The Winter Long

It took everything I had not to turn and gape at the key that had somehow torn a hole in everything I thought I knew about our world, calling forth the magic of our missing Queen. Instead, I watched the road as beside me the Luidaeg murmured, “Thank you, Mother,” and raised the key to her lips.

As soon as they touched the metal, it exploded into light like I had never seen. The road, the trees, everything went away except for that glaring brilliance, which managed to be white and red at the same time, like it was bleeding as it purified. I slammed my foot down on the brake, fighting to keep control of the car as we reduced speed more quickly than the laws of physics would advise. The Luidaeg didn’t want me to stop. I was not willing to drive blind into a landscape I didn’t know.

I couldn’t force my eyes to stay open. When everything went from white to black, I realized I had shut them at some point to block out that horrible brightness. They were still closed when the Luidaeg put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Hey. October. Open your eyes, I put the key away.”

She couldn’t lie to me—I knew that—but I still cracked my right eye open with caution, in case some of the light had managed to linger. Natural light can’t do that, but that’s the trouble with magic: it does what it wants, and screw the laws of nature.

The cab was reassuringly dim, and the world outside the window was visible, painted in late afternoon shades of green and brown and gold. I opened both eyes and blinked, twisting in my seat as I realized that we were at Paso Nogal Park, the spot where Shadowed Hills was anchored to the mortal world. We were parked in the main lot, assuming you used the term very generously, since the car was sitting slantwise across three spaces. I blinked twice, and then took my foot off the brake as I carefully navigated us into a more proper parking place and turned off the engine.

The Luidaeg was quiet while I parked the car, possibly because she recognized that my battered nerves couldn’t take much more. Finally, once I was sure my heart wasn’t going to burst out of my chest, I twisted in my seat and asked, “Did we just drive from San Francisco to Pleasant Hill in less than ten minutes?”

“I told you, shortcut,” she said, sounding pleased with herself. “Let’s go ruin my sister’s day, shall we?”

“In a second.” I undid my seat belt and slid out of the car, feeling better as soon as my feet hit solid ground. Maybe this was how Tybalt felt every time he had to take a ride. I’d have to apologize to him for not being as understanding as I could have been. Speaking of Tybalt . . . “I don’t want to go anywhere before Tybalt shows up. He’d freak out if we weren’t waiting for him when he arrived.”

“You do have a remarkable talent for getting yourself injured when your allies let you out of their sight,” said the Luidaeg.

I shrugged. “I heal fast.”

“Most of the time.”

I didn’t have an answer for that one.

Standing still felt obscurely like failing. Evening was a big enough threat that we should never have been allowed to stop long enough to take a breath, much less stand around a parking lot waiting for my boyfriend to show up. There was a time when I wouldn’t have been able to take that pause. The need to be moving, to act, would have sent me running into the knowe, even if I knew that I was running into certain danger. “I guess I’m growing up,” I muttered.

“No, but you’re maturing, and that’s more than I hoped for when we met,” said the Luidaeg. I glanced at her, blinking. The bones of her face had shifted during the drive, going from what I thought of as her Annie-face to the one that I was more accustomed to. They were very similar; she could have been her own sister. They weren’t quite identical. She met my eyes with a small shrug and said, “It’s true. I don’t lie to you, remember?”