Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel

“I should go.”


“I wish you didn’t have to.” I turned to Tybalt. He was standing in the deepest part of the shadow. I could still see the bruise on his cheek and the exhaustion in his slumping shoulders. “Are you sure you don’t want a cup of coffee or something?”

“Your love of artificial stimulants will be the death of you one day,” he said, a smile turning up the corners of his lips. “I must attend to my Court, and you must attend to matters here. I will find you when I have the freedom to do so.”

“Okay,” I said reluctantly. The smell of pennyroyal and musk rose as he opened the door onto the Shadow Roads, and he was gone, leaving me alone.

If any of the students who saw me emerge from beneath the bridge thought it was strange, they kept their thoughts to themselves. This was UC Berkeley. Strange women in leather jackets with ash-stained hands probably crawled out from under their bridges all the time. The student body continued about its business, and I continued on mine.

Even if Walther didn’t have anything useful for me yet, he had my squire, and I wanted him back. Quentin was a smart kid, and that extended to going where I told him to go, as long as he didn’t think I was trying to be heroic and self-sacrificing. “Walther had better have coffee on,” I muttered, and kept walking.

As a junior faculty member, Walther barely rated an office. He didn’t rate one that was easy to find. It was located in a maze of twisting hallways that seemed to have been designed by an architect who dreamed of one day having a real Minotaur lurking to devour the unwary. No legendary Greek monsters leaped out to grab me as I walked, finally stopping in the open doorway of a small, cluttered room that held two legendary monsters of its own. I rapped my knuckles against the doorframe.

“If one of you doesn’t have coffee for me, I’m going to be cranky,” I announced.

Walther and Quentin had been bent over something on the counter. They straightened and turned at the sound of my voice. Walther smiled. Quentin didn’t bother with the preliminaries. He grabbed a paper cup and trotted over to me, holding it at arm’s length.

“Here,” he said. “Coffee.”

“And thus am I reminded why I allow you to live,” I said. The coffee was cold and the “creamer” had never seen the inside of a cow, but I didn’t care. The caffeine was all I needed. I lowered the cup after chugging a third of its contents, asking, “What’s our status?”

“Come in, come in,” said Walther, beckoning me forward. “And close the door.” His glasses were askew, and his hair was mussed. Not enough that anyone who didn’t know him would notice, but Walther worked very hard to maintain his superficial “I am the perfect professor” appearance. Mussed hair didn’t go with that ideal.

“Long night?” I asked, doing as I was bid. The office was considerably dimmer once the light from the hall was blocked. All the overheads were off, leaving us in a room that would have been substantially too gloomy for mortal eyes.

Good thing none of us had mortal eyes. I sipped my coffee as I walked across the room, drinking more slowly now that the first rush of caffeine was in my system. With the ambient light blocked by the door, it was apparent that whatever Walther was working on was glowing faintly, like a light stick the morning after Halloween. It was a steady glow, at least, and not a candlelight flicker. I hate candles.

“I was already here when you called, tinkering with some personal projects. You just focused me,” said Walther. He turned back to the counter. “I’m not technically supposed to be here today, but I knew no one else was using my office, so I just kept going.”