The fact that human law said the park was closed wasn’t a big deaclass="underline" most fae don’t have a lot of respect for human law. Still, the hour was a good reason for me to hustle my little changeling butt out of there. If enough people got out before being seen by humans became a risk, we were more likely to escape without somebody getting arrested and Arden needing to have some poor innocent park ranger’s memory wiped.
Sometimes I think it must have been nice to be alive in the days where everyone knew that Faerie existed. Sure, bands of angry humans sometimes tried to kill us with iron and fire, but nobody questioned where we wanted to celebrate the seasons.
Tybalt followed me to the entry hall, where May, Jazz, and Quentin were waiting. May was holding a large canvas bag that smelled suspiciously like sugar cookies. When she saw me, she beamed, held the bag up as if for inspection, and announced, “I raided the kitchen!”
“Of course you did,” I said, with a weak smile. “I just got named a hero of the realm. Like, the actual title accessory pack kind of hero, not just ‘you do heroic things, gold star and try not to die.’”
“You were already a hero of the realm to us,” said my squire. He sounded so sincere that I couldn’t even poke fun at the statement. Not that I wanted to. Quentin and I have been through a lot since Sylvester first tried to use him as an errand boy. I refused the message he was supposed to give me, but I kept the messenger. It’s all part of my larger pattern of picking up strays.
Jazz yawned as she asked, “So are we getting out of here? Please? Because if we’re not leaving, I’m going to go sleep in one of the trees.” She was a Raven-maid, a form of skinshifter, and one of the few diurnal races in the primarily nocturnal landscape of Faerie. Things like Yule were hell on her internal clock.
“We’re leaving,” I said, turning for the exit. We were just in time: I could hear footsteps behind us, signaling the start of the exodus. “Sun’s up, and this is a pretty popular commuting route. If we want to make it home by a decent hour, we need to head out now.”
“Oh, thank Oberon,” said Jazz. “I can sleep in the car.”
My skirt made descending the hiking trail connecting Arden’s knowe to the main park difficult. I gathered it as high as I dared, exposing my calves, knees, and sensible black flats as I picked my way down the side of the mountain. Tybalt took the lead, offering his hand to help me keep my balance. I didn’t object. We’d both been working on accepting help more easily, and it was starting to pay off, at least as far as I was concerned. Jazz nearly fell twice before saying something unpleasant in a language I didn’t know, pulling the feathered band out of her hair, and transforming into a raven. She perched on May’s shoulder after that, and we made the rest of the descent in silence.
“Did everyone have a nice time?” I asked.
“I ate so much sugar that I think I qualify as an annex to Willy Wonka’s factory,” said May.
“I liked eating at the high table,” said Quentin. There was a hint of wistfulness in his tone, matched by a temporary strengthening of his Canadian accent.
It made sense that eating at the high table was something he’d have missed, coming from the family that ruled the entire continent. I flashed him an understanding smile. Quentin smiled back, and we kept walking.
Muir Woods was peaceful this early in the morning, empty of both the human tourists who would fill it in a few short hours and the swirling shadows that Arden and her illusionists had used to dissuade any illicit nocturnal hikers from setting foot inside. The redwoods stretched on toward forever, and everything smelled of sap, fresh running water, and the green.
This time, it was Tybalt who stopped at the edge of the parking lot. “I must return to the Court of Cats,” he said. “My absence from last night’s Yule festivities was forgivable, for it is a great joke for me to be invited to the gatherings of the Divided Courts, but my people need my attention for a time. Will you be well without me?”
“You mean will I pine and die wishing you were there? I think I’ll pass. Although you really owe me that ‘showing me how much you appreciate my choosing you’ thing.” I dropped my skirt and leaned up to give him a quick kiss. He slid his arms around my waist, pulling me closer and deepening the kiss into something more. The taste of pennyroyal and musk lingered on his lips, a sweet reminder of his magic.
“Get a room,” said May, and kept on walking.
I laughed, pulling away from him. “Okay, when my Fetch starts lecturing us on public displays of affection, that means it’s time to stop. I’ll see you tonight?”
“Count on it,” said Tybalt. He turned and walked back toward the trees. The shadows at the edge of the wood spread for him like a curtain, and he was gone.
I smiled a little goofily as I followed the others to the car. Quentin was draped over the hood, making exaggerated snoring noises. May was just standing there, watching me tolerantly. Jazz had apparently fallen asleep; she was stretched across May’s folded arms, still in raven form, not moving.
“Did you have a good Yule?” May asked.
“Not that it’s any of your business—”
“It’s totally my business.”
“But yes.” I unlocked the car, peering quickly into the backseat before I opened my door. “Quentin, stop faking being asleep and get in. You’re not fooling anyone.”
My squire grinned as he straightened up. Then he yawned and climbed into the front passenger seat. His eyes were closed by the time I slid behind the wheel.
May got into the back, setting Jazz on the seat next to her long enough to fasten her seat belt. Then she scooped her avian girlfriend back into her arms. “We’re good,” she said. Having significant others who spent a substantial amount of time as animals—mine a cat, hers a raven—meant we had adjusted the “everyone must wear a seat belt” rule to apply only to people who were currently in a seat belt-friendly form.
As expected, Quentin turned the radio to the local country station as soon as I started the car. Then he closed his eyes again, rolling as far to the side as the seat belt and a seated position would allow, and went to sleep. I smiled as I glanced at the rearview mirror. May was slumped over in the back, cradling Jazz like a stuffed toy.
“Peace at last,” I murmured, and started down the mountain separating Muir Woods from the nearest outcropping of human civilization. Don’t get me wrong: I was as tired as the rest of them, maybe more, since I was the one who found parties the most draining. The flip side was that escaping a party felt like a stay of execution, and that, combined with the comfort of being back behind the wheel of my faithful VW bug, meant I was more than awake enough to get us home.
We were almost to the base of the mountain when I realized none of us was wearing a human disguise. I swore under my breath and grabbed a handful of shadows from the roof of the car, gripping them between my nails as they tried to squirm away like eels. The smell of copper and freshly cut grass rose as I chanted, rapid-fire, “The trees they do grow high and the leaves they do grow green, many’s the hour my own true love I’ve seen, many’s the day I’ve watched him all alone, he is young but he’s surely growing.”
The spell, which had been building with each word, burst around me like a soap bubble, accompanied by a brief spike of pain at my temples. I breathed out, my shoulders relaxing. It was a simple blur, but it would do the job; as long as I didn’t get pulled over, we should be able to pass any cursory inspection by the other drivers on the road.
A “simple” blur. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to manage a blur spell at all, much less cast one on a carful of people, and I would have paid for the attempt with a lot more than a momentary pang of magic-burn. Then again, two years ago, I was more human than fae, and still trying to force my magic into a mold it was never designed to fit. It turns out that when someone isn’t Daoine Sidhe, yet keeps trying to scale their workings to Daoine Sidhe specifications, things sometimes go wrong. Who knew? Now, I was more fae than human—it was hard to say how much more, it being a matter of reading the balance of my blood, and not something that could be resolved with a scale—and I was more confident in the magic I did possess than I’d ever been in my life.