Rosemary and Rue

There was another long pause before she whispered, “Toby, there isn’t much time. Please, pick up. I can’t leave, and you’re the only one I trust enough to call, so damn it, please! Answer your goddamn phone!” I’d never heard her curse before. The night was full of firsts, and I wasn’t even out of my bathrobe yet. “I know you’re there! Dammit, I am not going to let your laziness get me killed! Toby, damn you . . .”


She took a breath then, before continuing in a firm cadence. By the time I realized what she was doing, it was too late; I’d heard the binding begin, and I would listen until the end.

“By my blood and my bones, I bind you. By the oak and the ash, the rowan and the thorn, I bind you. By the word of your fealty, by my mother’s will, by your name, I bind you. For the favors I have done you in the past, you promised that I could ask anything of you; this is my anything. Find the answers, find the reasons and find the one who caused me this harm, October Daye, daughter of Amandine, or find only your own death. By all that I am and all that I was and all the mercies of our missing Lord and Ladies, I bind you . . .”

I felt the curse catch hold, sinking thorny talons into my skin as the bittersweet smell of dying roses flooded my nose and mouth. I dropped my coffee cup and staggered backward retching, clapping a hand over my mouth as I tried not to throw up. Promises bind our kind as surely as iron chains or ropes of human hair, and Evening had bound me with the old forms, the ones anyone with a trace of fae blood can use. No one uses the old bindings anymore, not unless things are so bleak that even our missing King and his Hunt couldn’t mend them. They’re too strong, and too deadly.

The fae never swear by anything we don’t believe in. We don’t ask for thanks and we don’t offer them; no promises, no regrets, no chains. No lies. If Evening said failure would kill me, it would kill me. I just hoped she had a good reason, or I was going to have to kill her myself.

“Oh, Toby, I’m sorry,” she said, and put the phone down, not quite in the cradle. The connection continued. I don’t know whether that was an accident or not, but I don’t think it was. She wanted me to hear. She knew that if I heard what came next, I wouldn’t even try to break the binding she had thrown over me.

It doesn’t matter. I’m still never going to forgive her.

The story the message told next was one I’d never wanted to hear, not on the worst of all my bad days. A door, slamming open; the sound of footsteps. Evening shouting something I couldn’t quite make out . . . and a gun going off. Her voice rose in a soaring scream, only to be silenced by another gunshot.

I jumped to my feet, bile rising in my throat as I shouted an involuntary “No!” at the phone. Evening screamed again. The gun fired a third time, and the message ended, the machine hissing on for several seconds before it stopped with a small, final click.

Somehow, that was what made it all seem real. I stared at the machine for a moment, breath hitching in my throat, then turned and bolted for the bathroom. I was fast enough, barely; I got to the sink before I threw up.

Time never runs backward when I need it to. Not for me, and not for anyone else.





FOUR



I THREW UP THREE times before I could leave the bathroom. I splashed water on my face before heading for my room, numbly starting the answering machine’s playback over again as I passed. There wasn’t time to shower, and I wasn’t sure I could work the taps without scalding myself. Even getting dressed was almost more than I could manage. Evening’s words were no kinder the second time, begging me to pick up the phone, to answer her, to do anything—anything at all—to save her. When did the last call come? Oak and ash, when did it come?

I was pulling on my coat, accompanied by Evening’s recorded screams, when realization hit me: she got what she wanted. Sure, I’d turned my back on Faerie, I’d refused to let her have my license reinstated . . . but I was on the case now, and I’d stay on it until I had the answers I needed.