The Winter Long

Fifteen minutes later, my dress was hanging in the closet, my hair was in a ponytail, and I was stepping into a pair of sweatpants. A little rummaging in the laundry hamper produced a nightshirt that wasn’t too filthy to wear.

“Bed,” I moaned, and pulled the blackout curtains over my windows, converting the room into a pleasantly artificial night. With this last chore accomplished and no demands on my attention scheduled until sunset at the earliest, I flopped full-length onto the mattress. I lay there starfished for about half a minute before I remembered how to control my limbs and started squirming under the covers. It would have been nicer to be going to bed with Tybalt, who always provided a pleasant source of warmth and a soothing purr, but sleeping alone had its advantages: for one thing, no one was trying to steal the covers. I nestled myself into a changeling burrito, sticking my head under the pillow for good measure.

The doorbell rang.

I pulled my head from under the pillow and turned to look at the clock, automatically assuming that I’d been asleep for hours and just hadn’t noticed. According to the digital readout, it wasn’t even eight o’clock in the morning. I’d been in bed for less than ten minutes.

The doorbell rang again.

“Oh, someone’s getting murdered today,” I muttered, rolling out of the bed. My bathrobe was on the floor near the door. I grabbed it and tugged it on.

The doorbell rang a third time as I was going down the stairs. “I’m coming!” I shouted, draping a human disguise around myself with quick, irritated motions of my hands. I would normally have worried about waking everyone else. Under the circumstances, I was more concerned about the doorbell waking them up if I didn’t get it to stop ringing.

I wrenched the door open and snarled, “What?” with a ferocity that would have made the Luidaeg proud.

Sylvester, who had been raising his hand to ring a fourth time, froze. I did the same, and for a long moment, we stared at each other.

He was wearing a human disguise, and had traded his party finery for a pair of tan slacks and a white cotton shirt with buttoned cuffs. He would have fit in with an amateur theater production of The Great Gatsby.

“What the . . . ?” I blinked, relaxing as confusion replaced my anger. “What are you doing here? Why were you ringing the doorbell? Don’t you have a key?”

“October,” he said. There was something odd about the way he shaped my name, like he hadn’t said it aloud in years. “You’re here.”

“Yeah. Look, it’s the start of the day. What’s going on?” I stepped to the side, gesturing for him to come inside. “You want some tea, or coffee, or something?”

“You are inviting me in?” He looked so perplexed that I was starting to wonder if something was really wrong.

“Um, yeah.”

“Ah. Then, yes; tea would be a delight.” He stepped over the threshold. I moved to shut the door behind him and froze, the scent of his magic tickling the back of my throat.

He smelled like smoke and rotten oranges.

This man wasn’t Sylvester Torquill.





THREE