Rosemary and Rue

After the night I’d had, I would have said there was nothing left that could shake me. I definitely wouldn’t have placed my bets on a little plastic box that weighed no more than a few ounces, keys hidden by a flip-down front that made it look like something out of Star Trek. Suddenly numb, I lifted my head and stared at Devin.

Fourteen years is no time at all in Faerie. It’s the blink of an eye, it’s the turning of a single tide. There have been balls that lasted longer than that, waltzes and banquets that stretched on for decades. The mortal world, though . . . the mortal world doesn’t work that way. The phone I used to talk to Cliff for the last time before I vanished weighed almost a pound. It was ugly and clunky and almost impossible to lose. This was a sleek, streamlined accessory, the sort of thing every person on the street would carry. It was the future, condensed into something solid. I’d been able to handle it when it was just the humans carrying the things; I could pretend that Faerie, at least, had stayed the same. But it hadn’t. Nothing had.

Devin saw the confusion in my eyes, because he smiled a small, hurtful smile, saying, “It wouldn’t have happened if you’d stayed here,” before he turned to press the button for the intercom. The equivalent button in the main room was set in the wall, under glass. I’d only seen the intercom from the main room used twice. Once it was a prank, and the kid that did it wound up beaten within an inch of his life by half a dozen of the bigger kids. The other time it was because Julie had been hurt so badly that we didn’t know how to put her together again, and even then we hesitated, afraid of the consequences. No one bothered Devin without good reason.

“Dare, I need you to come back here and escort Ms. Daye to her car. Now,” he said. If Dare was in the bar, she’d come. If she wasn’t, someone else would come in her place, and she’d be in a world of trouble.

Lucky for her, she hadn’t stepped out for a cigarette. The door opened a few minutes later, revealing a very nervous Dare and her slightly more relaxed older brother. Neither looked happy. That was my fault, but I was still too stunned to really care. I hadn’t known what Evening had meant to these people. I would never have guessed—I would never even have dreamed—and I should have known. What happened to the world while I was gone? How much needed to change before the most arrogant pureblood I’d ever known could come to a place like Home and earn that much respect?

“Sir,” said Dare, bending in what looked like a six-year-old’s approximation of a curtsy, “you need me to take Ms. Daye to her car?” Her accent was substantially lighter when she was speaking to Devin. The bruise on her cheek was flowering now, turning purple and gold.

Devin narrowed his eyes. I used to try guessing how much of The Look was real and how much was an act before I realized it wasn’t important. It worked. That was what mattered. Devin might lie to you, but he always got results. “That was why I called you, Dare. You can hear, can’t you?”

She cringed. Manuel turned to me, pleading with his eyes. I just shrugged. Devin used the same look and the same lines on me, once; I wasn’t foolish enough to try undermining his authority with someone who still believed they meant something. Dare gave him all the power he had over her. Once she grew up enough to figure out that Devin could only control her as long as she let him, she’d be fine, and if she never grew up that much, she belonged at Home, where someone else would take care of the real world and she could take care of the chores.

“Yes, sir,” Dare said, straightening. “I can hear, sir. I’ll take her to her car right away, it’s just outside, and then I’ll come back and wait, just like I’m supposed to.”