my squire into pointless danger.”
Quentin narrowed his eyes. “You would have woken me before you knew I was the Crown Prince.”
That made me pause, but only for a second. Quentin was my squire, yes, but he was in the Mists under a blind fosterage: no one was supposed to know who his parents were, and even though I’d known him for years, I hadn’t learned their identity until recently. It turned out that was because they were the High King and Queen of the Westlands—a Kingdom better known as “North America” in mortal circles. He was going to rule a continent one day. Assuming he stayed alive that long, which was by no means guaranteed while he was living with me.
In the end, I decided to go with aggressive honesty. My headache was enough to make anything else seem like too much work. “Guilty as charged. I didn’t wake you because I don’t want you anywhere near Simon Torquill, okay? This is the man who turned me into a fish for fourteen years. Now he’s trying to feed me some bullshit line about how he did it to ‘save me,’ which means he’s delusional on top of everything else. So, yeah, you’re staying home. I’m not going to be the girl who gets the Crown Prince killed.”
“I’m still your squire. That comes first until my training is finished,” Quentin shot back. “I’m not staying behind. You know I can follow you. Do you really want to make me do that?”
I glared at him. “I hate you.”
“I know.”
“You will do exactly what I say at all times. That includes backing off if I say something is too dangerous for you. Do you understand?”
“You’re my knight,” he said, almost cheerful now that he knew he was getting his way. “I do what you tell me to do.”
“That’ll be a cold day in Mag Mell,” I muttered, and stalked toward the stairs. “Come on. We need to ward this place to kingdom come before we get on the road.”
We walked down the stairs side by side, our shoulders brushing the walls. I managed to swallow most of my relief—I wasn’t going out there alone—but I couldn’t swallow my dread. The only place I knew for sure that Simon wasn’t was the house. By leaving it, I exposed myself to him, wherever he might be lurking. I took some small comfort in knowing that the spell he’d thrown at me had hit him. Hopefully, the bastard was a pigeon or something by now.
May and Jazz were no longer in the kitchen. My former Fetch had dragged or carried her unconscious girlfriend into the living room, and was busy warding the windows while Jasmine slept on the couch. May looked around when Quentin and I appeared in the doorway.
“I didn’t wake him up on purpose,” she said. “He must have heard the noise from the kitchen, same as I did.”
“I’m a little insulted that you all thought you could have a major fight in the house and not wake me up,” said Quentin.
“You’re a teenage boy. You could sleep through a nuclear bomb. Now go ward the front door and the mail slot against intrusions.”
“Don’t try to leave without me,” he said, and ran off to do as he’d been told.
I watched him go, managing to keep my expression mostly composed until he was out of sight. Then I turned back to May, allowing my fear to show. “He’s not going to let me leave him behind.”
“No, he’s not.” She muttered a line from what sounded like a They Might Be Giants song, waggling her fingers at the window as she spoke. The smell of cotton candy and ashes filled the room, layering on top of the traces of her magic that had already been present. She turned back to me. “That’s good. You’d worry about him just as much if you let him out of your sight, and you’re not exactly rational where Simon is concerned.”
“He tried to turn your girlfriend into a fish!”
“I’m not exactly rational where Simon is concerned, either,” she said wearily. She walked back across the living room and perched on the arm of the couch, reaching down to stroke Jazz’s hair. “I’d be the worst kind of backup possible right now—the kind who just wants to go home and take care of someone she loves. But that doesn’t mean I want you going out alone.”
“I told the cats to find Tybalt,” I said, feeling somehow ashamed of myself for wanting to run before any of my allies could put themselves in the line of fire for me. I couldn’t handle it if they got hurt. Not by this. Not by him.