The Winter Long

by Seanan McGuire

  “If you so much as whisper the first word of a transformation spell, I’ll have your larynx in my hand before the second word can form,” said Tybalt, with a chilling calm.

  “I assure you, no further harm will come to her by my hand.” Simon opened his eyes and then, to my utter shock, he bowed to me. “Sir Daye, you have done your bloodline a great honor. Your words and deeds will be remembered long after mine have faded into simple villainy. You have no reason to trust a single word I say as truth, but please believe me when I say that I am sorry I did not get to know you better.”

  “Uh, what?” I said.

  “Good luck,” he replied, before turning and walking away into the garden.

  Tybalt growled, starting to step past me. I put out my arm, blocking him. He shot me a startled, almost injured look.

  “Don’t,” I said. “He didn’t threaten us. He even apologized, in his weird-ass Simon way. And he gave us something.” I looked down at my bouquet of ice-white, glacial-blue roses. “He gave us a riddle to solve.”

  Tybalt didn’t look happy, and I couldn’t blame him, but he followed me as I unlocked the door and poked my head into the silent house.

  May and Jazz were gone, of course, departed for Muir Woods in the back of Danny’s cab. It still felt strange to come home and know that no one was there to meet us. I’d worked a long time to build a place for myself—a place, and the family to go with it. Now Simon was back, and it felt like everything was at risk. I still didn’t know why he’d come here, or whether he’d left us any unwanted surprises. I turned, pressing my bouquet into the arms of my startled squire.

  “Stay here,” I commanded him. “Tybalt, you’re with me.”

  Tybalt nodded, understanding my concern immediately. Quentin followed us into the kitchen, still looking utterly confused, but he didn’t ask what was going on, and for the moment, that was good enough for me.

  Side by side, Tybalt and I made our way from the kitchen to the hall. I gestured for him to check the living room while I started up the stairs, drawing my knife from my belt and holding it close to my hip. It wouldn’t do me any good if Simon had hidden a monster in the upstairs closet, but holding it helped focus me a little, and I needed all the help that I could get.

  This is your fault, I thought. Quentin and Tybalt are in danger because of you. If you didn’t let them stay around, they wouldn’t be in harm’s way. This is on you.

  The thought was unfair, and I pushed it aside almost as quickly as it formed. Maybe it was true, but if it weren’t for me, Tybalt would still be lonely, Quentin would still be trapped in the spiral of pureblood superiority, and May wouldn’t even exist. She’d be a night-haunt named “Mai,” scavenging for the bodies of Faerie’s dead, surfing from identity to identity without ever truly owning any of them. Jazz might have been safer if not for me, since it was her association with May that kept putting her in harm’s way, but I somehow doubted she’d see things that way.

  The upstairs hall was dark. I didn’t turn the lights on, choosing instead to pause on the landing and sniff the air, looking for traces of blood or magic. I didn’t find any, and so I started moving again, checking the rooms one by one for signs of a struggle or a spell. Light footfalls behind me signaled Tybalt’s return, and I kept walking, feeling safer now that I knew I wasn’t alone.

  The upstairs was clean. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, bringing up the entry for May. Still staring at her room, I raised it to my ear. Pick up, I thought. Come on, May, pick up. Just this once, do something because I want you to do it. Pick up the phone.

  There was a click, and then May demanded, “Maeve’s tits, October, what is it now? Please tell me you didn’t do something you can’t actually bounce back from, because I am so not up for pulling your bacon out of the fire right now.”

  I bit back a gale of completely inappropriate laughter. Oh, yeah, my nerves were fried. “Simon was on the back porch when we got home,” I said. “I’m sorry to wake you, but you needed to know that the house is officially off limits until we catch him.”

  “I was already planning to stay at Queen Windermere’s Hotel and Day Spa for the foreseeable future, especially after Quentin’s cute little status update,” said May without pause. Then she took a whistling breath and said, “He was there? At our house? Again?”

  “He was,” I said grimly. “Quentin brought you up to speed on the situation?” I was willing to let Simon go out into the world thinking that the Luidaeg was truly dead—it was better if we kept the knowledge of her survival close to our chests—but I wouldn’t do that to May.

  “He did, and sweet Titania, that’s terrifying,” said May. “Are you safe?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “I’m just really, really glad you’re in Muir Woods.”

  May actually laughed. “What a difference a monarch makes, huh? Six months ago you’d have gone for elective facial piercings before you went to see the Queen, and now you’re happy to pawn me and Jazz off on her protection.”

  “It’s amazing how quickly I can adapt to having someone on the throne who isn’t actively trying to get me killed,” I said. “Just stay safe, all right?”

  “You know, I don’t like that the pattern has become ‘danger arises, get May the hell away from it,’” she said. “I want to help.”

  I hesitated before saying, “Maybe you can. This geas—it’s on Simon and the Luidaeg, and the Luidaeg confirmed that the person who cast it is someone I know. We already know that whoever did it is still alive, or the geas wouldn’t be active. So who knows me, Simon, and the Luidaeg, and has the power to bind one of the Firstborn? I’ve been trying to figure it out all day, and I’m coming up empty.”

  “Not quite empty,” said Tybalt, from behind me. “You still have to consider the possibility your mother is involved with this somehow.”

  “He’s right,” said May wearily. “Tell kitty-boy I can hear him, and that he has a damn good point. Amandine is Firstborn, and she knows all three of the people who have to be checked off before someone makes the list. She’s been sort of cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs for a while now, so there’s an absolute chance that she could have done this.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What would she have to gain? And how could she have hurt the Luidaeg the way she did? Mom’s not a fighter. She can mess with the balance of someone’s blood, and yeah, that hurts like hell, but there’s nothing in the Luidaeg for her to catch hold of.”

  “Maybe she didn’t attack the Luidaeg,” said May. “Maybe she hired or compelled someone else to do it, or maybe this isn’t her at all. I’m just saying we can’t cross her off the list because she’s your mother. If anything, that puts her closer to this than almost anybody else.”

  I ran one hand back through my hair, wincing as my fingers snagged on several poorly placed knots. “Right. So you and Jazz will stay where you are, and stay safe. I’ll take Tybalt and Quentin and go back to Mom’s tower. It looks like I need to verify, once and for all, whether she’s behind all of this.”

  “And if she is?” asked May. “Because let’s face it, Toby, this is a pretty weak plan.”

  “It’s what I’ve got.” I dropped my hand. “If Mom is there, I arrest her for compelling the kidnapping of Luna and Rayseline Torquill, and I take her before the Queen to be held accountable for her crimes.” Yes, I’d allowed Simon to walk away, even though he was the one who’d actually kidnapped them. I was going to be sorry about that later, I was sure. And yet the geas—which genuinely existed, since it also bound the Luidaeg, although I wasn’t sure why Mom would have needed to bind him—had left him with little choice about his actions. Under those circumstances, it made sense to bring the mastermind to justice first, find out how much free will the underlings really had, and take care of things in the proper order.

  May laughed unsteadily. “Sounds like you’re going to have a fun night.”

  “I al
ways do,” I said. “Open roads.”

  “Kind fires, and Toby . . . be careful.” She hung up, presumably to keep me from saying anything she didn’t want to hear. I could understand the sentiment.

  I put my phone back in my pocket. “Wait here,” I said to Tybalt, before ducking into my room and yanking off my blood-crusted shirt, replacing it with a clean one. He was right: I did feel better with less blood on me. He smiled when I rejoined him in the hall, giving me an approving look. Together we walked downstairs and to the kitchen, where a clearly anxious Quentin was slapping together egg salad sandwiches with more force than strictly necessary. The roses from Simon were on the kitchen table. Patches of frost had begun to form around the bouquet, and some of the glacier-colored flowers looked like they were actually melting.

  He whirled when he heard our footsteps. “Well?” he asked, gesturing toward us with his spoon, which was still full of egg salad. “Is everything okay?”

  “It’s all good,” I said. “If Simon came into the house, he doesn’t seem to have touched or done anything.”

  Quentin relaxed slightly. “Oh, thank Oberon. I don’t want to deal with magical booby traps in my own home.” He turned back to his sandwiches. “I didn’t like standing idle, so I figured I’d start putting together something for us to eat. We’ve been running hard with no food all day. That can’t continue forever.”

  “See, October, the Crown Prince’s association with you has done him good after all,” said Tybalt. “It has taught him to force-feed his elders, as they cannot take care of themselves.”

  “That’s going to serve him well.” My stomach growled, reminding me that Quentin was right: I hadn’t eaten since getting out of bed, and I hadn’t been in bed nearly long enough. I walked over and snagged a plate with one of the fully assembled sandwiches, carrying it with me as I crossed to the table and peered more closely at the roses. The chill coming off of them was enough to make me want to turn the heat up, but something told me that would just make them melt faster, and any message they might imply would be lost.

  “Some of them are Duchess Torquill’s own creations,” said Quentin, as he went back to mechanically slapping sandwiches together. “Some were cultivars from the Snow Kingdoms, or from the deeper lands. People brought them along when all the doors were sealed.”

  “Makes sense,” I said. That was how goblin fruit had been transported from the lands where it grew naturally into the mortal world. It was actually sort of nice to realize that we’d carried more than just deadly narcotics with us when we had to flee our ancestral homelands. “How long has Luna been growing this kind of rose?”

  “As long as I’ve known her,” said Tybalt.

  “It’s hard to grow roses from the Snow Kingdoms when it’s not always winter,” said Quentin. “They’re really delicate. There are a few in the palace gardens back home, and Maman refuses to let me or my sister near them, since she’s afraid we’ll offend the Snow Kingdoms by picking flowers and turning prize blossoms into snowmelt.”

  “You mean like Simon has?” I asked. I stuck my finger into the water pooling around the bouquet. It was freezing cold. “Okay, so Simon mentioned the language of the flowers. Rosebay is a warning. White roses mean ‘I am worthy of you,’ which, fuck no, he isn’t. Even if he weren’t my stepfather. Blue roses mean . . .” I stopped, drawing a blank.

  “Blue roses mean nothing, because they do not naturally occur in the mortal world, and the language of the flowers was borrowed, like so many other things, from humanity,” said Tybalt. “They are a flower without a definition.”

  “Well, I’m just going to take a wild guess that roses made of ice are also outside the flower language, so . . . he gave me a bouquet that means both ‘warning’ and ‘nothing.’ What the hell, Simon?” I frowned at the flowers, taking another bite of my egg salad sandwich. There had to be something I was missing. Something—my eyes widened, and I swallowed my mouthful only half-chewed, to ask, “What if the point isn’t the message, but the contents of the bouquet?”

  Tybalt frowned at me. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not saying ‘beware, I am worthy of you,’ or ‘beware, no definition found,’ he’s saying ‘beware’ and giving me roses made of ice. Winter roses.” I dropped the rest of my sandwich onto the table, whirling. “He’s telling us that whatever’s coming next, it’s going to happen at Evening’s old knowe. We need to get to Goldengreen.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Quentin.

  I snorted. “Kiddo, I’m not sure of anything right now, but I’m sure we don’t have time to waste standing around and arguing about it. Tybalt?”

  “Yes?”

  “Much as I hate to leave my car behind, it’ll be faster if we take the shadows. Can you . . . ?”

  He smiled a little. “You know, every time you request this of me, I laugh on the inside.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, once upon a time I freaked out at the idea of the Shadow Roads, and now I treat them like a faster version of the Monorail at Disneyland. The question stands. Can you get us both there without hurting yourself?” Tybalt was a King of Cats, but that didn’t make him indestructible. He’d died twice in the past three years, and while he’d recovered both times—it turns out the old “cats have nine lives” myth got its start with the Cait Sidhe—that didn’t mean I wanted to overtax him and go for a third.

  Tybalt thought for a moment before he nodded. “Goldengreen is a friendly territory. I have passed through its wards before. I am more than willing to undertake this journey.”

  “Good.” I offered him my hand. “Quentin, come on. We’re heading for Goldengreen.”

  “I like field trips,” he said, and grabbed my hand, and Tybalt pulled us both with him, into the shadows.

  The Shadow Roads seemed a little less cold than usual, as if the lingering chill from my contact with Simon’s roses was keeping the normal freeze at bay. That didn’t make me any more likely to linger, especially not with my head still pounding and my legs still a little weak from blood loss. Tybalt ran and I ran with him, keeping a tight hold on Quentin’s hand. The last thing I wanted to do was explain to his parents that I’d allowed him to become lost on the Shadow Roads for all eternity. Not to mention the fact that I would genuinely miss the kid if something ever happened to him.

  We ran, as always, until I felt like there was no way I could run any farther; my lungs were going to give out, my feet were going to freeze solid, and I was going to fall. Then Tybalt’s body gave a lurch, his hand very nearly ripping out of mine as he abruptly stopped moving. There was a moment of disorientation, during which I couldn’t have said which way was up, and then Tybalt was pulling, and we were tumbling out into the empty air—

  —some twenty yards above the cold black waters of the Pacific Ocean. I scrabbled to keep hold of his hand, and Quentin’s, but it was no use; the wind ripped them away from me as we fell, and then I hit the water, and everything went black.

  TWELVE

  I OPENED MY EYES ON watery gloom, surrounded by waving fronds of the kelp that chokes the California coastline like the hand of a cruel regent. For a moment I hung suspended in the green, too stunned to understand what was going on. One minute we were running along the Shadow Roads, and the next, we were standing on thin air somewhere above the waves. And then we fell—

  I jerked in the water, comprehension sweeping over me as I finally realized what had happened, and more importantly, where I was. I began to thrash, trying to follow the trailing kelp up to the surface. There was no way of knowing whether I was going the right way, but it was a fifty-fifty chance, and that was fifty percent more than I’d have if I stayed where I was. There was no sign of Tybalt, or Quentin. I may as well have been alone in the ocean.

  Oddly, their absence helped: it gave me something to focus on beyond my own predicament. If they were hurt, or worse, they would need me to stay calm. They would need me to
help them. Even with my hydrophobia threatening to rise up and slap me down, I clung to the thought that my boys needed me, and I kept on swimming.

  Dammit, Luidaeg, why aren’t you here to turn me into a mermaid again? The thought was almost dizzy, and I realized my vision was going black around the edges. All my runs through the airless cold of the Shadow Roads had been a sort of conditioning: I might not be a swimmer, but I could hold my breath for a surprisingly long time all the same. That was only going to get me so far, though. As I strained toward the surface, I was dimly, terribly aware that the end of the road was very close indeed.

  Then something with all the grace and subtlety of a torpedo slammed into my middle, hard enough that the last of the air was knocked out of me and escaped toward the surface. I wanted to go after it, but I couldn’t break away from the arm that was locked around my waist, dragging me toward some unknown destination.

  I tried to focus through the black spots that were increasingly devouring my vision, and caught a glimpse of black hair, pale skin, and scales like blue-and-purple jewels. Something about them was familiar enough that I stopped fighting and closed my eyes, letting their owner carry me wherever she would.

  The darkness had just been waiting for me to relax. It closed in, pouncing on the shreds of my consciousness like a cat pounces on a mouse, and the world went away for a little while.

  “—by? Hey, are you dead? Wake up if you’re not dead.” Someone grabbed my shoulders, shaking briskly enough that my head flopped from side to side. I coughed, and water filled my mouth, summoned up from my throat and lungs. “Shit, she’s choking.” The voice didn’t sound surprised, or particularly worried; this was more of a statement of fact than anything resembling concern.

  Strong hands rolled me onto my side, and then someone gave me another shake, hard enough that I started coughing again. This time, I didn’t stop until I was vomiting water all over the sand next to me. Someone helped me sit up enough that I wasn’t throwing up on myself, which was a serious improvement. I struggled to catch my breath, breathed in, and resumed coughing. This time, no water accompanied the action. Thank Oberon.