Home Improvement: Undead Edition

Through This House SEANAN MCGUIRE

“So this is Goldengreen.” May stared around herself with undisguised curiosity, taking in the high weeds choking the footpaths and the brambles that did their best to conceal the drop-off to the Pacific Ocean waiting a hundred yards or so below the cliff. Not one of California’s finer views, although at least it wasn’t raining. “It’s a fixer-upper, that’s for sure.”

“Shut up,” I snapped. I kept circling the rusted-out old shed that used to link the field behind the San Francisco Art Museum to the knowe of Goldengreen, Seat of the County it was named for. The door connecting the mortal world and the knowe had been created and maintained by the former Countess, Evening Winterrose.

Trouble was, Evening had been dead for nearly two years, and few enchantments are strong enough to last that long in the mortal world without maintenance. Goldengreen was sealed when she died. No one maintained the connections, figuring, I guess, that someday there would be a new regent, and it would be their problem.

Guess who the new Countess of Goldengreen was?

Good guess.

I gave the shed an experimental kick. It shook slightly, but that was all. No magical sparks leaped out to char my shoe, no lingering wards activated—whatever magic Evening had used here, it was long gone. I sighed, stepping back. “Come on, May. We’re going to need to try one of the other doors.”

“Awesome.” May walked over to me, beaming. “It’s an adventure.”

“Yeah,” I said dryly, and started walking toward the edge of the cliff. “That.”

A LITTLE BACKGROUND, before this gets too confusing: My name is October Daye. I’m a changeling, which means my father was human and my mother was fae. I’m less human than I used to be, also thanks to my mother, who used blood magic to push me more toward fae in order to save my life. I’m still not sure whether to be pissed off about that.

About two years ago, Countess Evening Winterrose was murdered by my former mentor. I was the one who proved he’d done it. In the process the Queen of the Mists—current regent of Northern California—wound up in my debt. It was a position neither of us found particularly comfortable, since she thinks I’m changeling scum and I think she’s dangerously insane. As soon as she had the opportunity to discharge that debt, she did . . . by giving me the title to Goldengreen. Yippee.

I never wanted to be a Countess, and I definitely didn’t want the responsibility of reclaiming an entire fallow knowe. Faerie hills get weird when they’re untended for too long, and Goldengreen had been empty since Evening died. Unfortunately, I also had a few dozen new subjects to worry about—the former denizens of the Japanese Tea Gardens, who were left homeless when their regent, my friend Lily, was murdered. They’d been camping in the entry hall, a huge, empty space that offered neither warmth nor comfort. It was the only place in the knowe close enough to the mortal world for us to access without actually prying a door open.

Reclaiming Goldengreen wasn’t something I could afford to put off. We just had to find a way to get inside.

May stopped at the edge of the cliff, teetering on her tiptoes as she looked down to the rocks far below. “Whoa. That first step’s a doozy, huh?”

“Something like that. Can you take a step to the left?”

“Huh? Oh, sure.” May took an exaggerated step sideways, offering me a bright smile at the same time. “How’s that?”

“Good. Good.” To the mortal world, May’s my sister. Faerie knows her for what she really is: my Fetch, a death omen summoned into existence by my impending demise.

That was several impending demises ago. May’s been living with me since the first time I failed to die, and she makes a pretty good roommate. Best of all, being a Fetch, she possesses one trait that was about to come in extremely handy.

Fetches are indestructible.

While she was peering down at the waves beating themselves against the base of the cliff, I positioned myself behind her, checked my footing, stepped forward, and shoved. May screamed as she fell—more with surprise than actual fear—but the sound was cut off after only a few feet, when she vanished into thin air.

“I thought this was the back entrance,” I said, and jumped after her.

MY FALL ONLY lasted a few seconds. Reality did a dizzying dip-and-whirl of transition as I passed from the mortal world into the Summerlands, and my feet hit the solid stone floor of Goldengreen’s main hall. May’s palm hit my cheek about five seconds later.

“A little warning next time?” she demanded.

I’m not fond of being slapped, but I had to allow that she’d been justified. “Would you have let me push you if I’d warned you?”

“What? No!”

“Well, that’s why you didn’t get a warning.” I waved a hand to indicate the hall around us. It was twilight-dim, saved from absolute darkness only by fae vision and the traces of a distant glow from somewhere up ahead. “We’re here. That was the goal. And what’s the worst that could have happened?”

“I could have been eaten by a giant shark swept out of its natural habitat by freak ocean currents caused by global warming.”

I let my hand drop back to my side, eyeing her. “That’s it. No more late-night horror movies for you. Come on. Let’s see if we can’t find the light switch.”

May fell into step beside me, sticking a little closer than was strictly necessary as we walked along the darkened hall. I couldn’t exactly blame her. The air had a sepulchral quality to it, like we were walking into a tomb that had been sealed since time began. Even our footsteps failed to echo, dampened and deadened by the shadows pressing in around us. In Faerie, the regent is the land. By leaving Goldengreen untended, the Queen had left the land without a regent . . . and that’s never good.

“It’s like we’re in a big zombie movie,” said May.

I glared. “I was trying really hard not to have that thought.”

Her smile was visible even through the gloom. “That’s what I’m here for.”

I started walking a little faster, making May hurry to keep up. She snickered as she quickened her pace.

“Oh, c’mon, Toby. If you just watched a few more horror movies—” The hall shifted around us.

It wasn’t a big shift—just enough to knock me off balance, sending me stumbling into May, who caught me easily. She looks like a changeling, but she’s a pureblooded Fetch, and her balance is much better than mine.

“What was that?” she demanded.

“Oh, now you’re not making jokes?” I straightened, tilting my head toward the join of wall and ceiling as I snapped, “Cut that out! I am the new Countess of Goldengreen, and I’m here by right of Crown and Claiming.”

Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

The hall shuddered, for all the world like a dog trying to shake something off its back. This time, May and I both staggered backward, stopping only when we hit the wall. Doors were slamming deeper in the knowe, and dust and cobwebs were beginning to rain down from the rafters. Unlike the first shift, this one showed no sign of stopping—although it did show signs of getting worse. If we didn’t move, the knowe was going to bring itself down around our ears.

Being buried alive didn’t sound like a great idea, and with Lily’s subjects camped in the entry hall, I couldn’t take the risk that the entire knowe would fall in. The Queen might approve—it would take out a lot of troublesome riffraff in one “regrettable accident”—but I certainly wouldn’t. I didn’t know why the knowe was objecting to us and not to them. That was something to worry about later.

I grabbed May’s arm. “I’ve learned something from horror movies, too.”

“What’s that?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard above the shaking.

“When the house tells you to get out, you get out!” I took off running, hauling her in my wake and banking on the exits being easier to find than the entrances were. The knowe continued to shake around us, more and more detritus showering down from the ceiling, the few remaining furnishings and ornaments toppling to the floor. Then a door was in front of us, and I hit it shoulder first, sending us both into the cool night air of the mortal world. We went sprawling, May in a patch of ornamental ground cover, me into a sign that identified our location as the San Francisco Art Museum garden.

The door swung shut behind us, but not before I saw the knowe stop shaking.

May sat up, beaming as she brushed her hair away from her face. “That was awesome! What now?”

I groaned, sagging backward against the sign. “I have no idea.”

MY ALLIES ARE a motley bunch, defined more by their stubborn refusal to stand back and let the professionals deal with things than any other characteristic. Danny showed up half an hour after I called, his cab roaring into the parking lot at a speed that would have been suicidal for most people. With Danny behind the wheel, it was just stupid.

He parked sideways across three parking spots before climbing out of the car, a process that took longer than would have been necessary for almost anybody else. Danny is a Bridge Troll—basically eight feet of mountain that walks like a man, with skin like concrete and hands large enough to wrap around a grown man’s head. He wasn’t bothering with a human disguise, probably because it was almost two o’clock in the morning, and stood revealed in all his craggy, gray-skinned glory. He would have looked right at home guarding the gate at a Renaissance faire, if not for the blue jeans and size 5X San Francisco Giants sweatshirt.

“Tobes!” he declared jubilantly, spreading his arms in greeting. “An’ May! How’s it going, girl?”

“Pretty good,” said May, walking over to hug him. “Jazz sends her love. She’s off with the flock this weekend. Something about the annual migration.”

“That’s, uh . . . that’s special.”

May grinned. “You get used to it once you’ve been dating a bird for a little while.”

The two of them continued exchanging pleasantries as I walked around Danny’s car and peered in the passenger-side window. The bronze-haired teenage Daoine Sidhe sitting in the front seat with a Barghest sprawled halfway across his lap offered me a timid smile. I knocked on the window.

Quentin obligingly rolled it down. “Hi, Toby.”

“Don’t you ‘Hi, Toby’ me. What are you doing here?”

“Danny said he was coming over, and I asked if he’d bring me along.”

There were so many issues with that sentence that I barely knew where to start. I settled for asking, “Why were you with Danny to know that he was coming over?”

“He picked me up from the Luidaeg’s.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Do I want to know why you were at the Luidaeg’s?”

“Just visiting.”

It’s a sign of how much time Quentin has spent with me that the idea of “just visiting” the Luidaeg didn’t seem to strike him as odd. Most people refer to the Luidaeg by her title: the Sea Witch. She’s Firstborn, almost as old as Faerie itself, and tends to be viewed as one of the bogeymen under our collective bed. No one “just visits” her. No one but me, and now, apparently, Quentin.

Quentin and the Luidaeg met when his human girlfriend was kidnapped by Blind Michael and transformed into a horse to serve his unending Ride. We got the girlfriend back, Blind Michael’s Ride was stopped for good, and Quentin wound up forming a personal relationship with one of Faerie’s greatest monsters. Nobody can say our friendship hasn’t been educational for him. I just hope his parents—whoever they are—will agree. Quentin is a blind foster at Shadowed Hills, which means I don’t know where he’s from, beyond “somewhere in Canada.”

If he doesn’t come from a really liberal family, I am eventually going to have to do some serious explaining.

“Get out of the car,” I said, dropping my hand. “You’re here. You may as well make yourself useful.”

Quentin grinned, scrambling to open the door. Danny’s Barghests poured out before Quentin had his seat belt undone, swarming around my feet making the weird yodeling noises that passed as their happy-to-see-you bark. I took a step backward, trying to maintain my balance. “Danny!”

“Aw, heck, sorry about that,” said Danny, and planted two enormous fingers in his mouth, giving an earsplitting whistle. I winced, waiting for the museum security guards to put in an appearance.

Luck was with us for a change; no guards appeared as the Barghests stopped circling my ankles and went racing over to dance around Danny, scorpion tails wagging in wild delight. There were only three of them, if only is the appropriate word when talking about corgi-sized semicanine monsters with venomous stings and retractable claws. Danny runs a Barghest rescue service, and they tend to go everywhere with him when he’s not driving mortal clientele. I don’t think he’s ever managed to adopt one out. I also don’t think he cares.

I shook my head. “Which ones are these?”

“Iggy, Lou, an’ Daisy,” Danny said proudly, bending down to pet his venomous charges, who yodeled more in their delight. “Daisy’s the smart one. She figured out how to open the door on the mail truck. You shoulda seen the mailman’s face.”

That was another line of thought I didn’t really feel like pursuing. I shook my head. “Okay, great. Come on. We need to find a way to get into Goldengreen without the knowe deciding to kill us all.”

“Sounds like fun to me,” said Danny, and grinned, showing a mouthful of teeth like broken concrete.

“Wish I shared the sentiment,” I said, and started down the path toward the cliffside entrance.

“LOOK AT IT this way, May,” said Danny encouragingly. “At least you were the first one off the cliff. Tobes or the kid woulda drowned, and I’d be walking along the bottom to get back to shore.”

May glared at him, continuing to wring the water out of her hair. “I can swim, but I still fell.”

“Yeah,” Danny agreed. “It was funny.”

“We don’t really have time for you to kill each other,” I said, stepping between them before my sodden Fetch could lunge. “So the cliff entrance has sealed itself, the garden entrance is one-way, and the entrance in the old shed is gone. The only other entrance I know of is in the museum itself, and that’s not going to work without breaking and entering.”

Quentin looked up. “Wait—you mean there was an entrance in that old shed we passed?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “That’s how I used to get in.”

“I think I have an idea.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Did you miss the part where the entrance was gone?”

“Yeah, but... ‘What’s been leaves marks on what is.’ ” He was clearly quoting something. All three of us looked at him uncomprehendingly. Quentin smiled, a little sheepishly. “I’ve actually been paying attention to my magical theory lessons.”

I didn’t have a better idea. “Okay, if you think you can get us in through the shed, let’s give it a try. It’s got to be more effective than chucking May off cliffs.”

“Not as funny, though,” said Danny.

“Hey!” protested May.

Danny kept chuckling all the way back to the shed.

It hadn’t visibly changed; it was still rickety, ancient, and choked over with rust. Quentin waved for the rest of us to stop a few feet away while he circled it slowly, the steel and heather scent of his magic gathering around him as he walked. I watched carefully, less because I wanted to see what he was doing—I’m learning to admit that the Daoine Sidhe can do things that I can’t—and more because I wanted to see how he was doing it. Quentin hasn’t used much magic beyond simple illusions in the time that I’ve known him. If he was going to start branching out, I wanted to see where he was going.

After his third trip around the shed, Quentin leaned forward to touch the open padlock, murmuring something that I couldn’t quite hear. An answering whisper echoed through the grass around us, sounding like the dying protests of the wind. Quentin said something else, dropping his hand to the shed’s rusted latch. The whisper this time was louder, and lasted longer. The smell of heather and steel was getting heavier by the second, chasing everything else away. It was just Quentin’s magic, the whispering grass, and the night.

And then the door swung open, revealing a square of blackness too profound to be anything but magical. Quentin looked back over his shoulder, sweat beading on his forehead, and offered a wan smile. “I got the door,” he said. “But we should probably hurry. I don’t know how long I can hold it.”

“You did good,” I said, motioning the others to follow as I walked quickly forward. “What did you do?”

“Countess Winterrose was Daoine Sidhe. You, um, aren’t.” He shrugged a little, looking uncomfortable. His hand never left the doorframe. “I told the knowe that I’m her. It believes me, for right now. But that’s going to change real soon.”

“That’s fine. We’re going.” I offered a quick smile and stepped past him, into the dark.

THE DOOR LED to the main courtyard, a vast, circular room with crystal panels in the domed ceiling. They let in at least a little light from the starry Summerlands sky overhead, where four lilac moons hung high. The knowe was tied to the mortal world but wasn’t a part of it. That was the issue. I don’t know about most people, but I’ve never walked into a dead woman’s house and had it order me to get out again. That sort of real estate problem is reserved for Faerie.

Danny and the Barghests were the next ones through. Iggy, Lou, and Daisy promptly scattered, tails wagging as they ran around the room trying to sniff everything at once, while Danny stopped beside me, planting his hands on his hips as he considered the room.

“You really planning to keep people in here?” he asked. “What, are you gonna sling hammocks or somethin’?”

“It’ll be a home improvement project. If it lets us start.” I turned in time to see Quentin follow May through, and stepped over to offer him my arm. “How’re you feeling?”

“Winded. Like I just ran a marathon. But awesome.” Quentin offered me a bright smile. “Did you see what I did?”

“I did. That was cool. I’ll be sure to let Sylvester know that you’re progressing in your illusions. And right after that, I’ll tell him you were visiting the Luidaeg on your own.”

“Hey!”

“Take the good with the bad, kiddo.” Inwardly, I was miffed. The Luidaeg hadn’t spoken to me in weeks. The fact that Quentin was able to casually visit stung. And besides, Sylvester Torquill is the Duke of Shadowed Hills, which makes Quentin his responsibility. If he didn’t know that Quentin was sneaking into San Francisco to visit the Luidaeg, he needed to be informed.

Quentin wrinkled his nose at me, but didn’t protest again as I turned to study the courtyard. Danny’s Barghests were still sniffing their way around the room. Danny seemed to be keeping a close eye on them, which was a relief; I wasn’t sure how many halls were connected to the courtyard, and I didn’t want to add Barghest hunting to my list of things to do today. May, meanwhile, had wandered into the center of the room and was looking up, studying the Summerlands stars through the crystal panels in the roof. The knowe wasn’t yelling at us yet. That was a nice change. Of course, once Quentin’s spell wore off . . .

“It’s too bad I don’t know where the other exits are from here,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Let’s see if we can’t figure out where the lights are.”

I started slowly forward, watching the shadows that collected at the base of the walls for signs that something was going to lunge out at us. Nothing seemed to be moving, but that could just be because we had yet to move far enough away from the door. If Goldengreen was truly tired of our intrusions, it might want to make sure we wouldn’t be able to escape. What a charming thought.

Sylvester always said he could “feel” Shadowed Hills, like a second heartbeat echoing the first. Every other landholder I’ve spoken to said something similar, even Countess April O’Leary of Tamed Lightning, whose ideas of “normal” are heavily skewed by the fact that she’s the world’s only Dryad living in a computer server. They can feel their territory—their knowes, and their lands, are a part of them. All I felt was the creeping fear that Goldengreen might decide to rise up and smash us at any moment. I don’t normally feel that way about parts of my own body, and on the rare occasions when I do, I tend to reach for the ibuprofen.

The floor was uneven, the cobblestones cracked and shifting in their settings. We were going to have some serious repair work to do once we managed to get the lights back on. Evening must have been neglecting her upkeep for years before she was killed—that, or the place had been sustained so entirely by her magic that when the magic was removed, the foundations began to crumble. I hoped that wasn’t the case. My magic can’t hold a candle to Evening’s, not even now that I’m starting to understand what my magic really is, and if I was supposed to power this place, we were going to have a very short residency.

Thinking back, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in this room. Evening had a small Court, almost unattended; I hadn’t heard anything about what happened to the denizens of her fiefdom after she died. They must have managed to blend into the Counties and Baronies around Goldengreen without so much as a ripple. I’d asked Sylvester if he could help me find any of them when the Queen first gave me the title to Goldengreen, and he hadn’t been able to name a single one, much less tell me where to look. If anyone out there knew the knowe’s secrets, they weren’t talking to me.

“Toby?”

May’s voice was soft but still pitched to carry. I turned toward it, starting in her direction. “What is it?”

She was standing next to one of the decorative crystal fixtures on the wall. They were shaped like ice cream cones, held to the wall by thin copper loops. I remembered them lit, burning with a calm white light that never flickered or dimmed. She didn’t say anything. She just pointed a quivering finger at the fixture, face gone pale. I blinked at her, confused, before reaching out and unhooking the offending fixture from the wall.

There was a glass dome tucked inside, where it would be normally hidden from view. I unscrewed it carefully, tipping the cone so I could see what was inside.

The dried-out husk of a pixie fell out.

It hit the floor before I had a chance to try catching it, shattering on impact and sending tiny, broken limbs and bits of wing in all directions. I jumped in surprise, cone and dome slipping from my hands and shattering next to the pixie’s remains. Given what they’d contained, I couldn’t find it in myself to be sorry that they were broken.

Raising my head, I gaped at May in horror. “How do you think it managed to get trapped in there? The poor thing must have starved to death. And why didn’t the night-haunts come?”

“They couldn’t get through the glass,” said May. Her voice was just as soft as it had been before, and her eyes were distant, not quite focusing on me. “I don’t think it got trapped in there by accident, Toby. I’m still a Fetch, even if I’m not exactly yours anymore, and I can feel their deaths all through this room. Dozens of them . . .”

Her words sank in slowly. I swept my horrified gaze along the wall, taking note of the crystal fixtures set at regular intervals. She was right; there were dozens of them, once you made a full circuit of the courtyard, and if they’d all contained live pixies at one point . . .

“But the knowe’s been sealed since Evening died,” I said. My words seemed distressingly loud. “She would never have allowed something like that.”

“You always saw the pretty side of the nobles, Tobes,” said Danny, looking back to us. He paused, then added, “No offense, kid.”

“None taken,” said Quentin faintly. He had walked over to stand next to me, staring down at the broken pixie on the floor with horror that mirrored my own. “I’ve . . . I’ve heard of people doing this. Before. It . . . they . . .”

“Pixies aren’t covered under Oberon’s Law,” I finished for him. He nodded, very slightly.

Oberon’s Law forbids the fae to kill each other. It’s the only absolute rule he ever made, and it’s enforced in every Kingdom. Of course, there are loopholes. Killing is allowed during an officially declared war. Changelings aren’t protected by the Law. Cait Sidhe are allowed to kill each other, since that’s a major part of their succession process, and the Law is enforced on the killer of a Cait Sidhe only if the local King or Queen of Cats requests it. Monsters, like Danny’s Barghests, and small folk, like the pixies, are completely exempt from the Law. Kill them all you want. No one will stop you. No one will punish you.

Most of the fae won’t even care.

Kneeling, I scooped the remains of the pixie into my hand. There was no way to avoid all the broken glass. A chunk sliced my forefinger. I stood quickly, hissing through my teeth. I wasn’t fast enough to keep from bleeding on the floor—just a few drops, but every one of them seemed to glow like a tiny star. The Daoine Sidhe work with blood. The Dóchas Sidhe are blood, in some way that I still don’t quite understand.

“Hold this,” I said distantly, pouring the pixie’s dusty remains into May’s hand. It didn’t occur to me to question how she knew to be ready. She was my Fetch for a long time before the bond between us was broken, and she knew how I was likely to react to almost anything. Even things that had never happened to me before.

Kneeling, I lightly pressed my fingertips against the blood that had spilled onto the floor. I was still bleeding, gleaming, sluggish drops that fell to widen the stain. I still didn’t feel the knowe, not really, but when I reached through the blood, I felt something. It was as if Goldengreen were stirring, becoming aware of our presence on a conscious level for the first time.

Of course, I had no way of knowing whether that was a good thing. I pressed my fingers down with a little more force, speeding the flow of blood. The knowe was definitely waking up, some deep, slow process that was too strange and too old for me to really understand.

“Uh, Toby?”

“Hang on, Quentin. I think I’ve got this.”

“No, I don’t think you do,” said May, voice carefully lowered.

I turned toward her, raising my head just in time to see the flock of pixies that had been massing in the hallway door swoop down on us, their wings buzzing in the confined chamber like a million pissed-off mosquitoes on the warpath. I had time for a startled, wordless shout, and then they were on us, blocking out even the faint ambient light with the pressure of their bodies.

NO ONE REALLY knows where the pixies came from. Unlike Faerie’s larger races, all of whom trace their ancestry back to Oberon, Maeve, or Titania, the pixies simply are. Some people say they’re the natural by-product of magic, and I can believe it. Not much else explains the existence of an entire species of tiny, semisentient humanoids with a fondness for roast moth and clothes made out of candy wrappers.

Most pixies are wild and occasionally vicious, but it takes a lot to goad them into actually attacking something the size of a Daoine Sidhe, much less someone as big as Danny, who practically qualifies for his own ZIP code. These pixies were something else. Their clothes were made from scraps of silk and pieces of old tapestries, not garbage scavenged from the mortal world. Their weapons looked handmade, carved from pieces of ash and rowan wood. We had no way of knowing if they were dipped in equally handmade poisons, and I didn’t want to find out.

The pixies chattered rapidly in high-pitched voices as they swept down on us, incomprehensible words almost drowned out by the buzzing of their wings. Danny’s Barghests barked at them for a few seconds, distracting the flock. Then the Barghests turned, running full-tilt for a door in the far wall.

“Get back here!” Danny bellowed, swatting at the pixies that were dive-bombing his head.

“I have a better idea!” I shouted, straightening up and grabbing hold of Quentin’s hand. “Follow those Barghests!” I ran after them, towing Quentin in my wake. May and Danny followed close behind, the pixies diving and weaving around all four of us as they lashed out with their tiny but potentially deadly weapons. The fact that we were running away didn’t seem to be lessening the fury of their attack; if anything, it increased their enthusiasm, since now they were winning.

The Barghests ran through the door and down the hall, making a sharp left after about twenty yards. The four of us followed, speeding up as best we could in our effort to escape the flock of pixies, which seemed devoted to stabbing us. May yelped in pain but kept running. Good girl. When we reached the place where the Barghests turned, we did the same, and found ourselves in a small, rounded room with tapestry-cushioned walls. There was another skylight set into the ceiling, filling the room with cool moonlight.

It was pretty, but I was more concerned with getting the massive oak door shut against the pixie influx. I shoved against it; it didn’t budge. “Danny, a little help here?” I asked.

“On it.” He reached over and gave the wood a small, almost dismissive shove. It swung away from me so fast I nearly fell, and slammed shut with a concussive boom that echoed through the entire room. “Better?”

“Much,” I said, and turned to study the others.

Quentin and May were both bleeding from a variety of small cuts, and one of May’s barrettes was missing, making the hair on that side of her head stick out at an odd angle. Only Danny looked relatively unscathed. He leaned against the door, folding his arms.

“You didn’t warn me about the attack pixies,” he said. “I woulda brought a flyswatter. Maybe a can of Raid or somethin’, too.”

“You can’t use Raid on pixies!” said May, looking horrified. “It’s . . . it’s . . .”

“Probably messy.” I shook my head. “I didn’t tell you about the attack pixies because I didn’t know they were here. I thought the place was empty.”

“The cliff exit,” said Quentin. We all turned to look at him. He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “There was that time right after Evening died, when you fell? Remember?”

“How could I forget? But how do you remember? You weren’t there.”

“I told him,” said May. I raised an eyebrow. “What? It was funny.”

“No, listen—the cliff exit didn’t have a door on it. The pixies probably got in that way and decided this was a good place to stay. No one was killing them. That’s sort of an improvement over the way things worked before.” Quentin paused before adding, reluctantly, “Maybe they even saw it as a sort of victory over the Countess Winterrose. She’s gone, and they’re still here.”

“Which also explains why they reacted so badly to us. They think we’re going to start killing them again.” I glanced at the door. “Anybody feel equipped to explain the lightbulb to a swarm of feral, pissed-off pixies?”

“Not it,” said May.

Danny’s Barghests paced the edges of the room as we spoke, their semicanine muzzles pressed low to the ground and their scorpion-like tails wagging. They abruptly stopped, muzzles swinging toward the same patch of wall as they began growling.

When a Barghest growls, smart people pay attention. I straightened, to face them. “Danny . . . ?”

“Iggy! Lou! Daisy! You stop that right this second!” Danny pushed away from the door, striding toward the Barghests. “Behave, or Toby’s not gonna want to take you guys for guard dogs!”

“What—” I began.

I didn’t have time to finish. A spider easily the size of a goat lunged out of the shadows between the hanging tapestries, where it must have been pressed practically two-dimensional in order to stay out of sight. The Barghests yelped, the smallest cutting and running to hide behind Danny while the others held their ground and began to bark cacophonously.

May shot me a look. “Remind me to never start another home improvement project with you.”

I didn’t dignify that with a response. I was too busy pulling the knife from my belt and charging forward, toward the massive spider.

The folks at Home Depot definitely didn’t have any pamphlets for this sort of thing.

IF THERE’S AN art to fighting enormous spiders, I somehow managed to live to adulthood without learning it. The creature seemed to consist entirely of lashing limbs and fangs the size of my forearm, which was enough to give even the Barghests pause. Danny grabbed one of them by the tail, jerking it clear just before it would have been impaled on one massive, hooked forelimb. I darted forward, slashing at the spider’s leg. It responded by hissing and scuttling backward, looking for a new angle of attack.

“We need an exit!” I said, taking up a defensive posture while Danny pulled the other Barghest to safety.

“The pixies are still out there,” said Quentin. He sounded dismayingly calm, given that we were sharing the room with the sort of thing that inspires arachnophobia. Maybe it was the fact that he had a Bridge Troll between him and the giant spider.

“Have you ever heard the phrase the lesser of two evils?” I asked, jumping back as the spider took another swing at me. It seemed to realize that this approach wasn’t working as well as it could have, because it turned and raced six feet up the wall, hissing at us. “Open the damn door!”

“It’s your funeral,” said May. She grabbed the door handle, pulling as hard as she could. It didn’t budge. “Quentin? A little help here?”

“On it.”

The spider hissed again, spitting a long stream of something sticky-looking in my direction. I dodged to the side. The sticky substance splattered against the floor instead of against my legs. “Danny! Help them with the door!”

“This day just gets better and better,” said Danny, and leaned over to yank the door open. May and Quentin were swept along with it, the wood shielding them as the tide of pissed-off pixies came boiling into the room. They stopped when they saw the spider, chattering rapidly among themselves in high-pitched voices. They weren’t attacking; that was something, anyway.

I was so distracted by the pixies that I didn’t notice the second spider until it dropped from the ceiling and grabbed me. Then I was being jerked into the air, so rapidly that I lost my grip on both my knives. Something pierced the skin at the back of my neck, sending what felt like liquid fire pumping into my veins. May screamed.

After that, everything went black.

I’VE WOKEN UP in a lot of strange situations, including “in the Court of Cats” and “halfway to being transformed into a tree.” That probably says something about how much time I spend unconscious. Waking up wrapped from feet to shoulders in a silk cocoon and dangling upside down from the rafters of Goldengreen’s throne room was a new one on me, though.

I blinked, trying to get my eyes to adjust as I strained to see what was around me. More cocoons hung to either side, the heads of my companions poking out the ends. Danny was to my left, with the Barghests behind him, and Quentin was hanging to my right. That just left—“May?” I tried to whisper. My voice still echoed in the empty room. I would have winced, but the cocoon didn’t leave me with that much freedom of motion.

“Worst knowe ever,” whispered May angrily. It sounded like she was hanging to my right, somewhere on the other side of Quentin. “I realize that your memory isn’t always totally reliable, but couldn’t you have at least tried to remember the giant spiders? That seems like the sort of thing you’d want to mention before you came for a visit.”

“They weren’t here before!” The puncture wounds at the back of my neck were a dull, distant throb. I could really get used to this whole accelerated healing thing. “Neither were the pixies.”

“Well, they’re here now,” replied May. “Quentin and Danny are still out.”

“Swell.” I heal fast; May’s functionally indestructible. In this case, that just meant we got to be awake when the giant spiders came back and decided to liquefy our insides for breakfast. I wasn’t sure either of us would survive that. “What did I miss?”

“The spider grabbed you, and then two more grabbed Danny, while the pixies herded Quentin and me into the first one. We never had a chance.”

“Hold on—the pixies are working with the spiders?”

“Maybe it’s a tribute thing? They feed us to the spiders, the spiders leave them alone.”

“No, really, hold on.” The spiders couldn’t be eating the pixies. Their fangs were too big for that. Any spider trying to eat a pixie would just wind up with a skewered pixie, and no breakfast to speak of. “They’re working together. They have to be.”

“What, we managed to blunder into the middle of the great pixie-spider alliance? Oh, that’s just fantastic. This place gets more entertaining by the minute.”

I tried squirming again. I still couldn’t get any real purchase against the silk, and I gave up after a few seconds, letting myself hang limp. The answer was obvious. It was all but staring me in the face the whole time. I’d just been distracted by its many, many teeth. “They’re not spiders.”

“Eight legs, fangs, wrapping us up in giant snack-pack cocoons—if they’re not spiders, what are they? Pretty pink ponies?”

“They’re bogies.”

There was a moment of silence as May considered my words. Then she groaned. “Oh, crud.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Bogies, like pixies, bridge the gap between the intelligent and bestial fae. They’re shapeshifters. Shapeshifters are pretty common in Faerie, but most shapeshifting fae have a limit to the number of forms they can assume. Bogies don’t. They can take the shapes of a thousand types of creeping, crawling things: spiders and centipedes, scurrying beetles, and even, occasionally, really big frogs. They’re territorial, like their pixie cousins, and they tend to live in large family groups, defending each other to the death.

Danny made a grumbling sound, like rocks grinding together, and the cocoon to my left shifted. “Anybody get the number of that dump truck?” he asked, sounding woozy.

“We found a bogie nest,” I said, without preamble. Best to rip the bandage off cleanly.

Danny was still swearing when Quentin woke up a few minutes later. “Hello?”

“Hey, Quentin,” I said. “Don’t bother to struggle. We’re bogie-caught.”

“. . . Oh,” he said. “That’s new.”

“Yeah, I know.” A distant humming sound was filtering into the room, like the beating of a hundred tiny wings. “Danny, shush. I think the pixies are coming back.”

“Oh, that’s exactly what I wanted,” muttered Danny, and went silent.

The pixies brought light with them when they came pouring into the room, their tiny bodies glowing like low-watt Christmas lights. There were at least fifty of them. They swarmed to surround us, jabbing tiny spears and daggers at our faces—but not, I noticed, actually making contact. In fact, except for the bites from the bogies, we hadn’t taken nearly as much damage from the knowe’s inhabitants as we could have.

Maybe the Goldengreen’s new denizens were trying to play nicely. Sort of.

I cleared my throat. “Uh, hi,” I said, to the pixie that was flying back and forth in front of my nose. Pixies don’t hover well. It was a male, maybe four inches tall, glowing with a rich, royal blue tint that didn’t quite go with the scrap of buttercup-yellow sheeting that he was using as a loincloth. “I’m Toby Daye.”

“And now she’s talking to pixies,” said Danny, in a long-suffering tone. “We’re all gonna die here.”

“Danny, shush,” hissed May.

I did my best to ignore them, focusing instead on the pixie. “I think we may have managed to get off on the wrong foot.”

The pixie eyed me suspiciously, not saying anything. That made a certain amount of sense. The language barrier between the small folk and the human-sized fae meant that while he might have been able to understand me, I had no real way of understanding him.

“I’m starting to get an idea of what used to go on here, and I’m sorry. I had no idea. The things that Evening—”

That answered one question: the pixies definitely understood at least a little English. The flock went nuts when I said Evening’s name, shrieking in high-pitched voices as they all started flying wildly around us. Almost all. The blue pixie continued flitting back and forth, eyes narrowing with suspicion.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I said, hurriedly. “It’s okay, really! We’re not here to do the things she did. Do you understand me? We’re not here for that at all!”

The blue pixie swooped a little closer, wings buzzing into a blur behind him as he aimed his spear at the tip of my nose. It was difficult to resist the urge to go cross-eyed looking at it.

“My name is October Daye. I’m supposed to be the new Countess here. The Queen sent me.” The pixie shook his spear. “Hey! It wasn’t my idea, okay? She didn’t ask me. But as far as she’s concerned, this knowe is my problem now, and she’s not going to take it well if we never come back out. Do you understand? If we disappear, more big ones will come looking for us.” There was something charmingly perverse about the idea that I was counting on the Queen of the Mists to avenge my potential death; she hates me, after all, and would probably be thrilled if I conveniently disappeared. But form would still insist she send someone into Goldengreen to look for us, and once whoever that was found our bones—and the homicidal local ecosystem—a mass extermination would follow.

“Sweet Maeve, I don’t believe I’m worried about the pixies getting in trouble for killing us,” I muttered. More loudly, I said, “Do you understand ? We aren’t here to hurt you, but if you hurt us, the people who come after us won’t be this nice.”

“What is she doin’?” whispered Danny. Hearing a Bridge Troll whisper was something like hearing a gravel truck trying to be quiet. It would have been funny under most circumstances.

“She’s trying to reason with the pixies,” said Quentin.

“Can she even do that?” asked Danny, abandoning his attempts at whispering. “Pixies aren’t that smart—hey! Ow!” Pixies swarmed around him, stabbing out with their tiny weapons. Bridge Trolls have thick skin, but even thick skin can be punctured if the attacker is dedicated enough.

May laughed. “Looks like they’re smart enough.”

“Guys, can we settle down? Please?” The blue pixie was still hanging in front of me, a wary, quizzical expression on his face. I sighed, focusing on him. “Sorry about my friends. All the blood’s going to their heads, and it’s probably messing with their brains.”

“Hey!” said May.

“So please. Let us down. We can talk about this rationally, once we have our feet on solid ground.” The pixie didn’t look convinced. I took a deep breath. “All right, you want me to swear? I’ll swear. I swear by oak and ash and rowan and thorn that we did not come here intending harm. I swear by root and branch and rose and tree that none will raise a hand against you, unless hands are raised against us.”

The pixie hesitated before turning and jabbing his spear at the rest of the flock. The pixies abandoned their swarming to come and circle around him, their various glows blending into a single off-white glow. A flurry of high-pitched exchanges followed. It seemed like every pixie had an opinion on the matter—that, or they just really enjoyed yelling at each other.

“Toby? What’s happening?” asked Quentin.

“The pixies are deciding whether to let us go,” I said. “I think.”

“Or maybe they’re getting ready to eat us,” said May dolefully.

“Oh, swell,” said Danny.

The pixies seemed to come to an agreement. Most of the flock flew toward the far wall, getting clear of our cocoons. The blue pixie turned to point his spear at the doorway, barking something that sounded very much like a command.

“Okay, he’s doing something . . .” I said.

The sound of feet running along the ceiling heralded the return of the bogies—conveniently still shaped like giant spiders. They were smaller now, only about the size of terriers, which wasn’t all that much of an improvement. Two of them ran down the length of my body, waving their serrated forelimbs at my face. I took a sharp breath, willing myself not to scream. I think of myself as pretty tough. That doesn’t mean I appreciate having giant spiders clinging to me while I’m tied up and helpless to get away from them.

“He’s calling his spider buddies to come and eat us,” said May. “Good job, Toby.”

The pixie barked another long string of squeaky commands . . . and the bogies started chewing through the cocoons. I let out a slow breath, closing my eyes. “Oh, good,” I said. “It worked.”

Danny was still swearing when we began dropping toward the floor.

THE BARGHESTS PRESSED themselves against Danny’s legs, growling deep in their throats. Danny wasn’t actually growling, but he didn’t look much happier than the Barghests did. That was understandable. We were completely surrounded by bogies—most still shaped like giant spiders, although a few had transformed into less mentionable things—while the pixies zipped around us in an ever-shifting circle. The blue pixie remained stationary, hovering in front of me with his arms folded across his chest.

I brushed some stray cobwebs out of my hair, offering the pixie a respectful nod. “It’s good to be back on the ground.” I didn’t know for sure that the prohibition against giving thanks applied to pixies, but I was trying to be polite, and that meant I wasn’t going to risk it.

“Now what?” muttered May.

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out,” I replied. The pixie glared at me. “Sorry! Sorry. We don’t negotiate with pixies very often.”

He unfolded his arms, chattering rapidly at me.

I sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand you.”

The pixie repeated himself, more slowly. He was clearly making an effort to be understood.

“None of us speak . . . uh, pixie,” I said. “How about this? I’ll try to guess what you’re asking for, and you’ll let me know when I get it right. Is that okay?”

The pixie nodded.

“Good enough. I, uh . . . Do you want us to leave?” The pixie didn’t react. “Do you want us to let you leave?” The pixie scowled.

“Ask him if he wants to know how you’re going to keep your promise,” said Quentin.

I turned to blink at him. “Good call.” Looking back to the pixie, I asked, “Is that what you want?”

The pixie nodded again, more vigorously. The motion of the swarm slowed, all their eyes focusing in on me at once. This was clearly important to them . . . and really, I couldn’t blame them. It’s hard for people that small to find places where they can let their guard down—and the longer I spoke to the pixies, the easier it became to think of them as people. I didn’t understand a word he said, but he understood me, and in Faerie, that’s better than you sometimes get.

“I’m supposed to be in charge here,” I said, slowly. “That means this knowe is mine. I have my own people to protect, and they need to be here if they’re going to receive that protection. Another promise. If you’ll let me claim this place, I will do my best to give you the same protection that I give to them. No one will hurt you here. No one who comes here will be allowed to hurt you. Not on my watch.” The bogies chittered. “That means all of you, as long as you can extend the same courtesy to my subjects. You don’t attack them, and they won’t attack you.”

The pixie dipped a little lower in the air, glow brightening. Then, abruptly, he turned and zipped out of the room, leaving me staring dumbly at the spot where he’d been.

“Either you just messed up bad, or . . . actually, I don’t got an or,” said Danny. “Should we be running?”

“I’m considering it,” I said. “Give it a minute.”

The four of us stepped closer together as the seconds ticked by, the majority of the pixies still circling. May was indestructible and Danny was tough as a rock; Quentin and I didn’t share those advantages. If the pixies and the bogies decided to attack in earnest, we were going to have problems.

I was getting ready to suggest we start moving when the pixie returned, clutching a chunk of rose quartz the size of a duck’s egg to his chest. He flew to a stop in front of me, holding out the rock. It glistened, gleaming from within and putting out a silent sound that somehow managed to serve the purpose of a spell’s magical signature. It was the knowe. He was trying to hand me the knowe.

There was only one response to that offering. “Okay,” I said, and took it.

Goldengreen shuddered around us again, the motion still feeling very much like a dog trying to shake off a flea. May yelped, staggering backward into Danny, who caught her casually and held her in place with one massive hand. I barely noticed. I was too busy trying to sort through the sensations that were crashing through me, flowing first through the stone, and then—in a moment of transition that was barely a transition at all—through the entire knowe.

Goldengreen was one of the first knowes opened in San Francisco. Evening didn’t open it. A red-haired woman I didn’t recognize did the opening . . . working in tandem with a blonde woman I did recognize. Amandine. My mother. No wonder the Queen was willing to give the knowe to me. She knew it would talk to me, even if it wouldn’t take me. Fae law says that changelings can’t inherit, but a knowe knows the bloodline that pried it open in the first place. The realization only had a moment to register. Then the shape of the knowe as a whole was slamming into me, sending me to my knees. The stone rolled free of my hand. The images flashing through my head didn’t stop.

Amandine didn’t stay with the knowe. She helped the red-haired woman open it, and then she left, leaving Goldengreen to grow under a single custodianship. The redhead left, replaced by an unfamiliar Daoine Sidhe who was replaced, in turn, by Evening Winterrose. Her arrival signaled the descent of the knowe. It was thriving before she came, filled with people and with life. All that ended after Evening, and the knowe fell into a long twilight that ended only when she died and it was sealed away, forbidden to Faerie.

And then the pixies came, and the bogies, and made the knowe their home. It liked them. It liked that it was needed, that it was wanted. For the first time in over a hundred years, Goldengreen had something to protect. That was why it was fighting us. It wanted its inhabitants to be safe.

I bit my lip, hard enough to draw blood. It was a moment’s work to raise my hand and wipe the blood away, touching it to the floor. The pressure of the memories decreased, even as I felt my connection to the knowe grow stronger. “I promise,” I whispered. “I am not Evening. I promise.”

There was a momentary pause, as if the knowe were holding its breath. Then two things happened at the same time: The images stopped coming.

And the lights came on.

“THAT WAS A nice trick,” said May, sitting next to me on the edge of the broken fountain in the main courtyard. Danny leaned against the wall, while Quentin sat to my other side. It was a comfortable moment, even with all the cleaning that we knew was waiting just ahead.

The pixies swarmed around us, picking up bits of broken cobblestone and whisking away cobwebs with quick sweeps of their wings. The bogies were nowhere in evidence; probably lurking in the shadows, waiting for someone they could jump out at and terrify. They were going to be waiting for a long time. After the day I’d had, my threshold for terror was very, very high.

At least the lights that were burning now were powered by magic, and not captive pixies. The pixie-power lights must have been purely decorative. Which didn’t make them any less horrible, but meant we weren’t going to be forced to deal with installing a new lighting system while we were doing everything else.

“It worked, didn’t it?” I asked. I could still feel Goldengreen at the back of my head, but it was fading quickly. The knowe was willing to talk to me, even willing to tolerate me—that didn’t mean that it was mine. The Queen had given me these lands. The lands themselves were still reserving judgment.

“Next time, risk somebody else’s neck,” suggested Danny amiably. “Like, I dunno, the Queen’s. Bring her next time.”

“Yeah, there’s a real life-extender.” I snorted, leaning over to ruffle Quentin’s hair. “Besides, now we have a built-in workforce to get all the crap down from the ceilings.”

“You’re going to make us clean, aren’t you?” asked Danny.

“And repair, and replace, and probably paint.” I stood. “Now that we have the doors open, let’s go beg the local nobles to lend us all their Hobs and Bannicks.”

“I’ll go for beer and pizza,” said May.

“I’ll drive her,” said Danny.

Quentin sighed. “I’ll get a mop.”

“Good call,” I said, and grinned before I started for the nearest exit. The bogies slipped out of the shadows, joining the pixies as they followed me all the way to the door, wings buzzing and legs tapping against the floor. Reclaiming Goldengreen was going to take a lot of work, and a lot of favors from the local hearth-fae community, but it was going to be worth it. Changelings and pixies have at least one thing in common: it’s rare that we have places where we’re safe. Goldengreen was an opportunity to change that.

With all the time I’ve spent feeling like I was on the outside, looking in, it was going to be nice to finally have a place I could say, with absolute conviction, was my home. The giant horror movie spiders, well . . .

Those were just a bonus.