Ashes of Honor

EIGHTEEN

EVERYTHING SMELLED LIKE BLOOD and nothing hurt when I opened my eyes on the star-splashed Annwn sky. The inside of my mouth tasted like blood and bracken—not the most appealing combination ever. I pushed myself to my elbows, trying to swallow the taste away, and realized I was lying on top of something Tybalt-shaped.

“Crap!” I rolled to the side, landing on my ass in the brush. Since nothing hurt, I looked down at myself, doing a quick check for injuries.

Claw marks shredded the front of my shirt, revealing pale strips of skin behind dark brown fabric that had been white when I put it on. My jeans were three shades darker than they’d been earlier, and my head was spinning. I heal fast. These days, I can recover from damn near any injury that doesn’t kill me. That doesn’t make me invincible, and the amount of energy it had taken my body to knit itself back together was clearly taking its toll.

I looked up again. “How long—?”

“I don’t know,” said Tybalt, sitting up and smiling at me. It was a pained, weary expression, but it looked real. “I was unconscious for the first part of it. Before you panic further, my injuries were superficial, unlike yours. Please try not to get yourself gutted again. It’s hard on my heart.” He closed his eyes.

He was lying. I could smell too much of his blood for him to be telling the truth. And there was nothing I could do about it without getting us out of here. “We were both going to get worse than gutted if we didn’t run for—Chelsea!” I scrambled to my feet. My head throbbed, protesting the movement. “Where did she go?”

“Here,” said a meek voice. I spun to see the dark-haired girl with Etienne’s eyes standing waist-deep in the heather, a wary, hopeful look on her face. “Did my mother really send you?”

“Your mother and your father,” I said.

Her eyes widened. “My what?” she squeaked.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best approach. I’m never the most subtle person in the world. Massive physical trauma and blood loss turn out not to help. “Chelsea, look—”

“Are you working with the people who stole me?” she demanded. The smell of her magic was beginning to curl through the air around us.

If she jumped, not only would Tybalt and I be stranded in Annwn until we could find a way out, but we might never find her again. And Tybalt wouldn’t heal like I did. “Chelsea, wait. Please, wait. We’re not with the people who took you, I swear. We’re trying to help.” I pushed my hair back, showing her the point of my ear. “If we were kidnapping you, would I be showing you what I really am?”

“A better question: would she have felt the need to bleed quite so much to lend her claim veracity?” Tybalt climbed stiffly to his feet. At least he could stand. “While my dear companion is occasionally dense, she is rarely stupid to the degree that sort of gesture implies.”

“Nice ‘rarely,’” I said.

He inclined his head. “I felt that truth would be better received than polite falsehood.”

Chelsea giggled. It was a short-lived sound, and when I looked back to her, she seemed faintly stunned, as if her laughter were somehow surprising. She’d lost her glasses somewhere, between the kidnapping and the running away. Without them, her resemblance to Etienne was clear. No one who knew him would be able to look at her and not guess they were related.

“I’m October,” I said. “You can call me Toby. Most people do.”

“I don’t, as a rule,” said Tybalt.

“That’s because you’re not people,” I said. “This is Tybalt. He’s a King of Cats. You can ignore most of the things he says.”

“I would bow, but given my current condition, I fear I would injure myself,” said Tybalt. “It is a pleasure to meet you at last, Miss Chelsea. You have quite a few people direly concerned for your well-being.”

“What—what are you?” The smell of Chelsea’s magic faded. “You’re not like the ones who…you’re not like them.” It was clear from the way she stumbled and stressed her words that she was talking about her kidnappers. “But you’re not human, either. You’re like me.”

“Tybalt’s what we call ‘Cait Sidhe’—the fairy cats. Which explains the attitude. And the eyes.”

“Meow,” said Tybalt, deadpan.

I snorted, and continued, “I’m Dóchas Sidhe.”

“You’re Sidhe?” Chelsea asked. “Mom always said my dad was one of the Sidhe, and they’d come for me if we weren’t careful.” Her face fell. “I guess I wasn’t careful enough.”

“We’re related,” I said, inwardly cursing Etienne—again—for getting involved with a folklore professor. Human folklore gets too much right and too much wrong at the same time. It’s hard to tell people you’re not planning to curse their cows and steal their children when every fairy tale they’ve ever read tells them that’s exactly what you’re planning to do. “Your dad isn’t Sidhe, Chelsea. He’s Tuatha de Dannan, and he’s very worried about you right now.”

Chelsea’s eyes narrowed. “If he’s so worried about me, where has he been my whole life?”

“That’s something you’re going to need to talk to your mother about. Just please, trust me.” I looked to Tybalt. He was still bleeding, but not as much; I hoped that was a good thing. Turning back to Chelsea, I said, “We really appreciate you getting us out of there before, Chelsea. Do you think you could take us somewhere a little less totally deserted? My friend needs medical attention.”

“I didn’t know I was going to get anyone out of anywhere!” she protested. “I don’t even know where I’m going half the time! I just wind up there, and then people grab me, or try to stick me with needles, or tell me they’re my friends and don’t I want them to keep being my friends.” She spread her arms, gesturing to the landscape. “I don’t even know where we are now, but did you see those stars? This isn’t Earth! We’re not on Earth anymore!”

“Annwn,” said Tybalt. “Some call it the land of the dead. Some call it the land of the blessed. Many centuries ago, a part of Faerie called it home.”

Chelsea froze. “We’re in Fairyland?” she whispered.

“You’ve been in Fairyland for a while, Chelsea,” I said. “It has a lot of different parts. The Court of Cats, for one, and the Fire Kingdoms, for another.”

“Is that where all the lava came from?” she asked.

“We wouldn’t call that the Snow Kingdoms,” I said, earning another of her brief-lived smiles. “You’re opening doors deeper and deeper into Faerie, and you have to stop. It’s not safe for you. It’s not safe for anyone.”

“Is that why there’s no one else here?”

“Among other reasons,” said Tybalt.

“I can’t control where we go. Mostly I wind up in places I’ve already been, whether I want to go there or not. We could wind up right back where we were, with those people who were trying to hurt you before.” Her eyes widened again. “Why were they trying to hurt you? What did you do?”

Maeve preserve me from the mood swings of high-strung teenage girls. “We didn’t do anything,” I began. “We…”

“I pursued an association with a woman outside my Court, and some of my subjects took umbrage,” said Tybalt. I stopped talking. He continued, “It is an unfortunate truth of the Court of Cats that we do not, as a rule, play gently with one another. When I did not oblige their request to focus my attentions on them, and them alone, they decided the appropriate course of action would be to depose me, that I might be replaced with someone more agreeable.”

“They tried to kill you because you liked a girl?” asked Chelsea.

Tybalt looked toward me. “Yes,” he said mildly. “They did.”

I reddened. Turning my attention back to Chelsea, I said, “We need to get out of here. Please, can you at least try?”

“We could end up anywhere,” she said miserably. “Totally anywhere.”

I paused. Chelsea hadn’t been coming to find us, but she’d found us all the same, just when we needed a miracle to get us out of the situation alive. She’d managed to take us back to one of the only truly safe, empty places in Faerie. Annwn had no resident monsters, not since Oberon sealed the doors.

And Li Qin, back at Tamed Lightning, bent luck.

“Try,” I said.

Chelsea swallowed. Then she raised her hands, the smell of sycamore smoke and calla lilies gathering around her. When she spread her hands, a circle appeared, apparently cut out of the air. Through it, I could see the lawn at Tamed Lightning, complete with picnic tables and frothy white lace-o’-dreams growing in the grass where you would normally expect to find mortal clover.

“Thank Oberon,” I muttered. “Come on. You, too, Chelsea. There are some people here you should meet, and we can call your mother and let her know that you’re okay.” And I could go out to the car while she was still calm, and get some of Walther’s power-dampening solution before she could jump away again.

We’d found her. We needed to keep her if we possibly could.

Tybalt was first through the portal, largely because I shoved him. He gave me a look that was half amusement, half aggravated dignity and stepped onto the lawn on the other side. I followed. Once I was through, I turned to beckon to Chelsea.

“Come on,” I said.

“Okay,” she replied, and stepped through. I saw her step through. She entered the glowing circle just as Tybalt and I had.

Unlike the two of us, she didn’t emerge out the other side.

The portal remained open for a moment, showing the moon-washed fields of Annwn. In that moment, I smelled apples and snowdrops. Then the portal vanished, leaving us looking at the rear of the company’s main building.

“Well,” I said. “That didn’t work.” Riordan has her. Riordan has her again, and I can’t tell Tybalt, because he needs medical care, and he needs it fast…

“No,” said Tybalt. “It did not.” He grimaced. “Loath as I am to distract from the important business of resuming our wild goose chase, might we find some soap and water first? I need to wash these cuts before I run the risk of infection.”

“We’re finding you a first aid kit,” I said firmly, taking his arm. “Come on. I think there’s one in the cafeteria.” If there wasn’t, April would notice our arrival and come to find out what we were doing back. She could tell me where to find some bandages and antiseptic cream.

There are times I wish Faerie had more healers, or that my particular healing talents extended to people other than myself. Since I still can’t stand the sight of blood, I’m basically useless for anything more involved than smearing Neosporin on a scrape and calling it good.

Tybalt wasn’t quite staggering, but he was close. I tried to tighten my grip on his arm without being too obvious about it. He shot me a sharp look. “I am not going to drop dead on the lawn. It would be crass to die without at least saying hello first.”

“Oddly, not that reassured.” I kept pulling him along. “Samson tried to kill us.”

“Yes,” said Tybalt dryly. “I noticed.”

“No, I mean—he really tried to kill us. Both of us. Not just you, which would be forgivable under the Law.” Succession in the Court of Cats is often fatal. As a consequence, the Cait Sidhe are considered exempt from Oberon’s Law as long as they stick to killing each other. A Cait Sidhe killed by another of his or her kind isn’t considered a murder victim so much as, well…bad timing. If Samson had killed me, on the other hand…“Even if the Queen wanted to hand out fiefdoms and cookies, I’m pretty sure Sylvester would insist on something being done.”

“Among others, yes. You have a surprising number of willing noble patrons. Even so, you must understand…Samson allowed you to be brought into the line of fire not because he thought he could get away with it, but because he didn’t care.” Tybalt’s expression turned grave. “The intent was almost certainly to send us both running into the shadows, where our deaths would go unremarked—and my death would be less likely to reverse itself.” Seeing my bewilderment, he explained, “A King or Queen who dies on the Shadow Roads—not after falling off them, but truly on them—remains dead. The magic that restores us can’t find us in the dark.”

I blinked. “That must have been a fun one to learn.”

“If it were not so, I could never have killed my father.”

My eyes widened before I could stop myself from reacting. Tybalt was a King of Cats. I’d always known what meant—that sometime in the past, he’d killed someone to get his throne—but I’d never really thought about it before. I hadn’t wanted to.

Tybalt shot me a very small, very tired smile. “I’m done with secrets between us, October. If I am asking you to let me court you—and to court me in return—I cannot pretend to be other than I am. I am a King. Kings gain their thrones in certain ways.”

I blinked again. This time, I didn’t have any words to follow the gesture. Admissions of love are one thing. One strange, scary, unexpected, potentially insane thing, but still, they’re self-contained. They can be ignored, if they have to be; they can be politely forgotten by both parties and never spoken of again. It didn’t seem likely, given the circumstances. It was still an option. Courting, on the other hand…

Formal courtship is common among the older purebloods, played at by the younger purebloods, and practically unheard of among changelings. It’s somewhere between the Victorian ideal of calling cards, chaperones, and romantic failure to even hold hands, and the fairy tale ideal of glass mountains, dragon-slaying, and the occasional curse. The whole concept was terrifying.

Tybalt clearly realized he’d managed to unsettle me. His next words made it plain that he didn’t understand why: “I thought you knew what I was.”

“I did,” I said. “I mean, I do. I mean…I don’t know what I mean.” I mean, I don’t know why you’d want to court me. I mean that I don’t know how to court you. I mean that I don’t know whether I want to be courted.

I meant a lot of things. I just didn’t know how to say any of them.

“Please tell me when you acquire the knowledge,” said Tybalt. He stepped away from me long enough to open the door into the next building. His shoulders were squared, and the effort that it took for him to stay upright unassisted was impossible to miss. I ached to help him. I didn’t move. Not until he had the door fully open and was gesturing for me to step inside.

“I will,” I said.

He followed me through the door and didn’t object when I took his arm again, shifting so he could lean on me.

“I promise not to make a habit of this,” he said.

“Tell you what. You don’t make a habit of this, I won’t make a habit of getting myself gutted, how’s that?”

His eyes went to the slashes across the front of my shirt. “I believe I can agree to that.”

“Agree to what?” inquired April, with what sounded like genuine curiosity. We both turned to see her standing a few feet away, head cocked to the side as she waited for our reply.

I frowned. “Why don’t I smell ozone?”

“Answering a question with a question is inefficient,” said April. “You do not smell ozone because I am not functionally here. This is a projection.” Then she smiled—an expression so joyful and sincere that it made my heart ache. She looked like her mother when she smiled like that. “Do you like it?”

“It’s very nice, April. It looks just like you.” April was made of solid light, rather than anything messy like flesh or bone. She’d always been questionably physical. This was just one more step along that illogical progression. “Where are the others, please? Tybalt’s injured, and I need to get someone to help me clean him up.”

“You have also been injured,” noted April. “The amount of blood on your clothing indicates a blood loss of approximately—”

“Please don’t calculate how much of my blood isn’t actually inside my body right now,” I interrupted. “I really, really don’t want to know. Where are Li and Quentin?”

April frowned. “In the cafeteria. I will alert them to your arrival.” She disappeared, as silently and scentlessly as she had appeared in the first place.

“Oh, Tamed Lightning, is there anything you can’t make creepier?” I paused, and added, “Don’t answer that. Come on.”

Tybalt and I walked to the cafeteria in the sort of silence that spoke, very loudly, to the effort he was making to stay on his feet. I wanted to suggest he shift to feline form and let me carry him, but I was afraid if he did that, he wouldn’t have the strength to shift back. Eventually, the bright blue cafeteria door came into view. Quentin pushed it open a second later and held it for us, a worried expression on his face. That expression deepened when he got a good look at my clothes.

“Toby…?” he said, in a small voice.

“I’m okay,” I said. “Could probably use some cookies and orange juice, but I’m okay. Tybalt needs help.”

“I assure you, I am less injured than I appear,” said Tybalt. “I am simply conserving my strength while I recover from the effort of holding October’s intestines inside her body.”

Quentin looked between the two of us, paling. Then he stepped aside. “Li’s getting the first aid kit.” He looked past us to the hall. “Where’s Chelsea?”

“Why would Chelsea be here?” I asked, leading Tybalt into the cafeteria. He was leaning on me harder all the time, and I could smell fresh blood again. He was bleeding somewhere under his clothes from an injury I hadn’t seen. That wasn’t good.

“Because I bent your luck and hers together,” said Li Qin. She was spreading the contents of a first aid kit out on one of the room’s oddly shaped white tables. “She should have gone right to where you were.”

“She did,” I said. “That’s why we’re alive.”

“What?” Li Qin looked up, and paled. “Oh, sweet Titania…”

“Hasn’t been seen in a long time, and wouldn’t help us if she were here,” I said grimly.

“I think I might want to take one of those seats,” said Tybalt, in a thoughtful tone. “They seem pleasant. They seem like a good place to wait while the room stops spinning…”

Then he collapsed.

People in real life never collapse like people in the movies, who always seem to fall like trees, or slump gently into whoever’s trying to support them. Tybalt pitched forward and folded up at the same time, turning from a man who was at least trying not to knock me over into more than a hundred and eighty pounds of dead weight. I yelped, scrambling to get a better grip on him. All I succeeded in doing was cushioning his fall as he bore me down to the cafeteria floor.

“Toby!” squawked Quentin. Li Qin said something in startled-sounding Chinese. Then both of them were next to me, working together to try to pull Tybalt off the floor.

Between the two of them, they were able to lever him off me. I scrambled out from under him, terrified that every move I made was just going to make things worse. He didn’t move. I took off my—his, it was his to begin with, and, oh, Maeve, he couldn’t die on me—took off my jacket and folded it into a pillow, sliding it under his head before fumbling with blood-sticky fingers for his pulse. It was there, but it was nowhere near strong enough for my liking.

“We need a healer,” I said, standing. “This isn’t going to be fixed with aspirin and gauze.”

Li Qin looked sick. “We have no healer. The closest we ever came was Yui, and she…”

“Died the same time January did, I know.” Tybalt wasn’t moving. The closest healer I knew of was Jin, at Shadowed Hills.

Shadowed Hills.

“I’m an idiot,” I said. “Quentin, give me your phone. Mine’s dead.” Quentin fished his phone out of his pocket and tossed it to me. I clicked it open, scrolling to the contacts. As I expected, Shadowed Hills was second on the list.

The phone only rang twice before Etienne picked up, beginning, “Shadowed Hi—”

“I need you to grab Jin and get to Tamed Lightning right now,” I interrupted. “It’s an emergency.”

Etienne hesitated. “October? I don’t…”

“Tybalt’s hurt! Don’t argue with me, just get over here.”

“I can’t run off with the Duke’s personal physician without better reason than a friend of yours being injured.”

“How about he got hurt because we were looking for your daughter, huh?” That wasn’t strictly true. For the moment, it was close enough. Etienne didn’t say anything, and so I pressed on, saying, “There’s no healer here. I can’t drive him to a place where he can get cared for. Duchess Riordan is one of the people who snatched Chelsea, and she has her right now. Now please, get Jin, and get over here.” I glanced at Tybalt. He was so still…“Please. We don’t have much time.”

“Tell Countess O’Leary to open the wards,” said Etienne. Then the line went dead.

I clicked Quentin’s phone shut, handing it back to him. April was nowhere to be seen. I cleared my throat and said, as calmly as I could manage, “April, I need you.”

There was a popping sound, accompanied by the strong smell of ozone, before she said, from behind me, “Yes?”

There was a time when that would have been enough to make me jump. How times have changed. “I need you to open an exception in the wards,” I said, turning to face her. “Sir Etienne is going to be teleporting in, accompanied by an Ellyllon healer. I apologize for inviting them without checking with you first, but it’s an emergency.”

“Ah,” said April. Her gaze went to Tybalt. She frowned. “Is he damaged?”

I nodded, trying to deny the sinking feeling in my chest. “I think he is, yeah,” I said. “Can you please open that exception?”

“Of course,” said April. “I do not want anyone else to leave the local network. We are too sparsely distributed.” Then she was gone, leaving the air to rush back into the place where she’d been standing.

I stayed where I was, eyes going to Tybalt. He hadn’t moved. There was a bloody fingerprint on his cheek that I recognized as my own, standing out in vivid red against the pallor of his skin. Mine. This was my fault. If it hadn’t been for me distracting him, Samson wouldn’t have decided Tybalt was neglecting his Court. Tybalt wouldn’t have been running through the shadows; he wouldn’t have been vulnerable to an attack. He got hurt because of me. This was mine, and I had to own it, just like I had to own what happened to Connor. This was my fault.

“October.” Li Qin touched my wrist. I whipped around so fast I almost hit her; the wind from my motion actually ruffled her hair. She looked at me impassively and said, in a low, firm, tone, “This is not your fault.”

“What—how did you—?”

“I’m not a mind reader, but I spent quite a few years married to the kind of woman who thinks the best way to adopt a daughter is to break the rules of nature. Jan took responsibility for everything that happened within a mile of where she was standing. In the end, I think that’s what killed her.” A flicker of sorrow crossed Li Qin’s face, only to be wiped away by sternness. “You don’t have much in common with her, and that’s for the best—she could never have done the work you do—but you share her fondness for taking blame. You didn’t do this.”

I took a breath, letting it slowly out before I said, “I guess we’ll see about that. I’ll let you know whether it’s my fault or not when we know whether or not he’s going to live.”

“He’s going to be okay,” said Quentin. “He has to. He’s Tybalt. You’d be all weird and irritating if he wasn’t around.”

“Weird and irritating?” I raised an eyebrow. “What gives you that idea?”

Quentin shrugged. “That’s already how you get when he isn’t around.”

The smell of cedar smoke and limes swirled through the air, saving me from needing to reply. I turned to see Jin stepping through a circle in the air, her gauzy mayfly’s wings buzzing anxiously until it looked like she might actually leave the ground from sheer nerves. It wasn’t going to happen—adult Ellyllon are too heavy to fly without using magic—but it was the sort of reflex that told me how little she enjoyed traveling via teleportation portal.

Etienne stepped through behind her, closing the portal with a wave of his hand.

“Where’s the—” Jin began, and stopped when she saw the state of my clothes, her eyes going wide.

Etienne was less restrained. “Maeve’s teeth, October, did you bleed to death and just not notice? You’ve got more blood outside than you have room for inside!”

“Hello to you, too,” I said, too relieved to get annoyed. “Jin…” I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything at all. I just stepped aside, pointing mutely toward Tybalt. He still wasn’t moving.

“Ah,” said Jin softly. Her wings stilled their buzzing as she studied Tybalt, assessing his condition from a distance. She’s been Sylvester’s personal physician for a long time—long enough to see most of the damage that a body can sustain and still survive. So it was more than a little unnerving when she shook her head and said, “You should have called for me sooner.”

My mouth went dry. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying you should have called for me sooner.” She stepped toward me, reaching out to touch my wrist, much as Li Qin had. Unlike Li’s touch, hers sent a wave of serenity washing over me, dimming and dulling my fear. Ellyllon can secrete both sedatives and stimulants through their skin. It’s what makes some of them such great healers, even as it makes the rest of them such great hedonists.

I glared at her, or tried to, anyway. With her artificial calm spreading through my body, the most I could manage was faint peevishness. “Don’t drug me.”

“Would you rather I knocked you out? Because I could do that. And I will, if it looks like you’re going to interfere.” She took her hand away, leaving tingles of chemical peace dancing over my skin. “Etienne, Quentin, get over here. I’m going to need the two of you to help me lift him onto the table. I need him higher.”

“Sure,” said Quentin, moving to join her. Etienne didn’t say anything. He just went.

Li Qin was abruptly at my side, taking my elbow and turning me away from the sight of Jin and her makeshift assistants descending on Tybalt’s unmoving form. “Let’s make some coffee,” she said, soothingly. “Wouldn’t you enjoy that? You like coffee.”

“Yes, I do,” I agreed. My voice sounded distant. I was aware, in an almost academic fashion, that I should be more upset than I was—that I should be doing something to help, not going to fix myself a cup of coffee. Now that Jin wasn’t adding to the calm, I could feel the shape of it in my blood, smooth and foreign. I could remove it if I wanted to. I might not have seen that if I hadn’t been so relaxed, but I was too calm to get in my own way. If I wanted it to stop, it would.

And that was why I couldn’t want it to stop. The only thing I could do to help Tybalt was stay out of the way and let Jin do the job I’d begged her to come to do. If he was going to be saved, she was going to be the one who saved him, not me. Not even a hero can do everything.

Li Qin led me to the coffee maker, where my current serenity turned the process of grinding beans and pouring water into something slow and ritualistic. It was like watching my friend Lily, the Lady of the Tea Gardens, setting up a formal tea service. Only this time, the end result wasn’t going to taste like licking the lawnmower.

“You like strong coffee,” observed Li Qin.

“Don’t sleep much,” I said. “Need the caffeine.”

“Jan didn’t sleep much either. She always said she could sleep once she was dead.” Li’s voice didn’t quaver. She kept watching me, smiling just a little. “I suppose that means she’s well-rested by now.”

“Jan was weird,” I said, pouring coffee into my cup. The part of me that was still aware that insulting a dead woman’s memory might not be a good idea cringed. The fact that Li Qin was Jan’s widow just made it worse.

But Li Qin didn’t seem to mind. Her smile didn’t waver as she agreed, “That’s very true. Everyone in Tamed Lightning is weird, one way or another.”

Living flesh being sliced open makes an unmistakable sound. Raw meat being cut is a kissing cousin, but it doesn’t really compare. Living flesh fights back. It resists in a way that dead things can’t, muscle and bone fighting against the invasion of the knife.

The thick, wet sound of someone being cut open hit my nerves like a cattle prod. I didn’t drop my coffee cup—it would take a lot more than shock, fear, and hope, all mixed into a sick cocktail, to make me drop a perfectly good cup of coffee—but I did go stiff, my fingers locking on the handle until I would have sworn I felt the porcelain bend. Jin’s peace fled as quickly as it had come, chased out of my body by adrenaline and my own rising magic.

“That’s gross,” said Quentin.

“Never become a doctor,” said Jin.

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

“Good,” said Jin, and started to sing.

The Ellyllon songs are strange things. They’re unique every time, because they bend to suit the needs of their subject matter. Ellyllon can sing both harm and healing, and what they can’t sing away, they can at least dull down. Jin kept singing long enough for me to raise my shaking hand, drink an entire cup of coffee without tasting a drop of it, and pour myself a refill.

Jin stopped singing. Silence fell…and in the silence, Tybalt coughed.

“And that’s how you perform home surgery,” said Jin.

I forced myself to move slowly as I put my cup down on the counter, barely registering the suddenly silent Li Qin, and turned around to face them.

The first thing I noticed was the blood, which covered the surface of the white plastic table and pooled on the industrial-blue linoleum floor. The second thing, oddly enough, was the glitter. A thick haze of silver and green glitter shimmered in the air around them, making them look like they were having a small, quiet, horror-movie-themed rave. Etienne and Quentin were standing on the far side of the table that Tybalt was lying on. Jin was standing in front of the table, blood coating her arms to the elbows, soaking into her shirt, and even covering the bottom half of her face.

And Tybalt, for all that he still looked pale and unwell, was struggling to sit up, eyes open, and looking back at me.

“Massive internal bleeding,” said Jin, tilting her chin up so that she was talking to no one in particular. “Damage to the liver and spleen. Three broken ribs, one of which managed to puncture a lung, which, let me tell you, takes talent. Also a cracked femur—shouldn’t have been walking on that—and a pretty severe concussion. Congratulations. It’s a nice, macho death, which nobody gets to die today.”

“For that, I thank you,” said Tybalt, swinging his legs over the edge of the table, gripping it hard for balance as he stood.

Jin glared at him. He was more than a foot taller than she was, but she still managed to look imposing as she gestured for him to sit back down. “No walking! No standing, no bending, no moving, no accessing the Shadow Roads, nothing. You don’t swim for an hour after eating, you don’t swan around like an idiot for an hour after narrowly avoiding death.”

“Toby does,” said Quentin.

“Toby is genetically predisposed to swan around like an idiot,” Jin shot back. “Now sit.”

“Must everyone behave as if I am some sort of hound?” asked Tybalt. Still, he moved to the nearest chair and sat. “I simply wished to reassure October that my condition was improved.”

“She can see you. She has eyes. There is no reason for you to be on your feet.”

“Elliot is going to be furious when he sees the condition of the cafeteria,” supplied April. I didn’t need to look to know that she was behind me. “That is a perfectly valid reason to be on your feet and potentially running away.”

I didn’t say anything. I just kept looking at Tybalt.

Li Qin put a hand on my shoulder, nudging me forward. “You’re not the one who’s not allowed to move,” she said.

It only took me four long steps to cross the stretch of floor between me and the chair where Tybalt was seated. Jin moved out of the way. The blood on the linoleum made it slippery, and when my feet started to go out from underneath me, I let them, hitting the floor on my knees. Somehow, in the course of the motion, I managed to get my arms around him. Jin had objected to him standing, but she didn’t object to this. He closed his arms around me in turn. I buried my face against his blood-soaked shoulder, struggling to keep my breath steady.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “If you hadn’t called them here…thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” I whispered back.

My jeans had almost dried while I waited for Jin to finish working on Tybalt. Now, they were getting soaked again, becoming heavy with blood. The feeling of it congealing against my skin was what made me let go and climb to my feet. I rested one hand on Tybalt’s shoulder, like I was afraid he’d disappear if I let go for too long. And maybe I was.

“Chelsea was here,” I said, turning to Etienne. His eyes widened. There was a smear of blood on his forehead, spoiling his normally immaculate appearance. Oddly, that just made him look more like his daughter. Blood will tell. “She’s the reason Tybalt and I survived long enough to get here. We were attacked in Berkeley. We were just about done for when she teleported in, and we managed to get her to bring us back here.”

“Is she…is she hurt?” asked Etienne.

“She’s scared, and she’s running, but she wasn’t injured that I could see. She’s definitely teleporting without any problems.” Teleporting, and tearing her way through doors that were supposed to have been locked centuries ago. “She brought us back by way of Annwn. I think she’s starting to wear some seriously thin patches in the walls of the world.”

“What?” asked Jin. She looked from me to Etienne, her wings beginning to vibrate rapidly again. “What are you two talking about?”

“A Tuatha changeling—” began Etienne, then stopped when he saw my glare. He took a breath, and started again: “My daughter, Chelsea, is missing. Her human mother reported her disappearance to me, and I retained October to locate her. Unfortunately, there have been complications.”

“You involved Toby. Of course there have been complications. If you don’t want complications, you buy her a bus ticket and send her to Vancouver to buy those coffee-flavored candy bars they have in Canada.” Jin said this in an almost distant tone, as if her mouth were keeping itself busy while her brain tried to process what it had just heard. “What do you mean, your daughter?”

“Bridget,” said Etienne.

Jin’s eyes widened. “You got the folklore professor pregnant? Are you an idiot?”

“See, that’s what I said.” I blinked, leaning back against the table as a wave of dizziness hit me. “Whoa. Why is the room spinning?”

“Probably because you lost enough blood to count as exsanguination in a mortal hospital, and your body’s going crazy trying to rebuild itself,” said Jin. Her gaze turned accusingly toward the slashes in my shirt. “Did you decide to test just how indestructible you really are?”

“Yup,” I said, as lightly as I could. “It turns out that I’m pretty damn indestructible. Me and cockroaches.”

April appeared next to me in a haze of ozone and sparks. She had a bottle of orange juice in one hand and a pack of Twinkies in the other. “These will improve your current condition.”

“Awesome,” I said, taking my snack from her. My fingers were so bloody that it was impossible to avoid getting at least a little bit on my Twinkies. I did my best to ignore that as I crammed the first one into my mouth.

“While my dear October is preoccupied with restoring herself to a semblance of normalcy, if I may: Chelsea has been to Annwn at least twice. She opened a gateway into the Court of Cats. Her jaunts are becoming no less impossible with repetition.”

“And the shallowing is becoming unstable,” added Li Qin. “We’ve had at least five microquakes today that weren’t mirrored in the mortal world.”

“Seven, to be more precise,” said April. “I do not know how much longer I can maintain structural integrity of the grounds. We may need to evacuate for the sake of our own safety.”

I blinked, swallowing my mouthful of Twinkie before I asked, “How can you evacuate? Isn’t your main server inside the shallowing?”

“It is,” confirmed April. “I can survive on backup power for up to nine days before I encounter permanent systems failure. I am more concerned about our data storage and the employees in the basement, who cannot be moved into a mortal environ without raising questions we will be unprepared to address.”

“Employees in the…oh.” I stopped talking, turning my attention to my orange juice instead. It seemed safer, or at least a little less macabre.

The murders at Tamed Lightning two years ago weren’t the normal kind of killings. All the victims were purebloods, and they were killed in a way that meant the night-haunts wouldn’t come for their bodies. Faerie flesh doesn’t decay. The last time I’d been to Tamed Lightning, all the victims save one—January, who hadn’t been killed like the others, and whose body had been burned—were still in the basement, waiting for April to put together the necessary pieces and find a way to bring them back.

“Um, ew,” said Quentin, clearly following the same train of thought as I was.

“It would cause complications with the mortal authorities if we were to remove them,” said April, seemingly oblivious to the fact that other people might find a basement full of dead people creepy. “This is aside from the fact that they are presently unable to conceal their fae natures, you understand.”

“Right,” I said, and stuffed the second Twinkie into my mouth to save myself from needing to come up with anything else to say.

“Now that Toby isn’t on the verge of collapsing, can someone please tell me how Etienne’s daughter was able to open a door to Annwn? Does Sylvester know about this?” Jin paused and answered her own question: “Of course Sylvester doesn’t know. If he knew, he’d be here making sure you idiots didn’t get yourselves killed. Good job on that, by the way.”

I swallowed without chewing, grateful for the spongy nature of Hostess products. “Etienne said he was going to tell him.”

“I am,” said Etienne. “I just found out Chelsea existed. I wanted to have her safely recovered before I went to His Grace with the news.”

“This is a whole new level of ‘better to beg forgiveness,’” said Jin. “Annwn? Really?”

“Turns out Chelsea didn’t inherit the blocks that keep most Tuatha from using too much power and blowing themselves up,” I said grimly, digging the Luidaeg’s Chelsea-chaser out of my pocket. It was glowing a serene white, caught in its neutral state. “Quentin and I each have one of these. The Luidaeg gave us these to track Chelsea down. So far, we’ve managed to get to where she’s been a few times, but we only wound up where she was once, when Li bent our luck to bring us all together.”

“An endeavor for which I am very grateful, as it no doubt saved both our lives.” Tybalt took the hand I had left resting on his shoulder, lacing his fingers with mine as he stood. “The fact remains that she is loose, somewhere, she is afraid, and she is doing a great deal of damage.”

“I think we’re all on board with the idea that we need to find Chelsea and get her to stop punching holes in things,” I said. “We’re not covering enough ground.”

Etienne frowned, sudden resolve washing over his face. “I will stay,” he said.

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I will remain with you. I can’t ask you to do this for me and not be willing to help—or do you think having another teleporter won’t be an asset? You have a mechanism for tracking my daughter. I am a mechanism for following her if she opens a door while you’re in pursuit.” Etienne’s frown deepened. “If you’re concerned about getting paid—”

“If you finish that sentence, I’ll have to hit you, so how about you don’t?” I shook my head. “We’re glad to have you. We need all the help we can get, especially since Riordan—”

I was interrupted as the shadows behind the nearest vending machine rippled like a black muslin curtain, and Raj stepped into the room, a revolver in his hands. He leveled it on Tybalt before any of us had a chance to react. “Hello, Uncle,” he said. “I’m here to kill you now.”

Oh, this day just got better and better.