Rosemary and Rue

Wouldn’t it be nice to get what you were looking for? it whispered. I can give you peace. I can be your flight of angels. Just give up and let me in.

The taste of roses filled the world. Maybe it was right; maybe I was done. I’d done what I was bound to do. I found the killers, or at least the one who hired them. The hope chest was safe with Tybalt. There was nothing left for me to do, and I had no Home to go to. Blood and betrayal: who needs anything else? Devin was my mentor, my friend, and my lover, and he’d tried to kill me. He’d ordered the deaths of at least two people, and he’d lied about it without blinking. Nothing was the way I’d left it; my world was dead. Why did I bother fighting?

I went limp beneath the weight of memory, letting the phantom roses wrap around me. I was ready to die, to sleep, to dream no more. No more dreams. No more deaths. No more anything. The world started to slip away.

Something that burned hot and cold at the same time hit me in the middle of my chest. The roses lost their grip as I was jerked, gasping, back into my body. The pain didn’t stop. I opened my eyes, and Lily was standing over me, one hand clutching the other, the skin looking cracked and seared.

The gun I’d stolen was on top of me, the chamber open to let the iron bullets spill out. They were bitterly cold, even through my shirt. My cup was shattered on the ground beside me, the moss around it dark with blood.

I sat up, scooping the bullets into my hand and shoving them back into the chamber before snapping it closed. I didn’t turn back toward Lily until they were all out of sight.

“You left,” she whispered. “I told you it was dangerous, but you did it anyway . . . and you left. Your body was here, and there was no one inside it.”

I glanced at her burned hand. Iron hurts purebloods worse than it hurts changelings, and as an Undine, Lily was more susceptible than most; she was only flesh because she wanted to be. To an Undine, iron is like acid, and the fact that she was willing to touch it at all showed something more than friendship. I set the thought regretfully aside. There would be time to think about what she’d done for me later . . . and time to wonder whether I could ever repay it.

Her expression was slowly returning to its normal serenity, although her eyes were pained. “Did you find what you needed?”

What I needed? I looked at the gun I was holding and nodded, slowly.

“Yeah, I did,” I said.

“And?” There was a waiting, worried edge to her voice. She knew what came next as well as I did, even if she didn’t know why.

I sighed. “Can you call me a taxi?”





TWENTY-SIX



IN THE END, LILY DIDN’T CALL the taxi; I did. Danny said he could be there in fifteen minutes, and that was good enough, because it also gave me time to call Shadowed Hills and leave a terse, angry messageto with the Hob who answered the phone. “Tell Sylvester I’m going Home,” I said. “I’ll try not to die before I get there.”

“Wait for him,” Lily said, watching me drop the phone back into its cradle. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

“Time’s too short, and the stakes are too high.” If Devin was willing to kill me to get his hands on the hope chest, how long would it be before he started trying to find its hiding place? How long before there were assassins in the bushes at Shadowed Hills, hired killers watching the Court of Cats for targets? “This ends now.”

“Yes,” she said, anxiously. “It very well may.”

I paused. “Can you send a messenger to Tybalt?” She nodded. “Tell him it was Devin; tell him he knows why, if he thinks about it. And tell him I’m sorry I got him involved in this.”

“Toby . . .”

“Just tell him.” I kissed her forehead and left the Tea Gardens as quickly as I could, heading for the parking lot where Danny would be meeting me.