One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel (33 page)

But I had. And I needed to find Rayseline, fast.

I dialed my home number as I walked down the hall, nodding genially to the people I passed. I still didn’t know all their names. That made me feel like a bit of a heel, when I thought about it.

May picked up, asking hopefully, “Toby?”

“How did you know it was me?”

“I’ve been answering the phone like that since Jin called to say that you’d left Shadowed Hills. Where are you? Is Tybalt with you? What
happened
? Where’s Gillian?”

“I’m at Goldengreen, and I’m pretty sure you’d just freak out more if I told you what happened over the phone, so how about I tell you when you get here?”

May paused. “When I get there? What?”

“I need you to bring the car over.”

“Um.” May managed to pack a truly impressive amount of dubiousness into a single syllable. “Toby? Jazz doesn’t drive, Quentin’s too young to get a license—and I don’t think he’s had driver’s education—and Raj is, well, Raj. How are we supposed to get the car to you?”

“You’re going to get the spare key from the bowl on my dresser, and you’re going to drive.”

“You’re not really Toby, are you? You’re a Doppelganger or something. Toby would
never
tell me to drive her car to Goldengreen.”

“Desperate times call for desperate measures. Besides, how bad can it be?”

“I hate you,” said May balefully.

“So you’ll come?”

“We’re on our way.” She hung up.

I had to smother a smile. My former Fetch is the worst driver I’ve ever met. She might, with a little effort, be the worst driver in the world. I just hoped Quentin and Raj were smart enough to wear their seat belts.

I dialed again as I walked across the courtyard, heading for the hall that connected it to the knowe’s unused throne room. It was the only room in the knowe that Evening really seemed to be fond of. We’ve left it empty, partially in honor of her, and partially because it creeps the rest of us out. Even the bogeys stay away. I don’t know exactly why . . . but Evening’s fondness for using pixies as lighting fixtures may have had something to do with it.

Getting through the mortal phone system and into the limited fae exchange requires a unique approach to dialing. I hit all the keys in a clockwise spiral, then repeated the pattern in the opposite direction. I hit the “five” three more times for good measure.

“Please hold while your party is reached,” I said, singsong. “You may press the pound sign to return to this menu at any time. To be assassinated by a tribe of warrior grasshoppers, press three.”

The phone beeped twice before beginning to hiss shrilly. That was a good sign. That meant the connection was working. I punched another succession of buttons, this time running through the multiples of nine, until the hissing was replaced with the sound of cement grinders grinding away on the other end. I stopped walking, leaning up against the wall next to the dais that used to hold Evening’s throne.

The cement grinders ground for a few seconds more, then stopped abruptly, replaced by the Luidaeg demanding, “October? Is that you?”

The sound of her voice filled me with a profound sense of relief. I closed my eyes, allowing myself to sag against the wall. “Luidaeg,” I said. “Yeah. It’s me.”

“What’s going on? Did the transformation charm work? Why haven’t you checked in?”

“Yes, it worked, I haven’t checked in because I passed out after Tybalt threw me onto the Shadow Roads to keep me from getting elf-shot, and what’s going on is that Rayseline’s insane. She took my daughter, Luidaeg. She took Gillian.” My voice was verging on a panicked whine. I forced myself to pull it back. “Why would she do that?” I asked, more softly. “Why would she take Gilly?”

“To throw you off-balance,” said the Luidaeg, not missing a beat. “To hurt you.” There was something in her voice I didn’t like. Normally, the Luidaeg is so honest it hurts. She may not give complete answers, but the ones she does give are entirely true. Now . . . I didn’t get the impression that she was lying to me, but I definitely felt like there was something she wasn’t letting herself say.

I took a deep breath. “Luidaeg? What aren’t you saying?”

“Toby . . .” The Luidaeg sighed. “She’s just a quarter-blood. Maybe less, given what your mother did to you when you were a little girl. That’s protected her until now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There are . . . rituals . . . that need certain types of blood if they’re going to work.”

The last of the light seemed to go out of the world. “What?”

“Rayseline doesn’t have a hope chest. She doesn’t need one, if she has Gillian.”

“Is she . . . Luidaeg, is she . . .”

“I don’t know whether she’s alive or not. I’m sorry.” She sounded genuinely regretful. That didn’t lessen the urge to scream.

Eyes still closed, I counted silently to five before saying, “I have one potential witness to wherever it is Raysel is taking these people. We need to talk . . . immediately.”

“And . . . ?” said the Luidaeg, suspicion creeping into her tone.

“And the person in question is dead. I need to talk to the night-haunts, and I don’t have time to screw around with waiting for midnight, or with complicated ritual circles. Tell me how to get them here fast.”

The Luidaeg sighed. “This isn’t the best idea.”

“I never expected it to be.”

“And there’s no other way?”

“You just told me the crazy girl who stole my daughter may have done it to fuel some big ritual that you can’t tell me anything else about. The Lorden boys are still missing, and the Queen is still planning to go to war. No, there’s no other way. Not now. Now tell me how to call the night-haunts.”

“Bleed for them.”

I opened my eyes. “What?”

“Go someplace private, someplace they can reach you, and draw a circle in your own blood. All you have to do is bleed for them, and call.”

Summoning the night-haunts was a lot more complicated the first time. Suspiciously, I asked, “There’s nothing else?”

“Not anymore. You’re stronger than you were, and they know you.” Her chuckle was entirely without mirth. “Better than you think they do. Just call, and they’ll come. But be careful with them. Don’t agree to anything you’re not willing to live with.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. I’ll check in with you later.”

“I hope so,” she said, and hung up.

I looked at the phone in my hand for a moment, resisting the urge to smash it against the wall. Then I tucked it into my pocket, turned, and walked through the archway behind the throne.

Connor and I were running for our lives from Devin’s hired assassins the first time I used that door. We didn’t know the hall would end by opening onto empty air, or that running down it without a backup plan was a good way to find ourselves trying to figure out how to fly. I can’t fly. I figured that one out fast. And that’s why I no longer run down blind halls when I have any choice in the matter.

I was moving more slowly this time. Marcia’s assistant bakers brushed past me as I walked, both pausing long enough to bow shallowly in my direction. If they were puzzled by their orders, they weren’t going to show it. Never question the nobility. It just annoys them, and irritated nobles are a dangerous thing.

It bothered me that I could be classed with the nobility now. It bothered me a lot.

The hall was narrow at first, but widened as I got closer to the solarium. It also became more cluttered, with boxes and pieces of broken furniture stacked against the walls. True to her word, Marcia had arranged to have the room emptied for my use. I smiled a little. If she’d been an employee, it would have been time to give her a raise.

The air tingled around me as I walked, crackling with excited static. The hall marked the dividing line between the Summerlands side of the knowe and the mortal world cave that served as one of the primary anchor points. That made it a liminal space, belonging simultaneously to both worlds, and to neither.

A recessed doorway was hewn out of the wall at the spot where the static was the most severe—still in the knowe, but close enough to the mortal world to be overlooked, almost hidden. A person could walk down the hall a dozen times and never find the opening. I put my hand on the flat groove worn into the door itself, pushed it open, and stepped through. It was time to do something I’d intended never to do again. It was time to call the night-haunts.

T
HE SOLARIUM WALLS WERE GRAY stone shot through with veins of quartz and studded with fossils. Careful study would show extra legs on the lizards and vestigial wings on the prehistoric mice. This was a Summer-lands mountain, and the secrets it held had no real connection to mortal evolution. The smooth gray floor was patterned with the lacy ghosts of fossil ferns.

Moonlight streamed into the room through the crystal panels set into a silver cobweb grid high overhead. I took a hook from the wall and walked carefully around the room, using the specially-designed tool to open the windows one by one. The night-haunts could have found a way inside without that small courtesy, but it never hurts to be polite, especially when asking for a favor.

Once all the windows were open, I returned the hook to its place on the wall. Then I walked to the center of the room, drawing the knife from my belt. Moonlight cast sharp, secretive glints off the silver. I didn’t pause before dragging the blade across the inside of my left elbow. Bright blood welled immediately to the surface. I tilted my arm down to let the blood run down my fingers and began to turn, drawing a bloody circle on the floor around me.

“I need your help,” I said, quietly. “I need your attention. I need you to come to me. Please, if anything remains between us, please, come to me now. I’ve never needed you more.” The smell of cut grass and copper rose around me, heavy and cloying. I licked my lips, and added plaintively, “Please.”

Silence fell. I returned my knife to its holster, clapping my right hand over the cut I’d made and pressing down to stop the bleeding. It was already slowing down. Just one more advantage of supernaturally efficient healing, I suppose.

Seconds ticked past, stretching into minutes. The smell of my magic didn’t fade, and the night-haunts didn’t come. I was on the verge of giving up when the spell surged and burst around me, leaving my head aching and the smell of copper hanging in the air.

And then I heard the sound of wings.

A thin stream of night-haunts flowed in through the windows above me, moving with an economy that made sense, considering that half of them were little more than shadows. The more solid members of the flock—the ones that had eaten the most recently—clustered around the outside, keeping their frailer companions from being scattered by the wind. They were all about the size of Barbie dolls, with tattered dry-leaf wings that looked too frail to lift them off the ground.

As they drew closer, I started to see individuals among the flock. Too many of them were familiar. The night-haunts have no faces of their own, so they borrow the faces of fallen fae, taking on their minds and memories . . . for a while. Seeing them always hurts, but it’s a good kind of pain, like having the chance to see something you thought was lost forever just one more perfect time.

The night-haunts surrounded me, their expressions giving no clue as to whether they were pleased or aggravated by my summons. Most of them stopped about six feet above the floor, hovering in place while one of the ones I recognized—the one with the face of Devin, my teacher, lover, and betrayer—barked instructions in a guttural language I didn’t know.

I swallowed, fighting the first tremors of fear. All I could do was hope they were willing to listen, and that I was right about the rules governing their interactions with the living.

“We didn’t think to see you alive a second time, October Daye, daughter of Amandine,” said the night-haunt with Devin’s face. He landed on the floor, closing his wings with an audible snap as he looked me slowly up and down. “You aren’t what you were.”

“None of us are what we were,” I said, and frowned. He hadn’t been their spokesman before. I glanced around the flock, but the night-haunt with Dare’s face was nowhere to be seen.

There were new faces among the night-haunts, some I knew, a few that I didn’t. Oleander de Merelands was there. So was Dare’s brother, Manuel, and Gordan, the only one from ALH Computing to die a “natural” death. There were more Cait Sidhe than I expected. Tybalt never told me how many of his subjects died when Oleander poisoned them. It looked like the casualties were higher than I ever guessed.

Devin’s haunt followed my gaze and said, “The hunting has been good of late.”

“Uh, yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Look, I was hoping you’d be willing to talk with me.”

“That’s usually the reason for a summons.” He looked at my simple circle, eyebrows raising in that old, familiar gesture of silent judgment. “No flowers? No pretty words or symbolic deaths?”