I blamed my years of uncertainty and confusion on my mother. She raised me to think I was Daoine Sidhe like Quentin and Sylvester, a blood-working descendant of Titania. The joke was on me. I was Dóchas Sidhe the whole time, only two generations removed from Oberon himself, and my skill set, while similar, didn’t follow the same rules.
Quentin started to snore for real. I grinned to myself and changed the radio station to 80s rock, letting the dulcet tones of Simple Minds fill the car as I hit the gas. Next stop, San Francisco.
Traffic was normally heavy at this hour of the morning, but we were saved by the season: everyone who could be off the road was off the road, using vacation time and sick days to stay home with their families or catch an early flight to Maui. I concentrated on the drive, and in what felt like no time at all, I was turning into the driveway of our two-story Victorian home.
Coming home to an actual house and not a rattrap of an apartment still felt like a gift every time it happened. Sylvester and Luna Torquill had been in the Bay Area for a long time, and they’d been investing in mortal-world real estate practically from day one. The house had originally been his. Technically it still was, since we’d never bothered to transfer the title, but in reality it was mine, and it would be mine for as long as I wanted it to be. It was home. I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted one until I had it.
“Wake up, sleepyheads,” I said, turning off the engine and releasing the blur spell at the same time. “I do door-to-door service, but I’m not carrying you to bed.”
Quentin mumbled something in sleepy French. I poked him in the arm.
“Wake up, go inside, and go to bed,” I commanded. “Come on, move it.”
“’M up.”
“You’re lying.” I twisted to look into the back, where May was yawning and unfastening her belt. “Are you going to be able to coax Jazz back to human form?”
“She’s pretty easy to coax. She doesn’t like to sleep as a raven in the bed,” said May, cradling her still-sleeping girlfriend. “I’m always afraid of rolling over and squishing her, so I won’t cuddle when she does that.”
“Firm but fair.” I jabbed Quentin again. “Up. Now.”
“I’m up.” He sat up, opening his eyes, and glowered at me petulantly before pushing open his door and shambling toward the house like something that had just crawled out of its grave. May followed at about the same pace, Jazz’s head resting on her shoulder. I swallowed a laugh, yawned, and got out of the car.
The cats and Spike, my resident rose goblin, met me at the door, complaining in their individual ways about being left alone, neglected and unfed. By the time I finished scooping food into their respective dishes—Purina for the felines, fertilizer for the animate rosebush—everyone else was gone, vanishing into their respective rooms for the next several hours.
“You’re on your own,” I informed the pets, and turned to head for the stairs.
Going up a flight of stairs in my dress was about as much fun as doing anything else in it had been. The downside of wearing real formal clothing to a ball, rather than spinning an illusion and calling it a night: I actually had to worry about taking care of the thing. Spider-silk is difficult to tear, stain, or even seriously wrinkle, but it needs to be treated properly if you want it to keep looking its best. I went into my room, closed the door, and began the unnecessarily complicated process of getting ready for bed.
Fifteen minutes later, my dress was hanging in the closet, my hair was in a ponytail, and I was stepping into a pair of sweatpants. A little rummaging in the laundry hamper produced a nightshirt that wasn’t too filthy to wear.
“Bed,” I moaned, and pulled the blackout curtains over my windows, converting the room into a pleasantly artificial night. With this last chore accomplished and no demands on my attention scheduled until sunset at the earliest, I flopped full-length onto the mattress. I lay there starfished for about half a minute before I remembered how to control my limbs and started squirming under the covers. It would have been nicer to be going to bed with Tybalt, who always provided a pleasant source of warmth and a soothing purr, but sleeping alone had its advantages: for one thing, no one was trying to steal the covers. I nestled myself into a changeling burrito, sticking my head under the pillow for good measure.
The doorbell rang.
I pulled my head from under the pillow and turned to look at the clock, automatically assuming that I’d been asleep for hours and just hadn’t noticed. According to the digital readout, it wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning. I’d been in bed for less than ten minutes.
The doorbell rang again.
“Oh, someone’s getting murdered today,” I muttered, rolling out of the bed. My bathrobe was on the floor near the door. I grabbed it and tugged it on.
The doorbell rang a third time as I was going down the stairs. “I’m coming!” I shouted, draping a human disguise around myself with quick, irritated motions of my hands. I would normally have worried about waking everyone else. Under the circumstances, I was more concerned about the doorbell waking them up if I didn’t get it to stop ringing.
I wrenched the door open and snarled, “What?” with a ferocity that would have made the Luidaeg proud.
Sylvester, who had been raising his hand to ring a fourth time, froze. I did the same, and for a long moment, we stared at each other.
He was wearing a human disguise, and had traded his party finery for a pair of tan slacks and a white cotton shirt with buttoned cuffs. He would have fit in with an amateur theater production of The Great Gatsby.
“What the . . . ?” I blinked, relaxing as confusion replaced my anger. “What are you doing here? Why were you ringing the doorbell? Don’t you have a key?”
“October,” he said. There was something odd about the way he shaped my name, like he hadn’t said it aloud in years. “You’re here.”
“Yeah. Look, it’s the start of the day. What’s going on?” I stepped to the side, gesturing for him to come inside. “You want some tea, or coffee, or something?”
“You are inviting me in?” He looked so perplexed that I was starting to wonder if something was really wrong.
“Um, yeah.”
“Ah. Then, yes; tea would be a delight.” He stepped over the threshold. I moved to shut the door behind him and froze, the scent of his magic tickling the back of my throat.
He smelled like smoke and rotten oranges.
This man wasn’t Sylvester Torquill.
THREE
THE WORLD SEEMED to slow down, turning crystalline around me. I automatically flipped the deadbolt as I finished closing the door, moving carefully and deliberately, like I was in a dream. Shutting myself in with my personal bogeyman wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done, but I didn’t think it would make a difference in the grand scheme of things. We weren’t both going to walk away from this. I was unarmed and effectively alone as long as the others were asleep—and I prayed they’d stay asleep. There was a chance Simon didn’t even know I had roommates. They’d be safe. Whatever he did to me, I just hoped it would be quick, and quiet enough that he wouldn’t wake anyone else before he left. I had no illusions about being able to defeat him. There was no way in the world Simon Torquill would have appeared on my doorstep if he didn’t feel like he somehow had the upper hand.
I turned to find him studying the hallway walls, his hands folded politely behind his back. His face was visible only in profile, still softened and humanized by the illusion plastered over it. I guess he didn’t dare release it. Most people couldn’t catch the taste of his magic just by walking past him, but any child of Faerie, however weak, would be able to smell the rot lurking inside him if they were standing nearby when he dropped the spell.