Ashes of Honor

ELEVEN

WE STEPPED FROM THE SHADOWS onto the hard-packed earth edging the creek that runs through the heart of the UC Berkeley campus. The creek’s small footbridge shielded us from mortal eyes; between that and the hanging ivy threatening to block the sun, we could practically have pitched a tent and had a cookout down there.

“I should go.”

“I wish you didn’t have to.” I turned to Tybalt. He was standing in the deepest part of the shadow. I could still see the bruise on his cheek and the exhaustion in his slumping shoulders. “Are you sure you don’t want a cup of coffee or something?”

“Your love of artificial stimulants will be the death of you one day,” he said, a smile turning up the corners of his lips. “I must attend to my Court, and you must attend to matters here. I will find you when I have the freedom to do so.”

“Okay,” I said reluctantly. The smell of pennyroyal and musk rose as he opened the door onto the Shadow Roads, and he was gone, leaving me alone.

If any of the students who saw me emerge from beneath the bridge thought it was strange, they kept their thoughts to themselves. This was UC Berkeley. Strange women in leather jackets with ash-stained hands probably crawled out from under their bridges all the time. The student body continued about its business, and I continued on mine.

Even if Walther didn’t have anything useful for me yet, he had my squire, and I wanted him back. Quentin was a smart kid, and that extended to going where I told him to go, as long as he didn’t think I was trying to be heroic and self-sacrificing. “Walther had better have coffee on,” I muttered, and kept walking.

As a junior faculty member, Walther barely rated an office. He didn’t rate one that was easy to find. It was located in a maze of twisting hallways that seemed to have been designed by an architect who dreamed of one day having a real Minotaur lurking to devour the unwary. No legendary Greek monsters leaped out to grab me as I walked, finally stopping in the open doorway of a small, cluttered room that held two legendary monsters of its own. I rapped my knuckles against the doorframe.

“If one of you doesn’t have coffee for me, I’m going to be cranky,” I announced.

Walther and Quentin had been bent over something on the counter. They straightened and turned at the sound of my voice. Walther smiled. Quentin didn’t bother with the preliminaries. He grabbed a paper cup and trotted over to me, holding it at arm’s length.

“Here,” he said. “Coffee.”

“And thus am I reminded why I allow you to live,” I said. The coffee was cold and the “creamer” had never seen the inside of a cow, but I didn’t care. The caffeine was all I needed. I lowered the cup after chugging a third of its contents, asking, “What’s our status?”

“Come in, come in,” said Walther, beckoning me forward. “And close the door.” His glasses were askew, and his hair was mussed. Not enough that anyone who didn’t know him would notice, but Walther worked very hard to maintain his superficial “I am the perfect professor” appearance. Mussed hair didn’t go with that ideal.

“Long night?” I asked, doing as I was bid. The office was considerably dimmer once the light from the hall was blocked. All the overheads were off, leaving us in a room that would have been substantially too gloomy for mortal eyes.

Good thing none of us had mortal eyes. I sipped my coffee as I walked across the room, drinking more slowly now that the first rush of caffeine was in my system. With the ambient light blocked by the door, it was apparent that whatever Walther was working on was glowing faintly, like a light stick the morning after Halloween. It was a steady glow, at least, and not a candlelight flicker. I hate candles.

“I was already here when you called, tinkering with some personal projects. You just focused me,” said Walther. He turned back to the counter. “I’m not technically supposed to be here today, but I knew no one else was using my office, so I just kept going.”

“He took a break for breakfast,” said Quentin helpfully.

“I bet he did.” By the time Quentin got to campus, he was probably so focused on food that he could have convinced an invading army to stop long enough to get some oatmeal and bacon. Teenage boys are good that way. “Is it safe to assume we’re all standing here in the dark because you managed to make something we could use?”

“I wouldn’t use the word ‘safe’ when talking about this stuff, but yes.” Walther picked up a beaker with excruciating care. He was wearing heavy gloves, and he still looked uncomfortable holding the thing. It was half-full of a viscous liquid glowing a soft, somehow menacing shade of orange. I looked at it and had absolutely no desire to get any closer.

Too bad I was going to have to get closer—a lot closer—if I wanted the stuff to be of any use. “Is this the power dampener?” He nodded. “Tell me about it.”

“For a start, do not ingest. The only way this could be more toxic is if I milked a rattlesnake into it to add a little extra zing.” Walther put the beaker down, looking relieved when it was safely on the counter. “It’s meant for topical application. Skin contact triggers its effects.”

“Which are…?” I prompted

“It blocks all access to higher magic for a year and a day. No illusions, transformations, blood workings, anything. I’m not sure what would happen if you spilled it on a shapeshifter, so let’s try not to find out.” Walther grimaced. “If there’s a counter for the stuff, I haven’t been able to find it. It takes about twenty minutes for the effects to stabilize, but they’ll kick in almost immediately.” He picked up another beaker. This one was filled with pale green liquid that didn’t glow at all. “Scrub off all traces of the potion with this and you should be fine—stress on should. I wouldn’t want to wait until minute nineteen before I started looking for a place to rinse my hands.”

“Got it. At least there’s a window.” I eyed the open beakers. “Is there any way you can decant those into something we can carry without worrying about spilling things on ourselves every time we hit a pothole?”

“I was working on that when you showed up.” Walther traded beakers again, waving me and Quentin back. He didn’t have to tell us twice. We stepped clear before he began pouring the glowing liquid into a set of thin-lipped glass jars. “This isn’t the most stable thing in the world.”

“Is it going to explode?”

“No, but it may modify its own properties if you wait too long to use it.”

That didn’t sound good. “Modify how?”

“Maybe it’ll stop working. Maybe it’ll turn permanent. I have no way of telling. Alchemy is half science, half magic—and when it’s something like this, all guesswork.” Walther’s shoulders sagged as the last of the glowing liquid trickled into the final jar. He turned to place the beaker gingerly in a waiting basin. Catching my curious expression, he said, “Milk. That should neutralize the potion on the glass, and if I leave it overnight, it’ll be safe to handle.”

“This becomes a more and more exciting adventure.” I finished my coffee, setting the empty cup down on the nearest desk before saying, offhandedly, “Someone tried to flood the Court of Cats with lava. Chelsea was there, but I don’t think she did it.”

“Was anyone hurt?” asked Walther.

“Tybalt was killed, but he got better. Kings of Cats are annoying like that.” The words felt odd. It was odder still to realize that they made total sense to me. “There weren’t any other serious injuries that I saw. I was a little distracted trying to figure out where Chelsea had been.”

“Did you?” asked Quentin.

In answer, I dug out the charm the Luidaeg had provided and held it up, letting him see the way that it was glowing. Then I paused. “Hey. Get yours out. I want to see something.”

Quentin frowned, looking puzzled, but did as he was told. His charm was still dark. I leaned over and tapped it with my own charm. There was a chiming sound, and the charm in Quentin’s hand flared into sudden light. He yelped, nearly dropping it. I made a grab with my free hand, closing my fingers around his before he could let the charm go.

“Careful,” I cautioned.

“What did you do?”

“My charm was already tuned to Chelsea. Touching it to yours passed the tuning along.”

“You could’ve warned me,” he grumbled, giving the glowing charm a mistrustful look before sliding it back into his pocket. “Now what?”

“Now we take what we came for, and we go.” I turned back to Walther. “I swear I’m not trying to be rude, but I have two missing teenagers, and—”

“Two?” interrupted Quentin. “What do you mean, two?”

“Quentin—”

“Why was it so important that Tybalt had to come and see you? The Court of Cats does just fine without our help all the time. Who’s the other missing kid, Toby?”

The cold edge on Quentin’s questions told me he already knew the answer; he just wanted to hear me say it. I sighed. “Raj disappeared when Chelsea tore through the Court of Cats,” I said. “Tybalt thinks he was knocked through the portal she used to leave. He obviously can’t access the Shadow Roads wherever he is, or he’d be back by now. That’s why Tybalt thought I needed to be involved. Because I’m already looking for Chelsea, and Raj is…”

If he weren’t Cait Sidhe, I’d have claimed him as my squire a long damn time ago.

“…my responsibility as much as he is Tybalt’s,” I finished, with barely a pause. “We all know that. This is just making it a little closer to formal.” And when we got Raj back, we were going to make it all the way formal if we possibly could. I was already training both of them. I might as well be allowed to send them both to pick up Chinese food.

Quentin scowled. “We have to get him back.”

“I know.”

“This will help.” Walther stepped between us, holding a disposable Styrofoam cooler. “You have four jars of the dampening solution and four jars of the counter solution. Do not drop this. I don’t think I could handle mixing that stuff again.”

“Noted.” I tucked the Luidaeg’s charm into my pocket and took the cooler. “You do good work,” I said, avoiding the forbidden “thank you.”

“I like a challenge,” he replied, with a small smile. He knew what I wasn’t saying, and he appreciated it.

“Good, because I think we’re going to have plenty of challenges ahead of us. Quentin?” But he was already halfway to the door, not looking back as he made his way out of the room. I cast Walther an apologetic look and followed him. Not only was time something we couldn’t afford to waste, Quentin was the only one who knew where the car was.

Walther walked me as far as his office door and stopped there, waving tiredly as Quentin stalked down the length of the hall and I followed. Soon Walther was out of sight, and soon after that, we were outside and Quentin was charging down a gravel path toward the faculty parking lot.

I didn’t dare run with the cooler full of jars, so I settled for walking as fast as I could. When it became clear that I wasn’t going to catch up with him like that, I stopped, tucking the cooler under one arm as I placed the first two fingers of my now-free hand in my mouth and whistled shrilly. Every visible head—human, canine, and squirrel—turned toward me. Every head but one. Quentin just stopped where he was, hands fisted at his sides, head down.

He stayed there as I walked the rest of the short distance between us. Once I pulled up alongside him, he started to walk again, pacing me.

“We’re going to find him.”

Silence.

“Tybalt wouldn’t have told me Raj was missing if he didn’t think we could help.”

Silence.

“If this is going to interfere with your ability to help me look for Chelsea, I swear by the root and the tree, I will send you back to the house right now.”

Now his head came up, eyes narrowing. The sunlight cast bronze glimmers off the metallic halo of his hair. I remember when he was a cornsilk blond, wide-eyed and innocent, and would never have dreamed of looking at his sworn knight like that. Good times. And I wouldn’t trade a single glare to have them back again.

“You wouldn’t,” he said.

“I would,” I replied calmly. “What’s more, I would make sure May and Jazz were under strict instructions to keep you in the house, no matter how much you argued. So how about you keep on working with me, and we bring them both home?”

Quentin sighed, seeming to deflate. “He’s my best friend,” he said, like he was admitting something strange and surprising.

I blinked. “Yeah. I know. So?”

“So he’s…he’s who he is, and I’m who I am. People like us aren’t friends. We’re passing acquaintances. Maybe. If we’re not busy hating each other all the time.”

“Ah.” Raj was a Prince of Cats; Quentin was the son of some unidentified noble family. They weren’t the sort of people who should have become friends. But they had. I liked to think I had something to do with that, although, if I were being honest, I had to admit that a psychopath named Blind Michael had more to do with it than I did. As a Prince of Cats, Raj had been pretty sequestered until Blind Michael kidnapped him. If that hadn’t happened, we might never have met at all. It’s funny how people can change your life without meaning to. Even the fucked-up, crazy people leave everything different when they go away.

Well, Raj wasn’t getting off the hook that easily. He might be missing, but he wasn’t free of us yet.

We were at the mouth of the faculty parking lot. The Luidaeg’s car was nowhere in sight. I squinted around at the few open parking spots before giving up and turning to Quentin. “Okay, where’d you park?”

“Over here.” He led me to a seemingly empty space under one of the big oak trees that dropped dead leaves and acorns with impunity on the vehicles below it. After glancing around to be sure we weren’t observed, he waved his hand. The brief smell of heather and steel rose around us, and the illusion that had been concealing the car popped like a soap bubble.

“Very good,” I said. Quentin’s illusions had been improving steadily since he finished with the worst parts of puberty and settled in to maturing into an adult Daoine Sidhe. I wasn’t in charge of that part of his education—Daoine Sidhe illusions are so far beyond me that I would have been barely more than useless—but Sylvester was doing an awesome job. I’d have to tell him so, the next time I got the chance.

Normally, Quentin would have taken a moment to preen and look pleased with himself. Instead, he smiled wanly and offered up the keys. “I didn’t want to bother Walther for a parking pass when he was working with dangerous chemicals.”

“Hey, what’s the point of having magical powers if you can’t use them to avoid parking tickets?” I took the keys before handing him the cooler. “Don’t drop this.”

“I won’t,” he said. That seemed to exhaust our possible conversation; we were both silent as we climbed into the car. He put the cooler on the floor, anchoring it between his feet. I fastened my seat belt, stuck the key in the ignition, and started the car. Time for us to go.

We drove away from campus and down Shattuck Avenue in that same frozen silence. Quentin didn’t even turn the radio on—something that was practically unheard of in my experience. I stole a few glances in his direction, but decided not to push the matter. He’d talk when he was ready, and we were both going to need our strength for what was ahead of us.

Possibly sooner than I’d thought. I hit the brakes when I saw the police cars parked outside Bridget’s house. Quentin yelped as he was thrown forward against his seat belt. “Ow! Hey!”

“Sorry. Sorry.” I took a deep breath, steadying myself, and drove on until I saw an open space about halfway down the block, sandwiched between a red sports car and a silver-gray VW station wagon. I eased the Luidaeg’s car up to the sidewalk and killed the engine, not bothering with a don’t-look-here.

Quentin checked the cooler to be sure its contents were intact before twisting in his seat and staring, wide-eyed, at the police cars behind us. “Toby…”

“I saw them.”

“What are they doing here?”

“I think we’re about to find out. Leave the cooler.” I undid my belt, leaning over to open the cooler and pull out one dose of the power-dampener goo. I tucked it into my jacket pocket, ignoring Quentin’s puzzled look, and climbed out of the car. Quentin followed, and together we walked along the sidewalk to Bridget’s house.

The door was standing open. I heard voices as we came up the walkway—Bridget’s and two others, both unfamiliar. The owner of one of those voices appeared as we walked up the porch steps: a frowning, brown-haired man in a Berkeley Police Department uniform.

“Can I help you?”

I forced myself to smile. “Hi—I’m a friend of Bridget’s. She asked me to come over?” Hopefully, the fact that I looked faintly worried despite my smile would work in my favor. Anyone who was actually a friend of Bridget’s would look worried if they found the police in her house. Quentin didn’t say anything, but he stepped closer to me, letting his obvious youth speak for him. He was the right age to be one of Chelsea’s friends from school.

We must not have looked too suspicious, because the officer didn’t reach for his handcuffs. He just shook his head, and said, “Ms. Ames is not prepared for company at the moment. Perhaps you should come back later.”

“Who’s there?” Bridget appeared behind the officer, blinking when she saw me. “October. I wasn’t expecting you until later.”

“I thought you could use a little help.” My eyes flicked to the officer and then back to her. “What’s going on?”

“It’s been long enough since Chelsea disappeared that I can file a credible missing persons report,” said Bridget.

There are times when I think I’ll never understand the human world. Maybe if I’d grown up as a part of it, but now…there’s no way. In Faerie, if a child disappears, you don’t wait forty-eight hours before you move. You go out and you get them back, unless they’ve been taken by something too powerful for you to defeat. And that doesn’t happen often these days.

“What?” asked Quentin, sounding honestly confused.

“Oh,” I said, surreptitiously nudging him with my elbow. He stopped talking. Good squire. “So she’s not sleeping over at Brittany’s house?”

Bridget shook her head. “No, she’s not.”

The officer didn’t ask who Brittany was. It’s a common enough name that it was safe to assume every girl in America knew at least one “Brittany” well enough to sleep over at her house.

“Damn,” I said.

“My thoughts exactly.” She placed a hand on the officer’s arm. “Can we finish taking my statement, Officer Daugherty? October’s been a great comfort to me.” Bridget didn’t blink or hesitate as she lied to the policeman; she kept her eyes on his the whole time, and her tone was steady. She must have been thinking of her excuse since they showed up on her doorstep.

“We can wait on the porch,” I offered.

Bridget shot me a relieved look. Officer Daugherty slowly nodded.

“If your friends don’t mind waiting, I believe we’re just about done.”

“Thank you.” Bridget took her hand off the officer’s arm, turning to me. “I won’t be a minute,” she said.

“Okay,” I replied.

Officer Daugherty didn’t say anything. But he closed the door before he turned away.

Quentin and I retreated to the edge of the porch, sitting down on the low stone wall that separated it from the rest of the yard. “Why did she call the m—” He paused, catching the word “mortal” before it could quite escape his lips.

“Kids can’t just disappear anymore; people notice,” I said, pitching my voice low enough that they wouldn’t be able to hear me inside. “One of Chelsea’s friends probably called them as soon as she went missing. It just took until now for them to take the report seriously.”

Quentin frowned again, clearly not understanding the situation. That was okay. I wasn’t sure I understood it myself. I just knew enough about mortal police work to know that this was all according to procedure.

There are times I really wish I’d joined the police force. I would have access to better materials, more backup, and a hell of a lot more forensic training. Then I realize I’d also be bound by rules like the ones that kept these officers from showing up until Chelsea had been gone for more than a day. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to handle that.

About ten minutes passed before the front door opened and Officer Daugherty emerged, followed by a black-haired female officer. They nodded politely as they passed, but that was the extent of their interaction; either Bridget had managed to really sell the idea that we were friends of hers, or they still weren’t treating Chelsea’s disappearance as a kidnapping. That was probably for the best, at least for them. There was no way they’d be able to follow her into Faerie. Not if they wanted to walk away from this case alive and reasonably sane.

Bridget appeared in the doorway a few seconds later. She beckoned us into the house. Once we were inside, she shut the door and demanded, “What are you doing here?”

“What were the police doing here?” I countered. “We said we’d help.”

“I called them when I was still trying to believe the faeries hadn’t come and carried my little girl away,” she said, glaring at me. “I couldn’t stop them coming in when they finally deigned to show up.”

I took a deep breath, counting to ten before I said, “Okay. I’m sorry they took so long.”

“I’m sorry you took so long!”

Counting to ten wasn’t going to be enough. I was actually grateful when Quentin stepped up next to me, scowling at her, and said, “We had to make sure we could catch Chelsea when we managed to find her. Unless you just wanted us to wave while she went teleporting by? Because we could do that, I guess.”

“Your parents aren’t going to thank me for what I’ve done to your manners,” I informed Quentin, not bothering to hide my amusement. Finally calm enough to turn back to Bridget, I said, “Look. We are doing the best we can. We are calling in every favor and every ally that stands even the slightest chance of helping us out here. But we’re not miracle workers.”

“Then what’s the point of being magical creatures?” asked Bridget, still glaring.

“We get a discount at Starbucks,” I said. “We’re going to find your daughter, Bridget. You need to start believing that, and you need to tell me exactly what she said when she called.”

“She said she was in Seattle.”

Sweet Oberon preserve me from the blindness of mortals. “Yes,” I said. “You told us that. But what, exactly, did she say?”

Bridget took a shaky breath, clearly forcing herself to calm down. Then: “She said she was in Seattle—Seattle, Washington—and she’d managed to get away, but only by going as far as she could in one jump.” There was a quaver in her voice. I couldn’t blame her for that. “She said they were chasing her—”

“Did she say anything about who ‘they’ were?”

“Just that there was more than one person. Not all of them can chase her—that’s how she was able to get away at all. They thought she was asleep and left her with people who couldn’t follow when she opened a door.” Bridget gave me a stricken look. “How many of you are there? I thought Faerie was fading.”

“Sometimes I want to shake J. R. R. Tolkien for that one,” I said. “Faerie never ‘faded.’ That was something Middle Earthy. The citizens of Faerie just got tired of being used for our pots of gold and magic shoes. We disappeared for our own good. There are more of us than you think.” Not as many as there used to be but, from the look on Bridget’s face, a lot more than she was comfortable with.

“So you can take our children whenever you want, and there’s nothing we can do to stop you?”

I took a breath. “I’m going to skip the part where you never told Etienne you were pregnant—which was sort of you taking his chance to be a father away, the way you’ve been afraid Faerie would take your chance to be a mother—and go straight to saying no, there’s not. There never has been. Some fae befriend the mortals; some play tricks on them for fun. Some of us steal children. Some of us get them back. Now, please. Did she say anything else? Anything she might have seen, or smelled…?” Chelsea wasn’t accustomed to being around other fae. The scent of their magic wouldn’t be background noise to her yet.

“She said she was scared.” Bridget straightened. She was still glaring at me. I was starting to think of that as her default expression. “My little girl is scared. If you’re not going to bring her home to me, what good are you?”

The fact that I was being lectured by an angry human woman who’d already hidden a changeling from her fae parent once wasn’t escaping me. I just didn’t know what I could do about it. I looked at Bridget as calmly as I could and said, “If you have information, call. We’ll do whatever we can to be sure that Chelsea is found safely, but we’re not here for you to abuse.”

“Don’t challenge me, Fair One,” she said sharply.

I sighed. “I’ll challenge you all I want. What are you going to do, call the police and tell them the faeries took your kid? You’ll wind up under psychiatric evaluation, and Chelsea will still be missing.”

“I can tell the police you took her.”

The threat was made with absolute calm. I had to pause, considering the nerve it took for her to stand in her living room, with no one to save her if she screamed, and threaten me. She didn’t know what Quentin and I were capable of. All she knew was that we weren’t human. And that didn’t change the part where she was threatening me. One unfortunate downside of my continuing involvement in the mortal world: I’m actually vulnerable to threats in a way that, say, Tybalt isn’t. If the police wanted to come for me, they knew where I lived.

Quentin started to open his mouth. I signaled him to stop before he could say something we’d both regret. Instead, I said, “You could do that. Hell, they might even pick me up, make my life difficult for a few hours. But since there’s nothing to tie me to Chelsea before she disappeared, they won’t be able to hold me. All you’ll manage to do is endanger her further by taking me away from my work and guarantee that when I do find her, I won’t be feeling that charitably toward you. Is that really how you want this to go?”

Bridget’s face fell, bravado dissolving as she started to cry. “I just want my daughter back,” she said. “Please. Please, get me my daughter back.”

I sighed. “I’ve already told you I’ll do what I can. That’s all I can do. And you need to stop treating me like the enemy, okay?”

Mutely, Bridget nodded.

It was hard not to feel bad for her. When I played faerie bride, I always knew my child might not be human enough for the mortal world. The threat of a lifetime spent in the Summerlands was something I considered, seriously, before I slept with Cliff. Bridget didn’t have that. She thought she was going to have her child forever, and once she realized there was a risk—once she realized Chelsea wasn’t human—she took the steps she thought she needed to take in order to protect her daughter.

Reaching a hand into my pocket, I produced the jar of power dampener. “This is why we came. If Chelsea teleports home, dump this on her. It will nullify her powers temporarily—long enough for you to call me and let me come to make things right.”

“It stops fae magic?” asked Bridget, a new light in her eyes as she reached for the jar.

I didn’t give it to her. “Let’s be clear about this. You have one shot. One. If you don’t take it, if Chelsea comes here and you’ve used this stuff for something other than stopping her, you will never see your daughter again. Do you understand? This isn’t a tool you can use to get your revenge. This is a way to save your little girl.”

The light went out again. Bridget nodded. “I understand.”

“Good. Don’t make me regret this.” I placed the jar in her hand before I turned to Quentin. “Let’s go. Bridget, we’ll call you if we learn anything. Until then, don’t do anything stupid.” I paused, a thought occurring to me. “Have you warded your house against the fae? You know, with things like your frying pan?”

“Yes, I have,” said Bridget. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Probably, but you need to take it all down. If there’s any chance you’ve hit on something that works, it’s going to keep Chelsea from letting herself in, and that’s the opposite of what we want.”

“I will,” she said.

“Good. Oh, and Bridget?” Quentin looked at me, bemused. I kept my eyes on Bridget. “If Chelsea comes back, call me. Don’t try to run. We’ll find you. I’m sorry, but you can’t hide anymore. It’s time to deal with all the things you were running away from in the first place.”

I didn’t wait to hear what she would say to that. I simply turned to the door, gesturing for Quentin to follow me, and stepped out into the cool air of the Berkeley morning. Our charms were attuned; Raj was missing; and somewhere, a group of people were working together to keep a changeling girl captive. It was time for us to find out exactly why.