“Gillian’s missing,” I informed it, as I stripped off my sleep clothes and started digging in the laundry on the floor, looking for something that was suitable for dealing with the police. Sure, I could use illusions to make myself fit into the scene, but illusions always work better when they have something to work with. My magic isn’t strong enough for me to discount that.
Spike rolled onto its side, thorns rattling in what sounded like a question. I shook my head. “I don’t want to take you with me. May and Quentin are coming, and I don’t want Jazz coming home to an empty house.” Cagney and Lacey would be there, of course, but they were just ordinary cats. Spike . . . I’d never been sure how intelligent rose goblins were, but it was at least smart enough to keep Jazz company.
Spike rattled again. I leaned over, risking a pat to the top of its head before I returned to getting ready.
Dark jeans; black T-shirt; leather jacket; silver knife. Not much as armor goes, but all I’ve ever needed, and enough to have seen me through a lot of bad situations. Wearing black is a financial decision as well as a stealth one: I have a tendency to bleed on my clothes, made worse by the fact that most of my magic is blood-based, and anything pale doesn’t usually survive being worn more than once or twice. Fortunately, dark colors often read as more formal in the mortal world, and that would make it easier for me to pass myself off as someone in authority.
I took a moment to run a brush through my hair, leaving it down to tangle around my shoulders. Not great if I wound up in a fight, but another layer of camouflage. Apart from my ears—pointed, although not as visibly as say, Quentin’s—the surest betrayal of my heritage is in my bone structure, which is too sharp to be human, and too hard to look away from. Keeping my hair loose would make that less evident even if my illusions happened to slip—and might give me time to get out of sight.
My shoes were by the door. I grabbed them and stepped into the hall, to be greeted by Quentin, fully clothed and looking anxious. Raj was nowhere to be seen. I raised an eyebrow.
“He went back to the Court of Cats,” said Quentin.
It was interesting that he didn’t say Raj had gone home. I decided to leave it alone, saying instead, “Good. He can make sure Tybalt knows what’s going on.”
“Yeah,” said Quentin softly. He glanced toward the stairs. “May already went downstairs. Is she . . . is she okay?”
“Wait here. I’ll call you when it’s safe to follow me,” I said, and patted him once on the shoulder before I started down.
May was in the middle of the hall, arms wrapped around herself, staring blankly at the door. She was dressed and had donned a human disguise that made her look distressingly like my human twin. It was like standing outside myself, watching my own distress over my missing child. It ached. I stopped several feet away, trying not to startle her.
“May?”
“How did this happen?” She turned, looking bleakly at me. “I remember when she was born. I know the memory isn’t mine, but I have it, and I’m not giving it back. I remember her being so small, and she had this one black curl,” she mimed tugging on the air at the center of her forehead, “that was so long, right after she was born. It was like silk. I’d never touched anything so soft. I said I’d do anything to protect her. Remember?” She was almost pleading.
“I do,” I said softly. I knew what she was asking: she was asking me to reassure her that she was Gillian’s mother, too, because she remembered it, and those memories burned. “I wanted to keep her safe. All I wanted to do was keep her safe.”
“You took the fae blood out of her to keep her safe. To keep her away from our world.”
“I did.” There was no point in arguing: she wasn’t accusing me of anything. All she was doing was telling me the truth.
“Why didn’t it work?” she asked, tears beginning to roll down her cheeks. “Why wasn’t that enough to keep her safe? It should have been enough. It should.”
I sighed and went to my Fetch and held her as tightly as I could, letting her press her face into my shoulder and cry. After a few minutes, Quentin came padding cautiously down and joined our silent embrace, and my family was so damn broken, and we were still holding on just as tightly as we could.
We were still holding on.
FOUR
THE DRIVE TO BERKELEY was quick. It would have been quicker, but Arden had insisted on speaking to me directly after May called and woke her, and since I was the one driving, we’d been forced to pull off to the side of the road. Quentin’s don’t-look-here spell would keep the human police from noticing and potentially ticketing me, but I didn’t trust myself to carry on a conversation and steer the car at the same time.
At least the delay had been profitable. We pulled into the on-campus parking lot to find Madden waiting for us, his lanky frame propped casually against a pay station. He was wearing the glittering outline of a human disguise that simultaneously bleached and darkened his normally red-and-white hair to an even shade of blond. It had also dialed his canine-golden eyes down to a more human-normal brown, but there was no mistaking his broad shoulders, or the way he occasionally sniffed the air, checking for signs of our arrival.
Despite everything that was happening, it was hard not to smile at the sight of him. Madden had the kind of energy that could make things seem less hopeless, even when they shouldn’t have been.
Quentin’s spellwork was good enough that Madden couldn’t see the car, but he saw us when we emerged and came bounding over to present me with a parking slip. “Here,” he said. “Prepaid for the whole day. Arden didn’t want you to worry.”
“That’s very kind of you,” I said, trying to ignore the way my heart sank.
When I’d asked for the loan of Arden’s seneschal, I hadn’t been thinking in terms of debts incurred or fealties observed. I’d just been looking for a bloodhound. Trouble was, Madden worked for the Queen, and things weren’t that simple. Arden hadn’t been on the throne long enough to have fully internalized the rules of royalty, but she was catching on fast, and something as small as accepting a parking pass could have repercussions for me later. Like, say, the next time she wanted to talk about shifting my fealty from Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills directly to her.
“Why didn’t you call your liege when you needed help?” was a reasonable question, but the answer was big and complicated and frustrating. The last time I’d asked Sylvester for help, he’d released his elf-shot brother, Simon, into my custody so I could find my missing sister, who happened to be Simon’s daughter. It had been a gesture of infinite trust, since Sylvester had good reasons—quite a few of them—to want Simon asleep and suffering for as long as possible. And I’d turned right around and screwed it up by allowing Simon to escape, with his memories twisted by the loss of all the gains he’d made in the days since he’d given up villainy in favor of redemption.
Sylvester loved me as a daughter. He always had. He trusted my skills as a knight; had been, in fact, the first person to put that sort of faith in me. And I had rewarded his faith, over and over again. It was just that sometimes it . . . well, it took a while. I didn’t feel like I could ask him for another favor until I’d managed to put my life back together to the point where I could go after Simon, return what had been taken from him, and fix things. Sweet Oberon, there had to be a way for me to fix things. I wasn’t going to let down the man who’d never given up on me.
At the same time, I couldn’t blame Arden for wanting to recruit me. She was building a household intended to control a kingdom, and she needed the best people she could get. I just needed her to accept that I was never going to be among them.
Madden watched as I placed the parking slip on the dashboard, watched as May and Quentin got out of the car, both of them sparkling with the soft haze of their own human disguises. May had tweaked hers to make her look less like my twin sister and more like a distant relative, or maybe just a
person with one of those faces, frequently mistaken for someone else. Quentin fit right into the collegiate setting: the right age, the right level of awkward formality, even the right footwear. If we needed someone to talk to students without being flagged as an investigator, the job would be his. Which left . . .
“All right, Madden, you’re here to help us follow Gillian’s trail,” I said. “Can you do that in your current shape, or do you need to be on four legs?”
“Four legs work best for something like this, and I can get in anywhere I need to be, but I don’t know what your daughter smells like,” he said. He paused before adding uncomfortably, “Before Ardy asked me to come here, I didn’t realize you had a daughter.”
“She’s human.”
He frowned, opening his mouth like he was going to ask a question. Then he caught himself and shook his head. “It’s none of my business. Do you have anything of hers?”
“Not yet, but we can get something when we visit her dorm,” I said. “I’d still like you to be able to pick up on any trails that might be around there.”
Madden looked at me carefully. “Do you think one of us did this? You said she was human.”
How to explain my family, my relationship with my daughter, without wasting time I no longer felt we had to spare? There wasn’t an easy way to do it. I shook my head.
“She wasn’t always entirely human, and when she was very young, people knew she was mine,” I said. “She’s been taken before by people who wanted to hurt me. It could happen again.” Last time, it had been Rayseline Torquill.
I went cold.
Raysel was asleep; she hadn’t done this. But before she had kidnapped my daughter, she’d been working with Oleander de Merelands as part of a complicated plan to kill her parents and convince me that I was the one responsible. Oleander—who was dead now, and the world would forgive me if I wasn’t losing any sleep over that—had been cruel, and ruthless, and willing to do whatever it took to achieve her goals.
She had also been Simon Torquill’s lover.
Simon, who knew I had a child. Simon, whose own fall from grace had begun with the loss of his daughter, who he believed was still missing. Losing his way home had stripped all knowledge of August’s return from his mind, since knowing she was safe would have given him too much to hold onto. Simon, who knew that the best way to hurt a parent was through their children.
But even when he’d been so deeply embroiled in his villainy that he’d been willing to attack his own family, he’d done his best to make sure none of those attacks would be fatal ones. Even when he’d transformed me into a fish, he’d done it to save me from the far worse fate that his mistress had intended for me. I believed he would lie, and cheat, and kill to get what he wanted. I also believed that he still loved my mother. He wouldn’t hurt her grandchild.
Unfortunately, Simon wasn’t the only one who knew Gillian existed. Anyone who’d been in or around the false Queen’s Court before my disappearance could easily have met her.
“Too many people know about her,” I concluded, shaking the chill away and focusing on Madden. “Can you shift before we go in? Having a dog with us from the start will be less unusual than suddenly acquiring one.”
“Especially if you’re willing to wear a vest,” said May.
“Sure,” said Madden, and stepped away, moving into the shadow of the car. It was close enough to the wall that no one could have easily seen him, even if his outline hadn’t blurred and melted as soon as he was behind cover. When he emerged, it was on four legs, with a plumed tail waving wildly behind him. The illusions he’d been using to look human were still intact, as transformed as the rest of him: instead of projecting a genial, ordinary man, they projected a genial, ordinary dog, a Golden Retriever that was maybe a little large for the breed, but nothing to attract any real attention.
“May?” I asked.
“On it.” She removed a pair of hair ties from her wrist and pulled a scarf out of her pocket, walking over to kneel in front of Madden. With her free hand, she scooped a few pine needles and some shards of bark off the pavement, only hesitating for a second before she grabbed a broken chunk of a green glass bottle.
“Was a farmer had a dog, and Bingo was his name-o,” she chanted, beginning to weave the pine needles into a chain connected to the hair ties at either end. “B-I-N-G-O, and Bingo was his name-o.” She wrapped the scarf around the glass and chain, tapped it twice, and shook the whole thing free. It crackled and stretched as it moved, until she was holding a long leather leash attached to a collar from which the appropriate tags jingled. That explained the glass: nothing better for faking metal.
The scarf had become a black vest with “working dog” stitched on the sides, and a helpful pictogram advising people not to pet. Madden stood patiently while May put the vest on him, although he flattened his ears in displeasure when she fastened the collar around his neck.
“It’s still braided pine needles and bark,” she said, holding the leash as she straightened. “If you pull too hard, it’ll break. Keep that in mind and try not to pull unless you’re trying to get away.”
Madden made a noise of acknowledgment. I rocked onto my heels, vibrating with the tension of wanting to get this over with, wanting to get this done.
“Come on,” I said. “This way.”
Knowing Walther and Cassandra—and growing up in the Bay Area—means I’ve spent enough time on the UC Berkeley campus to be familiar with its general layout, if not with all the little details I would have learned if I’d been a student or a full-time resident of one of its charming captive creeks. There are fae who live on campus, the wilder kind who swear fealty to no liege lord and mostly want to be left alone. I made a mental note to seek some of them out and ask whether they’d seen anything. It was unlikely. “Unlikely” has never been a good enough excuse to leave an avenue unexplored.
We walked from the parking lot lengthwise across the main school, passing groups of students, tables asking us to sign petitions or join clubs, and other people who looked like they were just passing through, taking advantage of the clean, safe, car-free passageway provided by the campus. It was strange seeing all this by the light of day. Most of the time, if I was in Berkeley, it was dark, and there were few people around.
Some of the students—not all, not even most, but enough to be noticeable—walked ringed in the glitter of their own human disguises. They nodded at us as we passed, but they didn’t do anything to draw attention from mortal eyes. UC Berkeley, like Golden Gate Park, is neutral territory, claimed by none of the two-penny nobles or ravenous monarchs who divide and subdivide the Bay Area. Education is for everyone, royal or radical or in-between.
Quentin looked around with open curiosity as we walked, drinking everything in. I nudged him with my elbow. He jumped, glancing guiltily at me.
“You could enroll, you know,” I said. “I’m sure April would be happy to fake whatever paperwork you needed.” April O’Leary is a friend of ours, a cyber-Dryad whose command of computer systems means she can make almost anything real, at least on paper. When it comes to false IDs or digital paper trails, she’s the girl to see.
Besides, she owes me. Her mother, January, had been dead, and now she wasn’t, thanks to my willingness to help them out. If Quentin asked for something as simple as a high school transcript and a valid mortal ID, April wouldn’t hesitate to help.
“Maybe,” he said uncomfortably. “I have a lot to do. I don’t know if it would be a good idea for me to take that kind of time.”
“Think about it.” As Crown Prince of the Westlands, Quentin was expected to learn as much as possible about the continent he’s eventually going to rule. Going to college would certainly be an educational experience. His parents might not like what it taught him, but hey, his parents probably didn’t like most of what he was learning from me, and they hadn’t taken him back to Toronto.
/> We reached the edge of the campus, where it spilled into the tree-lined avenues of the city itself. Small neighborhood stores warred for space among the satellite campus buildings and the dorms. We kept walking.
According to Cliff’s text, Gillian was in off-campus housing, not a dorm but not one of the sororities either. A residence building rented by a coalition of students, probably from an alumnus or one of the satellite schools. It gave them a place to live without forcing them to share space with as many people as they would have encountered in a proper dormitory.
The trade-off was worse security and more isolation—good when it came to privacy, bad when it came to anyone seeing what happened when, say, the whole place was vandalized. Madden whined, scenting trouble a beat before we came around a bend in the sidewalk and saw the stately old Victorian house with the caution tape around the outside of the yard and the police cars parked along the sidewalk. Their lights were off, and their sirens were no longer screaming, but that didn’t matter. The sight of them was enough to knock the breath out of my body and leave my skin feeling suddenly too tight. May put a hand on my arm, supposedly to steady me, but really to steady us both.
This was a crime scene. A crime had been committed here. A crime that had involved my daughter, my child, who was now missing.
I hit the base of the driveway and kept walking, faster all the time, until it felt like I was barely on the slow side of breaking into a run. A man on the porch saw us coming and moved, presumably to tell me I couldn’t be here.