Page 46 of Night and Silence

Tybalt settled in the front passenger seat while May and Quentin took the back. It was strangely comforting having so much of my weird little family around me. I hadn’t realized how big a hole Tybalt’s absence made until it wasn’t there anymore.

“Quentin, before you call Dean again, can you don’t-look-here the car?” I asked. “I need to check my injuries, and that means making sure no one can see how much blood I’m wearing.”

“I wish that were a surprising request,” he muttered, and waved his hand, mumbling a verse of a song I didn’t recognize. As was usually the case with him, it was about boats. The air thickened, and the don’t-look-here dropped on us with the force of a wave.

I started the car. “Tybalt?”

“Remind me what attracted me to your side in the first place because, at the moment, I have a difficult time bringing it to mind,” he said. He snapped his fingers. The illusion shattered into the smell of pennyroyal and musk.

In the back seat, May gasped. “October Christine Daye, why is there a hole in your neck?” she demanded.

“It’s never a good sign when you use my full name.”

It was difficult to see my own throat in the rearview mirror while driving, but with a little twisting around, I managed it. The sight wasn’t pretty. The wound was fairly superficial at this point, consisting mostly of some tears in the skin surrounding a raw spot that was barely larger than a hickey. That wasn’t the alarming part. The alarming part was that it existed at all. I should have healed long since, wiping everything away except for the blood, which would always remain to betray me.

“What happened?” she demanded, leaning forward.

“The Baobhan Sith tried to eat me. She got more blood than I like to think about. That’s probably going to be a problem later. Right now, I just need something to eat and I’ll be fine.”

“Wait.” The note of alarm in May’s voice wasn’t fading. If anything, it was getting stronger. “You’re telling me there’s a Baobhan Sith out there running around with a stomach full of your blood? That’s . . . that’s not good, Toby.”

“Tell me about it,” I muttered. Like the Daoine Sidhe, the Baobhan Sith are blood-workers. Unlike the Daoine Sidhe, that’s all they are. They don’t do flower magic, they don’t do blood magic, and unlike the Dóchas Sidhe, they don’t generally use their own blood for castings. They do it all with the blood of others. That’s also what sustains them. Some people think the human vampire legends began with the Baobhan Sith, and honestly, I can’t say those people are wrong.

As long as she had my blood, the Baobhan Sith who had attacked me would be able to access powers that mimicked my own—meaning she’d be able to recover from supposedly mortal wounds and track people by the scent of their magic. Not good.

“Why did she attack like that?” asked Quentin uneasily. “I’m a blood-worker, and I don’t try to chew people’s throats out.”

“She looked like she was starving,” I said. “If she’d somehow been held there, unable to hunt . . . it could have been pure hunger that had her going for me like that.” It didn’t make me feel any warmer or fuzzier toward her, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to be inviting her over for dinner any time soon, but at least there was a chance there had been no malice in her attempting to eat me.

That didn’t explain why she’d looked like Gillian when I’d first found her. Nothing was going to explain that. Nothing good, anyway.

“Your throat—” insisted May.

“It’s healing,” I said brusquely.

“You’re not supposed to be healing,” said May. “You’re supposed to have already healed, past tense, no delays. This isn’t normal, and I don’t like it.”

“Nothing about today has been normal,” I countered. We were nearing the bridge. I glanced at the rearview mirror. “Quentin, try Dean again. If he still isn’t picking up, try Marcia. She’s thin-blooded enough to be mostly diurnal.”

“She stays up as late as she can so that she can do her job as seneschal correctly,” said Quentin, even as he started poking at his phone. “I’ve tried her twice. No one’s picking up.”

Tybalt and I exchanged a glance.

Goldengreen is the name of both a County and the knowe that serves as its heart. They were founded at the same time, by the same woman: Evening Winterrose, also known as Eira Rosynhwyr, Firstborn of the Daoine Sidhe. Being part of the local nobility made it easier for her to control them . . . at least until she “died” and the false former Queen gave Goldengreen to me in order to discharge the Kingdom’s debts. Oh, and shift my fealty from Sylvester Torquill to her, thus ensuring that when she wanted to charge me with treason, my liege wouldn’t be able to do anything to save me.

Nice lady, our former Queen. So nice she almost killed me. “Almost” only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, as Devin used to say, and when I wasn’t put to death for crimes against the crown, I offloaded my title and lands as quickly as I could, using them to avert a war between the Kingdom in the Mists and the local Undersea. As the son of a Merrow Duchess and a Daoine Sidhe Count, Dean Lorden was perfectly positioned to hold Goldengreen and make it a symbol of peace and cooperation.

Of course, that also meant that if anything ever happened to him, his mother, Duchess Dianda Lorden of Saltmist, would march her army right up our beaches and start swinging. Dean was a great kid. He seemed to be a good first boyfriend for Quentin; the boys were happy, and that was all I really cared about. But if he was actually hurt, things were about to get a lot worse.

“Drive faster,” advised May.

I did.

It was a testament to how urgent things were that Tybalt didn’t complain, at all, about how my driving was likely to get us killed; he just hung onto the handle above the door and closed his eyes, doing his best to endure this madcap modern transportation without making a fuss. That was a good thing. Normally, I found his disdain for cars cute, endearing even. Right now, I needed to floor it.

I made it from the toll booths to the city in what felt like record time, tearing through several red lights and several more near-misses as I raced toward the San Francisco Art Museum. Knowes require an anchor to stay connected to the mortal world, and Evening had always liked to be thought of as someone who was cultured, connected to the most modern developments in human art and music. Having a museum built atop her connection point must have seemed perfect.

There were several cars in the lot when we arrived. A glance at the clock confirmed that the museum had already opened for the day. I grimaced. There are entrances to the knowe located outside the museum—there have to be, given how often people need to come and go after operating hours—but most of them aren’t exactly subtle, and we needed to get in unseen.