Page 50 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)

The drop of blood on the floor lit up like a beacon, becoming the brightest thing in the room.

Dots of brilliance surrounded it, tiny flecks of blood that had splattered when the main drop hit the floor.

I forced myself to focus on the largest brightness, refusing to get distracted, and followed the little glittering flecks out of the kitchen to the hall.

There was considerably more blood there, although not enough for anyone else to have noticed; you’d get more of a mess from the average bloody nose.

Still, there were brilliantly gleaming drops all along the length of the hall, and out the front door to the porch and steps beyond.

I paused to throw up a human illusion before following the trail onward.

They wouldn’t have bothered to drag the bodies out of the house if they were just going to teleport.

I clung to that belief as I followed the blood down the steps to the sidewalk, where it stopped about ten feet further down the street.

“This is where they got into the car,” I said.

Spike was standing next to me on the sidewalk.

I turned to it. “Hey, buddy. I know you can use the Rose Roads. Is there any chance you could follow the blood trail through the roses to Tybalt?”

It looked at me and chirped, rattling its thorns. I sighed. “Thought not, but it was worth asking.”

I turned back to the porch, eyeing the steps unhappily. Quentin and Bucer were standing on the porch, watching me. “Lock the door and come down?” I suggested. “We can go around the house to get in the car.”

“Fine by me,” said Quentin, coming down the stairs to stop beside me.

Bucer followed. Even the appearance of human feet couldn’t stop his steps from sounding like hoofbeats.

Spike looked at him and hissed, clearly unhappy with the man’s presence.

I couldn’t blame it for that one. We needed someone who was familiar with Dame Altair’s home and defenses, but that didn’t mean I liked having him here.

Bucer looked back at the rose goblin and shook his head, putting his hands up defensively. “Nice, er, horticulture,” he said. “Be good.”

“It knows goats eat rose canes,” I said, leaning down to run a hand over Spike’s head.

Bucer grimaced, and followed as we began walking toward the driveway, and the cars.

“Pregnant woman gets shotgun,” I said, once we reached the corner of the house. Quentin sped up, unlocking the car and checking the backseat for possible attackers. I was never going to get tired of seeing that kid demonstrate basic situational awareness.

Bucer didn’t object, only got into the back of Quentin’s car, Spike hopping into the backseat beside him with a final ominous rattle of its thorns. The rose goblin curled up, compact as a cat despite its larger size, and tucked its paws under its chest as it closed its eyes.

I lowered myself into the front passenger seat, groaning a little as I sat. “Can you give me your phone? I want to check on Danny,” I said.

“I don’t have his number.”

“Of course you—wait.” I paused. Quentin had never been the one to call Danny directly. “Did I really never give you his number?”

“Nope. And I didn’t ask. You have lots of friends whose numbers I don’t have.” He shrugged. “Well, some friends.”

“Oak and fucking ash,” I swore. “When this is over, we’re updating your address book.”

“Works for me. You know, you’re a lot calmer than I thought you’d be,” said Quentin.

“I’m not calm,” I corrected. “I’m seething. I am furiously angry right now, and the only thing that’s keeping me from screaming is the knowledge that I can’t do this alone, and we don’t have much in the way for available backup.”

I couldn’t call on Sylvester without compromising Raysel—assuming he would even answer, which was still a large assumption.

I was pretty sure Arden would be willing to send guards, but that would take time, and make us all less agile.

No. We needed to find out where May and Tybalt had been taken, and we needed to do it as quickly and quietly as possible.

“You thought there wouldn’t be any trouble going to talk to Dame Altair on your own,” said Quentin. He was smart enough not to verbalize the unspoken “and look what happened that time.”

“All right, that’s fair enough,” I agreed, as he pulled out of the driveway and onto the street. “But there shouldn’t have been. She’s a minor noble, she’s been around as long as I can remember, she’s never committed treason against the crown before.”

“Temptation gets to everyone eventually,” said Bucer. “Maybe the dame just needed to reach the right level of greedy before she was willing to act. And there’s her brother. Last I’d heard, he was pretty much banished from the kingdom.”

“He was in prison,” I corrected. “I’m a little surprised he hadn’t been elf-shot by now. I know we have a cure, but it’s not like it isn’t still a useful way of putting purebloods into storage while we figure out what we’re going to do with them.”

“I guess Arden’s trying to be more reasonable about casting her enemies into eternal slumber,” said Bucer.

I sighed. I’m not the biggest fan of elf-shot—never have been.

Elf-shot is fatal to changelings in a way it isn’t to pure fae.

The mortality in us objects to the idea of sleeping forever, and it rips our bodies apart, kicking off an internal war that we can’t win, only die of.

I’ve been elf-shot repeatedly. The first time I survived only because Amandine interceded, giving me the Changeling’s Choice for a second time and using my answer to let her pull the poison out of my veins.

By the time I was elf-shot again, I was fae enough to survive until the cure could be administered and wake me up.

Still, it hurt, and I was in no rush to go through that again, or to subject anyone else to it.

But it would have been nice if Dugan had been out of the picture, at least until we were finished dealing with his sister.

Quentin drove quickly and efficiently, paying more attention to traffic laws than I ever had. I relaxed into my seat, pondering our next steps.

Dame Altair and Dugan had taken our people somewhere.

They didn’t have a lot of options that I could think of.

Dugan had never been in possession of his own household as far as I was aware; he’d been a hanger-on of the false queen’s, living in her knowe until she was deposed and it was deserted, left to rot and collapse.

Titania had been able to call echoes of that knowe out of the void when she spun her false reality, but they’d been unstable even then, and I didn’t think he could get back there even if he wanted to.

He’d fall through the bottom of the world if he tried.

Knowes are dug out of the barrier between Earth and the Summerlands, anchored to both places but technically hovering between them.

They can become unmoored, and they can dissolve.

I don’t know what would happen to someone who entered that space without the protection of a knowe, a skerry, or a road already forged through the nothingness.

So far as I’m aware, only the original Three could walk in that space without dissolving.

Presumably Titania and Oberon still can, since we know where they are at this point. It’s not like I was going to ask.

So the most likely place for them to have gone was back to Dame Altair’s knowe, which would only make sense if she believed they could be safe there.

Without driving to distract me, I was just spiraling through my thoughts.

We needed someone who could help us find our people, who could do better than a single drop of blood.

“Quentin, can I have your phone?”

He took a hand off the wheel long enough to extract the phone from his pocket and pass it over. “Should be unlocked,” he said.

I tapped the phone’s screen to wake it up, dismissing the picture of Quentin and Dean being absolutely adorable with one another, then opened the contacts app, selecting the number I needed from the list. I tended to assume Quentin would have the number of anyone I trusted enough to call for help: there was always the chance he’d be trying to find me and I’d be with one of them, making me easy to locate if he knew where to start.

It wasn’t always the right assumption, but it worked about as often as not.

The phone rang and I waited until there was a click and a friendly voice said, “Borderlands Caf é . Madden speaking. How may I help you today?”

I relaxed, sinking deeper into my seat. “Hey, Madden. When do you get done with your shift?”