Page 44 of Night and Silence

“Hold fast, my love,” he said, and then he was plunging into the dark, carrying me with him. I screwed my eyes closed, holding the last breath I’d been able to take like it was the most precious thing in the world.

The Shadow Roads are different for the Cait Sidhe than for their passengers. There’s no other way Tybalt and Raj could use them the way they do, racing from one place to another without coming out choking and wheezing for breath every single time. For me, they are always featureless, unforgiving, and cold, like running through a void that chooses to hold me up, except when it chooses to let me fall.

It felt like he ran for less than half as long as he had run before. The shadows shredded around us, and we emerged into the mold-and-ash-scented room, now spattered with great streaks of my drying blood. I sucked in a great, gasping breath and pushed against his chest, wordlessly indicating that he should put me down. He did so, with reasonably good grace, and watched as I recovered my knife and broken cell phone from the floor.

“What possessed you to think you should enter such a place alone?” he asked.

“I’ve never met a Baobhan Sith before,” I said. “I thought it was some sort of warding spell. We all did. And if Gillian was in here, this was where I needed to be.” I looked around, in case Gillian might somehow have appeared while I wasn’t looking. The closet had no door, and pieces of the mattress had rotted away, making it clear that she wasn’t under the bed. I scowled. “Another damn dead end.”

“Someone is laying traps for you. Someone too aware of your limitations.”

“Isn’t that great? I love it when the world decides to kick me while I’m down.” I took a breath. “Can you . . . can you smell anything here? Any magic?”

Tybalt inhaled. “The Baobhan Sith’s,” he said. “Yours, although less so, and mostly, I think, because of the quantity of blood you’ve lost. This room has been practically painted.”

“Fortunately, I don’t have to pay the cleaning bills.” I looked at him solemnly. “The false Queen’s magic was here when I arrived. I think . . . I think she’s involved.”

His eyes widened. “But she sleeps—”

“Maybe. Maybe not. This is Faerie, Tybalt. You know things aren’t always what they seem.” I raked my blood-sticky hair out of my face before I turned and started toward the front of the house. “Get a human disguise up. We don’t want to scare the neighbors.”

“Perhaps you should do the same.”

I stopped, reaching up to feel my ear. Good illusions are tactile as well as visual. They have to be. I could never have managed to sleep with Cliff if every time he’d touched me, he’d discovered angles that weren’t supposed to be there. My fingers found a tapering point.

“Oak and ash,” I muttered. “I didn’t even feel the spell break.”

“You lost a great deal of blood.”

“I didn’t lose it,” I said. “I know exactly where it is.”

I didn’t need to turn to feel Tybalt glowering at me. “Ah, yes,” he said. “I begin to remember why I missed you so. The glorious spectacle of watching a woman do her best to bully the universe into rearranging itself according to her utterly self-destructive whim.”

“A girl needs a hobby,” I said, and grabbed a handful of shadows—or tried to, anyway. They slipped through my fingers like, well, shadows, refusing to catch or cling. I frowned. “That’s weird.”

“Not really. Again, you lost a great deal of blood, and what remains is preoccupied with putting you back together.” Tybalt stepped around me, stopping so that we were face-to-face in the char-covered living room. “May I?”

I wanted to tell him “no.” Other people’s illusions always make me itch, and I hate not having control over the spells I wear. Instead, I nodded, and said, “Please.”

The smell of musk and pennyroyal rose as he leaned in and ran his thumb along the line of my cheek. Then he kissed me again, soft and slow and achingly mine. I kissed him back. The spell took shape around us, solidifying and bursting into being. He pulled away, a smile on his suddenly-human lips. I raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“It’s nice to see you,” he said. “Especially when I don’t have to look at quite so much of your blood.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and so I punched him in the shoulder. To my surprise and delight, Tybalt laughed.

Even a human disguise couldn’t conceal the fact that he was a handsome man, although it rounded his ears and his pupils, took the impossible malachite green out of his eyes and the dark stripes out of his hair. He looked like the sort of man who belonged on a stage or in a magazine, and he was right there in front of me, smiling at me like I was the most amazing thing in the world.

There wasn’t time to appreciate him now, but oh, I wanted to. “When this is over, when Gillian is safe at home with her father, come home with me,” I said. “Don’t leave me again.”

His smile faltered. Then, gravely, he nodded. “As my lady wishes,” he said.

“Good.” I kissed his cheek, quick and glancing, and walked out of the house. To my relief, Tybalt followed.

Quentin, May, and Madden were waiting on the sidewalk, and had been joined by a fourth: Walther, his hair in disarray and his glasses askew as he threw what looked like table salt at the bayberry bushes. He stopped when he saw us emerge. “Toby!”

“Hey.” I hurried down the path toward them, Tybalt at my heels. I had scarcely passed the barrier before Quentin slammed into me, wrapping arms around my waist and pressing his face to my leather jacket. Then he pulled back, expression going from relief to suspicion in an instant.