The Winter Long

Quentin seemed to have been expecting that answer. He grabbed a handful of air, singing a verse from a song about boats—the kid had an endless supply of songs about boats—as his magic rose and burst, filling the car with the smell of steel and heather. I felt the weight of his don’t-look-here spell settle over us as we reached the end of the driveway. It was a more sophisticated illusion than the one that made us seem human. It would keep us from being pulled over or ticketed during the drive, and all I had to do was remember that most of the other drivers couldn’t see me, which could make avoiding a collision a little more exciting than usual. It was a worthy tradeoff, especially considering the land-speed records that I was about to break.

On a good day, with no traffic, it takes about an hour to get from my house in San Francisco to my liege’s knowe in Pleasant Hill, the mortal suburb that conceals the fae Duchy of Shadowed Hills. There was traffic. Not as bad as it would have been during rush hour, but enough that despite breaking every posted speed limit and a few rules of common sense, it was still almost ninety minutes later when we reached the parking lot at Paso Nogal Park. I pulled into the first available parking space, nerves rattled from the drive, and unfastened my seat belt.

“Quentin, I want you to stay close,” I said, twisting in my seat to look toward my squire. “We don’t know where Simon is. No unnecessary risks.”

“Okay,” he said. The scent of steel and heather wafted through the air as his don’t-look-here popped around us.

“Good.” I started to reach for my door. My hand found empty air. It took a few precious seconds for me to realize someone else had gotten there first, wrenching the door open; then a hand was closing around my upper arm, hauling me out of the car.

My first instinct was to reach for my knife. Fortunately, my eyes were faster than my hands; I had just closed my fingers around the hilt when I recognized my captor, even if I wasn’t accustomed to seeing him this disheveled. I stared at him. Tybalt stared back, the banded green of his eyes muted by the illusion that made him seem human.

“Are you hurt?” he demanded.

“Hello to you, too, Tybalt.” I breathed in, tasting his heritage, just to be sure. Simon might have been able to make himself look like Tybalt, but he would never have been able to pass himself off as Cait Sidhe; not to me, not to my particular set of skewed magical abilities. I relaxed as my magic confirmed that yes, this was Tybalt. There were other Cait Sidhe in the world, but he was the only one who would be looking at me with such a perfect mix of terror and exasperation.

“Why didn’t you wait at the house?” He let go of my arm. “I came as soon as the cats reached me, but you had already gone.”

“Look at it this way,” I said. “If I wasn’t there, Simon had no reason to come back.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Tybalt’s face contorted with sudden fury, washing everything else away. “He found you once,” he said, voice low and dangerous. “He should never have been allowed to come near you again.”

“But he did, and I survived,” I said. “Now come on. We need to tell Sylvester his brother’s back in town.” I took a breath before adding, “He probably wants to get his hands on Simon, and he may have some idea why Simon would come back to the Mists. I think that’s the sort of thing we need to know.” And I could confirm that Sylvester was who I thought he was. If I’d been Simon, the first thing I would have done was replace my brother. Most people aren’t as sensitive to the scent of magic as I am. He could have gotten away with it, as long as he’d distracted Luna and kept me—and my mother, I suppose—far away from Shadowed Hills. Simon might have had ways to cross the Bay Area faster than I could manage in a car. He could be the acting Duke by now.

Tybalt stared at me for a moment. Then, with a shake of his head, he moved to follow me up the hill that would lead us to the entrance to Shadowed Hills.

Quentin moved faster than either of us, although he kept his word and stayed close, never roving more than a few yards away as he went through the complex series of steps and turns necessary to unlock the door into the knowe. I slowed down until Tybalt and I were walking side by side, then reached over and slid my hand into his, lacing our fingers together.

“You have no idea how terrified I was when Cagney and Lacey came to the Court of Cats and told me you’d been attacked,” he said, voice pitched low to keep it from carrying to where Quentin was now running circles around a hawthorn bush.