Page 4 of Night and Silence

“Danny, shake the thing that isn’t a damn pig. I want to get out of here.”

Danny heaved a long-suffering sigh and shook the arkan sonney. It squealed fury and indignation, and the third member of their little herd—pack? What the hell was I supposed to call a group of winged hedgehog-pig-monsters from the depths of Faerie?—charged into the open. This one was bigger than the others, with quills as red as its eyes. Crimson streaks blazed across the brown feathers of its wings. It didn’t take a genius to guess that this was the male, and that we had captured both of its mates.

It looked around, eyes blazing, and squealed a furious challenge before charging straight at Quentin. He stood his ground. Once the arkan sonney was close enough to pose a serious danger, I shouted, “Now!”

Quentin lifted the edge of the trash can, revealing the cowering arkan sonney inside. The male rushed in, still squealing. Quentin dropped the trash can back over both of them. I threw myself against the other side, holding it down.

“Danny, a little help here?” I demanded.

Danny rolled his eyes. “See, when I want to have a serious conversation about feelings, you say it’s not the time, but when you want me to wrestle pig-monsters—”

“Please?”

With a huff, Danny carried his captive arkan sonney over to me. I let go of the trash can and grabbed the discarded lid. He gave me a nod. As if we had practiced it, Quentin lifted the can again, Danny flung the third arkan sonney at the other two, and I swept the lid into place, sealing the three intruders safely inside.

They whined and squealed, kicking at the metal. Their hooves left dents. All right, maybe not safely inside, but at least we had them all—

“Um, Toby?”

I turned toward the sound of Quentin’s voice, and groaned at the sight of six puffball monster piglets creeping out from under a hedge, their flightless wings drooping and their snouts to the ground.

Danny laughed. “Oh, man, that’s great!”

“We’re going to need a bigger carrier,” I said dolefully. The people who lived in this house were never going to know where their trash can had gone. Maybe that was for the best. There are some things that should never be explained.

Fairy pigs in hand, we faded back into the San Francisco night, and left the uncomfortable conversations, however temporarily, behind.

TWO

DANNY DROVE ALONG THE winding road leading into Muir Woods like it had somehow personally offended him, his foot smashed down on the gas and his face set in a thin-lipped scowl. I sighed.

“You can’t be mad at me forever,” I said.

“I’m pretty sure I can,” he replied. “Let’s find out.”

Quentin cleared his throat. He was sitting in the backseat with a cat carrier full of baby flying hedgehog-things in his lap. The trash can containing the adult arkan sonney took up the rest of the seat, occasionally rattling ominously as they slammed against the metal. Quentin was sitting as far away from them as he could—which was surprisingly far, thanks to Danny’s extensive investment in expansion charms. Those don’t come cheap, but without them, he would never have been able to fit behind the wheel.

Done properly, magic is difficult for humans to notice or focus on, and Danny’s mechanic knew her stuff. His human passengers probably came away from trips with him thinking they’d never been in a cab that spacious but wouldn’t necessarily realize that the car was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. Danny’s fae passengers included Centaurs, Merrow, and even his fellow Trolls, and all of them could get their seatbelts on.

“I’m still here,” said Quentin. “In case you forgot.”

“I never forget you,” I said.

“You forget to answer my questions all the time.”

I groaned, letting my head slam back against the seat. It was padded, making the gesture less effective than it could have been. “Seriously, is this ‘gang up on Toby’ night? Can you let me know when you schedule these, so I can arrange to be somewhere else? Like, I don’t know, another Kingdom?”

“Most other Kingdoms won’t let you in,” said Danny, almost reasonably. “You keep deposin’ their monarchs.”

“I’ve never deposed anyone who didn’t deserve it,” I said. “And I’ve only done it twice.”

“Uh-huh. Y’know, ordinary people don’t commit treason once, much less twice.”

“Oh, root and branch.” I groaned again, with more feeling this time. “Can we not?”

He wasn’t wrong—I knew that. It was still frustrating. Sure, I’d been instrumental in bringing about two regime changes, but neither of them had been intentional, and neither of them had been undeserved.

When King Windermere died in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, he left behind no legitimate heirs. Arden and her brother, Nolan, had been born and raised in secrecy, never publicly claimed by the king. It made sense: his own parents had died under mysterious circumstances, and he’d been trying to give his children a better life by giving them half a chance at survival. Good for them, not so good for the rest of us. In the absence of a clear line of succession, Evening Winterrose had been able to endorse a stranger, putting her own puppet on the throne. The nameless Queen of the Mists, mixed-blood and mad, had strangled the Kingdom like kelp for decades, becoming less yielding and more cruel with every passing year.