The Winter Long

Tybalt and I exchanged a look. I shrugged, and we followed her inside. The door slammed behind us of its own accord. Apparently, we were going to be staying for a while.

It was hard to say how large the Luidaeg’s apartment was, since I’d only ever seen the hallway, living room, kitchen, and bedroom. Several other doors led off the hall. One of them was presumably a bathroom, but the rest were anybody’s guess. When you’re an undying daughter of Oberon and Maeve, normal physical laws apply only as much as you want them to.

She hadn’t bothered putting up her illusions before we came in. The place was spotless, with kelp-colored carpet and cream-colored walls. The air smelled of fresh seawater. If Yankee Candle could have figured out how to bottle that scent, they could have cornered the home fragrance market and put all their competitors out of business in a season. When we reached the living room, we found her sitting in an overstuffed easy chair, stirring her ice cream into an unrecognizable slurry.

“This is going to suck,” she said, without preamble. “You’re here because Simon Torquill is back in town, and you want answers. I get that. The problem is, those answers are like a crunchy candy shell surrounding a chewy center of shit I can’t talk about. Not won’t, can’t. As in, ‘I am physically unable to tell you what you came here hoping to find out, and there’s no way you can word the questions that will get us around that little glitch.’” She sounded genuinely sorry.

I paused, studying her. The Luidaeg didn’t just sound sorry; she looked sorry. Her shoulders were slumped, and her eyes were fixed on her ice cream, like she couldn’t bear to look at us. She seemed perfectly human, with her dark, curly hair hanging loose around her face, which still bore the ghosts of old acne scars. There wasn’t even the faint glitter of an illusion to mark her as fae, but that was a reflection of how powerful she really was. Only one of the Firstborn could mask their nature that completely.

“Is this because of a geas?” I ventured.

“Ten points for Amandine’s daughter,” said the Luidaeg, and licked half-melted ice cream off her spoon before jabbing it viciously back into the container. She raised her head and looked at me. Her eyes were the pale green of sea-tumbled glass, and full of fathomless desperation. “I can’t, Toby. You know I can’t.”

“I know.” I worried my lip between my teeth for a moment before I asked, “Can I try finding some questions that don’t break any of the rules, but that might help us out?”

“You can try,” she said.

“Do you know where Simon Torquill is?”

The Luidaeg blinked. Then she shook her head. “No. He can hide himself from me, the bastard. Old magic, borrowed from your mother, no doubt.”

I nodded slowly, tensing a bit. “So you can talk about Mom and Simon.”

“That was never technically a secret.” She sighed. “I never brought it up with you because, well. What good would it have done? Amy was off in her private fairyland, and Simon was Dad-knows-where. Telling you how they used to do the nasty wouldn’t have helped you any, and it might have made it harder for you to sleep.”

“Especially if you worded it like that,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “Luidaeg . . . Mom left him, right? She must have, since she got together with my father. So why didn’t she divorce him? There was no land to fight over, and she never took his title. Sylvester said it was because that would mean admitting there was no hope for them, but that just . . . that didn’t sound right. Something was missing. What isn’t he telling me?”