Page 60 of Night and Silence

“Home to me,” said Janet. I turned. She was still sitting, but her hands were balled into fists, and she was glaring at me with every ounce of fury she could muster. She locked her eyes on mine. “This changes nothing. You don’t get to take her.”

“She’s a person,” I said. “An adult person, who gets to make her own choices. But yes, I am bringing her home to you, and to Cliff, because she chose to be human, and he never asked to get this tangled up in Faerie. Even though his human wife might as well be one of us.” I paused. “He doesn’t know, does he?”

“Never,” said Janet. “I would never.”

“Good.” I looked back to the Luidaeg. “It’s her, and she has my child, and I don’t know how or why she took her, but I know it’s her.”

“Do you know where she is?” prompted the Luidaeg.

I opened my mouth to answer. Then I paused and dug Jocelyn’s note out of my pocket, unfolding it. “Gillian’s roommate is a thin-blooded changeling. Thin enough not to be having a violent allergic reaction to Janet’s ‘protection charms,’ but strong enough that fairy ointment works on her. She knew more than she should have, and she left me this note.” I shoved it at the Luidaeg. “The old knowe. They’re at the old Queen’s knowe.”

The Luidaeg looked at the note. Then she looked at me and nodded.

“I think you’re right,” she said. “You’d better go.”

I started to turn. Then I hesitated, and said, “Promise me.”

The Luidaeg lifted an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“You haven’t said that you’d protect Janet. That means you don’t intend to. I need her safe. Promise me, Luidaeg.” I paused. “You’re my aunt. You’re my blood. Apparently, so is she. I need time to figure out what that means.”

The Luidaeg pinched the bridge of her nose. “Dad preserve me in the face of all his damn heroes. Yes, October, I will protect the woman responsible for my mother being lost to me. Happy now?”

My stomach twisted. I hadn’t really considered that part. “No,” I said honestly. “I’d be happier throwing her in the Bay. But I can’t do that to Gillian. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“See that you are.”

I turned then, and bolted for the door, accompanied by the footsteps of my friends as they ran after me. The Luidaeg’s patience wasn’t infinite, and neither were Gillian’s chances.

It was time to bring my daughter home.

SIXTEEN

BEFORE THE POND, before Luna and Rayseline disappeared and Sylvester asked me to bring them home, before my life fell apart, I had been a wide-eyed innocent rambling through the Bay Area, somehow—despite parental neglect and accidental, predatory apprenticeship to a man who never met a pair of hands he didn’t want to exploit—holding on to the idea that Faerie was wonderful and we were lucky to live in a world made of magic. I had been looking for my place in that world, seeking the combination of talent and skill that would make me indispensable to the Courts.

What I had found was that purebloods are, by and large, not curious people. There are exceptions, of course, but those exceptions almost always seem to come after too much exposure to the mortal world, where things happen fast and don’t leave room for introspection. For most purebloods, taking a hundred years to solve a riddle is perfectly reasonable, because they have a hundred years to take. For me, a hundred years was out of the question. I had started off like the Nancy Drew knockoff I believed myself in my heart to be, finding lost things and solving little mysteries. By human standards, I’d been bumbling at best, untalented and inept at worst. But by fae standards, I had been a miracle worker from day one, because I was willing to try. The lost could be found. The broken could be fixed.

And then the Queen—the Queen! The actual Queen of the Mists, the pureblood to end all purebloods, even if her heritage was more mixed than some of the courtiers seemed to think was appropriate—the Queen herself had put out the word that she was seeking a new knowe. The one she had was collapsing in on itself as the shallowing that sustained it rotted away.

Now, I could see that for the warning sign it had been. Her knowe had collapsed because it hadn’t been properly rooted and she didn’t have the power to sustain it, and King Gilad’s knowe was sealed, inaccessible until Arden was found. At the time, though, it had seemed like the greatest opportunity of my short life. All I had to do was find a new knowe for the Queen, and I would be in her good graces, finally accepted as an equal to the purebloods who surrounded me—and best of all, finally able to be sure Gillian would be safe.

Then a woman named Dawn had been found dead by her “sister,” Evening Winterrose, and somehow a simple real estate search had turned into a hunt for a murderer, following the trail through hidey-holes and dead ends all across San Francisco. In the end, I’d found the man who held the knife, and better yet, I had found a place in the mortal world where the veil between Earth and the Summerlands had been worn thin as paper, ready to be punctured by a steady hand.

That hand could never have been mine. But when the Queen had followed me to the shore, I had felt invincible. I had felt like I could do anything, forever. She had touched the weak spot I had found, and it had torn wide, revealing a hall with marble floors and a ceiling like the sky itself. Whoever had constructed this knowe had long since abandoned it, and I was the one who brought it back to Faerie. Me.

I had earned a knighthood for that week’s work, and the eternal enmity of a woman who had been unable to make herself accept that changelings could do anything of use. She had demanded a ceremony—archaic even for Faerie—during which I gave up all claim to the knowe in exchange for letting my title go uncontested. Sylvester had shaken his head and said she reached too far, that as a Duke, he could knight anyone he pleased once they showed themselves worthy, but my eyes had been full of stars, and they had been blinding me. The Queen knew who I was. The Queen. How could anything ever go wrong for me again?

Sometimes I wish I could travel back in time and shake myself briskly until all the stupid falls out. Except that if I hadn’t been such a fool when I was younger, I wouldn’t have the life I have now. Warts and all, it’s mine, and I love it.

Tybalt had his eyes closed and was clutching the handle above the door, a clear response to the fact that I was driving at unsafe speeds through the streets of San Francisco. I glanced at him, asking conversationally, “The Court of Cats is where the lost things go, right? Whether they’re part of Faerie or not?”

“We have access to the lost places, yes,” he said, not opening his eyes. “If you are about to tell me we have become lost, you should get a map. I refuse to open my eyes until we exit this traveling death trap.”

“Did you have access to the false Queen’s knowe before I found the door?”

He hesitated before saying, “Yes.”

“Is that part of why you used to be so pissed at me all the time?”