who caused me this harm, October Daye, daughter of Amandine, or find only your own death. By all that I am and all that I was and all the mercies of our missing Lord and Ladies, I bind you . . .”
I felt the curse catch hold, sinking thorny talons into my skin as the bittersweet smell of dying roses flooded my nose and mouth. I dropped my coffee cup and staggered backward retching, clapping a hand over my mouth as I tried not to throw up. Promises bind our kind as surely as iron chains or ropes of human hair, and Evening had bound me with the old forms, the ones anyone with a trace of fae blood can use. No one uses the old bindings anymore, not unless things are so bleak that even our missing King and his Hunt couldn’t mend them. They’re too strong, and too deadly.
The fae never swear by anything we don’t believe in. We don’t ask for thanks and we don’t offer them; no promises, no regrets, no chains. No lies. If Evening said failure would kill me, it would kill me. I just hoped she had a good reason, or I was going to have to kill her myself.
“Oh, Toby, I’m sorry,” she said, and put the phone down, not quite in the cradle. The connection continued. I don’t know whether that was an accident or not, but I don’t think it was. She wanted me to hear. She knew that if I heard what came next, I wouldn’t even try to break the binding she had thrown over me.
It doesn’t matter. I’m still never going to forgive her.
The story the message told next was one I’d never wanted to hear, not on the worst of all my bad days. A door, slamming open; the sound of footsteps. Evening shouting something I couldn’t quite make out . . . and a gun going off. Her voice rose in a soaring scream, only to be silenced by another gunshot.
I jumped to my feet, bile rising in my throat as I shouted an involuntary “No!” at the phone. Evening screamed again. The gun fired a third time, and the message ended, the machine hissing on for several seconds before it stopped with a small, final click.
Somehow, that was what made it all seem real. I stared at the machine for a moment, breath hitching in my throat, then turned and bolted for the bathroom. I was fast enough, barely; I got to the sink before I threw up.
Time never runs backward when I need it to. Not for me, and not for anyone else.
FOUR
I THREW UP THREE times before I could leave the bathroom. I splashed water on my face before heading for my room, numbly starting the answering machine’s playback over again as I passed. There wasn’t time to shower, and I wasn’t sure I could work the taps without scalding myself. Even getting dressed was almost more than I could manage. Evening’s words were no kinder the second time, begging me to pick up the phone, to answer her, to do anything—anything at all—to save her. When did the last call come? Oak and ash, when did it
I was pulling on my coat, accompanied by Evening’s recorded screams, when realization hit me: she got what she wanted. Sure, I’d turned my back on Faerie, I’d refused to let her have my license reinstated . . . but I was on the case now, and I’d stay on it until I had the answers I needed.
Evening was my worst friend and my best enemy, and she never really knew me, because even in the end, she didn’t understand that I would’ve done it without the curse. All she had to do was tell me the stakes were as high as they’d apparently gotten. She was my friend. I would have done it.
The reality of the situation still hadn’t fully sunk in as I reset the wards and walked down the concrete path to the garage. Evening
You never think of death in terms of yourself or your friends until it gets too close to ignore. When did the last call come? Was I already home? If I hadn’t been such a selfish brat, if I’d listened to my messages, could I have saved her?
My car started easily despite the lingering December cold. That’s part of why I like the original Volkswagen bugs: they break down constantly, the parts are impossible to find, and the mileage sucks, but they always seem to start when you need them to. I pulled out of the garage without checking for traffic and barely avoided a collision with a group of teenagers packed into Daddy’s Lexus. We traded expletives across a narrow strip of asphalt before heading in opposite directions—them toward downtown and me toward the South City, where you can find some of the most expensive residential neighborhoods in San Francisco.
Most purebloods Evening’s age live full-time in the Summerlands rather than dealing with the daily stresses of mortal living. Even Sylvester, the most “human” pureblood I’ve ever known, lived entirely on the other side of the hill. Evening was stubborn. She saw San Francisco built around her, watching it grow from a little dock town into a thriving city. Somewhere along the way, it became her home, and after that, she simply refused to leave.
I asked her about it once. “I prefer San Francisco,” she said. “The lies are different here. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you start appreciating new approaches to dishonesty.”
I don’t remember how I found my way to her apartment. When I try to think about the drive, all I can think is that I must have had my eyes closed the whole time, because I was praying so damn hard. The fae aren’t big on gods, but I prayed anyway—prayed that my ears had lied to me, that this was some sort of cruel wake-up call on Evening’s part, or that maybe, just this once, the universe would see that it had made a mistake and would take it all back.
The neighborhoods had been getting more upscale as I drove, the buildings taking on an elegant, cookie- cutter uniformity. Evening’s choice of residence was nothing unique among the purebloods who live on this side of the hills. Not only do they tend to have bank accounts going back centuries, but the electronic age has broadened the horizons of magical fraud to an astonishing degree. Faerie gold can be used for more than just party tricks; it works pretty well on the stock market, for example, where money’s an illusion anyway. The only purebloods who live poor anymore are the ones whose magic is too weak or whose morals are too strong to let them lie on that sort of scale.
Evening never had those kinds of problems. Unfortunately for me, it doesn’t work like that for changelings. Sustaining illusions that strong for the amount of time required would kill me, assuming I could cast them in the first place. So the purebloods live on veal and candied moonbeams, while I’ve become a connoisseur of macaroni and cheese.
Oh, well. Pasta’s probably better for you anyway.
Police cars lined the street in front of Evening’s building, lights spinning in an endless flashing dance of red- blue-red and shattering the illusion of wealthy, untouchable serenity that the neighborhood worked so hard to project. Those lights made it impossible to pretend that everything was perfect or that this was the mythic San Francisco the pop songs promised; this was too real for that. The people walking by looked nervously at the police cars, like they were afraid whatever crimes or tragedies their imaginations had conjured would rub off on them. Humanity has always had a flair for guilt by association. What was Evening guilty of—dying?
I found a parking place at the end of the block, where I wedged my car into the space between a news van and a battered Studebaker. My fender dinged the news van, and I felt a flare of satisfaction. They’d never pick out the dent in the colony already established on my car, and they deserved it. They shouldn’t have been rushing after the sound of the sirens like vultures after road kill.
The way I retreat into trivial concerns when I’m scared amazes me. All I have to do is get to the point where I’m so panicked I can’t see straight, and suddenly the expiration date on the milk is all that matters. I guess that’s how my mind protects itself.
It took twenty minutes to walk the half block to Evening’s building. I stopped to read flyers tacked to telephone poles and watch cats sitting on windowsills, doing everything I could to make the trip just a little longer. I didn’t want to get where I was going. Not that it mattered; all too soon, I was looking up at the elegant building that had been the home of the Countess Evening Winterrose for the last forty years. I didn’t want to go in. It wasn’t real until I went inside: it wasn’t a fact, just a possible plot twist, like a cat stuffed into a closed box. If I turned around and went home, I could wait until Evening called to gloat over how gullible I’d been. We’d laugh and laugh . . . if I didn’t go inside. The police would turn off their sirens and go back downtown. I’d be able to forget her binding me; I’d forget the cloying taste of roses and the stench of burning rowan.
I’d forget that it was my fault.
