Chimes at Midnight

TWENTY-TWO

DRIVING AWAY FROM THE HOUSE and leaving Quentin and Jazz behind was one of the hardest things I’d done all week. I sat in the backseat with May, twisting around in my seat so that she could apply Neosporin and strips of gauze to my scraped-up palms. Her fingers were trembling, and she kept stealing glances through the rear window, watching as our house receded into the dark. I felt a pang of guilt. As hard as it was for me to leave my squire behind, leaving her girlfriend had to be even harder for her.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I said.

“Hmm?” May’s attention focused on me. For a moment, it was like she wasn’t even seeing me; she was still looking back, watching one more life fade into the distance. Then she shook her head, mustering a smile, and said, “I’m glad you asked me to be. I’ve been feeling sort of left out lately.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I mean, I’m your death omen. I don’t exactly have the right to demand to be a part of your life.” We pulled up in front of Borderlands, visible now that Arden was with us. She hopped out, trotting toward the darkened storefront. May tracked Arden’s movements, her smile fading. “She really does look just like her father. It’s weird. I never thought I’d see those eyes again.”

If we survived this, May could tell Arden what she remembered about King Gilad; Arden was going to find out where Fetches came from eventually, if she didn’t already know. It occurred to me that I didn’t have any idea what she did or didn’t know about Faerie. She’d been young when she went into her self-imposed exile, and her education seemed to have been centered on keeping herself and her younger brother safe. How much time would that have left for learning how everything else in our world worked? We might be putting a completely unprepared woman in charge of one of the largest regional Kingdoms in the Westlands . . . and to be entirely honest, I didn’t care. Ignorant or not, Arden was smart; she could learn. And anything would be an improvement over the Queen we were living under.

“Did you know him?” I asked.

“Yeah.” May sunk down in her seat. “I wasn’t him, or anything—that would be too weird—but I was one of his servants, or I remember being one of his servants, a little. She’s patchy. Too many other memories overwrote hers. But I remember seeing Arden in the halls. She was always so serious. She and her brother haunted the knowe like little ghosts. They were so sad, and Gilad would never talk to them when he knew anyone else was around.”

“But that didn’t always include the servants,” I guessed.

May shook her head. “No. He was a good man, but he was still a King, and Kings sometimes forget that servants are people. We knew who she was, and we all kept his secret, because we understood why it was important.”

The cab door opened, and Arden slid into the backseat, forcing May to move into the middle. “The secret is out now,” she said. We looked at her guiltily before May turned to resume bandaging my hands, trying to act like she’d been doing that all along.

“Arden—” I began.

“I heard enough,” she said, cutting me off. “I’m not going to ask what it all meant, because this isn’t the time. But once we’re finished taking back my Kingdom, you’re going to explain everything to me. Do you understand? Everything.”

“I hope you have a lot of time to kill,” said May.

I offered Arden a sheepish smile. “Sorry. Things get chaotic around me sometimes.”

“You don’t say.”

The front passenger door opened. Madden flung himself into the seat, beaming. “Hi!”

“Hi, Madden,” May and I chorused dutifully.

He turned a hopeful expression on Danny. “Can I . . . ?” he asked.

Danny chuckled. “Sure thing,” he said, and started the cab. “Just don’t jump out the window while we’re moving, okay?”

“Okay!” said Madden, and shimmered, replaced by a large white dog with red-furred ears. His eyes were surrounded by matching circles, giving him an almost panda-like quality. Danny hit a button. Madden’s window rolled down, and he stuck his head outside.

“Dogs are weird,” I said.

“Says the woman who voluntarily travels with a cat,” said Arden, turning back to me. “Will all those people you named before really come to help us?”

“I know the Undersea will; they’re going to want Dianda back, and this is a way to accomplish that without actually going to war this week. Not that they’d be opposed to a good war, but that’s something I’d rather avoid. Shadowed Hills . . .” I paused, trying to find the words for my complicated relationship with Sylvester Torquill. I settled for saying, “My liege holds Shadowed Hills, and he’s never failed to come to my aid when I truly needed him. I absolutely believe he’ll be there for me now. And he likes the current Queen about as much as I do.”

“An’ Toby hates her,” said Danny.

May sighed. “Danny. Don’t explain the joke.”

“Sorry.” He turned off Valencia, heading for the freeway. “Muir Woods is about an hour away.”

“That gives Tybalt time to notify the cats and get to Shadowed Hills so Sylvester can start mobilizing the troops,” I said. Muir Woods was close to the ocean, with a beach technically inside the boundaries of the park. I was assuming the Undersea would come largely via the water, which meant they never had to set foot, fin, or tentacle on land that belonged to the Queen. Sylvester could get his people there, and Marcia and the others from Goldengreen who couldn’t swim but didn’t want to stay there could take their cars. We were going to be on time.

Too many of my allies were scattered, unprotected, around the Bay Area: I knew that, even as I knew that there was no way to call them all to safety, and no safety to call them to if we tried. Walther would be better off on campus, far away from fights of succession. Mitch, Stacy, and the kids would be safer at home. April O’Leary couldn’t move without the necessary hardware, and Li Qin Zhou was just as likely to kill me with her luck as she was to save me. The Luidaeg might have been able to help us . . . but then again, she might not. Rayseline Torquill had proven that the last time the Luidaeg tried to get involved in person. She couldn’t raise a hand against any descendant of Titania, and that included at least half the Queen’s guards.

So no. This wasn’t everyone I could have called, but in this instance at least, it was everyone I should have called. My stomach rumbled. I stuck one of my freshly-bandaged hands into my pocket and pulled out the baggie of blood gems from Walther, trying not to think about how few were left.

May followed my gaze to the baggie, and said, “I have a suggestion, but you’re not going to like it.”

“Those words are right so much of the time that it makes my teeth itch just hearing them.” I looked away from the too-tempting chunks of frozen plasma and met the pale gray eyes of my Fetch. It occurred to me that my eyes were darker than hers for the first time. What a funny world we lived in. “What is it?”

“Goblin fruit isn’t hard to find right now. Maybe if you had a little . . .”

“May!” I stared at her. “I can’t believe you’d even suggest that.”

“Toby, addiction isn’t a personal failing. It’s a thing that happens, sometimes because you made a mistake, sometimes because of, you know. Evil pie.” She made a pie-tossing gesture. I scowled. She sighed. “You know I’m right. I mean, this is the longest you’ve gone without coffee since you discovered its existence. If it weren’t for the goblin fruit, I’d expect you to be climbing the walls over caffeine withdrawal. And if you can’t even kick coffee cold turkey, why should you think that’s the right way of dealing with something a hundred times more addictive?”

“Maybe because goblin fruit messes me up so badly that I’m useless? I need to be able to take care of the situation, not just lie around watching pink elephants dance around the room.”

May shrugged. “That’s why you should just have a little bit. Just enough to calm your body down for a while, but not enough to make you start hallucinating. We don’t have to do this for long, right? We’re fixing things.”

What she was saying made sense, and I hated it. I hated it right down to the bones of me. Most of all, I hated how much I wanted to give in.

“I—”

“She’s right,” said Arden. I looked past May to find her watching me, a serious expression on her face. “If you’re starting to get shaky from goblin fruit withdrawal, you need to have some. Otherwise, you’re going to wind up useless to me, and I’m sorry, but I can’t allow that.” My shock must have shown, because she smiled. “You said you wanted me to be your new Queen. Well, that means you have to listen to me. As your Crown Princess and presumptive regent, I am ordering you to have some goblin fruit.”

“Look, even if we had some here—which we don’t—you don’t know what it’s like,” I said. “You can’t know. You’re not a changeling.”

“I can’t know what it’s like for you, but I do know what it’s like. Being a Princess doesn’t make you immune to temptation, especially when you’re a Princess in exile in your own country, and you’re too scared to run because running would change everything, would start something you’re not sure you’re ready to finish . . .” Arden shook her head. “Father hated the stuff—he said it was cheap and unfair—but I was lonely and scared, and I knew better than to play around with mortal drugs. So I got some goblin fruit. And you know what? It helped. I don’t really remember most of the ’60s . . .”

“Neither does anyone else,” said Danny.

“Not helping,” said May.

Arden continued. “But it really did help, and Toby, I know withdrawal when I see it. You’re one sharp noise away from flipping out and climbing the nearest tall building with a sniper rifle, and that’s not going to get my brother back. You need some goblin fruit.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think I need,” I said flatly. “We’re not stopping to find a street corner drug dealer, and I don’t think Danny’s been running goblin fruit out of the glove compartment. So I’m going to just keep on the way I have been, if it’s all the same to you.”

“No, you’re not,” said May, in a very small voice.

I turned to frown at her. “May?”

She didn’t say anything. She just reached into her purse and pulled out a plastic baggie with a sandwich inside. It was white bread, cut into quarters; the crusts had been trimmed off. My eyes widened.

“May, no, don’t—”

She opened the seal, and the smell of goblin fruit flooded the car. Without my having consciously decided to move, I was taking the baggie away from her and cramming the sections of sandwich into my mouth. There was barely a teaspoon of jam in the whole thing, making it just a thin layer of sweetness between the slices of bread, cheese, and ham, but I somehow managed to stop myself from ripping the sandwich apart to get at what I wanted faster. The small part of my brain that was still capable of making rational decisions knew that this was the only way I’d get the calories I needed to rebuild what my body was burning.

That part of my brain was in the minority. Most of me had been transformed into pure wanting, and it wasn’t until I was sucking the crumbs off my fingers that my head cleared enough for me to realize what I’d done.

“Oh, root and branch,” I swore, woozily. The car was getting blurry around the edges as the goblin fruit kicked in. I fumbled for the knives strapped to my waist, not really caring which one I grabbed, as long as I got something I could use to cut myself.

May shouted something, trying to pull the knife out of my hand. The car was already starting to fade from view, and it felt like my blood was carbonated. I couldn’t feel my own fingers.

But I could feel hers.

“M’sorry,” I managed, and stabbed her in the arm.

May shrieked. Arden swore. Danny briefly lost control of the car in the commotion, sending us swerving across two lanes of traffic. I ignored them all as I clamped my mouth down over the wound I’d created.

Her blood tasted like her magic, cotton candy and ashes, as well as the copperier, more expected taste of the blood itself. The fact that I could taste her magic at all was a change, although I wasn’t sure whether it was a good one or a bad one. A stream of faces and flickers of memory tried to rise in my mind’s eye, and I forced them away, refusing to look at them. I was too busy trying to hold my focus, forcing it inward and pushing back the bubbling sensation I could feel working its way through my veins.

Arden could talk about the dangers of withdrawal all she wanted, and she could even convince May she was right—although the fact that May had that sandwich ready to go probably meant that my Fetch had come up with this particular harebrained scheme at least partially on her own. And maybe they were right . . . for them. They were both purebloods, and neither of them had the kind of magic that could turn them human if given something to work with.

Goblin fruit counted as “something to work with.” I ignored the sounds around me, and focused on getting as much blood into my body as I possibly could. It was funny, in a sad sort of way: the goblin fruit was the reason I had to do this, but it was also giving me the strength to counter its effects. The fuzziness retreated to the corners of my eyes, and while Arden’s shouts retained an odd echoing quality, they didn’t get any stranger. I pulled my mouth cautiously from May’s arm, checking the size of her actual wound at the same time.

It was barely more than a scratch. Goblin fruit apparently interfered with my aim in addition to everything else.

May clamped her hand down over her arm as soon as I was out of the way, eyes wide, and demanded, “What in the name of Oberon and his wives do you think you’re doing?”

“Surviving.” I wiped my mouth. It left a red trail on the back of my hand. I fought the urge to gag. “What do you think you’re doing? Dangling goblin fruit in front of me like that is dangerous.”

“You stabbed me!” She made a grab for my knife. I pulled it back, out of her reach. “Oh, no, give me that. You don’t get to stab me and then hold onto your knives.”

“No, but I do get to stab you if that’s what it takes to keep from turning myself human.” I wiped the blade on my jeans, glaring at her defiantly, before shoving it back into its holster. “Or did you forget that little parlor trick?”

“You said you couldn’t turn yourself any more human than you already were,” May protested.

“I said I didn’t have the strength.” I reached up and tucked my hair behind my ears, using the gesture as an excuse to check how pointed they were. They didn’t feel like they’d changed at all . . . this time. That was a small mercy, and one I wasn’t going to count on. “I’ve consumed the Luidaeg’s blood since then. So I had the strength to start a change. I needed the strength, and the focus, to stop it.”

“You were telling the truth.”

Arden sounded almost awed. That was enough to pull my attention away from May, and back to her. She was pressed against the door, mismatched eyes wide. “Excuse me?” I said.

“You’re not Daoine Sidhe. You weren’t lying about that. Your mother . . . Amandine is the Last Among the First?” She said it like it was a title, each word weighted somehow, so that they stood separate and distinct from the rest of the sentence. She said it the way I would have said “once upon a time,” and for some reason, that terrified me.

“Um . . . yeah?” I said, glancing to May for help. She shook her head, looking as mystified as I felt. “I told you that, remember? Mom’s Firstborn.”

“She was here all along.” Arden sagged, looking suddenly stricken. “Father could have saved himself.”

“What?” I demanded.

“What?” May echoed.

“We’re at Muir Woods,” said Danny. We all turned to stare at him. He grimaced apologetically. “Sorry. Just thought you’d like to know.”

“You said we had an hour,” I protested.

“You were latched onto my arm for a while,” said May.

I groaned, running my hand back through my hair. “Of course I was. Swell. Arden, you have until Danny parks this car to tell me what the hell you’re talking about. Talk fast.”

“A woman—Oleander de Merelands—came to the Court a week before the earthquake,” said Arden. “She told Father that the Last Among the First was in the Mists. She said the Last was going to shake the world down if we didn’t find and stop her. He searched, but there wasn’t much time, and there was nothing to be found. The only Firstborn even rumored to live in the Bay Area was the sea witch, and no one finds her when she wants to be left alone. Time ran out. The world fell down.”

“And your father died,” I said grimly. “I’m willing to bet that had more to do with Oleander than it did with the earthquake.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Arden. “Amandine? Really?”

“That was pretty much my reaction.” I looked to May as the car rolled to a stop. “How’s your arm?”

“Almost healed. I’m not in your league, but I’m close. It’s a Fetch thing.” She scowled. “Don’t stab me again.”

“I wasn’t planning to. Don’t feed me any more goblin fruit.”

“Deal.”

“You ladies keep havin’ sharing time. I’ll be right back.” Danny got out, lumbering over to the chained gate into the parking lot. Madden jumped out after him, tail pluming wildly, and vanished into the underbrush.

“Should I be concerned?” I asked.

“No,” said Arden. “He’ll check for dangers and be there when we get out of the car. You’ll see.”

“Huh.” Cu Sidhe and Cait Sidhe were very different. And yet maybe not. I would have been just that sure of Tybalt. “Uh, so are the two of you . . . ?”

Arden actually laughed. “Me and Madden? No. Even if I was interested, his boyfriend would kill me with a hammer.”

“Just asking.”

Danny had reached the chain holding the gate closed. He stooped, saying something to the lock. Even with the windows down I couldn’t hear him, but apparently the metal of the hasp liked what it was hearing, because it popped open. Danny removed it, pulling the chain free, and opened the gate before walking back to the car and getting in. “Here we go.”

“I love Trolls,” said May blissfully, leaning forward and hugging Danny’s neck around the back of the seat. He didn’t say anything, but I could see his smile reflected in the rearview mirror.

Arden was still staring at me with a strange mix of confusion and anger in her eyes. I did my best to ignore her. As soon as the car stopped, I undid my seatbelt and slid out into the cool, redwood-scented air of Muir Woods. Somewhere in the tall old trees an owl shrieked, and something rustled through the underbrush. I felt like an intruder, stepping into a world that was never meant to be mine—and at the same time, I felt like I was coming home.

It was a changeling’s dilemma, writ large through every cell of me. The trouble was that this time, I knew what I was missing. I wanted my real world back.

Arden stopped next to me and tilted her head back to look at the trees, eyes filling with slow tears. I didn’t say anything as May stepped up on my other side. I just waited. Finally, Arden spoke.

“I haven’t been here since Father died.” Her tears slipped free, running down her cheeks. “It still looks just the same.” Madden came bounding back out of the trees, stopping beside her. He didn’t shift back to human form.

“Let’s see if that applies everywhere,” I said. “Come on.”

We walked into the forest. Madden quickly ran ahead, visible only as an occasional glimpse of white between the night-blackened trunks. An owl screeched, protesting this intrusion. Madden barked gleefully back. At least one of us was having a good time. Of the five of us, I was the only one who’d been to the shallowing in the last hundred years, if at all. May walked beside me, her hand resting on my shoulder, where she could pull me back before I went blundering off into the underbrush or walked into a creek. I made my way through the redwoods largely by feel, pausing occasionally to get my bearings.

“Toby . . .” said May.

“I know,” I said. “Just trust me, okay? Sooner or later, Arden’s going to say—”

“I know where we are.” Arden pushed past me, suddenly moving through the trees with purpose. May muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “I hate you,” and tightened her grip on my arm, stepping in front of me so that she could haul me after the fleeing Princess. Danny brought up the rear, moving surprisingly quietly for someone his size.

Arden led us up a series of mud and timber steps that had been cut into the side of the hill, breaking into a run when she reached the top. The rest of us followed. When we caught up with her again, she was standing in front of an enormous redwood tree, with Madden sitting near her feet. The trunk was bigger around than my kitchen; you could have hollowed it out and used it as a good-sized living room. She was crying again. That wasn’t really a surprise.

“I’m here.” She raised her hands, pressing them flat against the tree. “I’m sorry. It took too long, and I’m sorry, but I’m really here. It’s me.”

Nothing happened.

Arden took a step backward, away from the tree. “It’s going to be like this, huh? Okay. I can handle that.” She turned to me. “Can I borrow your knife please?”

“Um. Sure.” I pulled the silver knife from my belt and offered it to her, hilt first.

“Thank you,” said Arden, with ritual formality. Thanks are always serious in Faerie, not least because they imply fealty—in this case, my fealty to her. She was beginning to accept who she was. Not waiting to see how I would respond, she turned back to the tree and ran the edge of my knife across her left index finger, pressing down until she drew blood. I swallowed hard, fighting the urge to look away.

“My name is Arden Windermere,” she said. “My father was Gilad Windermere. My mother was Sebille, of no family line. They are gone now, both of them; they have stopped their dancing. I have not. In the name of the line of Windermere, I ask you to open your door to me. Know me, accept me, and welcome me home.” She pressed her bloody fingertip against the tree, and smiled. “I’ve missed you.”

What happened next . . . I might have understood it a little better if I’d been more fae at the time. One moment, the tree was intact, and the next, there was a great hollow in its center. That, I had almost expected, based on my previous visit to Muir Woods. What I didn’t expect was the door, a huge, ornately-carved thing that filled the hollow. As we watched, it swung open, revealing a vast hall so choked with cobwebs that the ceiling was invisible. Arden’s smile brightened, becoming almost painful to look at. She started to step forward.

“This is too easy,” I muttered, and lunged forward, grabbing her arm. She stopped, blinking at me. Fortunately, Madden stopped with her. I was quietly relieved. That would have been a complication I didn’t want to deal with.

“What are you doing?”

“This is too easy.”

“Uh, what? Maybe you’re used to bleeding every time you want something to happen—”

“She is,” said May.

“—but that was not easy,” continued Arden, undaunted.

I shook my head. “Just trust me, okay? This was too easy. The doors shouldn’t have opened without some sort of failsafe, and if Oleander was here a week before the earthquake, if she knew that it was coming, then she killed your father. And Oleander loved traps. Was this door accessible only to people with royal blood?”

Arden paled. “Oh.”

“I thought so.” I looked over my shoulder. “Hey, May, come and trigger a booby-trap for us, will you?”

“Why is that always my job?”

“Because you can’t die.”

“Oh, right.” May stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans, humming atonally as she stepped through the open doorway into the lost knowe of King Gilad. There was a whistling sound, and a fletched dart appeared in the middle of her chest. She blinked down at it, then shot me an annoyed look. “I better not have just been elf-shot, you idiot.”

“Do you feel like passing out for a hundred years?”

“No.”

“Then you’re probably fine. Keep walking.”

May rolled her eyes before continuing on into the darkened knowe. She vanished into the cobwebs. There was a thumping sound, followed by a meaty thud. “I’m okay!”

“What happened?”

“Tripwire! But I think I’m supposed to be dropping dead from neurotoxins right about now, so come on in.”

Arden looked at me uncertainly. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “We do this sort of thing all the time. If May says it’s safe, there’s a really good chance she’s right.” I decided not to mention that usually “we” meant “me.” There was no point in making things more awkward than they already were.

“All right . . .” said Arden, and stepped into the knowe.

There should have been a fanfare, some sort of glorious celebration of the circle that had been broken when King Gilad died and his children lost their parents and their home in the same night. There should have been something. But all we got was a gradual brightening of the room as lights high above the cobwebs came on, glowing golden through the grime of years, and the door swinging closed behind us.

May walked back to join the rest of us, a gray ghost swathed in dust and cobwebs. “There’s a big receiving room up ahead,” she said. “No more traps that I could find.”

“We’ll have to check everything twice before we assume it’s safe,” I said. Then I turned to Arden, who was looking around with wide, too-bright eyes. I dropped to one knee and bowed my head.

“What?” she asked.

A soft thump told me May had followed my lead. A second, much louder thump told me that Danny had joined us.

“Your Highness,” I said. “Welcome home.” I raised my head, meeting her eyes. “May we reclaim your Kingdom now?”

Arden took a deep, shaky breath before she nodded.

“Yes,” she said. “Why don’t we go ahead and do that?”