Ashes of Honor od-6

by Seanan McGuire

  “Like riding the blood all the way to a death?” I asked.

  The Luidaeg looked up, meeting my eyes, and nodded. “It would be a lot like that. The nature of the connection is similar. Quentin would probably bounce back. You, on the other hand…there are downsides to being what you are.”

  I shuddered. I couldn’t help it. Blood magic is always dangerous; maybe that’s why there are so few races in Faerie that specialize in it. Water magic, sure. Flower magic, why not? But blood magic? That’s the sort of thing that can get you killed. I should know. It’s come close to killing me, more than once.

  “I’m not going to get her memories, am I? Because that would be a little bit distracting. Puberty was annoying enough the first time.”

  “No. We’d need an actual sample of her blood for that.” The Luidaeg opened both jars of sludge. One, she poured into her teacup. The other, she dumped into a large ceramic mixing bowl that looked like it was made sometime in the 1970s. “This is the best I can do without having her on hand.”

  “Which would make this whole thing unnecessary,” muttered Quentin. I glanced toward him. He winced a little, looking apologetic. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said the Luidaeg. She reached into a second cabinet and pulled out several jars of spices, all of which she uncapped and began dumping into the bowl. “You don’t have to drink this shit.”

  “We don’t?” asked Quentin and I, in relieved unison.

  The Luidaeg snorted. “Not this time. Once in a while, I make things you don’t need to ingest.” She pulled a wooden spoon from the jar next to the stove, beginning to stir the increasingly vile-looking paste. “Besides, it would probably kill you if you put it in your mouth.”

  “You never lose sight of how important it is to be reassuring, do you?” I raked my hair back with one hand, eyeing the gunk. “If we don’t drink it, what do we do with it?”

  “You carry it.” The Luidaeg gave the paste one last stir before holding her hand out toward me and saying, imperiously, “Give me your arm.”

  Long experience has taught me that when the Luidaeg demands part of my anatomy, I’m going to be bleeding soon after. Still. It’s not like I wasn’t going to wind up bleeding anyway, given the way my life usually goes, and Chelsea was in trouble. If the Luidaeg needed some of my blood before we could find her, she could have it. I stuck out my right arm.

  The Luidaeg grasped my wrist, gently turning my arm until my palm was facing toward the ceiling. Still gentle, she pushed up the sleeve of my leather jacket, revealing the skin. I grimaced. She glanced up at me.

  “Still don’t like the sight of blood, do you?”

  “Not really.”

  “You know, there are times when I could slap Amy for what she did to your head.” The comment was made without malice. For the Luidaeg, slapping my mother just made sense. Then she bent her head, pressed her lips against my wrist, and bit down. Hard. Her teeth had looked entirely human when she was talking, but now, feeling them break my skin, I would have been willing to swear that she had a mouthful of shark’s teeth. I grimaced, fighting the urge to start swearing.

  “Toby?” Quentin sounded concerned. “You okay?”

  “I’m good, I’m cool, I love it when people chew holes in me.” I glared at the top of the Luidaeg’s head. “Haven’t you drawn blood yet? It feels like you’re about to start leaving tooth marks on the bone.”

  The Luidaeg chuckled—an unnerving noise in and of itself—before lifting her head, smiling at me with bloody lips, and turning to spit a mouthful of blood into her bowl. I slapped my left hand over the wound before I could accidentally catch a glimpse of the damage. It would heal. These days, all my wounds heal. That didn’t mean I wanted to see it.

  “This should just about do it,” she said, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that my blood was dripping down her chin. She stirred the paste again. The herbs-and-slime mixture changed from green to a deep, almost-black shade of red. “Quentin, go to my room and look in the top drawer of my bedside table. There should be a purple velvet box. Bring it here.”

  “Okay,” said Quentin. Turning, he left the kitchen.

  The Luidaeg tensed, waiting to hear his footsteps fade. Then she turned to me, speaking quickly and quietly as she said, “This is bad, Toby. You got that, right? This is very, very bad.”

  “I thought you made that pretty clear.”

  “No. Not clear enough.” She shook her head. “If you don’t find her soon, she’s going to start opening doors, and she’s not going to be able to stop. Those doors want to be open, and they’ll force her to keep on going. Killing her won’t undo the damage she has the potential to cause. If she opens a door all the way to the Heart of Faerie, it won’t close. The Heart wants people. It’s lonely. And that means it’s going to try to pull her toward it.”

  I frowned. “I’m guessing that would be bad?”

  She gave me an indulgent look, the kind adults give to children who think they’re smarter than they are. “Purebloods make knowes, Firstborn make worlds…what did you think my parents made?”

  “They made Faerie,” I said.

  “They did. And Faerie misses us.” She shook her head. “If Chelsea’s powers get all the way out of her control, she’ll punch a hole straight through to where Faerie was born, and then Dad help us all. You have to stop her.”

  “And if I can’t?”

  “Only blood will close a hole that deep—more blood than a body has to spare. Even yours, October. Someone will have to die. Stop her before things go that far.”

  “I’ll do my best.” This wasn’t my first kidnapping case, not by a long shot. It was the first one where I’d been told that I would have to kill the kid if I couldn’t retrieve her safely.

  “Good.” The Luidaeg straightened a little, smiling toward the kitchen door. “That’s the box I meant! Bring it over here, kiddo, and we’ll see about getting you two back on the road.”

  Quentin looked quizzically at us as he walked over to put the velvet box down on the counter next to the bowl of gunk. “What were you two talking about?”

  “How we were going to get back on the road,” I said quickly. The Luidaeg can’t lie. Thankfully, I don’t share her limits. “The car’s been crushed, and Etienne’s with Sylvester.”

  “We can call Danny,” Quentin suggested.

  “We may have to.”

  The Luidaeg opened the box, pulling out two small glass spheres. They looked solid until she tapped them with the tip of her index finger. Then they opened like four-petaled flowers, becoming unusually shaped bowls. The Luidaeg spoke as she worked, saying, “I know stupidity comes naturally to you, but this isn’t the time for it. You can take my car.”

  I blinked. “You have a car?”

  “Yes, I have a car. I don’t drive much, but how did you think I got out to Half Moon Bay before I met you? I sure as shit didn’t fly. I don’t have the figure for it.” She scooped about a half-teaspoon of gunk into each of the glass bowls, checking to be sure the amounts matched. Then she tapped the “petals” again, and they closed seamlessly. “The car’s parked at the back of the alley, under a don’t-look-here. Keys are next to the front door. Don’t scratch the paint.”

  Considering what the Luidaeg did when she liked us, I didn’t want to think about what she’d do if we managed to damage her property. “If you’re sure…” I said.

  “I don’t make offers when I’m not sure.” She lifted the glass spheres to eye level and blew on each one, just once, gently. The gunk inside dissolved, replaced by tiny piles of gleaming red sand, flecked with flakes of gold and black. “Here.”

  She held the spheres out toward us. I let go of my wrist to reach for mine. My skin was still bloody—no surprise there—but the wound made by the Luidaeg’s teeth was gone. That was never going to stop being creepy.

  Quentin squinted at his sphere and asked, “What does it do?”

  “It finds Chelsea. You need to take it somewhere she’s been.
That will let it attune to the scent of her magic—just don’t get it near any other recent Tuatha portals. After that, it will start pulling you in the direction of her most recent door. If you’re lucky, she’ll still be there when you arrive.”

  “So it’s like the candle?” The Luidaeg made me a magic candle when I went into Blind Michael’s lands for the first time. It helped me find the children he’d stolen. It also got wax everywhere, but that was a necessary evil.

  “Same principle, different execution,” said the Luidaeg. “If you find Chelsea—when you find Chelsea—hand her the spheres. That’ll break the connection and keep you from getting hit with any backlash. If she dies before you can get her to take them…”

  “It’ll hurt. Gotcha.” I tucked the sphere into my pocket. Quentin did the same with his. “If that’s all, then we should probably—”

  My phone rang.

  The Luidaeg’s expression went blank. “You should answer that,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  Frowning a little, I pulled out my phone and flipped it open. “Hello?” My eyes widened. “Bridget, calm down. What did you say?”

  Chelsea’s mother took a shaky breath, and repeated, “Chelsea just called me. She said she was at a pay phone in Seattle.”

  Oh, oak and ash. “Is she still there? I can go pick her up.” Etienne would be able to take me. Even if that was normally farther than he could jump, he’d find a way to take me, for her.

  “No. She said she couldn’t control where she was going anymore. People took her!”

  “From the phone in Seattle?”

  “No! On her way home! Are you listening to me?!”

  I took a breath, counting to five before I said, “Yes, Bridget, I’m listening. I just need to know exactly what’s going on. Did she say anything about the people who took her?”

  “That they want to open a door! A door where? What’s going on?” Her voice, never calm, was beginning to take on an edge of genuine hysteria. “Where is my daughter?!”

  “I don’t know. But we’re going to find her. We—”

  “Why aren’t you finding her?!”

  “We’re doing the best that we can. Bridget, I just need you to stay calm, and—” I was talking to the air. Bridget had hung up.

  I snapped the phone closed, looking toward Quentin. “We have to go.”

  “Yes, you do,” said the Luidaeg. “And Toby?”

  “Yeah?”

  She looked at me grimly, her pupils expanding until her eyes were black from side to side. “Hurry.”

  NINE

  THE LUIDAEG’S DON’T-LOOK-HERE POPPED as we approached the car, leaving the scent of brackish water hanging in the air. We were short on time. I knew that; Quentin knew that; we still took a moment to stand there and look at the car, trying to wrap our minds around it.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d expected the Luidaeg to drive; it was a toss-up between something battered and semi-destroyed or something utterly classic, Christine as driven by a badass water demon from the dawn of human history. I was sure of one thing: I wasn’t expecting a green Honda Civic. It looked like something a soccer mom would drive. It looked like something I would have been driving, if I’d stayed part of Gillian’s life long enough to wind up taking her to dance recitals and school plays.

  “Do you know how to drive this?” Quentin asked. “It looks, you know. Antique.”

  “Quentin, you didn’t own a pair of pants with a zipper until you were fifteen. You didn’t have reliable access to cable television until you moved in with me. Your wardrobe consists mostly of tunics.” I unlocked the car as I spoke. Giving Quentin a hard time might be good for both of us, emotionally, but it wasn’t going to get us to Berkeley any faster. That was where we were most likely to find the doors we needed to attune the Luidaeg’s charms.

  “So you’re saying I shouldn’t call other people’s cars antique?”

  “I’m saying that no one who grew up in a live-action Tolkien novel gets to call cars from 1998 antiques.”

  Quentin smirked and got into the car. “Yes, sir.”

  “Damn straight.”

  Some of the influence of the Luidaeg’s don’t-look-here spell must have been clinging to the car; there was plenty of traffic, but it got out of our way with an ease that was frankly eerie. Quentin played with the radio while I drove. For some reason, it didn’t get anything but a Canadian folk music channel and three stations playing hits from the 1940s and 1950s. I expected him to complain. Instead, he announced, “I love this song!” as the band on the Canadian station started singing enthusiastically about boats, and proceeded to sing along.

  “Weirdo,” I said.

  “Canadian,” he replied. His stomach growled. “Hungry Canadian. We still haven’t eaten.”

  “Believe me, I noticed. I’m the one who had to bleed for the Luidaeg’s latest special project, remember? As soon as we get these things attuned to Chelsea, we’ll hit the nearest drive-through and buy a sack of breakfast sandwiches. Okay?” Breakfast sandwiches and coffee. I wasn’t going to do anyone any good if I fell asleep at the wheel and drove into a tree.

  “Okay,” said Quentin.

  I tossed him my cell phone. “Here. Call Walther. Let him know we’re coming back to Berkeley. We don’t need a picture anymore, but if he can mix anything that would work as a temporary, nonharmful magic suppressant, I’d love to hear about it.” If we could shut down Chelsea’s ability to open doors for a little while, maybe we’d be able to catch her before she gated herself away. And if whoever took her was on her trail, well…

  I felt sorry for them. I was cranky, I was tired, I needed caffeine, and people who kidnap teenage girls piss me off. Call it my way of working through residual anger issues from when Raysel grabbed my daughter, but if I got my hands on Chelsea’s kidnappers, they were going to learn that I don’t play nicely with people who mess with kids.

  Quentin dialed Walther’s number and must have reached him, because a few seconds later, he identified himself and started explaining the situation. I tuned him out, focusing on the road instead of my squire. I knew I didn’t need to monitor him. If you’d asked me three years ago whether I would trust my status updates to a teenage boy, I would have looked at you as if you were insane. These days, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

  Besides, we were crossing the Bay Bridge, and I’ve always been a little paranoid about that particular stretch of road. Something about being on a giant iron structure suspended over the water rubs me the wrong way.

  “Toby?” Quentin lowered the phone. “Walther wants to know how long the power damper needs to work.”

  “I don’t know. Long enough for us to keep Chelsea from turning the fabric of the universe into pudding. An hour? A day?”

  “Got it.” He relayed this to Walther. There was a pause before he lowered the phone again, and said, “He can do a year if you don’t want it to hurt her. That’s sort of the minimum. Anything that doesn’t last as long will probably mess her up pretty bad at the same time.”

  A year was a long time to strip someone of her magic. On the other hand…if Chelsea decided to become human, she wasn’t going to have magic anymore, no matter what. If she chose to become fae, a year wouldn’t matter one way or the other. “Tell him a year should be fine. Anything that lets us get close enough to her to make this stop.”

  “Okay.” He raised the phone again, and I returned my attention to the road. My cell phone landed in my lap less than a minute later. It bounced once before wedging itself between my knees. “He’s on it,” said Quentin.

  “Good. Did he say when we could pick it up?”

  “No. He just laughed and hung up on me.”

  I nodded. “Even better.” Working with me has had the unexpected side effect of teaching Walther that sometimes you not only don’t get sufficient time to prepare, you don’t get any time at all. I liked to tell myself it was good for him. It’s too easy for purebloods to get c
omplacent about time management—when you have forever, what’s the point of worrying about whether or not you’ll get your library books back on time?

  “You’re terribly hard on your allies,” commented Tybalt’s voice from the backseat. “It’s a wonder any of us remain willing to stand by you for more than a season of abuses.”

  I yelped, involuntarily jerking the wheel to the side. We swerved across two lanes of traffic, causing the cars around me to hit their brakes and horns practically in unison. Quentin shouted something I couldn’t make out over the mingled cacophony of the horns and my own steady swearing. I risked a glance in his direction. He was hanging onto the car’s “oh shit” handle so hard that his knuckles were white.

  “Really, October, am I worth this much fuss and bother?” asked Tybalt.

  “I am going to murder you!” I shouted. The car was mostly back under my control, but we were still straddling two lanes, and the drivers around us were still leaning on their horns so hard that it was hard to hear myself think.

  “Now that’s definitely overreacting,” said Tybalt. The scent of pennyroyal and musk filled the cab. I felt the weight of an illusion settle over us. Most of the horns stopped, possibly because the other drivers could no longer see our car.

  I got us back into one lane, hit the gas hard enough to send the car lurching forward, and risked looking away from the road long enough to glare at Tybalt in the rearview mirror. “What in the name of Oberon’s ass do you think you’re doing?” I demanded. Something else occurred to me, and I added, “And how did you do that? We’re in a moving car. How did you get here?”

  “Cars cast shadows,” said Tybalt. Then he sighed. It was a deep, exhausted sound, and it told me how much effort he had expended in shifting himself into his current position. “The Luidaeg may have provided some small measure of assistance,” he admitted. “I arrived at her domicile only a few minutes after your departure, and once I was able to impress the urgency of my errand upon her, she agreed to help me.”