Page 36 of Night and Silence

“Oh, are you Jocelyn’s mom? She told us you’d be coming by to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything.”

I turned. A harried-looking human woman was standing in the hall, a clipboard in one hand, like something out of a college recruitment catalog. She flushed when she saw me staring.

“I’m Chloe, I’m the residence director,” she said, almost apologetically. “I’m sorry. It’s been a hell of a day.”

My anger and confusion fell back as a mask of professionalism snapped into place. This woman might have answers, at least to the question of where the hell Jocelyn had gone. “I heard one of your residents went missing.”

“Not from here, thank God.” Her flush faded, replaced by a shocked pallor. “I’m sorry. That sounded bad.”

“That’s the second time you’ve apologized,” I said, trying to sound gentle. I probably didn’t succeed. Hopefully, I at least sounded like I understood why she might be tense. “Have they found the girl?”

“Not yet,” she said. “Gillian was parked on campus when someone snatched her. No one noticed for hours because we’d had some vandalism here—wait. Didn’t Jocelyn tell you all this?” Her eyes narrowed. “Can I see some ID?”

“Absolutely.” I pulled a chunk of broken glass out of my pocket, intentionally slicing my fingertips on its edges, and murmured, “Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, but you can’t have any, fuck off.”

The smell of grass and copper swirled around us as a spike was hammered into my temple, the pain from before flaring up twice as brightly. Chloe’s eyes went briefly unfocused. When they sharpened again, she was smiling.

“Sorry about that, but you know how it is,” she said. “You can’t be too careful where student safety is concerned.”

A funny sentiment, considering that Quentin and I had just walked in. I shoved my hands into my pockets, hiding the blood on my fingers, hiding how tightly clenched they were. “Safety is the highest priority,” I said. It was a struggle to keep my voice from wavering from the pain in my head. “Jocelyn was very upset about the disappearance of the Marks girl. She was a good roommate.”

“Everybody loves Gillian,” said Chloe. “I’m just sick at the thought of something like this happening here. We’re going to set up a buddy system until she’s found, to make sure the rest of the residents are safe. Please tell Jocelyn that when she decides to come back, I will be happy to personally be her buddy. Nothing is going to happen to any of my other girls.”

“I appreciate that,” I said neutrally. The spell I’d used to make her see an ID she would accept had also made her suggestable. That was a good thing, as long as I didn’t push it too hard. “Did you have any sign that this was coming? Suspicious people hanging around the house, neighborhood kids throwing rocks, anything?”

Chloe looked uncertain.

Screw it. I’d push as hard as I had to. “If I’m going to allow Jocelyn to return to school, I need to know she’s going to be safe.”

“It seemed like nothing.”

Jackpot. “What seemed like nothing?”

“Someone kept cutting the house internet. I know, that sounds silly, and at first we thought it was just our ISP being awful—it happens, people assume the Bay Area will have this incredible, super-fast service, and really, we’re on decaying DSL lines and nobody wants to pay to upgrade them—but it kept happening, and one of our computer science majors managed to uncover an ongoing denial of service attack against us, specifically. Someone was flooding our Wi-Fi.”

“All the time?” I didn’t understand half of what she was saying, but I could tell Quentin did. He was frowning, looking thoughtful, not confused. He could explain this to me later.

“No.” Her expression turned sorrowful, sheepishness and regret and hindsight warring for dominance. “Only when Gillian was home. Now, after the fact, it feels like . . . well, it feels like someone was trying to make sure she’d stop studying in the house. Maybe they were trying to get her to Wheeler Hall. I don’t know.”

I ground my teeth so hard it hurt, and I tasted blood. That was enough to center me, and I took a careful breath before I said, “I feel like someone should have called me, since she was rooming with my daughter.” True enough, as long as the “she” in that sentence referred to Jocelyn.

The fae are great liars. They’ve had centuries to perfect their art. I’ve always found the truth to be more effective, especially when I’m already operating under false pretenses. It’s harder to get caught in a contradiction when you never contradict yourself.

“We honestly didn’t think it was anything dangerous.” There was a defensive note in Chloe’s voice now. I was approaching the end of her patience, even for a parent. “We would have notified all parents if it were.”

“I appreciate your candor,” I said, with a meaningful glance at Quentin. He nodded agreement, so vigorously that for a moment I was afraid his head would pop clean off his shoulders. “If you’ll excuse us, I want to finish cleaning up in here and be on my way. My daughter is very upset about everything that’s happened.” Another truth—or at least I hoped it was. If Gillian was conscious, I had no doubt she was upset.

“I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me,” said Chloe, and retreated. For once, the natural human desire to avoid the fae—even if they didn’t realize that was what they were doing—was working for me, not against me.

I turned to Quentin. “Check under the beds, behind the dressers, anywhere for signs of where she might have gone. If you see anything herbal, retreat and call me, got it? We have five minutes, tops, before that woman realizes we probably shouldn’t be in here unsupervised.”

“On it,” said Quentin, and made for Jocelyn’s bed.

I didn’t want to come into contact with another of those dusty, deadly sachets, and so I turned away from the dressers, toward the room’s single narrow closet. It looked barely big enough to contain my clothes, much less the clothing belonging to two girls in their late teens, when having a different outfit for every occasion still felt like it mattered. And it did matter, for some people. I’d never seen Arden wear the same Court dress twice. I’d never seen my mother do it either. Depending on what they chose to do with their lives, Gilly and Jocelyn might need to have wardrobes large enough to contain worlds, packed with shoes and slip dresses, with silks and satins. Or they might wind up like me, barely filling a single dresser. That’s the thing about time, about youth. It passes, and you become a bit more yourself with every day gone.

Nothing in the closet appeared to have been taken or even disturbed. I frowned thoughtfully. It was like Jocelyn wanted us to know she was gone but hadn’t wanted to go to the trouble of actually leaving. Cautiously, I parted the hanging dresses. I knew when I touched something of Gillian’s by the faint tingle it left on my skin and the acrid scent of dried fennel and kale. I was going to need more of those allergy pills before the day was done.

There was nothing of interest in the closet, and the sachet tucked into the far corner meant that sniffing out Jocelyn’s magic wasn’t an option. I closed the door and turned to her dresser, pulling the top drawer open.