The Winter Long

by Seanan McGuire

  She didn’t respond. I heard the front door slam. I kept doing chest compressions; I couldn’t think of anything else to do. There was a scuffing sound from the direction of the hall. I turned, hands still moving, to see May standing frozen in the kitchen doorway.

  “Toby . . . ?” she said.

  “Simon was here I thought it was Sylvester but it was Simon and he put me in a stasis spell only Jazz came in and he hit her I don’t know what he hit her with I think it was a transformation spell I broke the stasis but I wasn’t fast enough and now she won’t wake up!” The words tumbled out in a rush, undisciplined and wild.

  May stared at me for a split-second. Then, pulling herself together with an almost visible force of will, she walked over to kneel by Jasmine’s side, sliding her hands beneath mine and taking over the chest compressions before I could tell her not to. “You said you broke Simon’s spell. How did you do that?”

  “I . . . I don’t know.” It had just happened, too fast for me to really pay attention to anything beyond survival. “I just reacted. He was throwing another spell at me, and I knew I couldn’t let it hit me. I wouldn’t be able to help Jazz if he knocked me out or turned me into something.”

  “Instinct is a wonderful thing. It doesn’t care about the lies our parents told us, or the ones we tell ourselves.” May kept working. Her voice was unbearably calm; she sounded like an undertaker’s assistant preparing for the biggest job of her career. “We don’t have much time. Close your eyes, and listen to me.”

  “May—”

  “Oberon’s balls, Toby, close your eyes and listen to me.” The facade of calm broke on her last words, showing a vein of raw, terrified need beneath it. “She’s not breathing, okay? But she’s not dead. I know dead, and she’s not there yet. You can save her, but only if you listen. Only if you do exactly what I say. Please.”

  I gaped at her, and then closed my eyes, too dumbfounded to argue. I felt May pull her hands away as she stopped the chest compressions, and then her fingers closed around mine, pressing them to Jazz’s torso, so tight that they almost hurt.

  “What does Simon’s magic look like?”

  “It doesn’t look like anything. It’s magic. Magic is invisible. But it smells like smoke and rotten oranges.” Traces of it were still hanging in the kitchen air, turning it foul and horrible.

  “That’s just the surface. Look closer. What do you see?”

  I frowned, brows knotting together, and tried to concentrate on her question, rather than the deadly stillness of Jazz’s chest beneath my hands. Magic doesn’t look like anything, unless it’s the glitter of pixie dust or the wispy smoke that sometimes follows the Djinn. Magic is intangible, smells and sounds and flavors on the wind. Nothing that lasts. Nothing that makes a mark on the world around it. Simon’s magic was smoke and oranges, and it lingered in the throat like a bruise, but it was still transitory, just like everyone else’s.

  “Try harder,” May said sharply.

  Right. I screwed my eyes more tightly shut, trying to think. What does magic look like? What would Simon’s magic look like? The smell of it was horrible and rancid; it would have to look a lot like that, all slimy lines and angles—but sharp ones, precise and exact. He might be a bastard, but he was never sloppy. Gray-and-orange lines, twisted together into a tight, complicated net of knots and hidden snares that would catch you if you weren’t careful. The more I considered it, the more it seemed like I could see it, wrapped around the body under my fingers, pulsing with a sluggish, sickly light.

  Sounding distant now, May said, “You see it.” It wasn’t a question.

  I nodded slowly. The lines of it were getting brighter as I focused on them. “It’s like a web,” I said.

  “Where’s the weak spot, Toby? Every web has a weak spot.”

  That was easy. “Over the heart.”

  “Good.” She shifted my hands to the side, pressing them over Jazz’s heart. “You can see the weak spot, Toby. Now break it.”

  “What? May, I can’t—”

  “Break it.”

  There was no arguing with her tone. Wincing, I hunched down, and focused on the lines. I still wasn’t certain they were real, but they were brighter now, either because I was closer to them, or because I was achieving a state of serious delusion. The smell of my own magic was starting to rise around me, summoned by my tension. Oddly, the copper and cut grass smell of it just brought the lines into even clearer focus, making it harder to dismiss them as a fiction.

  “Let go,” I said.

  May pulled her hands away.

  Moving my fingers with careful deliberation, I slid them under the network of lines, hooking them into two of the knots. My head began to throb, the pain beginning at my temples and then radiating outward. The web lifted up with little resistance, almost clinging to my hands. I tugged until it was a few inches off Jazz’s body, and then pulled as hard as I could, forcing the strands apart until they reached their bearing limit. The throbbing in my head got worse as the smell of smoke, mixed with copper, sizzled in the air around us.

  The net snapped with a backlash that was only half physical, but which sent me tumbling backward, smacking my head hard against the kitchen floor. I groaned, as much from surprise as from pain, and lay still for a few seconds before pushing myself upright again, expecting to see May flung sobbing across her girlfriend’s body.

  I saw no such thing. May had pulled Jazz’s head into her lap and was stroking the other woman’s hair. She was crying, yes, but they were relieved tears; the smile on her face made that as plain as day.

  “Jazz?” I asked. The pain from my head’s introduction to the floor was fading. The pain from breaking Simon’s spell wasn’t. It was almost a relief to have my limits so clearly delineated.

  “She’s going to be okay,” said May. She looked up, smiling brilliantly. “If you can move, come over here.”

  If I could move? That didn’t sound encouraging. I moved my fingers carefully, and found they still responded to my commands. If anyone noticed that I had a headache—something I tend to telegraph by wincing a lot—I could blame it on my impact with the kitchen floor. Blunt force trauma excuses a lot of things. I got onto my hands and knees and crawled over to them.

  Jazz remained supine on the floor, eyes closed . . . but they were normal eyes, set in a normal face. What little I’d seen of her before I ripped the net away told me that this was a great improvement. I glanced downward. Thin red scabs ringed her neck, but the gills were gone. Her chest was moving normally, rising and falling in slow, shallow hitches as she breathed.

  “She’s alive?” I whispered.

  “She’s going to be fine,” said May, still smiling through her tears. “All you had to do was listen to me.”

  “But . . .” I pushed myself into a standing position, reeling a little as my head throbbed in time with the motion. “I don’t even know what I did.”

  “You know the trick with the dresses? The one where we’d take something the false Queen had transformed, and then you’d pull on the spell until it turned into something else?”

  I nodded. I quickly regretted the motion.

  May didn’t seem to notice. Her eyes were back on her girlfriend’s face. She was looking at Jazz like she was some sort of miracle. Considering what had just happened, maybe she was. “You finally figured out how to unravel fresh spells the same way you reweave them. That’s what you did. That’s what you did for me.”

  “. . . oh,” I said. I didn’t really understand, but I wasn’t sure that mattered. Jazz wasn’t going to die, and she wasn’t going to spend the next fourteen years of her life living in a fishpond. Those were the important things.

  “Thank you,” whispered May.

  Those words—those forbidden words—were enough to finally shock me out of my shock. I straightened. “I need to go,” I said.

  “Go? Go
where?”

  “Sylvester. He has to be told that Simon is back. He has to . . . I have to go.”

  “Wouldn’t it be faster to, you know, call him?”

  Yes: yes, it would have been faster. But I needed to see him. When I tried to picture Sylvester’s face, I kept seeing Simon’s instead, with those cold, hooded eyes staring at me, daring me to challenge him. I needed to see my liege. I needed to tell him what had happened, and let him put his arms around me and tell me that he would keep me safe this time. Even if it was a lie, it was a lie I needed.

  So I told a lie of my own. “They’re identical twins, May. He may have gotten into Shadowed Hills already; who would stop him?” I shook my head. “I need to go to Shadowed Hills. I can’t know I’m actually speaking to Sylvester unless I can taste his magic.”

  “At least take Quentin with you. He’s your squire.”

  I started to take a breath to argue, paused, and tried pleading instead. “Jazz can’t be moved yet. You’ll need help if Simon comes back.”

  “I’ll call Danny.” May shook her head. “Take him. I get that you don’t want to leave us alone, and I get that you don’t want to put Quentin in danger, but you’re forgetting that I remember what Simon did to you. I remember it like he did it to me. I can’t let you go alone.”

  I paused a second time. May and I mostly tried not to talk about our shared memories these days. It was too confusing, for both of us. But she knew better than anyone else in the world what Simon had done. She’d gone through it, too, in her way. “If he’s awake, I’ll consider it,” I said finally. “Now, I’m going to get some clothes, grab my weapons, and ward the crap out of this place. Stay inside. Don’t answer the door for anybody. Do you understand me?”

  “I do,” she said. “Toby . . .”

  “Don’t tell me to be careful. We both know that’s not going to happen.”

  “I wasn’t going to tell you to be careful.” Her eyes narrowed, mouth twisting in a vengeful line. “I was going to tell you to get the bastard who hurt my girlfriend.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” I said. “I will.” Maybe it was foolish of me to make promises I couldn’t be sure of keeping, but Simon Torquill had done more than enough to earn whatever he had coming to him. He’d come into my home; he’d hurt my family. He’d gone too far, and this time, finally, he was going to pay for everything he’d done.

  FOUR

  CAGNEY AND LACEY were curved on my pillow like sleeping commas when I opened the bedroom door. Either the chaos in the kitchen hadn’t filtered up the stairs—unlikely, given Jazz—or the cats hadn’t cared. I leaned over and pulled the pillow out from under them, sending them sprawling. They opened their blue Siamese eyes and squalled, protesting this rough treatment.

  “I needed you awake, and I don’t have time to be polite,” I snapped, throwing the pillow on the floor. I started yanking off my nightclothes, letting them fall where they landed. “Simon Torquill was just here. That name doesn’t mean anything to you, but it’ll mean something to Tybalt. I need you to tell him I’ve left for Shadowed Hills, and that he should find me as soon as he can.”

  The cats stopped complaining and simply looked at me, assuming the classic sphinx poses practiced by felines around the world. I shook my head.

  “He’s at Court. I’ve intruded enough there recently.” I knew he’d be angry at me for leaving before he could join me, but this was part of the balance we had to strike. Sometimes, I had to take care of myself, no matter how much it upset him, just like sometimes, he had to take care of me, no matter how much it upset me.

  The cats kept staring at me. I shook my head again, digging through the mess on the floor until I found a pair of reasonably clean jeans. “I don’t care how mad he’s going to be. He can be mad at me. Just tell him, all right? Tell him Simon is back. Tell him Simon came to the house. Simon hurt Jazz. Tell him . . .” I hesitated. None of the things I wanted to say felt right, and so I shook my head and said, “Just tell him to hurry.”

  Cagney meowed once, a sharp, almost disdainful sound. Then she jumped off the bed and ran out the bedroom door. Lacey followed her. I looked after them for a few precious seconds. They were both indoor cats; I’d never caught them outside the house. They still had a way of getting to Tybalt when they needed to. The Court of Cats is open to all felines, and they all know how to get there. He would hear. He would find me.

  I got dressed as fast as I could, yanking on my shoes and belting my knife around my waist. After a moment’s hesitation I grabbed my sword from where it hung on the closet door. I still wasn’t good with it, despite Sylvester’s many patient hours of training, but it would keep the fight farther away from me, if it came down to that. The way I was feeling right now, anything that kept the fight at a distance was a good thing. The last thing I put on was my leather jacket, shrugging it over my shoulders and taking a small degree of reassurance from its familiar weight.

  “I can do this,” I said. “He isn’t going to be there, and even if he were, he’s not the bogeyman. He’s just a man. I can beat him.”

  They may have been lies, but even lies have power if you repeat them often enough. I took a breath to steady myself, turned, and opened the bedroom door.

  Quentin was leaning against the hallway wall, already dressed to go, with his own sword belted by his side. He raised his head and looked at me coolly. His bronze hair was wet and slicked back from his face, a concession to the shower he hadn’t had time to take. “I thought you might forget to wake me, so I got ready,” he said. There was no quarter in his expression: he knew damn well that I’d been thinking about leaving him behind, and he wasn’t having it.

  Tough. “I didn’t wake you because you need to get some sleep. As your knight, it’s important for me to look out for your health.”

  “You didn’t wake me because you don’t want me coming with you.”

  “Oh, right, silly me. I didn’t want to drag my squire into pointless danger.”

  Quentin narrowed his eyes. “You would have woken me before you knew I was the Crown Prince.”

  That made me pause, but only for a second. Quentin was my squire, yes, but he was in the Mists under a blind fosterage: no one was supposed to know who his parents were, and even though I’d known him for years, I hadn’t learned their identity until recently. It turned out that was because they were the High King and Queen of the Westlands—a Kingdom better known as “North America” in mortal circles. He was going to rule a continent one day. Assuming he stayed alive that long, which was by no means guaranteed while he was living with me.

  In the end, I decided to go with aggressive honesty. My headache was enough to make anything else seem like too much work. “Guilty as charged. I didn’t wake you because I don’t want you anywhere near Simon Torquill, okay? This is the man who turned me into a fish for fourteen years. Now he’s trying to feed me some bullshit line about how he did it to ‘save me,’ which means he’s delusional on top of everything else. So, yeah, you’re staying home. I’m not going to be the girl who gets the Crown Prince killed.”

  “I’m still your squire. That comes first until my training is finished,” Quentin shot back. “I’m not staying behind. You know I can follow you. Do you really want to make me do that?”

  I glared at him. “I hate you.”

  “I know.”

  “You will do exactly what I say at all times. That includes backing off if I say something is too dangerous for you. Do you understand?”

  “You’re my knight,” he said, almost cheerful now that he knew he was getting his way. “I do what you tell me to do.”

  “That’ll be a cold day in Mag Mell,” I muttered, and stalked toward the stairs. “Come on. We need to ward this place to kingdom come before we get on the road.”

  We walked down the stairs side by side, our shoulders brushing the walls. I managed to swallow most of my relief—I wasn
’t going out there alone—but I couldn’t swallow my dread. The only place I knew for sure that Simon wasn’t was the house. By leaving it, I exposed myself to him, wherever he might be lurking. I took some small comfort in knowing that the spell he’d thrown at me had hit him. Hopefully, the bastard was a pigeon or something by now.

  May and Jazz were no longer in the kitchen. My former Fetch had dragged or carried her unconscious girlfriend into the living room, and was busy warding the windows while Jasmine slept on the couch. May looked around when Quentin and I appeared in the doorway.

  “I didn’t wake him up on purpose,” she said. “He must have heard the noise from the kitchen, same as I did.”

  “I’m a little insulted that you all thought you could have a major fight in the house and not wake me up,” said Quentin.

  “You’re a teenage boy. You could sleep through a nuclear bomb. Now go ward the front door and the mail slot against intrusions.”

  “Don’t try to leave without me,” he said, and ran off to do as he’d been told.

  I watched him go, managing to keep my expression mostly composed until he was out of sight. Then I turned back to May, allowing my fear to show. “He’s not going to let me leave him behind.”

  “No, he’s not.” She muttered a line from what sounded like a They Might Be Giants song, waggling her fingers at the window as she spoke. The smell of cotton candy and ashes filled the room, layering on top of the traces of her magic that had already been present. She turned back to me. “That’s good. You’d worry about him just as much if you let him out of your sight, and you’re not exactly rational where Simon is concerned.”