Ashes of Honor

SIX

QUENTIN WAS SMART ENOUGH to stay behind me. I raised my hands in a placating gesture, saying, “I don’t know who you think we are, but we don’t have your daughter. We’re not kidnappers.”

“Then hold this.” She thrust the frying pan toward us. It was cold—it had to be, or she wouldn’t be able to hold the handle—but it might as well have been heated to the point of melting from the way it seemed to twist and warp the air when she got it close to me. I must have looked like I was going to throw up, because a triumphant smile twisted the corners of her lips as she said, “I keep it rubbed down with a mixture of crushed juniper berries and rowan ash. Don’t you like the way it makes the metal shine?”

That explained the heat. Normal iron hurts, and it’s possible to get iron poisoning from staying close to the stuff for too long. It’s not a pleasant experience; I don’t recommend it. But rubbing the frying pan with two of the oldest charms against the fae had amped its natural properties to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised if touching the metal burned my skin.

“It’s lovely,” I said, taking an involuntary half step back. “Really, though. I don’t like to handle other people’s cookware.”

“That’s the best you can manage? That’s your bright, bold lie?”

“Look, lady, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had somebody corner me on a dark street and try to hand me a frying pan before,” I snapped. I could hear Quentin moving. I hoped that meant he was getting farther away, not preparing to do something stupid. Sadly, after spending so much time with me, he was just as likely to be getting ready to charge.

Bridget blinked before barking a single, sharp sound I assumed was a form of pained laughter. “This is what the Fair Folk have come to? This is the great threat of the hollow hills?”

“Um, no. This is a San Francisco native and her—” I struggled to find a word that existed in the modern mortal parlance, and settled for the Batmanesque, “—ward, wishing you’d stop waving that thing at us and back the hell off. We don’t want your frying pan.”

“Because you can’t touch it, is that right?” Bridget’s lips firmed into a resolute line. “My shirt’s inside-out, there’s bread in my pockets, and I’ve a firm grasp on this pan. Take a step toward me, and you’ll regret it.”

“But you’re between us and the car,” said Quentin, with puzzled practicality.

“I’m not sure she’s thinking clearly right now.” I lowered my hands. Shooting for a soothing tone, I asked, “Is there a reason you’re out here threatening us with your frying pan?”

Bridget gave me a withering look. “You can refuse to talk to me. You can lie to me—lord knows, it’s what your people are renowned for. But don’t you dare talk to me like I’m an idiot. My little girl is missing. You bastards left us alone for sixteen years. Why couldn’t you have stayed gone? No one believes in you anymore. Why couldn’t you let us be?”

I hesitated. The pain on her face was familiar; it was a pain I’d felt myself, when it seemed that the human world had stolen my daughter from me. No mother should have to feel that way. The secrecy of Faerie is one of our oldest traditions…but it had already been broken where Bridget was concerned. Etienne broke it long before I appeared on the scene, while I was still wearing fins and scales and unable to do anything for anyone, not even myself.

I glanced over my shoulder at Quentin. He met my eyes and nodded. He knew what I was about to do. I couldn’t say whether he approved, but he knew, and that was enough for me. If I was going to blow his cover as well as my own, I wanted him to know that it was coming.

“We don’t have your daughter, and neither does Etienne,” I said, turning back to Bridget. She stiffened. “He called me because finding lost children is a specialty of mine. I don’t take them. I bring them home. Please, believe me. We’re not here to hurt you. We’re here to help.”

“Then why didn’t you come to my doorbell and tell me this without being forced?” she demanded.

“Because we’re not used to telling humans ‘oh, hey, we exist,’” I said. Quentin stepped up next to me as I continued, “And because you thought—maybe you still think, I don’t know—Etienne took Chelsea. He didn’t, Bridget, I swear it on my father’s grave. Etienne isn’t that kind of man. He didn’t even know she existed before you called him.”

A car roared past on the street, abruptly reminding me that there was more to the world than the three of us standing in the dark and discussing things that were never intended to be discussed at all—not with humans anyway. I sighed.

“My name is October,” I said. “This is my squire, Quentin. We want to help. We want to make sure that Chelsea is safe. You don’t have to believe me, although it would probably be good if you did. I just want you to ask yourself something.”

“What’s that?” asked Bridget warily.

“If Etienne had your daughter, would he have sent us here? And if he didn’t send us, would we have come at all?” Sometimes I think the real tragedy of the intersection between humanity and the fae is how much both sides get wrong. Bridget thought she knew everything about us, and she’d lived in fear when she didn’t have to. She would always have lost Chelsea—that’s the unfortunate reality of being a human and having a child with the fae—but she could have been with Etienne all that time. She didn’t have to spend those years looking over her shoulder, waiting for the ax to fall.

There was a pause as she considered my words. Finally, she lowered the frying pan. “I don’t trust you.”

“That’s fine.”

“I won’t trust you.”

“That’s fine, too; we’re not asking you to trust us. We’re just asking you to let us help. Please. For Chelsea’s sake, if not yours.” I hesitated, and then added, “I mean, technically, I guess we’re family.”

Bridget barked another of those short, sharp laughs, lowering the frying pan. “Some family you are. You owe sixteen years of birthday presents.”

“I’ll be sure to let Etienne know.” I breathed out a little, relaxing now that the frying pan wasn’t being brandished in my direction. “We were planning to walk Chelsea’s route to school. Does she go to Colusa High?”

“Yes,” said Bridget, wariness returning. “How did you know?”

“I have a daughter, too. She lives with her human father.” Saying the words made the tiny wounded place inside me ache even more. Gillian lived with her human father, because Gillian was human. Thanks to me, she would never be anything else. “I know there’s no way she’d be walking to school if she had to go more than a mile. Etienne said Chelsea was walking home from school when she disappeared. Colusa High was the only school that fit the profile.”

“You have a daughter? With a human man?” Bridget’s tone thawed a little; perhaps she was finally allowing herself to believe we might be here for the right reasons. “What’s her name?”

“Gillian. She’s a few years older than Chelsea. She was kidnapped last year, and I would have done anything to get her back. Anything. Even if it meant trusting people I wasn’t sure about.” I shook my head. “If a human kidnapper took Chelsea, you called Etienne for nothing. I don’t think you would have done that. Not after sixteen years of being careful. That means you really think it was one of us. If you’re right, don’t you need our help?”

For a moment, I thought I might have pushed too hard. Then, reluctantly, Bridget nodded. “What can I do?”

“Well, first, can we get off the street? I’m feeling a little exposed, and I’d like to see Chelsea’s room.” If the smell of smoke and calla lilies was this strong on the open street, I wanted to see how strong it was in an enclosed space.

Bridget hesitated before nodding again. “Follow me,” she said, turning to march up the walk to her house.

Quentin and I followed at a more sedate pace, neither of us all that anxious to go where the woman with the anti-fae frying pan led. “Are you sure about this?” he asked.

“Nope,” I said calmly. “I just don’t have any better ideas, and I really want to get a look at that room.”

“Tybalt’s going to kill me,” he muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

The door was locked, even though Bridget had gone no farther than the sidewalk. She looked back over her shoulder at us as she unlocked it, saying, “You can’t be too careful.”

A lock wouldn’t stop a truly determined Tuatha de Dannan or Cait Sidhe. For once, I thought before I spoke and didn’t say that out loud. “It’s a scary world out there,” I said.

Bridget nodded and opened the door. The smell of sycamore smoke and calla lilies poured out, a hundred times stronger than it had been on the street. Schooling my expression to keep from giving away just how thick the smell of Chelsea’s magic was, I followed Bridget inside. Quentin was right behind me.

It only took one look at the living room walls for me to realize there was no need to ask for a picture of Chelsea. There were pictures of Chelsea everywhere. She was a sweet-faced little girl who grew into a beautiful teenager over the course of dozens of images. Her delicate bone structure might have tipped me off to the presence of some fae blood in her lineage, but I would never have pegged her as a full changeling. I frowned, studying the pictures more closely.

“Oh,” I said, finally. “I see.”

Bridget looked at me. “Do you?”

In every picture, Chelsea’s brown-black hair—something she inherited from her father—was styled to cover her ears. The lenses of her glasses were tinted, making it hard to tell what color her eyes were. “Does she need glasses?” I asked.

“No,” said Bridget. Her expression softened as she looked at Chelsea’s picture, the hard edges going out of it until she was just a mother, scared for the safety of her child. “She started wearing them when she was six. They’re tinted glass.”

“Rose-colored glasses. Literally,” I said. Etienne’s eyes had a copper sheen to them, glittering, metallic, and inhuman. If his daughter had his hair, the odds were good she had his eyes as well. “How long have you known?”

“That my lover wasn’t human? I suspected from the first, but I told myself I was making up stories. I was new to the department, I missed Ireland, and here was this mysterious stranger come to argue with me and spin me yarns and be exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. I thought he had to be one of the Sidhe, come to save me from myself…and then thought I was being a fool, because everyone knows the Sidhe don’t exist.” The smile she shot my way was bitter. “I suppose that makes me twice a fool, doesn’t it?”

“No,” said Quentin. “It makes us what you said we were. It makes us really good liars.”

I glanced at him, surprised by his quick response. He looked at me and shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed.

“It’s true,” he said. “We are.”

“I just didn’t expect you to say it,” I said.

“That reminds me.” Bridget raised the frying pan again. “I’ll thank you to take off whatever masks you’re wearing. I like seeing who it is I’ve allowed into my home.”

Quentin and I exchanged a look. It seemed like every time I thought we’d broken all the rules, another one popped up for us to violate. “I’m not sure…” I began.

“Please.”

That stopped me. I sighed, once, and let my human disguise wisp away into the smell of cut grass and copper. Quentin did the same, and the smell of our mingled magics briefly overwhelmed the smell of smoke and lilies. It was a pleasant change, even if it didn’t last.

Bridget’s eyes went wide and round. It was one thing to challenge two strangers and declare them to be part of a hidden world existing alongside her own. It was something else to have it proved. It probably didn’t help that the similarities in our human disguises were washed away by our true appearances. Quentin is Daoine Sidhe, bright and vibrant as something from a fairy tale. I, on the other hand, look as though half my color was stolen from me by the villain from some children’s TV show.

Oh, and there were bullet holes in my jacket. Can’t forget those.

“What are you?” she whispered, finally.

“Quentin is Daoine Sidhe,” I said. “I’m Dóchas Sidhe. We’re…cousins, I guess.” It was close enough; both races descended from Oberon, although Titania claimed the Daoine Sidhe as her own. “What we are doesn’t matter. Finding Chelsea is what matters. Can I see her room?”

“Yes, of course,” said Bridget, tossing the frying pan onto the couch before beckoning for us to follow her. Apparently, disorientation made her agreeable. Then again, it might also be the deep conditioning of human history at work, the old lessons that say, “mess with the fae, and you’ll regret it.” Now that she could really see us, maybe she didn’t feel she could fight us anymore. Either way, I was just glad she’d dropped the frying pan.

The smell of smoke and lilies got stronger as we walked down the hall. By the time we stopped in front of a door decorated with the poster from the third Lord of the Rings movie, it was all I could do not to breathe through my mouth to avoid choking.

“This is her room,” said Bridget needlessly.

“I kind of figured,” I said. I sneezed, once, before turning to Quentin. “Wait out here with Bridget, okay?”

“Okay,” he said.

Catching Bridget’s sudden irritation, I explained, “I can sort of detect magic, but it works best when I’m alone.” And better still if someone has bled recently, but since Chelsea was taken from the street, that was probably too much to hope for. “I promise I’m not going to do anything to your daughter’s things. You can even keep the door open and watch me.”

“Oh, I will,” she said…but she opened the door, releasing a cloying wave of lily-and-smoke perfume. “Don’t you dare take anything.”

“I won’t,” I said, and went in.

Chelsea’s room was practically spotless, especially for a teenage girl. There were no dolls or plastic horses; instead, she had rows of neatly shelved secondhand paperbacks, build-it-yourself model kits, and what looked like a working microscope. The walls were covered in Star Trek and Firefly posters, and she had posters for the first and second Lord of the Rings movies taped to her ceiling. A too-small bedspread patterned with spaceships and planets was folded over the foot of her bed, the remnant of a childhood she wasn’t willing to let go of yet. I turned slowly in place, a lump in my throat that wasn’t caused just by the difficulty of breathing through the miasma of Chelsea’s magic. She deserved better than whatever was happening to her…and she deserved better than what was going to happen to her when she was finally found.

I closed my eyes, breathing deep as I searched for something—anything—that might help us track Chelsea. What I found was enough to make me stiffen in surprise. “Oh, oak and ash, that’s not good,” I murmured. Opening my eyes again, I looked around the room, gaze settling on the composition notebook next to the microscope. I reached for it.

“What are you doing?” demanded Bridget.

“I need to check something,” I said. “Both of you, stay out in the hall, please.”

As I’d hoped, a girl who kept her room as neat as Chelsea did, and who had such an obvious interest in science, also kept very careful notes. The notebook was full of columns showing dates, times, locations, and what she called “relevant factors.” Everything was written in heavy block letters, making it easy to read, even if it took me a moment to understand.

“Oak and ash,” I repeated, and added a human, “Fuck. Quentin, can you come in here?”

“Sure.” He walked over to me, followed by Bridget, who seemed to have decided “stay in the hall” only applied as long as she and Quentin were both doing it. I didn’t comment on her presence. I just handed Quentin the notebook.

He frowned at the pages, brow furrowing for a moment before it smoothed out as his expression became one of pure surprise. “Was she experimenting with herself?”

“She was,” I confirmed. Bridget looked utterly bewildered. Taking pity, I explained, “Etienne said that you knew he was Tuatha de Dannan. What you may not know is that they’re teleporters, and so is Chelsea. Based on what’s written here she’s been opening small portals for the last year or so. She’s been testing what she can do.”

“That’s not possible. I would have known.”

“Have you ever encouraged her to use her magic? Or have you told her to hide it, no matter what?” Bridget’s silence was answer enough. I continued: “She wanted to know what she could do. And I think she managed to catch someone’s attention.”

What I didn’t say was that if the locations in Chelsea’s book were accurate—and I had no reason to suspect they weren’t—she was opening portals that stretched a lot farther than she should have been able to manage. Etienne could go from Pleasant Hill to San Francisco, if he stretched. His little girl had recorded trips from Albany to Vancouver. And that wasn’t good. There are always stories about changelings with too much power. None of them end well.

“Where is she?” whispered Bridget.

“I don’t know. But we’re going to find out.” I held up the book. “Can I take this?”

Clearly reluctant, Bridget nodded.

“Okay. We have to go now. We have to go and find your daughter.” Assuming she was still alive. And that, unfortunately, was looking like an increasingly big assumption.