Page 16 of Night and Silence

“Four legs work best for something like this, and I can get in anywhere I need to be, but I don’t know what your daughter smells like,” he said. He paused before adding uncomfortably, “Before Ardy asked me to come here, I didn’t realize you had a daughter.”

“She’s human.”

He frowned, opening his mouth like he was going to ask a question. Then he caught himself and shook his head. “It’s none of my business. Do you have anything of hers?”

“Not yet, but we can get something when we visit her dorm,” I said. “I’d still like you to be able to pick up on any trails that might be around there.”

Madden looked at me carefully. “Do you think one of us did this? You said she was human.”

How to explain my family, my relationship with my daughter, without wasting time I no longer felt we had to spare? There wasn’t an easy way to do it. I shook my head.

“She wasn’t always entirely human, and when she was very young, people knew she was mine,” I said. “She’s been taken before by people who wanted to hurt me. It could happen again.” Last time, it had been Rayseline Torquill.

I went cold.

Raysel was asleep; she hadn’t done this. But before she had kidnapped my daughter, she’d been working with Oleander de Merelands as part of a complicated plan to kill her parents and convince me that I was the one responsible. Oleander—who was dead now, and the world would forgive me if I wasn’t losing any sleep over that—had been cruel, and ruthless, and willing to do whatever it took to achieve her goals.

She had also been Simon Torquill’s lover.

Simon, who knew I had a child. Simon, whose own fall from grace had begun with the loss of his daughter, who he believed was still missing. Losing his way home had stripped all knowledge of August’s return from his mind, since knowing she was safe would have given him too much to hold onto. Simon, who knew that the best way to hurt a parent was through their children.

But even when he’d been so deeply embroiled in his villainy that he’d been willing to attack his own family, he’d done his best to make sure none of those attacks would be fatal ones. Even when he’d transformed me into a fish, he’d done it to save me from the far worse fate that his mistress had intended for me. I believed he would lie, and cheat, and kill to get what he wanted. I also believed that he still loved my mother. He wouldn’t hurt her grandchild.

Unfortunately, Simon wasn’t the only one who knew Gillian existed. Anyone who’d been in or around the false Queen’s Court before my disappearance could easily have met her.

“Too many people know about her,” I concluded, shaking the chill away and focusing on Madden. “Can you shift before we go in? Having a dog with us from the start will be less unusual than suddenly acquiring one.”

“Especially if you’re willing to wear a vest,” said May.

“Sure,” said Madden, and stepped away, moving into the shadow of the car. It was close enough to the wall that no one could have easily seen him, even if his outline hadn’t blurred and melted as soon as he was behind cover. When he emerged, it was on four legs, with a plumed tail waving wildly behind him. The illusions he’d been using to look human were still intact, as transformed as the rest of him: instead of projecting a genial, ordinary man, they projected a genial, ordinary dog, a Golden Retriever that was maybe a little large for the breed, but nothing to attract any real attention.

“May?” I asked.

“On it.” She removed a pair of hair ties from her wrist and pulled a scarf out of her pocket, walking over to kneel in front of Madden. With her free hand, she scooped a few pine needles and some shards of bark off the pavement, only hesitating for a second before she grabbed a broken chunk of a green glass bottle.

“Was a farmer had a dog, and Bingo was his name-o,” she chanted, beginning to weave the pine needles into a chain connected to the hair ties at either end. “B-I-N-G-O, and Bingo was his name-o.” She wrapped the scarf around the glass and chain, tapped it twice, and shook the whole thing free. It crackled and stretched as it moved, until she was holding a long leather leash attached to a collar from which the appropriate tags jingled. That explained the glass: nothing better for faking metal.

The scarf had become a black vest with “working dog” stitched on the sides, and a helpful pictogram advising people not to pet. Madden stood patiently while May put the vest on him, although he flattened his ears in displeasure when she fastened the collar around his neck.

“It’s still braided pine needles and bark,” she said, holding the leash as she straightened. “If you pull too hard, it’ll break. Keep that in mind and try not to pull unless you’re trying to get away.”

Madden made a noise of acknowledgment. I rocked onto my heels, vibrating with the tension of wanting to get this over with, wanting to get this done.

“Come on,” I said. “This way.”

Knowing Walther and Cassandra—and growing up in the Bay Area—means I’ve spent enough time on the UC Berkeley campus to be familiar with its general layout, if not with all the little details I would have learned if I’d been a student or a full-time resident of one of its charming captive creeks. There are fae who live on campus, the wilder kind who swear fealty to no liege lord and mostly want to be left alone. I made a mental note to seek some of them out and ask whether they’d seen anything. It was unlikely. “Unlikely” has never been a good enough excuse to leave an avenue unexplored.

We walked from the parking lot lengthwise across the main school, passing groups of students, tables asking us to sign petitions or join clubs, and other people who looked like they were just passing through, taking advantage of the clean, safe, car-free passageway provided by the campus. It was strange seeing all this by the light of day. Most of the time, if I was in Berkeley, it was dark, and there were few people around.

Some of the students—not all, not even most, but enough to be noticeable—walked ringed in the glitter of their own human disguises. They nodded at us as we passed, but they didn’t do anything to draw attention from mortal eyes. UC Berkeley, like Golden Gate Park, is neutral territory, claimed by none of the two-penny nobles or ravenous monarchs who divide and subdivide the Bay Area. Education is for everyone, royal or radical or in-between.

Quentin looked around with open curiosity as we walked, drinking everything in. I nudged him with my elbow. He jumped, glancing guiltily at me.

“You could enroll, you know,” I said. “I’m sure April would be happy to fake whatever paperwork you needed.” April O’Leary is a friend of ours, a cyber-Dryad whose command of computer systems means she can make almost anything real, at least on paper. When it comes to false IDs or digital paper trails, she’s the girl to see.

Besides, she owes me. Her mother, January, had been dead, and now she wasn’t, thanks to my willingness to help them out. If Quentin asked for something as simple as a high school transcript and a valid mortal ID, April wouldn’t hesitate to help.

“Maybe,” he said uncomfortably. “I have a lot to do. I don’t know if it would be a good idea for me to take that kind of time.”