Praise for the October Daye Novels
“Rosemary and Rue will surely appeal to readers who enjoy my books, or those of Patricia Briggs.”
—Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“Fast-paced, without ever being frantic, with excellent characterization. . . . McGuire is a dab hand at dialogue, and the bantering between Toby and everyone—especially Tybalt—is one of the highlights of the book.”
—RT Book Reviews
“The plot is strong, the characterization is terrific, the tragedies hurt . . . and McGuire’s usual beautiful writing and dark humor are present and accounted for. This has become one of my favorite urban fantasy series, and I can’t wait to find out what happens next.”
FantasyLiterature.com
“An urban fantasy detective series featuring a resourceful female detective . . . [October Daye] should appeal to fans of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files as well as the novels of Charlaine Harris, Patricia Briggs, and similar authors.”
—Library Journal
“It’s fun watching [Toby] stick doggedly to the case as the killer picks off more victims and the tension mounts.”
—LOCUS
“With Ashes of Honor, McGuire has crafted a deeply personal and intense story that will keep you on the edge, hoping to be pushed over. In my opinion, it is, hands down, the best Toby to date.”
—The Ranting Dragon
“These books are like watching half a season of your favorite television series all at once. . . . More than anything else, it’s the fun of it all that’s kept me returning to McGuire’s books, and to this series, long after I’ve stopped reading other mainstream titles.”
—SF Signal
“I love that Toby is a strong, independent—yet still vulnerable—heroine. I love that this is a world where people die, where consequences matter. I love the complex world-building and mythology. I love the almost film noir tone of the series. I love that each book leaves me wanting more. If you dig urban fantasy, this is one of the best out there.”
—CC2K
DAW Books presents the finest in urban fantasy from Seanan McGuire:
InCryptid Novels:
DISCOUNT ARMAGEDDON
MIDNIGHT BLUE-LIGHT SPECIAL
HALF-OFF RAGNAROK*
SPARROW HILL ROAD
October Daye Novels:
ROSEMARY AND RUE
A LOCAL HABITATION
AN ARTIFICIAL NIGHT
LATE ECLIPSES
ONE SALT SEA
ASHES OF HONOR
CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT
*Coming soon from DAW Books
Copyright © 2013 by Seanan McGuire.
“Never Shines the Sun” copyright © 2013 by Seanan McGuire.
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Chris McGrath.
Cover design by G-Force Design.
Interior dingbat created by Tara O’Shea.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1631.
DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA).
All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-101-63566-7
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.
Contents
Praise
DAW Books presents
Title Page
Copyright page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
October Daye Pronunciation Guide
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
Excerpt from NEVER SHINES THE SUN
For Jude and Alan,
and all the staff at Borderlands Books.
But especially for Ripley. We miss you.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
Chimes at Midnight marks the start of what I view as the second stage in Toby’s journey, and I am grateful and a little awed that you’re all here with me, watching it happen. Writing these books is forever a labor of love, and a big part of that is all of you. Seriously. Thank you all. Thanks also to the Machete Squad, as always, since without them, I would probably still be hiding under the bed rather than facing the tangles of draft two; to the Disney Magic Bitches, for putting up with endless trips to Disneyland; and to Vixy, Amy, Brooke, and Shawn, for being extremely forgiving of the fact that no matter where we go, Toby goes there too.
I remain utterly delighted with my agent and personal superhero, Diana Fox, with my editor and savior, Sheila Gilbert, and with my eternally fantastic cover artist, Chris McGrath. Thanks to Christopher Mangum and Tara O’Shea for website design and maintenance, and to Kate Secor for keeping my email from eating me alive. I know it’s hungry . . .
We have come so far, and we have so far yet to go, and I am honored to have you all here with me to see where we wind up. I hope you’ll continue to stick around.
My soundtrack while writing Chimes at Midnight consisted mostly of Prepare the Preparations, by Ludo, Carry the Fire, by Delta Rae, Fairytale, by Heather Dale, endless live concert recordings of the Counting Crows, and Journey’s Greatest Hits, by Journey. 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 remember: You must not look at goblin men. You must not buy their fruits . . .
OCTOBER DAYE PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
THROUGH CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT
All pronunciations are given strictly phonetically. This only covers races explicitly named in the first seven books, omitting Undersea races not appearing in, or mentioned in, book seven.
Afanc: ah-fank. Plural is Afanc.
Annwn: ah-noon. No plural exists.
Bannick: ban-nick. Plural is Bannicks.
Barghest: bar-guy-st. Plural is Barghests.
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.
Cu Sidhe: coo shee. Plural is Cu Sidhe.
Daoine Sidhe: doon-ya shee. Plural is Daoine Sidhe, diminutive is Daoine.
Djinn: jin. Plural is Djinn.
Dóchas Sidhe: doe-sh-as shee. Plural is Dóchas Sidhe.
Ellyllon: el-lee-lawn. Plural is Ellyllons.
Gean-Cannah: gee-ann can-na. Plural is Gean-Cannah.
Glastig: glass-t
ig. Plural is Glastigs.
Gwragen: guh-war-a-gen. Plural is Gwragen.
Hamadryad: ha-ma-dry-add. Plural is Hamadryads.
Hippocampus: hip-po-cam-pus. Plural is Hippocampi.
Kelpie: kel-pee. Plural is Kelpies.
Kitsune: kit-soo-nay. Plural is Kitsune.
Lamia: lay-me-a. Plural is Lamia.
The Luidaeg: the lou-sha-k. No plural exists.
Manticore: man-tee-core. Plural is Manticores.
Naiad: nigh-add. Plural is Naiads.
Nixie: nix-ee. Plural is Nixen.
Peri: pear-ee. Plural is Peri.
Piskie: piss-key. Plural is Piskies.
Pixie: pix-ee. Plural is Pixies.
Puca: puh-ca. Plural is Pucas.
Roane: row-n. Plural is Roane.
Satyr: say-tur. Plural is Satyrs.
Selkie: sell-key. Plural is Selkies.
Shyi Shuai: shh-yee shh-why. Plural is Shyi Shuai.
Silene: sigh-lean. Plural is Silene.
Tuatha de Dannan. tootha day danan. Plural is Tuatha de Dannan, diminutive is Tuatha.
Tylwyth Teg: till-with teeg. Plural is Tylwyth Teg, diminutive is Tylwyth.
Urisk: you-risk. Plural is Urisk.
ONE
August 22nd, 2012
We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow.
—William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II.
LIKE MANY PORT TOWNS, San Francisco is a city built on top of its own bones, one where broad modern streets can exist side by side with narrow alleys and abandoned thoroughfares. It’s a lot like Faerie in that regard. Both of them are studies in contradiction, constant wars between the old and the new. I prowled down one of those half-hidden alleys, the sky midnight dark above me and my shoulders hunched against the growing chill. I’m inhuman and borderline indestructible. That doesn’t make me immune to cold—more’s the pity.
I’d been walking down the alleys of the city since a little after ten o’clock, when most of the mortal population was safely inside and the streets informally switched their allegiance to Faerie. The air around me smelled faintly of cut grass and copper, as well as the more normal scents of garbage and decay. The don’t-look-here I had cast over myself was holding, for the moment.
Somewhere in the alleys around me, a tabby tomcat was prowling, and a woman who looked enough like me to be my sister walked shrouded in her own don’t-look-here. Quentin and Raj—my squire and Tybalt’s heir, respectively—were back at the house watching horror movies and pretending not to resent the fact that we wouldn’t let them come along. I’ve dragged Quentin into plenty of dangerous situations, but even I have my limits.
We were hunting for goblin fruit.
It’s a naturally-occurring narcotic in Faerie: sweet purple berries that smell like everything good in the world and give purebloods beautiful dreams. The effect can be concentrated by making the fruit into jam, dark as tar and more dangerous than any mortal drug. What’s just pleasant for purebloods is an unbreakable addiction for humans and changelings—the crossbred children of the fae and human worlds. They waste away on a diet of nothing but sweet fruit and fantasies.
Goblin fruit isn’t illegal. Why should it be? It doesn’t hurt the purebloods who love it, and it’s usually too expensive for changelings to get their hands on—which didn’t explain why the stuff had been appearing on the streets of San Francisco with increasing regularity. My old mentor, Devin, used to control the city’s drug trade. He kept the goblin fruit out . . . at least until he died. It took me too long to realize what a hole his passing would make. In my defense, I was busy trying to keep myself alive.
That excuse wasn’t going to hold much water with the people who were already addicted—or with the ones who were already dead.
Word on the street was that half a dozen local changelings had vanished recently, there one day and gone the next. They hadn’t taken any of their possessions, if they had anything to take; not all changelings did. They hadn’t told their friends where they were going. A few were known criminals—thieves and petty thugs. Others were just kids who’d been bunking in the independent fiefdoms of Golden Gate Park while they tried to figure out what to do with their lives. And then, suddenly, they were just gone.
Changelings are the perfect victims in Faerie. We’re a born underclass, and very few of us have anyone to miss us if we disappear. I might never have heard about the problem at all, if I hadn’t been one of Devin’s kids, once upon a time. A few of my fellow survivors came to me to see if there was anything I could do. I agreed to try. I’d been out on the streets every night for a week doing just that. So far, I’d busted three goblin fruit dealers, stopped a mugging, and stopped for coffee at half the all-night diners in the city. But I hadn’t seen any of the missing changelings. I honestly wasn’t sure whether that was a blessing or a curse.
A raven cawed harshly from somewhere overhead. It would have been a perfectly normal sound in the daylight, but here and now, this late at night . . . I looked up, scanning the rooftops until I spotted the outline of a large raven perched on a broken streetlight. It cawed again and then took off, flying west. I swore under my breath and chased after it, trying not to let it out of my sight as I ran along the alley.
The uncharacteristically night-flying raven was the animal form of Jasmine Patel, my Fetch’s girlfriend. She’d been keeping lookout over the whole area. If she was calling for backup, she’d seen something—and whatever it was, it was pretty much guaranteed to be nothing good.
Jazz’s caws guided me through the maze of narrow streets, until I skidded around a corner and into a dead-end alley. There was a dumpster at the far end, so overstuffed with garbage that it had practically become a tiny, localized landfill. A figure I knew was standing at the edge of the mess, her head bowed in evident sorrow. She was my height, with colorless brown hair worn short and streaked with neon pink. Her clothes were almost shockingly bright in the dim alley—orange corduroy pants and an electric blue sweater—but somehow, that didn’t do anything to lessen the impact of the scene. May knew what death meant, maybe better than any of us. She was a Fetch, after all.
I stepped up next to her, releasing my don’t-look-here as I joined her in looking at the heaped-up trash. She put a hand on my shoulder, sniffling.
“Yeah,” I said softly. “I know.”
There was a girl lying sprawled in the garbage. Her skin and hair were the ivory color of old bleached bones, with a faint waxy sheen: she was half Barrow Wight. Only half; her height, and the square lines of her jaw, came from her human parent. She was thin enough to look consumptive, and she wasn’t breathing.
I walked forward, kneeling to touch the girl’s wrist. Her skin was still warm. She’d been alive when we started prowling the streets. There was a faint, sickly-sweet smell to the garbage around her, too dilute to be tempting, but strong enough to make her cause of death plain. Goblin fruit. We’d finally found a changeling who had been killed by goblin fruit. Luck was with us.
Luck was nowhere in the picture.
“Toby?” May’s voice was very soft. “What do you want to do now?”
There was only one thing that we could do. I stayed crouched beside the girl, my fingers still resting lightly on her wrist. “We wait for the night-haunts.”
The soft scent of musk and pennyroyal tickled my nose. “Are you sure that is the wisest course of action?” asked a male voice, sounding faintly concerned.
“I promised not to summon them again. I didn’t promise not to hang around and say hello.” I straightened, turning to face him. I couldn’t quite conceal my relief at the sight of Tybalt, standing there in a wine-colored shirt and tight black pants. Unlike May and I, he hadn’t bothered trying to make himself look human: the black tabby stripes in his dark brown hair were clearly visible, and his eyes were banded malachite green, with vertical pupils. His expression, however, was as sorrowful as May’s.
If I hadn’t already loved him, I think I would have started
to in that moment.
“The night-haunts aren’t friendly people, Toby,” said May. “I know. I used to be one.”
“Do you have a better idea?” I shook my head. “It’s not like we can break into the county morgue later and examine her body. Even if we had forensic training, it wouldn’t matter. This is the only way.” If the girl had died a violent death, I could have sampled her blood for clues. This was different. If I tried to do blood magic and ride her memories, I could wind up getting addicted to goblin fruit in the process. I cared about justice. I cared about cleaning up my streets. There were some risks I still wasn’t willing to take.
The night-haunts were a risk of a different variety, and one that I had taken before. They were one of the deep, dark secrets of Faerie, the shadows that came for the dead and carried them away, leaving perfect human replicas in their place. The work of the night-haunts allowed Faerie to exist without worrying that the bodies of our dead would betray us. The trouble was, they also made it impossible for me to know how many of the missing changelings had died and been replaced by human manikins. This changeling could be our first casualty. She could also be our twentieth. If the bodies couldn’t tell me, I was going to have to go for the next best thing, and ask the dead.
Wings rustled overhead as Jazz came in for a landing, shifting back into her semi-human form in the same motion. She was a tall, black-haired woman of clearly Indian descent, with raven-amber eyes. “I think Toby’s right,” she said, moving to take May’s arm. “That doesn’t mean we have to stay if you’re not comfortable.”
“No,” said May, shaking her head. “If Toby’s staying, so am I.” She hesitated before smiling, very slightly. “It’ll be nice to see my siblings again.”