he said. For a moment, I couldn’t find an answer.
Then I remembered Evening sprawled on the floor of her apartment, with a second mouth where her throat should have been. “I’m sure.”
After a pause that felt longer than those missing years, he nodded. “Done. I’ll send some kids to your place in the morning to check in and make sure you remember your part in the deal.”
Oh, I remembered. How could I ever forget? I’d dealt with this devil before; he had my signature under lock and key in his personal files. I didn’t sign in blood—he would never have been so gauche—but he trusted the power of my given word to bind me. He trusted, and he was right. I’d pay for any information he brought me, I’d pay for anything his kids did for me, and if he helped me find what I was looking for, I’d pay double. He liked me. I knew enough about what happened to people he didn’t like when their bills came due to hope he’d never stop liking me.
“Tomorrow morning doesn’t work,” I said. “I have to go to Shadowed Hills and talk to Sylvester. Tomorrow night’s the soonest I’ll be ready for them.”
“At least let me have someone escort you home.”
I rubbed my forehead with one hand. “Devin, I’m exhausted, and exhausted means I can’t deal with your kids right now. I need to get some sleep, or I’m not even going to be able to handle Sylvester.”
“If he has no power, why are you going to see him?”
“Because,” I replied, looking down at my silk-clad legs so that I wouldn’t have to see his expression. “He’s still my liege, and I’m embarking on a murder investigation. I don’t have to ask for his help, but I have to tell him before I endanger myself.”
I could feel Devin watching me. “You can break your fealty. He’s done you no favors.”
“Please. Don’t ask me for that.” I glanced up again. “Not yet.” Oath breaking is almost expected from a changeling. That’s why I’ve never done it. Sylvester would release me if I asked him, and I never will, because it would just prove all the things that have ever been said about my kind. I might regret my promises, but I keep them.
Devin looked at me for a moment, expression flat, before he sighed. “Have it your way—I know better than to argue with you.” He opened the top drawer of his desk, pulling out something the size of a deck of cards and shoving it toward me. “Take this.”
“What is it?” I asked, picking it up.
“Cell phone. I keep spares on hand for just this sort of thing.” Devin’s nod was small, but satisfied. Purebloods respond to change slowly, if at all. Flexibility and adaptation were changeling traits. If he still had them, he was doing just fine.
After the night I’d had, I would have said there was nothing left that could shake me. I definitely wouldn’t have placed my bets on a little plastic box that weighed no more than a few ounces, keys hidden by a flip-down front that made it look like something out of
Fourteen years is no time at all in Faerie. It’s the blink of an eye, it’s the turning of a single tide. There have been balls that lasted longer than that, waltzes and banquets that stretched on for decades. The mortal world, though . . . the mortal world doesn’t work that way. The phone I used to talk to Cliff for the last time before I vanished weighed almost a pound. It was ugly and clunky and almost impossible to lose. This was a sleek, streamlined accessory, the sort of thing every person on the street would carry. It was the future, condensed into something solid. I’d been able to handle it when it was just the humans carrying the things; I could pretend that Faerie, at least, had stayed the same. But it hadn’t. Nothing had.
Devin saw the confusion in my eyes, because he smiled a small, hurtful smile, saying, “It wouldn’t have happened if you’d stayed here,” before he turned to press the button for the intercom. The equivalent button in the main room was set in the wall, under glass. I’d only seen the intercom from the main room used twice. Once it was a prank, and the kid that did it wound up beaten within an inch of his life by half a dozen of the bigger kids. The other time it was because Julie had been hurt so badly that we didn’t know how to put her together again, and even then we hesitated, afraid of the consequences. No one bothered Devin without good reason.
“Dare, I need you to come back here and escort Ms. Daye to her car. Now,” he said. If Dare was in the bar, she’d come. If she wasn’t, someone else would come in her place, and she’d be in a world of trouble.
Lucky for her, she hadn’t stepped out for a cigarette. The door opened a few minutes later, revealing a very nervous Dare and her slightly more relaxed older brother. Neither looked happy. That was my fault, but I was still too stunned to really care. I hadn’t known what Evening had meant to these people. I would never have guessed—I would never even have dreamed—and I should have known. What happened to the world while I was gone? How much needed to change before the most arrogant pureblood I’d ever known could come to a place like Home and earn that much respect?
“Sir,” said Dare, bending in what looked like a six-year-old’s approximation of a curtsy, “you need me to take Ms. Daye to her car?” Her accent was substantially lighter when she was speaking to Devin. The bruise on her cheek was flowering now, turning purple and gold.
Devin narrowed his eyes. I used to try guessing how much of The Look was real and how much was an act before I realized it wasn’t important. It worked. That was what mattered. Devin might lie to you, but he always got results. “That was why I called you, Dare. You can hear, can’t you?”
She cringed. Manuel turned to me, pleading with his eyes. I just shrugged. Devin used the same look and the same lines on me, once; I wasn’t foolish enough to try undermining his authority with someone who still believed they meant something. Dare gave him all the power he had over her. Once she grew up enough to figure out that Devin could only control her as long as she let him, she’d be fine, and if she never grew up that much, she belonged at Home, where someone else would take care of the real world and she could take care of the chores.
“Yes, sir,” Dare said, straightening. “I can hear, sir. I’ll take her to her car right away, it’s just outside, and then I’ll come back and wait, just like I’m supposed to.”
Devin settled back in his chair with a nod. I’d have been scared of him if I hadn’t known him so well—and knowing him like I did, I was terrified. He was putting on this little show for my benefit, reminding me that he was in charge and his word was law. He was always putting on the show for someone’s benefit, even when no one else was there. Playing mind games with Devin was like playing with dynamite: someone always got hurt in the end. I was hoping like hell that it wouldn’t be me.
“Good girl, Dare,” he said. She preened under the praise. I think all kids are hungry for a kind word, not just the lost ones that wind up drifting into places like Home. They all react the same way when they’re given the validation they need, locking fear and love together so tightly that they never even notice the moment when they grow up.
Dare turned to me, apple-green eyes wide, and said, “I’ll show you to your car now, Ms. Daye. You’ll follow me?” Manuel watched from behind her. It was hard to face both sets of eyes at once: the color was too bright, too needy.
“Yeah,” I said finally, giving in to the unspoken plea in Manuel’s eyes. “I’ll follow you.”
She smiled—the first honest expression I’d seen on her face—and led me away. I could hear Devin making a soft, almost smothered sound as the door swung shut behind us, but I couldn’t tell whether he was laughing or crying. For all I knew, all I still know, he may have been doing both.
EIGHT
THE REST OF DEVIN’S KIDS WERE still at the front of the bar. They watched warily as Dare and Manuel escorted me out. I didn’t say anything, and neither did they; we didn’t have anything to say. I’d been in their position, and I’d gotten out. From my perspective, they were being used, and from their perspective, I was just a sellout. I think we were all glad when I got into my car and pulled away, leaving Home, and the two golden-haired figures on the curb, to dwindle in the distance. Maybe there’s something to Devin’s little sign after all: every time I think I’m free of that place, it finds a way to pull me back in.
The sky was still dark; dawn was hours away. I’d been awake less than half the night, and I was so tired I could barely see straight. Multiple confusion spells, a major act of blood magic, an encounter with an angry
