Page 85 of Night and Silence

Yes. I’d just been better at pretending they weren’t.

“The Luidaeg says she’ll be able to let Gillian and Janet come home in a few more hours,” I said. “I need to start getting our story straight.” Because that was the problem, now, wasn’t it? Gillian hadn’t made the Changeling’s Choice, not really, and she wasn’t a changeling anymore. She was a Selkie. She had the right to play fairy bride, and if she wanted to change the rules to make it a game of fairy daughter instead, she was allowed.

Cliff could never know what had happened to her. Like his lover and his wife before her, his daughter was going to spend the rest of her life lying to him, and one day, the three of us would stand at his funeral, draped in illusions that made us look older and other than we were.

“Do you want me to go in with you?”

“Who would you tell him you were? He knows I don’t have a sister.” I offered her a shaky smile. “Besides, I need to get this done so that Tybalt and I can get back to Muir Woods. Wouldn’t want to miss the train to Silences.”

May looked unsure. “I guess.”

The false Queen of the Mists was definitely not asleep in the Kingdom of Silences, no matter what Walther’s family said: she was in one of the towers at Arden’s knowe, awake and under constant guard. Lowri had been placed in charge of that particular duty, since there was no concern she had any lingering loyalty to her former mistress. Really, the only concern with Lowri was that she might “accidentally” spit in the false Queen’s food. Once I was done talking to Cliff, I was going to be accompanying Madden, Tybalt, and a small detachment of Arden’s guard to Silences to find out what they actually had in their custody.

Big fun. Bigger fun, by far, than talking to the man I had once believed was the love of my life about why his daughter wasn’t home yet.

I took a deep breath. “Here goes nothing,” I said, and started across the street.

The doorbell was still echoing when Cliff jerked the door open, panting slightly with the exertion of running from wherever he’d been in the house. His eyes flicked from me to the empty spaces on either side of me, and his face fell, fleeting hope dying before it could bloom.

“October,” he said.

There was a time when he spoke my name with love. There was a time when he looked at me like I was the most beautiful woman in the world, like I was Helen of Troy and he was ready to launch a thousand ships to save me. That time passed years ago, and as I looked at him now, all I felt was pity, and a little regret that he no longer believed he could lean on me.

Then again, when I’d needed saving, he hadn’t exactly broken out the fleet. “Breathe, Cliff,” I said. “Gillian is fine.”

He froze. Every inch of him seemed to have been transformed suddenly to stone, leaving him incapable of anything beyond standing there and staring at me. “How . . .” he managed. Then: “Where. Where is she? October, where is my daughter?”

“Our daughter is with Miranda, receiving a medical examination from my Uncle Sylvester’s private physician.” I looked at him steadily. “She’s fine. She’s alive, she’s relatively unhurt, and she should be home soon.”

Cliff sagged in the doorway. My “rich Uncle Sylvester” has always been a constant in our relationship: a man of unclear relationship to my family whose money was virtually infinite, and who allowed me to do odd jobs for cash when necessary. The fact that Uncle Sylvester had never paid my bills or put me through college had seemed more like tough love than cruelty, back then, and even now, Cliff was clearly prepared to believe I had access to a man who could afford his own private doctor.

That was good, because I was lying. Janet and Gillian were still with the Luidaeg, and it was going to be quite some time before I felt like reintroducing my daughter to my liege, much less to the members of his Court. Sylvester was family to me, in his sideways Faerie way. I wasn’t ready for Gillian to look at him and judge what she didn’t understand.

“She’s all right,” he said, words slow and heavy and deliberate.

I nodded. “She’s all right.”

“She’s . . . you’re sure?” He stepped forward, grabbing me by the shoulders, his large hands engulfing the curve of my upper arms. “You’re not lying to me to soften the blow. You’re sure she’s all right.”

“She’s fine,” I said firmly. “Shaken, yes, absolutely. She had a real scare, and she’s probably going to need some time to recover. I’ve turned everything I found over to the authorities, and I’m sure they’re going to find the jerks who thought this would be a funny prank.”

Cliff’s expression hardened. “Prank,” he echoed.

“They’d heard about her being kidnapped while she was still in high school.” This was the hard part. This was the part that cast blame, however deserved, on me.

If not for Jocelyn’s burning need to be a part of Faerie—with blaming Gillian for not wanting to be—there would have been nothing for Dugan and the false Queen to grasp hold of. They might still have been able to get to Gillian, but with Janet’s anti-fae charms everywhere, it would have been a lot harder, and a lot sloppier. The dangerous side of hero worship is stalking and obsession, and I had been Jocelyn’s hero.

Jocelyn and Dugan were awaiting trial. They could make things easier on themselves if they testified against the false Queen. Dugan might never speak again, thanks to the damage he’d done to his throat, but he was alive despite the damage, and he could still hold a pen. If he was willing to tell everything, he might see the moonlight through something other than bars in a century or two.

“How . . . ?”

“I guess Gillian talked about it in one of her classes.” I shrugged, trying to express my ignorance of all things collegiate. Bridget would absolutely back up any claim that Gillian had mentioned the kidnapping, and Gillian had already been advised to agree that anything Professor Ames said was the full and absolute truth. “Some of her classmates thought it would be funny to pretend to be a terrorist group, kidnap her, and tell her that they were the same people who’d taken her before. They told her they were going to make her disappear so completely that her family would never know what had happened to her. She’d just be gone. So you can understand if she’s a little messed up right now, given our history.”

That last part had been my addition to the script. I no longer wanted Cliff to take me back—hadn’t wanted that for a long time—but that didn’t change the fact that what he’d done when I’d returned from the pond had been shitty, and small-minded, and wrong. He needed to accept that. Especially now that Gillian was going to, of necessity, start falling deeper into my world. Even if I still wasn’t a major part of her life, she was going to be a part of my world forever.

His cheeks reddened. “Are you saying that this is somehow my fault? That she wouldn’t have been kidnapped if I’d taken you back?”

“No.” I kept my eyes on his, trying to ignore the way his hands were tightening on my shoulders. I was suddenly glad Tybalt was at the house bringing Raj up to speed and making sandwiches, which he swore upon his honor he was going to make me eat. “This is the fault of the kids who kidnapped her. This is the fault of people not getting the full story. You asked me to find her. You came into my home and all but accused me of being the one who’d taken her. I found her. She’s with her stepmother now. She’s coming back to you. Do you think you could maybe, maybe find it in your goddamn heart to finally forgive me for something I never intended to do? Because every time you have come to me for help, I’ve given it to you. Every time you’ve asked me for anything, I’ve been there for you.”