A Local Habitation

“So if you’re not January Torquill, that makes you . . . ?”


“January O’Leary. I’m not full Daoine Sidhe—my father was half-Tylwyth Teg, and his last name was ‘ap Learianth.’ That doesn’t exactly work on a business card. We settled on ‘O’Leary’ as the abbreviation when we incorporated.” She smiled again. This time, the expression had an edge I recognized all too well. Sylvester smiled that way when he was trying to figure out whether something was a threat. “It’s interesting that Uncle Sylvester didn’t tell you that. Considering the part where he sent you here, and everything.”

“You have a phone,” I said. “You could call him.”

“I already tried that while Elliot was stowing you and the kid in the cafeteria.”

“And?”

“No one answered.”

“I have directions in your uncle’s handwriting.” I held up the folder.

“Handwriting can be faked.”

I bit back an expletive. Half the Kingdom knew me on sight and expected me to start breaking things the second I walked into the room, while the other half wanted three forms of photo ID and a character witness. “Alex and Elliot knew who I was.”

“They know who you look like. There’s a difference.”

Sad to say, she had a point. I nearly got killed last December by a Doppelganger who impersonated my daughter. In Faerie, faces aren’t always what they appear to be.

“Okay. If you know who I look like, you presumably know what . . . that person . . . can or can’t do. Right?” January nodded. “It’s sort of hard to prove that I can’t cast a spell, so that won’t work. If you want to give me some blood, I can tell you what you did for your fifth birthday . . .”

“That’s okay.”

“Didn’t think so.” I sighed. “I don’t suppose dropping my illusions and letting you poke me with sticks would do it? I’d really like to get this sorted out.”

She frowned. “It’s a start,” she said.

“Got it,” I said, and let my human disguise dissolve, wafting away in a wash of copper and cut grass.

Jan watched intently, nostrils flaring as she sniffed at the air. Then she grinned. If her smile was bright before, it was nothing compared to the way she lit up now. It was like looking at the sun. “Copper and grass! You are you!”

“No one’s ever been that happy about the smell of my magic before,” I muttered. “How do you . . .?”

“I have files on my uncle’s knights, in case someone tries to sneak in.” There was a brutal matter-of-factness to her tone. She was the Countess of a County balanced on the edge of disaster, and this was just the way things worked. “We’ve had people who could fake faces and pass quizzes, but nobody’s been able to fake somebody else’s magic.” The word “yet” hung between us, unspoken.

“Well, your uncle’s worried, and he asked me to come see how you were doing. Why didn’t you tell me who you were when I got here? We could’ve taken care of all this an hour ago.”

“Do you know where you are?” she asked.

I frowned. “I don’t see what that has to do with . . .”

“Humor me.”

“I’m in the County of Tamed Lightning.”

“Do you know where the County is?”

“Fremont?”

“Fremont, where we’re sandwiched between two Duchies that don’t get along. We’re a shiny little independent County right where it’s not a good idea to have an independent County.”

“I was under the impression that things were stable.” That could change at any time, of course, and there’s always a risk of small-scale civil war in Faerie—it’s something to do when you’re bored and immortal—but the modern world has reduced that risk substantially. The fae are poster children for Attention Deficit Disorder: give them something shiny to play with and they’ll forget they were about to chop your head off.