Page 70 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)

TWENTY-TWO

T HE DEMAND WASN’T UNEXPECTED. It still made my stomach contort into a hard, unforgiving knot, rage flooding through my veins. I balled my hands into fists and shook my head.

“Not on the table, Janet,” I said. “Try again.”

“You know I deserve this child,” she said. “You stole Gillian from me, but I can try again. I’ll be the only mother the babe has ever known, and I’ll be loved. Now and forever, I’ll be loved.”

“That isn’t how love works,” I said, keeping my eyes locked on the woman in front of me.

Tybalt was to my side, still holding Quentin like he was an exhausted toddler after a day in the park; Walther was on my other side.

May was somewhere behind us with the baby.

I wasn’t going to call attention to her if there was a chance she might be able to get away from here.

“You can’t just demand that someone love you,” I continued. “I know you don’t want to be the villain in a fairy tale. That’s what happens to people who snatch babies and take them far away from their families.”

“I am that child’s family! And I’m just doing to Faerie what Faerie thought it had the right to do to me!

” Janet shook her head, scowling. “I lost one child because I saved a man who swore he loved me, and when I got another with the King of the Faeries, I thought I would finally be allowed to be a mother. But no. No, his wife hated me for being in his bower, and she swore to take my baby and twist her away from me, away from her own humanity. My lover listened, and while I slept, my baby disappeared into the mist. I searched and searched. For centuries I searched. And by the time I found her, she wanted nothing to do with the human world. She couldn’t even see me as her mother. ”

“None of that makes this okay, Janet,” I said. “You can’t replace the children you lost with someone else’s babies. It doesn’t work.”

“I replaced your mother with your daughter,” she said. “For years, I was the only mother she knew, and if you hadn’t known how to find us, we would still be happy together. You’re the one who lured her away from me, back into Faerie, where she had no business being.”

As if on cue, the baby began to cry. Not from directly behind me, as I would have expected, but somewhere off to the side. Janet’s head snapped around, eyes going wide and bright with greed.

“The child is healthy, then,” she said. “Bring it to me.”

“Don’t think I will,” said May. “And I don’t think you want her, anyway. There’s nothing human about this baby.”

“Liar,” said Janet. “I know October’s heritage. I know she still has humanity in her. The baby will as well.”

May came into view ahead of us, walking toward Janet with a bundle in her arms. The baby wasn’t crying anymore. Somehow, that didn’t make me feel any better.

But something about the way she was holding herself didn’t make me feel any worse . She was walking toward our enemy with my baby in her arms, and I was more curious than upset. It was an odd response, and it told me that something about this wasn’t as it seemed.

“You know October’s heritage, but you know the balance of it can change once magic gets involved. October’s magic was willing to let her die to preserve her daughter’s life. Why would it leave the girl human in the slightest? Humanity is a danger. It invites mortality in.”

“Not for me,” said Janet. She tossed the scabbard away, grabbing the bundle out of May’s arms like she was grabbing onto the rope that would pull her to safety.

Tybalt tensed next to me, snarling, but he didn’t drop Quentin and he didn’t lunge; whatever May was doing, he was trusting her to see it through.

Janet kept the iron knife pressed to Madden’s throat as she pulled the bundle closer to her chest, peering into it. Her expression softened. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, there you are. I’ve been waiting for you for so long.”

“Give her back,” said May, without commitment.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” demanded Janet. She stepped backward, removing the knife from Madden’s throat, and shoved him toward us. He stumbled forward, already turning back and growling. She waved the knife.

“I’ll see her dead before I’ll see her back in Faerie’s hands,” she said.

I went cold. My baby could heal from almost anything, but iron was one of the few exceptions to that, as we’d just had brutally demonstrated with me.

I glanced at Tybalt. He stood as if frozen, a stricken, horrified expression on his face, not even seeming to breathe.

This was all my fault. I’d been too eager to get back to work, and now my cursed immortal grandmother was holding my baby while she was still too fresh to have a name.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t move, because Janet had an iron knife and if I moved, she might use it, she might cut and cut and cut until there was nothing left of the child I had carried through so many trials, protected through so many dangers.

She lost her baby after Maeve’s Ride, but I’d held on to mine after Titania’s. This wasn’t right.

Janet took another step back, aiming her knife at all of us. “Stay where you are,” she commanded, then whirled and ran away, heading for the farthest corner of the warehouse. I immediately moved to run after her—

—only to find May standing in my way, blocking me from my pursuit. “Stand aside ,” I snarled.

“Toby.” She put her hands up. “Tybalt. Both of you stop, take a breath. Would I really hand my niece off to that asshole?”

“I—no,” I said. “May, what’s going on?”

“Promise not to run after her.” She turned, walking back toward the shelves to our right, and took something off of a shelf, walking back toward us.

The baby, who had been perfectly comfortable on the shelf, made an unhappy hiccupping sound followed by a thin whimper that sounded like it was going to escalate to full-out crying.

May rocked her gently, murmuring nonsense syllables until the baby calmed down again.

“She’s fine,” she said, and presented me with the bundle. I snatched it away from her, staring down at my daughter, who quieted as soon as she was in my arms. I looked back up at May.

“How…?”

May shrugged. “Night-haunt, remember? Or I was, before. I can still make manikins if I feel the need. I grabbed Walther’s leftovers, and Janet stole herself a child made of leaves and bits of herb.

She’ll figure out something’s wrong when the baby doesn’t wake up, but by then, we’ll be well away from here.

Especially since she just showed us where to find the exit. ”

We all stared at her. Tybalt set Quentin gently on his feet, then reached over and grabbed May’s shoulders, jerking her into a hard hug. May squeaked, then relaxed into his embrace, waiting until he let go before trying to step away.

He looked at her gravely. “Never again,” he said. “Promise me, never again.”

“It was a special circumstance,” said May.

“Next time, I’ll scratch your eyes out.”

“They’ll grow back.”

“Not immediately.”

I tuned out the sound of their bickering, focusing on the baby in my arms. She was awake and looking at me, eyes the muddy swamp water blue that always seemed to manifest in new babies.

Gillian’s eyes had been the same color. Her pupils were round.

If she was going to take after her father, she wasn’t showing it yet.

No matter how closely I looked, I couldn’t see any traces of humanity in her soft, round face.

May might have been telling the truth. My magic could very well have removed her mortal blood while I was carrying her, not offering either one of us a choice.

The thought was almost revolting. Only almost, because nothing about my little girl could be truly revolting. I reached down to smooth a bit of hair away from her face, tucking it behind one wrinkly, pointed ear. Oh, she was perfect.

She was perfect, and someone was tugging on my arm. I looked up to find Walther next to me.

“If you’re done with your beautiful bonding moment, we need to get out of here,” he said. “Janet thinks she has what she wants, but we need to get past Dame Altair if we want to make it back to the mortal world.”

The mortal world would mean cell reception and access to the Shadow Roads.

We could get Madden and me to a healer, we could get the baby somewhere safe.

Tybalt and I needed to talk about names—I couldn’t just keep calling her “the baby,” but somehow, picking names before she arrived had felt too much like borrowing trouble.

We could tell the Luidaeg we weren’t dead, hopefully before Karen had a chance to relay my message—worse, the circumstances under which it had been given—and set her off. “Yes,” I said. “Let’s go.”

This time, I kept hold of the baby, and Quentin walked on his own.

May retrieved the scabbard that turned everything to iron, and carried it against her chest as she followed us.

It felt strange to be following Janet’s route through the warehouse, given everything, but it was the best clue we had as to where the exit might be found, and so follow her path we did, until finally we reached the wall.

There, between two large shelves, one loaded down with books, the other full of dishes for some reason, was a door.

Either there was more here than just magical items, or a lot of people were distressingly fond of enchanting salad plates and drinking glasses.

The door was tall and broad and made of what looked like solid maple, and when Madden brushed his fingertips against the doorknob, it swung open easily, unlocked and waiting for us.

“Good job,” I said, letting May and Tybalt take the lead. My instincts told me to go first, but for right now, I had other priorities.

We stepped through, and we were back in the little house in the courtyard, emerging from the hall into the impeccable front room.

It was empty. Either Janet had decided to keep running after she got outside, or she was elsewhere in the house.

It didn’t matter much, as either way, she wasn’t in a position to stop us.

We kept going, piling out the front door to the porch.

The courtyard was bright with morning light, the sun high overhead and illuminating everything.

Everything including Dame Altair and her brother, standing to either side of the small chicken-legged house, clearly waiting for us.

Fun.