Chimes at Midnight

TWENTY-FIVE

I OPENED MY EYES and found myself staring at the ceiling of my old apartment. “Okay,” I muttered, sitting up and looking down at myself. I was in my long black Bourbon Room T-shirt, and I was lying on my four-poster bed from Mother’s tower. The room was familiar and wrong at the same time, mixing aspects of my mortal and fae lives with maddened abandon. The shelves groaned with battered paperbacks and random knickknacks alongside magic swords and jars full of fireflies. One of the windows looked out on the Summerlands, while the other showed a midday parking lot.

“I hate symbolism,” I said, sliding out of the bed. At least nothing hurt. My wounds were gone, washed away by whatever process I’d started by touching the hope chest.

I had touched it, hadn’t I? I couldn’t quite remember whether I’d reached it in time. I walked toward the door, fighting the urge to touch my ears and see where my blood was balanced. This place seemed designed to tell me soon enough, and there was no point in rushing the inevitable.

Then I opened the door, and found myself looking at . . . myself. Mostly. The woman in the doorway was clearly a changeling, a little less fae than I had been at the start of the week, a lot less human than I’d been when I broke into the treasury. She was wearing my leather jacket, and had a knife in either hand. Her fingers were wrapped around the blades, hiding them, and their hilts were identical.

“Hi,” she said, without preamble. “I’m you.”

“I got that,” I said, frowning. “What’s going on? Am I going to have some kind of messed-up vision every time I need to change my blood?”

“Maybe,” she said. “It’s not like this is ground that’s been walked before. Most blood magic comes with visions of a sort, so you could call this more of the same. How do you feel?”

“Weak.”

“That’s because you’re bleeding to death.” She held the knives out toward me, hilt first. “Pick one.”

I blinked. “That’s it? That’s the wisdom of this particular stupid vision? ‘Pick one’?”

“The hope chest responds to intent, and right now, you don’t have any; you’re too far gone,” she said, still holding the knives out. “You could actually say that this moment, right here, is both you fighting your own blood, and you fighting the hope chest. Part of you wants to be human. Let the goblin fruit carry you away on a tide of sweet, sweet dreams that leave you dead. Part of you wants to be fae. Stop making this choice, stop taking this risk. So pick a knife. If you get the silver, you’re fae. If you get the iron, you’re human. Either way, you’ll have made a decision—you’ll have given the hope chest the intent it needs to work.”

“Are you messing with me?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m offering you a fifty-fifty chance at survival. And that’s better than you’ll have if you don’t pick a knife soon. There’s only so much blood in your body, and you’re not regenerating. Come on. Choose while there’s still time for it to matter.”

The knives were identical, and she was holding them the same distance from her body. Nothing about her position hinted at which one I should take.

“What do I do after I have it?” I asked.

“Stab yourself.”

“. . . of course I have to stab myself,” I muttered. “This day just gets better and better.”

“Don’t stall,” she snapped abruptly. I blinked. She scowled. “If you bleed to death, I die with you. So stop messing around and fix this. I don’t want to die. I’m not ready. I have too much left to do.”

“But if I pick the wrong knife—”

“If you pick the wrong knife, Faerie had better find a new hero.”

I stared at her for a few precious seconds before turning my attention to the knives in her hands. They gave no external clues, nothing that might help me know which one I wanted.

But then, I’ve never been very good at choosing just one. I reached out and grabbed both knives before she had a chance to react, pulling them from her hands. The motion left her fingers cut and bleeding, freeing the smell of blood to invade the room. I took a deep breath, letting the blood strengthen me, turned the knives around in my hands, and drove them into my stomach in a single gesture. I never did see which was which. It didn’t seem to matter.

The pain was sudden and immense, expanding to fill the entire world. The last thing I saw before I fell was my own face smiling at me from the doorway. She looked approving. I wanted to yell at her. If there was a right choice, why couldn’t she just tell me that and skip the stupid riddles? But falling seemed much more important than arguing. I hit the floor on knees I could barely feel through the pain washing through my body.

The knives. The knives. I needed to . . . I needed . . . I yanked the knives out of my stomach before the blackness could take me. And then I closed my eyes, letting myself go limp. Dying hurt. I did not approve. I did not—

A hand closed on my shoulder, fingers surprisingly solid despite the remaining haze. “Toby? October? Are you all right?” Dianda sounded worried. I couldn’t blame her. From the smell of things, there wasn’t much blood left in me, but there was a lot of it around me. “Hey. Don’t be dead. I’m pretty sure it’ll count as a declaration of war if you’re dead.”

“No such luck,” I rasped. Until I spoke, I hadn’t been quite sure I still had a mouth. It tasted like blood, just like everything else. I swallowed, trying to clear the taste away, and opened my eyes to find Dianda—still finned and scaled—on the floor next to where I’d fallen. I blinked. “Did you crawl here?”

“I need water before I can shift back,” she said. “Are you all right?”

“I . . . I don’t know.” I sat up, waiting for a flare of pain. Nothing happened. I reached for my side, slipping my hand through the cut in my clothing to feel smooth, undamaged skin. Sitting up a bit straighter, I pulled my hand free, wiped it on my jeans, and reached up to brush my hair back.

My fingers hit the sharp edge of my ear. Not pureblood-sharp, but the angle I was used to. I took a deep breath, swallowing the urge to shout with joy. “I think I’m—” I began, and stopped as pain shot through my left side. I doubled over, clapping my hands over the wound I knew had to be there.

They found the hilt of my iron knife. Fighting to focus, I wrenched the blade from its scabbard and flung it across the room. It clattered against a pile of golden coins before vanishing behind them. I pulled up my shirt and pulled down the waistband of my jeans. There was a welt where the knife had been close to my skin, and unlike the rest of my injuries, it wasn’t healing.

“I’m definitely back to normal,” I said, and stood, tucking the hope chest under my arm. Maybe more than normal. I felt less human than ever before, although I’d managed to hang on to some of my humanity. I knew the balance of my own blood well enough to be sure of that.

Worrying about what I’d done to myself could come later. For the moment, I had allies to worry about. “I’m going to get you some water,” I said.

To my surprise, Dianda shook her head. “No. There’s bound to be something in here,” she waved a hand to indicate the treasury, “that makes water out of nothing, or never dries up, or whatever. I’ll find it. Go save your cat.”

Tybalt. Fear washed over me, and I nodded. “All right,” I said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” I didn’t wait for her response. I was off and running, my feet squelching through the blood trail I’d left earlier. Even in her current form, Dianda could fight off any guards that came for her. She was a Duchess in the Undersea; they based titles off the ability to hold them. She’d be fine. Tybalt needed me.

How long had it been? How long had it taken me to change my blood back to normal, how long for Dianda to pull herself across the treasury floor to where I was huddled around the hope chest? How long? I ran, heading as fast as I could for the dungeon door. My feet slid on the blood-slick stone floor. I slammed my hip against a corner and kept on running, feeling the pain first spread through me and then recede, pulled back by the power in my blood.

I couldn’t properly enjoy my body being my own again. I was too busy running, my mind already playing through the worst possible scenarios. Most of them were terrifyingly simple: I’d get there and the night-haunts would be gone, and the next time I saw the flock, there would be a diminutive figure with Tybalt’s eyes among their number.

The door to the dungeon was unguarded; the guards Dianda and I had taken down were gone. Whether gone meant “away” or “down,” I didn’t know, and didn’t care. I yanked the door open and ran into the dark without care for how badly I might hurt myself. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting there in time to save him.

The door to Dianda’s cell was open. That was a good sign: if the guards had been down here, they would have closed it. I kept running until I turned the final corner and stopped dead. The bottom seemed to drop out of the world, leaving me alone in the darkness. Tybalt was there, unmoving, lying in exactly the position he’d been in when I left him.

But the night-haunts were gone.

Moving slowly now, like the air had been replaced by thick goo, I walked toward him. He still looked fae. Night-haunts usually replaced the dead with human-seeming shells. Would they have bothered with that here, in a knowe, where his body would never be seen by the mortal world? It didn’t make sense, from a logical standpoint—but since when was Faerie logical? Maybe they’d left one just to mess with me.

“It isn’t fair,” I whispered.

“It never is,” replied Devin’s voice. I whipped around to find the two night-haunts hovering behind me. Connor’s haunt wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I managed to fight the urge to slap them out of the air. “Is he alive?”

“For now,” said the Devin-haunt, looking me up and down. “I see you’ve found yourself again. Our part in things is done. Whether he lives or not, you owe us.”

“I know,” I said, and turned my back on them. I walked the last few steps to Tybalt, kneeling beside him on the cold stone floor, and reached out to stroke his cheek. My fingers left bloody trails behind them. “Hey,” I said. “Hey, you need to wake up. It’s time to save the Prince, defeat the evil Queen, and go on a vacation. I hear Hawaii is nice this time of year. I’ll go there with you. I’ll go anywhere with you. Come on, kitty-cat. Wake up.”

He didn’t respond. I glanced over my shoulder to the night-haunts. They were hovering there, watching me. Connor’s haunt made a small gesture with his hand, like he was pulling power out of the air. That was all.

My power has never been in the air. I turned to Tybalt, taking a deep breath, and raised my hand to my mouth, licking the blood off of my palm. There was enough there that I didn’t need to cut myself. My magic responded instantly, thundering down on me in a cascading wave of cut grass and bloody copper. I gathered it all, holding it like a snake that wanted to escape, and bent to press my lips to Tybalt’s.

Directing a spell means telling the magic where you want it to go. This time, as I kissed him, I told the magic I wanted it to go into his body. I gave it freely and without restraint, trying to push it away from me as hard as I could. Come on, Tybalt, I thought, half-begging, half-praying. Take it. Please, take it, and open your eyes. Come on . . .

Even with the blood, my magic wasn’t limitless. I kept forcing it away from me, but there was only so much I could do, and the end was nearing. I gathered what strength I could and pushed it into him. Please.

With a choking gasp, Tybalt started breathing.

His arms rose, closing around me, and my one-sided kiss became something more as he kissed me back. I sighed with relief as I let the last of my magic go, fading into the dungeon air. Finally, I leaned in and let my forehead rest against his. His eyes were open. I had never seen anything so beautiful.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello,” he said. Then he blinked, and frowned. “You are covered in blood. And your eyes . . .” His eyes widened. “Your eyes are your own. October, did you find it?”

“I did.” I pulled away, holding up the hope chest. “I couldn’t find the user’s manual that goes with it, but I think I did okay. Are you okay?”

“Tired. Sore. What happened?”

I climbed to my feet, offering my free hand. “The Queen tightened her wards after our last jailbreak. The strain of carrying me through them nearly killed you.”

“Ah.” He took my hand and stood. “Then it’s a good thing you found the hope chest on your own.”

“Not entirely on my own. Dianda’s in the treasury.”

He blinked. “Why did she not return here with you?”

“She’s sort of a fish from the waist down at the moment. And she’s got a moderate case of iron poisoning, so she needs water before she can shift back.”

“I miss so much when I’m unconscious,” he said.

I laughed, turning to lead him out of the dungeon. I was unsurprised to see that the night-haunts were gone. Together we walked back to the stairs and up into the hall. One of the Queen’s guards was waiting there. I didn’t see Tybalt move. One moment, he was standing beside me, the next, he was holding the guard off the floor by the throat.

“You really like that move, don’t you?” I asked, continuing to walk. The guard thrashed as Tybalt cut off his oxygen supply. “Just don’t kill him. We’re not breaking Oberon’s Law today.”

“You are covered in blood,” Tybalt said again, stressing the words harder this time. “It makes me tense.” There was a thud as the guard hit the floor, and Tybalt returned to my side.

“Wow. You must be tense a lot.”

He sighed. “You have no idea.”

I thought of how terrified I’d been when he wouldn’t wake up, and shook my head. “I think I have some idea,” I said, and kept walking.

No more guards appeared as we walked toward the treasury. A large floral display was set up on one of the small tables in the hall. I grabbed it, dumping the flowers on the floor. If Dianda hadn’t been able to find water in the treasury, maybe this would be enough.

The reason for the lack of guards became clearer as we neared the treasury. Angry voices were coming from the room, and several sets of tracks ran through the blood trail that I’d left behind me. Tybalt and I exchanged a look.

“Please don’t kill anyone,” I said.

“I will do my best,” he replied, and ran ahead of me into the treasury. The angry voices promptly acquired a note of panic. I guess adding an angry Cait Sidhe with some aggression he needed to work off had changed the character of their party. I didn’t bother hurrying. Those poor guards were already in enough trouble.

When I stepped inside, I found four guards on the floor, two more trying to reach Dianda without being hit by her expertly-swung tail, and another being held off the floor by a snarling Tybalt. I stepped around the bodies, stopping just outside of Dianda’s hitting range and holding up the vase. “I found you some water,” I said.

“Oh, good.” She slammed her tail into one of the guards. He toppled over. She took aim at the other. “Hold on to it for right now, I’ll get it in a second.”

“Okay.” I turned to survey the guards on the floor. Two of them appeared to be conscious. One was wearing a very fancy tunic. That probably made him part of the chain of command, although I couldn’t have guessed at his rank. I knelt beside him, smiling. “Hi.”

His eyes widened. Being smiled at by a bloody, too-calm woman in the middle of a pitched battle was probably a little disconcerting. “You are under arrest in the name of Her Majesty the Queen,” he said, his voice shaking.

“Mmm, no, I’m not,” I replied. “Her Majesty, Queen Arden Windermere in the Mists, sent me. This is an illegal holding. The Queen who’s been doing business here? Turns out she’s a fake. Who knew, right?” I leaned closer. “Your mistress has gone to answer Arden’s challenge. This is your chance. Change allegiances now, stop attacking us, and we’ll tell Arden you helped. Don’t . . .” I glanced over my shoulder at Tybalt. He had grabbed Dianda’s other attacker, and was slamming her against the wall. I turned back to the guard. “Well, you can see what happens if you don’t.”

The guard looked at me for a few long moments. I looked back, not allowing myself to break eye contact. I was gambling on his loyalty to the Queen being weak—something that wasn’t much of a stretch, given the way she treated everyone I’d ever seen her interacting with.

Finally, he said, “Help me up.”

“Are you going to try to take me hostage?” I asked, as I took his hand and helped him climb awkwardly to his feet. “Because that would really be a lousy move on your part.”

“I know who you are, daughter of Amandine,” said the guard. He let go of my hand, turning to the rest of the room. “In the name of Her Majesty, the Queen of the Mists, I order you to stand down.”

“Your Queen is a fake,” said Dianda, propping herself up on one elbow and glowering.

“My fealty is sworn only to the throne, not to she who sits upon it,” the guard replied. “Long live Queen Arden Windermere of the Mists.”

The other guards—the ones who were still conscious, anyway, which wasn’t most of them—turned to stare at him. Tybalt kindly stopped using his guard as a basketball, releasing the woman to stagger back to her feet and frown at her superior officer.

“How many troops did the Queen leave to hold the knowe?” I asked.

“Thirteen,” said the guard. “I am the ranking member of the guard still here.”

“Good. Then you can let the rest know that there’s been a regime change.” I smiled thinly, aware of just how ghoulish that had to look, considering my current condition. “If the old Queen tries to retreat, she’s going to find herself with nowhere she can retreat to.”

“Impressive as it is to watch you erode the loyalties of everyone around you, can I get that water now?” asked Dianda.

“Of course.” I walked over and handed her the vase. Dianda dumped its contents over her head, washing away some of the blood—and all of her scales. Her tail disappeared as the water ran along her body, replaced by bare, bloody legs.

“Much better.” She dropped the vase to the floor. It shattered. She climbed to her feet and said, “As the ranking noble—no offense, Tybalt—”

“None taken.” He sounded amused.

“Good. As I was saying, as the ranking noble currently present, I claim this knowe in the name of Arden Windermere, rightful Queen in the Mists. Do not challenge me. I am out of patience, and I have such a headache.”

“That’ll be the iron,” I said. I turned to the guard. “We need an alchemist. She’s been in your dungeon long enough to get sick, and since she’s not committing treason by backing the rightful monarch, that’s technically a declaration of war against the Undersea.”

“You people are certainly fond of declaring war against the Undersea by mistake,” said Tybalt. “I am pleased the Court of Cats has not managed to do this during my tenure.”

“We live in interesting times.” I moved to stand beside him. The guards were groaning as they woke up. “We found the hope chest and Dianda, and we technically just conquered the Queen’s knowe.”

“Yes. Not to mention the rest of it.” Tybalt ran a finger along the sharpened peak of my ear.

I smiled. “Yeah, there’s that, too. I’m hungry, even.” And not for goblin fruit. I wanted a steak. Rare, if not raw. My body had a lot of blood to build back up. “So let’s find Nolan while Dianda gets patched up, grab a sandwich, and then head back over to Muir Woods. We have ourselves a war to win.”

Tybalt looked surprised. Then, slowly, he smiled back.

“Why, October,” he said. “I thought you’d never ask.”