Chimes at Midnight

“Toby!” My name was followed by the sound of a teenage boy vaulting over the back of the living room couch. Quentin appeared in the kitchen doorway a few seconds later, practically vibrating with the need to know what he might have missed. “You’re home.”


“I am,” I said, heading for the coffeemaker on the counter. May, Oberon bless her, had started a fresh pot while I was still out in the car with Tybalt. “Where are May and Jazz?”

“They went straight up to their room. May said you’d tell me what was going on.”

“Of course she did.” My hands were shaking again as I poured myself a cup of coffee. I still forced myself to complete the process before I turned to him and said, “We finally found proof that the goblin fruit problem has gotten bad enough that it’s killing people.”

Quentin’s eyes widened behind the bronze fringe of his hair. I remember a time when that hair was the color of cornsilk, but like many Daoine Sidhe, it had darkened as he aged. “Somebody died?”

“A lot of somebodies died, Quentin.” I could see their faces if I closed my eyes. “We found a dead changeling in an alley, and we waited with her until the night-haunts came. We saw the victims, all of them. There have been at least a dozen. Maybe more.”

“Oh, oak and ash.” He stood a little straighter, unconsciously falling into a formal posture. He was a courtier at Shadowed Hills when we first met, and some habits die hard. “What are we going to do?”

There was something extremely comforting about that “we.” I spent so long without any allies that sometimes I wasn’t sure I knew what to do with the ones I had. “We’re going to take it to the Queen,” I said. “This is her land. She should be doing something to keep her people alive.”

“Um,” said Quentin. “But . . . she hates you.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said dryly. “I appreciate the reminder, though.”

“He has a valid point,” said Tybalt. “Her dislike for you is rather legendary.”

“And she’s still the Queen.” I sighed before taking a gulp of my coffee. “We work with what we have.”

They weren’t exaggerating, sadly. The Queen of the Mists had hated me for years, starting when I refused to pretend I hadn’t been the one to discover what was currently her knowe. Her hatred had just grown stronger, and more irrational, with time. She’d done some complicated political maneuvering to get me convicted of murder not all that long ago. She nearly succeeded in having me executed over that one.

But this was her Kingdom, and Faerie is a feudal society. If I wanted this to happen, we would have to go through the Queen.

“Quentin, go get changed,” I said, topping off my coffee. “I’m going to go find May and Jazz, see if they want to come with us—where’s Raj?”

“He went to Helen’s,” said Quentin, grimacing. “They’re fighting again.”

Helen was Raj’s longtime half-Hob girlfriend. It was sort of a miracle that they were still together, given the circumstances of their meeting, but I wished them luck. Love does best when it has lots of luck to bolster it up. “All right, fine. That means we don’t need to worry about him. I want to leave within the hour, got me?”

“Got you,” said Quentin, and vanished into the hall, sounding more like an elephant than a teenage boy as he galloped toward the stairs.

I followed more sedately, sipping my coffee as I walked. I was almost to the second-floor landing when I heard Tybalt following. I knew he was letting me hear him, and that dissolved what little irritation I might have otherwise felt; by walking loudly enough for me to hear, he was offering me the opportunity to tell him to go away.

Adjusting to the nonverbal oddities of dating a Cait Sidhe has been strange, but rewarding, and in a way, I think I’ve been getting ready for this for years. I looked back over my shoulder as I stopped in front of the door to May and Jazz’s shared room, flashing him a quick smile. “You okay back there?”

“Yes,” he said. “I do believe I am.”