Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel

“Yes.”


“Right.” That could be any one of a number of people. I gave Officer Thornton another sidelong look, this time focusing on his face. “I’m sorry, but you seem familiar. Do I know you?”

“Golden Gate Park. You were wearing a leather jacket in the middle of summer.” Officer Thornton grinned at my obvious surprise. “I don’t forget a pretty face, especially when it’s refusing help for heatstroke. You’re not going to do that again this year, are you?”

“Oh! That was you?” I remembered that day in the park. I hadn’t been suffering from heatstroke; I’d been poisoned by an old enemy, Oleander de Merelands, who was trying to drive me out of my mind. She came disturbingly close to succeeding. Sometimes I wish my problems were as simple as heatstroke.

“That was me,” he confirmed. He turned to the officer manning the desk, and said, “Ms. Daye is being released. Can we get her things, please?”

“You’ll have to sign for them,” said the officer, frowning at me.

“I’ve been signing my name since I was six,” I said. “I think I can manage.”

The desk officer rolled his eyes as he got up and vanished into the back, leaving me alone with Officer Thornton. We stood in silence for a few seconds before he cleared his throat and said, “You have an interesting file.”

That was probably an understatement. “Yeah?” I asked, trying to sound uninterested.

“You were the subject of a missing persons case that remains unsolved, since you never told us where you’d been. Your teenage daughter was abducted last fall—”

“Are you implying something?” I interrupted. I didn’t care if that looked suspicious. I didn’t want him saying anything else about Gillian.

I disappeared because Simon Torquill turned me into a goldfish for fourteen years. My little girl grew up believing I’d abandoned her. My only comfort had been knowing that Gillian was free of Faerie and its dangers…a solace shattered by Simon’s niece, Rayseline, when she abducted my now-teenage daughter. Raysel wanted to hurt me. She succeeded. I lost both my daughter and my lover thanks to her. Gillian was still alive. Connor wasn’t. It had been almost a year, and I hadn’t had a good day’s sleep since that night. The dreams were too much for me.

“Not at all,” said Officer Thornton, clearly sensing my distress. “I just thought it was interesting. That’s all.”

“Try living with it,” I said. Living with the things in my file wasn’t that hard. It was living with the things that weren’t there that was threatening to kill me.

Officer Thornton was saved from replying by the return of the desk officer with my confiscated belongings. Leather jacket, package of tissues, wallet, belt; it was all there and, thankfully, all still covered by the illusion I had spun. Suddenly appearing bloodstains and bullet holes wouldn’t have gone over well with the police. I signed the form and slipped my jacket on, relaxing a little as the weight of it settled on my shoulders.

I looked up once everything was back where it belonged. “Is that all?”

“That’s all,” confirmed Officer Thornton. “You’re free to leave.”

“Great.” That seemed insufficient, so I added, “It was nice to see you again. Despite, you know. The circumstances.”

“I apologize that we had to keep you past midnight,” said Officer Thornton.

“It’s all right. I’m a bit of a night owl.” It being after midnight just meant I was fully awake. Fae are nocturnal, and I’m fae enough to be at my best after the sun goes down.

“Get home safely, all right?”