Late Eclipses

ONE

THE DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO SAFEWAY was practically deserted. No surprise there, given that it was nearly one in the morning. May—my Fetch and current roommate—was in the produce department, tormenting the resident pixies. Their shrieks of irritation were almost enough to distract me from the task at hand. Almost; not quite. We had a mission, and I was, by Oberon, going to accomplish it.

Glancing along the row of cereals, I considered my options with exquisite care before reaching out and grabbing a box of Lucky Charms. The stuff’s delicious when you combine it with enough coffee, even if it does mean putting up with that stupid cartoon leprechaun. I hesitated before taking a second box. It’s not every night that I get to splurge.

My name’s Toby Daye. I’m half-fae, half-human, and depressingly excited by the idea of being able to pay for name-brand cereal.

The empty Safeway was doing wonders for my mood. I hate shopping where I used to work, and the last thing I wanted to do after spending three days on stakeout was deal with my former coworkers. They seemed to share the sentiment, since they’d all vanished into the back as soon as they saw me. That was cool with me. I wasn’t friendly when I worked at the store—“hostile” is a more accurate description—and I didn’t “quit” so much as “walk out and never come back.”

I wasn’t meant to be a checkout girl. I probably wasn’t meant to do anything that involves dealing with the public, which makes my career choice of “private investigator-slash-knight errant” all the more ironic. Still, when you live in the shady borderland between Faerie and the mortal world, neither beggars nor changelings can be choosers.

The stakeout was for the first of my two vocations, the one that lets me pay the bills with a telephoto lens and a minimum of magic. My employer was a Silene who wanted to know where her husband was spending his spare time. Silene are horses from the waist down: sturdy, practical, and jealous as hell. She should never have married a Satyr if she didn’t want him looking at other women, since that’s basically what Satyrs are built to do. Her suspicions weren’t unfounded: her goat-boy husband was getting a little extramarital action from the Hind two streets over, a doe-eyed lady if there ever was one. A couple of nights in the car, a few incriminating photos, and I was in the rare position of being able to pay for groceries.

The lack of clerks wasn’t a problem, thanks to my shopping companions. May was racing through the store fast enough that she might as well have been on roller skates. Our mutual friend, Danny, was moving more sedately; it’s just that he was doing it while being more than seven feet tall. He’s not actually all that big, for a Bridge Troll, but he’s good for getting things off of high shelves.

“Hey!” May jogged toward me with an armload of cantaloupes. She dumped them unceremoniously into the cart, without regard for what might be crushed in the process. “Did you know there were pixies in the produce section?”

“Yes, and so did you.” I tapped my temple. No one’s ever quite figured out what makes Fetches appear, but when they do, they come equipped with all the memories of the person they mirror. They’re death omens; once a Fetch with your face shows up, your days are supposed to be numbered. Lucky for me, May has about as much innate interest in following rules as I do, and she’s actually saved my life on at least one occasion. As far as I know, I’m the first person to live more than a month past the arrival of a Fetch—and I’m definitely the first person to ask their Fetch to move in.

May’s store of borrowed memories includes my mind-numbing stint as a Safeway checkout girl. That’s not a period of my life I like to dwell on, although the cynic in me insists on pointing out that fewer people were trying to kill me in those days. And yet, without all those attempts on my life, I wouldn’t have needed a Fetch, and I’d have missed out on May’s excellent vegetarian lasagna. There’s a bright side to everything.

May pouted. Yet another expression never worn by my face until the universe decided to make a copy of it. “You take the fun out of everything.”

“That’s me,” I agreed. “Toby Daye, assassin of fun.”

“You should put that on your business cards,” said Danny, chuckling as he came around the corner. I promptly elbowed him. I just as promptly winced, making him chuckle even more. Bridge Trolls have skin like granite. Hitting them is a good way to break a knuckle.

I glowered. “Not funny.”

“I disagree,” said May amiably.

“Oh, go get the bread,” I said.

“On it!” She saluted before zipping off again.

Danny gave me a sidelong look. “You okay? You seem tense.”

“It’s the store.” I shook my head. “I know this is the best place to get groceries, but there’s a reason I mostly live on things that come from drive-thru windows.”

“Maybe that’s why you got a Fetch. She’s the nutrition fairy, here to punish you for all those double cheeseburgers.”

“Well, that explains why she keeps trying to make me eat salad.” I started dropping boxes of Pop-Tarts into the cart. Danny rolled his eyes and moved pointedly toward the granola bars.

I wasn’t always a connoisseur of fast food hamburgers and microwave burritos. I’ve never been a very good cook—my ex-fiancé once compared my meatloaf to roadkill—but I used to make more of an effort. Then my liege lord asked me for a “little favor” and I wound up spending fourteen years as an enchanted fish. It was difficult to work up any enthusiasm about learning to make a casserole after that.

Curses and contradictions are the story of a changeling’s life, mine maybe more than most. Changelings aren’t stolen human children; we’re crossbreeds, born to both worlds, belonging fully to neither. My mother was fae, and my father … well, wasn’t. I was raised human until Mom’s family found us and hauled us off to the Summerlands. Mom didn’t want to go, and she mostly raised me through neglect after that. I ran away as soon as I thought I was old enough, and immediately fell in with a bad crowd. It’s a sadly common story, but I got lucky. Good luck and good friends got me out of a bad situation, and I swore fealty to Sylvester Torquill, a man who didn’t care how mixed-up my blood was. I met a human man, fell in love, and made my mother’s mistakes all over again, even down to deserting my own little girl. Like mother, like daughter.

May eyed the Pop-Tarts as she returned with the bread. “Do we really need those?”

“They’re part of a balanced breakfast.”

“In what reality?”

“Mine.” I grabbed another box of Pop-Tarts. “Danny, we got everything?”

“We do,” he said, and lifted the three industrial-sized bags of cat litter from the floor, hoisting them with ease. “Let’s get out of here.”

“That assumes we can get somebody to ring us up.” I started pushing the cart forward. “We could be reduced to shoplifting if my former coworkers stay in hiding.”

“That’s our girl.” Danny patted my shoulder with one huge hand, nearly knocking me off my feet. “Making friends wherever she goes.”

“Something like that,” I muttered.

May can be as susceptible to colorful displays as any six-year-old; she tossed five candy bars into the cart while we waited in the checkout lane. I raised an eyebrow. “Do you need that much chocolate?”

“You get to criticize the amount of chocolate I eat when I get to criticize the amount of coffee you drink.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Low blow.”

“Yet so well aimed.”

The door to the employee break room opened, and Pete—the night manager and my former boss—started toward us, expression suggesting that he’d just bitten into something sour. He usually looked like that when he had to interact with customers. That the customers included me was just a bonus.

“October,” he said. He had the decency to try sounding surprised. He just lacked the acting skill to pull it off. He glanced at May and Danny, eyebrows rising in much more realistic confusion. Whoever warned the staff that I was in the store hadn’t bothered to pass along the fact that I was traveling with my identical twin.

“Pete,” I replied. “Busy night?”

His cheeks reddened. “Inventory.”

Inventory would mean more staffers in the store, not fewer. I didn’t call him on it. “Right. Well, this is my friend Danny,” Danny nodded, his sheer size making the gesture intimidating, “and my sister, May.”

“Hi!” May grinned, rocking back on her heels. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for being so awesome to Tobes when she worked here.”

“Uh,” said Pete. “Right.”

I couldn’t blame him. Meeting May has that effect on people, especially the ones who’ve known me for any length of time. She looks almost exactly like me, and people don’t expect that level of pep to come out of my mouth. She’s taken steps to distinguish herself from me, piercing her ears six times and getting a feathered bob before streaking her ashy brown hair with magenta and electric blue, but the underlying bone structure has stayed the same.

Pete rang up the groceries on a sort of swift autopilot, bagging them himself when no one came out to help him. He didn’t try to make conversation. In a rare display of mercy, May didn’t try to force him.

The total was over three hundred dollars: painful, but not unexpected, considering that we’d been down to ramen noodles and mystery cans from the back of the cupboard. I paid cash. Pete frowned but didn’t comment. Sometimes it’s better not to know.

“Nice to see you again, Pete,” I said, starting to push the cart forward. Danny and May followed, both keeping quiet for once.

We’d almost reached the door when Pete called, hesitantly, “Are things … you were pretty miserable when you were here. Are things better now?”

I looked back over my shoulder, breaking into a wide, honest smile as I said, “Things are wonderful.”

Pete nodded. I nodded back, and we left the store without another word.

We were trying to fit everything into the car when May stiffened, eyes narrowing. “Someone’s coming.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Someone’s coming,” she repeated. “From …” She turned to scan the shadows edging the parking lot before raising an arm and jabbing her forefinger decisively toward the spot where the building gave way to the surrounding bushes. “Over there.”

“Danny?” I put down the bag I was holding, reaching for the silver knife belted at my left hip. I keep the iron on the right, for emergencies that don’t let me play nice. I have that sort of emergency way more often than I’d like.

“Got it.” His human disguise crackled around him as he took a step forward, blurring to show the true slate color of his craggy skin. He curled his hands into fists. One punch from him would stand a good shot at stopping a freight train.

Neither of us questioned May’s conviction that we were about to have a visitor. The normally transitory nature of Fetches means no one really knows what they’re capable of. Every day with her is a whole new adventure.

The source of all that new adventure was shifting uneasily from foot to foot, eyeing the shadows she’d indicated. “I’m feeling a little unarmed here.”

“Get in the car, May,” I said.

“We sure this is somebody unfriendly?” Danny asked.

“If they were friendly, I wouldn’t know they were there,” May said.

Another bit of trivia for the growing compendium of Fetch abilities: she does laundry and she detects hostile guests. “Charming,” I muttered, and inhaled deeply, the copper and cut grass smell of my magic rising around me.

My mother was the most skilled blood-worker in Faerie, before she went crazy. I’m not in her league, but I’m good enough to roll the air over my tongue and feel for the fae heritage of the people around me. May’s magic tasted like cotton candy and ashes, and her blood was pure Fetch. Danny was the heavy stability of granite, Bridge Troll through and through. Fetch, Bridge Troll, and changeling. What else? I pressed further, feeling the first warning tinge of a migraine in my temples. Changelings have limits. Some of us more than others.

“Toby—” began Danny.

“Wait.” I almost had it. The trace was slippery, probably because the person was invisible, but it was there. I grabbed for it, pushing as hard as I could … and caught it.

For a moment, I was too surprised to make sense of what I tasted. Part of me hadn’t expected that little trick to work. Then I swallowed, focusing on the point where the blood seemed strongest, and said, “We know you’re there. I didn’t think the Daoine Sidhe were into sneaking up on people.”

The taste of cardamom flared in my mouth, chasing my magic away and leaving a pulsing headache in its place. I winced, blinked, and missed the point where a man replaced the empty air.

He was tall, slender, and movie-star handsome, with dark hair and sharp-chiseled features that were about as natural as my own round-curved ears. The flicker of an illusion spell colored the air around him, hiding his fae nature from anyone who might glance out the Safeway window. And he didn’t look happy about being caught. “October Daye?” he asked.

“Correct,” I said. “You are?”

“The Queen of the Mists has sent me to inform you that your presence has been requested,” he replied. His expression smoothed as he spoke, becoming the still, calm mask of a properly trained courtier. “You are to come at once.”

“Still not answering my question.” I dropped my hand from my knife, disgusted. I don’t expect manners from the Queen of the Mists, or from anyone who works for her. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t appreciate them. “Did she give a reason?”

“My name is Dugan Harrow. As for the other, Queens are not required to provide reasons to their subjects.” His condescending smile barely concealed his irritation.

“Is this an order or a request?” I hadn’t seen the Queen since I finished settling the affairs surrounding the death of Evening Winterrose, Countess of Goldengreen. I doubted she’d been any more broken up about my absence than I was.

He raised an eyebrow. “I was unaware the two differed. Your arrival is expected within the hour. I don’t recommend disappointing Her Majesty.” He left that dire proclamation hanging in the air as he turned on his heel and stalked away. The smell of cardamom rose again, now mixed with cinnamon, and he was gone.

Since Daoine Sidhe aren’t teleporters, he was probably walking invisibly to whatever he was using to get home. The illusion was his way of making a big exit. That’s the purebloods for you: always going for the special effects.

It was effective in this case, because we all just stood there, staring after him. May finally broke the silence, asking, “Do you think we have time to take the ice cream home and get it in the freezer before she gets really mad?”

Danny and I exchanged a look, and I groaned, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“Looks like we’ve got a date with royalty,” I said.

“Well, crap,” said Danny.

I lowered my hand. “My thoughts exactly.”