Chimes at Midnight

Ten minutes, maybe less, passed before we heard the distant sound of ragged wings beating against the night. That was our only warning: immediately after that, the flock descended. They were a ribbon of smoke and dead leaves against the night, an impossible swirl of half-realized bodies and charcoal-sketched faces. Individually, they were about the size of Barbie dolls, but they didn’t travel that way; they moved as an all-consuming cloud, too organized to be natural.

They landed between us and the body, the more solid members of the flock standing closest to us, folding their wings behind their bodies and watching us with wary hunger. Several of them had faces I knew. Devin, my old mentor; Oleander, the woman who’d been partially responsible for my spending fourteen years as an enchanted fish . . .

. . . and Connor, the Selkie man I’d loved, once upon a lifetime ago. My mouth went dry. Connor had been alive the last time I’d seen the night-haunts. Somehow, I hadn’t allowed myself to consider what his death would mean.

He met my eyes, and then looked away without saying a word. There was nothing left for us to say.

Devin’s haunt felt no such restraint. He launched himself into the air with a maddened buzzing of his wings, flying forward to hover in front of my nose. Face contorted with anger, he gestured at the girl in the trash and demanded, “Well, Toby? Well? Is this good enough for you?”

“What?” My eyes widened, temporary shock over seeing the night-haunt wearing Connor’s face forgotten. “Devin, what the hell are you talking about?”

“For over a hundred years, I kept that shit out of this city, and you—” He laughed, a bitter sound with no amusement behind it. “You may as well have invited it in. Rolled out the red carpet, told the dealers that San Francisco was ripe for the taking. Are you happy now? All these dead kids are on your head.”

“What? Devin—”

“You could have stopped this!” He flew even closer, close enough that I could feel the breeze generated by his wings. “You could have done something!”

“Egil, you forget yourself,” snapped May, her words suddenly overlaid with an accent that I had never heard before. Devin’s haunt and I both turned toward her. Her eyes were fixed on him, and so cold. You could freeze to death in those eyes. “Chastising the living? Really?”

“As if you have any right to judge me, Mai,” he snapped. The difference between the name he used and the one I knew her by was subtle, but I could hear it. “You’ve joined them.”

“Yeah, well,” she said, the accent slipping from her voice to be replaced by her normal Californian lilt. “That’s the way the cookie crumbles. Now stop shouting and help.”

“You said ‘all these dead kids,’” I said, slowly. “Devin . . . how many have there been?” I knew that “Devin” was the name of the face the night-haunt wore, and not the name of the night-haunt himself, but I was pretty sure that I didn’t have the right to call him “Egil.” “This girl is the first one we’ve found.”

He turned in the air to look at me impassively. Then he snapped his fingers. Figures began to separate themselves from the flock, flying forward—not as close as he had come, but close enough for me to make out faces, hair colors, the points of their ears. Some were more human-looking than others, but all of them were changelings. They just kept coming. By the time they stopped, there were more than a dozen night-haunts hanging in the air, wings a blur as they stared at me.

The blood ran out of my cheeks, leaving me pale and lightheaded. “So many?” I whispered.

“Goblin fruit is a killer,” snapped Devin. “You may as well have put a bullet in their heads. It would have been more merciful.”