TWENTY-THREE

“ARE YOU SURE you want to do this?” May looked across the street to the house where Cliff and his family lived. My family, too. My daughter; my grandmother. Root and branch, had things always been this complicated?

Yes. I’d just been better at pretending they weren’t.

“The Luidaeg says she’ll be able to let Gillian and Janet come home in a few more hours,” I said. “I need to start getting our story straight.” Because that was the problem, now, wasn’t it? Gillian hadn’t made the Changeling’s Choice, not really, and she wasn’t a changeling anymore. She was a Selkie. She had the right to play fairy bride, and if she wanted to change the rules to make it a game of fairy daughter instead, she was allowed.

Cliff could never know what had happened to her. Like his lover and his wife before her, his daughter was going to spend the rest of her life lying to him, and one day, the three of us would stand at his funeral, draped in illusions that made us look older and other than we were.

“Do you want me to go in with you?”

“Who would you tell him you were? He knows I don’t have a sister.” I offered her a shaky smile. “Besides, I need to get this done so that Tybalt and I can get back to Muir Woods. Wouldn’t want to miss the train to Silences.”

May looked unsure. “I guess.”

The false Queen of the Mists was definitely not asleep in the Kingdom of Silences, no matter what Walther’s family said: she was in one of the towers at Arden’s knowe, awake and under constant guard. Lowri had been placed in charge of that particular duty, since there was no concern she had any lingering loyalty to her former mistress. Really, the only concern with Lowri was that she might “accidentally” spit in the false Queen’s food. Once I was done talking to Cliff, I was going to be accompanying Madden, Tybalt, and a small detachment of Arden’s guard to Silences to find out what they actually had in their custody.

Big fun. Bigger fun, by far, than talking to the man I had once believed was the love of my life about why his daughter wasn’t home yet.

I took a deep breath. “Here goes nothing,” I said, and started across the street.

The doorbell was still echoing when Cliff jerked the door open, panting slightly with the exertion of running from wherever he’d been in the house. His eyes flicked from me to the empty spaces on either side of me, and his face fell, fleeting hope dying before it could bloom.

“October,” he said.

There was a time when he spoke my name with love. There was a time when he looked at me like I was the most beautiful woman in the world, like I was Helen of Troy and he was ready to launch a thousand ships to save me. That time passed years ago, and as I looked at him now, all I felt was pity, and a little regret that he no longer believed he could lean on me.

Then again, when I’d needed saving, he hadn’t exactly broken out the fleet. “Breathe, Cliff,” I said. “Gillian is fine.”

He froze. Every inch of him seemed to have been transformed suddenly to stone, leaving him incapable of anything beyond standing there and staring at me. “How . . .” he managed. Then: “Where. Where is she? October, where is my daughter?”

“Our daughter is with Miranda, receiving a medical examination from my Uncle Sylvester’s private physician.” I looked at him steadily. “She’s fine. She’s alive, she’s relatively unhurt, and she should be home soon.”

Cliff sagged in the doorway. My “rich Uncle Sylvester” has always been a constant in our relationship: a man of unclear relationship to my family whose money was virtually infinite, and who allowed me to do odd jobs for cash when necessary. The fact that Uncle Sylvester had never paid my bills or put me through college had seemed more like tough love than cruelty, back then, and even now, Cliff was clearly prepared to believe I had access to a man who could afford his own private doctor.

That was good, because I was lying. Janet and Gillian were still with the Luidaeg, and it was going to be quite some time before I felt like reintroducing my daughter to my liege, much less to the members of his Court. Sylvester was family to me, in his sideways Faerie way. I wasn’t ready for Gillian to look at him and judge what she didn’t understand.

“She’s all right,” he said, words slow and heavy and deliberate.

I nodded. “She’s all right.”

“She’s . . . you’re sure?” He stepped forward, grabbing me by the shoulders, his large hands engulfing the curve of my upper arms. “You’re not lying to me to soften the blow. You’re sure she’s all right.”

“She’s fine,” I said firmly. “Shaken, yes, absolutely. She had a real scare, and she’s probably going to need some time to recover. I’ve turned everything I found over to the authorities, and I’m sure they’re going to find the jerks who thought this would be a funny prank.”

Cliff’s expression hardened. “Prank,” he echoed.

“They’d heard about her being kidnapped while she was still in high school.” This was the hard part. This was the part that cast blame, however deserved, on me.

If not for Jocelyn’s burning need to be a part of Faerie—with blaming Gillian for not wanting to be—there would have been nothing for Dugan and the false Queen to grasp hold of. They might still have been able to get to Gillian, but with Janet’s anti-fae charms everywhere, it would have been a lot harder, and a lot sloppier. The dangerous side of hero worship is stalking and obsession, and I had been Jocelyn’s hero.

Jocelyn and Dugan were awaiting trial. They could make things easier on themselves if they testified against the false Queen. Dugan might never speak again, thanks to the damage he’d done to his throat, but he was alive despite the damage, and he could still hold a pen. If he was willing to tell everything, he might see the moonlight through something other than bars in a century or two.

“How . . . ?”

“I guess Gillian talked about it in one of her classes.” I shrugged, trying to express my ignorance of all things collegiate. Bridget would absolutely back up any claim that Gillian had mentioned the kidnapping, and Gillian had already been advised to agree that anything Professor Ames said was the full and absolute truth. “Some of her classmates thought it would be funny to pretend to be a terrorist group, kidnap her, and tell her that they were the same people who’d taken her before. They told her they were going to make her disappear so completely that her family would never know what had happened to her. She’d just be gone. So you can understand if she’s a little messed up right now, given our history.”

That last part had been my addition to the script. I no longer wanted Cliff to take me back—hadn’t wanted that for a long time—but that didn’t change the fact that what he’d done when I’d returned from the pond had been shitty, and small-minded, and wrong. He needed to accept that. Especially now that Gillian was going to, of necessity, start falling deeper into my world. Even if I still wasn’t a major part of her life, she was going to be a part of my world forever.

His cheeks reddened. “Are you saying that this is somehow my fault? That she wouldn’t have been kidnapped if I’d taken you back?”

“No.” I kept my eyes on his, trying to ignore the way his hands were tightening on my shoulders. I was suddenly glad Tybalt was at the house bringing Raj up to speed and making sandwiches, which he swore upon his honor he was going to make me eat. “This is the fault of the kids who kidnapped her. This is the fault of people not getting the full story. You asked me to find her. You came into my home and all but accused me of being the one who’d taken her. I found her. She’s with her stepmother now. She’s coming back to you. Do you think you could maybe, maybe find it in your goddamn heart to finally forgive me for something I never intended to do? Because every time you have come to me for help, I’ve given it to you. Every time you’ve asked me for anything, I’ve been there for you.”

I took a step back, twisting my shoulders and breaking free of his grasp. Cliff stood frozen where he was, hands grasping empty air. For a moment, I almost felt sorry for him. He was only human. He was just the man who had grown out of the boy who’d seen a girl on the sidewalk, two runaways looking for a better life together. It wasn’t his fault I’d never been able to give him what he needed.

And it wasn’t my fault, either.

“Let go of whatever it is you think I did to you, Cliff,” I said, voice soft. “I am the mother of your child. I am the woman who used to love you, who never meant to leave you, and I am asking you, let it all go. This is how you pay me for finding her. You stop fighting to keep me out of her life.”

“Miranda—”

“Miranda and I have already talked.” That was stretching the situation a bit. She had confessed, and I had listened. Still, she wasn’t going to argue when he said I needed to be allowed to hang around. There was a lot left that we needed to discuss.

He hesitated before saying, finally, “What if I don’t want you around?”

“What if I don’t care?” I looked at him flatly. “I broke your heart. I get that. I genuinely do. I didn’t mean to, but you’re never going to believe me, so whatever. You broke my heart when you slammed the door in my face. There’s a lot of bad blood between us, and from where I’m standing, you put most of it there. I didn’t have a choice. You did. Gillian needs to know me. I am her mother. No matter how much she wants to judge me or dislike me, she needs to know where I come from, because that’s part of where she comes from, too.”

Cliff glared for a long moment before he sagged, becoming nothing more than an aging mortal man whose world stubbornly refused to stop changing. He looked away. “You say I had a choice. I didn’t. You left me alone with a little girl who wouldn’t stop asking about you. Where you were, why you’d gone, why you weren’t coming back. Whether it was her fault you’d left us. I let you go because I had to, if I wanted to save her. Yeah, I slammed the door when you tried to come back. I had finally found a way to make things good again. You wanted to change all that. I couldn’t risk it.”

“So we both made mistakes. I let myself get lost. You refused to let me be found. Our daughter’s coming home, Cliff. Be glad of that and stop trying to turn me into your enemy. It’s never going to happen. Her existence means it can’t.”

“I . . .” He took a deep breath as he looked back to me. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll try.”

“That’s all I wanted.” I stepped backward, preparing to go.

“Toby?”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

I smiled. Really and sincerely smiled. “Not a problem. Maybe next time ask before you accuse, though, okay? She’ll be home soon.” I turned and walked away.

The sound of the door closing behind me felt like an ending. A good one.

May looked up from her phone when she heard me coming. “Well?”

“We’re okay.” I opened the car door. “How’s Jazz?”

“Mad that we didn’t call her before we went chasing a kidnapper around Berkeley, but glad Gilly is safe.” May got in on the passenger side. “She says bring home donuts.”

“We’re going to Portland to find out how a deposed, elf-shot monarch was able to escape, make it back to the Mists, and arrange for the kidnapping and attempted murder of my daughter, and I’m supposed to stop for donuts?”

May shrugged. “I guess she figures you’ll have some free time.”

I had to laugh at that. It felt good to be relaxed enough that I could. Things were beginning to knit themselves back together. Maybe they’d even make it all the way back to normal.

We drove back to the house singing along to the radio with off-key gusto, and nobody tried to kill either of us, and no one wound up drenched in blood, and it was awesome. Technically, I spend more time not being threatened than I do running for my life. It’s just that the moments of extreme stress and peril tend to loom large on my mental landscape.

May looked over at me as I pulled into our driveway. “You going to talk to him? Now that he’s halfway out of his head? Because he’s just going to crawl back in and refuse to come out if you give him a chance.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.” She tapped her temple. “I remember. I know a lot of people the way I know you. Healing takes more time than anyone wants to think it will, and it takes more than one big gesture to be finished. He needs time. He needs you even more.”

“I have a plan,” I said.

She looked at me. “In Portland?”

“In Portland.”

“Good.” She got out of the car, leaving that as the final word of our conversation. I shook my head, smiling as I followed her to the kitchen.

Tybalt was putting the finishing touches on what looked like an entire picnic basket full of sandwiches when we walked in. We both stopped in the doorway, blinking. May spoke first.

“Are we feeding the neighbors?” she asked. “Because I don’t even know most of the neighbors. There’s that old guy two doors down who always glares at me like I kicked his dog. I don’t want to give him a sandwich. I’d be happy to give it to the dog, though.”

“You may have two,” said Tybalt imperiously. “The rest are for October.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “How much do you think I’m going to eat?”

“As many sandwiches as you can fit in your mouth during the drive,” he said. “I will feed you if you have concerns about keeping your hands on the wheel. I would prefer to feed you, as I have concerns about your keeping your hands on the wheel. But you have lost substantially more blood today than I care for, and as you seem unwilling to take steps to replace it, it seems I must step up and do a husband’s duty even before we are wed.”

“If you decide you don’t want him, I’ll take him,” said May.

“You don’t like men,” I said.

“I can make an exception,” she insisted. “Jazz will understand.”

Tybalt laughed, and somehow that was the best sound the world had ever known. It was good enough to lure me across the kitchen to his side, where I had time to kiss him before he handed me the first sandwich.

“Roast beef and cheese, with blackcurrant jam,” he said. “Eat, or I shall stop catering the menu to your idiosyncratic taste in cuisine and start feeding you like a sensible person.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and took a bite of sandwich. It tasted better than it had any right to, and my stomach growled in sudden approving hunger. Tybalt was right about one thing: I had done too much bleeding and not enough eating. I swallowed. “Where’s Raj?”

“Returned to the Court of Cats to hold sway in my absence.” Tybalt’s smile faded. “He has been doing an excellent job of late, picking up the things I had allowed to fall away. I do not deserve such a fine heir.”

“I think he’d disagree with you.” Raj’s father had led a brief-lived rebellion against Tybalt, and he’d died for his crimes. It would have been easy—even understandable—for Tybalt to cast Raj out in the aftermath of Samson’s actions. Instead, he had taken the boy even more concretely as his own. They weren’t related. They were unquestionably family.

“Perhaps so.” He turned to offer a shallow bow to May. “Milady Fetch. The return of my betrothed is appreciated, but we must to Muir Woods if I’m to convince her to sleep any time in the near future.”

“That’s fine,” said May. She snagged two sandwiches from the tray, waving one of them amiably before she added, “You kids have fun out there,” and retreated to the hall.

Tybalt picked up the tray.

“You can’t be serious,” I said.

“Oh, but I am. If I can convince you to eat every one of these, I will go to my grave a happy man.”

I blinked. “No.”

“Not in the near future, little fish. But someday, when all my lives are spent, I can still count myself a fortunate man, for I will have spent the greatest number of them with you.” He kissed my temple as he walked by me to the door.

I sighed. “You have got to stop defusing every conversation you don’t want to have by talking like something out of a Regency romance.”

Tybalt opened his mouth, like he was going to say something. Then he stopped, ducked his head, and said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how else to be. I am . . . I’m frightened, October. I’m trying to find my way out of the darkness I’ve been cast into, and levity seems a safe enough shield. I would not cause you harm if I had any choice.”

It should have been funny, him standing there with a tray of sandwiches, apologizing to me. It wasn’t. I shook my head as I looked at him. “You’re not hurting me, and you’re not going to hurt me by needing help, okay? I didn’t agree to marry you because I wanted everything to be moonlight and roses forever. I can’t even manage that on my own, much less with another person. I love you. I want to help you. The only way you’re going to hurt me is by refusing to let me at least try.”

He took a deep, shaky breath, holding it for a moment before he let it out and said, “Then let us hurry out, so that we may return home, together, and begin.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said. We left the kitchen, and I had hope. Maeve help me, I had hope.