“I would be offended, but if you feel anywhere near as hungry as I do, your question is reasonable. Yes, I can disguise myself. Can you?”
“I can.” My illusions have never been great, courtesy of me having none of Titania’s blood in me at all, but anger has always made them stronger. Anger fuels me in a way that all the training in the world never could. And I was so, so angry.
Angry at Amandine, for stealing Tybalt and Jazz in order to get her own way; for never being there for me when I needed her, until she was more adversary than parent. Angry at Sylvester, for keeping secrets from me for so long that I had never been able to understand why my mother held herself so distant. If he had been open with me, I might have been able to heal the rifts between us—me and my mother, me and him—before they got so vast they became unbridgeable. Angry at August, for running off on a fool’s errand. She had been older when she disappeared than I was now, but she had been cared for, cosseted, and hadn’t learned the most important lesson of being a hero: she hadn’t learned that sometimes it was less about what you could do, and more about who could help you do it.
Most of all, though, I was angry at myself. So much of this mess was mine. I hadn’t been the one to make it, but I’d been the one to keep saying “later, later,” like anything ever really waited until later to become a problem. I could have gone looking for Mom, to try to make things right between us: I hadn’t. I could have made more of an effort to fix things with Sylvester: I hadn’t. I could have asked Acacia what she was doing about the Riders, or asked the Luidaeg to help me find Officer Thornton. I hadn’t. All my chickens were coming home to roost, and while I didn’t want them, I had earned them. I had earned them, every one.
When I finished gathering my anger, I tucked the unlit candle into my jacket pocket. Hands now free, I raked my fingers hard through the air and snagged the fabric of the magic that had risen around me, responding to my obvious need. I shook it once, hard, and layered it over me like a veil, tamping it down until my ears itched and the scent of cut-grass and copper sizzled in the air.
The smell of smoke and rotten oranges rose to my side, underscored by a thin layer of mulled cider. Simon’s original magical signature was struggling to reassert itself, fighting through the rot to reclaim its place in the makeup of his magic. I still didn’t know how his magic could have changed, or how it was beginning to change back. Everything about it was a mystery to me.
Our spells solidified and burst at the same time, leaving two apparently human individuals behind: me, with the colorless brown hair I once had naturally, before my shifting blood began acting as a magical highlighting session, him, with his usual fox-red hair, but with hazel eyes and blunter, kinder features. Cast as human, Simon Torquill was no longer a knife of a man, primed to cut out the hearts of anyone who looked at him. Instead, he was softer, more reasonable, the kind of man who seemed more likely to buy you a cup of coffee than enchant you forever.
He looked me up and down, and smiled a little. “I almost recognize you better this way,” he said. “It’s clear you based your human face off the one you used to wear.”
“Yeah, well, that was the face I expected to have for my entire life, and illusions don’t come easy to me, so I figured I’d go with what worked.” As if to remind me how hard illusions really were, a low throbbing started behind my temples. This wasn’t my best kind of magic, and if I was going to persist in doing it, I was going to pay.
I could at least make the bill a little lower. I swept my hand through the air, dismissing the illusion on the alley. The scent of cut-grass and copper grew stronger as the illusion fell apart around us, showering down with the sweet, bright scent of magic released. The ache backed off. Not enough. Still, it might see me staying on my feet until I could get something into my stomach and make the next stages of our journey easier to handle.
Simon was looking at me, half concerned and half calculating. “Where next?” he asked.
“The Babylon Road wouldn’t have dropped us here if August hadn’t been here,” I said. “It’s too close to dawn for me to pick up her trail—assuming it’s still here to find.” Up until this point, I’d been following August through purely fae realms, places where dawn and its destructive cleansing force never reached. Magic could linger there for decades. Here . . .
The mortal world has a way of eroding even the most powerful spells in a matter of days. Whatever trail August had left was likely to be long, long gone.
“So food.”
“Food,” I agreed. It felt almost traitorous to be thinking about my stomach when my people were in danger, but I wasn’t going to do them any good if I collapsed from hunger. Tybalt would want me to eat.
Tybalt would want to be eating with me, not leaving me alone with Simon Torquill, but we can’t have everything in this world. For the moment, I’d settle for a breakfast burrito and a glass of orange juice to help me keep this headache at bay.
If you’re looking for a good burrito in San Francisco at any time of the day or night, the Mission District is the place to be. I led Simon up a few blocks to one of the many taquerias dotting Valencia Street. They were just unlocking the doors, and we were the first customers through. I was opening my mouth, preparing to give my usual order, when Simon turned to the man behind the counter and said something in amiable, flawless Spanish.
The man he had addressed looked surprised before responding in kind, and that was that: the two of them were off and running, chattering away like old friends. Simon gestured to me and said something, and the man laughed, nodding. I smothered a scowl. Whatever was going on here, it seemed to be going well, and all I was going to do was complicate things.
Then Simon reached for his pocket, presumably to pull out his wallet. I grabbed his wrist. He froze, looking startled, and I realized he hadn’t been expecting me to willingly touch him. Not so soon after he’d been woken up; maybe not ever.
“My treat,” I said, through gritted teeth.
Simon’s look of surprise deepened, but he relaxed his hand, making it clear that he wasn’t going to fight me on this. “As you like,” he said.
Whatever he’d ordered for us came shy of twenty dollars. I paid with a crumpled bill from the inside pocket of my jacket, silently grateful for my policy of never using imaginary money with local businesses. Yeah, sometimes fairy gold is the only way out of a tight situation, but I’ve been the one who counts the drawers on the graveyard shift. No one’s getting fired because I wanted to turn some leaves into cash more than I wanted to buy generic.