see their faces to know they were on edge.
My experience with the Cloud Kingdoms—and hence the Folletti—is limited enough to verge on nonexistent. Since they were made of air, and illusions are technically bent air and light, they might see right through Etienne’s don’t-look-here. On the other hand, being made of air might make the illusion work even better on them. It was a gamble. As their searching eyes found our side of the hall, I tensed, ready to throw myself at them in order to buy Etienne time to open us a portal.
The Folletti looked right through us and drifted on their way. I kept my hand over Etienne’s mouth and began slowly, silently counting, refusing to let either of us move until I was certain we were alone. When I had reached a hundred without the Folletti returning I pulled my hand away, jerking my chin toward the end of the hall. Etienne nodded. Still holding Tybalt to my chest, I pushed away from the wall and started walking toward the doorway to the stairs.
If Riordan thought we were safely confined in our individual rooms, she wasn’t likely to have multiple squads of Folletti checking up on us. That would be a waste of resources, and whatever she was planning was big enough that I didn’t expect her to have resources to waste. Holding that thought in mind, I put my free hand on the bannister and began descending the stairs. Etienne was close behind me.
That’s what saved us. When the second group of Folletti floated up through the open central column of the spiral stairway, Etienne yanked me backward against him, covering my mouth the way I’d covered his only a few minutes before. The Folletti drifted by without noticing us. Once they were past, Etienne let me go, and we resumed our downward trek.
With the Folletti above us now, we were able to continue down past the floor where Etienne and I had been held. There was another floor below it, identical to the two above. I stopped at the landing, pulling the Luidaeg’s Chelsea-chaser out of my pocket. It was still glowing the color of pale starlight. Chelsea wasn’t here. But that didn’t mean Quentin wasn’t.
Bringing my mouth close to Tybalt’s ear, I whispered, “Are you feeling strong enough to check the hall for prisoners? I don’t need you to get into their rooms. Just find out if there’s anyone here for us to save.”
Tybalt opened his mouth in a silent meow—the secret weapon of cats everywhere—and squirmed to tell me that I should put him down. I bent to set him gingerly on the cold stone floor, and watched uneasily as he slunk out of sight down the hall.
Etienne put his hand on my shoulder. I looked back to him, forcing myself to smile. He glanced down the hall after Tybalt before raising an eyebrow in silent question. I hesitated, considering my answer…and then, finally, I nodded. Yes. I was worried about Tybalt, and yes, I was worried for reasons beyond simple friendship. Oak and ash. If I was going to fall in love with the man, couldn’t I have picked a more reasonable time to do it?
Then again, when do I get a reasonable time to do anything anymore? There’s always something going wrong. If I put my life on hold until everything was calm, I’d be waiting forever for the chance to start living.
Tybalt came slinking back along the hall and wound himself around my ankles in a complicated figure-eight pattern before starting back the way he’d come. I followed, catching his intent, and Etienne followed me. The three of us made an odd procession as we continued along the hallway to another of those damn locked doors. I dropped to my knees, pulling a sprig of bracken from my hair. By the time this night was over—if nights in Annwn ever really ended—I was going to be well practiced in the arts of breaking and entering.
Tybalt sat next to me and Etienne stood guard as I picked the lock. If it was Quentin on the other side, we’d be back together; we could hunt for Chelsea in earnest. I wouldn’t need to worry that my squire was in Riordan’s boudoir, waiting for her to come along and make him an offer he’d really want to refuse. If it was Quentin…the lock let go. I pushed the door open.
It wasn’t Quentin.
Officer Thornton of the San Francisco Police was lying bound in a heap of bracken like the ones we’d found in each of the other rooms. Like Etienne, he was blindfolded; like both Etienne and Tybalt, he’d clearly been beaten. Unlike either of them, he was human. I stood slowly, too startled to know what to say.
Much to my surprise, it was Etienne who found the words I couldn’t: “Oh, Oberon’s honor,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “That.”
Riordan was kidnapping humans. That wasn’t technically against any fae laws—Faerie has always had a generous definition of “acceptable” when it comes to messing with the human world. As long as you don’t get caught or leave witnesses, no one cares. But she had a mortal life, too, and that meant that Officer Thornton’s presence signaled one very big, very bad thing.
She wasn’t planning to go back to a world where she might be in trouble for kidnapping a police officer.
If we didn’t find Chelsea soon, we were going to be stuck in Annwn.
TWENTY-THREE
THERE WAS BLOOD ON OFFICER THORNTON’S forehead and caked under his nose, but he was alive, and he was awake. He turned toward the open door, snarling, “You are interfering with an officer of the law. Take off this blindfold, take off those stupid masks, and release me at once.”
I only had a moment to make a decision. Close this door and leave him behind, or try to get him to see reason and work with us. I wanted to close the door. Faerie was in danger, Chelsea was in danger, and a human police officer was one more distraction we didn’t need. That’s why I stepped into the room.
My humanity has always been a tenuous thing, and I’d been able to feel it slipping since Amandine shifted the balance of my blood. If I was sawing through my hands without hesitation and letting myself be ripped open because it was the most logical route, that meant I was losing my grip on what it meant to be human. A human—a good one, the kind I’d always tried to be—wouldn’t leave another human behind. Until I was certain I wanted to lose that part of myself, I couldn’t leave another human behind, either.
“Officer Thornton?” I kept my voice level as I walked toward him, the bracken muffling my footsteps. I motioned for Etienne to release the don’t-look-here. The smell of cedar smoke and limes washed through the room, almost obscuring the pennyroyal and musk smell of Tybalt resuming his human form. “Are you all right?”
The officer’s brow furrowed above his blindfold, matching the frown creasing his lips. Finally, he said, “Ms. Daye? Is that you?”
“Yeah.” Pointed ears and all. “Are you all right?”
“Are you aware that abducting an officer of the law is a felony, Ms. Daye?”
“I am, but I’m not particularly worried about it, since my friends and I didn’t abduct you.” I knelt next to him, reaching for his wrists. My fingers brushed his skin. He jerked away. “Hey. I’m trying to help.”
“I was trying to find you when this happened.”
“Maybe you should have given up on that a little sooner.” Luckily for me, Riordan’s people hadn’t viewed Officer Thornton as enough of a risk to break out the iron; he was bound with twine. I started picking at the knots on his wrists. “Why were you after me, anyway? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I don’t…I don’t know.” Officer Thornton looked briefly, utterly lost. Then his expression hardened, and he said, “There’s a teenage girl missing, and you have a history of being around missing teenage girls.”
Tybalt took his meaning before I did; I heard the quiet growl from behind me, like the sound a cat makes when confronted with a dog on its territory. I paused, my hands going still. “Are you implying what I think you’re implying?” I asked, in a soft voice.
Officer Thornton was smart enough to realize that maybe he didn’t want to continue down this road. He was also clearly strait-laced enough to feel that he had to. “You must admit, there has been a high incidence of crossover.”
“I’m a private detective. It’s what I
“I felt I had to,” said Officer Thornton. The confusion was back in his voice.
“Chelsea Ames is my daughter,” added Etienne, not to be left out of what was becoming an increasingly awkward conversation. “I retained Si—Ms. Daye to find her.”
Etienne’s hastily swallowed “sir” didn’t slip by Officer Thornton, whose frown deepened. “Who
“Something like that.” I went back to untying the twine around his wrists, being less careful about pulling it
