Rosemary and Rue

her hips. I knew better. I knew her name. Oleander de Merelands: nine hundred years of nasty wrapped up in a pretty little package that could pass for sixteen in any mortal setting. She’s half Tuatha de Dannan, half Peri, and entirely hazardous to your health. The Peri have always been a race that enjoys causing pain, but they aren’t social—avoid them and they’ll avoid you. The Tuatha, on the other hand, enjoy the company of others. Oleander got her fondness for hurting people from the Peri side of the family, and her willingness to seek them out from the Tuatha. Rumor puts her at the sites of half the assassinations in the last hundred years and there are rewards on her head in half the kingdoms I can name. The other half just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

“It’s wonderful to see you, my dear.” Simon folded her into his arms and delivered a kiss that made several passing tourists blush and look away, embarrassed by what they perceived as a pervert with his jailbait girlfriend. If only they knew. The Torquill brothers are barely five hundred years old; if anyone was cradle robbing, it wasn’t Simon. I put a hand over my mouth, appalled for reasons that had nothing to do with anyone’s age. There had always been rumors, but no one had ever been able to prove a direct connection between Simon and the fae underworld. Seeing him with Oleander changed everything.

I had to get to Sylvester. I had to tell him. I started backing up, getting ready to run.

“This is getting dull, darling,” Oleander informed Simon, pouting in a way that would have been pretty if it hadn’t been for the malice behind it. “Finish it?”

“Of course, sweetheart.” He raised his head, looking past the tree I was crouching behind and right into my eyes. “You can come out now. We’re ready.”

“Oh, oak and ash,” I hissed, and scrambled backward—or tried to. That was the order I gave to my legs, which were suddenly not obeying my commands. I staggered into the open, dropping to my knees. I tried to stand. I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything but wait.

Lily, where are you? I thought desperately. She was the Lady of the Tea Gardens; this was her fiefdom and her domain. She should have been there by now, rallying her handmaids and running to my rescue, but she was nowhere to be seen. There weren’t even any pixies in the trees. The mortal tourists looked at us the way they would have looked at air. I had never in my life been so afraid, or so alone.

Simon’s smile was almost warm as he knelt, placing one hand beneath my chin and raising it until our eyes were level. I tried to struggle, to find some way to look away from him, but couldn’t force myself to move.

“Hello, my dear,” he said. “Did you enjoy our little walk?”

“Go . . . to . . . hell,” I managed through gritted teeth.

Oleander laughed. “Oh, she’s a sassy one.” Her expression darkened, mood shifting in a heartbeat. “Make her pay for that.”

“Of course.” Leaning forward, Simon pressed a kiss against my forehead and whispered, “I’ll make sure someone finds your car in a week or two, once they’re ready to give up hope. Wouldn’t do to make your family wait for you too long, now, would it?”

If I could have, I would have screamed. All I could do was snarl behind clenched teeth, breath coming hard and fast as panic gripped me. I had to get out of there. Cliff and Gilly were waiting for me, and I had to get away. I just couldn’t see how. I couldn’t even drop the don’t-look-here that was guaranteeing no one would see what was happening. I was bound too tightly.

Simon stood, putting his hand on top of my head and shoving downward, whispering and moving his free hand in a gesture I couldn’t quite see. I made one last wrenching attempt to pull away. Oleander laughed again, the sound cold and somehow distant, like it was being filtered through a wall of ice. Without any warning or fanfare, I forgot how to breathe.

All magic hurts. Transformation hurts more than anything else in the world. I gasped for breath, trying to break out of Simon’s enchantment. My own meager powers were giving way, and I felt myself warping and changing, melting like a candle left too long in the sun. His binding relaxed as the change entered its final stages, and I flopped against the path, gills straining for another breath, for anything to keep me alive for just a few more seconds. My eyes were burning so that I could barely focus, but I could still see Simon, right at the edge of my vision. He was smiling, and Oleander was laughing. They were proud of what they were doing to me. Oberon help me, they were proud.

“Hey!” shouted a voice. “What are you people doing?” Then there were strong hands underneath me, boosting me off the wood, down into the water. I dove, driving myself deep into the water, away from the air, from the fear, from my own existence. The instincts of my new body took me into the cool darkness under the reeds while I was still trying to make my head stop spinning. All of the other koi watched with disinterest, and promptly forgot that I hadn’t always been there. Fish are like that.

All fish are like that, and thanks to Simon, I was one of them. I managed to force myself back to the surface once, frantically looking for help, and not finding it. Simon and Oleander were gone. I was disposed of, as good as dead, and they didn’t need to worry about me anymore. The fish I had become was taking me over, like ink spreading through paper, and as it pulled me down, nothing really mattered. Not Sylvester and Luna, not Cliff, waiting forever for me to come home. Not my name, or my face, or who I really was. Not even my little girl. There was only the water, and the blessed darkness that was my home now, the only one I’d know for fourteen years.

There’s fennel for you, and columbines;

There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me. . . .

You must wear your rue with a difference.

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet

ONE

December 23, 2009: fourteen years, six months later

DECEMBER HAD COME to San Francisco in fits and starts, like a visitor who wasn’t sure he wanted to stay. The skies were blue one minute and overcast the next; tourists overheated or shivered in their prepacked wardrobes, while residents traded sweaters for tank tops and back in a single afternoon. That’s normal around here. The Bay Area exists in a state of nearly constant spring, where the color of the hills—brown with a strong chance of brushfire in the summer, green and suffering from chronic mudslides in winter—is the only real difference between the seasons.

It was half past six in the morning, and the Safeway grocery store on Mission Street—never much of a happening nightspot, no matter how you wanted to slice it—was virtually deserted. The usual rush of drunks and club kiddies had passed through several hours before, and now all we had was an assortment of early risers, grave-shift workers, and homeless people looking for a warm place to spend the tail end of the night. By silent, mutual agreement, the homeless and I ignored each other. As long as I didn’t admit I could see them, I wouldn’t need to ask them to leave, and we both got to avoid the hassle.

I’m getting good at ignoring things I don’t want to see. Call it an acquired skill. It’s definitely one I’ve been working on.

“Paper or plastic, ma’am?” I asked, not bothering to conceal the weariness in my tone. Half an hour and my shift would be over, leaving me with just enough time to get home before the sun came up.

“Plastic’s fine, honey,” said the woman occupying my lane. Running a hand through oily black curls, she gestured toward my name tag. “Is that really the name your parents gave you?”

Plastering a smile across my face, I began bagging her groceries with the automated ease that comes with long practice. “It is.” She was buying six pints of gourmet ice cream and a twelve-pack of Diet Coke. I’ve seen stranger.

“Hippies, huh?”