Chimes at Midnight: An October Daye Novel (23 page)

There were no other jaywalkers. There were no other pedestrians of any kind, not on the sidewalks, not even clustered outside the Phoenix or the corner store. Even if everywhere else was deserted, there should have been
someone
outside the two nearest sources of alcohol. I stopped, not particularly caring that we were in the middle of the street. “I’m an idiot,” I murmured. “Quentin?”

“Um, yeah?” he asked, automatically dropping his voice to match mine.

“I need you to throw up a hide-and-seek spell, and it needs to be big enough to cover all three of us.” I started looking around, trying to focus on the places where the shadows were deepest. The firefly was supposed to let me see through illusions. That was fine and dandy, except for the part where I had to
find
those illusions before I could see through them. I hate loopholes.

“Tobes? You wanna tell the rest of us what’s going on?”

Doing emergency planning in the middle of the street might seem counterintuitive, but it actually wasn’t a bad idea. If anyone tried to sneak up on us, we’d see them coming. That wouldn’t stop listening charms. There’s always an element of risk. “As soon as the hide-and-seek is in place, grab Quentin and run,” I said, quietly. “I’ll be running in the opposite direction. I hate to split up, but we’re walking into a trap, and I bet the Queen set it. She’s trying to find Arden’s hiding place.”

“Wait wait wait,” said Danny. “Why am I grabbing the kid? No offense, but I should be grabbing
you
.”

“Because you, and me, we can see where we’re going. Quentin can’t.” I shook my head. “He hides us, we run, we find people. Once we find people, we know we’re outside the bounds of this ambush. You carry Quentin back to the you-know-where,” I was suddenly unwilling to say the word “bookstore” aloud, “and I’ll meet you there.”

“I don’t like this plan,” said Danny.

“I
hate
this plan,” said Quentin.

“Well, then, it’s a damn good thing I’m in charge, since this is the only plan that’s getting us inside without telling the Queen where we’re going,” I half-snapped. “Now cast the hide-and-seek. We need to get moving.”

Quentin sighed. Then he raised his hands, waving them through the air like he was conducting an unseen orchestra, and sang, in a clear, high tenor, “Oh, my name is Captain Kidd, as I sailed, as I sailed, my name is Captain Kidd, as I sailed . . .”

I couldn’t smell his magic, but I felt a prickling sensation run across my skin as the spell was cast, causing the small hairs on my arms and the back of my neck to stand on end. Quentin lowered his hands. I looked at him. He nodded.

“All right,” I said. “See you there.”

Then I turned, and sprinted for the end of the block, still in the middle of the street.

Hide-and-seek spells primarily depend on one thing: the person you’re trying to hide from losing sight of you. We hadn’t exactly been subtle as we stood on Valencia Street and argued about our next move, but we also hadn’t been
moving
. It was my sincere hope that our sudden action would be confusing enough to give us a few seconds’ head start. That, and I really, really hoped the Queen hadn’t sent any Centaurs. I’m pretty good at running for my life—I’ve had a lot of practice, when you get right down to it—but there’s no way I could outrun someone with four legs and lungs sized to sustain most of a horse’s body. A Silene, maybe. A Centaur, no way.

As I ran, I dug my phone out of my pocket and started scrolling through my contacts with my thumb. Why did I have to know so many
people
? It was like having a cell phone made people you hadn’t talked to in years come out of the woodwork, demanding you care enough to keep their information handy. I decided I’d delete them all as soon as this was over, and pressed “call” as the list finally reached the name I’d been looking for.

There were cars on the block up ahead. I veered back onto the sidewalk, listening to the phone ringing in my ear. “Come on, pick up,” I gasped, already too winded to do much else. “Come on, come on . . .”

“Hello?”

“May!” I swerved to avoid running into a fire hydrant. “Is Jazz there?”

“Toby? Are you running or something? You sound like you can’t breathe.”

“That’s because I’m running! Is Jazz there?”

“Yeah, she’s—”

“Tell her I need her, and the flock, to mob at Valencia and 16th Street.
Now
.”

“Toby, what—”

“I’m being chased by an unknown number of people,” I swerved to avoid a bike chained to a bike rack, with no owner in sight, “and I’m not sure how long I can keep running. I need a mob.”

“On it,” said May, and hung up.

That would have to be good enough. Hoping Jazz could actually rouse the rest of the city’s Raven-maids and Raven-men before I had passed the intersection, I put the phone back in my pocket, put my head down, and
ran
.

This is how it is with me and exercise: I have to exert myself, I get winded, I complain about getting winded, I swear I’m going to get into shape, I get distracted, and it never happens. Developing a supernaturally-enhanced healing talent didn’t help, since it meant I no longer had to worry as much about outrunning gunshots. So I wasn’t in the best shape, endurance-wise,
before
the goblin fruit caused my body to shift me most of the way back toward human. I was moving on momentum and terror, plain and simple, and as soon as one of them gave out, I was going to be in a world of trouble.

It was a good thing I was semi-invisible at the moment, since I knew how strange I would have looked to anyone who could see me: just a woman, running pell-mell down the empty sidewalk, with no one visibly in pursuit. I wanted to stop. My lungs were burning, and my knees had started to ache—a pain from my more mortal days that I’d been more than happy to forget about. The landscape was on my side for the moment, presenting me with a gentle downward slope, but once I crossed 16th, that would stop. If Jazz and the Ravens didn’t meet me there, I’d be running uphill.

Come on, Jazz,
I prayed, as I dug deep for one more burst of short-lived speed.
I know you can do this. I believe you can do this. So come on, and prove me right. Please.

My next stride hit the sidewalk just a little bit wrong, and I lost my balance, going head over heels before landing in a painful heap against the base of a nearby wall. Spots danced in front of my eyes. I tried to roll to the side, and found myself looking at a series of koi silhouettes that someone had painted on the sidewalk and building. I laughed, and then groaned as it made my head ache even more.

For the first time, I heard footsteps behind me. I tried squinting in their direction, but there was nothing there, and I realized that the feeling of feather-light feet dancing over my collarbone was gone. I raised a hand and touched my chest, confirming what I already partially knew: the firefly was gone. Either the flight or the fall had dislodged it.

“Then there were seven,” I muttered, pulling myself inch by aching inch to my feet. The knees of my jeans were ripped out, and the smell of blood was thick in the air. Good. I raised one scraped palm to my mouth and ran my tongue across it, borrowing what strength I could from my own blood before I snapped, “Well? What are you assholes waiting for? Come on!”

The Queen’s guards stepped out of thin air.

There were five of them, all dressed in the Queen’s livery, all armed. They had to be allowing me to see them through some sort of selective don’t-look-here; those weapons weren’t street-legal, and it wasn’t like I had the power to see through illusions on my own. The figure at the center of the group was a Gwragen, eyes closed and mouth moving in some silent litany as she maintained the spell that was keeping them concealed and keeping the mortal population at bay.

“You’re going to have one
hell
of a headache in the morning,” I wheezed, and licked my hand again. Despite the bits of gravel and dirt embedded in the skin, the blood tasted good.

“October Daye, you are under arrest—” began one of the guards, a broad-shouldered Satyr with holes cut in his helmet to allow his horns to curl through.

“Sir,” I said, interrupting him.

He stopped, frowning at me. “What?”

“Sir,” I repeated. “If you’re going to arrest me, you’re going to use my proper title. Can’t you people remember your own procedures? I mean, come on.”

He stiffened, lips drawing into a scowl. I wasn’t making any friends with my attitude. But I never do, where the Queen’s men are concerned, and all I needed was enough time for Danny and Quentin to get away from whoever might have followed them. Once they were safe, I could get arrested as much as I wanted to.

“
Sir
October Daye,” he began, “you are under arrest—”

A vast flock of black-winged birds descended from the sky, talons clawing and wings beating wildly as they mobbed the Queen’s guards. In a matter of seconds, inky feathers had obscured them from my view.

I wasn’t up for running—my running had been used up somewhere between 18th Street and taking a header into the sidewalk—but I was fully equipped to limp laboriously away. The beauty of the hide-and-seek is that you don’t have to go all that far. I stopped on the opposite corner, watching with some satisfaction as Jazz and her flock did their best to recreate
The Birds
with the Queen’s guard. As for the guards, they held their positions for almost a minute, which is longer than I could have done. Then they turned and ran, with the ravens in hot pursuit.

One large raven stayed behind, fluttering down to land in the street. It picked its way through the fallen feathers, head bobbing. It cawed, an inquisitive sound. I smiled a little. The raven was Jazz, more than likely, and it—she—couldn’t see me. The hide-and-seek was holding.

“Open roads,” I whispered, too softly to be heard, before I pulled the flask out of my jacket and freed another firefly, setting this one on my neck, where it would be hidden by my hair. Once that was done and the flask was put away again, I turned and began limping back up the street toward Borderlands. The fading sound of wings and shouting told me I was moving away from the Queen’s guards. That was good. I really didn’t have a second encounter in me.

It took three times as long to walk the few blocks between me and Borderlands as it had when I was running and—oh, yeah—uninjured. Still, eventually, I found myself in front of the bookstore’s closed screen door. I peered through the window. Danny and Quentin were already inside, looking profoundly uncomfortable as they pretended to browse the bookshelves. The dark-haired woman with the red kerchief was behind the counter, handing a book to a woman in a white peasant blouse. Her hair was an odd shade of silvery-red, like red gold. Neither of them seemed to realize there was anyone else in the store. The hide-and-seek was holding.

The redhead turned to leave. I stepped out of the way, letting her open the door for me. I might be hidden by Quentin’s illusion, but that was no reason to push my luck by making the woman in the kerchief—Jude, that was her name—deal with a door that was opening on its own.

As the redhead stepped out of the store, I stepped in. Danny turned toward me. Quentin and Jude didn’t. I blinked, impressed. The hide-and-seek was clearly better than I’d thought.

Interacting with someone will enable them to see you, illusions or not. I walked over and put a hand on Quentin’s elbow, squeezing when he started to jump. “It’s me,” I said. “Breathe.”

He exhaled. “Toby.”

“Come on.” I gestured for Danny to follow as I led Quentin toward the door leading to the basement. If Arden was here, and hiding, she would be in the makeshift apartment that she’d been sharing with her brother. It was the safest place for her.

Jude didn’t look up as we opened the door and started down, shrouded by the hide-and-seek spell. Once the door was closed behind us, I murmured, “Let it go,” to Quentin.

He released the spell with a sigh of relief. “Ow,” he said. There was a pause, presumably while he got a good look at me. I couldn’t see his face in the dark, but I knew the hole that assessing someone’s injuries could make in a conversation. “Toby? What
happened
?”

“I think I need a Band-Aid, an icepack, and some new knees,” I said. “Danny, get the lights?”

“Sure thing,” Danny rumbled.

The light clicked on, flooding the basement with light—and revealing the man from the café next door, the one who had served us our coffee. He was wearing another black T-shirt, this one with the Borderlands logo, and holding a crossbow, which was aimed squarely at my chest.

“Hi,” he said, with another tooth-baring smile. “I wondered when you’d get here.”

Crap.