The Winter Long

She pushed herself out of her chair. Her eyes were still green, and her skin was still tan and human; her form wasn’t slipping, which was the most frightening thing of all, given how agitated she looked. I’d never seen her this upset without her fae nature beginning to bleed through. Her forgotten pint of Ben and Jerry’s fell to its side on the floor as she stood, spilling ice cream everywhere. She ignored it, advancing on me.

“This is my fault. I know it’s my fault. I should never have let you get so comfortable. You started thinking of me as harmless. I’m safe. I’m the monster at the end of the book, the one that you run to when the bigger monsters start threatening to eat you, but that’s not right, Toby, that’s not right, you forget yourself. You forget me. I am the scariest thing that has ever gone bump in the night. I am what you knew, at the bottom of your unformed child’s heart, was lurking in the back of your closet. And what I am telling you, right here and right now, is that you need to leave, because I am afraid of what will happen if you don’t.”

I stared at her, fighting the urge to take a step backward. Something told me that retreating would mean showing weakness, and showing weakness would be a mistake. “I’m not scared of you. If you were going to kill me, you’d have done it a long time ago, and it wouldn’t have been over a yes or no question.”

“Toby.” She said my name gently, and with a deep, centuries-long sorrow. “Who the fuck said I needed you to be afraid of me?” She took another step forward, dropping her voice to a whisper: “Run.”

I stared at her for a moment before groping behind me until I found Quentin’s hand. I trusted Tybalt to run, but Quentin . . . he was even closer to the Luidaeg than I was. If I was having trouble with this, he was going to be staggered. My fingers closed around his.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

Then I turned and ran, dragging my squire down the hall with me as I fled from the woman who had become one of my staunchest and most trusted allies. I expected to hear things breaking, or worse, the sounds of pursuit, but all that followed us was the unmistakable sound of the Luidaeg sobbing like her heart was broken. It took everything I had to wrench the door open and keep going, rather than turning back to help her.

The door waited to slam until all three of us were standing in the alley, which was blanketed by a thick fog that should have burned off long since. We stood frozen, staring at each other, until Quentin asked in a small voice, “What happened?”

“I think . . . I think I found a loophole,” I said. I sounded shell-shocked, like I’d just been through something much worse than a run down a short hallway. “She shouldn’t have been able to answer that last question. She shouldn’t have been able to tell me that it was someone I knew. That’s why she threw us out.”

“If she violated the geas, however accidentally, there may be consequences,” said Tybalt, dawning horror in his tone. “She was moving us out of the line of fire.”

“We have to help her,” said Quentin.

“Yeah, we do, and that means finding a way back into the line of fire. We need to know more about what we’re dealing with here.” I turned and started walking toward the car, digging my phone out of my pocket as I went. Much as I hated cell phones, they had their uses. The name I needed was halfway down my contact list.

It was the middle of the day, an hour when all good fae were snug in their beds like happy little monsters. My call went straight to voicemail. I hung up and called again. It went to voicemail again. I hung up and called a third time. We had reached the car by then; I unlocked the doors and peered into the backseat while I waited for an answer.

This time, I got it. “Hello?” Li Qin sounded groggy and half-aware, which made sense, given that I’d probably just hauled her out of a sound sleep.

“Li Qin, hi. I need a Library pass.”

“Toby?” The grogginess faded, replaced by confusion. “Titania’s teeth, Toby, it’s barely past noon. What’s going on?”

January had been Sylvester’s niece before she was Li Qin’s wife. Trusting that this meant I didn’t need to explain the whole tangled history of the Torquills to her, I said, “Simon’s back.”