Chimes at Midnight

NINE

MY COFFEE WAS HOT AND STRONG and gone by the time we’d traveled the five steps between the coffee shop and the bookstore. Tybalt plucked my empty cup from my fingers, replacing it with his own, which was still full. I blinked at him. He smiled.

“I did not ‘profane’ the coffee with milk or sugar, much as I would have liked to,” he said. “Unlike you, I am capable of functioning without artificial stimulants.”

“I like artificial stimulants,” I protested. “They usually mean nobody’s trying to kill me. Unlike the natural kind.”

Tybalt laughed. I took advantage of the pause to study the front window of the bookstore, where a display of books about robots was arranged alongside a sign advertising the store hours. Inside, tall bookshelves were the order of the day. A woman almost pale enough to be nocturnal stood behind the register, a red kerchief tied over her near-black hair. She glanced up, saw me looking in, and smiled in the tired but welcoming way of early morning shopkeepers everywhere.

Tybalt stepped up next to me. “Have you any idea what comes next?”

“Yeah.” I took a long drink of coffee. I actually tasted it this time. “We go inside.”

The bookstore was even quieter than the café, probably because it didn’t hold as many people. The hardwood floors were older, softened by worn Oriental rugs, and classic rock played from somewhere behind the counter. The woman was still smiling at us.

“Welcome to Borderlands,” she said. “Let me know if I can help you find anything.”

She sounded like a California native. I smiled back and raised my coffee cup, using the action to mask opening my mouth and breathing in a brief taste of her heritage. Human. I lowered the cup. “Actually, maybe. My sister was here recently, and she said she was supposed to get a call from a lady who works here? Um . . . her name was Arlene or Denise or . . . something, I don’t know. My sister’s not too organized.”

To my relief, the woman grinned. “I’d be willing to bet you’re looking for Ardith. Give me a second. I’ll see if she’s ready to start her shift.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said. I’m technically allowed to thank humans. That doesn’t stop it from feeling weird. I avoid it when I can.

“Just be glad you came in early—Ardith helps open, and then she’s gone until late afternoon,” said the woman. She moved out from behind the counter, heading toward a door at the back of the room and vanishing through it.

Her motion, meanwhile, had startled the store’s cat, which had been curled unseen on one of the chairs behind the counter. It leaped up next to the register, where it crouched, wrapping its tail around its legs, and considered us with eyes the color of Midori liqueur.

Tybalt recoiled, horror and shock in his face. “What,” he demanded, “is that?”

“It’s a cat,” I said. There was a sign next to the register. “It says her name is Ripley. She’s a Sphinx. They’re hairless cats from Canada. Huh. Who’d have thought hairless cats would come from Canada?” I gave the cat another look. “I wonder if I should get one for Quentin.”

“It’s naked,” said Tybalt.

He was right: the cat was almost completely hairless, with only a few stubby, half-curled whiskers and some patches of fuzz on her toes and tail. Her skin was pink blotched with black and orange, like part of her remembered, deep down, that she was supposed to be calico. She was still watching us. I’d been around Tybalt and my own cats long enough to interpret her expression as a smirk.

“She’s pretty, in a weird, alien life-form, probably steals souls in the night kind of way,” I said. I held out a hand. Ripley sniffed it with the expected gravitas before deigning to butt her forehead against my fingers. “I think she likes me.”

“Delightful,” grumbled Tybalt.

“You don’t get worked up over Manx cats.”

“Missing a tail is nothing like missing all your hair,” said Tybalt primly.

I snorted laughter, and took another drink of coffee. That was all I had time for before an unfamiliar voice from behind us said, “Oh, you met Ripley. She’s granting you a great favor, you know. She doesn’t always let first-timers see her. Now what’s this about a sister?”

This time, when I tasted the air to feel out the heritage of those around us, I got more than just Dóchas and Cait Sidhe. The flavor of Tuatha de Dannan overlaid them both, strong and very, very close. Lowering my coffee, I turned. Tybalt turned with me.

The voice had come from what looked like a perfectly normal shop girl. She was wearing jeans, and a black shirt with red cap sleeves and the store’s logo printed across the chest. Each of her ears had been pieced three times, something that was easy to notice, since we were almost the same height. Her eyes were two different colors, one brown, one so blue it was almost disconcerting, and her hair was chestnut brown, worn long. Her bangs overhung her eyes, and her skin was even paler than mine. She was looking at us with cheerful curiosity, like she couldn’t wait to help with our question, and for a moment I hated myself for coming here to drag this girl back into the world she’d clearly walked away from when her father died. I knew all too well what it was to have people putting their expectations of your parents onto your shoulders. It wasn’t fair of us to come here and ask this of her.

It wasn’t fair for the Queen of the Mists to bring goblin fruit into the city. It wasn’t fair for me to be exiled from my home. The Luidaeg was right: Faerie isn’t fair. Maybe it was never meant to be.

“There’s no sister,” I said, talking fast to get the words out before the human clerk came back. “Well. I have a sister, but she’s never been here. None of us have. Your charms made sure of that, Your Highness, and I know they’ve kept you safe for a long time, but it’s time to stop hiding. Your Kingdom needs you.”

Her eyes widened. Then they narrowed, taking on a calculating cast as she looked from me to Tybalt and back again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now please leave, or I’ll tell Jude you’re harassing me, and she’ll call the police.”

“Princess.” Tybalt’s voice was a slow rumble. She turned to him, expression melting toward confusion. He has that effect on most women, including me. “I knew your father. He was a good man, and he equipped you with the means to hide yourself for good reason. I was a reluctant Prince, in my own time, and I know the terror of the throne. I claimed mine when to do otherwise would have been to fail my people. Can you owe your people any less?”

“I don’t know who you people are or what you want, but you need to leave,” she said. “Now.”

The store was still empty, and Jude hadn’t reappeared. I decided to push things a little farther before giving up. I took a breath, and said, “Your name is Arden Windermere. Your father was King Gilad Windermere. I don’t know where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing since he died, but the Mists needs you. I need you.” I reached into my jacket pocket, relieved when the firefly inside responded by climbing onto my fingertip.

The firefly’s glow brightened as I pulled it out into the open air of the shop. It rose on only slightly-battered wings to fly to Arden, hovering in front of her startled eyes for a moment before doing a loop around her head and finally landing on her chest like a strange, living jewel.

“We don’t have the wrong girl,” I said.

Arden looked down at the firefly clinging to her shirt. Then she looked up again, sorrow and despair warring in her eyes. “Don’t do this,” she begged. “Whoever you are, whatever you want, don’t do this. Leave. Walk away. Don’t make me refuse you again.”

“We can’t,” I said. “But if you’d like to talk about it in private, we’d be happy to listen.”

Her expression sharpened, turning almost feral. It was the sort of wary, assessing look I’d seen on the face of every child Devin had ever brought Home, the kind of look that knew there was no help coming. “How do I know you’re not working for her?”

There was no question of who Arden meant when she said “her”: a Princess hiding in her own kingdom would have no need to refer to anyone with that much bitterness unless she was talking about the person who held the throne that should have been hers. “The Queen of the Mists hates me more than just about anyone else,” I said. “Maybe she hates you more, if she knows you exist, but I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m not her creature. If you need proof of that, well. She banished me last night. I have three days to get out of the Kingdom.”

“I am a King of Cats,” said Tybalt. “My loyalty is first to my people, second to my lady, and lastly to myself. The Kings and Queens of the Divided Courts have no power over me.”

Arden shook her head. Then she turned to the office and shouted, “Jude, I need to spend some more time with these folks, okay? Tell Madden I’ll be downstairs if he needs me.”

“Okay . . .” Jude’s answering call sounded dubious. Arden clapped a hand over the firefly on her chest just before the mortal woman emerged from the back room, wrapping her fingers around it. She put her hand behind her back, offering Jude a sickly smile. Jude blinked and then frowned, giving us a suspicious look. “Ardith? Is everything okay?”

“I’m fine. I just have the things I promised to give to her sister downstairs.” Arden shot me a panicked look as she realized she didn’t know what to call me.

“I’m October, by the way,” I said, to Jude. I tried to make it look like a normal introduction. I probably failed.

Tybalt, naturally, was cool as ever. “Rand,” he said, smiling. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“Uh-huh,” said Jude. She was looking more suspicious by the second. “Ardith, are you sure you don’t want me to keep your friends company up here while you go get whatever you need from the basement?”

“I’m sure,” Arden said. “Just tell Madden where I am.”

“Right.” Jude stepped behind the counter. Her smile did not reappear.

“Come on.” Arden gestured for us to follow her with the hand that wasn’t full of firefly. She led us to a small door near the front of the shop and opened it, revealing a narrow flight of stairs descending beneath the building. She started down, leaving us no choice but to follow. Tybalt went last, and closed the door behind himself, cutting the light to almost nothing. Only almost: the firefly in Arden’s hand was glowing brighter than ever. The light seeped through her fingers, lessening the darkness just enough to make it navigable to fae eyes.

Arden didn’t speak as she walked down the stairs to the basement below. It was a large, cavernous room that appeared to exactly mirror the bookstore over our heads. Support pillars broke up the space, explaining why several hundred paperbacks weren’t crashing down on our heads. Everything smelled of fresh sawdust and old dampness, the clean kind that naturally built up underground. It spoke of growth and potential, not decay.

“Shield your eyes,” Arden said, and flicked a switch on the wall. Bulbs came on overhead, almost blinding after the darkness. She opened her hand, letting the firefly free, and released her human disguise in the same motion.

Her magic smelled like redwood bark and blackberry flowers. Her hair was the color of blackberries, so black it was virtually purple, with strange, glossy undertones. Her eyes stayed mismatched, but instead of brown and blue, they were polished pyrite and shifting mercury silver. No wonder a somewhat alien blue had been the best she could do. Those were eyes designed to resist concealment. Her ears were delicately pointed, and her bone structure had changed subtly, but those things were almost afterthoughts. Nothing human had those eyes.

She glared at us as the firefly circled her head and came to rest once more on her chest. “Who sent you?”

“The Luidaeg.” I pulled the flask of fireflies out of my jacket pocket, holding it up. Arden gasped. “She thought we might have trouble finding you, so she gave us these.”

Arden’s surprise quickly faded into wariness. “I don’t believe you.”

“Of course you don’t.” I tucked the flask away again as I released my human disguise. I smelled pennyroyal, and knew without looking that Tybalt was doing the same thing, both of us trying to convince our reluctant Princess that we meant her no harm. We didn’t look like the Queen’s guards. I was wearing an increasingly dingy ball gown, and Tybalt was the wrong species. “We haven’t been properly introduced. My name is Sir October Daye, Knight of Lost Words, in service to Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills.” I didn’t identify my race. The human in my background would be easy enough for her to see, and for the moment, it was better if I didn’t try to explain the situation with my mother.

For once, my name brought no flicker of recognition or reminder of things I hadn’t necessarily intended to do. Arden just frowned, and said, “I remember Duke Torquill. He was a nice man.”

“He still is.”

“I am Tybalt, King of the Court of Dreaming Cats,” said Tybalt. “I knew your father.”

“So you said, but what makes you sure he was my father?” Arden focused her frown on him. It was a bit of a relief to see her glaring at someone else. “I never said I was your girl. Maybe I just took you guys down here because I didn’t want you talking crazy in front of Jude. She doesn’t know.”

“That’s good; mortals shouldn’t,” I said. “You didn’t have to say it. The fireflies know.”

“You have your father’s eyes,” added Tybalt. “It’s no wonder you had to work so hard to hide yourself. Anyone who knew the King would have looked at you and known you for his child. I am so sorry for your loss.”

Those words seemed to seal any hope Arden had that we could be convinced she was really Ardith, bookstore clerk, and not Arden, Princess in the Mists. Her face crumpled, tears springing up in her mismatched eyes. “No one said that to us,” she said. “No one knew how much we’d lost. Father was gone, and Mother . . .”

Understanding hit me. There was an element we’d missed, someone who should have either whisked the children safely out of the Kingdom or backed their claim to their father’s throne. “What happened?”

“She was one of his servants at the Court,” said Arden. She sniffled. “It was how they made sure no one was suspicious about them spending time together. It was like a game they played. They made sure we knew the rules, so we wouldn’t get mad at Father for refusing to acknowledge her, or mad at Mother for letting him ignore her. It was even fun, sometimes, when she brought us to the Court and made us wear disguises and pretend we were changelings, or servant-children, or fosters. We learned about hiding.” She reached up, touching the corner of her silver-mercury eye, and added, “We had a nursemaid to spin our illusions for us, back then. We didn’t have to depend on our own.”

“That makes sense,” I said, not wanting to interrupt the flow of her story, but not wanting her to think I wasn’t listening.

“When the earthquake came . . . things were falling everywhere. Nolan’s leg was hit when some rocks came out of the wall. I went running, looking for Mother. We weren’t supposed to talk to her when we were at Court. I broke the rules.” For a moment, her expression was a child’s, filled with the quiet conviction that breaking the rules somehow caused everything that followed. “The earthquake was still happening. I found her in one of the bedchambers, where she’d been changing the sheets. She was already . . .” She closed her eyes. “She was gone.”

I blinked. “Wait. She was dead? Did something fall and hit her?” Some of the chandeliers I’d seen in noble knowes could crush an adult, if the chandelier was falling and the adult was unlucky.

“No.” Arden opened her eyes. “Her throat was slit. She was murdered. My father was, too. There’s no way he died in the quake. He was Tuatha de Dannan. He was a King. He would have died saving his people, if he died at all. Instead, they said he was crushed. Just crushed. That’s not possible. That’s not my father. Someone killed them, and they would have killed Nolan and me if Marianne—our nursemaid—hadn’t taken us away before anyone realized who we were. So, yes, you found the missing Princess in the Mists. Now please, save my life, and leave.”

“Oh, oak and ash,” I whispered. People had always suspected that King Gilad was assassinated: Oleander de Merelands was in the Kingdom at the time, and her presence combined with his death was too convenient to ignore. This was as close as we could get to proof without questioning the night-haunts. Arden had been orphaned, and her parents had been murdered. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago,” she said—but her tone made her words into lies. Her voice was shaky and raw, like the deaths had happened only days before. She’d been deferring her grief over a century, and grief deferred can turn toxic. “But that’s why you have to leave. You can’t be here. You can’t ask me to claim the throne. I have nothing left to lose.”

I paused, a sudden thought striking me. Arden wasn’t an only child. Her brother, Nolan, might not have been Crown Prince, but he was with her during the earthquake, and he went with her into hiding. So why was she only asking us to save her life by leaving? “Arden, where’s your brother?” I asked.

“You’re very young, aren’t you?” Her reply seemed nonsensical until she continued, saying, “You think you’re the first ones to track me down. Like that could happen. Our parents did their best, but there were always rumors. The lost Prince. The missing Princess. It was a fairy tale waiting to happen, and you know how we love our fairy tales.” She spun on her heel, stalking toward the back of the basement. After four steps, she paused, looking back, and demanded, “Well?”

“We’re coming,” I said, exchanging a glance with Tybalt. We walked after her, approaching the rear wall.

The closer we got, the stranger it looked. It was like someone had painted a perfect replica of the actual wall, and then hung the picture in place, using it to hide the fact that the room wasn’t all there. Arden slipped her hands into a fold in the air, pulling the illusion open like a heavy canvas curtain. It was a gesture much like the one Tybalt used when he was accessing the Shadow Roads, but with less natural ease: this wasn’t her spell.

“Marianne’s work,” she said, holding the illusion open for us. “She was Coblynau. She left us with everything she knew we’d need, and then she disappeared.”

That explained the quality of the illusion. Tuatha de Dannan are passable illusionists, but they’re barely in a league with the Daoine Sidhe, much less the masters. Coblynau are good, and more, can bind their spells into objects. That long-gone nursemaid saved her charges’ lives with the things she’d given them. She had to know it, too. It was the only reason someone who loved the children she was tasked to protect would have left them. Her presence was a danger, and her gifts were the shield her body couldn’t be.

We stepped through the curtain. Arden followed us through, letting the illusion fall closed again. Viewed from inside, it really was a curtain, a heavy canvas sheet with a slit cut down the middle. A narrow slice of the basement showed through the gap. Arden pinched it closed, sealing us inside.

The space on the other side of the illusion was small, about the size of my bedroom back at the old apartment. A bunk bed was flush with the basement wall. The bottom bunk was a welter of sheets and handmade quilts, and a reading lamp was set up there, gooseneck bent toward the piled-up pillows. Mismatched bookshelves lined the walls, piled with books, DVDs, even VHS and Betamax tapes. There was a stereo system and a television, which was on, quietly playing an episode of some television drama that I didn’t recognize. There hadn’t been any sound from the other side of the curtain.

A heavy wardrobe took up almost a quarter of the living space, made from what looked like redwood, with a pattern of blackberry vines and dragonflies carved into the doors. It was the nicest piece of furniture in the room, and as such, it immediately caught and held our eyes. It also raised the question of exactly how much Arden could transport when she teleported. That thing had to weigh two hundred pounds, easy.

She followed my gaze and scowled. “It was my mother’s,” said Arden. “You wanted to know why I don’t want your help reclaiming my throne? Tempting as the idea sounds? Come here.” She walked to the bunk bed, where she stepped onto the lower bunk, holding the upper rail in both hands. I walked after her, and at her silent urging, climbed the ladder so I could see what she was looking at.

In a way, I already knew what I’d see. But some things must be seen in their own time, and in their own way; some things can’t simply be said. As I looked down at the sleeping body of Prince Nolan Windermere in the Mists, I knew that this was one of those things. He looked almost enough like Arden to have been her twin. He had the same blackberry hair, and the same faintly olive Tuatha skin. His clothing was out of date, making him look like he’d just stepped out of a production of The Great Gatsby.

“Nolan didn’t like what that woman had been doing to our father’s Kingdom,” Arden said. “He wanted us to come forward during the War of Silences, but we were too young to rule, and we were so afraid. I convinced him to wait a little longer, and see if she’d get better. Maybe she’d turn into the kind of Queen our father wanted me to be, and then it wouldn’t matter that the throne wasn’t mine. As long as someone was caring for the Mists, it would be all right.”

“But she didn’t,” I said quietly.

“No. She got worse, and after Silences, she started changing the rules. Our father was never a great advocate for changeling rights,” the look she cast my way was almost apologetic, “but he believed they were a part of Faerie, and they deserved to be treated fairly. When he was alive, Oberon’s Law was applied to the changelings of his Kingdom. He let them hold titles, as long as they never aspired to claim anything greater than a Barony. He was . . . he was fair.”

I stared at her for a moment before looking back down at Nolan. “That’s not the world I grew up in,” I said.

Tybalt’s hand landed on my shoulder, squeezing once. I descended the ladder, putting my hand over his and holding him there as Arden began speaking again.

“Father maintained ties with the Undersea and the Sky Kingdoms. He insisted we treat the Cait Sidhe with respect, because Oberon wouldn’t have given them dominion over themselves if they weren’t worth respecting. He did all those things, and she did none of them. I was scared. Marianne—our nursemaid—was so clear about how important it was for us to hide, and I’d seen Mother’s body. Nolan never did. He wanted us to come out of hiding. He wanted us to take back what was supposed to be ours. He wasn’t scared.” From her tone, she wished he had been.

“What happened?” I asked.

“He said we had to go to the false Queen and demand our Kingdom back. I told him he was being foolish, that all he’d do was get us both killed. But Nolan never listened to a word he didn’t want to hear. He slipped out of the boarding house where we were living while I was at work. The pixies led me to him two days later. He was in the bushes in Golden Gate Park, with the arrow still in his chest. They’d used it to leave a note.” A tear ran down her cheek, falling onto the pillow next to Nolan’s head. It probably wasn’t the first.

“What did it say?”

“That I was lucky they’d only used elf-shot; that if they saw either of us, ever again, they wouldn’t be so merciful.” She looked up again, eyes hardening. “They would have killed him. I know they would have killed him. But they needed me to know I’d be a fool to stand up to them.”

“No,” I said. “I’m sorry, Arden, but no. They didn’t need you to know. They weren’t being merciful. They needed you to be afraid. If they’d really wanted to show you that you were too weak to defeat them, they would have killed your brother. They left him alive because they wanted you scared, not angry. The War of Silences happened in the 1930s, and judging by his clothes, that’s how long he’s been asleep. That means he’ll wake up soon. Do you want to tell him they won? That they made you sit out the fight because they told you bad things would happen if you didn’t?”

Arden looked at me solemnly. Then she looked down at her brother, reaching out to wipe an imaginary smear of dust away from his cheek. “Father did everything he could to protect us,” she said.

“It’s time for you to pay him back,” I said. “It’s time for you to protect his Kingdom.”

“Your Kingdom,” said Tybalt.

Arden shook her head. “We’ve been safe because we’ve been invisible. We have no allies. We have no resources. My brother’s been elf-shot. Where could we possibly go?”

I blinked. And then, slowly, I smiled. “Princess,” I said, “I know someone who would very much like the opportunity to meet you.”