A Local Habitation

TWENTY-SIX

SPENDING SEVERAL HOURS WITH TYBALT was surprisingly easy, maybe because we had a common task to focus on: sorting through Barbara’s personal effects. When I asked, hesitantly, why she left her files in a place where they’d be so easy to find, Tybalt laughed, replying, “She was a cat, October. Where would the fun be if she hid them?” There was the Cait Sidhe mind-set in a nutshell.

I became a PI because I was good at focusing my attention and shutting out the things that wanted to distract me from the task at hand. I was so preoccupied with studying the contents of Barbara’s desk, trusting Tybalt to notice any threats that might arise, that it was a genuine surprise when Elliot walked up, saying, “It’s time.”

“What?” I looked up. “Oh. Elliot. Sunset, already?” I frowned, glancing toward the wall like I expected a window to appear. “Sylvester’s not here yet?”

“No. But you should come with me, please. Terrie will be here soon.”

“Right.” I put down the papers I’d been holding and moved to follow him, Tybalt silently trailing us.

Elliot glanced at me as we walked, and said, “We haven’t been entirely honest with you.”

“I noticed,” I said. “You’ve never embraced ‘full disclosure’ around here, have you?”

“In more ways than you know. Alex will meet us in the cafeteria.”

“Alex?” I stared. “Oak and ash, Elliot, I don’t want to accuse his sister of murder in front of him!” I didn’t like the man, but there are limits.

“Don’t worry.” He smiled regretfully. There was something I needed to know in that expression. I just couldn’t tell what. “She never gets here before sunset.”

“What are you talking about?” I paused. “If she’s some sort of bloodsucker and you haven’t told me—” Faerie has its vampires, sort of, and most of them can’t stand the sun.

“That’s not it,” Elliot said, stopping at the cafeteria door and pushing it open. “After you.”

Alex was sitting at one of the tables, wearing a denim jacket over a white cotton shirt and a pair of leggings. He looked exhausted. Glancing up, he saw me and paled. “Uh, hi, Toby. Elliot. Dude I don’t know.”

“Tybalt,” I supplied. As for Tybalt, he had moved closer to me, starting to snarl almost silently. I glanced at him, surprised.

“Uh,” Alex said. “Right.”

“It’s almost sunset, Alex,” said Elliot. “Toby needs to talk to your sister.”

“What?” Alex sounded almost frightened. I narrowed my eyes, watching him. “She’s not here. You know that.”

“We need you to stay until she comes.” Elliot shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“Elliot . . .” Alex began.

“Toby,” Elliot said, not looking at me, “please tell Alex your suspicions.”

I took a breath. “I don’t think that’s any of his business.” Tybalt’s growl was getting louder, distracting me.

“It’s important that he know why he needs to stay.” Elliot sounded serious.

I frowned. “If you’re sure . . .”

“I am.”

“All right.” Turning to Alex, I said, “I think your sister is involved with the murders.”

He made a startled squeaking noise. “Really?”

“I don’t know what her motives are, but she has no alibis, she hasn’t participated in any of the searches, and she was alone when she found the first body. She may not be guilty. She may have good reasons for everything. But it doesn’t look good.”

“And now you want to see her.”

“I do. There’ve been too many deaths. We can’t just let this lie.” If I didn’t find someone for the nobility to punish, they’d choose someone on their own, and they tend to be a lot less picky than I am. They might take all of us, on charges of obscuring justice.

“Elliot?” Alex looked toward him, eyes wide.

Elliot shook his head. “This one’s yours.” His smile was bitter. “You should have been more careful. I’ve told you before not to play games.”

That seemed to mean something to Tybalt that it hadn’t meant to me. His snarl became suddenly louder, and he all but pounced on Alex, hoisting the other man by the upper arms like he weighed nothing at all. “How dare you!” he roared.

I stared. “What the hell—”

“I didn’t hurt her!” Alex shouted, his attention fixed on Tybalt.

“You’re not going to have the chance.” Tybalt released Alex’s left arm, pulling back a hand that was suddenly bright with claws.

And the sun went down.

Transformations in the real world never happen the way we expect. The light around Alex blurred as his hair melted from gold to black, the tan bleaching out of his skin, the focus shifting until Tybalt was holding a gasping Terrie off the ground. The change seemed to have disoriented him, because she was able to squirm out of his grip and wobble in place. Women have smaller lungs than men do; sunset had to feel like the worst asthma attack ever.

The change was the piece I needed to answer the question of Alex and Terrie Olsen’s heritage, spelling it out in neon letters that made everything else fall into place. Gordan’s comments about it getting cold out on that hillside. The speed of our mutual attraction. The way he could make me forget about doing my job, just by smiling. A glamour that kept hitting me, even after I knew it was happening, a bloodline I couldn’t identify, and the way I’d hated Terrie, just as quickly as I’d fallen for him. And the birds . . . oh, root and branch.

“And no birds sing,” I said, horrified. Keats didn’t know much about Faerie, but he knew enough to get some things right. Gean-Cannah—the Love Talkers. I’d never met a changeling Gean-Cannah before, only heard rumors, so I hadn’t been able to recognize their blood. True Gean- Cannah were shapeshifters, entirely protean creatures who changed their faces and genders with a thought. Only their changeling children were tied to the movements of the sun, split forever into different people. I should have known when I saw their eyes. I should have known. But I didn’t.

Gean-Cannah were common once. They preyed heavily on the mortals. Too heavily. There’s never been any shame in hunting humans. The shame is in getting caught. It’s all right to be a monster, but it’s not all right to be sloppy. The Gean-Cannah took what they wanted, and they were noticed. Oh, were they ever. They were heavy victims of the war with the humans, and the Love Talkers have never bred fast; they can’t stand the company of their own kind, and most fae are too canny for them. They’re rare these days. I’ve only seen a single pureblood, and he was on the other side of a royal Court. Not exactly close enough to learn the attributes of the blood.

The Gean-Cannah will become your perfect lover, and it’ll be your last. They pull the life out of you, leaving you drained of everything but the need to keep loving them, to keep feeding them every ounce of strength you have . . . until it’s over.

Most affairs with the Gean-Cannah end in suicide.

Tybalt was getting over his surprise, looking even angrier now. I stepped forward, taking hold of his arm while I glared at Terrie. “The night shift.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, lowering her inhaler. “I would have told him not to, but he didn’t leave me a note until it was too late.”

“So you couldn’t have killed them all.”

She shook her head. “I wasn’t awake.”

“This . . . thing . . . touched you?” asked Tybalt, tone gone dangerously quiet.

“Her day-self did.” I looked at Terrie. “Do you have any control?”

“I . . .” Terrie paused, sighing. “You want to know if Alex forced your attraction to him.”

“Yes.”

She looked away. “Yes.”

For a long moment, I just stood there. Then, turning to Tybalt, I said, “Do whatever you want. I’m done.” Terrie’s head whipped around, eyes gone wide. I ignored her, attention swinging toward Elliot. “You let him.”

“Toby, I—”

“Do you know what happens when you lie down with the Gean-Cannah? Do you?” None of them said a word. Not even Tybalt, although the growl was beginning again, low in his throat. “You get tired and your thoughts get fuzzy and you stop thinking about anything but when you’ll see your lover again. You lie down on the cold hillside, and you die. And you were just going to let me stumble into his arms, without a warning?”

“Toby, it wasn’t like that—” Terrie began. I glared at her, and she stopped.

“I don’t care what it was like, and I don’t care what your reasons were,” I said. “This is too much. I’m taking my people, and we’re getting out of here.” I turned and stalked out of the cafeteria, letting the door swing shut behind me.

They didn’t follow. If the look on Tybalt’s face meant anything, he wasn’t going to let them.

I made it as far as the hall before my knees buckled and I sank to the floor, starting to cry in vast, exhausted gasps. How dare they? How dare they? I cried until I ran out of tears. It took a frighteningly long time. It wasn’t until I stopped to wipe my eyes with the back of my hand that I realized someone was leaning against me. I froze, realizing I’d just broken my own cardinal rule for surviving: I’d gone off alone. It would be a beautiful, annoying sort of irony if I got killed right after making my dramatic exit.

Whoever it was wasn’t making any hostile moves; they were just leaning. Most psychopaths seek blood before cuddling—it’s a trait of the breed. And no, I don’t think they’d have killed less if they were hugged more. I just think that by the time they start killing, they aren’t necessarily looking for a pat on the back.

I looked down. April was huddled against me, eyes closed, tears rolling down her cheeks in fractal patterns. “April?”

She didn’t open her eyes. “I didn’t think my mother could go off-line.”

“Oh, April.” I bit my lip, not sure what to say next. It was easy to forget her origins and focus only on her strangeness. Maybe she wasn’t normal, but Jan was her mother—probably the only one she’d ever had. Dryads don’t exactly come from nuclear families. I settled for the most inconsequential, least hurtful words I could find: “I’m sorry.”

“She was supposed to take care of me, but she left the network without me. How could she do that? She has to take care of me.”

“I’m sure she took good care of you.” I winced as soon as I spoke, realizing how patronizing that had to sound.

April realized it too, because she raised her head, expression fierce. “She did take good care of me. She always did.” She paused, continuing more quietly, “People said she only cared about me because I was new, and she’d forget me when she found something else new. But they were wrong. She took care of me. When I was hurt or sick or confused or anything, she took care of me. She always . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“She always what, April?”

“She kept my systems operational,” she said. “She loved me.”

That surprised me more than it should have. I knew April was devoted to Jan. I hadn’t realized she understood what love was. Quietly, I said, “I think I understand.”

“Do you?” she asked, pulling away. It was hard to get used to the emotion in her voice. She’d been sounding steadily more alive—more “real”—since Jan died.

I only wished her mother could have seen it.

“I think so.”

“I would never have let anything hurt her.”

“I know.”

“I hope so,” she said, and shook her head. The tears on her cheeks disappeared like they’d never been. “There aren’t many choices left. I have to go now, and you have to think. It’s important.” Then she was gone in a haze of static, leaving me alone.

“April? April, come back—what’s important? April!” I stared at the empty air, hoping she’d reappear and explain herself. No such luck. “What was that about?”

Picking myself up off the floor, I raked the fingers of my good hand through my hair, looked toward the futon room door, and turned, with a sigh, to walk back toward the cafeteria.

I couldn’t go. I wanted to, and I couldn’t. If it had just been Jan, maybe I could have left the mess for Sylvester, but April . . . April needed someone to find out what had happened to her. I owed that to her, and I owed it to her mother.

To my surprise and mild disappointment, the cafeteria was not the site of further carnage. Terrie was gone, and Tybalt and Elliot were at opposite sides of the room, Tybalt glaring, Elliot trying to look like he wasn’t uncomfortable about being glared at. Tybalt straightened as I entered, attention refocusing on me.

I moved until I was standing nose-to-nose with Elliot, and said, “We’re staying until Sylvester gets here. Not for your sake. For Jan’s. And if Alex comes near me again, night or day, I’ll kill him. Do you understand?”

He raised his hands, supplicating. “We weren’t trying to endanger you.”

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“Terrie can’t help what she is—it’s her nature to make people love her, just like it’s your nature to pull answers from the dead.” He paused. “I’ve always wondered why the Daoine Sidhe have that gift. You’re Titania’s children. Why are you so tied to blood?”

“Because we’re also Oberon’s, and no one else was willing to take the job. Cut the crap, Elliot. Do you want my help or not?”

He looked at me blankly. “Yes. We do.”

“Then you need to follow my rules. Can you do that?”

“I can,” he said slowly, like he found the words distasteful. Tough.

“Good.” I stepped away from him. “First rule: no one goes anywhere alone, no matter how secure you think the area is or how certain you are that nothing will happen. There aren’t many of you left. I’d like to keep the ones we have.”

Elliot nodded. “I’ll order everyone that’s still here to travel together.”

“Can you make them listen?”

“I think so.”

“Good. Second rule: if I ask a question, I want an answer, not an excuse and not a string of technical terms you know I won’t understand. A real answer. Can you promise me that?”

“I promise.”

“Swear.”

“Toby, do I really need—” He saw the look on my face, and stopped. “Fine. I swear by root and branch and silver and iron, by fire and wind and the faces of the moon. May I never see the hills of home again, if I deceive.” He paused. “Will that do?”

“For now.”

“And you’ll help us?”

“We will. Let’s go give Connor a status, check on Quentin, and . . .” I paused. “Where’s Terrie?”

“She left,” Tybalt said, sounding satisfied. “Best she stays gone.”

“So she’s alone?” If she wasn’t our killer, she might well be a target. I didn’t like her. I didn’t want her dead.

“I suppose,” said Elliot.

“Oh, Maeve’s teeth. Tybalt? Can you find her?”

He nodded, barely, and took off at a run. I followed a beat behind him. I didn’t know that anything was wrong—not really—but I knew that every time I’d gambled with fate in this place, I’d come up snake eyes. The house always wins.

Tybalt hit the door Alex had led me through earlier, rushing out into the warm night air with me and Elliot at his heels. The smell of blood hit me even before I saw Terrie lying loose-limbed and still in the grass. The cats were gone. It was the first time I’d been outside ALH without seeing cats.

“Oh, you poor thing,” I said, glancing to Elliot and Tybalt. “Tybalt, go find the cats. See if they saw anything.” He nodded. “Elliot . . .” Elliot was pale and shivering, shaking his head from side to side. I sighed. “Stay there.”

Tybalt turned, vanishing into the shadows as I walked toward Terrie’s body. Kneeling beside her, I turned her head to the side, revealing the puncture just below her jaw. Similar punctures marked her wrists, exactly where I expected them to be. “Jan really was a fluke,” I muttered. Our killer was back to the normal pattern.

Terrie’s skin was still warm, even warmer than Peter’s had been. We’d almost made it in time. Too angry and exhausted for delicacy, I lifted her arm, raised her punctured wrist to my mouth, and drank.

Blood is always different. It has a thousand tastes, spiced by life and tainted by memory. Take away those flavorings and all you have left is copper, cloying and useless. Terrie’s blood was empty. I prepared to spit it out, and paused, licking my lips. There was something there. Ignoring Elliot’s choked-off gasp, I took another mouthful. Yes; there was definitely something there, something not quite gone. It was just a flicker of memory, a distant whisper of clover and coffee, too faint to tell me anything . . . but it was there.

I sat back on my haunches, frowning. What was different here? What distinguished this death from the rest? The others were purebloods; Terrie was a changeling. Maybe that was it. Or maybe it was the fact that she was two different people . . . and only one of them had died.

“Elliot? What time is it?”

“A little after eight.” He hesitated. “Why?”

I smiled, and he blanched. I could feel the blood drying on my lips. “Let’s move her to the basement. I want to check on Quentin, and then I’m going to sleep until Sylvester gets here. I need to be alert in the morning.”

“Why?” he asked. He didn’t sound like he really wanted to know.

Tough. Still smiling, I said, “Because at sunrise, I’m going to wake the dead.”