Page 54 of Night and Silence

“Except for the part where anyone fae who touched her got sick, which meant they could figure out something was up with her,” I countered. “Best case would have been her getting reported to the local nobility as a human who knew about the fae—and I say ‘best’ because that would have been run up the chain of command to the queen, and I might have heard about it before she wound up turned into an apple tree or something. This wasn’t subtle.”

“She attends Berkeley,” said Janet. “There is no local nobility.”

May and I both stared at her. Finally, carefully, I asked, “How do you know that?”

“Before he left, Oberon promised me that wherever I chose to settle would have no one watching over it, no ruler tied to the land more directly than whatever king or queen claimed it as part of their domain.” Her lips twitched, like she was trying not to smile. “He wasn’t quite ready to make a queen of me. Said it might send the wrong message, given everything that had happened, and given I’m immortal solely because his absent wife decreed I should be. A pity. I would have been fetching in a crown.”

It took me a moment to find my voice again. “The people who stole Gillian used her clothing—her bloody clothing—to lay a false trail into a courtyard that shouldn’t have been there, full of things that shouldn’t exist. No one had used magic there since it was created, and apparently, all the local royalty know about it but don’t tell anyone, because there’s an agreement that predates any of them. Is that . . . ?”

“Not aging is a problem in the human world, and I don’t have your hand with illusions: once cosmetics stop doing the job, I’ll have to fake my own death and disappear for a decade or so,” said Janet. There was genuine regret in her tone. “I settled here to be close to my daughter, and later, to you. Oberon himself granted me that land. No one should have been there.”

“Someone was. Someone wanted whoever went looking for Gillian—meaning me—to find the place, which means someone not only knew about the courtyard, they knew about you. They wanted me to . . . find . . .” I stopped. “We have to get you out of here.”

“What?” asked May.

“What?” asked Janet.

“I’ve been acting on the assumption that whoever kidnapped Gillian was trying to get to me. Maybe I’m looking at things the wrong way. Maybe they’re trying to get to you.” I shook my head. “We have to get you out of here.”

Janet stared at me, eyes wide. “You can’t be serious.”

“Someone violated your space, which was apparently granted to you by Oberon himself. Someone stole a human child most people would assume was your daughter and yours alone.” The false Queen knew Gillian was mine. The false Queen was aiming for us both. I couldn’t say that until I was sure, and not until I had Janet out of harm’s way. “They’re trying to hurt you, either by setting us against each other, or by ignoring my part in things entirely. You can’t stay here. You’re in danger.”

“I can’t be killed,” said Janet.

“Cliff can,” I said.

She went still.

“You think I put him in danger by loving him and being fae? I was a changeling, I was barely more than a child, I had no power and no position and nothing to lose. You? You’re a legend and a monster and an impossibility. You need to come with me, or you’re going to get him killed.” I shook my head. “Leave a note. Say you’re looking for Gillian. Say whatever you want. But I’m not leaving you here.”

“Dear God,” breathed Janet. My earlier assumptions about how pale she could get were clearly not good enough, as even more blood drained from her face. “I . . . how long do you think this will take?”

“However long it has to,” I said. “May, you stay here and help Janet get whatever she needs. I’m going to go and tell the boys what’s going on.”

“Wait!” Janet took a step back, visibly alarmed, and stopped only when her hips hit the counter. “Who are ‘the boys’? You’re not going to tell them who I am, are you?”

“Lady, I don’t think you have any right to ask me to keep secrets after what you’ve done to my family, but I’m not going to put that same family in danger by broadcasting your identity all over the Mists.” I made no effort to keep the weariness out of my voice. I was exhausted. A few cinnamon rolls weren’t enough to counteract the amount of blood I’d lost, and I was going to need real food soon. “At the same time, yeah, I’m telling my squire and my fiancé. We don’t keep secrets in our house.” Not anymore. Not with the way every secret we’d tried to keep had ended up playing out.

Some things aren’t worth risking. My family—the one I had made for myself, the one I was going to fight for until the end of the world—was on that list.

“I don’t suppose I have a choice here, do I?” asked Janet.

“Not really,” I said.

“Nope,” said May, with malicious cheer. She glanced at me. “Go. I’ll make sure she doesn’t do anything any of us will regret later.”

Leaving the two indestructible women alone seemed like a dandy idea. More importantly, I wanted to be away from Janet, at least for a few minutes—at least long enough to get my head together. This was all too much. My daughter was missing; her stepmother, the woman I had spent so much time envying and despising for taking my place, was my grandmother. It was enough to make my head spin, and I wanted a moment to wrap my mind around it.

I practically bolted for the front door, not allowing myself to look back. That isn’t just a bad idea in Bible stories and Greek myths: it’s what leads to a simple course of action getting complicated or disrupted, and things never getting done. Janet’s revelation was . . .

Janet’s revelation was a problem, and it was going to take me days, if not weeks, to process all the way through it. I needed to talk to the Luidaeg. She could explain what this meant, how it was possible for my mother to be a human’s daughter, whether it had somehow affected me even two generations down the line. And that was fine, that was absolutely great, because where could I go to hide someone who shouldn’t have existed, someone who stood at the center of the story that broke the world?

To the sea witch, of course.

Quentin and Tybalt both turned when I yanked the car door open and dropped myself into the front seat. Human disguises can mimic all the little parts of living, the blushes and the pallors, the changes of mood. The one Tybalt had woven for me wasn’t good enough for any of that. It let me pass for human, and that was about all it could manage.

Tybalt frowned, sniffing the air. “What’s wrong?” he asked.