Rosemary and Rue

NINE

THIRD ROAD ENTERPRISES WAS DARK when I arrived. According to the clock on the dashboard, it was a little less than an hour to dawn, when the janito rial staff would probably start to arrive. The rest of the staff wouldn’t show up for a few hours after that, if they came to work at all. It was two days before Christmas, after all. If there was any time when I’d be reasonably able to get in and out undetected, it was now.

Despite my best efforts, I found myself wondering how many of the people who worked there would spend the next few days feigning sorrow before suddenly finding work a lot more pleasant. Evening was even worse with people than I am; she froze them out, while I just let them pass me by. Most folks would forget me if I disappeared again, but they’d remember Evening. They always remembered Evening: she was too wild and strange and fair to forget.

The people in that building would never have believed in Evening’s true face. They thought they knew her, but they were wrong. They knew a woman as human as they were, and I was willing to bet none of them ever looked for anything deeper. They’d never needed to, because in their world, you put Faerie away when you turned off the nursery lights. There’s no place for us in the human world these days, and still we can’t let go.

And when the hell did it go back to being “we”?

I walked toward the building, grateful for the lack of security guards. Considering my stained and increasingly grimy gown, no one was going to believe I had a good reason to be entering an upscale office building in the middle of the night. There’s pushing the bounds of credibility, and then there’s just getting silly.

The taste of roses faded as I walked. It was like playing a game of Hot or Cold with the rules reversed: the closer I got to my goal, the harder it got to know where I was going. If I caught Evening’s killer, the curse would snap and the roses would fade altogether, leaving me free to live or die as I chose. My fingers continued tracing the outline of the key cupped in my palm, trying to puzzle out its secrets. Evening had been more worried about it than she was about her own life. Why? Borrowed memories moved in the back of my mind, hissing, The key will open the way in Goldengreen, in her voice. I stopped where I was, almost stumbling.

Riding the blood isn’t an exact art: bits and pieces of the person you travel with can linger for days afterward, their secrets shaking loose like sand through a sieve. I hadn’t thought of the key in conjunction with Goldengreen before. It made perfect sense. I didn’t want it to.

Goldengreen was Evening’s knowe, and the gateway to her small holdings in the Summerlands. It was locked and sealed to her desires, and the idea of going in didn’t appeal. Once I set foot inside the boundaries of Goldengreen, the odds of being caught would go through the roof. I hadn’t considered that. What would someone who’d been able to kill Evening do to me? Probably nothing I’d enjoy. Not that I had any choice—not with Evening’s curse egging me on. If the key unlocked something in Goldengreen, Goldengreen was my next destination.

The front door wasn’t locked, despite the lateness of the hour. I hesitated with my hand on the handle, then walked inside and crossed to the elevator. There were no security guards. I still didn’t relax until the elevator doors closed between me and the lobby, and I was headed upward, toward the administrative offices on the ninth floor. The last thing I wanted was to be questioned about what I was doing there, but my luck was holding.

It couldn’t last. The door from the elevator lobby on the ninth floor was locked. Worse, it was one of those new keycard locks, which meant I couldn’t even try picking it. I rattled the handle a few times before I gave up, scowling. “Great,” I said, “now what am I supposed to do?”

Sometimes reality stops being subtle in favor of smacking you upside the head. Standing in front of a locked door with a magic key in your hand probably counts. I lifted the key. Somehow, not even the dimly flickering safety lights could make it look like the tacky stage prop it should have been.

“Will you let me in?” Hoping that I wasn’t completely insane, I pressed it against the lock, and said, “I’m here by leave of the Countess of Goldengreen.”

Nothing happened. I hit the door with the heel of my hand, saying, “Open sesame, damn it.”

The key flared, and the door swung open.

I gaped. Then, recovering my senses, I stepped through the door before it could change its mind. It made sense, in a twisted sort of way: most people would assume that Evening had her locks set to the more florid formal patterns. She could keep almost everyone out just by keeping things simple.

The office was almost totally dark. I pulled the door shut behind me, easing it closed, and stayed where I was, giving my eyes a chance to adjust. I hadn’t seen any guards or tripped any alarms that I was aware of, but that didn’t mean turning on the lights would be a good idea—and I, prepared as always, had left my flashlight in the trunk. Finding a path through the office would’ve been a cakewalk for Evening or my mother, but I knew the limits of my changeling’s eyes. If I didn’t take time to adjust, I was going to smash my shins against someone’s desk.

Unfortunately, my eyes weren’t adjusting. My head hurt, and thanks to the expensively tinted windows, there was almost no ambient light in the office. “Next time I bring the flashlight,” I muttered. The key in my hand suddenly blazed a brilliant white. I jerked my face away with a small, incoherent cry.

It took a moment for the afterimages to fade. When I was sure I hadn’t been blinded for life, I turned back toward the key, which was glowing with a rich, rosy light. I stared at it for a moment before shaking my head, muttering, “Lovely,” under my breath. Holding the key in front of me like a strange art nouveau torch, I began picking my way through the maze of desks.

The work spaces were almost all decorated with some small, personal touch—a photograph, a selection of small toys, a child’s drawing. One of the desks was practically a shrine to Tinker Bell, decorated with a half dozen ceramic representations of the world’s most famous pixie. I paused, looking at a figurine of the little blonde bitch posed coyly atop a thimble. Every changeling in the world would love to shove her into a microwave, but Disney, alas, is more powerful than most of us could ever hope to be. Shaking my head, I moved along.

Most of the desks were in cubicles, open to anyone that passed by, but there were a few more enclosed offices along the back wall, their doors closed and locked. The one I wanted was tucked into the far corner, where the view of the city would be at its best. A plain faux brass nameplate was mounted on the front, engraved with the name “Evelyn Winters.” Oh, Evening. We hated each other so well and loved each other so badly . . . and I had no idea what I was going to do without her.

I lifted the key higher, and whispered, “Evening, I’m sorry.” There was a click as the lock came undone, and the door swung open.

Some people live where they work. Others just visit. Third Road Enterprises was just a diversion to Evening, and her office was practically empty, reflecting her lack of true dedication. A mortal lifetime was small change for her: by the standards of faerie time, spending thirty years building a company was just another game. There was nothing on the desk or the walls to indicate who worked there, or whether that person was coming back.

Morbidly, I muttered, “At least they won’t have to do much cleaning.” I had no idea what I was looking for, or what it would look like. Evening’s illusions were some of the strongest I’d ever seen, remarkable even for one of the Daoine Sidhe. If she’d concealed whatever it was, it would probably be under a spell I couldn’t see, much less break.

After a few minutes of scanning the room, I started turning in a slow circle, holding the key in front of me like a dowsing rod. It made a strange sort of sense, really: the key got me in. It was probably connected to whatever I was trying to find. I made two full turns before the key started to vibrate, nearly jerking itself out of my hands as it was pulled toward the filing cabinet by the window. Lowering it, I moved to kneel and continue my search.

Three of the four drawers opened easily. The second from the top was stuck fast, and when I touched the handle, it felt unnaturally cold; a signature sign of Evening’s magic. “It’s okay, Evening,” I said, touching the key against the drawer. “I got here first.”

The binding spell released with a gust of snow-cold air and the smell of roses, and the drawer slid open easily when I tried again. The key’s light went out at the same time, leaving me blinking in the sudden darkness. “Crap.”

I’ve done worse things than navigating my way out of an office building by feel. I tucked the key into the front of my bodice, where it would hopefully recharge—that sort of magic item usually does if you give it enough time—before I reached into the drawer. The thought of booby traps crossed my mind, and I quashed it as firmly as I could. Still, doubt lingered, and it was a relief when my questing fingers hit only hanging files.

I let my hands slide past the folders, guiding myself by feel. There was something hard at the back of the drawer, half buried under a pile of loose papers. Brushing the papers aside, I felt for the edges of the object. It felt like a box, a wooden box, about the size of a thick paperback book. My fingers tingled as they brushed against it, and the tingling became a burn, spreading up my arms as I lifted the box and removed it from the drawer. The burning wasn’t painful. It was almost pleasant in a way, like rubbing hot oil on sore muscles.

My eyes must have adjusted while I was fumbling in the file cabinet, because I could clearly see what I was holding. I stared, the steadily increasing burning in my arms forgotten.

It was a hope chest.

A real, genuine, hope chest, carved by Oberon’s own hand from the four sacred woods of Faerie—oak and ash for bracing and balance, rowan and thorn for pattern and protection. I knew what it was. Any child of Faerie, no matter how thin their blood, would have known what it was. And it couldn’t be what I knew it to be, because it was an impossible thing, a bedtime story. It didn’t exist. And I was holding it, and it was the reason Evening had been killed. There was nothing else that it could be.

The stories say there are twelve hope chests, that Oberon made them when mankind was still nothing but an interesting diversion. Some people say the chests hold secrets, or stars, or nothing at all; that the Heart of Faerie is hidden in one and the others are decoys, or that they hold a map that would lead us to our missing King and Queens. Some say the chests hold the keys to the deeper lands of Faerie, the places on the other side of the Summerlands. And behind closed doors, they say the hope chests hold a different sort of key: the key to immortality. That they can change the balance of a changeling’s blood, making them pureblooded . . . or human.

If anyone had asked me whether the hope chests were real, I would have laughed. But at that moment, with the weight of the wood solid against my fingers and the burning spreading through me, I believed, and I understood why Evening chose to protect the key before she protected herself. There’s not a pureblood in Faerie who wouldn’t die to keep a hope chest safe.

My hands pulled the box to my chest without consulting my brain, thumbs caressing the lid. For the first time since I woke up, Evening’s death was the furthest thing from my mind. There was nothing in the world but the hope chest and me. I almost thought I heard it whispering to me, offering the world if I’d lift the lid and see what the stories didn’t tell us. I could play Pandora, if I wanted to. I could remake the world.

Pandora was an idiot. I dropped the box, shuddering from cold as much as from temptation; as soon as the hope chest left my fingers, the burning died. Whatever it was selling, I wasn’t in the market. I had enough to deal with without being pushed around by magical items that shouldn’t exist.

There were plastic trash bags in the office kitchen. I grabbed one, wrapping it around my hands before I picked the hope chest up again, and then wrapped the rest of the bag around the box. It didn’t help. I could still feel it. I hadn’t seen anything that powerful since I left the Summerlands—maybe not even then—and honestly, I’d never wanted to. Magic that strong never causes anything but trouble. I wanted it away from me as quickly as possible.

Tucking the bag under my arm, I made my way back to the elevator. Time was running short, and there was maybe half an hour left before dawn. I felt horribly conspicuous, like someone was going to jump out of the shadows and accuse me of theft at any second. No one did. I made it back to my car and climbed inside, putting the black plastic bundle of trash bag and hope chest down in the foot well on the passenger’s side. It looked so small, wrapped up and set aside like that. It certainly didn’t look like anything worth killing for. Unfortunately, somebody thought it was, and that meant I needed to hide it, and fast.

But where? It had to be someplace no one would look. My apartment was at the top of the list of places they would look first. Home and the Queen’s Court weren’t far below it. I hadn’t exactly been subtle. And even finding a hiding place wouldn’t be enough; nothing’s really safe unless there’s someone there to guard it. One way or another, I was going to have to trust somebody, and when it comes to finding someone you can trust with something no one can know exists, you always turn to the ones you hate.