Page 48 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)

“Your magic has always been built on a base of heated wax, probably inherited from your maternal grandmother, but after I changed your blood, the secondary note went from mustard flower to crushed blackthorn fruit,” I said hurriedly.

“You consented to be changed even though you were asleep, because I came to you in a dream and asked if I could. You asked me if I’d be willing to claim offense against you, because you needed to get out of Shadowed Hills for a little while—”

That was apparently enough. With a choked-off, hiccupping sound, she threw the door open and flung herself at me, locking her arms around my neck. I took my hand off the sword, leaving it sheathed, and caught myself on the metal porch rail with both hands, letting her sob against my neck.

“Guessing things haven’t been going well, huh?” I asked.

She didn’t reply in words, only an incoherent babble of sounds that all blended together into something like the cry of the wild parrots that flocked on Telegraph Hill. I brought one hand up and began to pat her back, trying to be soothing.

“Uh, Ray? What’s with the waterworks?” asked Quentin, standing behind me on the porch stairs.

Raysel lifted her head, still sniffling, but at least no longer babbling, and wiped her eyes with one hand. “Um. Hi, Quentin,” she said.

I was pretty sure she had a crush on him.

I wasn’t worried about either of them doing anything about it.

My squire was growing up to be an attractive young man, but he was in a pretty serious relationship with Dean, who had a complicated past with Raysel.

She wasn’t going to risk her place in our household by getting between Dean and his boyfriend, and Quentin wasn’t going to endanger his existing relationship to mess around with his liege’s daughter.

I was his knight, but Sylvester held his fosterage, and Sylvester wasn’t always rational where Raysel was concerned.

And yeah, I was enough of a hypocrite to not want Quentin and Raysel goofing around under my roof.

I couldn’t stop them—I wasn’t actually sure I’d try if I caught them.

Both of them were over eighteen, which mattered more in the mortal world than it did in the fae one, but my human-influenced sensibilities told me that if they wanted to get naked, they absolutely could. I just didn’t want to know about it.

“Hey, Ray,” said Quentin. “Why are you crying?”

“Because I thought you were—there were—” She pulled back enough to look at my face, then burst into tears again, sobbing loudly and messily.

Raysel was Daoine Sidhe, but she couldn’t cry pretty, despite all the ethereal beauty she was heir to.

Her eyes got red, and snot bubbles formed on her nostrils.

Under other circumstances, and if she hadn’t been so clearly distraught, I might have been pleased by the reminder that being a pureblood didn’t guarantee that you would always look perfect.

In the moment, spending more than a fleeting thought on anything other than her obvious distress would have been utterly cruel.

“Raysel.” I gripped her upper arms, turning her so that she was fully facing me. “Where are May and Tybalt? Are you alone?”

She nodded vigorously at the second question, strands of fox-red hair clinging to the tears on her cheeks and making her seem disheveled and impossibly fragile.

“They wuh-were here,” she sobbed. “ You were here too, but it wasn’t you, and Spike kept rattling all angry, so I didn’t come down to the kitchen, I stayed upstairs in my room until there was this big thud, and then I came to the top of the stairs and I saw—I saw—”

Her words dissolved into sobs once more, hysteria overwhelming whatever she was trying to say. I began to let go of her arms and straighten and she immediately reached up, clamping her hands over mine and holding me where I was.

“Don’t… don’t let me go,” she managed. “I feel like I’m falling, all the time, forever. Please don’t let me go.”

“Okay, Raysel,” I said. “What did you see?”

“The people who looked like you and Quentin were dragging Tybalt and Aunt May out the front door. They looked—” She stopped again, this time not because she was crying, but because she’d just realized that maybe she was about to say something that could be dangerous while I was standing that close to her.

“That was Dame Altair and her brother, Dugan, wearing disguises to look like us,” I said, as patiently as I could manage. I gave Raysel’s arms a squeeze, then let her go, and this time she let me. “They like poisons. I’m sure May and Tybalt are just knocked out.”

May was effectively unkillable—even closer to truly immortal than I was. I’d once seen her grow back the bulk of her internal organs after they’d been shattered by a tree branch. As for Tybalt…

The reason I wasn’t going to let myself give in to panic was simple: Quentin and Bucer had both been poisoned without my healing abilities to help them recover, and they’d both woken up just fine.

Whatever Altair had dosed Tybalt with, he’d wake up, and he’d be fine.

Furious , I was sure, but fine. And I had to believe that with all my heart, or I was going to turn around and kill Bucer where he stood.

Bucer. Oh, hell. I whipped around, and found him standing in the driveway next to the car, a downcast expression on his face and his hands dangling by his hips.

“The bracelets don’t come off,” he said.

“In case you were wondering. When I try to pull them off, it’s like they grow thorns all over the inside, and they dig into my skin, and they don’t come off.

So that’s definitely awesome and not at all going to be a horrible thing for me later, when I have to try leaving here with my magic bound. ”

“I know the Luidaeg well enough to say that they’ll probably come off if I’m the one pulling on them,” I said.

“But no, I’m not going to test that until we’re done with you.

You leave when I say you leave, and if you have a problem with that, I can remind you that right now, you’re in the best position you’re ever likely to be in again. ”

“What’s that?” asked Bucer.

“You’re on my side,” I said, voice cold, and turned back to Raysel. “You must have come downstairs after that. Did you try calling anyone?”

“No,” she said, in a very small voice. “I don’t have a lot of phone numbers written down, and I don’t have my own phone yet, and I didn’t want to call anyone at Shadowed Hills because if I called there wailing about you poisoning Tybalt and dragging him away, I know my father would come, and just make everything even worse. Also, I wasn’t sure it was really you.”

“Why not? Poisoning Tybalt—which is something we both know I’d never do—aside.”

“She wasn’t moving like she was pregnant.

She was moving like she had a pillow stuffed under her shirt, like she was pretending she was pregnant, but not like she had a baby in there.

I’ve been watching you move for months. You don’t step lightly anymore.

” She had the grace to look embarrassed as she said that, looking down at her feet.

“You sort of… not stomp, but you plod around, and you look uncomfortable all the time. This lady wasn’t doing any of that, and she was dragging Tybalt by his wrists and snapping at the man who looked like Quentin.

And he didn’t say anything . He just followed her without saying anything. ”

“Where would they take them?” asked Quentin.

I focused on Raysel again. “Okay, Raysel, I need you to think very carefully: was either one of them bleeding? Was there any blood at all, anywhere?”

“I don’t know,” she said, sniffling again.

“All right. How long ago was this?”

“Maybe half an hour? I don’t know .”

She was starting to sound mulish, which made me want to shake her, and feel bad for wanting to shake her. None of this was her fault. “All right, sweetheart. You’re doing great. Did you hear a car when they were dragged outside?”

“I always hear cars. The cars never stop.” She scowled. “But… yes. There was a car right after they left the house.”

“Good girl. You’ve been a great help.” I stepped around her and into the kitchen, pausing in the doorway to survey the scene.

There were four mugs on the table, containing the dregs of what looked like hot chocolate with whipped cream and multicolored marshmallows—one of May’s specialties.

I had never been particularly impressed with Dame Altair, but if she’d managed to poison May’s cocoa in May’s own kitchen, she was more subtle than I had ever taken her to be.

Great. Why do the bad guys always have to turn out to be better at their jobs than I want them to be?

Still, if anyone should have realized that she wasn’t me, it would have been Tybalt.

If even Raysel could see that Dame Altair’s faux pregnancy didn’t look right, he would certainly have caught some turn of phrase or gesture that didn’t synchronize with what he expected from me.

He had to have figured out at some point that something was wrong.

I moved to the middle of the kitchen and closed my eyes, breathing deeply.

All the usual smells of a well-used room came to my attention, underscored by a faint ribbon of red.

May had cut herself here, several times, and she didn’t heal like I did; when she broke skin, she bled until her blood could clot.

None of the blood smelled fresher than a few days old. That wasn’t what I wanted.

I kept walking across the kitchen, heading for the door to the hall, and stopped dead as fresher blood assaulted my nose, rich with the mingled scents of pennyroyal and musk. “Oh, you clever, clever cat,” I murmured.

“What did you find?” asked Quentin.

“Tybalt must have felt the poison kicking in, and clawed himself.” I couldn’t kneel, so I looked down, studying the floor until I found the smallest smear of red against the wooden floor. “He left us a trail.”

“How far…?”