Page 26 of The Brightest Fell

That wasn’t all I’d seen. I had seen August herself, wearing a dress the color of corn husks and holding a white candle mottled in calico patches of black and gold, walking into a forest. I had seen those trees before. I couldn’t remember where, but it would come to me; I was sure it would come to me.

“Oh, yes,” said Simon, looking pleasantly surprised. “I had forgotten all about that. Come on, then.” He started for the front door, steps light, stride almost casual.

It hurt to watch him. Not because he was supposed to be my enemy, and he was walking toward my childhood home: because he was a man whose entire family was gone, one way or another, and he was walking toward his own home, the one he had lost through a combination of bad luck and his own actions. Through his own failures. Based on what little I understood of what had happened after August disappeared, it wasn’t so much that Amandine had objected to the methods he’d resorted to in trying to recover their daughter: it was that they hadn’t worked.

Simon Torquill had been carefree once, the sort of man who would no more turn a person into a fish and walk away from them than he would go outside without his trousers on. Here, in the shadow of my mother’s tower, the ghost of that man still lingered, and it made me ache for what he had become.

To my surprise, he didn’t walk straight in, but raised his hand and knocked, waiting patiently on the steps as Quentin and I caught up with him.

“She hasn’t been home in ages,” I said.

“Perhaps not, but it’s always better to start with an excess of civility and then move toward breaking and entering, rather than attempting to go in the opposite direction,” said Simon. “There’s no one to apologize to if a knock goes unanswered. There’s quite a lot of apologizing to do if, upon picking a lock, the owners of the place turn out to be having breakfast in the parlor.”

“I know how to pick locks,” said Quentin. “Toby taught me.”

“Good,” said Simon. “A boy your age should have useful skills, or else no one is ever going to think of you as anything more than a dilettante, and where’s the fun in that?”

I groaned.

The door began to open.

I snapped to immediate attention, posture straight, chin up, fear and muscle memory propelling me into the posture of a scared teenager who knew her mother would never approve of her. Quentin’s posture almost mirrored mine, although there was more formality in it; he’d learned from the best etiquette tutors his parents could find, rather than snatching knowledge from the shadows and spackling it as thick as he could over the rough edges of himself.

Then the door finished swinging wide and Amandine was there, still in her gown of white flowers, a frown on her pretty face. The only sign of her activities from earlier in the evening was a single red drop on one of the petals of her skirt. She must not have noticed the blood. I couldn’t notice anything else. It was screaming for my attention, as blood always did.

Amandine’s frown melted into a look of surprise. “Simon,” she said. “What are you doing here? They told me you’d been elf-shot.”

“They woke me up,” he said, and smiled, open and earnest and bright as moonrise. “Hello, Amy. It’s been a long time.”

“Not nearly long enough,” she said. “I said I didn’t want to see you until our daughter came home, and she’s not with you. Just the other one, and her little pet.”

Hearing my own mother call me “the other one” stung less than I would have expected. Maybe I was finally growing up. Or maybe the desire to punch her in her pretty nose was keeping me from feeling like I wanted her to be proud of me. “We’re here because we’re about to go looking for August,” I said. “Remember, Mom? You hired me?”

“I remember that you refused me and forced my hand, and I remember that you’re a devious, sneaky little thing. If I let you inside, you’re likely to try freeing your other pets, and then where will I be? You won’t help me willingly. I have to compel you.”

“I’d work better if I weren’t worried about them,” I said. “You have my word that if you give them back now, I won’t rest until I find out what happened to my older sister.”

Her frown became a scowl. “She’s no sister of yours,” she snapped. “Simon had no part in making you, and I claim no responsibility for the blood you bear. August is my heir, and I shall have no other.”

“I don’t want anything that belongs to you,” I said. “I just want Tybalt and Jazz back.”

“Then you’re a liar, dear daughter, because right now, they belong to me. You can’t have things both ways. Either you want nothing of mine, or you want my most prized possession. Which is it?”

“How can they be your most prized possession when you just stole them from me?” I asked, too frustrated to mind my words. “You’re the one who’s trying to have things both ways.”

“They’re the pretty pets that bring my August back to me, as she should always have been,” said Amandine. She smiled serenely. “There’s no way out of the circle you’re stuck in, October. I won’t give them back. You won’t give up wanting them. So find my daughter.”

“That’s what she’s had me woken to help her do,” said Simon, stepping in before I could start yelling. There was a soothing note in his voice, calm, like this was a perfectly reasonable conversation. “Amy, remember how I used to laugh and call August our little wolfhound, from the way she could follow a person’s magic from one side of the tower to the other? I suspect October can do the same. May we enter?”

“October grew up here,” said Amandine. “I think I would have noticed if she had wandered off one afternoon and returned with August.”

I saw my opening. “Yes, but I was more human then,” I said. “That was how you wanted me to be, remember? I could always detect magic, but it’s only been recently that I’ve really been able to understand it. I can follow it a lot farther than I used to. Let me try.”

She looked at me with open disgust. “Of course you would embrace the part of your heritage that left you sniffing at the corners like an animal. Fine. Do as you like. Only be aware that I am watching you, and you’ll be punished if I think you’re trying to trick me.”

She turned on her heel then, stalking back inside, leaving the door open so we could follow. Quentin blinked.

“Your mom is sort of terrifying, and I don’t think I like her very much,” said Quentin, looking at me.