Page 35 of Night and Silence

“The house where they live takes applications at the start of the term,” said Bridget slowly. “They don’t accept everyone, of course, and once you’re in, it can be difficult to get a new roommate. If I had to guess, I’d say Jocelyn greased a few palms to get the assignment she wanted.”

This was beginning to look more and more damning. I took a breath. “Walther, can we get more of that allergy medication, just in case? If the herbal blend sticks to clothes, we might be reexposing ourselves by looking for Gillian.”

Quentin gave the bundle of clothes he was still carrying an alarmed look.

Walther nodded. “I made some up in pill form. It doesn’t work as fast, but every dose should last for about eight hours. If you think you’ve been exposed, take another pill.” He picked up a clear bottle filled with violently blue gel caps and lobbed it at me. I caught it, shook it once to see how many pills were in there, and tucked it into my pocket. He tossed another bottle to May. I nodded approvingly. Never put all the life-saving medication in one basket.

“Overdose risks?” I asked.

“None.” Walther paused. “Well. Some, but you’d need to take more than I’ve given you, and all you’d do is turn blue for a while.”

“Swell.” I turned to Madden. “I want you to take May and follow the second trail. If you find anything, anything that might tell us where Gillian’s been taken, call me immediately, and I’ll be right there.” Sending them off without me ached. But if there was anyone this side of Faerie who loved Gilly like I did, it was May. She wouldn’t let our daughter come to harm if there was anything she could do about it.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“Go and have a little talk with Jocelyn.” I bared my teeth at him. He took a startled half-step backward. “She and I have so much to discuss, don’t you think?”

“Don’t kill the poor girl,” said Bridget.

I looked at her. “And if she’d taken Chelsea? Would you be saying that?”

“No. I’d be telling you to bring me her entrails, so I could have a go at reading the future. But I am neither a knight nor a hero of the realm, and as Etienne would have me understand it, the rules are different for you.” She looked at me levelly. “I’ll not tell you to spare the girl if she doesn’t deserve sparing. I am telling you to be sure before you do something that can’t be taken back. It’s a cruel enough world, Toby. There’s no need for us to go and make it worse.”

“Big words from a woman who tried to hit me with a cast iron pan when she even suspected I might have had something to do with her daughter’s disappearance.” Bridget flushed red and turned her face away. I tried to feel some sense of victory. All I felt was tired.

“Don’t kill her so much that I don’t get a chance,” said May.

“That, I think I can promise.” I turned to Walther. “I’ll see you soon. Open roads.”

“Kind fires,” he echoed automatically.

With that I turned and walked out of the office, Quentin beside me, leaving the rest of them behind.

We made it out of the building and down the steps before he looked at me anxiously and asked, “You aren’t really going to kill her, are you?”

“I don’t know, kiddo,” I replied. “I really don’t know.”

We walked on.

NINE

THE OFFICERS WERE GONE from the residence hall when Quentin and I got there. Several girls I assumed lived there were out front, hammering boards over broken windows with the resigned air of people who thought they were too good for basic, menial tasks. Only a few of them looked at us as we walked up the path to the front door, and no one moved to stop us from going inside or even ask who we were there to see.

“Nice security,” I commented. Cliff was going to get an earful about this once Gilly was safely home, that was for damn sure. Maybe I didn’t have any authority over her life at this point, but I could certainly make my feelings known. She needed to be living somewhere with a front door that locked. Maybe a doorman would be a step too far—in addition to being prohibitively expensive—but dammit, she deserved some sort of protection.

Quentin made a disgusted snorting noise. It was nice to know someone was on my side in this.

We reached the top of the stairs, walked to the room Gillian and Jocelyn shared, and stopped dead, both of us staring. Quentin found his voice first. He had fewer layers of shock and self-recrimination to work through.

“What the hell . . . ?”

Gillian’s side of the room looked exactly the same as before. May’s search, intensive as it had no doubt been, had left no traces. That was good. She lacked the muscle memory to do things like drive or fight, even if she could close her eyes and relive my lessons, but she knew how to toss a room without getting caught. Jocelyn’s side of the room, on the other hand . . .

The bed was stripped. All her personal items were gone, from the books on the headboard to the small display of pictures on the wall. Even the desk was bare. I suddenly felt like I was choking, and it was no allergic reaction this time. She was gone, my daughter’s roommate was gone, and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe.

Slowly, I stepped into the room, Quentin standing frozen behind me. The acrid scent of the herbal sachets lingered in the air. I realized I had no idea what Jocelyn’s magic smelled like, or whether it was even strong enough to have a scent at all. The presence of so many hostile herbs had prevented me from sniffing it out while she was here, and now . . .

Now she was gone, and our chances of finding Gillian might well have gone with her.