The clothing woven into the nest was too deliberate a clue, and there was no way the house could have disrobed her. Someone who had known about this strange and secret place had laid a false trail to bring us here, and they had stripped Gillian naked and left her clothing as a red herring. I gave the sweatshirt in my hand another bleak look.
“She was never here,” I repeated.
SEVEN
“MADDEN.”
He turned, looking almost relieved to have something to focus on apart from trying to pick up a nonexistent trail. I thrust the sweatshirt at him.
“Someone stripped Gilly and put her clothes here for us to find.” Probably someone who assumed I would be following the blood trail, or that Tybalt would be sniffing her out for me. For all that he liked to remind me that he wasn’t a bloodhound, he had a remarkably good nose. Not as good as Madden’s, but good enough that laying a false trail was only sensible. “They were smart enough to do it without magic: I’m not getting any spell traces. Can you see whether you can find any other scents on this? Anything at all?”
“Okay.” Madden strode over to take the sweatshirt, adding as he did, “I have to call Ardy once I’m done. She needs to know what we found.”
Berkeley is unincorporated territory, but the crown still has authority there. It’s still part of the kingdom. I started to nod and froze, eyes widening. “Oh, sweet Titania, have I always been this stupid?” I asked.
“What?” asked Quentin.
“Hang on,” I said, and dug my phone out of my pocket, pulling up my recent contacts. Raj was third from the top. I tapped his name and waited.
The Summerlands are outside the range of most cell towers. For a long time, one of the advantages the human world had over Faerie was the reliability of cellular phones. Then April O’Leary, the cyber-Dryad ex-Countess of Tamed Lightning, got annoyed by her inability to call her friends whenever she wanted and started upgrading everyone’s phones. At this point, they function across the Summerlands and even in the Court of Cats.
The phone rang three times before Raj picked up. “Hello?”
“Raj, I need you to come to Berkeley, find Shade—wake her if you have to—and bring her to University Avenue, between the organic gluten-free bakery with the bread braids in the window and the artisanal chocolatier.”
There was a long pause. Then: “I’m hanging up and going back to bed.”
“No, you’re not. You want to act like you’re my squire until it’s time for you to become king? This is where you live up to the title. We found something that shouldn’t exist, and Madden is going to call Arden, and she’s going to swoop in and claim it for the Divided Courts. If you want the Court of Cats to have any say in this new mystery, you need to get Shade and get your fuzzy butts to University Avenue. Call me back when you’re here.”
I hung up. When I lowered my phone, Madden was staring at me, a hurt expression on his face.
“Why did you do that?” he asked.
“Because Shade is the local Queen of Cats, and by terms of the treaty between Oberon and the Cait Sidhe, she has as much claim to this place as Queen Windermere does,” I said. “I’m not trying to take it away from Arden. I’m trying to make sure we don’t have a diplomatic incident that could have been otherwise avoided. Did you find anything on the sweatshirt?”
“Only Gillian, and you, and Jocelyn,” he said. “Nothing but those.”
Gillian’s blood was soaked all through the fabric; I had been holding it; Jocelyn was her roommate. That made—
Wait. Her roommate who handled her laundry for some reason, when she’d already admitted they weren’t really friends? I frowned.
“How strongly does it smell of Jocelyn?”
“Pretty strongly.” His frown mirrored mine. “That’s a little weird, isn’t it?”
“It’s a lot weird.” I gave the courtyard one more look, focusing on the decrepit old house at the very back. The smaller house had climbed up onto the porch and perched there, legs folded under its foundation. “I’m going to look around inside. Quentin, here.” I tossed him my phone. “When Raj calls, go out and get him.”
“What if the wall is solid again?”
“Come in and get me, and we’ll both go out and get him. Madden, I know you need to call your liege, but please make sure she’s aware that the Court of Cats has already got their own Queen en route, and she’ll need to share.”
“Fine,” he grumbled.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, and started forward.
There were still no pixies. There were rose bushes but no rose goblins. If not for the fact that we were surrounded by fae plants on all sides, some rare enough to be worth several fortunes, I would have thought this place was just a remarkably well-concealed human garden. It was wrong. Everything about it was wrong. Even the faint scent of cinnamon hanging in the air was wrong.
Cinnamon. Who did I know whose magic smelled like cinnamon? Or was I being paranoid, and the scent was a consequence of being so close to the organic bakery? Under the circumstances, I thought I’d earned a little paranoia.
The porch steps creaked when I stepped onto them, and for a moment I thought my feet were going to punch right through the rotten wood. But the planks held, and I kept going, climbing all three of the steps between me and the front door. The chicken-legged house made a soft sighing sound, like hinges creaking in the wind, and turned slightly to watch me as I tested the front door.
Locked, of course. Good thing I habitually carry lock picks these days, having encountered one door too many that seemed to think I could be kept out. I crouched, pulled the picks out of my pocket, and got to work.
There were no wards or countercharms on the door, only a lock so old that half its tumblers no longer latched the way they should. Getting it open was almost insultingly easy. If the day hadn’t already been so long, I would probably have taken the time to gloat. As it was, I simply straightened, shoved the door open, and stepped inside, stopping to stare for what felt like the hundredth time since I’d been dragged out of bed by the sound of Cliff hammering on my front door.
The front room was small, quaint, and spotless, the sort of rose-damasked parlor that felt like it belonged in a period drama full of British accents and quaint murders. Everything showed signs of having been dusted recently. The couch was overstuffed, inviting, and at least seventy years old, if the polished woodwork was anything to go by. I breathed in deeply, looking for any hint or sign of magic. I found nothing, only more cinnamon and the bizarrely modern scent of Lemon Pledge.
“What the hell,” I muttered, and pushed deeper in.
For all that the house looked like it was going to collapse at any moment from the outside, the floors inside were smooth and stable, and the walls were straight with no hint of lean or sag. I paused to touch one of them, feeling the shape of the wood. It was all hand-planed, and there didn’t seem to be any nails, just the wood itself, slotted together with an artisan’s hand. How much of the outside was a lie, intended to keep people like me, who had somehow discovered a secret garden, from bothering to open the door?
A short stairway led to the second floor. I took it two steps at a time, no longer really believing Gillian was anywhere for me to find, but still hoping there’d be something that could tell me who owned this courtyard, this garden, this impossible detour on the all-important road to finding my daughter. Whoever it was, they were important enough to frame for stealing my child, and powerful enough to have woven an enchantment into the very foundations of the block. This wasn’t a shallowing or a twist in the local geography: this place existed. I could feel it all the way down to my still-mortal bones.
The second floor was even smaller than the first, with only three rooms. An old-fashioned bathroom that looked like it dated from the dawn of indoor plumbing; a walk-in linen closet, the shelves almost bare, save for a few neatly folded towels and a s
pare set of sheets; and a bedroom with a single window looking out over a patch of garden I hadn’t seen before, one that appeared to be almost entirely roses. There was a narrow bed, a dressing table, and a wardrobe. There was a spinning wheel. There was nothing to tell me who slept here, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t catch any traces of magic in the air.
It was like this entire place had somehow been made without any magic apart from the standing effects which kept it concealed from the mortal world. There are people powerful enough to set up those kinds of illusion and permanent barrier spells. I know some of them. I just couldn’t for the life of me imagine why.
Someone shouted outside. I whipped around, forgetting the bedroom as I ran for the stairs and down them to the front door. The little house was standing on the porch, chicken-claws digging into the rotted wood as it looked attentively toward the growing crowd at the center of the courtyard. Arden had appeared next to Madden, probably after he somehow talked her through the process of opening a portal to a place she’d never been before. Nolan was with her, both of them gaping in open-mouthed amazement.
It was sort of nice to see the confirmation that Arden was still new enough to this “queen” thing that she could be impressed like this. I hopped down the porch steps and hurried toward her.
“Did Madden tell you the local Queen of Cats is on her way?”
“He did. I wish you’d talked to me before you called her.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s going to tell you the same thing I am: we’re not supposed to be here.” Arden took another look around, and for the first time, I saw the unease under the amazement. “My father knew about this place. I have his papers, remember? I’ve been trying to learn the secrets of my kingdom before they can be sprung on me.”
“You never said,” said Madden, sounding hurt.
“Because it was never your business.” Arden gentled her voice as much as she could, trying to take the sting from her words. From the look on Madden’s face, she didn’t entirely succeed. “There are secrets queens keep, Madden. It’s not personal. It’s not meant to be cruel. It’s how kingdoms work.”
“How is it that we’re not supposed to be here?” I asked. “This is your kingdom.”
“Too bad you didn’t think so when you called the cats,” said Arden, shooting a sharp look in my direction. Then she sagged and sighed. “That wasn’t fair. I’m sure they know about this place, too. They have to. It’s their job to find the lost places, and this isn’t a lost place, but it’s got to be close enough to attract their attention, and this is their kingdom, too. There’s no way they didn’t receive the same message my grandparents did.”
“Which was?” I pressed. Quentin was still holding the bundle of Gillian’s clothing. I pointed to it. “Because whoever owns this place, someone wanted me to think they were the ones who took my child. Someone wanted to start trouble for them, or for me. I think I have a right to know.”
“I think that’s a very human approach to a very inhuman problem,” said Arden levelly. “There are secrets in this world that you have no right to. Not every question you ask demands an answer.”
“My daughter is missing.”
“And Madden has already confirmed that she is not, and was never, here. The person who took her was laying a false trail.”
I agreed with Arden, but in that moment, I couldn’t say so. All I could do was stare at her, my heart in my throat and the blood pounding in my ears until I couldn’t hear anything else. Quentin stepped up next to me, lending support through his silent presence. Only Quentin. May was nowhere to be seen. I glanced around and didn’t find her in the shadow of the trees.
Quentin didn’t seem alarmed, which meant May had told him where she was going. I returned my focus to Arden, trying to breathe levelly so as not to start shouting at the queen. That never ends well for me.
“Your Highness,” I said, through gritted teeth, and watched Arden flinch from her own title like it was an enemy’s blade. “I am a hero of the realm, named so by your own tongue. I am in pursuit of a missing child who was born of Faerie, even if she no longer claims it. You say there are secrets I have no right to. Well, by your own admission, I’m already standing in the middle of one of those secrets. Someone led me here, probably because they were trying to incriminate whoever lives here, and hence means them harm, which I think is sort of more important than preserving their privacy. I don’t have a lot of time to waste, since I need to get back to finding my daughter. What is this place? Why is it here?”
“This place is an agreement,” said a cool, unfamiliar voice with a strong Taiwanese accent. I turned. May had stepped back through the brick wall with a short, willowy woman at her side. The stranger’s blazingly blue eyes and cat-slit pupils betrayed her nature even before I tasted her heritage on the breeze.
I bowed, showing her all the courtesy and regard I had denied Arden. It was an intentional snub, and from Nolan’s small gasp, I knew it had been received. “It is an honor to stand before a Queen of Cats,” I said.
“Yes, it is,” agreed Shade mildly. “But we have met before, and this should be done quickly. Have you touched anything? Taken anything?”
“Only what was taken from me.” I indicated the bundle in Quentin’s arms. “We were led here by the blood trail of my daughter’s clothes.”
“There should be no objection to reclaiming lost property, as long as it is followed by swift departure.” Shade looked to Arden. “Are we in agreement?”
In her feline form, Shade was a Blue Point Siamese, perfectly designed to blend into the fog that sometimes shrouded the city streets in the early morning. Her bipedal shape echoed that coloration, with snowy skin that darkened to a deep gray at her wrists, the points of her ears, and in an accenting stripe across the bridge of her nose. Her hair was black at the root, lightening slowly to that same blue-gray, and finally bleaching itself white for the last few inches. She could have chosen to look more like one of the Daoine Sidhe, as Tybalt often did: it was rare to see him with his stripes showing. The fact that she hadn’t showed how little she cared for the good regard of the Divided Courts.
It was interesting, sometimes, being reminded of how unusual a King of Cats Tybalt was, and had been long before I’d come along to turn his world upside-down. He cared about things outside his Court. Not all Cait Sidhe bothered.
“Yes,” said Arden.
I straightened. “I still want to know what this place is. Someone thought they could use it to hide my child.”
“It is, as I have said, an agreement,” said Shade. Maybe it was the fact that my own Queen clearly hadn’t been telling me what I needed to know, or maybe she just didn’t care about keeping secrets that didn’t belong to her, but she continued, “When this city was still forest and field, still owned at least in part by those mortals who were here before the new Americans came and drove them out, an individual came before the rulers of our spaces, our kind. They held certain charms and a grant of land from Oberon himself. This, here, is what they asked for, and it was given. Did you never wonder why it is the Divided Courts claimed no authority here? There is a Court of Cats, for there must be to keep the shadows open, but the ones who should have demanded allegiance keep their distance.”
“Because Oberon told you to.” I glanced at Arden. She was glaring at Shade, her hands clenched. That, more than anything, confirmed Shade’s story. “Do you know who the land grant was for?”
“No,” said Shade.
“My father tried to find out before he died, but he never succeeded,” said Arden. “This is the first time I’ve been here. We’re breaking a dozen rules of etiquette just by breathing this air. We need to leave.”
I thought of the absence of magic in the house, of the spare décor and the empty rooms. Whoever lived here was keeping an intentionally low profile . . . but apparently, they had still made at least
one enemy.
“All right,” I said. “But if I have to come back to save my daughter, I will.”
Arden sighed. “I know. I couldn’t stop you if I tried.” She sketched an archway in the air with her hand. A portal opened, showing her throne room in Muir Woods. “Please be careful. I don’t know who owns this land, but I know they were able to win it from Oberon himself. That’s not a person to toy with.” Then she was gone, Nolan behind her, leaving the faint scent of blackberry flowers and redwood bark hanging in the air.
I turned to Shade. “Did the Prince of Dreaming Cats come with you?” I asked. It would have been nice to see Raj, if only to confirm that he didn’t know about this place. I knew Tybalt couldn’t tell me everything about the Court. It wouldn’t make sense to expect him to. But the hurt in Madden’s eyes might well be mirrored in mine, if I found out he’d been hiding something that had been used to hurt my child.
“I dismissed him,” said Shade airily. She studied my face for a moment before she smiled. “I see. You worry that he knew and did not tell you. That my opposite number knew and did not tell you. You forget that our fiefdoms are smaller than those of the Divided Courts, for we must deal much more closely with our subjects. This is a secret kept by those of us who rule here, over the Court of Golden Cats. Your mate did not keep a secret of this size from your ears. How is he?” There was actual concern in the question. “I have heard things that are . . . troubling to my ears. I would that he were well.”
“I don’t know enough about how your Courts function to be sure I won’t do him some political damage if I start answering questions now,” I said. “But I appreciate you telling me he didn’t know about this place, so I’ll tell you this much: he’s doing the best he can, and I’ll be here for him when he wants me. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Truth from the Liar’s daughter; who would have thought I’d see the day?” Shade offered a small smile and a smaller bow. “If you have need while he is unable to assist you, call upon the cats of my Court. They may not come, but if I hear, I will do what I can.” She stepped backward, into the shadow cast by a branch of the apple tree and was gone.
Night and Silence Page 13
