Tybalt is savvy enough to have gone this long without getting caught. So I took the time I needed to catch my breath, and when the ice melted enough to let me open my eyes, I turned to find him watching me with undisguised fondness that seemed strange only due to his currently human appearance.
“Where are we?” I asked. I was barely wheezing at all, and I was proud of that.
“Service alley about two blocks from your ex-boyfriend’s house,” he said. “The owner of the liquor store,” he indicated a door set into the brick wall in front of us, “keeps swearing he’s going to install security cameras, and keeps putting it off due to the expense. I’m sure that will change when he gets robbed again, and we’ll need to find a different path to visit this neighborhood, but the cats will keep me apprised.”
“Even when you’re not their King anymore?”
For a moment, Tybalt looked conflicted, unhappy and hopeful at the same time. Then he nodded and said, “Raj will rule them, but they will still respect my place as one of the Cait Sidhe, even as they respect his. I’ll know where it’s safe to travel.”
I had a lot of questions, like what he meant when he said Raj would rule “them” and not “us,” but for the moment, it seemed safer to let things slide. Tybalt was working hard enough to be okay with the changes in his life. They were necessary changes—he’d stepped down and allowed a regent to guard his throne for him because he needed the time to heal, not because I’d asked him to—but they were still an adjustment. For both of us.
“Come on,” I said, and motioned for him to follow me out of the alley. Looking relieved, he did.
San Francisco is an old city, which means it’s not as segmented as modern cities always seem to me. Small convenience stores and blocks of retail offerings are tucked into otherwise residential neighborhoods, making it possible for people to do most of what they need to do entirely on foot. That’s a good thing, considering how bad the parking situation is. I fully expect someone to get murdered over a good parking place one of these days, and go off to prison utterly content, as long as someone else stays behind to feed the meter.
Turning left, we climbed the short hill between us and the nearest of those residential streets. The shops dropped away, replaced by the tidy, pressed-together houses that had been all the rage after the Victorians but before the condos. The house Cliff shared with Gillian and Janet—whose real name he still didn’t know—wasn’t far.
His car wasn’t parked in the driveway. I felt bad about how relieved that made me. Still, the last thing I needed to add to an already-uncomfortable afternoon was trying to talk freely with my human ex-boyfriend sitting in the room.
Tybalt flashed me a quick, understanding smile. “It will be all right,” he said.
“It’ll be something,” I said as I climbed the steps and rang the doorbell.
Seconds ticked by, enough of them that I was considering whether it might be a good idea to ring again, before I heard footsteps on the other side. I took a deep breath. No matter who opened that door, they were family, and that meant that they were complicated.
“Coming!” The voice was Janet’s. I didn’t relax.
Janet Carter—currently known as “Miranda Marks,” thanks to both her assumed name and her marriage to Cliff—is human. Totally, completely, perfectly human. She’s also more than five hundred years old, thanks to a curse flung by Maeve after her Ride was broken. Janet won’t age or die, through natural or unnatural means, until Maeve returns and allows her to do so. And since we don’t know whether Maeve is ever going to come back, well . . . .
She could be around for a long, long time. She’s too human for Faerie, and too fae-touched to be comfortable as a part of humanity. Maybe it makes me a bad person, but in a way, I’m glad. She took my daughter away from me, and she did it on purpose, discouraging Gillian from reaching out, believing I was just another careless fae parent who didn’t want or deserve her partially-mortal child. Janet and I have reconciled some of our differences. We’ve had to, for Gilly’s sake. That doesn’t mean I’ve forgiven her completely, or that I’ll ever be able to.
The door swung open, revealing a woman with the healthy tan of a gardener and buttercup-blonde hair drawn back in a complicated braid. She was wearing a lace sundress, and she looked like she could have stepped off the cover of a magazine advertising the latest in holistic health care, or maybe the newest trends in early childhood education.
She blinked once. “October?” she asked, in a startled, wary tone. Her accent was pure California, but I could hear the shores of Scotland lurking beneath it, like her roots were unable to resist the magnetic pull of her own blood. She’s my grandmother. Parts of her will always know me, whether she wants them to or not.
When I first saw her, Cliff’s new wife, the woman who swept in while I was absent due to Simon’s spell, the woman who won when I didn’t even know that we were competing, I’d thought she looked too much like me for comfort, like Cliff had a type he couldn’t get away from. There were similarities in the shape of our eyes, the length of our fingers, even the curve of our hips. Her coloring was more saturated than my own—Dóchas Sidhe always look faintly bleached, if my sister and I are anything to go by—but it was easy enough to draw a line from her to me, from me to her. Learning we were actually related had almost been a relief, except for all the ways in which it wasn’t.
“Yeah,” I said. “Can we come in?”
Janet glanced warily at Tybalt. “Your friend is . . . ?”
“Fiancé,” said Tybalt. “We’ve met, in passing. You may call me ‘Rand’ if it suits you to do so, or you may call me nothing at all if that suits your sensibilities better. I’ll be accompanying my lady either way.”
Janet’s wary glance turned into a blink, and then a look of dawning comprehension. “I see. Well, I suppose you’d best both come inside. I can put a pot of coffee on if you’d like something to drink.”
“That’s all right,” I said, stepping into the front hall and stepping to the side so that Tybalt could do the same. “Caffeine doesn’t do anything for me anymore, so coffee’s just bitter and frustrating.”
“That’s not fair,” said Janet. “Caffeine is one of the true wonders of the modern age.”
“What do you consider to be the others?” asked Tybalt.
Janet shrugged. “The Internet. Telephones. Vaccinations. McDonald’s. Fast food in general. I assume this isn’t a social call?”
I wanted to ask more about that whole “McDonald’s” thing, but this wasn’t the time. I shook my head. “Not a social call, no. Is Gillian home? I need to speak to both of you.”