posies; ashes, ashes, we all fall down.” The wards flared and writhed, becoming a web of thin red lines as the smell of cut grass and copper rose around us. If anyone broke into the apartment, we’d know. A bolt of pain lanced through my temples, making my lingering headache worse. The poison was gaining on me. “Damn,” I muttered.
“What is it?”
So May wasn’t getting my headaches in real-time. That was good to know. “Just the headache. Can I get you to throw a don’t-look-here on the car? We don’t have time to deal with a speeding ticket.”
“Sure.” She gave me a sidelong look. “You’ve been using a lot of magic while you’re driving lately.”
“I’ve been in a hurry,” I said, brushing past her on my way to the parking area.
May followed, silent as I performed my usual check of the backseat and unlocked the doors. She climbed into the passenger seat, shifting Spike into her lap. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. I’m just concerned.”
“Don’t be. It’s not like my chronic migraine is going to kill us.”
“Right.” She closed her eyes and pressed her hands against the dashboard, reciting, “There’s a man who lives a life of danger. To everyone he meets, he stays a stranger. With every move he makes, another chance he takes.” The smell of cotton candy and ashes filled the car.
“‘Secret Agent Man’?” I asked, amused.
May slumped back in her seat. “Not everyone shares your lousy taste in music.” She wrinkled her nose. “Ugh. Now I have your headache
May was pureblooded. If she was starting to get magic-burn, her condition was even more synchronized with mine than I’d thought. That wasn’t good.
“You relax,” I said. “I’ll drive.”
May nodded, slumping in her seat as I started the car. We drove in silence. It was close enough to rush hour that traffic was picking up; once we were on the freeway, most of my attention was taken with avoiding an accident. We made good time, but there were a few points—especially at the freeway interchange on the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge—where I was forced to drop to a crawl or pay the consequences. Going through the Caldecott Tunnel when none of the other drivers could see me is one of the most harrowing things I’ve ever done of my own free will.
There was only one other car in the parking lot when we arrived at Paso Nogal: a battered but serviceable silver Toyota that looked familiar enough to have been made before I wound up in the pond. Walther was standing next to it, attention on the small glass vial in his hand.
I pulled up beside him and killed the engine. He didn’t look up. I glanced to May. “Okay. That’s a good spell.”
Even May looked impressed. “I didn’t realize it was
“Well, drop it. We need to talk to him.”
“Right.” She clapped her hands, bobbing her head a la Barbara Eden. The spell burst like a soap bubble, leaving us visible to anyone who was looking.
Like Walther. He jumped, nearly dropping the vial as he whipped around to face us. “Toby!”
“It’s me,” I said, sliding out of the car. May followed. I gestured between them, saying, “May, Walther Davies. Walther, May Daye, my—”
“Your roommate. You said. A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Daye.” May looked surprised but pleased as Walther tucked the vial into his pocket, turning his attention back to me. “I only got here a few minutes ago. Did you drive the whole way invisible?”
“Yeah, we did. It’s faster. Sort of.” I took Spike from May, holding it toward Walther. “This is Spike.”
“The rose goblin? Marcia mentioned things might get odd around you.” I gave him a quizzical look. He shrugged. “I asked her to fill me in on what to expect when I started working with you.” Quickly, he added, “You were right; it doesn’t look healthy.”
I decided to let Walther’s digging into my background slide. I would have done the same thing in his shoes. “It was fine until Luna got sick.”
“May I … ?” He reached for the goblin.
“Be my guest.” I passed Spike to him, wincing as I saw how shallowly it was breathing. I wasn’t sure it actually needed to breathe—it was as much plant as animal—but that didn’t mean good things would happen if it stopped. May settled beside me, shifting her weight uneasily from foot to foot. I put a hand on her shoulder, and waited.
Walther cradled Spike against his chest, listening to its breathing before putting a finger on its throat to test its pulse. Finally, he said, “This is a very sick goblin.”
“We know. That’s why I want you to take soil samples here.”
“Because of the connection between the Duchess and the goblins?”
I nodded.
To my surprise, he chuckled grimly as he passed Spike to May. “Faerie never fails to stay interesting, does it?”
“Like a Chinese curse,” I said. “Let’s go find some roses.”
We didn’t have to look for long. The bush was half-dead, its few surviving flowers liberally mottled with brown. I stopped. “Here’s one.”
“Got it.” Walther pulled a spoon out of his pocket and knelt to dig around the roots of the bush. He stopped after only a few seconds, frowning. “That’s not right.”
“What isn’t?” May asked.
“The texture of this soil is all wrong.” He pulled a small jar from his coat pocket, dumping a spoonful of dirt inside. Then he uncapped the vial he’d been studying when we arrived, pouring its pale red contents into the jar. The resulting mixture fizzed and turned clear. Walther’s frown deepened.
“I don’t like that look,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s no poison here. Something’s still not right.” Walther waved his hand over the jar, muttering in Welsh. The liquid turned gold and started fizzing again.
“He’s weird,” said May. “If he pulls out a Bunsen burner, we’re leaving.”
I bit back a smile. If she was feeling well enough to be snide, we were doing better than I’d thought. “He’s Tylwyth Teg,” I said, like that explained everything.
Apparently it did, because May looked satisfied with that answer. Walther kept chanting as the liquid changed colors, finally settling on a glittering white.
“Ah,” said Walther, and stood.
I raised an eyebrow. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
“Salt.” He held up the jar for my inspection.
“What do you mean, ‘salt’?” I squinted at the jar like I expected his words to start making sense. “Isn’t there always salt in dirt?”
“A little bit, but plants die if they get too much. This dirt has too much salt. Think of it as dosing a person with a little bit of arsenic at a time. It’s essentially slow murder.” He shook his head. “The only way to get rid of it is to leech it out, and the plant still might die if there’s enough damage.”
“Leech it? How?” I demanded. The implications were sinking in. The damned drink was a red herring; the salt was our real culprit. There could be another poison involved, something to knock her out once she’d been weakened, but poisoning the roses would be enough to incapacitate her.
“The soil needs to be flushed with water and treated with gypsum. Uh, that’s a mineral that pulls salt out of the ground.”
“How fast can we do that?”
“This isn’t something you can just snap your fingers and do. It takes time for the soil to recover, and that doesn’t take into account how long it’ll take the plant to get better.” He shook his head. “I might be able to speed things up, but it won’t be instantaneous. I’m a chemist, not a horticulturist.”
I shrugged. “You’re all we have.”
Walther paused. Then he held his hands out to May. “Give me the goblin.”
She glanced to me. I nodded consent, and she reluctantly handed Spike over. Walther pulled it to his chest, cradling it as he reached into his pocket for another vial.
“If this doesn’t work, there’s nothing else I can do,” he said, not looking up.
