The Winter Long

THE HALLWAY WAS dark, although I couldn’t have said whether the lights were off or broken. The Luidaeg’s illusions were back at full strength, cloaking everything with filth and decay. I wanted to take that as a good sign—most people can’t maintain illusions when they’re dead—but this was the Luidaeg, and all bets were off. Maybe the clean, well-organized apartment she lived in was actually a horrible, rotting shell that she’d transfigured into something more livable, and now the transformation was falling apart. I didn’t know. The Luidaeg had never told me, and suddenly my lack of information felt like it could be the thing that got one or both of us seriously hurt.

The smell of blood was stronger now that we were inside, although it was still weak enough that I couldn’t be sure we were going in the right direction. I wasn’t even sure whether it belonged to the Luidaeg. I breathed in deeper, trying to confirm, and almost gagged on the smell of rotting wood and decaying fabric. No more deep breaths for me.

The carpet made nasty sucking sounds as we picked our way through the debris, making a silent approach impossible. Even Tybalt couldn’t move without making noise. That would normally have been a little reassuring, since I find Cait Sidhe stealth slightly unsettling under most circumstances. At the moment, I wished there were something I could do to muffle our steps. Anything that might have given us an advantage.

But there was nothing. We walked down the hallway to the living room, where the moonlight filtering in through the grime-smeared windows illuminated a level of chaos that was unusual even for the Luidaeg. Her coffee table had been smashed down the middle, reduced to a pile of splinters, and two moldering cushions from the couch were split open. Muddy stuffing and rotten feathers were scattered around the room. Cockroaches skittered around the edges of the walls, disturbed by our motion.

I stopped, motioning for Tybalt to do the same, and closed my eyes as I broke my promise to myself and took a deep breath of the cloying, fetid air. I was looking for the source of the blood I’d been smelling since the street, and maybe traces of a bloodline that didn’t belong to one of us. I was hoping for something that might lead us to whoever had done this, or maybe an early warning before someone dropped an illusion and attacked.

What I wasn’t expecting was the way the blood slapped me across the face, so strong that it nearly knocked me off my feet. I gasped before I could stop myself, stumbling backward as my eyes snapped open. Tybalt was there to catch me by the shoulders, steadying me and keeping me from landing on my ass on the Luidaeg’s floor.

“What is it?” he whispered, lips close to my ear.

“Blood,” I managed.

“So you’ve said,” he said. “What—”

But I had already turned my attention back to the room, swinging my head back and forth like a bloodhound seeking a scent until finally I found it and plunged forward, heedless of the trash and obstacles littering the floor. Let Tybalt watch my back; I needed to find the source of that blood. I needed to know if the Luidaeg was okay.

The smell of blood led me to the shredded couch, which was flipped over to create a smaller bubble of hidden space within the greater room. The Luidaeg was behind it, lying on the floor in a crumpled heap. Two more split cushions had fallen to cover her, mostly hiding her body under a veil of poly-foam blend stuffing. I threw them aside, almost grateful for the brief reek of mold that accompanied the motion. At least it was something to obscure the smell of blood, if only for an instant. The Luidaeg didn’t move.

The Luidaeg wasn’t okay.