Page 71 of The Brightest Fell

Beep. “Toby, it’s Quentin again. Are you okay? Seriously, you’re freaking me out. The Luidaeg put Officer Thornton to sleep in her room. She says he’s really malnourished and probably sick from being in deep Faerie for so long. Oh, and she wants to know when the hell you decided she was your new home for misfit toys. Call me.”

Beep. “October, this is Quentin. Please call me back.”

Beep. “Toby, please. You’re freaking me out bad. Danny’s going to give me a ride home. I want to feed Spike and the cats and get some new clothes and charge my phone, since obviously I need to have enough battery to answer when you finally remember that I’m your squire and you need to call me.”

Beep. “I hate you.”

Beep. “I hate you and I’m eating the last of your ice cream because you suck. Please call. Please, please call.”

I hung up and tucked the phone back into my pocket, glancing at Simon. He was watching me out of the corner of his eye, most of his attention still focused on the candle. He was doing an excellent job of steering us around the pedestrians, avoiding collisions that seemed like they should have been inevitable. I admired that, even as I was glad someone else was leading for a change.

“Quentin,” I said. “He called from the Luidaeg’s to update me on Officer Thornton, and then he called a bunch more times to tell me what a terrible knight I am for not picking up or calling him back.”

“How cruel of you, to ignore him so while you were unconscious and recovering from a near-disastrous act of blood magic,” said Simon gravely.

“I know, right? I’m the worst.” I shook my head. “The officer’s not doing great.”

“Humans were never meant to live that deep. They cannot thrive there. They can only wither or endure, doing their best to swim against a tide that means them only ill.”

“Yeah.” What would Annwn make of me in my current state? I had already felt a little unwelcome there, unable to quite relax into the embrace of a land that had never known mortality. Now . . . it might throw me out entirely. And I would probably go willingly.

We had turned off Valencia at some point, and were now walking up a familiar street. I didn’t see it during full daylight all that often, but some landmarks don’t change. I stiffened.

Simon caught the change immediately. He cast a more direct look toward me, frowning. “What’s wrong?”

“I know where we are.”

“I thought you knew San Francisco quite well.”

“I do, but we’re heading for my house.” I started to walk faster, forcing Simon to match my pace. The candle flame didn’t so much as flicker. We were still going in the right direction, and that was exactly what I’d been afraid of.

Simon’s eyes widened. “August—”

“Is Dóchas Sidhe, which means she could do the same ‘track me by my magic’ routine that we’ve been doing with her. She can’t find her home. She can’t go back to where she belongs. But my home? There’s nothing stopping her from going there.” She had left me broken and writhing on the basement floor; she had no reason to think I was a threat to her, or even that I would be able to figure out where she had gone.

By taking my home, after she had subdued me, she had put herself into the best position possible. It was too bad for her that I wasn’t actually dead.

“Oak and ash,” murmured Simon. This time, he was the one who sped up, and we half walked, half ran the rest of the way along the street to my front gate, where as expected, the candle flame leaped upward, telling us that we were close.

Simon blew it out and snapped his fingers. The don’t-look-here dissolved. I gave him a curious look, and he shook his head.

“She knew I was there, in the basement,” he said. “She may not be able to recognize me, but she isn’t blind to my presence. If we enter under an enchantment and she detects the magic, she’ll assume we’ve come to hurt her, and she’ll react accordingly. I don’t mean to offend, October, but in your current condition, I don’t think you can fight her off.”

“You’d be surprised,” I said. August had been fast and furious, but she hadn’t been trained. Every swing was supported by as much weight and momentum as she could put behind it. That made her a merciless opponent, sure. It didn’t make her unbeatable.

My teacher had been a man named Devin, and he’d trained me on the assumption that I was always going to be a changeling, mostly mortal, hampered by the reflexes of my own body. He’d taught me how to take and throw a punch. Most importantly, he’d taught me how to incapacitate my opponent. August had been able to get the drop on me in the basement, because I hadn’t expected her to attack, and because she’d had magic.

Well, she’d done all the damage she was going to do. No one was turning me wholly human against my will, and I wasn’t planning to let her touch my skin again. If she still felt like playing punchy games, she could find out what it felt like to have her teeth loosened.

“Come on,” I said, and started up the path toward my front door, digging the keys from my jeans as I walked. My wards would have long since burned away, undone by the passage of successive dawns. A pang of concern hit as I remembered Quentin mentioning that he was going to feed the cats. Had we left enough kibble?

Even with May staying at Shadowed Hills to anchor the blood trace, Raj would have come by the house to check on them. They were his subjects, and he was determined to show he would be a good King when his time came—even if that time was coming too fast for any of us to be comfortable. They’d be fine. They had to be.

And all of this was me refusing to think about the possibility that any of them had been in the house when my sister decided to make it her own. I knew that. I focused on the inconsequential anyway.

The doorknob turned as I was unlocking it. The door swung open, and there was August, draped in the glittering shine of a human disguise, dressed in one of my tank tops and a pair of May’s sweat pants. That made sense. August was thinner than I was, and none of my jeans had drawstrings.

Her face darkened at the sight of me, and she moved to slam the door. I stuck my foot into the opening before she could, effectively jamming it open.