ONE

October 11th, 2014

The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,

And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely

His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,

And then he falls, as I do.

—William Shakespeare, Henry VIII.

“WE’RE GOING TO HAVE to discuss dresses eventually, October,” said May, holding up a bridal magazine and waving it at me like a weapon. “Something pretty. Something lacy. Something—and this is the part I can’t stress enough—that you’re actually willing to wear.”

“It doesn’t matter what I wear to the wedding, we both know it’s going to be completely covered in blood before we reach ‘I do,’” I said scornfully. “Do purebloods even say, ‘I do’?” Having never been to a pureblood wedding before, I was woefully uninformed about their customs. Thanks to my mother, my wedding knowledge is much more romantic comedy than formal fairy tale.

My sister—technically my retired Fetch, but that’s not a relationship that’s easy to explain, and she’s family either way—rolled her eyes. “Of course not,” she said. “That’s a Christian thing, which means it’s a human thing. Purebloods don’t do Christian wedding vows.”

“Got it,” I said, even though I didn’t. I didn’t “got” any of this.

May snorted before pushing her hair, currently streaked in electric blue, out of her eyes and dropping the magazine onto the pile that had come to dominate our coffee table. “Liar,” she said. Like most of our furniture, the table had originally come from Community Thrift, and like every other flat surface in our house, it had been immediately covered in a thick layer of junk mail, books, and generalized clutter. We’re not tidy people.

It doesn’t help that we have a constant stream of teenagers flowing in and out of the house, which is huge by San Francisco standards. We have a dedicated living room and a dining room, and four bedrooms, most of which are in use on any given afternoon. Tybalt and I share one, despite his occasional protests that it’s inappropriate for us to cohabitate before the wedding; May and her live-in girlfriend Jazz, share a second, which is far enough down the hall from mine that we can all pretend to be untouched paragons of virtue.

The third bedroom belongs to my squire, Quentin, and will until the day his parents call him home to Toronto to take up his place as Crown Prince of the Westlands, which is what Faerie calls North America. We steal human words with gleeful abandon, but we don’t like to use their names for things when we have any other choice in the matter. We’re sort of like the French that way.

The fourth bedroom is currently a guest room and plays host to a rotating cast of people with nowhere better to spend the day. Usually, it’s either Quentin’s boyfriend Dean, who prefers to sleep alone, my friend Etienne’s daughter Chelsea, or my friend Stacy’s middle daughter Karen. Like I said, a constant stream of teenagers. Tybalt’s nephew Raj is in Quentin’s room what seems like three nights out of five, and I continue to hold out hope that my own daughter Gillian will eventually decide she’s tired of hating me and take her turn at using up all the hot water. I like having a full house. It feels safer than the alternative.

Although that might be an artifact of my childhood. When I was alone with my mother in her tower, that was always when things got bad. When I was with Uncle Sylvester and my friends in Shadowed Hills, I was safe, and fed, and cared for. For me, home never happened in the building where it was supposed to live. I guess that’s why I’m so determined to keep my doors open, and to keep the kids who tumble through my life as safe as I can. I want to be the kind of friend to them that my uncle was to me, back before he became my liege, back before I understood what we really were to one another.

Growing up doesn’t mean getting over everything that happened to us as children. It just means calcifying it and never letting go.

May grabbed another bridal magazine, flipping it open to a picture of a bride who was wearing so much lace and beadwork that it was a miracle she could stand under her own power. Wait. Maybe she wasn’t standing. Maybe the dress was doing it for her. It certainly looked stiff enough.

“How about this one?” she asked.

“If you want to open a bakery, I won’t stop you, but I’m not walking down the aisle looking like somebody’s grandmother’s prize meringue,” I said.

May wrinkled her nose. “You’re no fun at all.”

“If you want a dress with its own zip code, you get married.”

To my surprise, she sighed heavily, turned the page in her magazine, and said, “I want to. Jazz isn’t sure.”

I blinked. “Why isn’t she sure? You’re amazing. Any girl would be lucky to marry you.”

“Try telling her that,” said May. She put the magazine down on the table and stood, stretching. “I think I’m done with this for the afternoon. I’m going to go bake some cookies.”

“That’s your answer to everything.”

“Better than your answer to everything.” She made an exaggerated stabbing gesture. “There’s a reason I don’t go through as many pairs of jeans as you do.”

“Brat.”

“Proud of it.” May cracked a smile, although it lacked her usual intensity. “I’d bake your wedding cake if you hadn’t promised the job to Kerry when you were six.”

“She’ll do an amazing job, and you know it.”

“I do,” May agreed. “But my buttercream is better.”

“Questionable.”

She laughed as she walked out of the living room, leaving me alone with a pile of bridal magazines and the two geriatric half-Siamese cats sleeping on the other end of the couch. I gave them a worried look. Cagney and Lacey can sleep through virtually anything these days. They’re cats, so sleep was always a strong suit of theirs, but for the last few years, they haven’t wanted to do much of anything else.

Age comes for everything mortal. Everything except for me, assuming I can play my cards right.

My name is October Daye because my mother should never have been allowed to name her own children. My mother should never have been allowed to have children. She’s a Firstborn daughter of Oberon, absent Lord of Faerie, and nothing about her is human. She used to pretend she was, once upon a time, and that’s how I happened, because my father was as human as they come. I’m what we call a changeling, a blend of two worlds, magical and mortal at the same time. It’s an awkward place to stand since we don’t belong anywhere, not really. We have to fight for our place every day of our lives, and it can be exhausting. A lot of changelings break under the strain.

Sometimes, I’m not sure I haven’t. I spent my childhood as my mother’s shadow, dogging her heels and trying desperately to make her love me, even when it was clear she didn’t really want to. I didn’t know it then, but I wasn’t the daughter she wanted to have. No, that honor was reserved for my missing sister, August, who had decided to play the hero and go looking for our grandfather.

She didn’t find him. She lost herself in the act of trying and stayed lost until I went and brought her home. But nothing in Faerie is ever that straightforward. I’m the daughter of a fae woman and a human man, and I’m holding onto my humanity by my fingernails. One day it’s going to slip away, and I’ll be immortal like my mother, my sisters, and my daughter.

I’m not ready for that. I can’t hold it off forever but giving up my mortality feels like betraying my father, who never asked to get swept up in any of this.

August’s father is as fae as they come. He’s a man named Simon Torquill, twin brother to my liege lord, Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills. He’s also the man who turned me into a fish for fourteen years and destroyed the life I’d been trying to build outside of Faerie. He did it to save me from something even worse, because fae don’t think about time the way humans do—as a pureblood, spending a decade or so as a fish would have been inconvenient, not devastating. It took me a long time to forgive him. Part of me never will. The part that will always be human, no matter what my blood says. The rest of me says I wouldn’t have what I’ve got now if I’d stayed where I was. I didn’t choose to lose my human fiancé, or my then-mostly-human daughter. I would never have chosen that. But I also wouldn’t go back if someone could offer me the choice. Not now.

Now, I’m a knight errant and a recognized Hero of the Realm, thanks to Queen Arden Windermere in the Mists, who was able to reclaim her family’s throne and get her brother back because of my chronic inability to mind my own damn business.

Now, I live in a house that I own free and clear, thanks to Sylvester, who gave it to me when it became apparent that my squire needed to come live with me. Houses are a weirdly extravagant gift in human circles, but the fae amass land the way some people amass little ceramic figurines. If Sylvester divested himself of his real estate holdings, he might actually crash the Bay Area markets. For him, giving me a house was a small price to pay for knowing I was safe behind a locked door and not at the mercy of a mortal landlord.

Again, purebloods think differently than changelings or humans do. They’re so far outside the flow of time that it doesn’t matter as much to them. It doesn’t have to. There are exceptions, of course.

Younger purebloods, like Quentin, may have eternity in front of them, but they’re still living within the limits of a mortal lifespan where experience and opinions are concerned. Their thoughts follow lines I can understand, and they’re as baffled by their elders as I am. Being the larval stage of something doesn’t mean you comprehend it. Maybe that’s why I have so many teenagers in my house. Or maybe they just figured out that I’m willing to feed them. The jury’s still out on that one.

May is technically a pureblood, but since she was created when a night haunt consumed my living blood, she has my memories up to that point, and some of her own memories from the person she was before. I’m not sure how deep those older memories go, but I know they’re less real to her; she’s May Daye, now and forever, mixed mostly with Dare, the girl whose face she wore before mine. We’re on much the same level most of the time.

And then there’s Tybalt. A man I never expected to call friend, much less anything more. But he loves me as much as I love him, and that’s a rare and precious thing in this world. He’s my best friend and my favorite person to talk to and the reason I’m letting May subject me to her increasingly questionable taste in wedding gowns. Although that may be partially her trying to mess with me, since she knows I don’t like dresses that are bigger than I am; she just wants me to pick something.

Some people seem to think my disinterest in the planning process comes from a secret desire not to get married. That couldn’t be further from the truth. If Tybalt would agree to it, or if it wouldn’t cause a massive diplomatic incident, I’d drag him to the courthouse tomorrow and get married in jeans and a tank top, since those make up the majority of my wardrobe. He fell in love with me without finery or billows of lace. I’d be happy to marry him the same way. It’s just that my life is chaotic and I’m something of a magnet for people who want to kill me, take me apart and use me for my magic, or ensnare me in incomprehensible plans for world domination.

It doesn’t matter what my wedding dress looks like because by the time the actual ceremony rolls around, I’m going to look like the lead in a high school production of Carrie. We should start out by rolling me through an abattoir since there’s no way we’re getting around it.

I’ve learned not to be too attached to plans. They never survive contact with reality when I’m around.

Groaning, I stood, leaving the couch, the cats, and May’s pile of magazines behind. There was a time when I would have been horrified by the thought of my wedding dress getting so drenched in blood that it was ruined; these days, I’m more resigned. My mother, who is not a very nice person, raised me to think I was Daoine Sidhe, descended from Titania, and that the reason I found blood alluring and revolting at the same time was because my magic wasn’t strong enough to handle it.

Thanks, Mom. She’s not Daoine Sidhe, and neither am I; there’s nothing of Titania in my veins. We’re Dóchas Sidhe, and while our magic is still tied to blood, it’s not the same. For us, there’s nothing else, no flowers, no water.

All we get is in the blood.

It was about six in the evening, and May and I were alone in the house. Quentin was at Saltmist spending time with Dean, who’s been over less since our collective visit to the Duchy of Ships back in May, where we’d helped the sea witch keep her word by bringing back her descendant race, the Roane, from the verge of extinction. It turns out that suddenly reintroducing a long-lost type of fae to the Undersea, while removing most of the Selkies at the same time, was a little destabilizing, and as one of our coastal nobles, whose mother is a Duchess in the Undersea, Dean had been spending a lot of his time dealing with the fallout.

Better him than me. Of the two of us, he’s the one who actually speaks “diplomacy” with something other than a knife.

Jazz was likewise absent, since the small antique store she owned and operated in Berkeley didn’t close until seven. With wedding planning done for the day, Tybalt off at the Court of Cats, and May busy baking, I was free to go upstairs, take off my bra, and do nothing for the rest of the afternoon. Paradise is real.

I was halfway to the stairs when the phone rang. The landline, not my cell. I stopped, blinking at the sound. It continued ringing.

“You going to get that?” called May.

If someone was calling the landline, it was probably a client of mine. Just what I wanted. I’m technically still a private investigator, although I don’t have nearly as much time as I used to for tracking down cheating spouses and untangling complicated paternity cases. I swallowed a sigh, walked over to the end table, and hooked the receiver out of its cradle, bringing it to my ear. “October Daye Investigations, October speaking,” I said.

“Aunt Birdie, you need to listen to me.”

I froze. “Karen?”

So far, two of Stacy’s children have shown an unexpected talent for soothsaying. Karen can see the future in her dreams; Cassandra can read it in the movement of air. When they order someone to listen, listening is the only reasonable response. I caught my breath.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“You’re going to learn something soon that makes you unhappy. I don’t know what it is because it didn’t matter to what I saw. You’re going to go looking for someone you’ve lost, and you’re going to want to take everyone you can with you. But you can’t do that. In my dream, when it went the way you wanted it to go, you had May and Quentin with you, and sometimes Spike, and no one else. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“I think so.” I was going to go on another quest, and Tybalt wasn’t allowed to go with me. Oh, that was going to go over well.

“You’re going to go to the place where the bad lady is sleeping, and you can’t wake her up. Promise me you won’t wake her up.”

Evening. There was no one else Karen would refer to as “the bad lady.” She’d been too close to Evening once, and like the rest of us, she’d learned not to use her name. It wasn’t safe. “All right,” I said.

“Promise me.”

“I promise.”

“I believe you. I’m sorry, Aunt Birdie. You can’t take Uncle Tybalt with you, or people will die. I don’t want anyone to die. Be careful.”

The line went dead.

I was still staring at the receiver in my hand when someone knocked on the front door. Slowly, I turned to face it.

“May,” I did my best to keep my voice as level as possible. “Did you order pizza and forget to tell me?”

“No,” she called back from the kitchen. “Why?”

“Someone’s at the door.” Someone at the door almost never means anything good outside of Girl Scout season. The people who live with me, whether intermittently or full-time, don’t bother to knock; they just charge in whenever they feel like it. The people I answer to in the hierarchy of Faerie don’t usually come to the house.

Any chance of a quiet evening at home that had survived Karen’s call slipped away as I reluctantly approached the door. I didn’t have my knives on me, but I had the baseball bat in the umbrella stand if I needed a weapon, and I had May, who had come into the kitchen doorway and was standing there with a rolling pin in her hand. If someone had come looking for a beat-down, they were about to have a lucky day.

“I’ll get it,” I said, and reached for the doorknob.

We don’t usually bother to lock the door when we’re at home. Anyone who could get through the wards we have on the place wouldn’t even be slowed down by something as simple as a deadbolt. With a simple twist of my wrist, the door was open, and I was braced for trouble.

Trouble, in the form of one of the tallest men in San Francisco, looked down at me and blinked before raising one thick eyebrow. “Tobes?” he rumbled. “There a reason you look like you’re getting ready for an MMA cage match?”

I relaxed, realizing as I did how much adrenaline had just been dumped into my system by the one-two punch of a ringing phone and a knock on the door. I may be under too much stress. “Hi, Danny,” I said. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

Danny McReady is a San Francisco cab driver and the owner of the world’s only Barghest rescue. There’s a good reason for that, since Barghests are hostile and venomous, with tails like scorpions built on a canine scale, and most people don’t consider them good pets. Danny’s not most people. He’s a Bridge Troll, with skin that’s literally as hard as granite. It’s also the color of granite when he’s not wearing an illusion designed to let him pass for human. I did a favor for his sister a long time ago, and he’s basically pledged himself to help me whenever I need it as a consequence.

“Your kitty-cat sent me,” he said. “Said I should ask you to put on something nice and not too bloodstained and get in my car. Hey, May. You’re looking fetching as always.”

“Oh, stop,” said May, before both of them laughed at his joke.

I didn’t. Tybalt doesn’t usually send people to get me; he prefers to come get me himself, using the Shadow Roads for transportation. Maybe I was being paranoid, but given the last few years of my life, I’d earned a little paranoia. I took a step back, gesturing for Danny to come into the house.

“Shut the door and drop the illusion, please,” I said.

Danny didn’t look surprised. He’s known me for a while. Instead, he closed the door before making a sweeping gesture with his right hand. His human disguise wisped away with the faint but distinct scent of fresh-mixed concrete and ripe huckleberries, revealing his true face. Gray and craggy, like a boulder that had decided it would be a good idea to put on jeans and a San Francisco Giants hoodie and go wandering around the city. He seemed to get taller, and broader at the same time, until it looked impossible for him to have fit through the door. He grinned at me, exposing square, craggy teeth.

“Do I pass inspection, princess?” he asked, in a voice like rocks being tumbled in a barrel.

“Sorry, Danny,” I said. “You know how it is around here.”

“I do, which is why I ain’t mad. Just get in my car, and we’re square. Only maybe change first, so the kitty doesn’t take it out on me.”

“I’m making cookies,” said May. “Come on, Danny, you can have one while you wait for Toby to make herself decent.”

“Never gonna happen,” he said and guffawed as he followed her into the kitchen.

I rolled my eyes at both of them and turned for the stairs. If Tybalt wanted me to wear something nice for some reason, that was exactly what I was going to do. And I wasn’t going to look like a meringue.

My room is warm and dark and comfortable, with blackout curtains on the windows and clothing usually strewn across the floor. Neither Tybalt nor I are much on putting the laundry away, and with as often as I get bled on in the course of my duties, I throw out as many shirts as I wash and fold. We make an effort to keep sharp things off the floor, since neither of us cares for blood on the sheets, and that’s good enough. I flicked the light on and was greeted by a chirping grumble and the sound of rattling thorns as Spike, our resident rose goblin, rose from where he’d been sleeping curled in the center of the bed.

“Hey, buddy,” I said, pulling my shirt over my head and tossing it into the mess on the floor. “Karen says I’m going somewhere, and you can come with me. Does that sound good to you?”

Spike rattled again, sitting down and beginning to groom one paw.

The bra I was wearing was pretty all-purpose, and so I left it on as I made my way to the closet, where my meager store of dresses hung, waiting for another night of disuse. Well, the joke was on them for once. I started rifling through them, looking for something that fit Tybalt’s definition of “nice” while still leaving me free to run, fight, and draw my knives if necessary.

Leaving the house without making sure I’m equipped for a knife fight is a good way to guarantee I wind up in a knife fight because the universe likes nothing more than making me regret my choices. Scowling at my closet, I pulled out a simple sleeveless dress in dark green, with a lace-covered bodice giving way to a knee-length velvet skirt. It pulled on easily over my head, with no zippers I’d need anyone else to help with, and that made it ideal despite its lack of pockets.

My knife belt and silver knife were on the nightstand next to my bed. I fastened the belt around my waist, where the illusion I’d inevitably need to cast to make myself seem human would hide it, then slid my knife into the sheath at my right hip. The left side remained empty. That’s where I used to carry an iron knife, back when I was more human and iron wasn’t quite so painful. Faerie comes with costs.

It only took a second to shimmy out of my jeans and step into a pair of black flats, and then I was heading for the bathroom—the nice thing about owning the house and having the master bedroom is the attached en suite, even if I mostly only use it to shower and pee without someone hammering on the door and telling me I’m taking too long. Tybalt said to put on something nice, not to make myself fancy, so I just ran a brush through my stick-straight brown-and-blonde hair before giving myself a critical look in the mirror.

There’s not much point to makeup when I’m going to be spinning a human disguise. Illusionary eyeliner is always perfect, and I’ve never jabbed an illusionary mascara wand into my eye. Considering that, I looked pretty put-together. My hair is easy to tame, thanks to its utter lack of curl or body, and the blonde streaks I’ve been developing ever since I started shifting my blood more toward fae look like intentional highlights. The pointed tips of my ears poked through, as usual; another thing for my illusions to hide.

Much as my hair has changed, my eyes are still the grayish, washed-out color of fog rolling across the bay in the small hours of the morning; they still look like mine, and I’m oddly grateful for that. I don’t want to look in my mirror and see someone else looking back at me. I took a deep breath, blew it out, and reached one hand toward the mirror in a beseeching gesture, snapping it closed as the smell of cut grass and copper rose in the air.

“’Twas many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea,” I said, tone as light as I could make it. “Where there lived a maiden whom you may know, by the name of Annabel Lee. But she moved and she didn’t leave a forwarding address, and I have no idea what happened to her after that.”

My magic gathered around me, growing heavier and heavier until it finally popped like a soap bubble, leaving me draped in the almost invisible glitter of a human disguise. The woman looking out of my mirror wasn’t a stranger, although her eyes were darker than mine, gray blue instead of blank fog. Her hair was the same, but her ears were rounded, and the bones of her face were softer, making her cheekbones, chin, and eyebrows seem gentler, less likely to cut anyone who touched them. I’m not as angular as a pureblood, but I don’t pass for human the way I used to.

Also, she was wearing mascara. And her eyeliner was perfect, and she wasn’t carrying any weapons.

I turned away from the mirror and left the bathroom, the faint smell of my magic clinging to my skin. Spike was in the middle of my pillow, stretched out with its thorny belly showing. I smiled at it and stepped into the hall, heading for the stairs.

May and Danny—now back in his human disguise—were still in the kitchen, the latter holding a napkin full of fresh chocolate chip cookies. He beamed when he saw me.

“You always clean up good,” he said. “New dress?”

“Not really,” I said. “Jazz brought it home from her shop. I think it’s as old as I am, and I was born in 1952.”

“Baby,” scoffed Danny. “Come on. Your chariot awaits. Good cookies, May.”

“Have a nice time wherever it is you’re going,” said May, beaming at me. “Here’s a tip: if someone tries to stab you, duck.”

“Oh, ha ha, I never thought of that before,” I said, and grabbed a cookie off the rack cooling on the counter before I followed Danny into the hall, to the front door, and outside.

His cab was parked in the driveway. One more luxury of the house we live in: we have a driveway. I could rent it to desperate tech workers for fifteen hundred dollars a month if I wanted to, and there have been times in my life when the temptation would have been almost irresistible. From the outside, Danny’s car was a standard yellow cab, the sort that crops up in most major American cities. I was relieved to see that there were no Barghests in the backseat.

“I ran the vacuum yesterday, so you don’t need to worry about your dress,” he said, gesturing for me to take the front passenger seat. “An’ the kitty said not to stress about getting home, he’ll take care of it. So it’s cool that you’re leaving your car.”

“Not sure how I’d bring it along, since I don’t know where we’re going.” I climbed in and fastened my seatbelt, first checking to make sure there was no one lurking in the back. It’s happened before, and a one-person car chase isn’t as much fun as it sounds.

Several strange charms and bundles of herbs dangled from the rearview mirror. One of them appeared to be an elaborate knot made from bright green hair. I squinted at it, inhaling gingerly as I tried to feel out the magic behind it. All the charms had been enchanted by the same person; they smelled, distantly, of engine grease and coal dust. I leaned back in my seat, rubbing my nose in an effort not to sneeze.

Smelling magic, even when it’s old, faint, or distant, is another Dóchas Sidhe party trick, although it’s part of what makes me terrible at parties. I’m constantly getting distracted by things no one else can smell, although almost all fae can pick up on the broad strokes. When I was younger, I thought everyone got as much detail as I did, and I was always very confused when people didn’t know what I was talking about. Just one more thing to add to the list of ways my mother made my childhood miserable.

If I ever find a therapist who works with changelings, I’m going to send Mom the bill.

The car dipped as Danny climbed behind the wheel, sliding into a space too big to fit into the apparent size of the frame. Magic again, making his life a little easier. And why shouldn’t it? We live in a world that was never designed for us, where iron lurks around every corner and where hiding from the humans is both increasingly difficult and of paramount importance.

There used to be places we could run to when the mortal world got to be too much to take. Worlds other than the Summerlands, places like Annwn and Emain Ablach, whole realities tailored to the needs and natures of the fae who occupied them. But the deeper lands of Faerie were sealed when Oberon disappeared, leaving us stranded in only two worlds, one of which is actively hostile to us, the other of which is too small to contain all of Faerie comfortably. The Summerlands are the only other realm we can get to now, and while they welcome us, they’re not home to anyone but the pixies.

Sometimes I wonder whether Amandine would have followed in the footsteps of her older siblings if Oberon hadn’t vanished right after she was born, spinning a world of shimmering spires and endless brambles, perfectly suited to the magic and desires of the Dóchas Sidhe. But then I remember that it would be a world that owed its existence to my mother and decided I wouldn’t want to go there if it existed.

Danny pulled out of the driveway, driving with the speed and safety of a man who not only got paid to do it, but had excellent reason not to want to be pulled over by the human police. He could always cast a don’t-look-here if he had to, to keep them from seeing how unreasonably large he was, but that wouldn’t necessarily fool a dashboard camera, and those are becoming more and more common.

“When are you going to tell me where we’re going?”

“When I absolutely have to,” he said jovially.

I folded my arms and glowered at him. He laughed.

“Try relaxing for once,” he suggested. “Me and the kitty aren’t going to hurt you, and you know it.”

“I do, but I didn’t become a detective because I liked people having secrets,” I countered. “Please, a hint?”

“You’ve been there before.”

He was heading for the 101. We were clearly leaving the city; I just had no idea why. I huffed. “You people.”

Danny laughed again.

We kept driving for almost twenty minutes, leaving San Francisco proper behind us. When we passed the sign for the Brisbane city limits, I turned and gave him a stern look. “Are you taking me to the airport?”

“What? No! That would be ridiculous. I didn’t tell you to get your ID.” He turned on his turn signal. “Hold tight, we’re almost there.”

I leaned back in my seat, folding my arms again. Wherever we were going, I was going to be getting there already mildly annoyed.

Danny pulled off the freeway and onto surface streets, driving through three intersections before he turned again. “Do you ever lighten up?”

“Not habitually.”

He turned onto a winding driveway, which vanished ahead of us into a patently artificial copse of trees. I sat up straighter, finally recognizing our destination. “You could have told me Tybalt was taking me to dinner.”

“Nope. Promised him I wouldn’t.”

I turned to glare at Danny. “I’m the hero here. You should be more afraid of me.”

“Tell it to the boyfriend,” he said. We passed into the trees, and a low brick building appeared in front of us. It was quaint looking, like something from an old Disney movie. Ivy clung to the walls, and roses covered the trellises out front. Danny pulled up in front of the valet station, gesturing grandly to the restaurant.

“Welcome to Cat in the Rafters, Tobes,” he said. “Now get out so I can find a paying fare.”

“I could pay you.”

“Nope. I keep telling you, your money’s no good here.”

I laughed as I opened the door and got out of the cab. “Then go. Make money.”

“Have a nice date, don’t get stabbed!” Danny drove off as soon as I closed the door, and I turned to face the restaurant, and the terrifying prospect of a normal dinner date.