Seanan McGuire - Ashes of Honor

Tybalt quirked a faint smile. “I bow to the wisdom of milady chirurgeon.”

“Huh?” said Quentin and Raj, almost in unison.

Jin smirked. “It means ‘doctor.’ I’m glad someone here knows how to take medical advice.”

“He’s using words that are no longer recognized as valid in Scrabble,” I said.

“I don’t care, he’s a smart cat. And before you try to tell me where to go, I’m staying here. You people are going to need patching up, I’m sure of it.”

I wished I could argue with her. Sadly, she was probably right. “Fine. Tybalt and I will go to Berkeley on the Shadow Roads, see if we can pick up Chelsea’s trail where we saw her last. After that—”

My phone rang.

I blinked, digging for the phone. “What the—I thought my battery was dead.”

“It was,” said April cheerfully. “I recharged it for you.”

“Without taking it out of my pocket?”

April blinked. “Why would I need to take it out of your pocket?”

“Right.” The display said it was May calling. I flipped the phone open. “Hello?”

Screaming and the sound of something being smashed greeted me, followed by the sound of May shouting, “Toby! Get over here! I don’t know how long I ca—”

The line went dead.

I shoved the phone back into my pocket without thinking about it, already breaking into a run. “Tybalt! Shadows! My place! Now!”

Tybalt nodded, stepping back toward the wall. The others moved out of our way as I jumped for him; he grabbed my hands, and then we were falling into darkness.

The Shadow Roads were cold and airless, but nothing came to attack us as we ran through the black. That made it a more pleasant trip than our last one. When I inevitably faltered—I may heal like a superhero, but it takes a lot out of my body, and I hadn’t eaten nearly enough to make up for it—Tybalt caught me smoothly and ran on through the dark with me cradled in his arms, holding me tight against his chest. This close, the heat from his skin was enough to beat back some of the chill. I relaxed as much as I could with blood freezing in my hair and terror pounding in my veins and let him carry me home.

I knew we were getting close when he slowed long enough to drop me back to my feet, murmuring next to my ear, “Seconds, little fish. Hold fast…”

And then we were bursting back out into the warmth and light of my cluttered living room, where May promptly hit me in the back of the head with my own aluminum baseball bat.

The reverberating “bong” of metal meeting bone was still audible as I dropped to my knees, no longer interested in focusing on much of anything beyond the shooting pain in my head. Tybalt snarled, a sound as inhuman as it’s possible for a mostly human throat to make, and May yelped. I managed to twist around, squinting past the tears in my eyes, to see Tybalt holding her off the floor by her throat. May was scrabbling uselessly at his fingers, trying to pry them away. Jazz was in the hall behind her, face pale, eyes wide and terrified. The smell of their mingled blood hit me a split second later, washing the scene in red.

It was the blood that gave me the strength to speak, focusing past the pain as I said, “Put her down, Tybalt.” I swallowed, tasting the air, and added, “It’s May. Not an impostor. She bleeds right.” A wave of nausea washed over me, and I stopped speaking. I really hate head injuries.

“She hit you,” snarled Tybalt.

“She thought you were that man again!” shouted Jazz. There was a harsh note under her normally soft voice, like a raven’s shriek. She was a skinshifter, not a shapeshifter—she’d need her cloak of feathers to transform—but some aspects of her avian nature were bleeding through. “Put her down! ”

May didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. Talking would have required air. She just went limp in Tybalt’s hand.

Tybalt sighed, looking clearly unhappy as he lowered May back to her feet and took his hand away from her throat. Livid red bruises shaped like his fingers remained behind, striping her skin. May took a hasty step backward, out of his reach. Jazz was right there to catch her, putting her left hand on her girlfriend’s shoulder and glaring murder in Tybalt’s direction.

The room was still spinning, and I was pretty sure that getting up was a terrible idea. I did it anyway, forcing myself first to my knees, and then to an unsteady standing position. Another wave of nausea hit me. I wobbled. “Wow, May,” I said. “I think maybe you cracked my skull. Please don’t do that again.”

Tybalt growled, low and deep in his throat.

“Chill,” I said. Moving as slowly as I could to avoid setting off any more alarm bells in my head, I looked around the living room. It wasn’t just cluttered, which would have been normal; it was destroyed .

The coffee table was shattered, as if something had been dropped on it from a considerable height. One of the legs protruded from the broken remains of the television set. Pictures and knick-knacks, some of which I hadn’t even known we owned, were shattered on the floor, amid the confetti remains of May’s gossip magazines and several of my books. Even the cat beds were shredded, bits of cloth and puffs of cotton filling scattered everywhere.

“What the hell happened here?” I asked.

“Why do you think I hit you with a bat?” May asked.

I turned to see her glaring at me. Jazz was doing the same, with a considerably more pained look in her eyes. Her right arm was dangling at her side, with a sharp new bend below the elbow. There were fingermarks on her throat, too, and I knew they weren’t from Tybalt.

“It was one of your people,” spat Jazz, that harsh croak still underlining her words. Her eyes flicked from me to Tybalt as she spoke, making it plain whose people she was referring to. “Gray hair. Green eyes. Tried to kill us both.”

“Samson,” said Tybalt, eyes narrowing. “He should not have done that.”

“Raj’s father,” I explained, for Jazz and May’s benefit. “He tried to kill us a little while ago. Actually, he nearly succeeded.”

“Well, when he failed, I guess he decided to take out his anger on something a little more defenseless,” said May. For the first time, I noticed the blood streaking the back of her blouse. May saw me looking. Her expression hardened. “He was a little surprised when I didn’t die. I guess no one told him Fetches are indestructible.”

“Lucky us,” I said quietly.

Spike slunk out from under the nearest couch, thorns rattling like bones in the wind. It stayed low to the ground as it crept to press itself against my feet. The pain in my head was abating, or at least that’s what I told myself as I stooped to gather my rose goblin’s thorny body into my arms. It promptly plastered itself into my chest, making small whimpering noises. I gritted my teeth and let it nestle. The thorns hurt when they broke my skin. That was nothing compared to what I’d already been through, and the day wasn’t over yet.

“Why did Raj’s father come here and try to kill us?” demanded May. “Why did he try to kill you? Dammit, Toby, what the hell is going on? You disappear all day, you don’t call, you don’t tell me what’s going on, and then a man I’ve never met before is here slamming my girlfriend into walls! Why is this happening? ”

I swallowed hard, trying to figure out what to say. “I’m sorry” seemed insufficient. She was right. I should have been here when Samson came; I should have called and warned her that she might be in danger, if nothing else. But it had never occurred to me that he might come here, or that he’d take his anger at me out on my Fetch and her girlfriend.