Page 18 of Night and Silence

Some of the scents were almost familiar, although none were complete enough for me to identify. I had probably encountered their owners in social situations, at Shadowed Hills or in Arden’s court or even back in the halls of Home. Not all of Devin’s kids had been magically weak, and it wasn’t unthinkable that some of them could throw a spell far enough to leave a trail behind. But they were tangled and layered on top of each other, and in the absence of anything that I could tie to Simon, I didn’t have a trail to follow. It was better, for the moment, to keep moving.

Almost all the doors at the top of the stairs were closed. The one second from the end stood open, revealing an unmade bed with a girl in a UC Berkeley sweatshirt sitting atop it, head in her hands. There were no police in sight. I spared a moment to wonder where they had all gone before stepping forward and rapping lightly on the doorframe, trying not to sound too aggressive. The last thing I wanted to do was startle the poor kid.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Is this Gillian’s room?”

The girl gasped, jerking her head out of her hands and sitting bolt upright. Her hair was purple, clearly dyed if the brown roots were anything to go by, and her skin was pale, save for the hectic blotches of sunburn across her nose and cheeks. Either she was very fond of using glitter gel to accent her eye makeup, or she was wearing fairy ointment. The latter was confirmed when her eyes flicked to Madden and she gasped again, scrambling to her feet.

“Are you—I mean, is this—are you her?” she squeaked.

I lifted an eyebrow. “Right pronoun, at least for me, but I need more than that to answer one way or the other. Is this Gillian Marks’ room?”

“Yes,” said the girl. She was still staring at me like she thought there was a good chance I might decide to eat her. Not my companions, although she kept giving Madden little sidelong glances: just me. “You’re really her. You’re Gillian’s mother.”

Oh. “Yes,” I said. “Are you her roommate?”

To my shock and dismay, the girl dropped to one knee like she was getting ready to swear fealty in some medieval court. May, who had to share at least some percentage of that dismay, gaped at her. Quentin, who was more accustomed to people bowing to him, snickered.

The girl raised her head. “My name is Jocelyn Lewis, and I am yours to command,” she said solemnly.

“Uh,” I said. “Or not. I don’t really need any vassals today. What I need is for you to stand up and tell me what happened here.”

“When she said her birth mother’s name was October, I thought she had to be pulling my leg, but then she said she’d dodged a bullet by taking her father’s last name, and I realized she meant you, she was your daughter, the only child of a hero of the realm, and she somehow chose human, you let her choose human, you hid her away so she could live her life even though she didn’t want to be immortal.” Jocelyn continued staring at me, starry-eyed. “I never knew a hero could be so good.”

“You have fans,” said Quentin, a note of malicious glee in his tone. “You have fans who keep track of what you’re doing, and some of them share a room with your daughter.”

“Shut up,” I said. “This isn’t the time.”

He sobered immediately, regret sweeping the glee away. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I . . . it’s fine.” We were all running on not enough sleep and way too much adrenaline. Jokes and prodding at each other was how we stayed sane. Usually. Right now, in this strange place with this strange woman—this strange girl, and sweet Oberon, I had never been that young—kneeling in front of me, I just wanted to get things done. “Please, can you get up? I need answers, and this isn’t helping.”

“I am so sorry.” Jocelyn finally got to her feet and sat back on the bed, eyes huge within their surrounding rings of fairy ointment. “I just never expected to see you in person. You’re a legend.”

This was getting more uncomfortable by the second, and it wasn’t helping me find my daughter. “Were you here last night? Do you know what happened? Anything that maybe you couldn’t tell the human police?”

May let go of Madden’s leash. He began sniffing his way around the edges of the room, focusing on the bed Jocelyn hadn’t been sitting on. It wasn’t hard to guess why: the process of elimination told me the second bed had to belong to Gillian. It was unmade, sheets and blankets twisted in a lover’s knot by her nighttime thrashing. A corkboard hung on the wall above it, dozens of snapshots tacked up with brightly colored pins. There were pictures of Cliff, either by himself or with Gillian and Miranda. There were pictures of Miranda, staged the same way. One, of Miranda with her cheek resting against the top of Gillian’s head while Gilly laughed and hugged her, seemed specifically designed to be an arrow through my heart. I looked at it, and it ached. That should have been me in the picture. That should have been me with my arms around my child.

“I, um. My mother was . . . is . . . a changeling. A Gwragen.” Jocelyn stumbled over the word like it wasn’t something she said very often. Thin-blooded, then, probably weak enough never to have been offered the Changeling’s Choice. Her own children would be merlins at best, if not entirely mortal. “I sleep at night, like a human.” The self-loathing in her voice made my stomach clench.

“There’s nothing wrong with being human,” I said, fighting to keep my voice gentle. I needed her help. I needed her to talk to me. Snapping at her for being distracted while my daughter was missing wasn’t going to help anything. “Gillian is human, and she’s amazing. You know that.”

Jocelyn nodded, sniffling gratefully.

I pushed back another jet of irritation. “If you sleep at night, does that mean you slept through the whole thing? Was she here when you went to bed?”

“No. She was going to be out late, studying with friends. I don’t think she likes me much.” Jocelyn wrinkled her nose. “I don’t understand why she never wants to talk about you. I mean, I know she doesn’t know anything about Faerie, but I never said anything that would have broken secrecy. I just wanted to hear about you. What kind of person you are, what it’s like to be your family.”

The clenching in my gut got worse. This wide-eyed girl had tried to make Gillian talk about me, even after she had clearly been rebuffed. “I see,” I said, abandoning the effort to keep the chill from my voice. “Do you know where she studied? How many people would have been with her? Do you have any of their names?”

Jocelyn’s eyes got wider and wider until, finally, she burst into tears. “You’re m-m-mad at me!” she wailed.

I winced. The human police might not be up here, but they were still in the house. If they came upstairs and found us interrogating Gilly’s roommate, they would probably be suspicious at best, and angry at worst. “Please, calm down,” I said.

“Let me,” said Quentin. With a wry half-smile, he added, “I’m nobody, remember?”

Numbly, I stayed where I was as Quentin crossed the room and sat on the bed next to Jocelyn, putting one hand over hers. He might look human at the moment, but he was still Daoine Sidhe, among the most beautiful and most enthralling of the fae. He turned the full force of his attention on the girl, and for a moment, I thought she might swoon.

Literally. She seemed like the swooning type, all fluttering hands and overplayed fragility. How Gillian had been able to share a room with her for more than an hour without breaking her nose, I might never know.