I stood there, still staring, as the sun finished rising and the dawn slammed into me, bringing the truth about who and what I was crashing down, along with the inevitable comprehension of what had happened. It was too much. I did the only thing I could to make the pain stop: I passed out.
Lily didn’t appear during my slow stagger through her domain, but she must have been there, because when the maintenance man found me sprawled naked in front of the ticket booth with no identification or reason to be there, he saw nothing but a human woman who had been the victim of some brutal attack. He called the police, and they came, collected me, and carried me off to the station for questioning. I didn’t fight them. Shock is a beautiful thing.
The police station looked pretty much like every other station I’ve ever seen: a little sad, a little overused, and seriously in need of a good steam cleaning. I didn’t notice the computers on the desks or the dates on the calendars; I still wasn’t used to being bipedal, and most of my attention was fixed on staying upright. The attending officer, a brisk, no-nonsense man named Paul Underwood, called for someone to clean the scrapes on my elbows, hands, and knees, and had them bring me some clothes. They were kind enough to let me dress alone in the bathroom; I guess having no possessions or pockets makes you seem less likely to be a dangerous criminal, and the various small injuries I’d picked up during my trek through the garden made them more inclined to believe me when I claimed to have been assaulted and left for dead. Being in a state of shock helped me ramble convincingly.
Now that I was starting to understand what Simon had done, I couldn’t get past the fact that he’d actually turned me into a fish. My thoughts were chasing their tails like puppies, caught between fear and fury. I thought the worst was over. I had no idea that the worst was still to come, or just how bad that could be.
Officer Underwood fed me coffee and stale donuts until I started making sense, and then he gave me papers to fill out—name, social security number, residence, place of employment—all the standard questions. He took them away when I was finished, presumably to be filed. Still standard procedure . . . at least until he came back ten minutes later with murder in his eyes.
“Just what are you trying to pull, lady?”
It was my name that did it. He knew it because he’d been assigned to the case when I disappeared; he spent a year turning over rocks, questioning witnesses, even dredging the big lake in Golden Gate Park looking for my body and finding nothing, and he didn’t think it was very clever, or very funny, for me to be posing as a dead woman. He handed me a clean set of papers, ordering me to fill them out correctly, without any stupid jokes. I think that’s when I started understanding just how much trouble I was in. Numbly, I turned the papers over, starting to fill them out, and the first correction came before I even got to my name.
“You’ve got the date wrong. It’s June eleventh, two thousand and nine, not nineteen ninety-five. Christ, lady, pay attention.”
My fingers tightened, snapping the pencil in half as I stared at the attending officer, eyes wide and uncomprehending. “How long?” I whispered.
“What?”
“How long did he leave me . . . oh, no. Oh, oak and ash, no.” I closed my eyes, letting myself go limp as the enormity of it all struggled to sink in. Fourteen years. I’d been afraid the spell might have lasted weeks, maybe even months, but fourteen years? It was too much to wrap my mind around. But I didn’t have a choice, and it just got worse from there.
Everything was gone. Every single thing I’d built or worked for in the mortal world . . . all gone. Cliff sold my business to cover my debts after my investigator’s license expired; after I expired, since seven years on the missing list is the limit of a human existence. I’ve always found that slightly ironic—after all, seven years is also the traditional period of confinement for those humans who manage to find their way into the hollow hills. October Daye, rest in peace.
Thank Oberon for Evening Winterrose, known as Evelyn Winters in the mortal world. She was the only person I knew whose telephone number wouldn’t have changed in the intervening years. I used my one phone call to beg her to come and get me. I expected her to yell, but she didn’t. She just came to the station, confirmed that I was who I was claiming to be, and somehow convinced them to release me into her custody. Then she took me to a motel where I could get my head on straight. We both knew that taking me to her place wouldn’t have helped, and so neither of us suggested it; I wasn’t up for entering someone else’s domain.
She stayed with me all day. She ordered pizza for dinner and scolded me into eating it; she hid the telephone book so I couldn’t try to find Cliff; she summoned pages and sent them to notify the other local nobles of my return. And when the sun went down and I finally started crying, she took me in her arms, and she held me. I’ll always remember that. Evening was never a nice person, but she held me as long as I needed her to, and she never said a word about my tears staining her silk blouse, or about the way I’d thrown her world into disarray. When push came to shove, she did what needed to be done, and she didn’t refuse her own.
Things got a little better after that. The purebloods of the city were willing to help as much as they could, and the changelings were willing to help even more. My refusal to have much to do with them tied their hands a bit, but they did their best before they left me to my own devices. Evening offered to have my P.I. license reinstated. I refused. I’ve been down that road before, and it didn’t do me a damn bit of good.
I think they told Mother I was back, but I’m not sure she understood. She doesn’t understand much these days. She spends her time wandering the Summerlands, humming songs no one recognizes and rattling at doors no one else sees. In her own way, she’s lost more time than I have.
Evening said not to contact Cliff until I was ready. I held out longer than I thought I could: I made it almost three days before I called him. I couldn’t tell him where I’d been or what had happened—there’s no real way to say “I was turned into a fish” to a man who thinks you’re as human as he is—so I fell back on old clichés, saying I had amnesia due to being attacked by the man I’d been tailing, saying I didn’t know what had happened. Our relationship was based on lies, and he must have known that, deep down. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised when he hung up the phone, or when Gilly didn’t want anything to do with me. They’d gone on without me, creating a life that had no room for a deadbeat who left them grieving for fourteen years. I couldn’t explain why I went away, and so all we had was a silence that didn’t allow for love. I keep calling. They keep refusing to talk to me.
That was June. I’ve done what I could to reassemble the trappings of a life, but nothing can bring back the years. The summers, the winters, the last hours with my mother before she slipped completely into her own private world, every precious minute with my little girl, they’re gone for good, and I’ll never get them back. Maybe that’s why it was so easy to turn my back on Faerie. It’s taken me away from the mortal world twice now. It doesn’t get a third try.
Six months passed in a blur of despair, self-pity, and isolation. I didn’t understand the world; I was as much an alien as my mother on the day she left the Summerlands for the first time. I called it my penance, I called it what I deserved, and I just kept going. The world was falling down around me, and I didn’t care anymore.
That’s where the dreams end: with the realization that it doesn’t matter where I am, whether I think I’m a woman or a fish or something in-between. I’ve never really left the pond. I still can’t breathe.
THREE
I WOKE UP JUST AFTER SUNDOWN with a pounding head and the vague, nagging feeling that something was wrong. Cagney and Lacey had somehow managed to open the bedroom door while I was sleeping and had migrated from the couch to the warmer and hence more desirable bed. They started to wail as soon as they realized I was awake, Siamese voices vibrating in my skull like buzz saws. I groaned, clapping my hands over my ears. “Can’t you
two be quiet?” They didn’t oblige me. Cats never listen. They’re dependable that way; when Rome burned, the emperor’s cats still expected to be fed on time.
The fae have always lived with cats. They’re the only mortal animals that can stand to have us around, and that holds true for all of us, even half-breeds like me. Dogs bark and horses shy away, but cats can look at Kings, and a lot of the time, they do. Cats put up with us, and in exchange, we treat them with respect, and we feed them. We’re related in a way, and I don’t just mean through the Cait Sidhe. We both tend toward pointed ears, stealing cream, and getting burned alive when the wind changes. It was only natural that we’d form an alliance where both sides said, “I don’t need you,” and both answered, “You’ll still stay.”
“All right, you win. I’ll feed you. Happy?” I pushed Cagney off my chest. She jumped off the bed, joining Lacey on the floor, where the two of them continued to yowl as they made it clear that no, they wouldn’t be happy until the food was in the dish. I rolled out of bed, retrieving my robe from the floor. The cats twined around my ankles, doing their best to trip me, and I pushed them ineffectively out of the way with my bare feet, heading for the door.
I got the cats so I wouldn’t be so lonely. I was starting to reconsider that idea. Maybe lonely was a good thing. Lonely certainly got more sleep. In my blackest moods, I tried to tell myself the increased sleep was the one good thing about losing my mortal family; living with Cliff and Gilly forced me to pretend to be diurnal and left me with a coffee addiction that verges on the epic. I don’t know how much caffeine it takes to kill a changeling, but I may someday find out.
The cats fell back once I reached the hallway, letting me walk unencumbered to the kitchen, where I filled their bowl with kibble. As they descended on their feast, I put a pot of coffee on to brew and made myself a quick nighttime breakfast of toast and scrambled eggs. Protein, carbohydrates, and best of all, cheap as hell. Combine minimum wage with the San Francisco housing market, and that sort of thing becomes an issue.
My food was still cooking when the cats finished theirs. Cagney wandered out into the living room while Lacey sat down in the middle of the kitchen floor and started to wash her paws, purring loudly.
“Laugh it up, brat,” I said, eyeing the level of the still-brewing coffee as I waited none too patiently. “We’ll see how much cat food you get after we’ve been kicked out for not paying the rent.” None of my magic was strong enough to make the landlord believe I’d paid him. I’d be out on my ass if I gave him the slightest excuse, and he’d be fitting a new happy couple into my previously rent-controlled apartment before I had a chance to find myself a cardboard box to live in. Evening wouldn’t solve my housing situation twice.
The fog in my head cleared as I ate, and I almost felt like myself by the time I’d finished my second egg on toast and third cup of coffee. I tossed the dishes into the sink, rumpling my hair with one hand as I walked back toward the bedroom. The answering machine light was still flashing. I paused.
“It’s probably Stacy, but it could be work,” I mused. “If it’s work, it probably means coming in on my night off. But it also means there might be money left after I pay the rent. Guys? Opinions?”
The cats didn’t answer. Cats are good that way. Their lack of answer saved me from needing to explain my secret, lingering fantasy, the one that woke every time the answering machine flashed: the hope that Gillian might have found my phone number forgotten on her father’s desk somewhere and decided to reach out for the mother she hadn’t seen in fourteen years. It was never going to happen, but it was a wonderful dream.
What the hell. I needed the money, and it wasn’t like my creditors could threaten me with anything I hadn’t heard before. If it was Stacy, I could just delete the message. I leaned back against the wall, sipping my coffee, and pressed the button marked “play.”
The speakers crackled, intoning, “You have three new messages,” in a bland mechanical voice that cut off with a strident beep. I winced and reached for the volume control, intending to turn it down. I was still reaching when the playback began, and I forgot about everything but the message.
“October, this is Evening. I believe I may have a problem. In fact, I’m nearly sure of it.” Her tone was clipped, tight with some unacknowledged worry. She always sounded repressed, but this was new; I’d never heard her sound scared. It takes a lot to scare most purebloods. It takes a lot more to scare someone as naturally scary as Evening herself.
“Evening?” I straightened.
Evening wasn’t just someone I called to fish me out of jail cells: she was Countess of one of San Francisco’s smaller fiefdoms, and sometimes, she was even a friend. I say sometimes because she and I had very different ideas about what social standing meant. She thought it meant she got to order me around because she was pureblooded and I wasn’t. I disagreed. So we hated each other about half the time, but we spent the other half helping each other survive. I found the man who killed her sister and I cleared her name when she was accused of plotting the destruction of the Queen’s Court; she bailed me out when I got a little too enthusiastic following the Duchess of Dreamer’s Glass. If there was a pureblood other than Sylvester that I’d trust with my life, it was her.
Damn her anyway, for making me care.
“If you’re there, please, please answer your phone. It’s truly essential that I speak to you immediately. Call me as soon as you can. And October . . .” She paused. “Never mind. Just hurry.” She hung up the phone, but before she did, I could have sworn I heard her crying.
The second message started immediately, before I had a chance to move, or even breathe. It was Evening again, sounding even more harried than before.
“October? October, are you there? October, this is Evening.” There was a long pause. I heard her take a wavering, unsteady breath. “Oh, root and branch . . . October, please pick up your phone. I need you to answer your phone right now.” It was like she thought she could order me to be home. My machine was too old to have a date and time feature so there was no telling how much time had passed between messages, but it had been enough for the worry to stop hiding and come out to the surface of her voice, obvious and raw. The only other time I’d heard that much emotion in her voice was when her sister died, and while Dawn’s death had broken the shell of her calm, even that hadn’t lasted long. This wasn’t sorrow. This was sheer and simple terror.
“Please, please, October, pick up the phone, please, I’m running out of time ...”The message cut off abruptly, but not abruptly enough to hide the sound of her crying.
“Oak and yarrow, Eve,” I whispered. “What did you get yourself into?”
I thought I wanted an answer. And I was wrong, because the last message answered me more completely than I could have dreamed.
The speakers crackled, once, before her voice began to speak for the final time.
“October Daye, I wish to hire you.” The fear was still there, but the command and power that was her nature shone clearly through it, brilliant and terrible. She was looking at the end of everything, and it was enough to remind her of who she really was. “By my word and at my command, you will investigate a murder, and you will force justice back into this kingdom. You will do this thing.” There was a long pause. I was starting to think the message had ended when she continued, softly, “Find out who did it, Toby, please. Make sure they don’t win. I need you to do this, for me, and for Goldengreen. If you were ever my friend, Toby, please . . .”
She’d never called me Toby before. We’d known each other for more than twenty years, and I’d never been anything but October to her. I knew then what had happened to her, even though I didn’t want to. I knew as soon as she started speaking, and I still wouldn’t let it be true. I couldn’t let it be true. Not moving, not breathing, I listened in stunned silence as she brought down what little remained of my world.
There was another long pause before she whispered, “Toby, there isn’t much time. Plea
se, pick up. I can’t leave, and you’re the only one I trust enough to call, so damn it, please! Answer your goddamn phone!” I’d never heard her curse before. The night was full of firsts, and I wasn’t even out of my bathrobe yet. “I know you’re there! Dammit, I am not going to let your laziness get me killed! Toby, damn you . . .”
She took a breath then, before continuing in a firm cadence. By the time I realized what she was doing, it was too late; I’d heard the binding begin, and I would listen until the end.
“By my blood and my bones, I bind you. By the oak and the ash, the rowan and the thorn, I bind you. By the word of your fealty, by my mother’s will, by your name, I bind you. For the favors I have done you in the past, you promised that I could ask anything of you; this is my anything. Find the answers, find the reasons and find the one who caused me this harm, October Daye, daughter of Amandine, or find only your own death. By all that I am and all that I was and all the mercies of our missing Lord and Ladies, I bind you . . .”
I felt the curse catch hold, sinking thorny talons into my skin as the bittersweet smell of dying roses flooded my nose and mouth. I dropped my coffee cup and staggered backward retching, clapping a hand over my mouth as I tried not to throw up. Promises bind our kind as surely as iron chains or ropes of human hair, and Evening had bound me with the old forms, the ones anyone with a trace of fae blood can use. No one uses the old bindings anymore, not unless things are so bleak that even our missing King and his Hunt couldn’t mend them. They’re too strong, and too deadly.
The fae never swear by anything we don’t believe in. We don’t ask for thanks and we don’t offer them; no promises, no regrets, no chains. No lies. If Evening said failure would kill me, it would kill me. I just hoped she had a good reason, or I was going to have to kill her myself.