Page 28 of Be the Serpent

“We dug his grave with a silver spade, walk him along, John, carry him along, his shroud of the finest silk was made, and he still managed to get bloodstains all over the damn thing when he rose from the dead and ate the vicar,” chanted Quentin rapidly, yanking his hands through the air and concluding by slamming them against the roof of the car. The smell of his magic rose and burst around us, thick with anger and too strong for the spell he was trying to cast.

The car’s outline didn’t even waver. I stared at him. He stared at the car. Stacy gazed off at the trees, entirely unconcerned.

“Toby . . . ”

“Yeah, I see it,” I said, grimly. “Come on. We need to talk to Arden, and we have a few hours before the park closes.” The whole point of hiding the car in the parking lot was keeping myself from getting towed if we were still here when the sun went down and the state police declared Muir Woods off-limits to the public. As long as we were reasonably quick, we’d be in and out before that happened.

As we approached the gates, I picked up a few dead leaves and twined them between my fingers, whispering a fragment of an old ballad as the smell of my own magic rose around us. There was a sick, twisting feeling in my stomach. I already knew this wasn’t going to work. I also knew that I had to try.

When we stepped up to the ticket window, I offered the leaves to the man taking tourist money, a bright, guileless smile on my face. He looked at them and frowned.

“What’s this supposed to be?” he asked.

“My son was just saying this place looked like something out of a fairy tale, and in the fairy tales, you can usually pay your way with dried leaves.” I smiled brightly at the man, making sure to dimple as hard as I could, trying to project “single mother trying to pick up dates in inappropriate places.” It wasn’t a role that came naturally, but it was one I’d needed to play a few times when I was on the job. Even the best investigator gets caught by their clients every now and then.

Whatever I was selling, this guy wasn’t buying. He gave me an exasperated look, glancing to Quentin as if he expected the boy to be embarrassed—and to be fair, Quentin knew how to play his part, looking intensely uncomfortable and then stepping halfway behind me. “Sorry, lady, we only take cash.”

“Well, it was worth a try,” I chirped, pulling my wallet out of my pocket and extracting a few bills. A handful of change later, the three of us were inside, walking briskly down the wooden path toward the entrance to the knowe.

“What did you try to do, Toby?” asked Stacy.

“I was attempting fairy gold,” I said. “It should have worked. That’s such a low-powered illusion that it’s never shorted out on me before. We need to get to the knowe. Something’s really wrong.”

It wasn’t just the sudden failure of my magic—and Quentin’s, too, based on the issues he’d had concealing the car. It was the headache still pounding behind my temples, steady as a heartbeat but ten times as loud. Every time it pulsed, I felt like I was about to barf, and I wanted to sit down and close my eyes almost more than I could say.

Quentin shot me a concerned look, clearly catching the pain in my expression. “Are you okay?”

“Not really. I’ve had a headache since the Safeway.”

“But you—” He caught himself. “Right. We need to get to the knowe.”

We led Stacy along the marked pathways to the place where the way up to the knowe would open for us—or where it was supposed to open, anyway. There was nothing there. When I looked up the side of the hill, I didn’t see any easy ladder of interlaced tree roots, only an endless tangle of brambles and poison oak, leaves spreading in sharp-edged precision. I stopped in the middle of the trail, staring upward.

“Quentin?”

“Yeah?”

“Are we in the right spot?”

“We should be, yeah. I . . . Do you think Arden moved the door?”

“To be honest, I’m not sure she can.” Knowes are half-architecture, half-living things. They’re planted by fae hands, and their first structures are built in the ordinary way, with tools and raw materials and effort, but at a certain point, they start to grow and change and have their own opinions about things. I’ve been able to shortcut several potentially dangerous situations by appealing to the buildings I’ve been in, and they seem to appreciate being talked to nicely. The knowe at Muir Woods was opened by Arden’s grandparents and sealed itself when King Gilad died, refusing to be used by the pretender to his throne. It had waited, patiently, for her to return, opening only once it was told she was alive by the Luidaeg, who couldn’t lie. But Arden and her knowe were still getting to know each other, and it would be a while before they had the sort of relationship where asking for major restructuring made sense.

Plus, why would she have moved the door when she knew I was on the way over? It didn’t make sense. I pulled my phone out of my pocket.

“What are you doing?” asked Quentin.

“Calling for backup.” I tried to think of who I knew for sure was in the knowe at the moment. Arden, but she might kill me if I called again, or at least ask me to do something I’d find unpleasant and annoying. Cassandra, but she was a little busy at the moment. Raj didn’t have a phone. Tybalt did have a phone, finally—reminding him he could use it to call me when I wandered into danger and didn’t tell him exactly where I was going had actually convinced him to take the plunge—but even April couldn’t arrange reliable reception in the Court of Cats, and if he was still working on getting Julie to the knowe, I didn’t want to interrupt.

May had a phone. Sometimes the fact that May had all of my memories up until the moment of her “birth” could be really inconvenient. Because May had a phone, but she also had all my love and affection and lifelong attachment to Mitch and the kids, and I didn’t want to distract her from them right now if I had any other option.

Phones are such a new thing in Faerie. How did we get so dependent on them so quickly?

“That reminds me,” I muttered. “We’re going to need to get Rayseline a phone if she’s going to be living with us.” One more thing for the long, long list of adjustments we’d be making. I frowned, then opened my contact list, finally raising the phone to my ear.

“Hello?” said Simon. “October? Is everything all right?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” I said. “Did Arden move the front door?”