Page 56 of A Killing Frost

“Is there any chance she had some sort of ward set that would banish you to the old parts of the knowe if you ever came here?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” she said. “She would never have considered me enough of a danger to warrant banishment, and the times I did have cause to walk in Goldengreen, nothing of the sort occurred. She was never afraid of me after I was bound not to do her any harm. Smart enough to make no bargains, yes, but never afraid. She wouldn’t have set any attempts to banish me.”

“No,” said Marcia, stepping around the corner of the hall on the other side of the door. “That was me.”

FIFTEEN

“OH, REALLY,” SAID THE LUIDAEG.Anyone who didn’t know her as well as I did might have missed the sudden tension in her neck and shoulders, illustrating just how unhappy she was about having someone join us without warning. “And when did you gain the ability to command Goldengreen’s defenses?”

“I’m Dean’s seneschal,” said Marcia. “If I’m the ranking member of the household staff present in the knowe, it tends to listen to my requests. It’s easier than fighting with me.” Her voice was dull, almost dead; she sounded exhausted. More than that, she sounded defeated.

I stepped forward, hesitating when I got a better look at her. She was wearing a simple yellow sundress, with a rip at the neckline and suspicious brown stains that could have been chocolate milk or could have been something else along the base of her skirt. More alarmingly, her lip was split, and there was a smear of what I couldn’t possibly pretend was anything but blood on her left cheek. The smell of it permeated the air around her. She looked at me with eyes as dull and empty as her voice.

“I’m the only one here,” she said.

“Marcia, what happened?”

She worried her lip briefly between her teeth, wincing when she hit the split, and said, “The staff was serving dinner in the main room when he showed up. Just walked right in, through a door no one realized was there, like he owned the place. Like he wasallowed.” A note of confused offense crept into her voice. “Hewalked in like he thought none of us would stop him, and I suppose none of us did, because he did it.”

“He who?”

“The man with the red hair,” she said, looking at me solemnly. In case that wasn’t enough, she added, “And the yellow eyes. But he wasn’t Sylvester Torquill. He just stole his face and used it to go where he wasn’t meant to go. He had Quentin with him, and an arrow, pressed against the side of Quentin’s neck, and when Dean demanded he let go and step away, he did... things.” She shuddered, voice going high and sweet and childish on the last word, like she was trying to put some distance between herself and the memory. “He said he was looking for Duke Lorden. Dean told me to get away. So I ran, and I asked the knowe if anyone came from the beach, to please send them here, where he wouldn’t think to look for them. No one comes here. We’re too far away from everything useful.”

I moved closer, putting an arm around her shoulders. She nestled against me, blinking wide blue eyes up through the tangled fringe of her hair. As always, they were ringed in a thick corona of fairy ointment, a simple cream blended for her by one of the local alchemists—sometimes that meant Walther, sometimes that meant one of San Francisco’s many changelings just trying to get by—so she could see Faerie. I’ve never unsnarled Marcia’s exact heritage, but she’s thin-blooded, no more than a quarter fae, and without the fairy ointment, she wouldn’t be able to see the doors to the knowe, much less pass through them.

“Marcia, where’s the man with the red hair now?” I asked.

“He left,” she said, eyes still wide. “When he couldn’t find me, he left. He took Quentin with him. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You’re looking for Quentin?”

“I am,” I said, stomach sinking. Simon had been here, done something terrible to leave Marcia with blood on her dress and glassy shock in her eyes, and left again, taking Quentin with him. “Can you take us to Dean?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t think I can do that. I don’t think anyone can do that anymore.”

My stomach sank further. “Can you take us to the last place where you saw him?”

Marcia considered for a moment before nodding solemnly andpulling away from me. “I can do that,” she said, and started walking down the hall, not waiting to see if we were following.

I glanced back at the Luidaeg, who looked at me with confusion and shook her head, clearly not sure exactly what was happening. Together, we followed Marcia down the hall and down a short flight of wooden stairs into a small room at the very back of the kitchen. It wasn’t a pantry, more an antechamber disguised as a pantry, and once we left it, we were in the kitchen proper, surrounded by the smell of baking bread and simmering broths. The stove was still on, burners heating the pots above them. Magic means not worrying about burning the house down if you step away for five minutes. Just one of the many wonderful services it offers.

Marcia stopped in the middle of the kitchen, eyes going to the rafters, anxiety written clearly in the thin line of her mouth. I followed her gaze, and paled when I realized what she was looking at—or wasn’t looking at, more importantly. There were no candy-colored bodies fanning their wings in the gloom, and no dog-sized spiders sneaking up behind them.

Goldengreen sat empty between Evening’s supposed death and my taking the knowe over. It hadn’t been as well-sealed as Arden’s knowe in Muir Woods, which had been locked by the Luidaeg herself, and things had been able to creep in around the edges. Nothing big—we hadn’t been forced to evict a dragon or anything of the sort—but big enough to be a nuisance. Normally, Goldengreen had a thriving population of pixies, as well as a large colony of bogeys, shapeshifting spiders that liked to make people uncomfortable. I had always acknowledged them as the true owners of the knowe, and while Dean hadn’t chosen to do the same, he’d never tried to evict them, choosing instead to establish a stable, if occasionally frustrating, peace.

They were always here. Even when Marcia was away from the knowe, her kitchen was alive with small bodies, stealing bits of bread, adding unexpected seasonings to the stew, and generally making a polite nuisance of themselves. I had never seen the rafters empty before.

“They rose to defend the knowe,” she said dreamily. “This is their home and they love it, and they love being accepted as a part of the household when so many would have had them evicted for the crime of being small and simple, so they rose to defend whatthey love when they felt it was in danger. And now we’re the only ones left.”

The hole in the bottom of my stomach felt like it was opening wider and wider. Soon it would be a gaping chasm, and May and I would match again. “Take us to where you last saw Dean,” I said, in a very small voice.

Marcia nodded, and the three of us left the kitchen together.

The smell of smoke and rotten oranges completely filled the hall, thick enough that I gagged as soon as I inhaled. Simon had not only been here, he had been flinging spells around with wild abandon. It was probably too much to hope for him to have exhausted himself in the process, although it was likely. There were traces of other magical signatures blending into his, but none were strong enough to imply that anyone had been able to successfully fight back. We kept walking.

When Goldengreen had belonged to Evening, it had been centered around the receiving room where she had kept her throne—as if anyone expected a Countess to sit a proper throne, like she thought she belonged among the upper echelons of the nobility. Etiquette didn’t demand that level of formality from anyone below the ducal level, but Evening had always been one to strive for extra credit when it meant she’d have the opportunity to look down her nose at someone. As one of the Firstborn, she’d probably considered it her due. After I’d taken over Goldengreen and moved in the survivors of my friend Lily’s unaligned Court, we had abandoned that receiving room, moving the knowe’s social center and heart to the courtyard.

If there had been a specific goal in mind when the Goldengreen courtyard was designed, no one has ever been able to tell me what it was. It’s set up almost like a smaller version of the rose gardens in Berkeley, large and circular, with walls arranged in six shallow concentric tiers, terminating at a floor-level central promenade, which is no more than sixty feet across. Tiny, for something with that design. Massive, by the standards of an indoor room. Goldengreen doesn’t have a ballroom, and I’ve often wondered if that was because the courtyard made it irrelevant.

The tiers had each been fitted with their own garden beds, and planted with a wide variety of plants, ranging from herb gardens and flowerbeds to vegetables, grasses, and trees whose rootnetworks could survive the limited space. The top, and largest, tier was dominated by a copse of willow trees that Lily’s former handmaids had transplanted from her knowe before it finished the process of sealing itself after her death. Even knowes can mourn.

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