She sounded tired, and annoyed, and a little bit glad to hear from me, although she would never admit it. She sounded, in short, normal, and somehow, that was the last straw. The dam broke and I started to cry, great, racking sobs that shook my entire body. Quentin looked alarmed. Raj looked embarrassed, like this was something he wasn’t supposed to see. May . . .
May looked relieved. She wasn’t the only person crying anymore.
“Toby?” The weariness dropped away from the Luidaeg’s voice in an instant, replaced by confusion and a small amount of dread. “October, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”
“M-Mom,” I managed, before I started sobbing again. It felt like once I’d started, I couldn’t figure out how to stop.
There was a long pause. Finally, the Luidaeg said, “She’s not dead. I would know, if she were dead. What did she do to you?”
I couldn’t answer. My tongue seemed three sizes too large for my mouth. The Luidaeg sighed.
“Fine. Tell your kitty-cat to come and get me, and you can explain in person. I swear on Dad’s guts, October, I wouldn’t go to half this much trouble for most—”
“He can’t.”
“What?”
“He can’t come and get you. Because she took him.” I took a shuddering breath, not bothering to wipe the tears from my cheeks. “She came here, she came into my home, under the auspices of my own hospitality, and she took him, Luidaeg, she took Tybalt.” May was looking at me, stricken. I amended, “Jazz, too. She’s using them as collateral.”
“Collateral for what?”
“She wants me to find my sister.”
There was a long pause before the Luidaeg said, almost hesitantly, “She wants you to find August?”
“Unless I have another sister out there that I don’t know about.” I paused. The urge to ask the Luidaeg whether I had another sister was almost overwhelming. The trouble was, the Luidaeg was bound by a complex web of geasa that kept her from answering everything I asked even as they prevented her from lying, and more, could bring this whole conversation to a halt if I asked the wrong thing. Much as I wanted to know, I couldn’t afford to get distracted. I resumed: “She named August specifically. She wants me to find her, and when I said ‘no,’ she took Tybalt and Jazz to make sure I’d do it.”
“I’d ask you why you tried to defy her, but I’ve met you, so I don’t need to ask, and anyway, it wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference. Amy would have taken prisoners just to make sure you wouldn’t let yourself get distracted. So if you’re beating yourself up, you need to cut that shit out and focus on what matters.”
I glanced at May, who was watching me with wide and worried eyes. “May said pretty much the same thing. That Mom would have taken them no matter what.”
“We ruined Amy. We didn’t mean to, but done is done, and we can’t take it back now. She doesn’t know how to be refused.” The Luidaeg sighed. “Fuck, Toby, I’m sorry. What do you want from me?”
“I want you to help me.”
“I can’t.”
Somehow, that wasn’t a surprise. It hurt all the same. “Why not?”
“Because she’s my sister. No matter what she may have done to you or anyone else, I can’t stand against her. Not without breaking rules I don’t even have names for. More than that, though, she is our father’s daughter. If she faced me on the sea, or even near it, I’d win. On her ground, on her terms? There’s no guarantee. She might be able to defeat me.”
That was a chilling thought. I shoved it aside as best as I could, asking, “So what am I supposed to do? She has my people—and she didn’t tell me how long she’d keep them. Do I have three days? A week? What’s my time limit?”
The Luidaeg chuckled, dark and mirthless and terrifying. It was the laughter of a woman being led to the gallows, already knowing what comes next. “Oh, October. Sometimes I forget how young you are. Don’t you understand? We say ‘three days’ or ‘a week’ or ‘in a fortnight’s time’ because otherwise, we would never stop.”
I went colder than I already was. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying Amandine doesn’t care about anything as petty as time. She didn’t tell you how long you had because she’s planning to keep them forever. Bring August back to her, and she’ll return her hostages. She took the shifters—may I assume they weren’t in their human shapes when she left?”
“No. She forced them to transform, and then she put them in cages.”
Raj hissed at that, his lips drawing back to reveal teeth that were larger and sharper than the human norm, and larger and sharper than they’d been only a few seconds before.
“There’s your answer. Amy always did like pets. She’ll keep them as long as she has a use for them, and when she breaks them—and make no mistake, she will break them—she’ll say she’d forgotten they were originally fae, and not just vermin. No one will believe her, but that won’t matter. She’ll be above reproach.”
“I have to save them.”
“You do. But I can’t help you.”
“So who can?”
“Talk to the people who remember August. The people who knew her before she went missing. Maybe one of them will be able to do something.”
I paused. “I need to ask you something, and I need you not to get angry with me.”
“For Dad’s sake, Toby . . .” The Luidaeg sighed again, angrily this time, like she couldn’t believe I was making her say this. “No. I don’t know where August is. I’ve never known where August was. If I did, I would have told Simon when he came to me, and I would never have let him do what he did in the name of saving his daughter. I may be a monster, but I know the meaning of mercy. Now go and bring your people home.”
The line went dead. I slowly lowered the phone. My tears were drying on my cheeks, leaving itchy trails behind. I stood frozen, not wiping them away. Not doing anything.
“Well?” said May, finally.
“I know what we have to do,” I said.
Oak and ash preserve me, but I didn’t want to. And I didn’t have a choice.
FIVE
“THIS IS A TERRIBLE idea,” said May.
“I know,” I agreed, and kept my eyes on the road.
We were rocketing toward Pleasant Hill at what would have been an unsafe speed even without the don’t-look-here spell I’d asked Quentin to throw over the car. As it was, if I let my attention veer for a second, somebody was going to get seriously injured, and it probably wasn’t going to be me. Predawn traffic is vicious in the Bay Area, as commuters try to beat the rush to work, and succeed only in moving commute hours earlier every year. Luckily for us, we were going against the grain. Getting back into San Francisco was a nightmare for later.
It had taken us less than ten minutes to get out of the house and on the road, which was a record I might have been proud of under other circumstances. As it was, those ten minutes had felt like ten too many. We would have gone faster, but leaving without grabbing weapons, supplies, and my leather jacket had been out of the question. I didn’t know when we’d be coming back. I wasn’t going out there unarmed. Not when Tybalt’s life was at stake.