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My girlfriend at the time, Julie, insisted that I was wrong and Toby had more to say, and dared me to help her say it. I was very fond of my girlfriend. I started looking for the rest of Toby’s story.
—I was a very optimistic new novelist, and I truly believed I could accomplish everything I wanted to do in just four books.
Toby is the first and in many ways most important of my imaginary friends. I love her so much. Blood and knives and all.
I’d only had the damn thing for a month, and it was already complicating my life. “These things will never catch on,” I muttered, hitting the flashing call button.
I gotta go. Tell Gilly I love her, and that I promise I’ll stop for ice cream on my way home.” “You don’t love me?” he asked, mock wounded. “I love you more than fairy tales,” I said—a ritual phrase that had long since replaced “good-bye” for us—and hung up the phone, throwing it into the backseat.
There was only the water, and the blessed darkness that was my home now, the only one I’d know for fourteen years.
Daaaang.
The Bay Area exists in a state of nearly constant spring, where the color of the hills—brown with a strong chance of brushfire in the summer, green and suffering from chronic mudslides in winter—is the only real difference between the seasons.
Who would’ve believed that it could take so much computer know-how to be the night clerk at a 7-Eleven? Not me, that’s for sure, until my inability to reboot the register got me fired.
thumbs, except for the part where mice don’t usually come armed with knives carved from broken beer bottles and homemade spears that may have been dipped in equally homemade poisons.
All it takes is one moment of carelessness on the part of the faerie world, just one, and after that . . . After that comes the iron and the silver and the rowan wood, and the mass graves on both sides, and the burning.
He’s got the sort of sleek, muscled build that only comes from a few specific types of exercise programs. For most men, that would mean yoga or running. In Tybalt’s case, it means bloody control of the local Court of Cats.
“Really, if you’d just do something with your hair, perhaps you could take a few steps up the social ladder. I understand that there are things called ‘scissors’ these days, very advanced, they allow you to—please don’t be alarmed, I promise it’s painless—shorten and even out the strands. It’s far more flattering.”
All Cait Sidhe are drama queens and jerks as far as I’m concerned. Tybalt’s never seemed interested in proving me wrong.
That’s the true value in wards; not keeping things out, but telling you if something’s managed to get in.
That’s where the dreams end: with the realization that it doesn’t matter where I am, whether I think I’m a woman or a fish or something in-between. I’ve never really left the pond. I still can’t breathe.
Cats never listen. They’re dependable that way; when Rome burned, the emperor’s cats still expected to be fed on time.
I got the cats so I wouldn’t be so lonely. I was starting to reconsider that idea. Maybe lonely was a good thing. Lonely certainly got more sleep.
Evening was my worst friend and my best enemy, and she never really knew me, because even in the end, she didn’t understand that I would’ve done it without the curse. All she had to do was tell me the stakes were as high as they’d apparently gotten. She was my friend. I would have done it.
Faerie gold can be used for more than just party tricks; it works pretty well on the stock market, for example, where money’s an illusion anyway.
So the purebloods live on veal and candied moonbeams, while I’ve become a connoisseur of macaroni and cheese. Oh, well. Pasta’s probably better for you anyway.
The way I retreat into trivial concerns when I’m scared amazes me. All I have to do is get to the point where I’m so panicked I can’t see straight, and suddenly the expiration date on the milk is all that matters. I guess that’s how my mind protects itself.
It wasn’t real until I went inside: it wasn’t a fact, just a possible plot twist, like a cat stuffed into a closed box.
I hadn’t visited Evening’s building since 1987. From what I could see, it hadn’t changed a bit—the place stank of elegance and the sort of timelessness that only money can buy. Stasis is one of the benefits of being very, very rich. Nothing ever changes unless you let it.
I’ve worked with the police, and I’ve even liked some of them, but that doesn’t mean I have to like them as a breed. Power brings out the worst in almost everyone.
The night just kept getting better. Now I had bad news to deliver to a powerful woman who didn’t like me, a terrible crime to avenge, and wet socks.
My destination was at the heart of the rot, in a place where only the people with nowhere else to go ever went. It wasn’t a place for children—it was never a place for children—and maybe that’s why we flocked there, gathering in a dying Neverland ruled by a man who was more Captain Hook than Peter Pan.
Maybe I used to be one of them, but they didn’t know me. For once, this proof of my escape didn’t make me feel any better.
He sounded so sure of himself, secure in his misplaced faith. Part of me wanted to shake him, but the rest of me wanted to swaddle him in cotton and hide him somewhere where the world would never take that faith away from him.
Evening was a lot of things, but she was never cruel, not even to her puppets. Her hands were always gentle on my strings.
I’m sorry, but I’ve never been real fond of paying for my abuse. Most people are willing to hurt me for nothing.”
Devin used the same look and the same lines on me, once; I wasn’t foolish enough to try undermining his authority with someone who still believed they meant something. Dare gave him all the power he had over her. Once she grew up enough to figure out that Devin could only control her as long as she let him, she’d be fine, and if she never grew up that much, she belonged at Home, where someone else would take care of the real world and she could take care of the chores.
I think all kids are hungry for a kind word, not just the lost ones that wind up drifting into places like Home. They all react the same way when they’re given the validation they need, locking fear and love together so tightly that they never even notice the moment when they grow up.
Great. I was cold, exhausted, and cursed, and now I was being harassed by something that moved too fast to see. That’s always how I like to spend my time.
This time my aim was clarity: water’s excellent for scrying, and fog is just water that’s forgotten its beginnings.
I’ve never met a rose that didn’t know Luna Torquill. Being a legend to the flowers must be interesting. It certainly keeps her busy during pruning season.
The key was the last piece I needed to make the situation perfectly frustrating: a murder without a motive, a curse without a cure, and now a key without a lock.
“Great,” I said, “now what am I supposed to do?” Sometimes reality stops being subtle in favor of smacking you upside the head. Standing in front of a locked door with a magic key in your hand probably counts.
“I’m here by leave of the Countess of Goldengreen.” Nothing happened. I hit the door with the heel of my hand, saying, “Open sesame, damn it.” The key flared, and the door swung open.
One of the desks was practically a shrine to Tinker Bell, decorated with a half dozen ceramic representations of the world’s most famous pixie. I paused, looking at a figurine of the little blonde bitch posed coyly atop a thimble. Every changeling in the world would love to shove her into a microwave, but Disney, alas, is more powerful than most of us could ever hope to be.
I almost thought I heard it whispering to me, offering the world if I’d lift the lid and see what the stories didn’t tell us. I could play Pandora, if I wanted to. I could remake the world. Pandora was an idiot.
The sky was starting to get lighter overhead. I had time to make it home, but barely. “Fine, Tybalt,” I said. “You win.” I turned to go. He was standing behind me.
“Oberon’s fucking balls, Tybalt, give me some warning next time!” “Why? It’s more fun this way.”
“You could have asked me.” “What would you have said?” I hesitated, and he smiled, looking satisfied.
“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.
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.
Lacey jumped onto the bed, strolling up to butt her head against my chin. At least someone was having a good day. Of course, the cats would have a good time in nuclear winter, as long as somebody was left to feed them.
“Would my lady care to state her business?” he asked. “Your lady is here to see the Duke. How would you like her to go about doing that?”
“And you are?” he said, giving me the sort of look usually reserved for people with contagious diseases and unpaid bills.
The knowe’s designer probably intended the room to seem majestic and to create an atmosphere of awe in the petitioner. All it’s ever done for me is create the urge to get a pair of roller skates and cut my travel time in half.
I’d been hiding from Shadowed Hills because I didn’t want to face him; I didn’t want to see the look in his eyes when I came creeping back and admitted that I’d failed. But all I saw when I looked at him now was the joy of a friend who’s finally seen something they’d thought was lost come home.
