Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel (13 page)

The Luidaeg paled. That, in and of itself, was terrifying. “It’s happening again,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Oh, sweet Mother, it’s happening again.”

“What’s happening again? Luidaeg, talk to me. I need to know what’s going on. I need to find Chelsea.”

“Oh, you need to find her, all right,” said the Luidaeg. She shook her head. Somewhere in the middle of the gesture, the humanity left her face, acne scars and tan fading away. She was left with a faint mother-of-pearl undertone to her skin…and the freckles. They seemed to be permanent, no matter what shape she took. The Luidaeg can be distressingly protean, and I may never know what she really looks like. I’m not certain I want to. “You need to find her
now
.”

“How?” asked Quentin. We both turned to look at him. He was frowning. “I know we need to find her. That’s why we’re here. We can’t teleport. How are we supposed to find her?”

I looked back to the Luidaeg. “How bad can this get?”

“Bad,” she said. “I’m assuming you’ve both heard about the changelings who go wrong when their magic comes in.”

“Instead of getting all the limits and none of the power, they get all the power and none of the limits,” I said. “I think everyone’s heard those stories.”

“Yeah, well. Have you ever met one of those changelings?”

“No.” Every changeling I’d ever known, myself included, was magically weaker than their fae parent. The horror stories about uncontrollable changeling magic destroying knowes and burning human cities had always seemed to be just that: horror stories, usually trotted out by pureblood kids who wanted to remind us that we weren’t just less than they were, we were potentially going to go bad.

“So if they’re that rare, why do the stories endure?” asked the Luidaeg. “Faerie is usually happy to forget the bad things. Hell, we practically race to see who can forget them first. Maybe some people don’t like changelings,
but shouldn’t they still be happy to forget about the disasters that happened years ago, to somebody else?”

I didn’t say anything. Neither did Quentin. We just waited.

The Luidaeg shook her head. “We remember because when it
does
happen, when this sort of thing
does
go wrong, it’s so fucking bad that no one can pretend it didn’t happen. The last time there was a Tuatha de Dannan changeling with the strength to smash his way through the walls Oberon erected between us and everywhere else, it was…bad.”

“Bad ‘well, that sucks’ or bad ‘end of the world’?” I asked, cautiously.

“Bad ‘he punched a hole all the way through to the central lands of Faerie, and some people were never heard from again,’” said the Luidaeg. “I’d tell you to go ask your mother, if I thought she’d be willing to talk to you about it. She was there. She was one of the people who had to seal the door he’d created before it could destroy all the worlds.”

Amandine had been rattling at doors no one could see since she went mad. Maybe she really could see something that the rest of us couldn’t. I frowned. “What happened to the changeling?”

“He died.” The Luidaeg’s tone made it clear that there would be no further discussion of the dead. Her kettle began to whistle. She took it off the stove and opened the nearest cabinet, taking down a mug. “If your Chelsea is that kind of changeling, you’ve got two choices.”

“What are those?” I already half-knew what she was going to say. I was hoping she’d come up with another option.

“You shift her blood all the way in either direction—make her human, or make her fae so that her blood will give her the power blocks she’s missing—or you kill her. She doesn’t walk away from this the way that she is now. Do you understand me? No one who can open a door to Tirn Aill without my father’s permission can be allowed to go free.”

“Why is that so bad?” asked Quentin. “I mean, when Oberon locked the doors, did he know he was going to be gone this long? Maybe people would fight less if they could go home.”

Faerie wars used to be bloody and unpleasant, but they always ended, because eventually the warring parties just went home. When your annoying neighbors live in a different pocket universe, it’s a lot easier to ignore the fact that they never mow the lawn. Locking all the inhabitants of Faerie in two worlds—Earth and the Summerlands—might have made out-and-out conflict rarer, but with nowhere else to go, the warring parties just kept at it until one side was all but annihilated. Just ask the Kingdom of Silences.

“It’s not my place to question my father’s decisions,” said the Luidaeg frostily. Then she sighed, thawing a little as she said, “Without him, Mom, and Aunt Titania to keep the Heart of Faerie under control, the deeper lands are unstable. They’re open to influence, and they’re going to be looking for it anywhere they can find it. If we went back to the deeper lands without them, we’d all wind up dead, trapped, or worse.”

I didn’t ask what “or worse” could be. Faerie is nothing if not creative when it comes to that sort of thing. Instead, I asked, “The Heart of Faerie?”

The Luidaeg didn’t answer. She just looked at me and waited.

Right. “So how are we supposed to find Chelsea?” I asked, dropping the subject. “She can teleport, and we don’t even have a car anymore, thanks to the Afanc.”

“What did you say her magic smelled like?”

“Sycamore smoke and calla lilies.”

“And she’s Etienne’s kid. What does his magic smell like?”

“Um…it smells like cedar smoke and limes.”

“Okay. Okay. Her line…she must be descended through Amorica.” Catching our blank expressions, the Luidaeg sighed. “You know, there was a time when everyone in Faerie knew the descendant lines of the Firstborn.
It helped people not get turned inside out when they
pissed us off
. Amorica and Elton are the Tuatha de Dannan Firstborn. Twins. Amorica’s magic smelled like burning heather—like all the fields in the world were on fire at once. Elton smelled like that same field at dawn, when the dew was heavy and fire seemed impossible. If your missing kid were from Elton’s line, she’d smell like, I don’t know, wet concrete and whatever.”

Quentin and I kept looking at her blankly. The Luidaeg scowled before picking up the kettle and pouring a stream of dark liquid into her mug.

“Did you never consider that maybe—just maybe—your magic said things about you?”

“I knew it usually reflected one or both of your parents somehow and that it could change as you got older, but I didn’t realize it identified your Firstborn,” I said. “Or that the Tuatha had two Firstborn.”

“Yeah, well, ‘had’ is the right word there. Amorica died the first time we went to war against each other—and don’t,” she held up a hand, “ask me why we went to war, or who was on which side. It doesn’t matter now, and it’s one of the questions I’m not allowed to answer.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “So she’s one of Amorica’s descendants. What does that mean from a practical standpoint?”

“It means I can mix you a tracking potion.” The Luidaeg sipped her tea, grimaced, and set the cup aside before opening her refrigerator and starting to rummage around inside. “You won’t be able to follow her if she gates out of the Summerlands, but at least you’ll be able to tell where she enters and exits.”

“What’s the catch?” asked Quentin.

The Luidaeg’s magic always comes with a price. Both Quentin and I have learned that lesson firsthand. There are people who would say we got off easy—we’re both still breathing, after all—and maybe they’re right. That doesn’t make the Luidaeg’s bills easy ones to pay.

“Well, for one thing, you won’t be able to stop looking until you find her.” The Luidaeg straightened, a jar of
unidentified green sludge in each hand. She closed the refrigerator door with a bump of her hip before moving to the counter. “For another thing, if she dies before you manage to catch up to her, you’re going to get it dropped on your head.”

“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.”