The Winter Long (17 page)

The smell of my magic rose unsummoned in the air around me, and brought with it a stinging, subtle undertone that wasn't a smell or a sound or any of the other impressions I would normally associate with magic: it was just magic, pure and simple and older than anything I encountered in my daily life. It was even older than the Luidaeg in its way, or maybe just more primal. It was the knowe.

I pulled my hand away from the door, steadying myself as I knelt and started working at the lock. There was some resistance at first, and still that soft, stinging sensation filled the air around me, now laced with the distant sensation of a heart beating. I took a deep breath, trying to focus despite what I could only assume was the close attention of the knowe. I had been insisting for years that the knowes were alive; I had even received proof of various kinds, some more blatant than others. But this was the first time it had really felt like a knowe was
looking
at me—more than that,
seeing
me, and knowing me for something distinct and apart from the rest of Faerie. It wasn't a comfortable sensation.

The padlock clicked and came open in my hand. The sensation of being watched faded in the same instant, and the shed door swung open without my needing to touch it. I straightened, tucking the lock picks back into the waterlogged inner pocket of my jacket. “Thank you,” I murmured, and stepped through.

The transition between the mortal and fae worlds has always been marked, for me, by a moment of disorientation. In those instants, up is down, hot is cold, and everything hurts and heals at the same time. Transitions like that used to be painful, back in the days when I was more human and further from Faerie. Since Mom spun the balance of my blood closer to Dóchas Sidhe, the pain had faded, although the disorientation remained.

As I stepped through the door into Goldengreen, I felt as if I were suddenly human again. The disorientation was worse than it had ever been, spinning the world around me like a top and yanking away my personal gravity at the same time, leaving me in a state of vertiginous free fall that barely managed to distract from the pain freezing every nerve and burning every inch of my skin. My blood boiled and iced over at the same time, trapping me in a limbo of agony that felt like it would never end. I was going to die here, alone in the spinning, painful dark.

It was the pain that allowed me to fight through the rest of what was going on around me. I've become very acquainted with pain over the course of the last few years, especially where my own body is concerned. This was external pain, being forced on me by someone else, and I refused to let that be what took me down. I fought against it, trying to feel my way through the waves of agony until I struck the cool bedrock of my own self.

My hands hit the floor of Goldengreen's entry hall a split-second later as I landed in an unsteady crouch. The vertigo popped like a soap bubble, leaving me winded and feeling like my skin had been scrubbed from the inside, but intact. Under the circumstances, I'd take it.

Slowly, I raised my aching head and considered the dim, empty hall. No pixies clung to the rafters, and no many-legged shadows scuttled in the corners; the bogies were gone. There was no way that could be a good sign. None of Goldengreen's usual inhabitants were coming to greet me. I straightened, one hand going to the knife belted at my waist, and listened.

Every place is silent in its own way. I had been in Goldengreen when it was completely deserted, and I knew what its silence sounded like. This was quiet, but it wasn't silent; not quite. Voices were coming from somewhere, so thinned out and diffused by distance that they might as well have been the whispers of the “ghosts” that haunted the entry shed.

I took a careful step forward, still listening. The courtyard was the center of Goldengreen's social whirl, and normally, if someone was talking but out of sight, I would find them there. The voices didn't seem to be coming from the courtyard this time. I allowed that to embolden my steps, and sped up as I walked down the short span of hall between me and the courtyard doorway. When I got there I stopped, trying to let my eyes adjust, hoping that what I saw wasn't really true.

Shortly after I had become Countess of Goldengreen, my friend Lily, the Lady of the Tea Gardens, had been murdered by Oleander de Merelands. I had inherited Lily's subjects, a motley assortment of changelings and purebloods with nowhere else to go. They'd promptly set about making the knowe a home, transplanting trees and flowers from Lily's holdings to the indoor garden that had been established in the courtyard. They'd stayed with Goldengreen when I'd passed it on to Dean, partially because I'd vouched for him, but mostly, I knew, because they hadn't wanted to move the trees.

They weren't going to have to worry about that anymore. The courtyard looked like it had been hit by a localized but powerful tornado. Trees were on their sides, roots sticking up in the air like accusing fingers. Flowers had been crushed, rosebushes uprooted and flung against the walls. I was still trying to take in the damage when I realized that the pale branches extending from beneath one of the fallen trees weren't branches at all. They were fingers.

“Oh, oak and ash,” I breathed, and bolted up the courtyard stairs until I reached the level where the fallen tree was splayed. It was one of Lily's willows, old and grizzled with years of survival. As I drew closer, I could see the scales on the pale fingers, and on the soft skin of the hand that they were attached to. One of Lily's former handmaids, a woman whose name I had learned and then forgotten, because we'd had nothing in common except for our love of an Undine who would never walk with either of us again. I tried to brace against the dirt and shift the tree off of her body, but it was no use; I didn't have super strength, and all I could do was force her deeper into the soil.

I dropped to my knees, following some half-formed instinct as I grabbed her wrist—not to check for a pulse, but to check the temperature of her skin. She was cool enough that I guessed she had been dead for at least an hour, maybe longer. So why was there still a body here for me to find? The night-haunts came for all the dead of Faerie. That was their purpose, and their one form of sustenance. They would never leave a body unclaimed for this long, and here—inside a knowe, where no human eyes would ever look—they wouldn't have bothered leaving a replacement. The night-haunts should have come by now.

Unless someone was keeping them out, along with the rest of us. I stood, looking uneasily around the darkened courtyard, which could easily hold another dozen bodies buried beneath the broken greenery. Was Dean in here? Or Marcia? Had I lost friends today?

You mean apart from the obvious?

Again, I pushed the thought down, burying it deep within my mind. If I started mourning, I was going to break. I could already feel the fissures forming, and when they gave way, I would be glad to fall into the abyss of my own grief. Right here, right now, I needed answers. I needed someone to blame.

I wasn't going to get any of that in the courtyard. Murmuring a quick farewell to the fallen handmaid, I turned and ran back down the steps to the door, heading into the hall and pausing only long enough to reorient myself to the distant sound of ghostly voices. They were coming from farther down the hall. I started toward them, slowly at first, and then breaking into a run that stopped only when I reached the door to what Dean called “the cove-side receiving room.” It hadn't existed when Goldengreen was mine, but knowes can rearrange themselves. The current Count was a mermaid's son. Of course there would be a seaside entrance.

Opening the door brought light back into the world. The spiraling stone stairway that descended toward the receiving room was lit by glowing abalone shells, which might have seemed tacky under other circumstances, but here and now were a welcome change from the unyielding dark. The voices were louder now. Moving cautiously, lest I attract attention I didn't want, I started walking down the stairs.

The voices continued to get louder. I felt a small knot of tension in my shoulders give way as I realized that one of those voices belonged to Dean Lorden. He was shouting something I couldn't make out, and he sounded every inch his mother's son: imperious and angry, and ready to kick the world in the teeth until it started giving him what he wanted.

If Dean was alive, maybe Goldengreen hadn't fallen quite yet. I still didn't believe he was the one who had sealed the wards—not against his mother, not against
me
—but he was fighting, and that made a huge difference in his survival prospects. I sped up, taking the stairs as fast as I safely could, and wishing I dared to pull the “sliding down the banister” trick that had worked for me in the false Queen's knowe.

Then I came around the last curve in the stairs, and froze, staring at the scene beneath me.

The receiving room was large enough to seem like it couldn't possibly fit inside the knowe, with a redwood deck covering half the floor, while the rest gave way to sandy beach that yielded in turn to a small, private cove. The cliff wall extended down past the surface of the sea; I wasn't sure what the seaward entrance actually looked like, and I didn't want to know. Over a dozen of Goldengreen's subjects were clustered together at the water's edge, all but one standing as close behind their Count as they could. Dean stood at the front of the motley little group, a trident in his shaking hands, aimed at the person in front of him. Marcia was to his right, holding a butcher knife. Her hands weren't shaking at all. She looked perfectly calm, and like she was ready for whatever was going to happen next.

In front of them on the sand was a woman who couldn't possibly have been there. Her skin was so pale that poets could have been forgiven for calling it “as white as snow,” and her dark hair wavered between black and purple, casting off wildflower highlights when the light struck it just so. Her hands were empty, but you wouldn't have known it from the terrified expressions of the people standing in front of her.

It was impossible. It was unbelievable. It had to be some kind of a trick. And yet . . .

“Evening?” I asked.

She turned, smiling at me with those familiar blood-red lips, looking somehow satisfied.

“Hello, October,” said Evening Winterrose, once Countess of Goldengreen. “It's been a long time.”

“B
UT . . . BUT YOU . . .” I STAMMERED, BEFORE
words deserted me and left me speechless, cold, and confused. Evening raised her eyebrows, giving me an impatient look as familiar as it was disorienting. This couldn't be happening. None of this was even remotely possible. I seized on that fact and wailed, “You're
dead!
You can't be here, because you're
dead!
”

“That was the rumor, and yet.” Evening spread her hands. “Here I am.”

She looked exactly like she had the last time I'd seen her, before her murder had yanked me out of my self-imposed exile and back into Faerie, like it or not. Her hair was down, falling to her waist in an inky wave, and she was wearing a dark brown velvet dress with a white lace accent panel down the front, cinched at the waist like something stolen from a production of
Wuthering Heights
.

“Here you are,” I parroted numbly. Then I paused, eyes narrowing. “But this isn't possible. Whoever hired you gave you the wrong face to borrow, lady.”

Evening blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“I've had doppelgangers used against me before. If your employer wanted you to achieve your mission without attracting attention, they should have suggested you mimic somebody who'd been dead for a little less time. Like, I don't know, no time at all.” I drew my knife, keeping my eyes on Evening as I called, “Dean? Everybody okay over there?”

“I've had better days,” he said, almost laconically. “You're all wet.”

“Yeah, well, I stopped off to talk to your mother. She's a little concerned about the locked wards on your knowe.”

“The knowe is mine, not his, as well you know,” snapped Evening. “What's more, the wards were closed by my hand, and because I needed to determine what had gone awry here in my absence. How did
you
get inside?”

I frowned, looking past her to Dean. “Is she telling the truth? Did
she
close the wards?”

“She came in through the cliffside entrance,” said Marcia. “She just walked in like she owned the place. We were in the courtyard, and . . . and . . .”

“And I reacted to a home invasion—to vagrancy—as I saw fit,” said Evening. “The law allows me to defend my home.”

“This isn't your home!” snapped Dean. “I'm the Count here, and you're a trespasser who is sorely trying my patience!”

Evening started to turn toward him, the smell of roses and snow wisping through the air like the beginnings of a venomous prayer. I gasped. I couldn't stop myself.

Doppelgangers can steal faces. They can mimic a person to the point where that person's loved ones would never know the difference. But the one thing no one can mimic is the scent of someone else's magic. Even if they share an element—roses are common, for example—they'll never be able to get the exact balance right. A person's magic is a glimpse into their soul.

“Oak and ash,” I breathed, everything else forgotten as I stared at the miracle in front of me. “Evening. How are you alive?”

Evening stopped mid-turn and swiveled back toward me, a smug smile twisting at the corners of her lips. “Oh, now you believe that it's me? What have I done to earn this honor?”

“Your magic started to rise,” I said, taking a step forward. My waterlogged sneakers squelched unpleasantly. “Roses and snow. You're you. There's no one else you could be. But how . . . this isn't possible. You
died
. You cursed me, and then you died.”

“Did I?” She put a hand on her hip, Dean and the others apparently forgotten now that she had the opportunity to needle me. That, too, was familiar. Evening Winterrose had been the best enemy I'd ever had, always ready with a taunt or a harsh word that would still somehow manage to set me on the proper path. “I cursed you, yes, because I was afraid that ruffian Devin was going to try something, and I needed backup. If you'd been answering your phone that night, I wouldn't have been forced to go so far. But I seriously doubt that I
died
.”

“The night-haunts came for your body,” I said. “That constituted proof of death to me.”

“The night-haunts can be bribed, if you know what they desire,” said Evening, dismissing my evidence with a wave of her hand. “As for the rest of it, I think it's fairly clear that I'm alive. I was attacked in my apartment, and wounded to the point where the night-haunts came. It took me some time to recover. When I did, I returned to my knowe to finish the healing process, and found it infested with vermin. Perhaps now that you're here, you can convince the vermin to leave.”

“She means us, Toby,” called Marcia. Her voice was surprisingly steady, given the circumstances. “We're the vermin, and she wants to kick us out of our home.”

“Uh-uh, little girl,” said Evening, half-turning. “This is
my
home. You're merely the raccoons that moved into the attic while I was away.”

“Your curse nearly killed me,” I said. “You're telling me you didn't even mean to do
that
? That you were never really in danger?”

“You know, October, it's considered rude to carry on multiple conversations at one time,” said Evening, attention shifting back to me. “Yes, I was attacked, yes, I cursed you, yes, I lived. I'm terribly sorry if my brief convalescence has inconvenienced you in some way. It was only three years. Barely enough time for moss to grow, and yet I come back to find you puffed up on ideas of heroism, and these people living in my knowe. It's enough to make me sick. Things are going to have to change around here, starting in this room.”

“It's not your knowe anymore, if it ever was,” said Dean.

Evening sighed, tilting her head back until her face was pointed at the ceiling. “You see what I have to deal with?” she demanded. “Uppity changelings and mouthy mixed-bloods, and for what? To have the proper order of things restored? Faerie has become a madhouse, and I seem to be the only guard left on the asylum staff.”

I frowned. Evening had never been particularly nice to me—“nice” wasn't really in her vocabulary—but she'd never been this outright cruel before. She'd always looked down on me for being a changeling, of course. That was normal among the purebloods, and I'd barely noticed it at the time.

Maybe my standards had improved since then.

“He's right,” I said. “This is his knowe. Actually.”

Evening lowered her head, turning a blank-eyed look on me. “How do you reach that conclusion, October dear?”

“Goldengreen is a fiefdom of the Kingdom of the Mists,” I said. “That has never been questioned, and you swear your fealty to the throne. When you died—and everyone believed you were dead, whether or not that was true—the County passed to me, as payment for services rendered. I passed the County to Dean Lorden, as part of a peace brokerage between the Kingdom of the Mists and the Undersea Kingdom of Leucothea. It was acknowledged by the then-Queen of the Mists, who was later found to be illegitimate, and then acknowledged again by Queen Arden Windermere in the Mists, after she officially took her father's throne. So by any line of title you care to follow, this knowe is Dean's. The High King might be willing to uphold your claim to the fiefdom, since you're not dead and all, but you'd have to ask him.”

“I see,” said Evening, sounding faintly stunned. Her eyes narrowed as she considered me. “You've changed a great deal in these past three years, October. I didn't expect it of you, not at this late date. You seemed bent on a life of glorious mediocrity, like your mother.”

“Yeah, well, I owe it all to you,” I said. My stomach was churning. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to laugh, cry, hug her, or throw my knife at her head. Evening was the one who'd helped me when I'd first returned from the pond. She'd been the one to take me to a motel and talk me through those horrible days when I didn't know what year it was or whether I would ever see my family again. She'd forced me back into Faerie by getting herself killed, and I both loved and hated her for that. Now here she was, standing in front of me, and I had no living idea what I was supposed to do next.

And then there was the body in the courtyard. Thinking of that pale, slightly curled hand reminded me of the sealed wards, and the feeling of being slapped out of the Shadow Roads by a stronger magic than that of a King of Cats running through his own domain.

My fingers tightened on the grip of my knife.

“I see,” said Evening, apparently picking up on the gesture. “If that's how things are to be, then that's how things are to be. A pity. I had hoped we could do this without fighting. I did so enjoy being your friend, October.” She raised her hand, the smell of snow and roses rising faster this time, until it filled the room.

I braced myself, preparing to grab whatever spell she threw at me and fling it back at her. It had worked with Simon; maybe I could do it again. To my surprise, she simply turned, flicking out her hands like she was trying to dry them off. Dean wobbled. Then, without fanfare, he and all his subjects—except, inexplicably, for Marcia—fell backward, into the water. Marcia cried out, dropping to her knees and trying to lift her liege's head out of the water.

Evening turned back to me and smiled. “There we are. You can be angry with me, attack me even, for the crime of leaving you, but you'll be leaving all these people to drown. Or you can play the hero, rush to their aid, and know that I will simply walk away unchallenged. The choice is yours.” She started walking calmly toward me.

I gaped at her, unable to process what was happening. The Evening I'd known would never have—but as I was coming to learn, I didn't know a lot of people as well as I'd always thought I did. Marcia was still crying, an increasing edge of hysteria coloring her voice as she struggled to keep Dean from drowning. No one was helping the rest of them. No one was going to help the rest of them if I didn't do something.

“Damn you, Evening,” I snarled, and ran past her to the water. Marcia was sobbing as I pulled Dean out of her arms and hauled him up onto dry land. “Get the next one!” I barked, pausing only long enough to check that he was still breathing before I splashed back out to grab the next of the floating bodies.

I heard the sound of footsteps on the redwood deck behind me stop for a moment, and Evening's voice said, “I'll be back later, to discuss the matter of my missing property. If you survived my binding, you must have found it.” The footsteps resumed.

I had other things to worry about. Evening's spell seemed to have slowed the breathing of the people it affected, at least a little; that was the only reason no one drowned before Marcia and I could finish dragging almost a dozen unconscious fae back to safety. She bent forward, resting her hands on her knees as she struggled to catch her breath. I turned and looked back toward the stairs.

Evening was gone. That wasn't much of a surprise.

I walked down the stretch of beach to Dean and nudged him with my toe. “Wake up,” I snapped. “I have no idea what's going on, but you need to open the wards before your mother starts attacking the walls with a kraken or something.” I could feel the emotional collapse nudging around the edges of my consciousness, prodding me with the reminder of everything I'd paid to be standing here in shoes filled with water, trying to wake up a teenage Count. He was barely older than Quentin . . . I nudged him harder, trying to swallow the lump that was forming in my throat. “Wake
up
.”

Dean groaned.

“Guess that worked,” I said, and took a step back. “Hey. Count Lorden. Drop the wards, I need to talk to your mother.”

“Wha'?” Dean opened his eyes, blinking at me. Then he bolted upright, feeling around in the sand until his hand hit his trident. He pulled it to his chest, virtually aiming it at me. “What happened? Who was that woman? Where is she?”

“What happened was—don't point that thing in my direction unless you want me to shove it somewhere that isn't medically recommended—that woman was Evening Winterrose, former Countess of Goldengreen, and she . . . she left.” With no more fanfare than that, my knees gave out, dropping me onto my butt in the sand. My feet wound up back in the water. Somehow, that seemed like the least of my concerns. “She hit you all with some kind of knockout spell so that I'd have to choose between stopping her and saving you, and she left.”

“Toby?” The voice was Marcia's, but it seemed very far away. The numbness that had been protecting me since Dianda dragged me out of the water was finally cracking into pieces and falling away, leaving me feeling naked and exposed to the elements. “Are you okay?”

“We fell, Marcia.” I looked down at the sandy beach in front of me, and considered the virtues of lying down on it, never to get up again. “She closed the wards, and we fell out of the sky. I couldn't . . . their hands. I couldn't keep hold of their hands.” A sob was threatening to rise and overwhelm me. I fought it for as long as I could, struggling to keep it contained, but it was too late. Too much had happened, and while maybe I could have stayed in denial for a little longer, the sight of Evening had broken some inherent part of my heart so quickly and so unexpectedly that everything else was tumbling uncontrollably downward. “They were gone so fast.”