Page 25 of Be the Serpent

Quentin leaned up between the seats again. “I see a spot!”

It was near enough to the front that I’d be able to find her quickly. I pulled in, pausing to check my reflection in the rearview mirror. As I had suspected, Simon’s illusions had gone with him when he left with Arden. That was fine. I dragged my fingers through the air, tangling them with almost imperceptible shadows until it felt like I was moving my hands through cobwebs, then chanted, lightly, “Boys and girls come out to play, the moon it shines as bright as day, leave your supper and leave your sleep, and you’ll get grounded for a week.”

The cut grass and copper scent of my magic rose to fill the car, bright and bloody in its own way, then burst and showered down over us, leaving my skin tingling. I checked my reflection again. I looked perfectly human, with nothing about me that would stand out in a crowd. Looking over my shoulder at Quentin confirmed the same was true of him.

I turned my attention to Tybalt. He was watching me, a small, fond smile on his face. “Be safe,” he said, and fell backward. It should have ended in him leaning against the car door. Instead, he vanished into the shadows that had gathered there, wrapping them around himself like a cloak as he transitioned onto the Shadow Roads.

“Come on, kiddo,” I said, pulling my keys from the ignition and getting out of the car. Quentin followed, and together we approached the Safeway.

Walking toward a large supermarket—especially a supermarket that was part of a large grocery chain where I was once gainfully employed—shouldn’t come with as much anxiety as it did in that moment. Shoppers passed us, bags in hand and phones to ear, ignoring us utterly. This was just a day to them, and nothing unusual or important.

The doors opened on our approach, welcoming us into the air-conditioned interior. As usual in urban grocery stores, there was a colony of pixies buzzing around the produce department, unseen by the mortal shoppers, armed with tiny spears and knives that they were using to carve away chunks of overripe fruit. I know pixies have natural magic that keeps them from being seen by humans. I’ve never been able to understand how this extends to them stealing food in plain sight without attracting attention. Maybe it’s something like a don’t-look-here, just automatic and unbreakable.

Like most modern Safeways, there was a Starbucks toward the front of the store. I walked toward it, gesturing for Quentin to follow me, and there, in the small seating area, was Stacy, sipping on some sort of iced coffee drink. My knees almost buckled at the sight of her. She seemed perfectly normal, untouched by the chaos of the day, her purse on the table next to her hand and a few smudges of pancake batter on the front of her shirt. If she could look this normal, the world couldn’t have changed that dramatically.

And Jessica was still dead, killed by a woman whose face I couldn’t see who reeked of roses, and no amount of normal was going to change that, ever again. I swallowed hard and walked over to Stacy’s table.

The thought that Stacy could have been magically compelled to harm her own child had occurred to me, seductive in its simplicity, repulsive in its impossibility, but seeing her told me it couldn’t be the case. There wasn’t a speck of blood on her, and I didn’t smell it, even as I got closer. She would have needed bleach to wash it away so completely that I couldn’t pick up on it, and she hadn’t done that. Her hands, blessedly, were clean.

She looked up at my approach, smiling placidly. “Hey, Toby.”

“Hey, Stace,” I said. “You mind if I sit down?”

“Not at all. Oh, hey, you brought Quentin with you. Hello, Quentin. It’s nice to see you again.”

“I’ve been around,” said Quentin, sounding distinctly uncomfortable. He hadn’t seen Stacy since the wedding, where he’d been transformed into a Banshee boy whose own situation had been dire enough, once, that he’d sold his very essence to the Luidaeg in exchange for something she’d never named. If he was still around, I hoped he was doing well, and if he wasn’t, I hoped he’d had a good life. But I guess that’s never guaranteed in Faerie, or anywhere else.

“It’s been so busy since the wedding,” said Stacy, mildly.

I frowned. “Stacy, why did you come to the store?”

She blinked at me.

“What do you mean? I needed to go to the store, or I wouldn’t have come.”

I pulled out the chair across from her and sat. “But you don’t have any groceries,” I said. “And you left your car at home. What did you need so badly that you couldn’t even take the car?”

“Oh,” she said, with vague confusion in her tone. “I don’t . . . I don’t know. I must have needed something, or I wouldn’t have gone.” She blinked again, and some of the fog cleared from her gaze, replaced by the first traces of alarm. “I was making pancakes. I don’t think I turned the stove off.”

“Don’t worry, I got it,” I said. “You’ll need to buy a new pan, but the house isn’t going to burn down.”

“You’re so good to me.” She shook her head, clearly still bleary. “I don’t know why I needed to leave so quickly, just that I did. I remember talking to Jessica and telling her to go to her room when she talked back to me, and starting pancakes so they’d be ready when the boys got home, and then . . . and then I was here, and I knew this was where I needed to be, and then you called and said to wait, so I got a coffee and sat down so you could get here.” She blinked again, slowly. “I think there was something I had to do, and I think I did it, and now it’s done, and so I can sit down and rest.”

That sounded like a compulsion spell to me, and one that was better designed than the one Simon had hit Quentin with not all that long ago. This one had clearly come with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and was sophisticated enough to have wiped itself away after it had served its purpose. That wasn’t great. Trying to be casual about it, I leaned forward and breathed in deeply, searching for traces of someone else’s magic.

SEVEN

“Toby? Toby, wake up!”

Someone was shaking me, which didn’t make sense. Neither did the fact that my eyes seemed to be closed, when they’d been open less than a second before, or the fact that I was sprawled on something hard and cold. My head ached like I’d been slinging illusions around all day without a pause to consider my magical reserves, and that didn’t make sense either. I don’t get magic-burn like that anymore. I haven’t since I rebalanced my blood to make myself more fae than human.

“Toby!” The person shaking me was starting to get really serious about it, shaking so hard that if I’d had a spinal injury or something, they would have been hurting me worse. I groaned and opened my eyes—or tried to, anyway. They were strangely resistant to moving, like they’d been glued shut.

At least the groaning seemed to reassure the shaker that I wasn’t dead. They stopped bouncing me quite so vigorously, which my pounding headache appreciated. I relaxed, slipping back toward unconsciousness.

Wait. Hadn’t I just been doing something? Something that felt like it was really important and probably at least a little bit time-sensitive?

My eyes finally opened, and I immediately slammed them shut again as the glaring overhead lights of the Safeway blasted my retinas. I groaned and rolled onto my side, only abstractly relieved when my body was willing to obey that particular command.