Chimes at Midnight

“Do you have a better idea?” I shook my head. “It’s not like we can break into the county morgue later and examine her body. Even if we had forensic training, it wouldn’t matter. This is the only way.” If the girl had died a violent death, I could have sampled her blood for clues. This was different. If I tried to do blood magic and ride her memories, I could wind up getting addicted to goblin fruit in the process. I cared about justice. I cared about cleaning up my streets. There were some risks I still wasn’t willing to take.

The night-haunts were a risk of a different variety, and one that I had taken before. They were one of the deep, dark secrets of Faerie, the shadows that came for the dead and carried them away, leaving perfect human replicas in their place. The work of the night-haunts allowed Faerie to exist without worrying that the bodies of our dead would betray us. The trouble was, they also made it impossible for me to know how many of the missing changelings had died and been replaced by human manikins. This changeling could be our first casualty. She could also be our twentieth. If the bodies couldn’t tell me, I was going to have to go for the next best thing, and ask the dead.

Wings rustled overhead as Jazz came in for a landing, shifting back into her semi-human form in the same motion. She was a tall, black-haired woman of clearly Indian descent, with raven-amber eyes. “I think Toby’s right,” she said, moving to take May’s arm. “That doesn’t mean we have to stay if you’re not comfortable.”

“No,” said May, shaking her head. “If Toby’s staying, so am I.” She hesitated before smiling, very slightly. “It’ll be nice to see my siblings again.”

Fetches are created when night-haunts consume the blood of the living. Sort of like caterpillars turning into butterflies, only gorier and a lot less likely to wind up on binders designed by Lisa Frank. I grimaced a little. “All right. Tybalt?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Do you even need to ask whether I intend to remain here while you engage in casual conversation with a group of merciless carrion-eaters who have little reason to be fond of you? I’m staying.”

“Not going to argue,” I said, and walked over to stand beside him.

“What do we do now?” asked Jazz.

In unison, May and I replied, “We wait.”

Tybalt snorted before casually looping his arm around my waist. I let him pull me a little closer, although I didn’t allow myself to relax. The night-haunts are nothing to relax around. The comforting smell of pennyroyal and musk rolled off him like my favorite cologne. All fae have their own distinctive magical odor. I’m more sensitive to them than most. It’s all part and parcel of being the first in a new race of blood-workers: the Dóchas Sidhe.

My mother, Amandine, is the daughter of Oberon himself, making her Firstborn and more powerful than anyone as . . . reality-challenged . . . as she is has any real need to be. I’m her daughter by a mortal man, making me a changeling with a rather unusual skill set, combined with the bleached-out coloring of a bad watercolor painting. The fact that I managed to get myself knighted for services to the Crown was practically a miracle. The fact that I had been dating the local King of Cats for three months without discovering that it was all an especially cruel dream sequence was definitely a miracle.

The four of us made a strange tableau as we stood there, looking at the body of a dead girl and waiting for her strange eternity to begin. It felt almost disrespectful. The dead should be alone when the night-haunts come. But I’d promised not to summon them, and there was no better way to find our answers than this. No; that wasn’t right.

Given the circumstances, there was no other way at all.