Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel (19 page)

“I can tell the police
you
took her.”

The threat was made with absolute calm. I had to pause, considering the nerve it took for her to stand in her living room, with no one to save her if she screamed, and threaten me. She didn’t know what Quentin and I were capable of. All she knew was that we weren’t human. And that didn’t change the part where she was threatening me. One unfortunate downside of my continuing involvement in the mortal world: I’m actually vulnerable to threats in a way that, say, Tybalt isn’t. If the police wanted to come for me, they knew where I lived.

Quentin started to open his mouth. I signaled him to stop before he could say something we’d both regret. Instead, I said, “You could do that. Hell, they might even pick me up, make my life difficult for a few hours. But
since there’s nothing to tie me to Chelsea before she disappeared, they won’t be able to hold me. All you’ll manage to do is endanger her further by taking me away from my work and guarantee that when I
do
find her, I won’t be feeling that charitably toward you. Is that really how you want this to go?”

Bridget’s face fell, bravado dissolving as she started to cry. “I just want my daughter back,” she said. “Please. Please, get me my daughter back.”

I sighed. “I’ve already told you I’ll do what I can. That’s all I
can
do. And you need to stop treating me like the enemy, okay?”

Mutely, Bridget nodded.

It was hard not to feel bad for her. When I played faerie bride, I always knew my child might not be human enough for the mortal world. The threat of a lifetime spent in the Summerlands was something I considered, seriously, before I slept with Cliff. Bridget didn’t have that. She thought she was going to have her child forever, and once she realized there was a risk—once she realized Chelsea wasn’t human—she took the steps she thought she needed to take in order to protect her daughter.

Reaching a hand into my pocket, I produced the jar of power dampener. “This is why we came. If Chelsea teleports home, dump this on her. It will nullify her powers temporarily—long enough for you to call me and let me come to make things right.”

“It stops fae magic?” asked Bridget, a new light in her eyes as she reached for the jar.

I didn’t give it to her. “Let’s be clear about this. You have one shot.
One
. If you don’t take it, if Chelsea comes here and you’ve used this stuff for something other than stopping her, you will never see your daughter again. Do you understand? This isn’t a tool you can use to get your revenge. This is a way to save your little girl.”

The light went out again. Bridget nodded. “I understand.”

“Good. Don’t make me regret this.” I placed the jar in
her hand before I turned to Quentin. “Let’s go. Bridget, we’ll call you if we learn anything. Until then, don’t do anything stupid.” I paused, a thought occurring to me. “Have you warded your house against the fae? You know, with things like your frying pan?”

“Yes, I have,” said Bridget. “Wouldn’t you?”

“Probably, but you need to take it all down. If there’s any chance you’ve hit on something that works, it’s going to keep Chelsea from letting herself in, and that’s the opposite of what we want.”

“I will,” she said.

“Good. Oh, and Bridget?” Quentin looked at me, bemused. I kept my eyes on Bridget. “If Chelsea comes back, call me. Don’t try to run. We’ll find you. I’m sorry, but you can’t hide anymore. It’s time to deal with all the things you were running away from in the first place.”

I didn’t wait to hear what she would say to that. I simply turned to the door, gesturing for Quentin to follow me, and stepped out into the cool air of the Berkeley morning. Our charms were attuned; Raj was missing; and somewhere, a group of people were working together to keep a changeling girl captive. It was time for us to find out exactly why.

“G
ET YOUR CHELSEA-CHASER OUT,” I said, once Quentin and I were safely in the car. “The Luidaeg said they’d lead us to her. Let’s see if we can figure out how that’s going to work.”

“Raj—”

“We’ll find him. Chelsea’s the one who might destroy Faerie, so we’ll find her first.”

Quentin nodded. “Okay.” He dug a hand into his pocket, pulling out the charm. He frowned at it. “Is it supposed to do something? It’s just glowing.”

“I don’t know. The Luidaeg didn’t give me the instruction booklet. Shake it or something, see what it does.”

“
Shake it?
” Quentin looked at me as if I’d just grown a second head before shrugging and shaking the sphere. It went from white to foxfire green. Then, with a chime like bells, it turned bright red and jerked toward the windshield, dragging Quentin’s hand with it. His seat belt pulled him up short before the charm could slam itself—or my squire—into the glass.

“O-kay, that’s new,” I said. “Which way does it want us to go?”

“That way.” Quentin pointed with his free hand. “It wants us to go that way.”

“I love really specific navigation charms,” I said, and started the engine.

The Luidaeg’s charm led us along surface streets to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, where we had to slow down to account for the increase in traffic. It kept on glowing as we took the entrance to I-880, heading toward the South Bay. I frowned. “Quentin?”

“Yeah?”

“Here.” I tossed him my phone. “Call April. I want you to ask whether she’s noticed anything unusual in the last couple of days. Weird lights where they’re not supposed to be, unfamiliar magical signatures, stuff like that.”

Quentin blinked. “You think we’re going to Tamed Lightning?”

I indicated the highway with a wave of my hand. “It’s starting to look that way.”

“Huh,” he said, and dialed.

The County of Tamed Lightning is located in the mortal city of Fremont. Like many more recently founded fiefdoms, they don’t have a proper knowe; instead, their holdings are consolidated in a shallowing, which also serves as the corporate headquarters for their software design company. It’s a County filled with crazy idealists, and they’re weird even by the most generous of Faerie standards. I met them when they had a small serial killer problem, one that got their former Countess—Sylvester’s niece, January—killed. Her adopted daughter, April, took over, and has been running the whole mess ever since.

It probably says something about me that I find dealing with April O’Leary soothing. She’s the only one of her kind in Faerie, and she thinks most of the traditions and rituals that control the other purebloods are ridiculous. Sometimes it’s nice to have someone look you in the eye and tell you that no, it doesn’t matter whether you say “thank you” or not; it matters whether you remember to pay the DSL bill. Really, I like just about everyone at Tamed Lightning, even Alex, despite the fact
that he once used his Gean-Cannah fascination powers to seduce me.

My relationships are complicated, even when they’re with people I think of as allies.

Quentin lowered the phone. The Luidaeg’s charm was still glowing red. “April says things have been moving around when no one was looking for the last several days, and she wants to know how we knew. She also says they’ll set up two of the employee break rooms for us, in case we need a place to crash.”

“Last time we slept there, you got kidnapped and nearly thrown off a catwalk. Oh, and shot. We mustn’t forget the part where you got
shot
.”

“Yeah, but they had really good donuts, so I guess it balances out.”

I snorted laughter. My stomach grumbled, reminding me that while Quentin might have had breakfast, I still hadn’t. “Donuts would be awesome right about now. I’ll hit a drive-through as soon as that thing takes us off the freeway.”

Quentin looked at the glowing charm. “Do you think this thing will lead us to Raj, too?”

I hate lying to him. I try not to do it when I have any other choice. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m hoping so. If not, it should lead us to Chelsea, and that means we’ll be able to get her to help us figure out where he wound up.” I took my eyes of the road long enough to shoot him a reassuring glance. “I’m sure he’s fine. Raj is tough, and he managed to get away from Blind Michael without my help. He’s not going to let a little unexpected teleportation throw him.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“So do I,” I said. I started to look back to the road, and paused, the rearview mirror catching my eye. I frowned. “Quentin? That car behind us. How long has it been there?”

880 between Berkeley and Fremont is always a mess. Most people change lanes frequently, trying to win those few extra seconds. All of them were behaving normally…except
for the neutral-looking white sedan following us at the exact recommended legal distance. He’d been there long enough that he should have passed me, or at least changed lanes when he realized I was never going to speed up. Instead, he was just tooling along down the road, following at an unvarying distance.

“I don’t know.” Quentin looked at the rearview mirror rather than twisting in his seat. I was proud of him in that moment. There was a time when he would have turned his whole body around, telling our tail—if it was a tail—that we suspected we were being followed. “Want me to cast a don’t-look-here on the car?”

“Too risky. If he
is
following us, he’s going to notice us vanishing, and we don’t know if he’s human or not. Do you think you can manage a hide-and-seek?” Hide-and-seek spells are what come after the don’t-look-here in the arsenal of magic aimed at hiding in plain sight. They’re a bitch to cast, but when they work, they’re almost impossible to notice.

I can cast hide-and-seek spells if I have to, but they take a lot out of me, and they’re not the sort of magic you should attempt while driving. Quentin, on the other hand, is Daoine Sidhe. The spell would be easier for him, and there wasn’t the additional risk of him losing control of the car. With a hide-and-seek, anyone who was looking at the car would continue to see it…right up until they lost sight of us for some reason. It didn’t matter if they looked away or we went around a curve, the end result would be the same: we’d vanish, and we wouldn’t be visible to them again until the spell was broken. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but if we were actually being followed, it was better than leading our pursuer straight to Tamed Lightning.

Quentin closed his eyes, the smell of heather and steel gathering around him as he ducked his head. He sang six bars from the song we’d been listening to earlier—the one about the man and the boat—and the magic burst around us, leaving the car smelling like a Bath and Body Works air freshener. I glanced his way and decided that
was one comparison I wouldn’t make out loud. He wasn’t in a position to appreciate it.

“Now what?” he asked, slumping in his seat.

The sedan was maintaining the exact same following distance. “We stop for coffee,” I said, and shifted over a lane. The sedan did the same thing. We were definitely being followed.

Not for long. The exit to downtown San Leandro involved going around a wide curve, and we were blocked from view several times before we reached the surface street. I promptly pulled off to the side, twisting around to see the other driver’s reaction to our disappearance.

He hit the gas as soon as he saw that we were “gone,” accelerating toward the street up ahead. He must have thought he could catch up with us. I watched intently as he blew by. For one second, I had a clear view of his face. I froze.

It was Officer Thornton from the SFPD.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” I whispered.

“Toby?”

I shook my head, looking back to Quentin. “That guy was one of the officers on duty when I got picked up the other night.”

Quentin frowned. “Why would he be following us now? And to Fremont?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. But I do know one thing.” I started the car again. “I really, really need a cup of coffee.”

Getting food was complicated by the fact that with the hide-and-seek spell on the car, we couldn’t use the drive-through. I eventually had Quentin wait in the car with the Luidaeg’s still-glowing charm while I ran into the McDonalds for a sack of cheeseburgers, fries, and faux-apple pies. He got a soda large enough to qualify as a health hazard. I got a coffee large enough that I was in no position to throw stones. Officer Thornton was still nowhere to be seen when I returned to the car, handed Quentin his share of lunch, and got back on the road.

The drive to Fremont is boring under most circumstances.
The roads are wide and reasonably well maintained—by California standards, anyway—and you don’t usually encounter people driving like complete idiots. That changes when you’re trying to eat lunch, drive an invisible car, and follow the directions of a magical snow globe at the same time. We nearly got sideswiped by a semi, and several single-passenger vehicles tried to merge, not into us, but close enough that I wasn’t comfortable. I wound up drinking my coffee through Quentin’s extra straw, muttering dire imprecations about my fellow drivers.

“You know they can’t see us, right?” asked Quentin, amused.

“Shut up.”

“I don’t think it’s fair to call them names if they can’t even
see
us.”