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
“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
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
“Shut up, or you’re walking.”
Quentin just laughed. I didn’t say anything, but I was relieved. With Raj missing and Chelsea’s mother threatening police action—and at least one officer already trying to tail us—I couldn’t imagine that laughter was going to be much of a priority in the days ahead.
We had just reached the Fremont city limits when the charm in Quentin’s hand changed from red to its previous white. The air in the car went strangely flat, like something was being discharged. Quentin frowned, giving the charm a vigorous shake. Its color didn’t change.
“I think it’s broken,” he said.
“I don’t.” My coffee was almost gone. I sucked the last of it through the straw before dropping it into the empty McDonalds bag. “Chelsea’s moving again. Wherever she is now, it’s not here, and it’s not close enough for us to be drawn there. She was in Seattle before, remember?”
“So where is she now? Tokyo?”
“Wherever she is, let’s just hope she’s safe.” I moved over a lane, heading for the freeway exit.
“Are we going to turn around?”
“Nope.” I reached over to steal a few of his remaining fries. They were cold. I ate them anyway. “She stayed in one place long enough for us to get this far. So either she’s managed to find a safe house near here, or her
