An Artificial Night - BK 3

“The brisk pacing, the effective mix of human and magical characters, and the PI ambience all make this an excellent choice for fans of Butcher’s Harry Dresden series. . . . Toby’s unusual heritage and her uneasy relationships with her mother’s family will remind readers of Brigg’s Mercy Thompson series, and Thompson fans will appreciate Toby’s tough and self-reliant character. This outstanding first novel is a must for fans of genre-bending blends of crime and fantasy.”

—Booklist
starred review

“McGuire successfully blends Robert B. Parker-like detective fiction with love and loss, faith and betrayal—and plenty of violence. . . .
Rosemary and Rue
will have readers clamoring for the next genre-bending installment.”

—
www.bookpage.com

“Well researched, sharply told, highly atmospheric and as brutal as any pulp detective tale . . . sure to appeal to fans of Jim Butcher or Kim Harrison.”

—Publishers Weekly

“October Daye is as gritty and damaged a heroine as Kinsey Millhone or Kay Scarpetta . . . an engaging narrator who promises to sustain as long a series as McGuire might wish to write. . . . Toby’s nocturnal existence is full of the kind of shadows that keep the pages turning. Changelings, like all faerie folk, live long; may McGuire and these novels do the same.”

—The Onion A.V. Club

DAW Books Presents Seanan McGuire’s October Daye Novels:

ROSEMARY AND RUE
A LOCAL HABITATION
AN ARTIFICIAL NIGHT
LATE ECLIPSES*

*Coming March 2011 from DAW

Interior dingbat created by Tara O’Shea.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1523.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

eISBN : 978-1-101-44276-0

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.

First Printing, September 2010

DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
—MARCA REGISTRADA
HECHO EN U.S.A.

S.A.

http://us.penguingroup.com

For Vixy.
For always.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

An Artificial Night
is the third of Toby’s adventures, and by the time I reached it, I had a decent idea of what I was doing . . . or so I thought, before I was tackled by the fine members of the Machete Squad, who beat some sense into me and some awesome into the book. Big thanks go to every one of them for their tireless labors. Special thanks on this volume go to Deborah Brannon, Mia Nutick, Michelle McNeill, and Jeanne Goldfein, all of whom helped immensely with the process of hacking my way down into Blind Michael’s lands. Mary Crowell took me down the scarecrow trail to show me a few things I’d missed when I was walking on my own, and Rebecca Newman was glorious, as always. A great deal of detail came from long discussions with Meg Creel-man, who was a fantastic help. I couldn’t have done it without all of them.

Chris Mangum and Tara O’Shea made sure my web-site was as awesome and low-stress as possible, thus allowing me to stress out over other things, like what my cats were doing. My agent, Diana Fox, was supportive and clever in all the best ways—it’s good to have a superhero in your corner—while my editor, Sheila Gilbert, was a joy to work with. Marsha Jones and Joshua Starr at DAW answered my endless questions about this and the books before it, and made the process much closer to painless than it could have been. Here on the home front, Kate Secor, Michelle Dockrey, Brooke Lunderville, and Amy McNally kept me from losing my mind, and made the book better at the same time. Finally, a big, big thanks to Betsy Tinney, who rescued me from an emergency kitten shortage when she provided my latest family member, a blue classic tabby and white Maine Coon named Alice.

My personal soundtrack while writing
An Artificial Night
consisted mostly of
Archetype Cafe
, by Talis Kimberley,
Thirteen
, by Vixy and Tony,
Seven is the Number
, by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer, and
Films About Ghosts
, by the Counting Crows. Any errors in this book are entirely my own. The errors that aren’t here are the ones that all these people helped me fix.

Now breath in deep, and keep hold of your candle. It’s a long way from here to Babylon.

PRONUNCIATION GUIDE:

All pronunciations are given strictly phonetically. This only covers races explicitly named in the first three books.

Bannick:
ban-nick
. Plural is Bannicks.

Banshee:
ban-shee
. Plural is Banshees.

Barghest:
bar-guy-st
. Plural is Barghests.

Barrow Wight:
bar-row white
. Plural is Barrow Wights.

Blodynbryd:
blow-din-brid
. Plural is Blodynbryds.

Cait Sidhe:
kay-th shee
. Plural is Cait Sidhe.

Candela:
can-dee-la
. Plural is Candela.

Coblynau:
cob-lee-now
. Plural is Coblynau.

Cornish Pixie:
Corn-ish pix-ee
. Plural is Cornish Pixies.