The Winter Long (15 page)

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” asked Quentin quietly.

“No,” I said. “But it's the only one we have right now. She needs to be safe. Tybalt will keep her safe.”

Quentin nodded. “Okay,” he said. He hesitated before saying, “I almost expected you to say that we should take her to Shadowed Hills. That's where you always would have taken her before.”

“I know.”

Minutes slunk by like hours, and I had to fight with myself not to run into that alley and begin clawing at shadows until one of them opened and let me inside. Finally, Tybalt came walking back, empty-handed and wearing a shirt that looked almost exactly like his previous one, only minus the blood stains.

“She is safe,” he informed us gravely. “I have advised my people of what must be done, and she will not be left alone. Someone will always be with her.”

I bit my lip and nodded, unwilling to trust my voice. He smiled, very slightly, as he reached out and touched the side of my face.

“She wasn't elf-shot, October; she'll be awake and making your life miserable before you have a chance to properly miss her.”

“I know,” I said, and sniffled, fighting the urge to cry. “Let's get the hell out of here. We still have way too much work to do.”

“If I may?” Tybalt leaned forward and tapped the collar of my shirt. I looked down at my bloody shirt, then back up again to him. “You need to change your clothing. Your house is five minutes' drive from here. You will feel better if you're not covered in someone else's blood.
I
will feel better if you're not covered in your own blood.”

“I'd just like it if no one was covered in blood for a little while,” said Quentin.

I paused before sighing and saying, “All right, I'll give. Let's go get me some clothing that can't stand up on its own—and then it's back to the Library, all right? Maybe we can still shake something out of the stacks. And if not, at least we're somewhere safe while we figure out our new plan.”

“As my lady wishes.” Tybalt sketched an elaborate bow before stepping around the car and sliding back into the passenger seat. Quentin ran after him, and I actually smiled as I got behind the wheel. Clean clothes would be a blessing. Getting the Luidaeg's blood off me would be even better.

Tybalt's estimate wasn't perfect: we pulled into the small covered garage next to the house about ten minutes after leaving the Court of Cats. Quentin was the first out of the car, as usual. What was unusual was the way he froze halfway down the path, shoulders going tense and back going ramrod straight. I was out of the car in an instant, hand going to my knife as I ran toward my squire and whatever threat had caused him to stop in mid-step. Tybalt was right behind me, and he would have been in front of me if the path had allowed him to pass without shoving me to the side.

Not Quentin,
I thought fiercely. I couldn't be sure of raising the dead twice in one day—I wasn't even willing to count on doing it once under most circumstances—and I would throw myself in front of whatever bullet was coming for him before I allowed him to be harmed. It wasn't just the whole “Crown Prince” thing; that was a relatively new development. He was my squire and my friend and he would
not
be harmed if I could prevent it.

I stumbled to a halt as I pulled up alongside him, blinking at the back porch. Tybalt was more decorous about his confusion; he strolled to a stop, rather than skidding like the rest of us, and frowned in bewilderment. Normally, I might have teased him for looking so openly baffled. This time, I couldn't blame him.

The sight of Simon Torquill sitting on my steps with his arms full of roses was plenty confusing, after all. The fact that I was already able to tell him from his brother without thinking about it was worrisome to me, but that aspect of the situation was lost as I stared at the roses. He was holding at least fifty of them, long-stemmed and wrapped in a cone of tissue paper. Their petals were a dozen shades of blue and white, from the pristine shade of falling snow to the near-black color that lives at the heart of glaciers. Sprigs of a purple flower I distractedly identified as rosebay ringed the bouquet, protecting the roses from harm.

Simon stood, walking silently toward us. I shied back before I could think better of it, my shoulder bumping against Tybalt's chest. I felt his sternum vibrating from the slow, rumbling force of his growl. It was comforting. This time, if Simon decided to raise a hand against me, it wouldn't be me and one Raven-maid with a baseball bat against his transformation magic.

He stopped a respectful distance away from the three of us and held out his bouquet. When I didn't move to take it, he cleared his throat and said, “I would be most grateful if you would accept this small token of apology for the trouble that I have caused to you and yours.”

“Aren't those flowers from Duchess Torquill's garden?” asked Quentin, narrow-eyed and wary. “It seems to me that giving someone a gift of stolen flowers sort of negates the apology.”

“Shadowed Hills is my brother's land, and I have long had permission to walk its gardens and pick what I like from its soil,” said Simon. His eyes never left my face. “My brother has barred me from his halls, but his lady wife has not yet barred me from her grounds. I think she hopes to trap me, like a spider traps a fly. I will not risk her succeeding, and so I say again that I would be most grateful if you would accept this gift from me. I doubt I'll be able to provide you with anything so lovely in the future.”

“Why are you here, Simon?” I asked. My voice sounded thin to my own ears, and if my shoulder hadn't still been pressed to Tybalt's chest, I doubt I could have stood my ground without shaking.

“To bring you this,” he said, holding out the flowers a bit more pleadingly. “They are yours. You have earned them, and they are the least that I can do.”

This close to the bouquet, I could feel the chill rolling off their petals, like they had brought a little slice of Luna's private snowfall with them. “Roses and rosebay,” I said. The combination tickled at the back of my mind, sorting through options until it finally reached the inevitable conclusion. I froze, straightening as I stiffened. “Get off my property.”

Simon blinked. “What? But I—”

“Rosebay is a member of the same family as the oleander,” I snapped. “They both mean ‘danger' or ‘beware' when they show up in a bouquet, and given that my mother's magic tastes of roses, it's pretty hard not to read your little gift there as a threat against my mom. Get the hell out of my yard or I'm calling the Queen.”

“I always forget that Amandine took the time to train you,” said Simon. He sounded almost embarrassed, like he'd committed some unthinkable error in judgment. “I apologize, October; I assumed you did not speak the language of the flowers, and included the rosebay in hopes that someone around you might translate. It was not my intention to distress you more.”

“Perhaps you did not hear my lady when she bid you leave her grounds,” said Tybalt, speaking in the tightly clipped tone that meant his mouth had suddenly filled with fangs. He had better control over his feline nature than most Cait Sidhe, but I knew from experience that his control could—and would—slip when he felt that the things he loved were being threatened. “If you do not heed her, you will wish that I had left you to your brother's tender mercies.”

“I intend no insult to your mother and would have used another flower for my bouquet had I not considered clarity to be more important than discretion.” Simon spoke hurriedly, like he was afraid of being chased away before he could get his message out. “I would never hurt Amandine. She is the only woman I have ever loved, and I was privileged beyond measure when she chose to be my wife. I am here to help you, not to hurt you. Please.”

“We do not need your help,” snarled Tybalt.

“Wait.” Once again, the sound of my voice surprised me. Was I really the one telling him to wait, rather than ordering him to rip Simon's throat out with his teeth? It seemed that I was. I stepped forward, finally accepting the offered roses. The tissue paper was thick enough that I didn't fear the thorns as I gathered them close and sniffed their cold perfume. It smelled like snow, like ice, and like the first stirrings of a storm, all overlaid with the sweet, familiar attar of rose. I looked up, meeting Simon's yellow eyes, and asked, “Why did you bring me flowers?”

“There is so much I can't say to you, October,” he said. “The best I can do is work within my limitations, and try to prepare you for what's coming.”

I hesitated. He sounded so lost . . . “The Luidaeg was attacked.”

He started. I think that was the moment when I really started to believe that he was trying, however poorly, to help: he looked genuinely surprised, and more than a little bit afraid. “The sea witch? Is she . . . is she well?”

“She died.” That wasn't the full truth, but it was close enough that I didn't have to fake the grief in my voice, or the tremor in my hands as I considered the magnitude of what had happened to her—and what I'd done. The roses in my arms seemed to be getting colder, threatening to freeze me clean through. “She died alone in her apartment, bleeding out on the carpet with no one to save her.”

“That isn't possible,” Simon said, staring at me. “I did not think . . . she can't die. She's the sea witch. She'll outlive us all.”

“Firstborn are immortal, not unkillable,” I said. “Hard to kill, I'll give you that, but wow did her attacker put in the effort.”

Simon closed his eyes. “Then I am too late already. You should have let me make of you a tree, October. I am very good at making trees, and you would have had a little time. You would have been stronger still by the time you won free of the soil. That might have been enough.”

“If you so much as whisper the first word of a transformation spell, I'll have your larynx in my hand before the second word can form,” said Tybalt, with a chilling calm.

“I assure you, no further harm will come to her by my hand.” Simon opened his eyes and then, to my utter shock, he bowed to me. “Sir Daye, you have done your bloodline a great honor. Your words and deeds will be remembered long after mine have faded into simple villainy. You have no reason to trust a single word I say as truth, but please believe me when I say that I am sorry I did not get to know you better.”

“Uh, what?” I said.

“Good luck,” he replied, before turning and walking away into the garden.

Tybalt growled, starting to step past me. I put out my arm, blocking him. He shot me a startled, almost injured look.

“Don't,” I said. “He didn't threaten us. He even apologized, in his weird-ass Simon way. And he gave us something.” I looked down at my bouquet of ice-white, glacial-blue roses. “He gave us a riddle to solve.”

Tybalt didn't look happy, and I couldn't blame him, but he followed me as I unlocked the door and poked my head into the silent house.

May and Jazz were gone, of course, departed for Muir Woods in the back of Danny's cab. It still felt strange to come home and know that no one was there to meet us. I'd worked a long time to build a place for myself—a place, and the family to go with it. Now Simon was back, and it felt like everything was at risk. I still didn't know why he'd come here, or whether he'd left us any unwanted surprises. I turned, pressing my bouquet into the arms of my startled squire.

“Stay here,” I commanded him. “Tybalt, you're with me.”

Tybalt nodded, understanding my concern immediately. Quentin followed us into the kitchen, still looking utterly confused, but he didn't ask what was going on, and for the moment, that was good enough for me.

Side by side, Tybalt and I made our way from the kitchen to the hall. I gestured for him to check the living room while I started up the stairs, drawing my knife from my belt and holding it close to my hip. It wouldn't do me any good if Simon had hidden a monster in the upstairs closet, but holding it helped focus me a little, and I needed all the help that I could get.

This is your fault,
I thought.
Quentin and Tybalt are in danger because of you. If you didn't let them stay around, they wouldn't be in harm's way. This is on you.

The thought was unfair, and I pushed it aside almost as quickly as it formed. Maybe it was true, but if it weren't for me, Tybalt would still be lonely, Quentin would still be trapped in the spiral of pureblood superiority, and May wouldn't even exist. She'd be a night-haunt named “Mai,” scavenging for the bodies of Faerie's dead, surfing from identity to identity without ever truly owning any of them. Jazz might have been safer if not for me, since it was her association with May that kept putting her in harm's way, but I somehow doubted she'd see things that way.

The upstairs hall was dark. I didn't turn the lights on, choosing instead to pause on the landing and sniff the air, looking for traces of blood or magic. I didn't find any, and so I started moving again, checking the rooms one by one for signs of a struggle or a spell. Light footfalls behind me signaled Tybalt's return, and I kept walking, feeling safer now that I knew I wasn't alone.

The upstairs was clean. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, bringing up the entry for May. Still staring at her room, I raised it to my ear.
Pick up,
I thought.
Come on, May, pick up. Just this once, do something because I want you to do it. Pick up the phone.

There was a click, and then May demanded, “Maeve's tits, October, what is it
now
? Please tell me you didn't do something you can't actually bounce back from, because I am so not up for pulling your bacon out of the fire right now.”

I bit back a gale of completely inappropriate laughter. Oh, yeah, my nerves were fried. “Simon was on the back porch when we got home,” I said. “I'm sorry to wake you, but you needed to know that the house is officially off limits until we catch him.”