“Sylvester used to say there wasn’t a heroic bone in my body,” said Simon. “I suppose I’d enjoy proving him wrong.”
“Mother preserve me,” muttered the Luidaeg, bowing her head for a moment. When she lifted it, her eyes were black. “Here is the cost of a candle, if a candle’s what you desire: I can’t close the way back, because you owe me, and I don’t give up on what’s mine. So I’ll give you what Amy didn’t. I’ll give you a deadline. Seven days out and seven days back, a fortnight to learn if you’re on the right track, and if by then your path’s not clear, you’ll come to me and stay a year.”
It took me an embarrassingly long time to hear the binding in the rhyming cadence of her words. They wove over and around us, tying themselves tight before I could protest. Not that I was going to. If this was the only way to get Tybalt and Jazz back—to bring August home—then it was what I was going to do.
“Fourteen days. At the end of it, you’ll have your sister, or you’ll be my servants, unable to deny or defy me, doing whatever I ask. All of you.” The Luidaeg held out her hand, palm upward. “Swear.”
“We swear,” said Simon, putting his hand in hers.
Either he didn’t recognize the danger, or he didn’t care. She dug her suddenly hooked nails into the back of his hand, raking the skin open and pinning him in place so he couldn’t pull away. Blood gushed from his wounds. Somehow, she grabbed hold of it, sculpting it like wax, until she was holding a long red taper streaked with bronze and gold.
“Mine required saltwater,” I said.
“Yours was kinder,” said the Luidaeg. She handed me the candle. The wick lit as soon as the wax touched my hand. “This will let you follow August’s trail, as long as you keep your feet pointed in the right direction. You have to follow her, or all is lost. Fourteen days, October.”
“We’ll find her,” I said.
“You’d better.”
Fog was starting to fill the room, swirling around me, smelling faintly of blood and ashes and cinnamon. The spell was taking hold. “Grab onto me,” I called to Simon and Quentin. “The Road’s opening.”
“You can get there and back by the candle’s light,” said the Luidaeg, and the fog came down, and she was gone, leaving the three of us alone in the unending gray.
THIRTEEN
“I SEEM TO BE BLEEDING quite a bit,” said Simon. He sounded pained. That was understandable. The back of his hand was so much raw meat, and it wasn’t like the Luidaeg had offered him an aspirin before she finished the spell. “I don’t suppose either of you has a bandage on you?”
“You’d think so, with as often as October gets herself hurt, but no,” said Quentin. “She heals too fast for bandages, and I’m pretty good about dodging before people cut me open.”
“The implied insult is taken as read,” said Simon. “If neither of you has a bandage, do you have a ribbon or other article that I can transform into one? I’m afraid I won’t do you much good if I pass out from blood loss.”
“Is this what it’s like hanging out with me?” I asked, looking at Quentin through the fog.
“Sort of,” he said. “You whine more. Also, you’d have lost a lot more blood and already be unconscious. Raj and I usually use that as an excuse to get something to eat while we wait for you to wake up.”
“Liar,” I said, and pulled the elastic band from my hair, offering it to Simon. “Will this work?”
“Better than nothing,” he said, and took it, muttering something under his breath. The smell of smoke and oranges rose, and when it dissipated again, it took some of the fog with it.
We were standing on what looked like the road out of a Gothic thriller: a narrow, hardpacked dirt trail winding through black, empty moors on all sides. The sky was still mostly obscured by clouds; what I could see was spangled with too-bright stars. It was like the air was no longer thick enough to break up their light, allowing it to shine down on us with the force of a halogen beam. It was bright enough that we could easily pick out every detail of the nothing that there was to see in every direction, at least when the fog wasn’t blocking everything.
Quentin was still taller than I was, and his hair was still bronze, rather than the dandelion gold it had been in childhood.
“Oh, thank Oberon,” I muttered, earning myself curious glances from both Quentin and Simon. “This is the Babylon Road. Last time the Luidaeg set me on it, I wound up regressing into childhood, because it was part of the price of passage. With Blind Michael gone, I guess the rules are different.”
Quentin looked horrified. “I forgot about that,” he said.
“Yeah, well, you were young enough at the time that the road didn’t mess with you the way it messed with me.” I raised my new candle, turning until the flame leaped up and brightened, telling me that it had found its equivalent of magnetic north. “This way.”
I started walking. The others followed. For a while, that was all we did. I walked, and they followed, and the moors unspooled around us without end, bisected by the dusty ribbon of the road.
After a time, I looked back at Simon. The smell of blood still hung in the air around him, bright and coppery, promising to tell me all his secrets, if I wanted to know them. I did. I wanted to know very badly. I didn’t want to know at all.
“Simon,” I said.
He lifted his head, looking at me. There was a wariness in his eyes. It occurred to me that there were a lot of unasked questions between us—questions that would change everything once I asked them. What did you do to Luna and Rayseline? Why did you leave them there for so long? What part of losing your child made you think it was right to be so cruel?
Those were questions for later, when I could afford to hate him without reservation. Right now, I needed to be able to tolerate him. So much depended on it.
“Why does the Luidaeg call you ‘failure’?” There: that was a safe enough question, if there was such a thing. There was too much bad blood and stony ground between us for any question to be truly safe. Everything could have consequences.
“Ah.” He sighed, relieved and regretful in the same breath. “She came to the wedding. Not in the form she wears from day-to-day. She looked like a Roane girl, with eyes the color of kelp and a smile like a breaking heart. People didn’t know then that Amy was Firstborn, you see, and so disguises were required, but I knew who she was, and Amy knew. She was the only one of Amy’s sisters to attend, or at least the only one I know of, and she made a toast after the ceremony. ‘All I ask is that you keep her safe, and grounded, and stay by her side,’ that’s what she said. I thought I could do all three. As it happens, I couldn’t do any of them.”
“What happened to August wasn’t your fault,” said Quentin.