Page 39 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)

Danny’s car was gone. We were close enough to the center of San Francisco that almost all the available parking was occupied, although there were three open slots in front of Dame Altair’s house—honestly, a bigger indicator of the presence of Faerie than all the pointed ears in the world.

Street parking doesn’t just linger in San Francisco, a city made of hills and narrow side streets where people have been shot for a decent spot.

Quentin was also wrapped in a human illusion, looking like a sporty young man in his early twenties, clean cut and mundane. I offered him a smile, which he returned in earnest.

“Let’s go home, kiddo,” I said.

Quentin sighed. “I guess they took your actual phone, too?”

“They took everything I had on me.”

“Oh, Tybalt’s going to love that,” he muttered. “I wish there was a spell to summon a cab.”

“Come on, it’s not that far.” I wasn’t thrilled about the hills between here and home, but I was still upsettingly glad to be out of the house—especially since I knew this brief brush with freedom was going to end soon.

“What about me?” asked Bucer.

“We’re taking you with us until we can figure out what else we can get out of you,” I said, silently adding, and until I can find out what you know about Quentin . “Behave and I won’t tell Tybalt you’re partially responsible for me getting poisoned. He tends to take that sort of thing personally.”

Bucer swallowed hard and didn’t say anything else as he fell into step beside me.

San Francisco is a big city in the sense that it looms huge in the cultural landscape.

In the mortal world, it’s a trendsetter for art and technology, reshaping their reality around its ideas and discoveries.

In the fae world, it’s the center of the Kingdom in the Mists, which may not be the largest kingdom in the Westlands, but is certainly the source of more chaos than any other location we have.

But geographically, San Francisco is tiny.

Dame Altair’s house was less than two miles from mine, with winding streets and steep hills between them, but still, not all that much distance.

We started walking. Our progress wasn’t fast; every time we hit an incline, I had to slow down, dragging myself up and staggering downward, unsteady on my feet, which I couldn’t even see half the time.

The whole way, Quentin was there, stabilizing me, offering his arm and keeping me from toppling over.

I leaned on him more heavily than I was entirely comfortable doing, periodically checking his face to be sure I wasn’t hurting him. He kept smiling the whole time.

“Gosh, kid, suck up a little harder, why don’t you?” asked Bucer.

“You try having Toby for a knight,” Quentin countered.

“There’s almost nothing I can do for her that she can’t do for herself.

She has to protect me during fights, because if I take a really solid hit, I’ll go down and not get up again.

Meanwhile, she’s out there recovering from everything short of a decapitation.

I can’t even carry her stuff, because Tybalt always gets there first. It’s nice to be able to feel like I’m keeping up my part of the bargain. ”

I blinked at him. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

Quentin shrugged, looking away from me and down at the sidewalk. “Yeah, well, ‘I wish you’d need me more’ isn’t the sort of thing a guy wants to say to his knight,” he said.

“Still, I want you to be happy.”

“I know. The fact that you want that is why I didn’t say anything before.”

I frowned. “You’re not worried about things changing, are you?”

“Worried? No. Excited? I’m really excited. It’s been a while since I got to be a big brother.” He slanted a fragile smile in my direction. “I haven’t seen my baby sister since I came to Shadowed Hills.”

“I always forget you have a baby sister.”

“I do, and she used to be my very favorite person in the whole world. On good nights, I think she probably still is. On the bad nights, I realize I don’t know her anymore.

I haven’t seen her in eight years. A lot can change about a person in eight years.

I’m not the same as I was when I left home.

What if she doesn’t like me when we get back into the same place? What if I don’t like her?”

His voice broke on the last word. I sighed. “No one can tell you the answer to that. We can’t see the future. But maybe it’s time I write your parents and ask if they’ve considered bringing her home.”

Quentin looked alarmed. “I don’t want to go home. I’m happy here, and I haven’t been knighted yet. I’m not leaving until you think I’m good enough to bear my own, earned title.”

Because of course he would have a title whether he attained his knighthood or not. Quentin was going to be High King of the Westlands one day, and the crown wouldn’t care whether he’d earned his laurels. He was only studying with me because tradition said he should try, as the heir to the throne.

The sky above us was clear and bright with the deepening afternoon sunlight.

Soon enough, twilight would come, and then the star-starved San Francisco sky, flattened and rendered empty by the light pollution from below, which could drown out all but the very largest, brightest celestial bodies.

Some stars would still shine, of course, and the moon, which never went away, but the glorious noise of the sky would be swallowed whole by the electric lights below.

There was probably some great message in that, but whatever it was, I couldn’t see it at the moment. I kept walking, leaning on Quentin when I had to, pulling Bucer along with me when he slowed, and bit by bit, we closed the distance between Dame Altair’s house and my own.

My car was in the driveway, as was Quentin’s. Danny’s was nowhere to be seen. I would have to go and check on him after we’d checked in at home. If Dame Altair had done anything to him, I was going to…

Well, I didn’t know what I was going to do. But whatever it was, it would be painful, and she wasn’t going to like it.

My feet were throbbing, my knees ached, and I needed to pee so badly it was almost all I could think of by the time we reached the front door.

I climbed the front steps laboriously, trying to pretend I didn’t know Quentin was following closely so he could catch me if I fell, and only paused when I reached the top and automatically checked my pockets.

No keys.

“She took my keys,” I complained.

“You already knew that,” said Quentin. “You said she took everything.”

“Yeah, but… my keys .”

“She probably thought you were going to use them as a weapon,” said Quentin.

“Because I would absolutely have used them as a weapon,” I said, sourly. “So she got that much right.”

“Are you really mad at her for taking a weapon away?” asked Bucer.

“Given that I hadn’t done anything to provoke her or give her a good reason to take me prisoner, yeah, I’m a little pissed,” I said. “She poisoned me, tied me to a bed, and stole my phone and my housekeys. I think I’m justified in being ticked off.”

All this said, I reached up and rang the doorbell, feeling the warning tingle of the wards against my skin. Then I stepped back to wait.

My house wards won’t keep me out—that would be silly.

But they aren’t so strong that having them meant we could leave the doors unlocked all the time.

I leaned against the porch rail to take some of the pressure off my knees, feeling increasingly put-upon as I waited for someone to come and let us in.

Finally, footsteps. I straightened, catching a glance of blonde-streaked brown hair passing the edge of the window. The color was enough to set my teeth on edge. I took a step backward, putting myself between Quentin and the door.

The knob turned. The door swung open. And the pregnant woman with my face looked impassively out at the three of us.

She was wearing the same outfit I was, bar the sheer quantity of blood that had soaked into my clothing, which thankfully was being covered by Quentin’s illusions.

She raised an eyebrow anyway, apparently seeing something out of order about my attire.

“We’re not looking for a new religion, thanks,” she said, in my voice, and began to swing the door closed again.

“How about buying some cookies?” I asked.

She smirked. “Funny,” she said, and slammed the door.

“We should go,” said Bucer, voice low and urgent. “She could come back, and if she sees through these illusions, we’re going to have a problem that I don’t think we’re prepared for.”

He was making good sense, and the house was already effectively conquered ground. I stood there for a few seconds, trying to figure out why I wasn’t more upset, before I turned to Quentin. “You got your keys?”

“No,” he said, and blinked hard. “How are you so calm?”

“Dugan’s a champion illusionist, so we can assume Dame Altair is too.

May’s indestructible, Tybalt’s a nightmare when he wants to be, I’m a little worried about Raysel and Jazz, but I trust our people to take care of them.

For right now, I say we steal my car and head someplace where we can regroup and figure out our next moves.

If anything, knowing that Tybalt isn’t going to freak out and come looking for us means we have a little more flexibility. ”

Quentin frowned, stopping where he was for a beat. He blinked several times, eyes going slightly unfocused, then jabbed a finger at me as I started down the porch steps. “You’re enjoying this,” he accused.

“Maybe a little.” I shrugged. “Look. My hormones are all over the place. Yesterday I burnt a piece of toast and I started crying because what if I’d hurt the bread’s feelings.

So I don’t think I can be entirely blamed if my reactions to things aren’t exactly what you’d expect them to be.

And I’ve been locked inside the house for months .

I understand why, I know the reasons behind it, but that doesn’t mean I’ve enjoyed it, at all.

Now I’m finally doing my job, and I’m not actually worried about our people, because they can handle themselves.

Let these assholes think they got one over on us.

Hopefully it takes them a while to figure out that we escaped. ”

Bucer looked at me flatly. “You knocked on the door .”

“Yeah, because I didn’t set the wards to just let me in, whether the door was locked or not, and we’re all disguised, and they have no reason to think I’d let you loose if I found you. So there’s a chance they’re not onto us.”

Reaching the bottom of the steps, I started for the corner of the house, pausing only to let the two of them catch up. “Hey, Bucer, remember when Devin taught us about boosting cars?”

“I remember you hated it,” said Bucer. “I remember you used to let me take care of it whenever you possibly could.”

“Accurate memory,” I said, with far more cheer than was probably appropriate to the situation.

As we entered the driveway area I stopped again, trying to bend enough to flip a large flat rock at the edge of May’s herb garden.

To my deep annoyance, I couldn’t get more than halfway there without the risk of toppling over, so I sighed and straightened.

“Quentin, look under that rock,” I said.

“Why?” he asked, even as he was flipping the rock to reveal a long metal toolbox pressed into the soft ground beneath. He shot me a sharp look, pulling the box free. “This what you were looking for?”

“It was,” I said, and moved to unbind Bucer’s hands. “Don’t get any smart ideas about running away or trying to fuck me over. I’m tying you up again as soon as this is finished.”

“Of course you are,” said Bucer, alternately rubbing and shaking his wrists. He held one hand out toward Quentin. “Box, please.”

Quentin frowned. “Toby?”

“Give him the box,” I confirmed. “He can use what’s inside to break into my car.”

“Why your car? I have better insurance than you do.”

“Because your car is too new to be easy to hotwire,” I said. “And because this way I get to drive.”

Quentin huffed and handed Bucer the box. I moved to stand next to him, keeping one eye on the kitchen window in case someone went in there. There wasn’t any motion: for the moment, it seemed we were in the clear.

Opening the box, Bucer removed the slim jim and moved to the driver’s side window on my car, working the tool through the seal between the door and the window. He’d clearly been practicing since we’d studied together: the slim jim went in smoothly, and he had the lock popped in a matter of seconds.

“How come you haven’t taught me how to do that?” asked Quentin.

“I taught you to pick locks. That’s a lot more relevant in your daily life,” I said. “Plus I don’t know how to steal anything newer than the late 1990s, and that’s not going to help you all that much.”

He huffed again and settled back to watch as Bucer opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat. A few more seconds of work and the engine rumbled on, the car coming alive around him. I promptly moved to grab the open door and smile sunnily at Bucer.

“Out,” I said.

“But—”

“We’re going to Goldengreen,” I said. “You can argue with me there. For now, get in the back. Quentin, tie his hands as soon as he’s in the car.”

Bucer was at least smart enough not to argue again. He got into the backseat, and Quentin waited until his belt was fastened before leaning in and looping the yarrow and silver chain around his wrists.

Quentin got into the front passenger seat, and I slammed the driver’s side door before pulling out of the driveway, leaving my compromised home behind.