Page 34 of Be the Serpent

I took a deep breath. “Most of them. Anthony got hurt, and we sent him back here to see a healer—I haven’t seen him since then.”

Simon glanced over his shoulder at us. “Jin was able to stop the bleeding and remove the weapon. He should recover fully.”

That was one good thing about today. We didn’t have enough of those to hold on to. I closed my eyes for a moment, still walking, trusting Stacy’s hand to keep me steady. I’d been doing that for most of my life. When everything else dropped away, there was always Stacy, reaching out to keep me from losing my balance completely.

“Anthony was hurt getting Andrew out of the house,” I said, and opened my eyes before I walked into a wall. “He wouldn’t have been able to get away from the woman who was attacking them, but Jessica intervened to stop her brothers from being hurt. She was a hero, Stacy. I need you to know that. I saw what she did, and she was a hero.”

“You saw . . . you mean you rode her blood, don’t you. You mean you drank my baby’s blood so you could watch her memories, because she couldn’t tell you herself.” Stacy yanked her hand out of mine and stopped walking.

I stopped in turn, facing her, feeling strangely unmoored without her hand in mine. She glared at me, face pale except for bright spots of color in her cheeks.

“Why couldn’t she tell you herself? Toby, where is my daughter? Where is Jessica?”

I took a deep breath, resisting the urge to close my eyes. She deserved to know that I was seeing her when I said this. “When the Root and Branch were young, when the Rose still grew unplucked upon the tree; when all our lands were new and green and we danced without care, then, we were immortal. Then, we lived forever.” Stacy’s face fell, the last drops of color draining away, and she looked, briefly, like she was going to collapse. I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. I owed this to her. I owed this to Jessica, to a little girl who had never done anything wrong, who had run out of time long before her time was done.

“We left those lands for the world where time dwells, dancing, that we might see the passage of the sun and the growing of the world. Here we may die, and here we can fall, and here my darling Jessica Brown, daughter of Mitch and Stacy Brown, has stopped her dancing.”

“No,” moaned Stacy. “No, she can’t—you can’t—this can’t—” She stopped, the third negation still hanging on her lips, and just stared at me, waiting for me to say that this was some kind of senselessly cruel, unnecessary joke. Like I could take it back.

I would have if I could. Instead, I half-shrugged, helplessly, and said, “I’m so sorry, Stacy. I’m so damn sorry.”

“What . . . what happened?”

“I don’t know yet. Someone broke into your house. I know it was a woman; I know her magic smelled like roses. She attacked the boys, and Jessica, she had this book of poetry, and it told her she needed to be afraid—it told her someone was going to hurt her brothers if she didn’t intervene. So she intervened. She broke up the fight, and she gave Andrew and Anthony the time they needed to get away. The woman killed her. I don’t know why she attacked your children.”

The stranger’s voice, filtered through Jessica’s blood memory, whispered in my ear: “Leave nothing behind. Be the serpent, be the shadow. Be nothing, or never come home.”

It didn’t make any sense. Why should it? Nothing else about this day made any sense. There was no real reason to expect a murderess’s words to change that.

“We’re here,” said Simon, breaking the silence that stretched between me and Stacy like a thin ribbon of unspoken promises and unanswered prayers. We both turned to look at him. He had his palm pressed to a plain door in the hallway wall. Had it been there a moment before? I wasn’t sure. The knowe was trying to help, in its slow, quiet way, and I was grateful for that.

“Stacy, are you ready?” I asked.

“No.” She shook her head, wiping her cheeks with the flats of both hands. Tears kept streaming from her eyes, making the gesture pointless. “But I don’t think I ever will be. Mitch and the kids are in there?”

“All four of them were when last I checked,” said Simon.

“All right,” she said. “I’m so . . . Toby, I’m so sorry you had to see that. But you’ll find her, right? You’ll find the woman who hurt my baby?”

“I will,” I said. “I promise. I will find her, and I will do my best to make sure you get to face her. You have my word.” My magic rose and then settled around us, sealing the promise with a level of formality that Faerie itself would enforce. If necessary.

“Thank you,” said Stacy, and pushed past Simon, opening the door and slipping silently inside.

The three of us who were left in the hall looked at each other, silently, not one of us wanting to enter that room without an invitation, not at all sure where we should be going instead. I’ve dealt with a lot of horrible things during my time as a hero of the realm. The death of a little girl who considered me family was a new, and terrible, one on me.

Finally, Simon cleared his throat. “My spouses have returned to Saltmist. They expect me to join them later. Rayseline is still here, waiting for you to take her home. I believe your Fetch has elected to stay with her for the present, until such time as you are available to drive them both back.”

“Cool,” I said. “Oak and ash, Simon, what are we supposed to do? How am I supposed to handle this?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Disappearing children are something I have a reasonable degree of experience in. Dead ones . . . the idea is unthinkable.”

“Maybe the Luidaeg can help.”

Quentin wrinkled his nose. “Stacy doesn’t find the Luidaeg comforting the way that we do,” he said. “She’s not likely to take another Firstborn shoving her nose into the family business very well.”

“I don’t have any better ideas,” I said. I turned, heading back the way we’d come. Both of them followed me.

“Where are you going?” asked Simon.