Page 58 of A Killing Frost

“I need you to tell me how to give Simon my way home,” I said.

SIXTEEN

DANNY MET MEin front of the museum, seated in his car with the window down and a worried look on his face. “What’s going on?” he asked, not bothering to say hello. “Why’d you call sounding so upset?”

“We need to go to the Norton house right now.” I ran around the car and flung myself into the passenger seat, managing not to recoil from the smell of Barghest that rushed out when I opened the door. “Fast as you can. Break some laws.”

“Cops won’t see me,” Danny promised, tapping the bundle of herbs hanging from his rearview mirror with one massive gray hand. I blinked. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized he wasn’t wearing any illusions to make him seem human. He smirked, catching the look on my face. “Upgraded the aversion charms,” he said. “Clover thought I was takin’ too many risks when I took the kids out for their nightly drive.”

Clover was his mechanic, a Gremlin woman I’d never met, but whose work came highly recommended, mostly by Danny himself. The “kids” were his pet Barghests. “What kind of risks?” I asked, as he hit the gas and threw the car into a tight, tire-squealing turn. Humans tended to either overlook the Barghests completely or see them as some weird new breed of designer dog. Like the pixies, they had their own simple magic that hid them from mortal eyes when necessary.

“Sometimes they get outta the car and I have to crank the windows down, and they don’t like the makeup,” he said, waving ahand vaguely in front of his face. Just in case I’d missed what he meant, he added, “You’re not wearing any. S’a nice change, seeing your face the way it’s supposed to be. I don’t like the way you change it, but unlike the Barghests, I don’t bite.” He laughed uproariously, stopping only when he saw that I wasn’t smiling. “Tobes? What is it? Kitty-boy get himself hurt again?”

“Not so far as I know, although I guess that’s something I should add to the list of things I’m worried about,” I said. Danny was mashing the pedal all the way to the floor, sending us careening along the road at a speed that seemed likely to end with at least one corpse, and probably a lot of insurance companies getting involved. Since he wasn’t going to get pulled over no matter what he did, and had been driving professionally for years, I wasn’t as worried about it as I maybe should have been.

The drive between Goldengreen and Half Moon Bay, where the Norton house is located, normally takes about forty-five minutes. Simon had at least that much of a head start, and unlike many purebloods, knew how to drive. He could easily have stolen a car and made it most, if not all the way, there already.

But he didn’t necessarily know that most of the Nortons had been permanently bonded with their skins, giving up their place as Selkies in exchange for becoming a much rarer and more permanent part of Faerie. The Roane were back, and even if he’d seen them in the memories echoed by my blood, he was still walking into a situation he didn’t fully understand.

I touched my pocket, where I had tucked the stub of a hastily shaped candle pulled together from things the Luidaeg had scavenged in Marcia’s kitchen. Walking into situations we don’t fully understand is virtually the family business, after all.

“Simon’s back,” I said tightly. “He’s kidnapped Quentin. He went to Goldengreen, and when he didn’t find what he was looking for there, he turned everyone in the knowe into trees and left, we presume for the Norton house, because he’s trying to reach Saltmist. He’s armed, he’s dangerous, and I’m going to stop him. Any more questions?”

“Yeah, where’s Tybalt? I don’t normally see you rushing into danger without the cat standing by to make sure you getoutof danger on the other end.”

It was a fair question, and no matter how fast he drove, he couldn’t entirely eliminate the distance we had to travel. I sighed. “I toldhim to stay home before I knew how dangerous this was going to be, and I haven’t quite worked myself around to calling and telling him I was wrong.” Or that May was injured and elf-shot and maybe not waking up, or that I’d lost Quentin, or that I was about to do somethingmonumentallystupid for the sake of potentially saving Simon.

Simon Torquill. The man I’d once considered to be my greatest enemy. The man I was now willingly risking everything I had for the opportunity to save. Faerie isn’t fair, and the world doesn’t make sense.

“You sound scared.”

“I am.”

“If this is somethin’ that scares you... I know it’s not my place to pry, Tobes, but maybe this would be a good time for you to go ahead and make that phone call.” Danny shot across a four-way intersection against the light and barely ahead of a truck that could have crushed us without so much as breaking a headlight. “If not for your sake, or for his sake, for my sake. You really think your cat won’t gut me like a fish if he finds out I let you do something that scared you without involving him? Think about me if you can’t think about yourself. Think about my kids. Who’s going to feed them if your boyfriend kills me for the crime of helping you kill yourself?”

“If I call him, he’ll come, Danny.” My phone was a heavy weight in my pocket, impossible to ignore. Sometimes I miss the days where people were out of touch if they weren’t at home, where we’d have to go hunting for a payphone to reach out. It’s a human way of thinking. No matter how fae I become, I figure I’ll always have a few of those. “I don’t want him here. Not for what I’m about to do.”

Danny slanted an alarmed glance across the car at me, keeping most of his attention on the road. “I didn’t mean it about helping you kill yourself. You know that, right? If that’s what you’re planning, I’m out. I’m happy to be your personal chauffeur—I smile every time you think to call me, even when you’re screaming, or covered in blood, or a fucking fish—but I’m not going to sit by while you do something that can’t be taken back.”

Oh, no. What I was planning could absolutely be taken back, either by passing around a curse like some sort of evil hot potato, or by finding Oberon and bringing him home to the children he’dchosen to abandon. No big deal. But either way, there were more people who cared enough about me to try than Simon had, and I would be better off than he was.

I thought. Probably. At least Evening and I had never been close enough for me to make waking her up my new life’s mission—even when I’d considered her an ally, I wouldn’t have gone that far. Again, probably.

“I’m not planning to do anything that can’t be taken back, but I’m planning to do something that could save a lot of people, Quentin among them,” I said. “It’s worth it. I’ve made up my mind. I can do this.” And if I forgot I was supposed to be planning a wedding, maybe people would stop nagging me about when it was actually going to happen. That would be a nice change.

That’s me, looking for the upside of everything, even the things that have no upsides.

“I worry about you, October,” said Danny, passing two cars that were going too slow, at only fifteen miles over the speed limit, for his current tastes. “Sacrificing yourself isn’t the only answer to every problem you come across. It would be nice for the rest of us if you realized that someday. I don’t want to have to bury you.”

“I don’t want to be buried,” I assured him. “I’m doing the best I can. I want to get married. I want to see Quentin grow up, and what kind of king Raj is going to be. I want to meet my own kids. Me and Tybalt... we’re going to have incredible children. And all those things mean I need to stay alive long enough to get there.” They were ridiculous dreams for someone like me to have. I was never going to get a happy ending. Heroes never do. Just look at Sylvester; he found the woman of his dreams, married her, settled down, had a daughter, and lost it all because of all the secrets that he and the people around him had been keeping for years.

Camelot never endures. No matter how shining the castle on the hill seems, it’s still capable of falling. Falling is what every shining city seems designed and destined to do.

Danny gave me another worried look before returning his attention to the road. I hated the thought that we might be driving into another aftermath, but Etienne hadn’t answered the phone when I tried to call him, and the Luidaeg and I agreed that this wasn’t a favor to ask of Arden. She had a kingdom to care for. As her pet hero, protecting it was my job. Playing taxi for me all over the Bay Area wasn’t hers.

As for calling Tybalt... that would only hurt us both, and I wasn’t entirely sure he’d be willing to take me where I needed to go once he realized what I was planning. Faced with a choice between my safety and the safety of the Mists, I couldn’t promise he wouldn’t choose me. He loved me, and he wasn’t a hero.

The road ran by outside the window, lights blending and blurring together until they were nothing but a sparkling stream. To Danny’s credit, while he was clearly unhappy about what he saw as driving me to my doom, he didn’t slow down or veer off our chosen course, and in less than twenty-five minutes, we were pulling off the freeway into Half Moon Bay.

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