ONE
March 8th, 2014
What’s the unkindest tide?
—William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona.
SOME PEOPLE BELIEVE the rise of the cell phone—and the associated rise of the cell phone camera—must have been a boon for the private detective. After all, when your camera isn’t just handheld, but is also attached to a personal communication device, it seems like it should be easier to surreptitiously photograph people doing things they aren’t supposed to do. Like cheating on their spouses, or money laundering, or trying to violate the terms of their custody agreements. All those charming, frustrating little ways that people like to break the rules, captured for the courts with a single press of a button. No fuss, no muss, no need to get anything developed. Swell, right?
Not so much. The trouble is, cell phone cameras have a long way to go before they’ll match the capabilities of a good zoom lens or long-distance rig, much less exceed them—and that’s where I have a problem. I still need my good lenses, but the more ubiquitous cell phones become, the more your classic camera stands out to the curious bystander. I used to be able to wander around with my trusty Canon slung around my neck and be confident that anyone who saw me would take me for a tourist. Not anymore. These days, people notice. People talk.
Some days I wind up taking lots of pictures of flowers and graffiti and showing them to anyone who seems too interested. It deflects suspicion, and it’s surprisingly soothing, even if I’m not going to get a gallery show any time soon. More often, I use some of my precious magic to hide my camera behind a veil of illusion. It makes me look like some sort of bizarre mime whenever I take a picture, but somehow, this is less obviously weird, at least in San Francisco.
Humans are strange.
I’d been following a man around the city with my veiled camera for three days, trying to get pictures of him meeting with a group of “investors” who were planning to use underhanded means to buy shares in his company. I didn’t fully understand why they didn’t just call their stockbrokers, but the man who’d hired me was the first man’s business partner, and he was paying me well for my time and expertise. I don’t question the check, as long as it cashes.
I used to be a more or less full-time private detective. These days, knight errantry eats up a lot of time, leaving me with curtailed work hours. Knight errantry also doesn’t pay, not when you’re talking cash money, and I’d jumped at the chance to pad my bank account back to something resembling normal. I have a lot of mouths to feed at home, and that doesn’t even go into the cost of veterinary cat food for my two geriatric Siamese.
My patience had paid off. Patience so often does. After three days, several near misses, and two false positions, it had all come together in a photo opportunity so perfect that I’d checked to make sure it wasn’t being staged. I’d captured the pictures my client wanted without being seen by my target, and had dropped off the film in exchange for a lovely check, complete with hefty bonus. Not too bad for half a week’s work.
Depositing the check had been quick and easy and best of all, gave me an excuse to pick up burritos from my favorite taqueria. The scent of them filled the car, making me drive a little faster. Burritos are best when they’re hot, and I wanted to get these home to my family before they had a chance to cool.
Home. Family. Two words I used to think would never apply to me again, which just goes to show how much things can change. Sometimes they even change for the better.
My name is October Daye. I’m a changeling, which is a fancy way of saying “one of my parents was human, and one of them wasn’t.” It sounds simple. It’s not. Being a changeling means never really knowing where you belong. It means always feeling like you’re standing on the outside of two worlds, unable to commit to being a part of either one, equally unable to walk away.
It’s even more complicated in my case. I was raised thinking I was half Daoine Sidhe on my mother’s side, making me a descendant of Titania. Well, it turns out my mother, Amandine the Liar, is actually the daughter of Oberon himself. She’s Firstborn, and I’m . . .
I’m not completely new, but I’m not all that old, either. There are only three of my kind of fae in all of Faerie. We’re called the Dóchas Sidhe. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what that means.
To add another fun little wrinkle, my mother’s mother is a human woman, Janet Carter. Yes, that Janet, the one whose interference with Maeve’s final Ride led to the Winter Queen’s disappearance and changed the course of Faerie forever. So that’s something fun for me to live with. Janet is still alive, by the way. She married my ex-fiancé after I disappeared for fourteen years. My daughter Gillian calls her “Mom.”
My family tree has a lot of thorns, and a tendency to draw blood.
Being a changeling usually also means living on the fringes of Faerie’s political structure, since the fact that we’re mortal is seen as a sign of weakness. Again, things are different for me. Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills stepped in as my protector and patron while I was still a child. Thanks to him, when I got tired of living on the streets with the rest of the changeling kids, I had someone to back me up and take care of me. Under his protection, and after I’d discovered a new knowe for the then-Queen of the Mists, I’d been able to study for and eventually achieve my knighthood—something that was almost unthinkable for a changeling, even one with my bloodline.
Being a knight gave me a place in the Courts. It was a low place, sure, and many people regarded it as scarcely better than being treated like a particularly clever pet, but it had been enough to give me something to hold onto. I’m surprisingly difficult to shake once I have something to hold onto.
I started as a knight, became a knight errant—sort of a fancy way of saying “odd jobs person for the fae courts of the San Francisco Bay area”—deposed an illegitimate monarch, and helped the true ruler of the Mists claim her family’s throne. It was a lot of work, and resulted in my being named a hero of the realm, which is sort of like being a knight errant, only more so. Heroes of the realm protect people.
And I have people to protect. Somewhere along the way, despite everything, I found my people. I have a squire. I have a Fetch. I have a man I love, who wants to marry me. I have a family, and they were all waiting for me to get home with dinner.
I drove a little faster.
The past three months hadn’t been perfect, but they’d been surprisingly peaceful, despite presenting their own unique challenges. Gillian—who had been born a thin-blooded changeling and then turned completely human in order to save her from a painful, elf-shot-induced death—was finally part of Faerie. I’d been resigned to the possibility that I’d never see my daughter again, that one day I’d have to add her grave to the list of those I visited regularly, decking them with rosemary and rue.
Only it hadn’t worked out that way. One of my old enemies, the false Queen of the Mists, had arranged for the kidnapping of my only child, and had nearly killed her by jamming an arrow dipped in elf-shot into her shoulder. Elf-shot is always fatal to humans. Gilly should have died. Gilly would have died if Tybalt hadn’t reached her before the poison could stop her heart. He’d carried her onto the Shadow Roads, which are only accessible to the Cait Sidhe, and from there to the Luidaeg, the sea witch of legend, and my mother’s sister.