Page 26 of The Innocent Sleep

“You worry too much,” scolded August, as she descended. “Mother will never know— Ah! What’s that?”

She had spotted me on the wall. As her attention swung in my direction, I stood and stretched, arching my back in a way people have always found endearing. Finished with my display of adorable nonchalance, I began to saunter toward her along the wall, tail high and whiskers forward, projecting harmlessness and enticing softness with every stop.

The apple whizzed by a few inches over my head, landing with a plop in the grass. I froze. August was bending to grab another out of the grass.

“Shoo!” she yelled. “Shoo, terrible beast!”

October was still watching from the window, eyes wide and utterly devoid of recognition. She didn’t know me. I froze for a moment, ears going flat, and stared at her. She didn’t know me. My wife, the love of my life, had no idea who I was.

At least that meant she wasn’t suffering my absence as I was suffering hers. But it also meant she wasn’t struggling to find her way back to me as I was struggling to find my way back to her, and our reunion would be entirely upon my shoulders. Most of her was concealed by the wall beneath the window, but her pregnancy hadn’t been apparent six days ago; I would have no outward way of confirming it now. I managed to open my mouth and meow, piteously, pleading with her to recognize me after all.

She recoiled, as if the meow of a cat were the most terrible thing she had ever heard, and still there was no recognition in her eyes, and still my heart felt as if it were broken. August threw another apple, once again missing me entirely, and I attempted to jump down into the grass by her feet, only for the tower wards to stop me. The ones which had refused passage to me in man’s form had only been the outer circle; there was another around the garden proper, refusing to let me pass. Damn and blast.

“Go away, creature!” snapped August. She had another apple in her hand, and a sharp glimmer in her eye. I saw no malice in her, and suspected she had been missing at least partially on purpose, trying to scare me off rather than do me harm. Still, my refusal to be easily frightened away was beginning to unnerve her, and she wouldn’t keep missing for much longer.

“What is it, Aug?” called October.

“A cat,” said August. “They’re mortal beasts. This one must have slipped through an unguarded door. It has no purpose here. It’s probably come to beg for food. Moving Day isn’t for months yet, creature! This isn’t the time for begging!”

She pulled back her arm for another throw. I recognized my cue and jumped down from the wall, away from the garden, leaving the sight of her behind.

I could still see the window, however, and October leaning out, looking down at her sister with concern. She was as beautiful as she had ever been, and I could see the humanity in the angles of her face: whatever Titania had done to her, she hadn’t forced the rebalancing of her blood. I had to believe that meant she hadn’t interfered with the pregnancy in any way. I had to, for to believe anything else would have driven me mad.

I turned my back on the tower and slunk away into the tall grass, waiting until I was beyond the edge of the wards to slip back into shadows and leave behind the one woman I had believed would never break my heart.

EIGHT

THE RUN BACK TO San Francisco was made more difficult by the fact that I felt like I couldn’t breathe even before I slipped into the thin air of the Shadow Roads. If Titania had been aiming her arrows specifically at me, she couldn’t have hurt me more deeply than she already had. Knowing that October was well and physically unharmed didn’t make me feel as much better as I would have hoped, because she was locked in a life not of her own making, designed by someone who sought only to destroy her.

The fact that October was not included in the family wards worried me even more. Oberon had bound Titania against harming Janet’s direct descendants, but Titania had mentioned loopholes. If this version of Faerie acknowledged the divorce, was October even considered a descendant of Janet Carter? How far back along the line did the sundering go? Did Oberon’s binding protect her at all?

Was my child safe?

The binding against harming Janet’s line wasn’t the only one Titania carried: she was ostensibly also forbidden to harm October, or anyone she considered family. If October didn’t know the child existed, could she consider it her family? Would Oberon’s bonds prevent either of them from being placed in the path of some other, greater monster, the way Eira had once used Simon and Oleander to do her dirty work, so that her hands could remain, technically, clean? The fear was all-consuming, and it was tempting to allow it to consume me, to take a moment to roar and snarl and behave the beast Titania believed me to be. Still I ran, because my duty was greater than my distress, and when I felt the pull of my destination loom nearby, I stepped out of shadow and into the Court of Cats. Ginevra was collapsed on a pile of furs, while Raj was throwing packs of grocery-store fried chicken into the teeming throng of cats.

Spotting me, he lit up with relief. “Tybalt!”

Ginevra raised her head, blinking blearily.

“I am here,” I said, and picked up several packs of chicken he had yet to distribute. I waded into the sea of feline bodies, heading for the edge of the crowd, where the older and weaker Cait Sidhe had gathered. The aged and the invalid. Under normal circumstances, they would have been the first to feed when we needed to open the stores of the Court to our people; them, and the kittens, none of whom I saw here.

But with the entire population of the Court locked inside and begging like street dogs for the smallest scraps, the least among us were going to receive exactly that unless measures were taken. I crouched and ripped open the foul plastic covering the food, setting each packet in front of a different small cluster of cats. A few stronger-looking cats tried to interpose. I hissed at them, and they retreated.

Turning my attention back to the elders, I urged them forward. “Here,” I said, voice soft. “This is for you. You need to keep your strength up.”

Not that they would be keeping their strength up very well on this, which looked to have been fried within an inch of its life before sitting under heat lamps for hours, but as I hadn’t been helping with the scavenging, I wasn’t going to criticize. I was just going to help.

With my hands now empty, I straightened and waded back to Raj, who shot me a grateful look.

“Your aid is appreciated, Uncle,” he said. “I know this isn’t the best way to see everyone fed, but without any other way to manage it, we’re doing what we can.”

“I’ve been to see Shade,” I said, solemnly. “Things are worse in her Court. She’s alone.”

“So is Ginevra’s father,” said Raj. “She slipped out to the mortal world and found a phone, called the comic book store. Her mother is working the counter.”

“And?”

“And the King of Whispering Cats is the only royal cat in his domain. Her sisters are trapped inside the Court with the others, but at least his people respect them well enough that they can stand guard over the food as needed, when he goes to sleep or comfort their mother. They don’t remember her. She remembers them being born, taken into shadow, and growing up in the Court, without her seeing them again. What sort of world is this?”