We punched back into the human world on a suburban street lined with pastel-colored houses and broad- leafed mulberry trees. The air smelled like roses and jasmine and was almost warm enough to break through the cold trying to work its way all through me. My arm was still bleeding, but sluggishly, already starting to heal. Tybalt staggered and collapsed as his feet hit the sidewalk. I managed to catch him, sliding an arm under his, and looked around.
There was no one in sight, and the curve of the street meant that we had a moment of privacy. California road planners sometimes seem to have a phobia about straight lines. We were lucky; it was early enough in the afternoon that most adults were at work and most kids were still at school. We might not have long before that changed, but for the moment, we were alone. “Hey—hey! Stay with me here, big guy. What the hell was that?”
“That, my dear October, was an assassination attempt,” he wheezed. He was shivering more than I was, and ice was caked in his hair and eyelashes. How hard had it been to fight on the Shadow Roads without losing track of me? He was a King of Cats, but not even a King of Cats has access to infinite resources. “Someone, I fear, has decided to depose me.”
“What the—” We were too exposed. If anyone passed us, the blood would catch their attention, and we’d wind up with a lot of explaining that we weren’t equipped to do. “Come on.” I shifted my arm to balance most of Tybalt’s weight against me as we staggered down the long driveway of the nearest house.
“This happens,” he said, without real authority; he was trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince me. “It will be fine. I just need to catch my breath, and I will crush this insurrection.
“Liar,” I said, with as much warmth as I could muster. “No one who’s bleeding as much as you are gets to say that to me.”
“They’re all flesh wounds.”
“Isn’t every wound a flesh wound?” I kept us moving until we were in the shadow of the garage. The climbing ivy that was doing its best to strangle the surrounding structures hid us from the street. I eased him to the pavement. “There’s no car in the driveway, and the shades are drawn. We should be safe for now.”
“Not for long,” said Tybalt, closing his eyes again. “Whoever has decided to challenge for my throne will follow. We cannot stay here.”
“And we can’t go anywhere else, either. So just breathe.”
Something rustled in the bushes. I whipped around, grabbing the knife from my belt. If the Cait Sidhe who attacked us on the Shadow Roads had already found us, we were toast, but I’d be damned if I wouldn’t take as many of them with me as I could. Tybalt couldn’t fight yet. That just meant I needed to do the fighting for him.
A cream-colored Siamese cat stepped out onto the pavement, tail curved in a question mark. Smoke-blue markings defined its paws and face. It barely spared a glance in my direction as it walked over and stepped into Tybalt’s lap, meowing loudly.
The sound seemed to serve as a summoning. Cats poured from the bushes on every side. Tabbies, calicos, and tortoiseshells, white cats and black cats, striped marmalade cats, and more. They leaped over whatever obstacles were in their way to twine around Tybalt, batting him with their paws and meowing. For a moment, I was afraid I was seeing a Cait Sidhe funeral—that he’d died for real this time and wouldn’t be coming back.
I relaxed when Tybalt opened his eyes, tilting his head toward the Siamese. “Ah,” he said, sounding weary but amused. The Siamese meowed. He nodded. “Yes, I feared that was the case. I would appreciate that very much, if you would be so kind.”
That seemed to satisfy the Siamese. It jumped out of his lap and ran for the street, a river of cats racing behind it. They were gone in seconds, some hiding in bushes, others sitting in full view on porches or the sidewalk. This was a California suburb. Thanks to no-kill shelters, healthy feral populations, and crazy cat ladies, no one would think twice about them.
No one but me. I turned to Tybalt, one eyebrow raised in question.
He smiled. “That was my opposite number, Shade. She keeps mostly to herself, but she felt the disturbance when we fell off the Shadow Road. She had heard rumors of the coming challenge to my authority, and while she is not allowed to interfere on my behalf, she does not support the challenge. Her Court will watch this area while we rest. If anything comes, they’ll hold it off as best they can and make sure we’re warned. My opponent made that permissible when you became involved. They should never have touched you. October…” His expression sobered. “October, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right.” I walked over and sat down next to him. “I think I understand.”
If Shade was Tybalt’s opposite number, that made her a Queen of Cats. Kings and Queens of Cats never live together. They don’t share Courts, they don’t share territory, and they don’t—according to gossip, anyway—share beds. Every Court of Cats has a single regent who rules according to his or her own laws. Queens tend to be more private than Kings, but they pay attention to what happens in their lands. Failure to notice a King of Cats showing up would probably lead to her having a very short reign.
Tybalt closed his eyes, sighing. “I don’t think I can do that again today. Not even if…”
“I understand that, too.” I dug the cell phone out of my pocket, looked at the display, and scowled. “My battery’s dead. We’re not calling for help.”
“That would have been too convenient.”
“I guess that’s true.” I replaced the cell phone in my pocket and put my hand on his knee. “Thank you anyway. For everything. For trying.”
Tybalt put his hand over mine and didn’t say anything about being surprised by my thanks. We sat in silence for several minutes. His fingers were cold and had barely started to warm up when he spoke again. “Did I ever tell you about my wife?” His tone was light and conversational, as if he were commenting on the weather.
I didn’t have to feign surprise. “I didn’t know you were married.”
“I’m not married anymore. It was a long time ago.”
That was oddly reassuring. I pushed the thought away. “I’m not sure this is a good time to—”
“This is the
“You’ll get better.”
“Not if they kill me properly. And you won’t get better regardless.”
I frowned, biting back further protest. “Okay. No. You never told me about her.”
“We met over two hundred years ago, in New York. Her name was Anne O’Toole.” His lips curved into a smile I’d never seen before, soft and wistful and almost longing all at the same time. “She was Irish when it wasn’t fashionable to be Irish, and a woman when that wasn’t fashionable either. She was all impulse and sharp words.” He opened his eyes, looking at me. “I think you would have liked her. You’re similar in some ways. Mostly in your habit of charging headlong into danger while swearing you’re doing no such thing.”
I looked at him but said nothing. After a moment he looked away, still smiling.
“We hated each other, of course. She thought I was arrogant and boorish. I thought she was common and dull, like every other human. But we…learned otherwise, and I loved her. She burned so bright—she raced through every day like she knew they wouldn’t last. She wanted me to remember her.” He stopped.
The cats yowled in the distance, marking out their territory. I brushed my hair away from my face with my free hand and asked, “Did she know?”
“That I wasn’t human? Of course she did. She wasn’t stupid.” The implied criticism of Cliff stung. “She knew before the first time she let me touch her. She said she loved me all the more for knowing I’d be here after she was gone. I was her immortality, she said. ‘The Sidhe have always been immortal for the sake of the Irish,’ that’s what she told me. And she laughed, and I laughed, because I was young and foolish and in love, and she was never going to die.”
“What happened?” The words seemed too bald, but I knew he’d never finish his story without prompting. We’d sit in silence until it was time to run again, and whatever demon he was trying to cast out with his recollection would stay with him.
“She died.” This time his smile was bitter. “She became pregnant, as women do, and it proved too much for her. Medicine of the time was…the human world lacked the skills she needed to survive. The Cait Sidhe have no talent for medicine, and I couldn’t find a healer among the Divided Courts who’d tend my ‘mortal slut.’ I begged. I
