My blood sang a song of magic and immortality and change in my veins as I pushed myself slowly, awkwardly to my feet. I still wasn’t what I had been, and I was still going to need the hope chest to give me the oomph I needed to put myself all the way back to normal, but I could breathe again. I reached up and pushed my hair aside, feeling the newly-sharpened point of my left ear. August had nudged me closer to the half-and-half that had been my default state for so many years. Not quite there, but . . . close.
When I looked up, she had her arms crossed and was glaring at me. Quentin was next to her. He wasn’t glaring. He wasn’t even looking my direction. All his attention was focused on August, and his hand was on the hilt of the knife at his hip.
If she thought she was in control here, she was going to be sorely surprised.
“Well?” she demanded. “Let’s move.”
“I miss being an only child,” I said, and started walking.
The swamp didn’t get much traffic, and while the ground was soft, it wasn’t swift to wipe our footprints away. The tracks of our earlier passage were still there, and following them was a simple matter. When the first glowing toadstools appeared, I looked back over my shoulder at August and said, “Mind your step. If you kick one of those, it’s night-night for all three of us, and I’d rather not deal with that at the moment.”
August sneered. “I know pixie traps when I see them. They’re pathetic, clumsy things. Anyone with eyes can spot them. What do you think I am, a changeling?”
The sound of ringing bells was our only warning before the pixies descended from the trees. They came in a single mighty flock, wings a chiming blur, bodies glowing in a hundred candied colors, like flying Christmas lights going on the attack. It was a relief to see them. It was even more of a relief to hear them. One of them buzzed past my cheek, so close that I felt a diminutive hand brush my skin before it joined the rest of the swarm in circling August.
They surrounded her in an instant, ringing and buzzing, feinting toward her face only to dart away again before her wildly swinging hands could hit them. August might be a pureblooded Dóchas Sidhe, but all the blood magic in the world couldn’t equip her to fight off a couple of hundred pissed-off pixies.
A scrap of purple light separated itself from the flock and came to hover in front of my face, resolving itself into Lilac. Her wings rang and her mouth moved, although I couldn’t hear what she was saying. She was too small, and too fae, while I, at the moment, was neither.
Oh, well. I knew from past experience that pixies could understand me, even when I couldn’t understand them. “Hi,” I said. “It’s me. October.”
August shrieked as the pixies buzzed too close to her eyes. Lilac bobbed in the air in front of me, wings ringing again, looking distressed.
I sighed. “Yeah, it’s a long story. That’s, uh. That’s Simon’s daughter. I’m taking her home to her mother. Could you maybe ask the rest of the flock to stop torturing her?”
An indignant ring.
“I know, she was saying some pretty shitty things, and I’m not going to pretend I’m not thrilled that you made her stop. But I need to get her back to Amandine before some people I care about get hurt. Can you call them off?”
Lilac rang again before buzzing off to join the rest of the flock in swarming around August. In a matter of seconds, they had stopped their circling and were rising into the air, taking up a hovering position just outside of arms’ reach.
“That’s great,” I said, while August bent forward, panting, to rest her hands against her knees. “I really appreciate you backing off.”
August raised her head, staring at me. “What are you saying?” she demanded. “They’re vermin.”
“See, that is one attitude I know you didn’t get from your father,” I said, as the pixies chimed warningly and flew in a slow spiral above her head—one that looked dismayingly like the mouth of a cyclone getting ready to touch down. If she wasn’t careful, she was going to find herself spat out in whatever the pixie version was of Oz. “Much as I’d like to leave you here and let them teach you the error of your ways, I need to get you to Mom before she does more damage than she already has. Are you ready to walk?”
“I’m ready to punish them!”
“And they’re ready to punish you.”
“For what?”
“For being a jerk.” I shrugged. Pixies landed on my shoulders and hair, ringing softly. “Pixies don’t like assholes. Who knew, right? Now come on.”
August glared as she straightened up and walked down the path to where Quentin and I waited. As she got closer, she switched her glare to the pixies in my hair. Wisely, she didn’t say anything.
The pixies chimed smugly. I got the feeling they didn’t like my brand-new sister any more than I did.
“Come on,” I said again, for lack of anything better or wittier to say, and resumed walking toward the edge of the swamp. The path turned gradually firmer under our feet, and the marsh grasses gave way to the twisted trees that had marked our way before. The pixies in my hair stayed put, their wings giving occasional small chimes, like the ringing of distant bells. I got the feeling they were keeping an eye on August, and I was fine with that. She was the sort of person who could do with some supervision.
Quentin stayed close. The farther we got from the Luidaeg’s door, the more August did the same, until she was walking close enough that our arms were almost touching. Her glare had finally faded, leaving her looking around with wide, hopeful eyes, and an expression on her face that made her look so brittle that I was afraid she’d shatter if I brushed against her.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“I remember this place,” she whispered. She didn’t look at me. “I used to come here with Papa. We’d pick berries and flowers, and sometimes I’d make him crowns and call him King of all Faerie, and he’d laugh and tell me that meant I was a princess. I remember this place.” She reached up to wipe away a tear on the verge of escaping her left eye. “I thought I’d dreamt it all. But I remember it, and now here it is. It’s real.”
For a moment, I felt painfully sorry for her. Sure, she was being awful, and sure, I might have been happier if I’d been able to keep her locked in the trunk of my car, but she was still my sister, and she was still a person who’d lost her home for a century, all because she’d made the wrong bargain, followed the wrong candle.
“Why did you do it?” I blurted. This time August did turn to look at me, brittleness giving way to confusion. I pressed on: “Why did you decide to go looking for Oberon? If the Luidaeg said it was a bad idea . . .”
“Mama said it was a bad idea, too,” said August, looking like she’d just bitten into a lemon. “She said heroism sounded too much like ‘hurt’ to be something any daughter of hers would do. She said she had made me a garden where I could bloom, and be safe and loved and beautiful forever.”