Page 55 of The Brightest Fell

One of the heaps of bracken moved.

I jumped, unable to help myself, putting out my free hand to keep Quentin where he was. Then, cautiously, I crept forward. Riordan would be here soon enough. Anyone she had felt the need to lock up was probably going to need our help . . . and August’s trail led here. She had been in this room. She had left from this room.

“Hello?” I said cautiously.

The heap of bracken moved again, pulsing almost, like something beneath it was trying to sit up. Then it shattered, resolving itself into a thin, wild-eyed man sitting in a pile of sticks and soiled grasses. I gasped.

“Officer Thornton?” I asked.

His eyes fixed on me. “You!” He lunged onto his knees, grabbing my forearms with bony hands. All the excess weight seemed to have been melted off of him by his time in Annwn—and there hadn’t been that much to spare in the first place. “You came back! You came back! Did I finally prove that I wouldn’t tell? I won’t tell! I’ll never tell!” He began to laugh unsteadily.

As he slumped forward, head against my shoulder, I realized that his laughter had become indistinguishable from tears.

Dammit.

“Is that a human?” asked Simon, sounding disgusted and fascinated at the same time, like he couldn’t believe what his eyes were telling him. “How is there a human here? This is Annwn!”

“This is Officer Michael Thornton of the San Francisco Police Department,” I said, patting Officer Thornton awkwardly on the back. He was wearing the soiled, tattered remains of the clothes he’d had on when he had first tumbled through one of Chelsea’s portals and into Annwn, a place where a human had no business being. He was here because of me. When we’d saved our own, we hadn’t been able to save him. I’d told the Luidaeg where he was and washed my hands of the problem.

Riordan must have been feeding him. Humans aren’t like fae. Humans won’t suffer endlessly, never quite giving in to nature’s laws and dying: humans will eventually be released. It can take a long time, especially in the lands of Faerie, where time and causality aren’t always logical. But she still must have been feeding him. Not much. Just enough to keep body and soul together.

“Sweet Maeve,” whispered Quentin. “What did she do?”

Officer Thornton was still collapsed against me, still crying. I shook my head and replied grimly, “She kept him.” She could have killed him. That wouldn’t normally have been my go-to, especially not where a member of the police was concerned. Devin had drilled it into my head often and early that messing with the mortal cops was always more trouble than it was worth. At the same time . . .

This wasn’t the Summerlands, where signs of humanity could be found everywhere, from pieces of their tech to stolen mortal servants working in the larger noble households. This was Annwn. This was a land that had never been intended for humanity’s use. Being here must have hurt him, every day, as the very land tried to reject his reality. Killing him would have been kinder.

Which was exactly why Riordan hadn’t done it.

“Put him down and follow the trail,” said Simon, a thin line of impatience slithering through his words. “We need to move before Treasa returns.”

“I’m not putting him down,” I snapped. “We can’t leave him here again.”

“He’s not worth our lives.”

“That’s not your decision.” There were voices in the distance now, voices on the stairs. They were going to catch us soon. “This is where August’s trail ends. We need to move.”

“The human—”

“Is coming!” I raised my candle. “Now get over here, or get your ass left behind. Quite honestly, I’m good with either right now.”

Simon scowled as he walked across the room to stand beside me. Quentin stepped closer. Fog began to rise from the candle, and with Officer Michael Thornton—lost to Faerie, now found—sobbing against my shoulder, the soft, misty gray closed in, and we were gone.

SEVENTEEN

WHEN THE FOG CLEARED, we were standing against the wall of a graffiti-festooned alley. Leaning forward gave me a perfect view of Valencia Street. Time had continued marching on in the mortal world while we were running around the various layers of Faerie: the sun was hanging low in the sky, and the ashy, charred scent of torn-down magic still lingered in the air. We had arrived in San Francisco immediately after dawn.

After which dawn? The human world and the Summerlands don’t always align perfectly where time is concerned, and deeper Faerie is even worse. It could have been days since we’d started down the Babylon Road. Our time could already be up, and we didn’t have August.

What we did have was a sobbing, shaking, seriously malnourished member of the SFPD. That would have been a problem no matter what the circumstances. People notice that sort of thing. Unfortunately for us, Officer Thornton had been working out of the Valencia Street station when he’d gone missing, which meant we had a sobbing, shaking, malnourished cop less than three blocks from a whole building full of people who would be very interested to hear what had happened to him.

I was trying to figure out our next move when the impossible happened: the candle went out.

That should have seemed like a small thing—candles go out all the time—but it wasn’t. This was a Babylon candle, designed to keep us on the Babylon Road, and it shouldn’t have gone out unless it had been dropped, or we had reached our destination. I looked wildly around, almost expecting August to step out of a mural. No such luck. No one else was here, not even a representative sample of the city’s homeless population.

“Well, crap,” I muttered, and handed the candle to Quentin before digging my phone out of my pocket.

“What’s going on?” asked Simon.