One Salt Sea

EIGHTEEN

I EMERGED FROM MY ROOM wearing dry jeans, a black cotton shirt, and a gray wool sweater. The smell of pancakes greeted me, awakening my appetite. Dianda’s bottles and the Luidaeg’s shell were in my pocket, and the pin was in the lining of my jacket. Maybe its magic was spent and maybe not; I couldn’t afford to throw it away if there was still a chance it might be useful.

I was starting to feel like a fairy-tale James Bond, only my version of Q was as likely to kill me as she was to kill the bad guys.

May met me at the kitchen door, shoving a plate of pancakes into my hand. “Eat,” she commanded. Raj and Quentin were already at the table, eating with a speed that almost disguised their total lack of table manners.

“Yes, Mother,” I said. The pancakes were fixed the way I like them, with grape jelly and powdered sugar instead of syrup. My stomach roared, reminding me how long it had been since the last time I actually sat down to eat.

I was halfway through my second serving—and most of the way through my second explanation of what happened in Saltmist, this time for Quentin’s benefit—when someone started hammering on the door. I dropped my plate onto the table and half-walked, half-ran to answer. No one would knock that way if it wasn’t an emergency. Wrenching the door open, I demanded, “What do you—”

The rest of the sentence died on my tongue as I saw the haggard, almost haunted look on Tybalt’s face. For a moment, we both stood frozen. Then he grabbed my wrist, jerking me forward. “We have to go.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded, trying to pull my arm away. He didn’t let go. “What are you doing here? Did the cats tell you something?”

“For once in your life, be quiet and come on.”

“Tybalt?” May walked up behind me, sounding bemused. “What’s going on?”

Tybalt’s eyes stayed focused on me. “I’ve had Gabriel watching your daughter’s house. You didn’t ask for it, but it seemed like the best idea, given the circumstances. He just contacted me. Something’s happened. They’ve called the police.”

I’d considered a lot of horrible scenarios for this war. None of them included my almost-human daughter. I went cold. “Gillian?”

“She’s gone, October. She’s missing. Now please. Come.”

“I . . .” I turned. “Call Sylvester. Tell him Gillian’s missing, and that he needs to put the knights on alert. Keep Quentin here with you.”

“Yes,” she said numbly. She’s not Gillian’s mother. Some of her memories were probably telling her she was. Her fingers flashed in the air, accompanied by the scent of cotton candy and ashes, and the veil of a human disguise settled over me. “Go.”

I nodded my thanks. I was going to need all the magic I could muster if I was going to make it through the day ahead. “Raj . . .” I began.

“I’m staying here. If my Uncle needs me, he’ll call.”

If Tybalt had a problem with Raj choosing his own orders, he didn’t say anything. He just nodded, fingers tightening around my wrist. “Hold your breath,” he said, and yanked me across the threshold, into the gathering shadows on the other side.

Repeated exposure to the Shadow Roads has made them a little easier to handle, but this trip was worse than any in years. The cold bit my skin, seeming to worm its way all the way down to the bone. Every time my feet hit the unseen ground, it felt like I was running on knives. I have my limits, and I’d been going nonstop for hours. I was wearing out. Fear for my daughter drove me on.

I played fairy bride over eighteen years ago, and I had a child with a human man. His name was Cliff. Hers was Gillian. She grew up without me, thanks to Simon Torquill, and when I came back, she didn’t want anything to do with me. I was something out of a bad after-school special; there was no room for me in her life. But I loved her. I always will. She’s my darling girl, and even when she was screaming for me to leave her alone, I loved her.

And now I was afraid she was already lost. Rayseline knew how to find my weak spots. Gillian was the biggest—and the most easily-targeted—of them all. Why didn’t I think to protect her? Why did I need Tybalt, of all people, to do it for me?

I knew it didn’t make sense to be angry at myself for this. In a war between land and sea, Gillian wasn’t even a factor. There hadn’t been time to set a guard, or reason to expect that Raysel would go for my little girl. That didn’t stop the anger.

We fell out of the shadows and into the narrow alley between two tall brownstone houses. The flashing lights of the police cars across the street told me where we were before I recognized our surroundings: Cliff and Gillian’s. I scrambled to my feet and ran for the house, not pausing to see whether Tybalt was following. Dragging a person through the shadows can hurt the Cait Sidhe. I knew that, and in that moment, I couldn’t care. Only Gillian mattered.

I vaulted up the porch steps and pounded on the door until it opened. A human woman stared out at me, eyes wide behind the yellow fringe of her hair. Miranda. My replacement, Gillian’s stepmother, and—since we were never married—Cliff’s first wife. Miranda and I don’t get along, maybe because I view her as a usurper, while she views me as an irresponsible bitch who thinks it’s okay to walk out for fourteen years and then stroll back in like nothing happened. In our own ways, we’re both right.

“October,” she said, sounding as surprised as she looked. “How did you—”

“A friend saw the police cars and called me,” I said, trying to see past her into the house. “What’s going on? Is Cliff here?”

“October, this isn’t a good time—”

“She’s my daughter, too, Miranda. If something’s happened, I need to know.”

“She’s gone,” said a gruff voice. I looked up, meeting the eyes of the man behind her. Clifford Marks, my ex-fiancé. It was the first time I’d seen him in over a year. I was surprised to realize I hadn’t missed him. I missed our daughter, but not her father. Not anymore.

“Cliff,” I said. “What happened?”

“Someone broke her bedroom window,” he said, gaze steady on mine. “Miranda went up to wake her for school, and she was gone.”

“Can I—”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Toby. The police will handle things.”

“Cliff . . .” Tybalt stepped onto the porch behind me. Cliff’s attention flicked briefly to him before returning to me. I raked my fingers through my tangled hair, looking pleadingly at my ex-lover. “Please.”

He hesitated before shaking his head. “No. My daughter is missing. I’m not going to risk you interfering with finding her.”

Something inside me snapped. “She’s my daughter too, damn you!”

“Maybe you should have thought of that sixteen years ago.”

That stopped me cold. How could I tell him that he and Gillian were all I’d been thinking of back then? What words were there to make him understand? I realized I was shaking just as I felt the solid, comforting weight of Tybalt’s hand on my shoulder.

“The mother has a right to help,” he said.

Cliff looked past me to Tybalt for the second time, and I found myself considering how the King of Cats must look to him. Even covered by a human disguise, Tybalt is impressive. “Who are you?” asked Cliff.

“A friend of October’s,” was Tybalt’s imperturbable reply.

“Please,” I repeated. “I have to help.”

“What if I don’t want you to?” Miranda asked abruptly. I blinked. I’d almost forgotten she was there. “How do we know you didn’t have some of your freak friends grab her so you could play detective and ride in to save the day? You were never a mother to her. You threw her away. Why should I trust you to bring her home?”

“That’s enough.” Cliff put a hand on her shoulder in an almost ironic mirror of the way Tybalt’s hand rested on mine. “If you can find her, Toby, do it. Bring her home. But if you come here again, I’ll tell the police they should be questioning you.”

I studied him for a long moment before nodding. He was giving me what his pride and panic allowed: he was giving me a chance. “Can I see where she was taken? Just to see if there’s anything that might give me a clue?”

“The police are handling that,” said Cliff.

“Mr. and Mrs. Marks?” called a voice from inside. “Is everything all right?”

Cliff’s look didn’t waver. I sighed. “We’ll be going now,” I said.

“Good,” he said, and closed the door. He didn’t say good-bye.

I stared at the doorframe, trying to calm the frantic hammering of my heart. Gilly was missing. Gilly was gone. She hadn’t been part of my life for a long time, but when she was in danger I reacted like any other mother—with fury and with fear. I looked up at Tybalt once I was finally calm enough to speak, asking, “What did you find?”

He shook his head, pulling his hand away as he stepped off the porch. I followed. Once we were on the sidewalk, too far away for the inhabitants of the house to hear us, he said, “I walked the bounds and spoke to my subjects. They say the girl was in her room when the window exploded. They led me there. There was blood on the carpet.” He paused, looking away. “It was hers.”

“How can you tell?”

“I know your scent, and her father’s. That’s enough to tell me whose she is.”

“Is she alive?” He didn’t answer. I grabbed his shoulder, nails digging into his skin. “Tybalt, is my daughter alive?”

“Yes,” he said reluctantly, looking back to me. “That may not be for the best.”

I stared at him. “What in Oberon’s name do you mean by that?”

“I smelled more than blood in her room. The air smelled of mustard flowers, and of wax.”

“Rayseline,” I said numbly.

He nodded.

“Can you follow the trail?” Normally, I would have demanded to see the room myself, so Gilly’s blood could tell me her story itself, but there wasn’t time. Cliff would never let us in, and Tybalt knew the scent of Rayseline’s magic. His cats had been there; if there were any other clues, they would have given them to their King. All I could do by trying to get inside was waste time that we didn’t have.

Tybalt looked mildly surprised by the question. “I can.”

“Do it. Please.”

He nodded again and closed his eyes, nostrils flaring. The Cait Sidhe are some of the best trackers in Faerie, no matter what shape they’re in. The cat never entirely leaves them. A moment later, he opened his eyes, and pointed west. “There,” he said, and started trotting toward the corner. I followed, pacing half a step behind and scanning the street for signs that Rayseline had been here.

It was late enough in the morning that the residential streets around Cliff and Gilly’s house were practically deserted. A man with a pit bull jogged past us, and a few cars drove by, but that was it, at least for the first two blocks. In the middle of the third, Tybalt stopped, his face knotting in concentration as he tilted his head and sniffed the air.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, stopping beside him.

“The trail is . . . fuzzy,” he said, picking his words with obvious care. He probably didn’t want to upset me. I appreciated the effort, even as I wanted to shake him until he told me what the hell he was talking about. “I haven’t lost it, but something is obscuring it from me.”

My heart dropped. “What are you talking about?”

“Just give me a moment. I can find my bearings.” There was a note of uncertainty in his voice that made me want to tear my hair out and scream. Instead, I paced around him in a circle, head down, trying not to think about Gillian and what Rayseline might be doing to her. My poor little girl . . .

The sound of a knife being drawn brought my head up in a second. I turned toward it, seeing Tybalt out of the corner of my eye as he did the same. All I saw in that direction was an empty lot, all dried brown weeds and broken bottles. I frowned, starting to unlock my shoulders, and stopped, a sudden, horrible thought occurring to me.

“Tybalt?” I asked. “Why would there be a vacant lot in the middle of all these houses?”

Tybalt frowned, sniffing the air. “It smells . . . wrong,” he said slowly.

I can weigh the balance of a person’s blood by breathing deep and rolling some intangible part of their fae heritage across my tongue. I hadn’t tried it at a distance before. I opened my mouth, tasting the air, and felt myself go cold.

“We have to run.”

Tybalt looked at me, questioning but not doubtful. “What is it?”

“Goblins.” As if that were some sort of sign, the veil of illusion that had been concealing the alley across from us shattered, revealing a cluster of Goblins. For an instant, we could only stand and stare.

Goblins are the shock troops of Faerie, and they represent the worst of what our world can be. I’ve met representatives of almost half the races in our world, and none of them have ever had a good thing to say about the Goblins. Most go into mercenary work, selling their services to the highest bidder, and they have little respect for the sanctity of Oberon’s Law. Goblins kill the immortal without looking back.

Twenty of them charged toward us, cloaked in a blurry haze that hid them from human eyes; if they caught us, no one would see us die. They were armored in uneven patches of beaten metal and leather that looked suspiciously like human—or fae—skin. Their ranks bristled with swords and spears, and they screamed at the tops of their lungs as they charged. It was meant to intimidate. It was working.

Tybalt’s lips drew back from his teeth, and he snarled, a low, guttural challenge that cut through the howls of the Goblins. Their front ranks faltered, perhaps rethinking the wisdom of charging a Cait Sidhe.

“There’s too many of them!” I shouted, drawing my knife.

“I know!”

Then the Goblins were upon us, and talking ceased to be a priority.

Goblins are cheap labor; that was the one thing we had going for us. They had the advantage in terms of numbers and weaponry, but most of them were young and too inexperienced to have faced many real fights. An old Goblin is a retired Goblin. These were all young Goblins, and they didn’t realize what they were in for when they faced a cornered Cait Sidhe and a changeling knight with nothing left to lose.

Tybalt fought like an animal, all teeth and claws and tearing fury. My own efforts were more restrained; I blocked and slashed with careful precision, aiming for throats and eyes. The Goblins laughed at my lack of armor until they felt the bite of silver across their faces or knuckles. They learned fast. They started coming at me with spears and longer swords, forcing me back.

A spear slipped past my guard, stabbing into the scar tissue on my shoulder. I screamed, slashing harder, and my attacker fell back, another immediately stepping up to take his place. It wasn’t until the first crossbow bolt whizzed past my head that I realized they were equipped for more than just hand-to-hand combat.

“Tybalt!” I shouted. “Elf-shot!”

He glanced over his shoulder at me, eyes wide and startled in a surprisingly pale face. Then he lunged, grabbing me around the middle and hauling us both backward, away from the closest tier of Goblins. An arrow zipped through the spot where I’d been standing only seconds before.

“What are you—” I began.

“Save your breath,” he hissed. “I’ll come for you.” Then his mouth was covering mine in a kiss as heated as the battle cries of the Goblins rushing up behind us. Everything seemed to slow for that one brief second, and I was all too aware of the heat from his skin, the press of his chest against mine, the faint pennyroyal scent of him. I started to kiss him back—

—and then he was shoving me, hard, into the shadows. As I fell, I saw Tybalt wheel to launch himself at the Goblins, already snarling. Then the shadows closed around me, and I found myself in the endless dark and crushing cold of the Shadow Roads . . . alone.

“Tybalt!” I shouted, before I could catch myself. The cold filled my mouth and flowed down my throat, making me feel like winter was devouring me from within. All the air seemed to rush out of my lungs, leaving me breathless and freezing.

I dropped to my knees, unable to see what was under me, and unable to entirely care. The cold was making me dizzy, and I had no idea how I could find my way out of the shadows alone. I barely even noticed when my eyes closed, trading the endless dark of the Shadow Roads for the endless dark inside my own eyes, and the world fell away.