Page 37 of Night and Silence

There was a note there, neatly folded atop the balled-up socks and rolled underpants. I stopped, looking at it.

Quentin caught the change. He glanced my way. “Toby?”

“It’s addressed to me.” I poked the paper with one finger. There was no tingle. If Jocelyn had made the sachets, she had been incredibly careful to keep their contents off her skin.

I picked up the note, unfolded it, and read aloud, “‘October, I bet you wish you’d been nicer now, don’t you? I could have told you a lot of things, but you didn’t want to listen. Good luck finding your precious brat. I guess you’re pretty good at losing her. If you decide you want to play nicely, I’ll find you in the place you gave away.’” I turned the note over. “That’s all there is.”

Quentin didn’t say anything.

I sighed, allowing weariness to settle over me for a moment, letting it weigh me down. I was so damn tired. I hadn’t slept, I hadn’t eaten, my daughter was missing, and now it seemed we’d let one of the people responsible for her disappearance slip right through our fingers.

As if on cue, my phone rang. I pulled it out and swiped my thumb across the screen as I raised it to my ear. “Hello?”

“We’re at Telegraph and Durant. Can you get down here? And hurry? There’s something you need to see.” May hung up. Either they’d found something terrible, or she knew we didn’t have time to waste. Either way, we needed to move.

“Come on.” I shoved my phone back into my pocket and tucked the note into my jacket as I turned for the stairs. Quentin followed behind me; thank Oberon, he didn’t ask where we were going, or why we were going so quickly. He just followed, and when I hit the front porch and broke into a run, he did the same.

We raced down the sidewalk, the two of us, and this was such a familiar scene that it ached, because this had never happened before, not really, not like this. It felt like everything was crumbling around me. Gillian was missing, maybe hurt, and Tybalt was shutting me out, and Jocelyn had gotten away. Would I have recognized her as a threat if I’d still been closer to human, if I hadn’t shifted toward thinking of people without magic as harmless? Would I have caught the signs that could tell me she was dangerous, not merely an annoyance, if I hadn’t been distracted by worrying about Tybalt? Was Gillian going to pay the price for my hubris?

We ran and ran, and I tried to let the running become a distraction. If I could focus on the act of putting one foot in front of another, maybe I would be able to find something that would let me fight through this terrible situation to the other side.

A corner loomed ahead of us. We turned, running two more blocks, and there was Telegraph Avenue, artery of the city, running straight and clean from the highway to the quad where the clocktower loomed. We turned again, weaving through crowds of students, parents, and tourists, passing street vendors both human and otherwise as we made our way toward Durant, a cross-street that connected the surrounding residential neighborhoods with this bustling commercial chaos.

May and Madden were waiting for us there. Madden was back in his seemingly-human form. I couldn’t decide whether that was a good sign. May elbowed Madden as we approached, and he swung his head around to face us.

“Hey,” said May, once we were close enough that she wouldn’t need to shout. “Did you find anything?”

“Not enough,” I said. “You?”

“There’s a second trail,” said Madden. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “It’s not . . . it’s not very strong. I don’t track,” he glanced around, and lowered his voice before continuing, “humans that well. They use such strongly scented soap that they all wind up smelling basically the same unless I can get a good starting whiff to work from. But I found it.”

“Okay.” I looked back and forth between them. “What are we waiting for?”

“It’s better if you see,” said May. “Come on.” She started walking. I stared at the back of her head, confused. Then I followed her. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

We walked down Durant to a smaller, residential street and turned, going another block or so before we turned again. The houses grew smaller and deeper set into their gardens as we walked, the trappings of suburbia melting into a wall of green. I hurried to catch up to May, falling into step beside her.

“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.

She shook her head. “We’re almost there.”

“Dammit, May—”

“I need to know what you see, and I need to know you’re not just repeating what I told you would be there.” May gave me a pained sidelong glance. “Believe me, I’m not thrilled about this either, all right? Please. I need you to be patient. Can you be patient, just for a few more minutes?”

I took a deep breath, forcing myself to calm. “A few more, but that’s it,” I said.

“That’s all I’m asking. Was Jocelyn there?”

“Gone. She left a note. I think she had something to do with Gillian’s disappearance. But I still don’t think the sachets were her doing. There wasn’t any trace of them in her things, only Gillian’s, and no one in their right mind fills their own living space with poison.”

“Maybe.” May stopped so abruptly that I almost tripped in my haste to do the same. She waved a hand, indicating the house in front of us. “What do you see?”

I turned and saw . . . a house. It was small and plain, with smooth plaster walls and a half-roofed porch overhung by a vast magnolia tree that didn’t seem to care how far out of its own climate it was. There was a huge picture window—and that was where the problems began. When I looked at the window directly, it was smooth and perfect. But out of the corner of my eye, it was a cobwebby mass of cracks, all of them radiating out from a hole the size of a fist. I blinked. The window was intact once more.

“What the—?”

“So you see something wrong?”