A Red Rose Chain

FIFTEEN

TYBALT AND I WERE nowhere near the comic book store when we left the Court of Cats. That was normal. I hoped Jolgeir at least had ended up back at his place of business, since otherwise Susie was going to be minding the front of the store for a long damn time.

“Stupid nonlinear space,” I complained.

We were standing next to a bright pink storefront that smelled strongly of sugar. Tybalt nudged me onto a bench and vanished inside, returning a few minutes later with a bakery box as violently pink as the business that had produced it.

“Here,” he said, pressing the box into my hands. “You should eat something before you yell at me. You’ll be able to work up a better head of steam if you fuel yourself.”

I eyed him sidelong before opening the box. It was full of donuts. That was normal. The donuts were covered in cereal, M&Ms, and in the case of one large maple bar, bacon. I blinked. “Tybalt?”

“Yes?”

“You know I’m mad at you, right?”

“Yes. I intend to apologize, but in this case, I had reasons for bringing you to my old friend without telling you how I believed the discussion would unspool. I—”

“Stop right there. I didn’t ask you to start explaining yourself, I asked if you knew that I was mad.”

Tybalt sighed. “Yes. I knew you would be angry.”

“Okay. So did you take me to Willy Wonka’s donut factory because you were hoping to distract me so much with laughter that I wouldn’t yell at you?” I stabbed a finger at one of the donuts. “Captain Crunch, Tybalt. This donut is covered in Captain Crunch cereal.”

“I admit it was a small hope of mine, that sugar might lessen your anger,” said Tybalt. “But no, I did not expect to escape your wrath entire. Would not want to, in fact. That was a mean trick I pulled, and I am sorry.”

I looked around. There were people, human people, strolling past with their own pink boxes, or sitting on the benches nearby, enjoying their donuts. A man was feeding a cruller to a large red macaw, which struck me as probably being unhealthy for the bird. No one was paying attention to us, and why should they? We had replaced our human disguises before we left the Court of Cats. Tybalt was still a handsome man, but his human form lacked the irresistible attraction of his true face, and I was just another brunette in tank top and jeans. We blended.

It was an odd feeling. I wasn’t used to fitting in. Still, I kept my voice low as I leaned closer and said, “You know I would have agreed to help your friend anyway. Why did we need to go with the whole cloak-and-dagger routine? It wasn’t necessary. It made me feel like you thought of me as something to use. Like a tool.”

The stricken look that flooded his face was too real to have been forced, starting with his eyes and moving outward until every inch of him was washed in regret. “Oh, October. I’m so sorry. I didn’t intend—I knew he would, given time, find his way to that topic. I knew what your answer would be. I also knew that, for him to take that answer as sincere, he had to reach it on his own, and I feared that if I were to prime you for meeting him, you would have done what you do best, and simply offered.”

“Which would have been too blunt, and left him looking for the catch,” I said slowly.

Tybalt nodded. “Yes. He’s been here, in this political situation, for a long time. Longer than you or I can imagine—my response to such things has always been to leave, to find another place to be, but he has put down roots and done his best to thrive despite adversity. Such a thing makes a man pleasant to talk to, and wary of things which seem too good to be true.”

I looked at Tybalt for a moment before reaching into the pink box and pulling out the maple-bacon bar. I offered him the box, as a peace offering, and he took out a chocolate cake donut crowned with a thick layer of Cocoa Puffs.

“I understand your reasoning, but I don’t appreciate it,” I said, putting the box next to me on the bench. “Please don’t do that again, or if we’re in a situation like this, where it’s genuinely important that I react without prejudice, warn me somehow. Okay? That’s enough to keep me from feeling like I’m being used.”

“I will do my absolute best,” said Tybalt. “Again, you have my deepest apologies.”

“It’s okay. We just have to keep doing better, that’s all. Everything is about doing better.” I took a bite of my donut, giving the crowd another look. Most of the people I’d noticed before had moved on, except for the man with the macaw, which was now holding the cruller in one claw and feeding itself. Still, I kept looking. Tybalt and I had been remarkably circumspect in our conversation, saying nothing that violated the provisions against revealing Faerie’s existence, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.

“What is it?” asked Tybalt.

“I don’t know.” I took a deep breath, but all I could smell was sugar. The lingering taste of maple didn’t help. “Look around. Try to be sort of casual about it. Just . . . tell me if anything seems off to you, okay?”

Tybalt nodded before leaning over to put an arm around me and kiss me theatrically on the cheek. Then he settled back on the bench, an expression of pure smugness spreading across his face. If I hadn’t been close enough to see the worry in his eyes, I would have believed that he was the happiest man alive.

After a moment, he murmured, “By the door. There is a man, blue shirt, brown hair. He has walked past three times. Each time he pauses just long enough to see that we remain, and then moves on again. If he’s not watching us, he’s planning to mug us later.”

“Let’s hope for a mugging,” I said, and shifted to rest my head against Tybalt’s shoulder, pretending to take a bite from my maple bar as I watched the spot he’d indicated. People wandered past, some going inside, others escaping the lure of fried dough and sticky frosting. Almost a minute ticked by, long enough for me to start considering an actual bite of my donut, before the man Tybalt had described appeared.

He was average-looking, almost to the point of becoming unrealistic. Brown hair, brown eyes, tan skin, and clothes straight out of a Macy’s ad—jeans, a polo shirt, and plain white tennis shoes. The smell of sugar was too strong to let me pick up any hints about his heritage, but now that I was looking, the faint glitter of his human disguise was impossible to ignore. He glanced our way, confirmed that we were still sitting there, and walked on.

“He’s not of my kind,” murmured Tybalt, voice close to my ear. “If he were, he would have come to announce himself to me. I have no authority here, but I am still a danger to those who would surprise me.”

“Right,” I replied, equally quietly. The man was continuing onward, apparently following a preset loop. “As soon as he turns that corner, we move. Got it?”

“Yes.”

The man turned the corner. We moved.

Dropping the maple bar back into the pink box—which I regretted leaving, I really did, but we couldn’t slow ourselves down with almost a dozen donuts, no matter how weird they were—I pushed myself off the bench. Tybalt rose at the same time, grabbing my hand, and together we took off across the little plaza and down the street, nearly knocking several bystanders over in our rush to get away. We weren’t being subtle; if our observer wanted to ask where we’d gone, plenty of hands would be pointed in our direction.

That wasn’t going to be a problem. We turned a corner, running onto an empty stretch of street, and Tybalt grabbed my hand. He didn’t bother telling me what was going to happen next: I already knew, and had time to take a deep breath before the world dropped away and we were running through the dark. It only lasted for a few seconds. Then we were back in the mortal world, in a parking lot behind what looked like a large grocery store. Tybalt stopped, his heels skidding in the gravel. I ran on for another few feet, using my momentum to turn myself around and start scanning for signs that we had been followed.

The only signs of motion came from the crows picking at the grass on the edge of the pavement. There was no guarantee that they weren’t working for King Rhys—living in Faerie means never knowing what is or is not spying on you—but they were far enough away that I was pretty sure they couldn’t hear us.

“Don’t-look-here, Tybalt, now,” I said, voice tight. My fingers were itching to go for my knife. I didn’t mind being watched while we were in the Court of Silences. I had expected that; it was part and parcel of being a diplomatic attaché to a Kingdom that didn’t want me. But the fact that we were being followed out into Portland itself, and followed by people who could track us even after we had passed through the Court of Cats? That wasn’t good. That showed a level of dedication to keeping me under surveillance that made me uncomfortable in ways I couldn’t even put into words.

Tybalt nodded. He pressed his hands together, rattling off a quick line of what sounded like Middle English. The smell of pennyroyal and musk rose and burst around us as he separated his hands, reached over, and grabbed my wrist. “Keep hold of me,” he said. “It works better when the spell doesn’t need to labor across open ground.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And there’s nothing in that casting about wanting to minimize my chances to go off and get myself hurt?”

He rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “I admit your nearness is a convenient side benefit, but no. I wanted to make the spell as strong as possible. That meant accepting certain limitations.”

“Okay.” I stepped closer. He switched his grip on my wrist to something a little less awkward. “Where are we?”

“Half a mile from our last known location, give or take a bit. We’re too far from the alley where we are meant to meet with the others, if that’s the true core of your question. We’ll need to take the Shadow Roads again.” He frowned a bit as he spoke.

I gave him a sidelong look. “How much are you wearing yourself out? You’re not a taxi service, Tybalt, and I don’t want you hurting yourself just because you’re trying to keep me safe. I’m harder to kill than you think I am.”

“Having been at your deathbed twice, I tend to disagree.”

“Having seen you dead, I don’t think you get to claim the moral high ground here.” I looked around again, and sighed. “All right. I have a solution. I don’t think you’re going to like it very much, and I don’t much care.”

Tybalt gave me a sidelong look. “What is this solution?”

“We’re going to walk until we find a bus stop with a bus that’s going in the right direction. Then, when the bus comes, we’re going to get on behind whatever passengers are coming on or off, and we’re going to make our way across Portland like ordinary people.”

Tybalt blinked slowly, looking like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. “You want to take the bus,” he said.

“Yup,” I said. “I know, it’s pedestrian and plebeian and lots of other things that start with the letter ‘p,’ but it also works. Buses are designed to get people from one place to another. And more, if Rhys sent whoever it is that’s following us—and I think we can both agree that’s what’s going on here—then he’s never going to dream we would take the bus.”

Tybalt blinked at me again, even more slowly than before. Then, almost against his will, he began to smile.

“Very well,” he said. “Take me to your bus.”

The nearest bus stop was about a block away, on a corner where the pavement was cracked and the trees were less well-tended than the ones near the donut shop. I guessed that meant we’d been downtown before, and were now somewhere out near the fringes of the city. There was a map of the bus routes served by this stop, and one of them was definitely the one we wanted. That was good. There was no one at the bus stop. That was bad. I sighed, checked the direction of the bus we needed to take, and started walking again.

“Far be it from me to sound as if I am eager to ‘catch the bus,’ but where are we going?” asked Tybalt. “That was a bus stop. I saw it with my own two eyes.”

“Then you also saw that we were the only people there,” I said. “Buses don’t stop everywhere along their route. They stop to pick people up, and they stop to let people off. Bus driver isn’t going to be able to see us, remember? There’s no guarantee anyone would want to get off at that stop, so we need to find a place where there’s someone waiting. Hence the walking. We’ll come to the next bus stop on the route within a few blocks.”

Tybalt threw his free hand into the air, shooting a beseeching glance upward to the sky. I managed not to laugh, but it was a near thing, and I only made the effort because I knew he wasn’t trying to be funny. “How do mortals function in a world grown so complex?” he demanded.

“One day at a time,” I said. “Now come on.”

The next bus stop was on a slightly nicer stretch of road, reinforcing my belief that we had wound up in a part of town that was, if not bad, at least a little bit neglected. There were people at this one, three of them, standing in the weary, not too close clump known to bus riders everywhere. Tybalt and I slipped into position behind them, careful to stay just far away enough that we didn’t upset the delicate balance of the bus stop. The don’t-look-here Tybalt had cast would keep people from noticing us, but it didn’t render us invisible. Blending in mattered, and would make the burden on the spell lighter, which would help it to last longer.

According to the schedule, the bus was slated to arrive about eight minutes after we did. I pointed out the time to Tybalt, who nodded understanding. “See?” I whispered, keeping my voice low. “You’re a natural.”

I didn’t need to bother. Bus riders are a rare breed, aware of their surroundings but also aware that they’re about to share a vehicle with a bunch of strangers, vague acquaintances, and people they have no actual interest in knowing. As long as we kept our voices down and didn’t seem inclined to murder anyone, we would have been semi-invisible to these folks even without the magic that made us that way.

It was nice, actually. I used to ride the San Francisco buses frequently, before I got a private parking spot and a boyfriend who could break the laws of linear space. I won’t pretend it was my favorite thing in the world, but it was familiar. The Portland bus system doubtless had its own quirks and oddities—every bus system does—but it was still public transit, with all the little slings and arrows that such a thing is heir to. Call me weird, but it was relaxing to spend some time doing something so beautifully mundane.

The bus pulled up only three minutes after the sign said it was due. The waiting passengers pushed themselves forward, and we pushed forward with them, me hauling Tybalt by the hand. Our don’t-look-here spell kept the driver from seeing us well enough to demand that we pay, but also kept him from closing the door on Tybalt’s leg. He did flip the lever as soon as Tybalt was clear, so that the doors hissed closed dangerously close to his ankles, but that was only to be expected. On some level, the bus driver knew we were there, we were fare jumpers, and hence, we were the enemy.

I pulled Tybalt down the center aisle as the bus rumbled away from the curb, finding us an empty seat to snuggle into. I put him on the inside, by the window. “See the cord?” I murmured. “That tells the bus someone wants to get off. When you start seeing things you recognize, yank it, and the driver will know he needs to take the next stop.”

“But we’re invisible,” he whispered back.

“Not to the bus,” I said. “Trust me.”

Tybalt nodded, looking like he wasn’t sure about all this, and turned his attention to the window. Portland scrolled by outside, greener than its Californian equivalents, but otherwise similar, in the way of modern cities built on the West Coast, where the weather is milder and the chance of earthquakes is higher. It’s a delicate balance that has defeated more architects than anyone can say, resulting in a lot of single-story homes that might as well have “please don’t fall down” stenciled across them in electric yellow. But for all the similarities, there were differences as well: different sorts of gingerbread and decorative wainscoting on the houses, different sorts of quirky independent businesses sandwiched between the chain stores and the municipal buildings. If there was a Portland style, I couldn’t recognize it well enough to describe it yet—and at the same time, I knew we weren’t in San Francisco anymore.

We had been on the bus for about ten minutes when Tybalt pulled the cord, sending a long tone reverberating through the bus. He pulled it again immediately after. The tone was not repeated. Scowling, he pulled twice more before I managed to reach up and snag his arm.

“No,” I hissed. “The bus knows. Come on.”

I slid out of the seat, tugging him with me. He came reluctantly, eyeing me the whole time like he was sure that this was some sort of a trick. I didn’t have the time to explain, and raising my voice enough to be heard over the hiss of the bus’ brakes would have meant risking the spell that concealed us, so I didn’t say anything; I just pulled him into the small safe haven of the bus’ rear door, waiting for the vehicle to come to a full stop. There was already a woman standing there. As soon as the doors unlocked, she pushed them open, and we all but fell out of the bus behind her.

Pulling Tybalt out of the way before we could be trampled by the other commuters, I moved us to the edge of the sidewalk, out of the way. The idling bus engine was loud enough to cover my voice as I said softly, “Hold here. I want to be sure no one followed us.”

Tybalt nodded. The bus pulled away, and I watched as our fellow riders moved off down the street, some doubling back to get to a destination a short ways behind them, others turning corners or just walking away. In a matter of seconds, they were all either gone or going, and we were alone.

The sidewalk wasn’t deserted. I scanned the people who remained in view, looking for any who seemed to be distorting the air or accompanied by unexplained glitter trails. Everyone I could see appeared to be human. I relaxed a little, turning back to Tybalt. “I think we’re clear,” I said. “Where to now?”

“This way,” he said. He started walking, and I walked with him, allowing him to lead me down a side street to a small, tree-lined shopping promenade. It opened on a courtyard packed with food trucks. My stomach rumbled and he paused, smiling. “Hungry?”

“A little,” I admitted. “Breakfast was a long time ago, and I didn’t get to finish my donut.”

“These kitchens on wheels are definitely safer than Rhys’ private dining hall; we could stop, if you would like.”

I shook my head. “I need to eat at the knowe. I basically skipped breakfast, and I’m supposed to be preventing a war, not insulting the King’s hospitality so badly that he invades us twice as hard.”

“If Arden did not want to risk being invaded, as you say, ‘twice as hard,’ she would have sent someone else.” We emerged onto a stretch of street that I recognized. The alley where we were supposed to meet the others was right up ahead. I felt myself untense. Maybe we were going to make it back to King Rhys’ Court without any serious damage done.

I should really learn to stop hoping. We stepped into the alley to find ourselves alone . . . but the faint smell of ashes and cotton candy hung in the air. May had been here recently. I stopped, bewildered, and took a deep breath. I could smell the faint, nearly indefinable strains of her heritage, mixed with an overlay of Daoine Sidhe. Fear gripped me in an almost physical hand, squeezing until I felt like all the air was being forced out of my lungs.

“Tybalt, drop the don’t-look-here,” I said, making no effort to keep my voice down. If May and Quentin were in the alley, I didn’t want them to be surprised by our sudden appearance.

Tybalt nodded. He clapped his hands, and the spell burst around us, filling the air with the musk and pennyroyal scent of his magic. Not for the first time, I wished that Quentin shared my sensitivity for magical signatures. He could pick up the broad strokes, but there was no guarantee he’d be able to smell the spell from wherever he was and know that we had arrived.

“Quentin?” I called, taking a step forward. “May? Are either of you here? It’s Toby and Tybalt. You can come out now.”

There was a scuffling noise from behind the dumpster. I took another step forward.

“I’m sorry we’re a little late; we had to take the bus in order to get here, and that slowed us down . . .”

Silence. Then Quentin’s face peeked around the dumpster’s corner, eyes narrowed warily. “How do you take your coffee?” he demanded.

“I stopped drinking coffee after I got hit with an evil pie,” I said. “Before that, I took it however I could get it. The more the merrier. Look, do you want a blood sample? That’ll confirm my identity faster than any quiz you can give me, and maybe then you can explain why you’re hiding behind a dumpster instead of greeting me like a normal person.” I couldn’t keep the edge from my voice as I reached the end of my sentence. Something was terribly wrong. Quentin had been my squire long enough to have learned that sometimes bravery gets you killed, but he didn’t hide for no reason. If I didn’t encourage senseless bravery, I didn’t encourage senseless cowardice either.

“I, too, am happy to give you a taste of my blood, if it means you will be able to relax yourself and tell us what has happened,” said Tybalt. He didn’t step forward, recognizing that Quentin wouldn’t find his presence as comforting as I did.

Quentin closed his eyes, an expression of relief washing across his face, only to be quickly replaced by bleakness. “Come over here,” he said, and withdrew behind the dumpster again.

That was when I knew. There was only one reason he could be acting like this, only one thing that could have happened that would explain his skittishness and his sorrow. So I knew, but I still didn’t admit it to myself: not until I had stepped around the dumpster and seen with my own eyes, which had lied to me in the past, when they’d had good enough reason. They weren’t lying to me now.

May, still draped in the hazy outline of her human disguise, although it was beginning to fray around the edges, was propped against the alley wall like a forgotten toy, limp and unmoving. The arrow protruding from her left shoulder formed a tight seal against the skin: there wasn’t even any blood on her shirt, and wouldn’t be until someone pulled that arrow out. Her eyes were closed, and her chin rested comfortably against her chest. She looked like she had just stopped to take a nap, pausing for a moment before she resumed racing through her life.

It was really a pity that the nap was going to last for a hundred years.

My hand was clapped tightly over my mouth. I didn’t remember putting it there, or putting my other hand against the dumpster for balance. All I could see was my Fetch, my sister, lying on the ground in an enchanted slumber that no true love’s kiss or glass coffin could fix.

“Oh, sweet Oberon,” I said, my voice devoid of strength. “What happened?” Night-haunts were immune to elf-shot. May had even said so.

Apparently, Fetches weren’t.

“I don’t know,” said Quentin. He was still standing in the shadow of the dumpster. He looked younger than he had when we left King Rhys’ Court, like all his strength and confidence had been ripped away when the arrow entered May’s flesh. I knew I should put my arms around him, that I should pull him to me and tell him that I was going to find a way to fix this, but I couldn’t make myself move. All I could do was stare at May, so pale and small and unmoving.

My Fetch was never unmoving. Even when she slept, she tossed and turned and squirmed, like she was secretly a hurricane forced into a girl-body and told to exist as best she could among people who had no idea what it meant to secretly be a weather pattern. But now, thanks to the elf-shot in her shoulder, she could no more move her body than she could turn back into a night-haunt and fly away on the wings she had traded for solidity and size. She had become a Fetch because I was her hero, and because she wanted to warn me that death was coming. Somehow that single, selfless choice had led us here, to this alley, and to silence.

“October.” Tybalt’s voice was low. “We cannot stay here. We must move.”

“How can we get her back to our room?” I lowered my hand, turning to look at him. “She can’t hold her breath. You have to be awake to hold your breath. I don’t even know how to get into the knowe from this side.”

“Does it matter if she holds her breath?” Quentin’s question was hesitant. I turned to look at him. He bit his lip before saying, “She can’t . . . I mean, she can’t suffocate, right? She can’t die that way. She can’t die at all. So does it matter if she holds her breath?”

“Not if I go quickly. I will take her first, and return for the two of you, if you can hold yourselves safe that long.” Tybalt spoke slowly, like every word was being ripped out of him. In a way, I suppose they were. He didn’t like leaving me alone when there was any chance I might be in danger, and this was sort of the definition of a bad situation. And at the same time, if he tried to run the Shadow Roads with May in his arms and the two of us holding onto his shirt, he ran the risk of losing us.

“Go,” I said. “We’ll be here.”

Tybalt nodded once before walking over and scooping May into his arms. She dangled limp, with no muscular resistance or rigor to keep her in place. As I watched, he gently lifted her head, bracing it against his chest to keep from hurting her. Then the shadows against the alley wall parted like a curtain, and he stepped through and was gone.

I frowned. Something was wrong—apart from the obvious, which was very wrong, and almost enough to keep me from noticing subtleties. I crouched, looking at the place where May’s body had been propped. There were no other arrows. Either our archer had managed to catch her on the first shot, or whoever it was had been careful to clean up after themselves. We still had an arrow, since there was one embedded in my Fetch’s arm, but it would have lost much of its potency when its poison rubbed off into her blood. Tracking the person who mixed the spell would be easier with an arrow that hadn’t been used.

There were no footprints, either. The dryness I had been so happy about when Quentin fell in the alley was a problem now. At least mud and wet ground would have increased the odds of someone leaving a trace of themselves behind.

“Toby?” Quentin’s voice was hesitant, like he was afraid of interrupting me. “Did you find something?”

“Not yet,” I said. I had to struggle not to snap at him, but he didn’t deserve that. He was the one who had found her lying there—I paused, turning to look at him. “Why didn’t you call me when you found her? I had my cellphone.”

“If someone was able to track May back to this alley and put an arrow in her, they had to have been following us,” he said. “I didn’t want to bring you back here if it meant they might get you, too.”

“That was brave and stupid,” I said. “You should have hidden yourself and called me. Next time, you call me, understand? You’re my squire. It’s my job to protect you, not the other way around.”

“I thought we protected each other,” he said, in a very small voice.

I thawed, just a little. “We do, honey. But sometimes you have to remember that it’s my job to protect you. It’s basically the most important thing a knight does for their squire. We teach you how to be better knights, sure, but that doesn’t matter if you’re dead.” I turned back to the alley wall. Something was wrong with this picture, something apart from the obvious. It was gnawing at me, biting down with sharp little teeth and refusing to let me go.

It was almost hard to imagine how carefree we’d been when we were first all together in this alley. Tybalt and I were going to meet his friend, Quentin was going to the bookstore, and May was going to—

“The laundry.” I straightened up, feeling as if I had just been electrified. “She didn’t have the laundry bag when Tybalt picked her up, and it’s not here. Did she leave it at the dry cleaner’s? Do you know which dry cleaner’s she went to?”

“They’re right up the street,” said Quentin.

“Do you have the name?” I pulled out my phone. When he blinked, I said, “If I send you to check and stay here, I feel like a coward. If I go to check and leave you here, Tybalt loses his shit when he gets back to find me gone. Neither of these is a good thing. So I’m going to pretend I’m a normal person, and call them.”

“I . . . that makes really good sense,” he said. “Sunshine Cleaners, on West Burnside.”

“Got it.” I dialed information, and when the polite, faintly robotic voice of the computer-generated “operator” picked up, I gave the address. Thirty seconds later, the phone was calling the cleaner’s for me. Sometimes I really do feel like we’re living in the future, and just haven’t fully accepted everything that means.

“Sunshine Cleaners, we put the sun back in your shirts,” said a voice that clearly felt it had better things to do with its time than answer phone calls, even if it was being paid to pick up the phone.

“Hi, this is October Daye. My sister, May, was supposed to drop off some laundry for me a few hours ago, and I was just wondering if you were able to get the stains out of my dress? I really love that dress.” I tried to match the voice’s disinterest with earnest need-to-know. Standing in the alley where my Fetch had been elf-shot and pretending that the most important thing in my world was laundry.

“Please hold.” There was a clunk as the phone was set down. I heard rustling. Then the phone was picked up again, and the same bored voice said, “No one named after a month has dropped anything off today. Either your sister sucks at doing her chores, or you need to call another cleaner. Have a nice day.”

The connection went dead. I lowered my phone, turning to look at Quentin. “She didn’t drop off the laundry, and she’s been elf-shot,” I said. “You know what this means?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking miserable. “King Rhys has an awful lot of your blood, and May’s going to be asleep for a hundred years. Toby, what are we going to do?”

I looked at him, and I didn’t have an answer.