Seanan McGuire - Ashes of Honor

“I’m sorry,” I said finally, choosing insufficiency over silence. May’s expression hardened further, until she might as well have been made of stone. “I didn’t know he would come here. Please believe me, I had no idea.”

“And I don’t understand why he would,” said Tybalt. “There was nothing here for him.”

“We may not be Toby, but we’re not ‘nothing,’” snarled May.

Tybalt put his hands up. “I did not mean to imply that you were nothing, merely that there was nothing here for Samson to find. Whatever he was looking for—”

“He was looking for me,” I said. All three of the other people in the room turned to me. I kept talking, saying, “The last he saw, we were falling into a hole that Chelsea tore in the world. I was pretty hurt, but he’s smart enough to know that I was going to heal and you weren’t. The smart thing for us to do would have been to split up, send you one way to get medical care, send me the other way to take care of Chelsea. How was he supposed to know we’d be total morons and stay together?”

“And the logical place for you to go would be here?” asked Tybalt.

May sighed. “Okay. Now we’ve hit something that’s not her fault. It’s mine. Tracking spells sometimes decide that I’m Toby. Something about me being made from her blood and bone confuses them, even though I’m not Dóchas Sidhe.”

“So he used a tracking spell, it led him here, and then he got pissed when he couldn’t find me,” I said. “That’s a big risk to take. I mean, killing me is going to open a pretty big can of worms…”

“But if his son has just been elevated to the throne of the Court of Dreaming Cats, he need never again enter a place where those consequences are his to face,” said Tybalt. He rubbed his face with one hand, looking unbearably weary. “Milady Fetch, I beg your forgiveness.”

“I’m not the one with the broken arm,” said May, putting a protective arm around Jazz’s shoulders. “Is he going to come back here?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I glanced to Tybalt, then back to the pair of them. “Call a taxi. Have it take you to Goldengreen. Count Lorden will let you stay there, and Marcia—”

“Isn’t a real healer,” snapped May, her arm tightening. Jazz whimpered. May loosened her grip. “I’m sorry, baby. You need a healer. She needs a healer!”

“Jin is in Tamed Lightning right now, but we can’t take you both through the shadows,” I said. “Even if Tybalt could carry all three of us—”

“Which I could not do, at present,” interjected Tybalt.

“—even if he could, Jazz is hurt, and neither of you is used to it.”

May grimaced. “I remember the Shadow Roads. The first time…”

“Remembering them doesn’t mean your body has adjusted,” I said. “It wouldn’t work.”

“Goldengreen doesn’t even have a real healer,” said May.

“Marcia does okay with a first aid kit, and she can put together a sling until we can get Jin to Goldengreen or Jazz to Shadowed Hills. With Samson on the loose out there, you can’t spend an hour in a cab to get to Sylvester or two hours to get to Tamed Lightning,” I said. The pounding in my head was fading, replaced by spinning as the bones of my skull knitted back together and burned through more of my body’s denuded resources.

“She’s right,” said Jazz. She straightened a bit, standing on her own. “Goldengreen is the best place for us right now.”

“Honey—”

“I mean it. We can’t stay here.” Jazz shuddered. “If he came back…”

“He won’t come back.”

“But if he came back. He’d kill us. And we can’t go to a human hospital, not without getting a whole bunch of questions I’m not ready for.” Jazz shook her head. “Goldengreen is the only answer. We have to go.”

“I’ll call us a cab. Danny will be thrilled to drive us, as long as we don’t bleed on the seats,” said May. Moving with surprising speed, she leaned over and grabbed my wrist, jerking me toward her. I somehow managed not to fall over as I stumbled across the floor. “Come on, Toby. You’re the one who has his number memorized.”

I knew the half-murderous, half-grim look on her face. I had to go with her, or she was going to start swinging. “Tybalt, keep an eye on Jazz,” I said, letting myself be pulled out of the living room and across the hall into the kitchen.

May let go of me long enough to close the kitchen door. Then she turned to face me, slowly looking me up and down. “How bad was it?” she asked finally.

“If you were still my Fetch, you’d probably be feeling pretty shaky,” I said. “And if Amandine hadn’t shifted my blood, I’d definitely be dead. I think I saw my own intestines.”

“You sure do know how to have a good time.” She rubbed her face with one hand. It was a gesture so familiar that it hurt. I know May’s memories don’t just come from me—she has Dare’s memories, too, and the memories of the night-haunt she used to be—but sometimes looking at her is like looking in a slightly sideways mirror. “How much danger are we in, October? And how much of it is your fault?”

“I…what?”

She dropped her hand. “You’ve been trying to find a cliff to throw yourself off of since Connor died. I won’t pretend I’ve been cool with it, but I remember dying so many times—I remember being the one mourned for and the one in mourning so many times—that I’ve been willing to let it slide. I figured you’d find your way back to yourself. Only now you’ve finally found a cliff that might actually stand a chance of killing you, and you’re going to take us right over the edge with you. Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you warn us?” She took a heavy breath, let it out, and asked, “Are you mad at us for surviving when he didn’t?”

Fetches are created when a night-haunt drinks the blood of a living person. It’s Oberon’s way of keeping the night-haunts from getting out of control and killing everyone they meet. One of the first things I did when I came back from my fourteen-year absence was go up against my former mentor, a man named Devin. He’d replaced me with two new kids, Manuel and Dare. Dare said I was her hero. I got her killed. But somehow, that didn’t change her mind, and when the night-haunt with her memories had the opportunity to help me, she took it. In the process, she got herself called as a Fetch. My Fetch.

She’d already died for me once. If she thought I was mad at her for not dying for me a second time, I was doing something unforgivably wrong.

My silence had lasted too long. Something hardened in May’s eyes, and she started to turn away from me. “Yeah. I thought so.”

“May, wait.” I grabbed her shoulder, stopping her. She didn’t look back at me. That was okay. She could hear me whether she was facing me or not. “I didn’t call because I didn’t think of it. That was stupid, and I’m sorry. I honestly didn’t think Samson would come here.”

“Are you going to try telling me you haven’t been attempting suicide every day since Connor died?” She looked over her shoulder without turning around, so that only a half-crescent of her face was visible. It was enough to let me see her eyes. They were the foggy no-color gray that had been in my mirror for most of my life, but the look in them wasn’t mine. It was the look I saw once in the brilliantly green eyes of a teenage girl who died because I couldn’t save her.

“No,” I said quietly. “I think you’re right. You’re all right. Tybalt accused me of the same thing, and I couldn’t even get mad, because you’re all right. But I’m done now. I’m done throwing myself off cliffs and hoping I won’t be there after I hit the bottom. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that to you. I’m sorry.”