The Winter Long

“Count on it,” said Tybalt. He turned and walked back toward the trees. The shadows at the edge of the wood spread for him like a curtain, and he was gone.

I smiled a little goofily as I followed the others to the car. Quentin was draped over the hood, making exaggerated snoring noises. May was just standing there, watching me tolerantly. Jazz had apparently fallen asleep; she was stretched across May’s folded arms, still in raven form, not moving.

“Did you have a good Yule?” May asked.

“Not that it’s any of your business—”

“It’s totally my business.”

“But yes.” I unlocked the car, peering quickly into the backseat before I opened my door. “Quentin, stop faking being asleep and get in. You’re not fooling anyone.”

My squire grinned as he straightened up. Then he yawned and climbed into the front passenger seat. His eyes were closed by the time I slid behind the wheel.

May got into the back, setting Jazz on the seat next to her long enough to fasten her seat belt. Then she scooped her avian girlfriend back into her arms. “We’re good,” she said. Having significant others who spent a substantial amount of time as animals—mine a cat, hers a raven—meant we had adjusted the “everyone must wear a seat belt” rule to apply only to people who were currently in a seat belt-friendly form.

As expected, Quentin turned the radio to the local country station as soon as I started the car. Then he closed his eyes again, rolling as far to the side as the seat belt and a seated position would allow, and went to sleep. I smiled as I glanced at the rearview mirror. May was slumped over in the back, cradling Jazz like a stuffed toy.

“Peace at last,” I murmured, and started down the mountain separating Muir Woods from the nearest outcropping of human civilization. Don’t get me wrong: I was as tired as the rest of them, maybe more, since I was the one who found parties the most draining. The flip side was that escaping a party felt like a stay of execution, and that, combined with the comfort of being back behind the wheel of my faithful VW bug, meant I was more than awake enough to get us home.

We were almost to the base of the mountain when I realized none of us was wearing a human disguise. I swore under my breath and grabbed a handful of shadows from the roof of the car, gripping them between my nails as they tried to squirm away like eels. The smell of copper and freshly cut grass rose as I chanted, rapid-fire, “The trees they do grow high and the leaves they do grow green, many’s the hour my own true love I’ve seen, many’s the day I’ve watched him all alone, he is young but he’s surely growing.”

The spell, which had been building with each word, burst around me like a soap bubble, accompanied by a brief spike of pain at my temples. I breathed out, my shoulders relaxing. It was a simple blur, but it would do the job; as long as I didn’t get pulled over, we should be able to pass any cursory inspection by the other drivers on the road.

A “simple” blur. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to manage a blur spell at all, much less cast one on a carful of people, and I would have paid for the attempt with a lot more than a momentary pang of magic-burn. Then again, two years ago, I was more human than fae, and still trying to force my magic into a mold it was never designed to fit. It turns out that when someone isn’t Daoine Sidhe, yet keeps trying to scale their workings to Daoine Sidhe specifications, things sometimes go wrong. Who knew? Now, I was more fae than human—it was hard to say how much more, it being a matter of reading the balance of my blood, and not something that could be resolved with a scale—and I was more confident in the magic I did possess than I’d ever been in my life.