Page 33 of Night and Silence

“We’re going to see Walther.”

Her eyes hardened, but she only nodded, recognizing how exposed we were now. Placing her fingers in her mouth, she whistled shrilly. Madden’s head whipped around, and he came bounding back to us.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” I said. “Walther needs to see us. Madden, can you find this trail again if we leave it here? Or do we need to split up?”

He whined once, but then he bobbed his head and fell in next to May.

“Okay,” I said, feeling a wash of relief. If Walther had something to unclog our noses and make our eyes stop itching, that was good. That could only help Madden be better at doing his job and finding my daughter. Leaving him out could be seen as an insult to the crown—and after our little jaunt into the courtyard-that-wasn’t, I didn’t think Arden was that thrilled with me. Maybe she’d decide I was too much trouble and she didn’t want my fealty after all. And maybe pigs would fly.

I snorted. May glanced in my direction, one eyebrow raised.

“Something funny?”

“Pigs are flying,” I said.

Quentin snorted as well, and May rolled her eyes.

“You are both twelve,” she said, and walked a little faster. I didn’t try to call her back. She knew the way to Walther’s office as well as I did. Really, the only one of us who didn’t was Madden, and since he was playing the faithful hound and sticking at May’s heels, there was no need to worry about losing him.

People think searching for something—a knowe, a cheating husband, a child—is always a linear process. You start here, you go there, you find the things you’re looking for and bring them safely home or back to their owners. Then you get paid and walk into the sunset, confident in a job well done. I blame television. Fitting something into an hour means cutting the wrong turns, the digressions, the complications. It’s an easy first act, a twist in the second act, and a resolution in the third.

The reality is more complicated. Finding someone is legwork and research and watching the clock, always, always watching the clock, because time is never on your side. There are no acts, no commercial breaks, and no guarantee that when the search grinds to a halt, the person you’re trying to find won’t already be floating in a ditch.

Gillian had been taken. Fact. Gillian had been taken by someone who may or may not have used magic in the process. Normally, it would have been clear, but she’d been taken before dawn, which meant any minor spells had already been crisped to ash, while the major ones, eroded but intact, would be drowned in the soupy swamp of magical signatures that wreathed the campus. My sensitivity to magic is a good thing, especially in my line of work, but it could also be a liability in a place like this, where there was just too much to confuse the issue.

Gillian had been taken and stripped naked, and her clothes had been left in a place so secret it made queens pale to hear that people were inside it, a place I’d never heard of before. Devin should have been running a damn farmer’s market out of a garden like that one. So who could have known it was there, and been willing to use it to throw me off the track like that?

It wasn’t a comfortable question. It confirmed fae involvement as nothing else could have, and only the fact that the scent of oranges had never so much as put in an appearance kept me from being sure that Simon was behind it all. That, and the fact that I knew him. Lost or not, I knew him, and I couldn’t believe he’d do this to me.

Then again, maybe I was being naïve. After all, he’d been willing to do this to his own brother. Why not me? But he couldn’t have cast a single spell without leaving the scent of rotten oranges behind, and I wasn’t finding any oranges. Just the strangely present scent of cinnamon, which didn’t connect to anyone I could think of.

The chemistry building doors stood open, propped to let the morning air inside. Students lounged on the steps, some eating late breakfasts, others chatting with their friends until it was time to go to class. A few cast curious looks in our direction. I tensed before realizing their attention was mostly focused on Madden, who was, after all, a very handsome dog. I relaxed. I’ve always been more of a cat person, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the camouflage of a good dog.

Walther’s office door was also open, thanks to a hefty brick that served as a makeshift doorstop. I still knocked. It was only polite. Walther poked his head out a moment later, stress showing in the tightly drawn skin around his eyes. It faded when he saw us. Not enough: there was still a shadow there I didn’t like, something that seemed more concerned than it needed to be.

“Toby,” he said. “Quentin, May. Please, come in.” He didn’t greet Madden. That made sense: Madden was a dog, after all.

Bridget was already in the office, sitting in the chair Walther used for visiting students, a paper coffee cup in her hand and a concerned look on her face that almost exactly mirrored Walther’s. She waved, saying, “I’m glad you could make it.”

“When Walther calls, we come,” I said.

Walther shut the door, removing his glasses. “Good.” He placed them on a convenient shelf as he started for his desk. “Stay right there.”

Tylwyth Teg tend to fit a certain mold: golden hair, sharply pointed ears, and eyes of piercing blue too bright to be concealed by any simple illusion. Walther’s glasses were designed to draw attention away from his eyes, and they generally worked, keeping his students from asking if he wore colored contacts. He was on the short side, with narrow shoulders and the quick, hurried posture of a scientist who was constantly afraid something in his lab was about to catch fire.

Once at the desk, he opened a drawer and withdrew four small plastic syringes, each filled with a virulently purple liquid that sparkled from within, like he had ground a pixie into dust and suspended it in the solution. “Each of you needs to drink one of these.”

“What are they?” I asked, already reaching for one. Quentin and May did the same, while Madden shifted into his human form, shook himself, and took the last of them.

“I told you.” Walther’s mouth was a thin, grim line. “It’s allergy medication.”

“Walther—”

“Just drink it, okay? I’ll explain after you drink it.”

I gave him a suspicious look before raising the syringe to my mouth. It had no needle, just a small circular opening that seemed perfectly designed to slip between my lips. I drove the plunger home, and the sticky-sweet taste of pomegranate, pear, and what I suspected was artificial grape flooded across my tongue. That was the pleasant part. The kick followed half a beat behind the flavor, and suddenly everything was burning. I coughed.

“What did you do, mix fire ants and whiskey?” I wheezed. The burning sensation in my throat wasn’t fading.