Like I said, my family is complicated.
The Luidaeg had been able to give Gillian a chance to survive. She’d draped my daughter in a Selkie’s skin, chasing the mortality from her bones for at least a hundred years. Most Selkies don’t keep their skins that long, but in Gilly’s case . . .
The elf-shot would linger in her system for a century. That’s what elf-shot was designed to do. It puts purebloods to sleep, and it keeps them that way until the world changes around them, becoming something alien and strange. If Gilly set her sealskin aside before the poison faded, she would die. Her humanity was the price of staying alive. It was seeing her father, her friends, everyone she’d ever cared about grow old and die while she continued on. She’d chosen to be human when I gave her the Changeling’s Choice, and then the false Queen and the Luidaeg had taken that away from her, one out of malice and one out of mercy, and I had to wonder whether she’d ever forgive any of us.
I haven’t spoken to her since the day she woke up and realized her life had changed forever. I promised to give her whatever space she needed, to let her be the one to come to me. But really, I don’t know what to say. “I’m sorry I saved your life” is a lie. So is “It’s better to be fae.” And “I didn’t want this for you” just might be the biggest lie of all. Of course, I wanted this—or something like it. She’s my daughter. I want her with me.
But I’m not the mother she reaches for when she’s scared, or lost, or lonely. That honor goes to my own grandmother, Janet Carter, who stepped in and raised my child when Faerie conspired to take me away from her for fourteen years.
Sometimes I hate my biological family. Maybe that’s why I’ve worked so hard to build myself a new one.
It was simultaneously late enough and early enough that traffic was light. The Market District was closed for the evening, sending its burden of businesspeople and their support staff scurrying back to their safe, secure homes, while the bars and clubs downtown had yet to hit their full swing. I passed Dolores Park and pulled into the driveway of my old Victorian-style house in nearly record time. The kitchen lights were on. I turned off the car, opened the door, and was accosted by the sound of classic rock blasting through the open window. May was singing along as Journey asserted the need to continue to believe. May, like me, can’t carry a tune in a bucket. The effect was surprisingly charming. It said “you’re safe here.” It said “nothing is currently wrong.”
It said “welcome home.”
Since there were people home, the wards weren’t set; all I needed to get inside was my key. I stepped into the warm, bright kitchen, where my Fetch was dancing in front of the counter as she mixed a bowl of cookie dough. She turned and grinned at me.
“I hope you got extra burritos,” she said. “We have extra mouths in residence.”
I raised an eyebrow. “How many?”
“Dean and Raj.”
I raised the other eyebrow. “Raj got away for the evening?”
May nodded. “Uh-huh. Gin told him part of kingship is being able to delegate every once in a while, so he’s our problem until midnight. That’s why I’m baking cookies. They’re working that poor boy to the bone.”
“That poor boy is going to be King of Cats; he signed up for this.” I swiped a fingerful of cookie dough as I headed for the hall. May laughed and hit me with her mixing spoon, getting more dough on my wrist. I grinned and kept walking, sticking my wrist in my mouth to suck off the sugary goodness.
As my Fetch—technically retired, since Amandine broke the connection between us when she changed the balance of my blood to save my life—May and I used to be identical. Now, years and quests and changes later, we still look like sisters, but we’re not twins anymore. Her face is the one I had when she was called into existence, soft and round and human in ways my own face has forgotten. Her eyes are a pale, misty gray, and her hair is the no-color brown that drives a thousand salon appointments, a color she’s constantly at war with, covering it in streaks of blue and green and purple and, most recently, flaming orange. It makes her happy, and I like it when she’s happy. After all, she’s my sister in every way that counts.
Her live-in girlfriend, Jazz, was in the dining room, sitting at the table and clipping coupons out of an advertising circular. She tensed and looked up at the sound of my footsteps, golden eyes briefly widening before she relaxed and offered me a somewhat weary smile. “Hey, Toby,” she said. “Need me to move?”
“Up to you.” I held up the bag of burritos. “As soon as I crinkle the foil, we’re going to have an invasion of teenage boys. Salsa may fly. Your coupons could get royally wrecked.”
“Yes, but I’ll have salsa, so I’ll live.”
I watched her gather her coupons as I set my bag down and unpacked its contents. Fortunately for my ability to eat my own dinner, I always make it a point to pick up a couple of extra burritos these days. My house contains between one and four teenagers at any given moment in time—more if Chelsea’s over and has decided she needs one or more of Mitch and Stacy’s daughters to save her from being outnumbered by the boys. If there’s one thing fae and mortal teens absolutely have in common, it’s the ability to eat more than should be physically possible. I once found Quentin absently gnawing on a stick of butter while he was doing his homework. It would be terrifying, if it wasn’t so impressive.
Jazz is a Raven-maid, one of the few types of diurnal fae. She and May make it work, mostly by spending their mornings and evenings together, then each doing other things while the other is asleep. For Jazz, “other things” usually means running her small secondhand store in Berkeley, on the other side of the Bay. Recently, though . . .
Recently, it’s mostly meant staying in the house with the doors and windows closed, steadfastly refusing to look outside and see the birds in flight. My mother broke something deep inside Jazz when she kidnapped her from what should have been the safety of her own home. It had been part of an effort to blackmail me into bringing back her eldest daughter, my missing sister, August. As usual, Amandine hadn’t cared who might get hurt, as long as she got her way.
She’d gotten her way. August had come home. And a lot of people had gotten hurt, including Jazz, who might never be okay again.
The smell of musk and pennyroyal tickled my nose a split second before arms slid around my waist from behind, pulling me against the solid form of a man only a few inches taller than I was. Tybalt buried his face in my hair, murmuring, “I was just thinking the house was surprisingly devoid of chaos, given its current occupants, and then you walked in the door.”
“Well, I do live here,” I said, continuing to lay food out on the table. “Plus I brought food, so this is about to be a battleground.”
Tybalt laughed, breath warm against my ear, and didn’t let me go.