Page 50 of Night and Silence

“Flatterer,” I said, and got out of the car, meeting May at the base of the front steps. She looked around with undisguised interest.

“Not bad,” she said.

“Nope,” I agreed. We walked together to the door. I had barely raised my hand to knock when it was wrenched open, revealing Miranda.

“Did you find her?” she demanded.

“Not yet,” I said. “May we come in?”

She stared at me, and for a moment, I thought she was going to refuse and that I would have to do this standing on the porch. Then she sagged and stepped to the side, making room for us.

“Of course,” she said.

“Is Cliff here?” I asked, trying not to stare as I stepped into the hallway. The walls were covered in pictures of Gillian as I had never seen her, toddler becoming small child becoming gawky adolescent. It was like a museum of my dreams and failures, and I wanted nothing more than to explore every inch of it, memorizing and committing it to heart.

Miranda was in more than half the pictures. She looked like she was Gillian’s mother in blood as well as legality: they fit together. She looked, I realized, like me—dauntingly so. Just blonder and better fed. Was that part of what had drawn Cliff to her in the first place? I wasn’t sure whether the thought was flattering.

“He’s at the police station, following up,” said Miranda. She shut the door, focusing on May. “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.”

“Oh,” said May. She smiled wanly and extended her hand. “I’m May Daye, October’s sister. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I just wish it were under better circumstances.”

Miranda’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Who are you really?”

Oh. Crap.

When Cliff and I first met, I’d been a walking cliché: the teenage runaway living in a den of poor choices and poorer morals. The fact that I’d actually been substantially older than I looked hadn’t exactly been relevant. I was a runaway, after all, and my upbringing hadn’t prepared me for the mortal world. The Summerlands are a great place to grow up if you want to know how to charm a unicorn or host a Midsummer’s Ball. They’re not so useful if you want to understand human money or how to make macaroni and cheese without setting the kitchen on fire.

The man who’d initially taken me in had understood the difficulties faced by fae-raised changelings escaping from their sometimes overly-protective parents and trying to make a go of things in the mortal world. Devin had always been patient, perfectly understanding of my unique and sometimes difficult circumstances. Of course, that had been because he was using me, like he’d been using all the other “kids” under his care. We were his thieves and his spies and his attack dogs. We were his own private army of Lost Children, and he was our Peter Pan—even now, years and miles away from Home, he was our Peter Pan. Devin had been dead for years. Part of me was always going to be waiting for him to call me back.

Cliff had been my escape from that life, the human man who looked at me and didn’t see my mother or my heritage, but October, a scrawny, pale kid with a funny name that was simultaneously too silly and too big for her. No matter how hard I try, I can’t think of a single person before him who loved me completely for who I was and not for the shadows around me. Not even Stacy. Not even Sylvester. There was no question that they loved me, but they’d started by looking at me through the mirror of my mother, and I had never been enough to eclipse her.

Only problem was, Cliff knew about my family—the dead father, the estranged mother. And he knew I didn’t have any siblings. Which meant Miranda knew that, too. She’d needed to know, if she was preparing to challenge me for custody.

“Really,” I said. I cleared my throat, buying myself a few precious seconds, and decided to go with as much of the truth as I could afford to risk. “May is my younger sister.”

“You don’t have a sister,” said Miranda with a scowl. “You told Cliff you were an only child, and our investigators haven’t found anything to contradict that.”

Lying to someone who’d been investigating me. How fun. “I thought I was an only child.” Dig for the truth. Use it to spin a convincing lie. “Mom never told me about her. She showed up on my doorstep a little while after I got away from my kidnappers. Said she wanted to be a family. I didn’t have anyone else. I decided it was worth giving her a shot. What’s the worst that could have happened? She kills me and gets me out of your hair forever? I gambled. I won. She’s been an incredible help to me these past few years.”

“Plus, I pay half the rent,” volunteered May. “Isn’t this sort of beside the point? We’re supposed to be worrying about Gillian, not debating whether I’m actually related to the woman I look almost exactly like. Either I’m her sister, or she’s the victim of a long con that required a lot of plastic surgery, and I’d expect you to be happy about that second one. Now can we focus? We have things to do.”

“Yes. Gillian.” Miranda returned her attention to me. “Why are you here if you haven’t found her yet?”

“My phone got broken,” I said. “I need to get Cliff’s number again, and I wanted to update you on what we’ve done so far. I went to the school, searched her room, spoke with her roommate—”

“You must not have searched very thoroughly,” said Miranda.

I frowned. “Why not?”

“You just don’t . . . I would have expected you to find something if you’d searched thoroughly. If you didn’t find anything, you can’t have done a very good job.”

“If you don’t think I know how to do my job, you can find someone else to work for you,” I snapped. “I’ll still keep looking for Gillian, I’ll still do everything in my power to find her, but I won’t keep you updated, and when I find her, I may or may not inform you. Does that sound like a better plan? Because we can march right the hell out of here, if it does.”

Miranda scowled. I looked neutrally back, trying not to let her see how much this entire situation flustered me. I knew Miranda didn’t like me. That was a good thing, in its own way, because I didn’t like her either. It was better when neither of us was trying to pretend. That didn’t explain why she was being openly hostile. With Gillian in danger, we should both have been willing to set our differences aside, at least until the girl we both loved came home.

As if she could follow my thoughts, Miranda sighed and said, “Follow me. I need a pen and paper.” Unspoken was the fact that she wasn’t willing to leave us alone in her house. Some things don’t need to be said. She started down the hall. May and I exchanged a look, and both of us followed her.

The hall ended at a large, open kitchen with a greenhouse window in one wall, the protruding glass panes creating a perfect growing environment for a variety of herbs and houseplants. They grew with joyous abandon, filling the air with sweet and spicy scents. I sniffed appreciatively, and then sneezed.