Page 20 of The Innocent Sleep

I nodded slowly. Asking Shade for help wasn’t an option; the question had become how we might be able to help her. “I’ve been seeking answers as to what has happened,” I said. “It appears Titania has returned, and announced her intention to become true Queen of all Faerie by revising the world to remove the elements she didn’t care for. She couldn’t remove us completely, so she simply put us where we wouldn’t be a problem for her any longer.”

“Our mother seeks to lock us away to die?” asked Shade, horrified.

I had forgotten she claimed descent from Erda’s line. I grimaced. “I don’t have all the answers yet, but what I have seen so far seems to indicate so, yes. I’m on my way to Shadowed Hills, where I hope to locate October. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to come to see if you were in need of aid sooner than I have. There may be things I can do, once I return. I have allies in the Undersea, and it’s possible to reach them via the Shadow Roads. I’m sure they have an excess of fish they might be able to donate to the cause of keeping our people alive for as long as it takes for us to end this.”

Shade looked at me with utter weariness. “Anything would be welcome, Tybalt. I really don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this.”

She wouldn’t be alone in that, not by a long shot. Even if only the Kingdoms Amphitrite had described as sundered from the Undersea were impacted, that was easily half a dozen Courts of Cats and quite possibly more, each of which had suddenly been filled to bursting and made the full responsibility of a very small number of royal cats. What good did it do for us to be able to see through Titania’s illusions if we were so busy fighting to keep our people alive that we had no time to move against her?

Or maybe that had been her plan all along. If she’d been unable to outright kill us for whatever reason—Oberon’s geas, or her own lingering traces of empathy for the world she had once helped to create—then locking us away to wither, forgotten and unable to escape—might have seemed like a way to be rid of us while keeping her own hands technically clean.

I growled under my breath, fingers flexing as my claws tried to extend of what felt like their own accord. Shade eyed me warily.

“Please, Tybalt, I’m too tired to fight with you, and if you want to challenge for my Court, only say, and I’ll gladly walk away.”

“I don’t think you could,” I said. “You care too deeply for your people. You would stay, no matter what, even as I’ll return, despite everything I am screaming for me to run and keep running until I have my lady safe back in my arms. I’m bound for Shadowed Hills now. If you could warn your people that I’ll be returning and ask them not to attack me when I do, I would very deeply appreciate it.”

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “They have a whole different history from the one I remember, and in their minds, the only things that come out of the shadows are myself and monsters. They must have thought you were an attacker.”

“Their willingness to defend your Court from the unknown speaks well of their loyalty,” I said. “The scratches on my face speak to their ferocity. If you can only keep them fed, you’ll be well served through this horror.”

“I will indeed,” she said, voice gone solemn. “Is there any chance you could bring me a bag of food when you come back? I’ve been reduced to kibble, for the bulk it represents, and to hunting the wild deer on campus.”

“I may be able to do better than that,” I said. “Make me a list of everything you need, everything you want, and everything you don’t dare wish for, shy only of your freedom, which is outside my power to address, and I’ll study it on my return.”

“A fool’s exercise,” she said.

“Then allow me to be foolish for a time, and have what faith in me you can,” I said. I bowed to her before stepping backward into the shadows and resuming my journey.

The Cait Sidhe are everywhere in Faerie—normally. We mingle more with the human world than most fae, because our feline kin refuse to be confined to the Summerlands, and we refuse to abandon them. Still, most of us are like Shade, living parallel but separate lives, holding our independence above all else. I had been like that, before October came along and dragged me into her strange hybrid of the fae and human worlds.

I preferred a Summerlands sky to a mortal one, no question. But I also appreciate Chinese food and pizza delivery and cable television, and in the moment, I was appreciating the existence of a wonder May had introduced me to the year before.

The Costco big box store, which was a warehouse in all but name.

They had pet food, they had freezers that held more meat and fish than a king’s larder, and best of all, they had long aisles where shadows gathered. If Shade was willing and we called Raj and Ginevra to assist, the four of us could clear out a retail location in an evening, and even a horde of ravenous Cait Sidhe would have enough to eat for several months. Best of all, there were multiple such stores dotted around the Bay Area.

Such acts of larceny were beneath us, and risked revealing the existence of Faerie, as the people who controlled the security cameras would certainly question our impossible appearance, and the equally impossible disappearance of all their goods. But we couldn’t be blamed for surviving, especially not when we were crushed under such conditions as Titania had created.

Shade had probably never been to a Costco, and almost certainly wouldn’t have conceived of robbing one. She lived too deeply in Faerie for that. There are benefits to the places where the fae and mortal worlds rub against each other. That thought caused me to step out of the shadows at the edge of the Berkeley campus, turning toward the building where the chemistry classes were taught before dropping down onto four legs and bounding toward the stairs. A stray cat was unlikely to attract much attention. An unfamiliar man with scratches on his face probably would.

The ventilation within the chemistry building was insufficient for the needs of the various classes, and so the doors were almost always propped during the day—a nightmare for security, a great mercy for people who wanted to avoid suffocation. I slunk inside and continued on, passing classrooms and offices until I reached the one I wanted.

The door was closed. I backed up until I could see the glass window toward the top of the door, then hissed at nothing, expressing my displeasure to the empty air.

The classroom was dark and deserted, and the name plaque that should have been next to the door was gone. Another ally, absent. Wherever Walther was, it wasn’t here. Looking for Bridget would likely be equally fruitless, and as a bespelled mortal, she was unlikely to be useful even if I found her; if not for Saltmist, I would have been afraid Titania had somehow wiped out all of Faerie, leaving the Cait Sidhe alone in the lost places with nothing we could be restored to.

I leapt back into the shadows, not particularly caring who saw me, and this time I ran full-out for Shadowed Hills. If the knowe was gone as Muir Woods had been, then we were dealing with an even larger problem than the one I already recognized. If it was present but unchanged, we might be able to begin resolving the situation. And if October was there . . .

If October was there, I would collapse into her arms and then curl into her lap, heedless of form, and remain with her until the subtle, ceaseless shaking I could feel in my bones came to an end. I could slow. I could speak. I could consider the safety of my people, and of Shade’s Court. I could see the need to find all the other missing people.

What I couldn’t do was care. None of that mattered, not really, not in any way that counted, because October was pregnant and October was missing, and I had never been this afraid in my life. I did my best to avoid love for a very long time to escape moments precisely like this one.

Love is a knife forever suspended an inch from your heart, and if it falls or you stumble into it, you can all too easily find yourself impaled and bleeding.

I ran, and the dark unspooled around me, until it was time for me to drop into the light, landing in the woods outside Shadowed Hills. I paused, then. The air smelled different. It wasn’t until I’d resumed moving toward the manor proper that I realized what had changed.

I didn’t smell roses. I smelled oak trees, grass, loam, even the distinct waxen scent of hedges, but I didn’t smell roses. Or any kind of flowers, really, which made no sense. Shadowed Hills has always been famous for its gardens, and Luna planted them all herself, cultivating a floral paradise for her comfort even as she wore a stolen fox’s skin draped over her true vegetable nature.