A Local Habitation

“I don’t know,” I said, studying her. Most people are upset when their friends die; this woman looked interested, and not all that surprised. That was unusual. She was roughly five feet tall, with a blaze of white hair cut in spikes that did nothing to hide the squared-off tips of her ears. Her figure matched her height—slight, lissome, and easily overlooked. Judging from her scowl, that happened pretty often; it wasn’t the sort of expression you master in an instant, even when your friends are dying. Lines cut through her face like scars through granite. They weren’t wrinkles; she wasn’t old enough for that. They were just lines, indelibly ground into the shape of her.

“Damn,” she said, raking her hands back through her hair. “I liked him.”

I glanced to Jan and Elliot, and frowned as I saw that she was sobbing on his shoulder. What a great thing to see in a leader: hysterics. I shook my head, looking back to the white-haired woman, and asked, “Who are you?”

“What?” She looked up at me, her scowl deepening until the lines on her face became caverns. “I’m Gordan. Who the hell are you?”

“October Daye.” I don’t normally flex my titles, but this time I added, “Knight of Shadowed Hills. I’m here by order of Sylvester Torquill, the Duke—”

“Duke of Shadowed Hills, yeah, we know the drill,” she said, interrupting. “We’re not totally uncivilized out here in the boonies, you know. Have you got any credentials on you?”

“What?”

“Can you prove it?”

“I’ve already shown my credentials to your Countess, but given that you’ve got a corpse here—an impossible corpse—do I really need to prove it? I’m Daoine Sidhe, I’m a licensed PI, and I don’t exactly see you getting any better offers.”

“So you’re here to fix all our problems? Well, that’s just peachy, princess. What the fuck took you so long?”

“What do you mean?”

She gestured to the body. “This started last month—Colin’s the third death we’ve had. What took you so long? Were you waiting for an engraved invitation? ‘RSVP for murder?’ ”

I stared for a moment before I got my mouth working again. “The third?”

“Yeah.”

“I . . . see. Excuse me for a moment, please.” I turned toward Jan, eyes narrowing. She had straightened and was wiping her face with one hand, teary-eyed and sniffling. And I didn’t care. “Ms. O’Leary? May I have a word with you?”

She looked up, golden eyes wide. “Huh?”

I’ll normally forgive a certain degree of shock after a major trauma, especially when I’m dealing with purebloods; most of them see so few deaths that they don’t know how to cope. Considering what Gordan had said, however, I wasn’t inclined to be charitable. “A word, Ms. O’Leary. I need to have one with you.”

“W . . . why?” She glanced at Elliot, and he looked away. I think he knew what I was going to say. “This isn’t the best time. I . . .”

“Why didn’t you tell me that people were dying?” I demanded. Bluntness isn’t usually an asset among the fae, but it’s served me well over the years.

Jan gaped for a moment before she recovered, snapping, “You can’t just stroll in here and expect me to dump all our problems on you! What kind of a Countess do you take me for?”

I hauled my temper to heel, forcing myself to take a deep breath as Quentin walked up to stand behind me. “Did you call your uncle last night?”

She nodded. “I tried. No one answered.”

“Well, he answered for me. He’s worried. Now answer me this: do you want these killings to stop?”

Jan stared at me. “How can you even ask me that?”

“I am one changeling with a half-trained page to back me up,” I said, levelly. “Whether I’m telling you the truth or not, there’s not going to be that much damage I can do. But what I also am is a trained investigator sworn to your uncle’s Court. Let me do my job. If you think I’m lying to you at any point, you can deal with me.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“When your car breaks down, do you fix it yourself, or do you send for a mechanic?”

The change of topics was apparently a little too fast for her. She stared at me for a moment, befuddled, before she said, “I send for a mechanic.”

“The principle here is the same. When people are dying, you don’t fix it yourself. You send for a mechanic.” I looked her in the eye, forcing myself not to start yelling again. It wasn’t easy. “I’m the mechanic.”

Jan froze, trembling with fear and anger. It was a long moment before the fire in her eyes dimmed and her shoulders began to droop, making it briefly clear just how young she was. The purebloods seem ageless, but they aren’t; they’re young and stupid once, just like everybody else, and if nothing forces them to grow up, they can stay that way for centuries. Jan was more than a century old, but she was still younger than I was where it counted. Voice low, she said, “Can you do it? Can you make this stop?”

I smiled sharply. It’s not my most pleasant expression, but with a fae corpse lying just a few feet away, it didn’t need to be.

“My lady,” I said, “you only ever needed to ask.”

NINE

“TOBY, WAIT UP! PLEASE?”

I stopped briskly, turning to glare at Alex. Quentin did the same, his own motions possessing a semimilitary crispness. His terror was translating into a level of formality that I hadn’t seen out of him since the night we met. I didn’t care for it, but I honestly couldn’t blame him. I was scared, too, and I had a lot more experience than he did.

“What is it?” I asked. “Got something else you neglected to tell me? More bodies? Giant spiders in the attic? Because I’m pretty much out of patience, and you didn’t bring me anywhere near enough coffee to excuse hiding a murder.”

Alex stumbled to a halt a few feet in front of us, his hands hanging limply at his sides. They weren’t singing arias now; for the first time since I’d met him, they were motionless. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Three people are dead, Alex. Two of them were already dead when we got here. What exactly was it like?”

“I . . .” He stopped, shoulders sagging, and sighed. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t supposed to tell you anything. I didn’t know anyone else was going to get hurt.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Who told you not to talk to me?”

“Only one woman here with the authority.” Alex quirked a small, bitter smile. “You want to know what’s going on, you talk to Jan.”

“All right; I will. Take us to her.”

To Alex’s credit, he didn’t argue or try to defend himself further. He just turned, gesturing for us to follow, and led us down the hall.

We’d been searching the buildings of the knowe for almost half an hour, forcing me to admit that Colin’s killer or killers left us nothing to find. There were no footprints or signs of forced entry; all the blood was on Colin himself, and there wasn’t much blood even there. He hadn’t struggled at all. Whatever happened to him, it happened fast. His skin was under the front seat of my car, where no one would tamper with it, but I couldn’t figure out what it meant, if anything. Who kills a Selkie and doesn’t take the skin? I had three victims, a crime scene that told me nothing and offered escapes into two barely connected versions of reality, and a Countess who said nothing was wrong when she knew that people were dying.

There wasn’t enough coffee in the world to make this bearable.

Alex led us to a closed door, where he knocked. “Who is it?” called Jan from inside.

“Alex,” he said. “I have Sir Daye and her assistant here. They’d like to speak with you.”

There was a pause—long enough that I began to wonder whether the illustrious Countess O’Leary had