Seanan McGuire - Ashes of Honor

“Oak and ash,” I breathed.

“Toby?”

I shook my head. “We’re on the right track. This is the way she walks to school.”

“Yes, it is,” said a voice behind me—female, with the faintest trace of an Irish accent, as though the speaker had been away from home for so long that her roots were just another story. “Now would you like to tell me what you’re doing out here, or shall I be calling the police now?”

There are times when I think the universe is only happy when it has an excuse to make me miserable. “We’d rather you didn’t do that, if you don’t mind,” I said, turning. The woman on the sidewalk about six feet away was wearing a blue bathrobe and holding a cast iron frying pan in one hand. “Is there a problem?”

“Etienne sent you, didn’t he?”

I couldn’t keep myself from flinching. My reaction was slight, but it was enough. Her eyes narrowed, and she brandished the frying pan at us like a weapon.

Slowly, enunciating each word with great care to be sure I couldn’t misunderstand her, Bridget Ames said, “Give me back my daughter right now, or I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”

Oh, great. It was going to be one of those nights.

QUENTIN WAS SMART ENOUGH to stay behind me. I raised my hands in a placating gesture, saying, “I don’t know who you think we are, but we don’t have your daughter. We’re not kidnappers.”

“Then hold this.” She thrust the frying pan toward us. It was cold—it had to be, or she wouldn’t be able to hold the handle—but it might as well have been heated to the point of melting from the way it seemed to twist and warp the air when she got it close to me. I must have looked like I was going to throw up, because a triumphant smile twisted the corners of her lips as she said, “I keep it rubbed down with a mixture of crushed juniper berries and rowan ash. Don’t you like the way it makes the metal shine?”

That explained the heat. Normal iron hurts, and it’s possible to get iron poisoning from staying close to the stuff for too long. It’s not a pleasant experience; I don’t recommend it. But rubbing the frying pan with two of the oldest charms against the fae had amped its natural properties to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised if touching the metal burned my skin.

“It’s lovely,” I said, taking an involuntary half step back. “Really, though. I don’t like to handle other people’s cookware.”

“That’s the best you can manage? That’s your bright, bold lie?”

“Look, lady, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had somebody corner me on a dark street and try to hand me a frying pan before,” I snapped. I could hear Quentin moving. I hoped that meant he was getting farther away, not preparing to do something stupid. Sadly, after spending so much time with me, he was just as likely to be getting ready to charge.

Bridget blinked before barking a single, sharp sound I assumed was a form of pained laughter. “This is what the Fair Folk have come to? This is the great threat of the hollow hills?”

“Um, no. This is a San Francisco native and her—” I struggled to find a word that existed in the modern mortal parlance, and settled for the Batmanesque, “—ward, wishing you’d stop waving that thing at us and back the hell off. We don’t want your frying pan.”

“Because you can’t touch it, is that right?” Bridget’s lips firmed into a resolute line. “My shirt’s inside-out, there’s bread in my pockets, and I’ve a firm grasp on this pan. Take a step toward me, and you’ll regret it.”

“But you’re between us and the car,” said Quentin, with puzzled practicality.

“I’m not sure she’s thinking clearly right now.” I lowered my hands. Shooting for a soothing tone, I asked, “Is there a reason you’re out here threatening us with your frying pan?”

Bridget gave me a withering look. “You can refuse to talk to me. You can lie to me—lord knows, it’s what your people are renowned for. But don’t you dare talk to me like I’m an idiot. My little girl is missing. You bastards left us alone for sixteen years. Why couldn’t you have stayed gone? No one believes in you anymore. Why couldn’t you let us be?”

I hesitated. The pain on her face was familiar; it was a pain I’d felt myself, when it seemed that the human world had stolen my daughter from me. No mother should have to feel that way. The secrecy of Faerie is one of our oldest traditions…but it had already been broken where Bridget was concerned. Etienne broke it long before I appeared on the scene, while I was still wearing fins and scales and unable to do anything for anyone, not even myself.

I glanced over my shoulder at Quentin. He met my eyes and nodded. He knew what I was about to do. I couldn’t say whether he approved, but he knew, and that was enough for me. If I was going to blow his cover as well as my own, I wanted him to know that it was coming.

“We don’t have your daughter, and neither does Etienne,” I said, turning back to Bridget. She stiffened. “He called me because finding lost children is a specialty of mine. I don’t take them. I bring them home. Please, believe me. We’re not here to hurt you. We’re here to help.”

“Then why didn’t you come to my doorbell and tell me this without being forced?” she demanded.

“Because we’re not used to telling humans ‘oh, hey, we exist,’” I said. Quentin stepped up next to me as I continued, “And because you thought—maybe you still think, I don’t know—Etienne took Chelsea. He didn’t, Bridget, I swear it on my father’s grave. Etienne isn’t that kind of man. He didn’t even know she existed before you called him.”

A car roared past on the street, abruptly reminding me that there was more to the world than the three of us standing in the dark and discussing things that were never intended to be discussed at all—not with humans anyway. I sighed.

“My name is October,” I said. “This is my squire, Quentin. We want to help. We want to make sure that Chelsea is safe. You don’t have to believe me, although it would probably be good if you did. I just want you to ask yourself something.”

“What’s that?” asked Bridget warily.

“If Etienne had your daughter, would he have sent us here? And if he didn’t send us, would we have come at all?” Sometimes I think the real tragedy of the intersection between humanity and the fae is how much both sides get wrong. Bridget thought she knew everything about us, and she’d lived in fear when she didn’t have to. She would always have lost Chelsea—that’s the unfortunate reality of being a human and having a child with the fae—but she could have been with Etienne all that time. She didn’t have to spend those years looking over her shoulder, waiting for the ax to fall.

There was a pause as she considered my words. Finally, she lowered the frying pan. “I don’t trust you.”

“That’s fine.”

“I won’t trust you.”

“That’s fine, too; we’re not asking you to trust us. We’re just asking you to let us help. Please. For Chelsea’s sake, if not yours.” I hesitated, and then added, “I mean, technically, I guess we’re family.”

Bridget barked another of those short, sharp laughs, lowering the frying pan. “Some family you are. You owe sixteen years of birthday presents.”

“I’ll be sure to let Etienne know.” I breathed out a little, relaxing now that the frying pan wasn’t being brandished in my direction. “We were planning to walk Chelsea’s route to school. Does she go to Colusa High?”

“Yes,” said Bridget, wariness returning. “How did you know?”

“I have a daughter, too. She lives with her human father.” Saying the words made the tiny wounded place inside me ache even more. Gillian lived with her human father, because Gillian was human. Thanks to me, she would never be anything else. “I know there’s no way she’d be walking to school if she had to go more than a mile. Etienne said Chelsea was walking home from school when she disappeared. Colusa High was the only school that fit the profile.”