Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel

“I’ve already rehearsed every objection you might make. I have answers to them all. Please. Can’t we just skip that part and reach the point where you agree to help me? My daughter is alone out there. Time is of the essence.”


He was wrong about one thing: she probably wasn’t “alone out there.” Teenage girls run away from home sometimes—I was a prime example of that—but they don’t usually vanish in broad daylight. If she’d disappeared that abruptly, the odds were good that someone made her disappear. I hate missing children cases, and that’s probably why the world keeps handing them to me. Reality is nothing if not malicious where I’m concerned.

Instead of arguing or objecting, I asked a simple question: “Why me?”

“Because you were the one who dared to go up against Blind Michael. When the sons of Saltmist were taken, you were the one who brought them home. And because my daughter is…she’s…”

“She’s a changeling,” I said. “You want me, instead of one of the other knights, because you think I’ll be more understanding of the fact that she’s not a pureblood.”

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He just nodded.

“I’m going to regret this, but…okay,” I said. I picked up my mug and downed its contents in a single long gulp. The coffee was hot enough to burn my throat a little, but I didn’t let that worry me; I’m a fast healer. I set the empty mug aside. “What’s her name?”

“Chelsea.” He said her name like it was some strange, undiscovered country, one that had disappeared from maps a thousand years ago. The wonder in his voice would have been touching if we’d been talking about a baby and not a missing half-human teenager. As it was, it was just a little sad.

“You said she disappeared on her way home from school. Do you know what school she attends?” He wouldn’t have a picture, since he hadn’t known she existed before she went missing, but every school keeps photos of its student body. Breaking into the office couldn’t be that hard. It would be easier than breaking into Bridget and Chelsea’s house, since schools tend to be closed at night, and that’s when I do the bulk of my petty larceny.

“I…no, I’m sorry. I don’t.” Etienne shook his head. “Bridget didn’t tell me much. Mostly, she just swore at me. She said I had no right to steal her daughter, not when I’d been gone since before Chelsea was even born. If there’s a pejorative term for faerie that Bess doesn’t know, I’d be surprised. I think she used them all on me tonight.”

I managed to keep a straight face despite his use of the proper Irish diminutive for Bridget. I wasn’t even sure he knew he’d done it. “Right. Do you know where they live?”

“Yes.”

“Really?” I pushed a pen and paper across the table to him.

“I may have fallen out of touch, but I have always known where Bridget was,” said Etienne, taking the pen and paper and scrawling down a street address. Catching my expression, he added defensively, “I never went there. I watched her on campus from time to time, and I had my spies, but I left her with her privacy. I just wanted to be sure that she continued well.”

And somehow you managed to never check closely enough to notice that she had a kid with pointed ears? I thought, before inwardly slapping myself. We don’t see the things we don’t want to see, and mothers are nothing if not inventive when it comes to hiding the truth about their children. Look at my mother. She managed to hide the truth of my race from practically everyone for more than fifty years, raising me as Daoine Sidhe when nothing could make me anything but Dóchas Sidhe—a direct descendant of Oberon, and a natural magnet for trouble. If Mom could pull off something like that with half of Faerie looking over her shoulder, it wasn’t hard to believe that Bridget could find a way to hide a changeling girl no one was looking for to begin with. It was harder to believe we were ever going to see that girl alive again.

“Wait—you said you watched Bridget ‘on campus.’ Does that mean she’s still at UC Berkeley?”