Authors: Seanan McGuire
Rosemary and Rue (18 page)
At first, the only source of warmth was Tybalt, who had me tight against him, arms still locked around my waist. Then I felt the hope chest again, heating my skin through the plastic I had wrapped around it. I didn’t throw the warmth away this time; I clung to it, struggling against the urge to take another breath. I had no idea what was going on, but I knew that fighting Tybalt wouldn’t get me out of the darkness. It would strand me there.
Just as I was sure I’d die if I didn’t breathe, Tybalt moved, pushing me forward, away from him, back into the blazing brightness of the morning. I stumbled, going down on one knee on the damp pavement of the alley as I took in huge, blessedly warm gasps of air. Once I was sure I wasn’t dead, I raised my head and stared at him, feeling ice crystals melting in my hair.
“What the hell . . . ?”
“You can talk,” he said, expression radiating utter calm. “Your illusions are intact. You aren’t panicking or in pain. Can you really say that was worse than standing through the dawn?”
I hesitated, actually looking around me. The sun was up. I could taste the ashes of the previous night’s magic in the air . . . and Tybalt was right. My own magic, small as it was, was still entirely intact. I was chilled, but that had been, in its strange and alien way, easier than the sunrise. I stood carefully, testing my balance as I watched him.
“You could have asked me.”
“What would you have said?” I hesitated, and he smiled, looking satisfied. “You see? You would be uselessly gasping for air, and not only would I still not know why you came here, but I would have missed the amusement of watching your expression when I pulled you into the shadows. Now. Since I’ve spared you the dawn, you can honor me with an answer to my question. Why are you here?”
There was no nice way to say what needed to be said. I didn’t even try. “Evening Winterrose is dead.” Tybalt recoiled, eyes going wide. I continued, “You knew Evening. You know what she could do. She used the old forms when she died, and she bound me. She wrapped me in a chain so tight that it’s choking me, and you’re the only person that can help me.”
Tybalt’s eyes remained wide as he frowned. “Me? Why me?” His expression was pained. He and Evening were never friends—they never even cared enough to be enemies—but they’d been in the same city a long, long time. Some ties run deeper than friendship. The news of her death had him off-kilter.
“Because I’m still in her service, and that means I have to keep going, even if it kills me. I need somebody to back me up if things . . . if things don’t go as well as they might.”
He flinched, and demanded, “Why in the hell would she choose
you?
You couldn’t even find a living woman. How are you planning to avenge a dead one?”
you?
You couldn’t even find a living woman. How are you planning to avenge a dead one?”
For once, the reminder didn’t sting. Yes, I’d failed, but that didn’t mean I’d fail again. Not this time. “Please, Tybalt. I need you.” I bowed my head in a calculated gesture of submission. A lot of purebloods still say we owe that sort of thing to our “betters.” The world has changed, but they don’t care; time can’t get much of a foothold in fealty. “My skills have limits.” I was laying it on pretty thick. I didn’t think he’d object.
“What do you want from me?” His voice was flat. I glanced up to find him standing at attention, shoulders tense, glaring. I’d handed him a full measure of grief and then asked for favors; if I was lucky, he’d let me finish talking before he ripped me open and left me for the night-haunts.
“I want you to guard this.” I pulled the garbage bag off the hope chest, holding it up for him to see. The touch of the wood against my skin set my hands tingling again, sending bolts of heat up my arms.
Tybalt froze, confusion washing across his face. “Is that . . . ?”
“Yes.”
“But they don’t exist.”
“Guess we were wrong about that, huh? It’s real. Evening had it. She hid a clue with the autumn sprites and told them to bring it to me.” I paused before saying the words I’d been hoping to avoid: “I think she got killed for it.”
“I don’t understand. They’re not . . . the hope chests aren’t
real
.”
real
.”
I shook my head. “I know that. I also know that at least one of them exists, and this is it, because I can feel it, Tybalt, I can feel it singing to me. I don’t know how true the stories about hope chests and changelings are, but I know enough to know that I can’t trust myself with it. I can’t trust any changeling with it. It has to be in pureblood hands, at least until I find out who killed Evening.”
Please,
I added silently.
I don’t know how long I can hold out.
Please,
I added silently.
I don’t know how long I can hold out.
The burning was getting strong again, faster than it had before. The hope chest knew who I was now, and whatever it had been designed to do, it was eager to get to work.
Tybalt glanced away. “The Queen . . .”
“She won’t help me. She’s already refused.”
“Why?” He looked back, suddenly frowning. “What does she know?”
“If I knew that, I’d feel safe asking someone at Shadowed Hills to guard it. But I don’t know why, and that means, for everyone’s sake, that it needs to stay with someone she doesn’t control.” The Courts of Faerie have no control over the Cait Sidhe, by Oberon’s own decree. The Queen couldn’t touch Tybalt. Maybe she wasn’t a murderess, but our brief encounter had left me with the sinking suspicion that she was going insane, and if that was the case, I really didn’t want to deal with her while I was cursed and looking for a murderer.
Tybalt’s eyes narrowed. “Why not just take it Home? I’ve heard you’d still be welcome there. Surely your ban on changelings can’t extend so far as that.”
“Devin’s got enough trouble with the Queen. I don’t need to cause him more.” I studied Tybalt’s expression, and frowned. I didn’t know of any bad blood between him and Home. Fourteen years is plenty of time to start a feud.
“The Tea Gardens, then.”
“That’s the first place anybody who’s trying to find it would look. If they know I can’t hide it with Sylvester . . .”
“They’ll assume you’ve taken it to the Lily-maid.”
“Exactly.” I cocked my head, watching him. “So you’ll do it?”
“You still haven’t said why you’re coming to me. I’m not the only cat in this city.”
“Because you hate me.” Seeing his confusion, I clarified: “There’s never been any love lost between us, and there probably never will be, but you keep your word, and I know that if you say you’ll do this for me, you’ll do it. Your honor might survive betraying a friend, because the friend would forgive you. I wouldn’t.”
His expression hardened. “What’s in it for me?”
“The chance to get me in your debt.” I allowed myself a thin smile. “That’s worth enough that I know you’d keep your word.”
He was silent for a long moment; long enough that I started to worry that I’d gone too far. Finally, voice hushed, he said, “So you’ll trust me because you don’t trust me?”
I swallowed. “Yes,” I said.
“You’ll owe me for this. You may never pay this debt; I may never let you. I could hold it over you for centuries. I could decide to never let you go.” There was an odd warning note in his voice, like he wanted me to reconsider.
“That’s my problem, isn’t it?” I raised my head a little further and met his eyes.
He blinked, apparently surprised by my boldness. Then he shrugged, saying, “Very well,” and reached for the box, trying to tug it from my hands.
I kept my grip on the hope chest. “No,” I said, sharply. “Promise first.”
He glared at me; I glared back. “You know the rules. You want me in your debt, fine, I’m going willingly. But I’m going by the rules. Now promise.”
“If you insist,” he said, and straightened, squaring his shoulders before chanting, “By root and branch, by leaf and vine, on rowan and oak and ash and thorn I swear that what is given to my keeping shall remain in my keeping and shall be given over only to the one who holds my bond. My blood to the defense of the task I am set, my heart to the keeping of the promise to which I am bound.” The air grew thick with the taste of pennyroyal and musk as his magic crackled around us, drowning out the taste of roses.
“Broken promises are the road to our damnation,” I said, the copper and cut grass smell of my own magic undercutting his. “Promises kept are the meeting of all our myriad roads.”
“And such a meeting will my promise be.” The magic shattered around us as the formalities ended and he pulled the hope chest away. This time I let it go, my fingers aching as they pulled away from the wood. How badly did I want it? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to.
“Thank you, Tybalt,” I said, lingering on the forbidden words. Thanks implies fealty. As long as Tybalt held that chest, he was in mine. It was rude beyond belief for me to point it out that way. I wasn’t sure exactly why I did it; chalk it up to stress.
He tucked the chest under his arm, glaring, before he turned and stalked away. He turned back as the shadows parted like curtains in front of him, saying, “There will be a reckoning, October,” before he stepped through them and was gone.
Shivering, I wrapped my arms around myself and walked back down the alley, heading for my car. There was no time to linger; I needed to go to Shadowed Hills, and I was exhausted. I needed to get some sleep. Evening’s curse wasn’t crippling me yet, but it would start eventually, and once that happened, it wouldn’t matter how tired I was. Somehow, time had become a limited commodity.
I stopped beside my car, looking back into the darkness of the alleyway. “Yes, Tybalt,” I said to the empty air. “I know.”
ELEVEN
IT WAS ALMOST SEVEN by the time I staggered back into my apartment, stumbling over the hem of my stained silk gown and garnering curious looks from the cats, who weren’t used to me coming in smelling of smoke and the sea. The sky outside the window was turning slowly from rosy gold to a clear, crystalline blue as the sun finished its climb above the buildings. That’s one thing you’ve got to give San Francisco: there are too many people, the rent is hell and the politics are worse, but we have beautiful mornings. Somehow, in the koi pond and everything that came after, I’d forgotten that part.
I shut the door and leaned against the wall, letting my human disguise waft away into the faint, distant taste of copper. Lowering the spell left me feeling oddly refreshed and clean despite the layers of grime I’d acquired during the night. The cats twined around my ankles, complaining. I vaguely remember spooning food into their dish before collapsing facedown on the bed, too tired to bother shutting the curtains, and falling into my dreams.
For the first time in weeks, I didn’t dream of the pond. I don’t remember what I dreamed, but whatever it was, it didn’t stay with me long enough to be remembered. I woke up stiff, aching, and still dressed in the blue silk gown that used to be my second-favorite pair of jeans. I sat up, pressing a hand against the side of my head, and paused. The headache I expected wasn’t there, and it only took me a moment to remember why. I touched the hope chest. I touched the hope chest, and my headache went away. Had it changed me in just that brief, accidental contact? Root and branch, how powerful was that thing?
My memories of the previous night were jumbled but clear enough to understand, from Evening’s last frantic phone call to being ordered away by the Queen of the Mists, the discovery of the hope chest, and my bargain with Tybalt. It was the Queen’s reaction that puzzled me the most. Evening’s death was a mystery and a tragedy, but there was an answer waiting somewhere for me to find it; the existence of the hope chest told me that, if nothing else. The Queen’s response to her death was another matter. I could have understood shock, sorrow, or even anger at the messenger. What I didn’t understand was her panic at the very concept of Evening’s death. Why had she reacted that way? Where did Evening get the hope chest in the first place, and who knew she had it? Too much of this wasn’t making sense, and I didn’t like that one bit.
The lack of a headache was more worrisome than anything else. I’d done more magic than was good for me the day before. On a good day I can maintain my illusions without any slips and still reset my wards. That’s on a good day. Add several small misdirection spells, fog-scrying, and an adventure in blood magic to the mix and I should have found myself one exit past pain and approaching the highway to agony. Magic-burn hurts more than anything physical, digging down until it finds nerves you didn’t even know existed. What, exactly, did the hope chest do to keep all that from happening?
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