“Guessing things haven’t been going well, huh?” I asked.

  She didn’t reply in words, only an incoherent babble of sounds that all blended together into something like the cry of the wild parrots that flocked on Telegraph Hill. I brought one hand up and began to pat her back, trying to be soothing.

  “Uh, Ray? What’s with the waterworks?” asked Quentin, standing behind me on the porch stairs.

  Raysel lifted her head, still sniffling, but at least no longer babbling, and wiped her eyes with one hand. “Um. Hi, Quentin,” she said.

  I was pretty sure she had a crush on him. I wasn’t worried about either of them doing anything about it. My squire was growing up to be an attractive young man, but he was in a pretty serious relationship with Dean, who had a complicated past with Raysel. She wasn’t going to risk her place in our household by getting between Dean and his boyfriend, and Quentin wasn’t going to endanger his existing relationship to mess around with his liege’s daughter. I was his knight, but Sylvester held his fosterage, and Sylvester wasn’t always rational where Raysel was concerned.

  And yeah, I was enough of a hypocrite to not want Quentin and Raysel goofing around under my roof. I couldn’t stop them—I wasn’t actually sure I’d try if I caught them. Both of them were over eighteen, which mattered more in the mortal world than it did in the fae one, but my human-influenced sensibilities told me that if they wanted to get naked, they absolutely could. I just didn’t want to know about it.

  “Hey, Ray,” said Quentin. “Why are you crying?”

  “Because I thought you were—there were—” She pulled back enough to look at my face, then burst into tears again, sobbing loudly and messily.

  Raysel was Daoine Sidhe, but she couldn’t cry pretty, despite all the ethereal beauty she was heir to. Her eyes got red, and snot bubbles formed on her nostrils. Under other circumstances, and if she hadn’t been so clearly distraught, I might have been pleased by the reminder that being a pureblood didn’t guarantee that you would always look perfect. In the moment, spending more than a fleeting thought on anything other than her obvious distress would have been utterly cruel.

  “Raysel.” I gripped her upper arms, turning her so that she was fully facing me. “Where are May and Tybalt? Are you alone?”

  She nodded vigorously at the second question, strands of fox-red hair clinging to the tears on her cheeks and making her seem disheveled and impossibly fragile. “They wuh-were here,” she sobbed. “You were here too, but it wasn’t you, and Spike kept rattling all angry, so I didn’t come down to the kitchen, I stayed upstairs in my room until there was this big thud, and then I came to the top of the stairs and I saw—I saw—”

  Her words dissolved into sobs once more, hysteria overwhelming whatever she was trying to say. I began to let go of her arms and straighten and she immediately reached up, clamping her hands over mine and holding me where I was.

  “Don’t … don’t let me go,” she managed. “I feel like I’m falling, all the time, forever. Please don’t let me go.”

  “Okay, Raysel,” I said. “What did you see?”

  “The people who looked like you and Quentin were dragging Tybalt and Aunt May out the front door. They looked—” She stopped again, this time not because she was crying, but because she’d just realized that maybe she was about to say something that could be dangerous while I was standing that close to her.

  “That was Dame Altair and her brother, Dugan, wearing disguises to look like us,” I said, as patiently as I could manage. I gave Raysel’s arms a squeeze, then let her go, and this time she let me. “They like poisons. I’m sure May and Tybalt are just knocked out.”

  May was effectively unkillable—even closer to truly immortal than I was. I’d once seen her grow back the bulk of her internal organs after they’d been shattered by a tree branch. As for Tybalt …

  The reason I wasn’t going to let myself give in to panic was simple: Quentin and Bucer had both been poisoned without my healing abilities to help them recover, and they’d both woken up just fine. Whatever Altair had dosed Tybalt with, he’d wake up, and he’d be fine. Furious, I was sure, but fine. And I had to believe that with all my heart, or I was going to turn around and kill Bucer where he stood.

  Bucer. Oh, hell. I whipped around, and found him standing in the driveway next to the car, a downcast expression on his face and his hands dangling by his hips. “The bracelets don’t come off,” he said. “In case you were wondering. When I try to pull them off, it’s like they grow thorns all over the inside, and they dig into my skin, and they don’t come off. So that’s definitely awesome and not at all going to be a horrible thing for me later, when I have to try leaving here with my magic bound.”

  “I know the Luidaeg well enough to say that they’ll probably come off if I’m the one pulling on them,” I said. “But no, I’m not going to test that until we’re done with you. You leave when I say you leave, and if you have a problem with that, I can remind you that right now, you’re in the best position you’re ever likely to be in again.”

  “What’s that?” asked Bucer.

  “You’re on my side,” I said, voice cold, and turned back to Raysel. “You must have come downstairs after that. Did you try calling anyone?”

  “No,” she said, in a very small voice. “I don’t have a lot of phone numbers written down, and I don’t have my own phone yet, and I didn’t want to call anyone at Shadowed Hills because if I called there wailing about you poisoning Tybalt and dragging him away, I know my father would come, and just make everything even worse. Also, I wasn’t sure it was really you.”

  “Why not? Poisoning Tybalt—which is something we both know I’d never do—aside.”

  “She wasn’t moving like she was pregnant. She was moving like she had a pillow stuffed under her shirt, like she was pretending she was pregnant, but not like she had a baby in there. I’ve been watching you move for months. You don’t step lightly anymore.” She had the grace to look embarrassed as she said that, looking down at her feet. “You sort of … not stomp, but you plod around, and you look uncomfortable all the time. This lady wasn’t doing any of that, and she was dragging Tybalt by his wrists and snapping at the man who looked like Quentin. And he didn’t say anything. He just followed her without saying anything.”

  “Where would they take them?” asked Quentin.

  I focused on Raysel again. “Okay, Raysel, I need you to think very carefully: was either one of them bleeding? Was there any blood at all, anywhere?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, sniffling again.

  “All right. How long ago was this?”

  “Maybe half an hour? I don’t know.”

  She was starting to sound mulish, which made me want to shake her, and feel bad for wanting to shake her. None of this was her fault. “All right, sweetheart. You’re doing great. Did you hear a car when they were dragged outside?”

  “I always hear cars. The cars never stop.” She scowled. “But … yes. There was a car right after they left the house.”

  “Good girl. You’ve been a great help.” I stepped around her and into the kitchen, pausing in the doorway to survey the scene. There were four mugs on the table, containing the dregs of what looked like hot chocolate with whipped cream and multicolored marshmallows—one of May’s specialties. I had never been particularly impressed with Dame Altair, but if she’d managed to poison May’s cocoa in May’s own kitchen, she was more subtle than I had ever taken her to be.

  Great. Why do the bad guys always have to turn out to be better at their jobs than I want them to be?

  Still, if anyone should have realized that she wasn’t me, it would have been Tybalt. If even Raysel could see that Dame Altair’s faux pregnancy didn’t look right, he would certainly have caught some turn of phrase or gesture that didn’t synchronize with what he expected from me. He had to have figured out at some point that something was wrong.

  I moved to the middle of the kitchen and closed my eyes, breathing deeply. All the usual smells of a well-used room came to my attention, underscored by a faint ribbon of red. May had cut herself here, several times, and she didn’t heal like I did; when she broke skin, she bled until her blood could clot. None of the blood smelled fresher than a few days old. That wasn’t what I wanted.

  I kept walking across the kitchen, heading for the door to the hall, and stopped dead as fresher blood assaulted my nose, rich with the mingled scents of pennyroyal and musk. “Oh, you clever, clever cat,” I murmured.

  “What did you find?” asked Quentin.

  “Tybalt must have felt the poison kicking in, and clawed himself.” I couldn’t kneel, so I looked down, studying the floor until I found the smallest smear of red against the wooden floor. “He left us a trail.”

  “How far…?”

  “He heals like a normal person, and I doubt Altair or Dugan stopped to bandage him up,” I said. “Right. Do you still have the phone from before your last upgrade? Because we need to go after them, now.”

  “I’ll get it.” Quentin ran for the stairs.

  I turned to glare at Bucer. “You’re coming with us,” I said. “We need to find the things you stole, we need to stop Dame Altair, we need to find my people, and we need to find the missing pretender to the throne.”

  “That’s a lot of finding,” he said. “Why do you think I can help with any of this?”

  “You have a lot of fingers,” I said. “Why do you think you need them all?”

  “Okay, okay!” He threw his hands up and walked across the kitchen to stand next to me.

  Raysel, who had been watching quietly since I started searching for blood, followed him. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.

  That stopped me. I couldn’t leave her here by herself, not when Altair and Dugan were on the loose, and she didn’t know how to drive. Bringing her with us would be counter to my promise to protect her. Dragging her into danger might be convenient, but that didn’t make it good.

  Quentin came thudding down the stairs, phone in one hand. He stopped when he saw the expression on my face. “Toby?”

  “We need to get Raysel to safety,” I said.

  He nodded, clearly following my line of thought to the inevitable conclusion that she couldn’t stay here alone. “I’ll call Chelsea,” he said.

  Raysel’s eyes widened. “I don’t want to go to Shadowed Hills,” she said, words tumbling over each other in her haste to get them out.

  “I’ll tell her that, and you can tell her that, too,” said Quentin easily. “It’s only eight. There’s plenty of stuff open downtown. You can go see a movie and get something to eat.”

  “I…” Raysel glanced at me, then visibly composed herself, clearly trying to look braver than she felt. I don’t think I’d ever been prouder of her. Sometimes it could be easy to forget that she was barely older than Gillian. Thanks to the way she’d grown up, she was physically mature, with less life experience than a young teen. It could make it difficult to accurately estimate how she was going to react to things. “I think I would like that, if Chelsea’s willing. I have some money, even, so I can help pay for things.”

  “How did you get human money?” asked Quentin, tone all curiosity without accusation.

  Raysel shrugged. “Aunt May pays me to help her around the house sometimes. She says a girl should be able to go out and buy a soda if she wants one, and not need to ask people to pay for her all the time.”

  “Practical,” I said, while Quentin brought the phone to his ear, waiting a few seconds before he started talking in hushed tones to the person on the other end. He turned back to flash me a quick thumbs-up, smiling at Raysel, then turned back to his conversation. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, trying to lessen the pressure on my knees. Charging into danger used to come with a lot less in the way of logistics. We didn’t have to make sure people were safely out of the way. We just did what needed to be done.

  And sure, there was a lot of blood loss in those days, and some exciting near-death experiences that weren’t remotely as fun when they were happening as they were in hindsight, but at least everything happened faster back then.

  Quentin lowered the phone, looking to Raysel. “Are you ready to go?” he asked. “Because she’s going to be right—”

  A portal opened in the air beside him and Chelsea bounced through, black hair slicked down to hide the points of her ears, and copper-colored eyes muted by tinted glasses. She wasn’t wearing a human disguise. Despite the fineness of her features, she didn’t need one; as long as she kept her ears covered and her glasses on, she could pass for human. She was wearing jeans and a dark orange sweater, and would have looked perfectly at home lounging around any of San Francisco’s many malls.

  “Hi,” she chirped.

  “—here,” finished Quentin. He leaned over to punch Chelsea lightly in the arm. “You were supposed to wait a few minutes so I could make sure she was ready for you.”

  “But I wanted to get moving now,” said Chelsea. She turned to Raysel, beaming. “There’s a showing of Kung Fu Panda 3 starting in fifteen minutes at the Metreon. We can absolutely make it. There’s a good spot at the back of the arcade to pop in where no one will see us, and the box office is on the same floor.”

  “I have no idea what you just said,” said Raysel, sounding befuddled.

  “We’re gonna have a good time, that’s what I said,” said Chelsea. “You got any money? It’s cool if you don’t, my dad has no idea what anything costs, so he gave me two hundred dollars. We can get burgers after.” She held her hand out to Raysel, clearly expecting her to take it.

  Raysel looked at me, anxiety in her eyes. “This is safe?”

  “Safer than staying here alone when we don’t know who might show up,” I said. “The world isn’t safe. But some risks are worth taking. A movie and dinner are pretty low on the ladder of possible dangers. Just go and have a nice time, okay?”

  “Okay,” said Raysel. She scooped her hands through the air like she was filling them with water, bringing them to her face. The air around her blossomed with the smell of hot wax and lightly crushed blackthorn fruit, and when she lowered her hands again, she looked perfectly human. Still striking, with red hair and vividly hazel eyes, but human. She and Chelsea were going to catch some admiring looks tonight. They looked like movie stars walking among ordinary people.

  That was at least within the realm of possibility. I smiled encouragingly at Raysel, and she walked over to Chelsea, taking the offered hand in hers. Chelsea grinned, stepping backward as she sketched an arc with her free hand, and a portal opened to swallow them both. Before it closed I got a glimpse of a darkened room filled with flashing video game consoles. The faint scent of popcorn and floor cleaner wafted through.

  Then they were gone, and I was alone with Quentin and Bucer. I exhaled.

  “She’ll be safer this way,” I said.

  “She will,” verified Quentin. “If anyone tries to mess with them, Chelsea will get them both out of the situation. Even without being able to take Raysel to Shadowed Hills, Chelsea can get them out of harm’s way. And she’s been wanting to spend more time with Raysel. She feels like they don’t know each other very well, what with the whole ‘elf-shot followed by voluntary exile’ thing on Raysel’s part, and their dads are sort of best friends.”

  “Good,” I said. The social web formed by Quentin and his peers was complicated and constantly changing, and I didn’t feel like they wanted me intruding on it any more than I’d wanted Melly and the other adults intruding on my time with Kerry and the others when I was his age. Childhood and adulthood are nebulous concepts in Faerie, where some people can hit puberty in their seventies, no one reaches their full majority until thirty years of age, and even after that, they’ll be considered young and dismissible until they’re at least a century old. Chelsea was nineteen, adult by human standards, and Raysel was older, and I still felt like I’d just sent a pair of twelve-year-olds to the mall alone.

  Oh, well. There would be time to brood over time and maturity in Faerie later, after we had my husband back. I put two fingers in my mouth and whistled shrilly. A second later, a rattling sound from the hall told me that Spike was trotting in our direction.

  “Quentin, do you want to drive?” I asked, lowering my hand.

  He shot me a startled look. “Are you sure?”

  “My knees hurt, and I’d like to give my feet a rest,” I said. “Plus some asshole cracked the central column on my steering wheel, and I’m going to need to get that fixed before I can drive around safely.”

  Spike entered the kitchen and rattled its thorns at me, then began to prowl around the border of the room, sniffing the floor and rattling angrily.

  “You want to come with us, buddy?” I asked. “We’re going to find May and Tybalt.”

  “Jazz,” said Quentin, tone horrified.

  “What about h—oh, root and bloody branch.” Jazz was May’s live-in girlfriend and functional fiancée: there hadn’t been a formal marriage proposal yet, but she’d agreed to the idea of marriage, and that seemed to be more than enough for my Fetch. She should have been home at some point between my poisoning and now. “Can you call her store?”

  “On it.” Jazz owned a small antique store in the unaffiliated part of Berkeley. They would be closed by now, but she had a habit of picking up the phone even outside of business hours.

  Several seconds ticked by. Quentin lowered his phone. “Voicemail,” he said grimly.

  I shuddered. I have a special aversion for voicemail and answering machines. Nothing good is ever recorded on them.

  “Okay,” I said. “That doesn’t mean anything bad has happened to her. Raysel would have said something if she’d seen them dragging Jazz out of the house too. For right now, we need to focus on the people we know are in danger. May will be able to tell us if we’re wrong about that, but for her to say anything, we need to save her first.”

  “All right,” said Quentin reluctantly.