August’s eyes widened. “Mama. Where is she? What have you done to her?” She began to struggle against the tape again, harder this time, like she thought she could somehow change the laws of physics. The smell of smoke and roses filled the air, strong enough that I could pick it up even with my currently dulled senses.
“Blood magic doesn’t work on duct tape, and since you’ve dialed my fae heritage down so far that you can hardly get a hook on it, I’m pretty sure persuasion spells don’t currently work, either,” I said. “If you’re thinking about making yourself look like someone I love so I’ll untie you, I’d skip it. Fairy ointment. I’ll see through any illusions you cast.”
August looked utterly betrayed. “But you’re a changeling,” she said. “You can’t beat me. It’s not allowed.”
I glanced at Simon. “So, bigotry, that’s fun. She get that from you, or from our mother?”
“A bit of both,” he said, looking deeply uncomfortable. “It was a different time when she was born. It was still possible to live a long and happy life without ever crossing paths with the mortal world.”
“Right.” Excuses didn’t change the fact that my sister was looking at me like a misbehaving dog: something to be disciplined and, if necessary, put down. I frowned at her. “Where’s Quentin?”
“Who?”
“My squire. Bronze hair, lives here, probably wasn’t too thrilled to find you in his house?” That was a mild way of putting it. Quentin is in some ways even more territorial than me. He doesn’t want people in his home uninvited. Ever.
August blinked before offering me a slow, syrupy smile. “The boy’s important to you, is he? Unbind me and I’ll tell you where he is.”
“Nope,” I said. “Not going to happen. But I appreciate you confirming that he’s in the house and alive. Simon? Watch her.” I turned on my heel and stalked out of the kitchen before I could think better of leaving Simon to watch his daughter.
He’d been looking for her for so very, very long. When I had seen my own daughter after our separation, all I had wanted to do was hold her, to gather her close and never let her go. The urge to do the same had to be eating him alive. But August didn’t even know who he was, couldn’t know until we found a way to get her path home back from the Luidaeg. If he untied her, we would lose her, and I wasn’t sure how many more times we could run her to ground before time ran out or one of us was seriously hurt. Or both. Both was always on the table.
The house was quiet. The air had that slow, dusty smell that spoke to hours left unoccupied, rooms left to settle deeper and deeper into stillness. Quentin was likely to have started by going to the kitchen—he was a teenage boy, with a teenager’s appetite and a fondness for bedtime snacks—and then made his way toward his bedroom. Since he wasn’t in the kitchen, I stuck my head into the living room long enough to be sure I hadn’t missed him, and then started up the stairs.
It was funny, in its own sad way. When I had first returned from the pond, I would have sworn I was never going to have a home to call my own again. I would live somewhere, because everyone has to live somewhere, but that place wouldn’t be my home. There’s more to home than just walls that don’t fall down and a roof that doesn’t leak. There’s commitment, and comfort, and the knowledge that even if you have to leave today, you can come home tomorrow, because home will wait. Home waits.
Somewhere between Quentin showing up on my doorstep with a message from Sylvester and today—somewhere in all the years and miles between us and that moment—I had found my own way home. He was a large part of what had helped to get me there. Quentin would have to leave eventually, going back to Toronto to finish learning how to be High King of the Westlands. That didn’t matter. He would always have a home in California, with me, because without him, I might not have been able to find my way.
Cagney met me at the top of the stairs. Lacey, her sister, was nowhere to be seen. She creaked when she saw me, the rusty, back-of-throat sound that served her in place of a meow. Both my cats were perfectly ordinary Siamese mixes from the humane society, and they were getting old. Nothing will ever stop that from happening, sadly.
“I know,” I said, in response to her creaking. “Do you know where Quentin is?”
Cagney gave me a disgusted look and twitched her tail before getting up and stalking back toward my bedroom, where all her favorite napping spots were.
Quentin wouldn’t be in there. Quentin never went into my room if he could help it, claiming it was haunted by all the times Tybalt and I had heartlessly had sex while my impressionable young squire was in the house. Since he hadn’t been sprawled in the hallway or on the stairs, I was assuming August had managed to sneak up on him somehow. I kept moving, pausing only when I reached his bedroom door.
It was open a crack. I reached out, barely breathing, and pushed it open the rest of the way.
Despite being a teenager, Quentin had always kept his room so clean and well organized that it was surreal. There was a place for everything, and everything was in its place, down to the corkboards on the walls and the banners advertising a variety of hockey teams that I had never heard of in any other setting. There was a large framed poster for a band called Great Big Sea hanging above the bed.
Quentin, on the other hand, was in the bed, flat on his face on top of the covers, hands clasped behind his back like they were tied. I squinted, and the fairy ointment showed me the glitter of an illusion in the air around him, something he hadn’t cast himself.
Illusions can do more than just confuse. They can imprison, if they’re strong enough. I crossed the room and rolled him onto his back. His eyes rolled wildly, and his mouth moved like he was trying to speak but couldn’t. I smiled wanly.
“Hey, kid,” I said. “Hold tight. I’ll be right back—and by the way, this is going to suck.” This dire pronouncement delivered, I trotted out of the room and down the hall to my own bedroom, where the weapons I wasn’t currently carrying were stored.
Fun fact about being a changeling: the more human someone is, the more easily they can stand the touch of iron, which degrades and destroys magic on contact. There was a time when I could carry an iron knife at my hip with no damage to myself. It had been a gift. I still had it. The box that kept its effects from reaching me was lined with yarrow twigs and silk. I undid the box, moved the shielding away, and wrapped my fingers around the hilt. It fit perfectly. It always had.
Sometimes it’s strange to think about how much I’ve left behind in the process of learning who I want to be. Iron knives aren’t an everyday part of my life anymore. But sometimes we have to go back to move forward. The knife clutched firmly in my hand, I left the room and walked back to where Quentin waited.
His eyes widened when he saw and recognized the knife. Up until then, I think he’d been taking my darker hair and softer features as some sort of illusion that I hadn’t bothered, for whatever reason, to dismiss.