Marcia didn’t ask how I’d hurt myself. She probably didn’t want to know. She just produced a first aid kit from the admissions booth and ordered me to go sit down in the pavilion, where underpaid teenagers in “traditional” Japanese robes sold overpriced tea to tourists. Those same tourists stared as Marcia slathered my hands with antibiotic cream before wrapping them in gauze and athletic tape.
We must have looked strange to human eyes: a rumpled brunette receiving elementary first aid from a gaunt-eyed blonde, with a glowering man looming off to the side. It made sense if you knew the situation. Like most things, my life looks stranger when viewed from a distance. I was Marcia’s temporary liege, and it was reasonable for Tybalt to bring me to her for medical care after I impaled myself on a hawthorn bush fleeing from what might have been a figment of my imagination . . .
Okay, my life makes even less sense when you understand it. Whose doesn’t?
Once Marcia was done taking care of my hands, I hugged her and reminded her to go to Tybalt if she needed anything. She agreed, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes; I think we both expected this to be our last good-bye. She’d seen me bleeding, and she knew things were moving toward a conclusion. Encouraging her to hope I’d still be standing when everything was done would have been unbelievably cruel, so I didn’t try.
Tybalt walked me to the car without saying a word. I almost asked what he was thinking, but I stopped myself. I was confused enough, and I had too much left to do. Tybalt could wait. Still, the fact that he didn’t even say good-bye flustered me enough that I didn’t realize until later that I’d managed to drive away without my baseball bat.
Finding UC Berkeley is easy once you’re off the freeway. Berkeley is a college town, and practically all roads lead to the campus—a vast, central sprawl of open space and green growing things. A creek cuts through the middle, blocked by fences designed to keep drunken co-eds from taking accidental dips. I was too busy trying to survive my time in Devin’s service to go to college, but I’ve lived in the Bay Area for most of my life, and I’ve cut through the university on my way to Telegraph Avenue more than once.
I bought a parking slip from a machine at the edge of the student parking lot. The students the lot was intended for passed as I got out of the car, chatting with one another and ignoring me. Apparently, rumpled women with gauze-wrapped hands wearing leather jackets in May showed up at their school all the time. Considering the air of genial weirdness that surrounds the people of Berkeley—fae and mortals alike—that wasn’t surprising. I shoved the meat from the Cat’s Court into the duffel bag alongside Luna’s cup and started to walk.
Berkeley is a neutral city, belonging to no fiefdom and answering to no liege but the Queen. That’s always attracted the more outré fae elements, and they, in turn, surround themselves with the weirdest that the human world has to offer. It’s the chicken and the egg all over again—which comes first, the crazy or the strange?
I looked around with unabashed curiosity as I entered the campus, hoping to find a map. Given the size of the school, I didn’t know which way I was supposed to go to find the chemistry labs. I waved at the nearest student. “Excuse me?” He kept walking. I turned to the next available person, repeating, “Excuse me?” She didn’t stop either.
“Great,” I muttered. “Now I’m invisible.” Humanity’s tendency to ignore the fae is sometimes annoying, but this was a bit much. I sighed and sat on the nearest bench, putting my packages to the side and resting my aching head in my hands.
“It’s not you,” said a voice. I looked up. A thin young man with deeply tanned skin and untidy black hair was standing nearby. He was grinning. I didn’t grin back, but I didn’t scowl, either. “They’re like that to everyone this time of year. Too close to finals for common courtesy to apply, y’know?”
“So why are you talking to me?”
“Chemistry major,” he said, like that explained it. I looked at him blankly. He laughed. “I’ve been awake and cramming for the last three days, and I figure if I can’t pass my finals now, it’s too late. No reason to be rude just because I’m failing.”
“Right.” I finally smiled. “If you’re a chemistry major, can you tell me where to find the chemistry classrooms? I’m here to meet one of the instructors.”
“I figured,” he said blithely, dropping himself onto the bench next to me. “My psychic powers tell me you’re looking for a blond guy with spooky blue eyes.”
I blinked. “Your psychic powers?”
“Yeah, the ones that kick in when my adviser tells me he’ll give me extra credit if I’m willing to lurk around the parking lots watching for lost-looking brunettes. He left off the ‘cute’ part, but I figured that out for myself from the way he was cleaning his desk.” He offered his hand. “Jack Redpath. I’m Professor Davies’ grad student.”
“Toby Daye.” Shaking his hand put pressure on my bandaged fingers. I tried not to wince. “Nice to meet you. What do you mean, spooky?”
“Spooky.” He reclaimed his hand, making circles in front of his eyes with thumbs and forefingers. “You’re sitting in class, innocently drawing naked chicks on your syllabus, when suddenly wham, Mr. Spooky-Blue-Eyes is looking right through you. Anyway, the chemistry classrooms are over there.” He indicated a building on the other side of the walkway. “Be sure to tell him I get my fifteen points, okay?”
“Deal,” I said, and stood.
Jack did the same, still grinning. “Nice to meet you. Have fun with the Professor.” He turned and strolled away, whistling.
“Okay, that was weird but productive.” I scanned the quad one last time before walking over to the building he’d indicated. The doors were unlocked. I hesitated, shrugged, and went in.
The air inside was cool, with the antiseptic tang I’ve always associated with hospitals and large institutions. The floor was linoleum, easy to wash and maintain, and the fluorescent lights were refreshingly dim after the glaring sunlight outside. I peered at the classrooms as I walked down the hall. The fifth door was standing open, and Walther was inside, erasing something from the whiteboard. Tucking the duffel under my arm, I knocked on the doorframe. His head jerked up, expression startled. “Hey,” I said. “How long have you had that guy out there waiting for me?”
“Oh, a while now,” said Walther, starting to smile. “I figured you might have trouble finding the place.” He was dressed to fit the professorial stereotype, in tan slacks and a brown sweater. I could see what Jack meant about the “spooky” eyes; they were a piercing, slightly eerie shade of blue even through the filter of Walther’s human disguise. He was wearing a pair of black-framed glasses to blunt the effect, but they weren’t working entirely.
“I did. So it was a good plan.”
“I try to think ahead.” He hesitated, smile fading as he saw the bandages on my hands. “What happened?”
“I had a little run-in with some hawthorn bushes.” I stepped into the classroom. “I brought the cup, and some meat I need to have tested. Do you have the facilities to check for fingerprints?”
“I don’t, but the forensic science class might.” He reached for the duffel. “What’s the meat for?”
“The inhabitants of the Cat’s Court have been poisoned. Whoever did it used this meat. Everyone who ate it has collapsed.”
That stopped him. “What? Is everyone okay?”
“No. There have been several deaths so far, and there are going to be more if we don’t do something. I need to know what’s in that meat.”
He paled. “Deaths?”
“Yeah.” I looked down, trying to put the image of Opal and her children out of my head. “There are a lot of sick Cait Sidhe in Tybalt’s Court right now.”
“I have a lab down the hall; we can go there.” He crossed back to the desk, putting the duffel down on top of a large stack of papers, and then picking up the whole thing. “Did you come straight from the Cat’s Court?”
“I checked in at the Tea Gardens first; everyone’s as
well as can be expected.” I didn’t mention that I’d only stopped by long enough for Marcia to bandage my hands. She’d tell him herself, soon enough.
“Right.” Walther walked into the hall, staggering as he tried to balance all the things he was carrying. “I’ll ring for a fingerprinting kit when we get to the lab. Get the lights, would you?”
I followed, flicking off the light as I passed it. “Can I take some of that?”
“Nope. Wouldn’t be right to let a lady carry her own deadly toxins.” He stopped at an unmarked door. “The keys are in my pocket. If you’d do the honors?”
“I—oh, right.” I dug the keys out of his coat, only slightly embarrassed about rummaging in the clothes of a man I barely knew, and unlocked the door.
The lab was about half the size of Walther’s classroom, with messy heaps of paper and equipment I didn’t recognize serving to make the space seem even smaller. I hadn’t seen a room that cluttered since January O’Leary’s office, otherwise known as “the place where paper goes to die.” I fumbled until I found the light switch and clicked on the overheads.
Walther dropped his armload of papers and potential murder weapons onto the counter before reaching for the phone. “I assume you know how to use a fingerprinting kit, and I don’t need to try to lie to a lab tech?” he asked, glancing in my direction. I nodded. “Good.”
“I have many useful skills,” I deadpanned.
“I’m sure you do.” He dialed, waiting a moment before saying, “This is Professor Davies from organic chemistry. Can I get a fingerprinting kit sent to lab four? No, no one broke in. I just need to do a demo.” He laughed. It was a broad, amiable laugh, and didn’t sound forced, even though I could tell from his expression that it was. “Great.”
Walther hung up, removing his glasses and setting them off to one side. “It’ll be here in twenty minutes. What are we looking for, exactly?”
“Anything.” I leaned over to unzip the duffel bag, pulling out the bundle of meat and offering it to him. “Look for floral toxins first. Poisonous flowers.”
“Right.” He pulled on a pair of latex gloves before taking the meat and putting it down on a clean section of the counter. Removing the blood-spotted butcher paper released a musky, rancid smell. He wrinkled his nose. “Well, whether this is poisoned or not, it’s started to go off. At least we shouldn’t need to keep it around long in order to find out what we need to know.”
“What are you going to do?” I dropped his keys on the pile of papers next to the duffel bag before moving to perch on a relatively stable-looking stool.
“Do you know anything about chemistry, alchemy, or hedge-magic divination?”
“Not really.”
“In that case, I’m going to put pieces of meat in jars full of chemicals and herbal tinctures, and see what happens.” He picked up a scalpel, starting to slice off slivers of meat. “Are we looking for floral toxins on the cup, too?”
“I think so.”
“Got it.”
After that, I might as well not have been in the room. Walther produced a startling assortment of jars and beakers from the cupboards and dropped a sliver of meat into each one before producing an even wider assortment of strange-smelling, brightly-colored liquids. He poured them over the slivers of meat, frowning as they fizzed, changed colors, or did nothing at all. I didn’t interrupt. He was right when he assumed I wouldn’t understand what he was doing.
He’d been working for about fifteen minutes when someone knocked. Walther didn’t seem to notice. I stood and moved to answer the door, preparing to lie. I didn’t have to: a bored-looking student pressed a fingerprinting kit into my hands and walked away, not bothering to ask who I was or whether he’d brought us the thing we needed.
I blinked, several times. Then I closed the door and moved to another clean section of counter, pausing on the way to remove the velvet-swaddled cup from the duffel bag. Walther was still off in chemistry la-la land, so I pulled on a pair of latex gloves and started the laborious process of checking for prints.
His voice broke the silence ten minutes later: “That’s not right.”
“What?” I turned, the fingerprint kit’s dusting brush in one hand, to find him scowling at a jar full of purple liquid.
“Just a second.” He waved his free hand over the jar, muttering in Welsh. His magic rose, filling the air with the taste of ice and yarrow, and the ghostly image of a branch of oleander flowers appeared in front of him. He lowered his hand, even as the brush fell from my suddenly nerveless fingers and clattered to the counter. “Well. That’s an unpleasant piece of work.”
“Oleander,” I whispered, not taking my eyes off the flowers.
“Exactly,” said Walther, clearly missing the importance of the word. “Someone spiked the meat with oleander extract. I’ve never seen the stuff so refined. It’s practically pure—” He stopped, catching the look on my face. “What’s wrong? I can cure oleander poisoning.”
“That’s Oleander,” I said. My head was pounding again. I was too relieved to care. Oleander’s always had a preference for using her namesake—call it hubris or plain old evil—but I don’t know how to distill the stuff. I wouldn’t know where to start; with Devin gone, I wouldn’t even know who to buy it from. She was real, and I wasn’t crazy.
“Yes, oleanders.” I could tell he didn’t have any clue Oleander de Merelands might be involved. She was ancient history for most people, just another boogeyman beneath our racial bed. I’d been starting to think I was the only one who couldn’t let her go. “They’re poisonous.”
“I know.” I picked up the brush and turned back to the cup, resuming my dusting. “I’ve seen them before.”
“I’m not surprised. They’re stupidly common in Californian landscaping. What did you say happened to your hands?”
“Hawthorn bush.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “When you finish with that, I want a blood sample.”
“What?” I glanced back over my shoulder, eyeing him. “You didn’t say what I think you just said.”
“Do you think what I said was ‘can I have a blood sample?’ ”
“Does it have to be from me?” I’ve always hated the sight of my own blood. The thought of sharing it didn’t appeal, especially not with my hands already beaten raw.
“Since you’re the only other person here for me to ask, yes, it does.”
“Take it from yourself.” I squinted at the cup. “The only prints here are Luna’s.”
“You know what Duchess Torquill’s fingerprints look like?” Walther removed his gloves and tossed them into the trash can.
“I can be pretty persistent when I want to be.”
“Really,” he said, dryly. He picked up a lancet, walking over to me.
I decided to ignore both his sarcasm and the sharp object he was carrying. “I went through a forensics phase, so I hassled her into letting me take her prints. They’re unique enough that I remembered them—see?” I indicated the scalloped flower-petal whorls of one print. “Never seen anything else like it.” I gave him a sidelong look. “I’d rather not give blood today. I feel fine.”
Walther sighed. “Toby, your pupils are dilated, your pulse is up, and you keep staring at your hands—which, by the way, you’ve managed to hurt in some way that makes no sense to me. You’ve brought me meat spiked with enough refined oleander to kill dragons, and a cup covered in Duchess Torquill’s fingerprints. Please excuse me if I don’t believe you ‘feel fine.’ ”
“Dragons?” I echoed, momentarily distracted from the lancet. “This stuff could kill dragons?”
“Tybalt’s lucky any of his subjects ate this and survived.”
“It’s a little early to say they survived,” I said. “Can you make some sort of antitoxin for the ones that are still alive?”
“Cait Sidhe are odd, biologically speaking, but I should be able to come up with something.”
“We don’t have much time.”
“I know. That’s
why I need you to let me take a blood sample before you drop dead and force me to explain your corpse to the administration.” His voice stayed level and soothing. “Chemistry professors who wind up with dead women in their labs don’t get tenure, and I don’t want to change jobs for at least another thirty years.”
“How do you know my pulse is up?” I felt my wrist. He was right—my pulse was racing like I’d been running a marathon. I frowned. Finding Walther’s office wasn’t that stressful, and watching him play with the chemicals had been almost soothing.
“Trade secret.” He paused. “You’re breathing too fast. You’ve been practically panting since you got here, and that forces your pulse up. That can’t be good, especially since you may have been exposed to some sort of toxin.”
“I’ve barely eaten today,” I protested. “I’ve been running in circles since last night.”
“Food and drink aren’t the only ways to poison someone. You can use inhalants, contact poisons—want the list? Unless you can prove you’ve managed to go without breathing all day, you’re at risk, and since you’re not a Gnome, you’ve been breathing.”
“Fine.” I offered my less-battered hand and turned my face away, squeezing my eyes shut. “Just make it quick.”
“I only need a little—it won’t even hurt. Tell me, are all Daoine Sidhe as squeamish as you?” He took my hand. “Not that you look like any of the Daoine Sidhe I’ve known, but I thought your people specialized in blood.”
“I don’t mind most blood, just mine.” Something pricked my finger. It wasn’t any worse than being clawed by one of the cats or stroking Spike the wrong way. I still winced.
“That’s it,” said Walther.
I looked back to see him wiping my fingertip with a cotton ball. I blinked. “Really?”
He smiled, holding up a test tube with a few drops of blood at the bottom. “This is all I’ll need.”