Page 52 of Night and Silence

She dropped the purse, eyes gone incredibly wide. “How are you still standing?” she demanded. “That should have felled anything even partially fae.”

I considered lying to her, but I didn’t see the point. She knew too much. Somehow, she knew too much, and this was going to have to be dealt with.

Cliff would break if his wife disappeared right after his daughter went missing. He would never recover, and even if he never knew enough to blame me, I would know that I had done this to him. I’d never been Miranda’s biggest fan, but it wasn’t until that moment that I began to hate her.

She raised her hands, showing us that they were empty, that her inexplicable thorn had been the only weapon she possessed—or at least, the only weapon she had had access to. We were still in her home. We needed to proceed with caution.

“May, get her purse,” I snapped. “I don’t want her going for whatever else she might have in there.”

“Lip balm,” said Miranda dully. “Throat lozenges, painkillers, some tampons. No weapons. I have nothing else in there that can hurt you.”

“You’ll forgive me if we don’t take your word for that,” I said, while May grabbed the purse and retreated out of Miranda’s reach, starting to rummage through it. “What the hell are you? What did you do to Gillian? What did you try to do to me?”

“I didn’t do anything to Gillian. I love her. I’ve raised her like she was my own daughter, and I’ve never harmed her, not in the slightest.” Miranda looked at me, eyes pleading, like my understanding suddenly mattered to her. Like she needed me to believe her more than she needed anything else. “Whoever took her, they didn’t take her because of me.”

Oddly, I did believe her, at least about that. Whoever took her was much more likely to have taken her because of me. “How did you know to ward her room against the fae? What are you?”

“‘Who’ might be a better question,” said Miranda. “I—oh, God, I didn’t want to have this conversation today. Or ever. Honestly, I was aiming for ‘never’ as a good time. I’m so sorry.”

“Maybe you have good reason to be,” I snarled. “You were using something that could kill people to keep the fae away from Gillian, while she was on a college campus. You’ve made a lot of people sick.”

“They wouldn’t get sick if they kept their distance,” she said. “It’s just hedge magic. Really, October, I expected you to recognize basic charm design, after everything I know you’ve gotten up to.” The corner of her mouth twitched. I realized, shocked, that she was smiling. “I was always impressed by your marshwater work. I don’t understand why you stopped. It’s not like those pureblooded bastards would ever see it coming.”

May and I both stared at her.

“Lady, what the hell are you?” I asked. My voice didn’t shake. I was proud of that. “I know you’re not a changeling, so are you a merlin? Are you one of the Firstborn? What?” They were two different extremes, but both were more feasible than anything else. I would have spotted a changeling or a pureblood the second Cliff had introduced me to his new wife. As a merlin, she would know about magic while having so little fae blood in her that I wouldn’t necessarily be able to detect her through my usual means, especially when I wasn’t looking for anything out of the ordinary. As one of the Firstborn, she would have the necessary strength to hide herself from me without difficulty.

“Neither,” said Miranda. “I was hoping things wouldn’t come to this. I didn’t think you’d identify the sachets. That was my fault, and I take responsibility for it. I got sloppy.”

“You’re still not answering my question.”

Miranda sighed, looking away. “I suppose you’re right, and I suppose you’ve the right to know,” she said. “I really am human. I never lied about that, although I may have omitted a few things. But my name isn’t Miranda. It’s Janet. I’m your grandmother.”

THIRTEEN

EVERYTHING FROZE. IT FELT like my heart stopped working properly, each beat thudding through my body like a hammer blow. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything but stare at this woman—this utterly human woman, with her golden hair and her eyes like blue heather growing in the Scottish hills, with her frizzy braid and the freckles across the bridge of her nose—who was claiming the impossible.

“Janet” is a common name. It has been for centuries, falling in and out of fashion but never disappearing. And humans change their names all the time. They don’t share the fae reluctance to have a name someone else has already used. There were plenty of explanations that didn’t have to mean anything.

None of them explained why she was claiming to be my grandmother, or why she said the name “Janet” like she knew what it meant. This wasn’t possible. It didn’t make sense.

“I thought I recognized you,” said May. Her voice was shrill, even filtered through my hammer heartbeat and overwhelming confusion. “I told myself it wasn’t possible, that it was just that you look sort of like Toby—which is creepy, by the way, and says bad things about your relationship with Cliff—and I was seeing things that weren’t there, but I wasn’t. I recognized you. I saw you in Oberon’s hall the season before he disappeared. You were dressed like one of his handmaids, and no one questioned your right to be there, or explained why the father of us all would want some random mortal woman in his knowe.”

“You demand to know what I am, but what are you?” said Miranda—Janet—sounding dismayed.

“Like we said before, I’m her sister. I’m also her Fetch,” said May. She glanced at me. “I thought I was seeing things, Toby, I swear. I would have told you if I’d realized there was actually something strange about her.”

I believed her. I still couldn’t take my eyes off Janet, my mortal lover’s mortal wife, standing there with raised hands and a strangely hopeful glimmer in her eyes, like this conversation somehow meant that we could come to an accord.

“Fetch?” demanded Janet, the hopeful glimmer dying, replaced by horror. She turned her attention on me. “Do you know what that means? She’s a death omen, she’s—”

“My sister,” I said flatly. “She’s been more family to me than any of the people I’m actually related to. Don’t worry about her. She’s none of your concern.”

“If she’s riding with you while you search for Gillian, she’s entirely my concern! A Fetch is a harbinger of doom! You’ll die, and you’ll leave that sweet child stranded in some hell she had no part in making!”

“You don’t even know the fae took her!” I countered—even though I was fairly sure, by this point, that no one else could have done it. The smell of rowan. The house with the chicken legs. There were just too many impossible elements. “With as much poison as you packed into her dorm room, all we’d need to do to find a fae kidnapper is look for the person in the coma with the backpack full of Benadryl! May is not. Your. Concern. She is my family. She’s the only real family I have, since you swept in and stole my daughter.”

Janet’s face fell. Root and branch, why was that name bothering me so much? “It was a mean trick, coming in while you were gone and taking Gillian for my own; I’ll own that.” Her voice took on a pleading note. “But please, try to understand. No one knew where you were. I thought you’d taken your mother’s example and run away rather than facing your responsibilities. Anyone with eyes could see the girl was mostly human. She was never going to be offered that spiteful bargain your people call a ‘choice.’ I thought you’d thrown her away. I was trying to do right by the blood of my blood, and you were gone so long, I truly came to love her as if she were my own child, and not my great-granddaughter. Then you came back, and I . . .” She spread her hands. “I couldn’t handle losing another child to Faerie. I told myself it was the right thing to do. That she deserved a mother who could stay, who wouldn’t be led astray by a society she would never belong to.”