Seanan McGuire - Late Eclipses

This book is for Amy. Everyone should have a fiddler at the crossroads.

Late Eclipses is the fourth of Toby’s adventures. You’d think it would be getting easier, right? I sure did. But the fact of the matter is, books remain a lot of work, no matter how many of them you write, and making them worth reading is the work of many hands. For me, those many hands begin with the faithful Machete Squad, a tireless team of heavily-armed and merciless editors who go through every chapter a dozen times before it becomes ready for prime time. Without them, I would be in a lot of trouble. Special thanks to Jennifer Midkiff, for scrupulous editorial attentions, and to Melissa Glasser, for being my “on-call vet” for weird questions about fae biology. Also, thanks to everyone at the Ohio Valley Filk Festival, who tolerantly allowed me to do copyedits during open filking.

On the publishing side of things, my agent, Diana Fox, saved my sanity and my sense of narrative on several occasions, all while continuing to rock like the superhero she is, and my editor, Sheila Gilbert, offered support, critique, and everything else a girl could possibly want. The rest of the team at DAW was just as fabulous, although special thanks go to Joshua Starr, who puts up with most of my random mid-week questions. Chris McGrath provided my fantastic cover, and Tara O’Shea provided my fantastic interior dingbat. I seriously could not have done this without them.

Here at home, my website was programmed and designed by Chris Mangum and Tara O’Shea, who gamely rose to every challenge I threw their way, even the insane ones. Kate Secor talked me through the big plot snarls, while her Tivo prevented me from destroying all mankind. Meanwhile, Michelle Dockrey and Brooke Lunderville helped me through everything else. Thanks to Tanya Huff, for San Diego, and to Jennifer Brozek, Jeanne Goldfein, and Cat Valente, for Melbourne. You guys made everything better. Finally, thanks to my cats, Lilly and Alice, for understanding that sometimes their monkey needs to stop petting them in order to type.

My personal soundtrack while writing Late Eclipses consisted mostly of Promised Land , by Dar Williams, Little Voice , by Sarah Bareilles, endless live concert recordings of the Counting Crows, and all of the soundtracks to Glee. Any errors in this book are entirely my own. The errors that aren’t here are the ones that all these people helped me fix.

Thank you all so much for reading. It means the world to me.

All pronunciations are given strictly phonetically. This only covers races explicitly named in the first four books.

Bannick: ban-nick . Plural is Bannicks.

Banshee: ban-shee . Plural is Banshees.

Barghest: bar-guy-st . Plural is Barghests.

Barrow Wight: bar-row white . Plural is Barrow Wights.

Blodynbryd: blow-din-brid . Plural is Blodynbryds.

Cait Sidhe: kay-th shee . Plural is Cait Sidhe.

Candela: can-dee-la . Plural is Candela.

Coblynau: cob-lee-now . Plural is Coblynau.

Cornish Pixie: Corn-ish pix-ee . Plural is Cornish Pixies.

Daoine Sidhe: doon-ya shee . Plural is Daoine Sidhe, diminutive is Daoine.

Djinn: jin . Plural is Djinn.

Dóchas Sidhe: doe-sh-as shee . Plural is Dóchas Sidhe.

Ellyllon: el-lee-lawn . Plural is Ellyllons.

Gean-Cannah: gee-ann can-na . Plural is Gean-Cannah.

Glastig: glass-tig . Plural is Glastigs.

Gwragen: guh-war-a-gen . Plural is Gwragen.

Hamadryad: ha-ma-dry-add . Plural is Hamadryads.

Hippocampus: hip-po-cam-pus . Plural is Hippocampi.

Hob: hob . Plural is Hobs.

Kelpie: kel-pee . Plural is Kelpies.

Kitsune: kit-soo-nay . Plural is Kitsune.

Lamia: lay-me-a . Plural is Lamia.

The Luidaeg: the lou-sha-k . No plural exists.

Manticore: man-tee-core . Plural is Manticores.

Naiad: nigh-add . Plural is Naiads.

Nixie: nix-ee . Plural is Nixen.

Peri: pear-ee . Plural is Peri.

Piskie: piss-key . Plural is Piskies.

Pixie: pix-ee . Plural is Pixies.

Puca: puh-ca . Plural is Pucas.

Roane: row-n . Plural is Roane.

Satyr: say-tur . Plural is Satyrs.

Selkie: sell-key . Plural is Selkies.

Silene: sigh-lean . Plural is Silene.

Swanmay: swan-may . Plural is Swanmays.

Tuatha de Dannan. tootha day danan . Plural is Tuatha de Dannan, diminutive is Tuatha.

Tylwyth Teg: till-with teeg . Plural is Tylwyth Teg, diminutive is Tylwyth.

Undine: un-deen . Plural is Undine.

Urisk: you-risk . Plural is Urisk.

Will o’ Wisps: will-oh wisps . Plural is Will o’ Wisps.

THE DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO SAFEWAY was practically deserted. No surprise there, given that it was nearly one in the morning. May—my Fetch and current roommate—was in the produce department, tormenting the resident pixies. Their shrieks of irritation were almost enough to distract me from the task at hand. Almost; not quite. We had a mission, and I was, by Oberon, going to accomplish it.

Glancing along the row of cereals, I considered my options with exquisite care before reaching out and grabbing a box of Lucky Charms. The stuff’s delicious when you combine it with enough coffee, even if it does mean putting up with that stupid cartoon leprechaun. I hesitated before taking a second box. It’s not every night that I get to splurge.

My name’s Toby Daye. I’m half-fae, half-human, and depressingly excited by the idea of being able to pay for name-brand cereal.

The empty Safeway was doing wonders for my mood. I hate shopping where I used to work, and the last thing I wanted to do after spending three days on stakeout was deal with my former coworkers. They seemed to share the sentiment, since they’d all vanished into the back as soon as they saw me. That was cool with me. I wasn’t friendly when I worked at the store—“hostile” is a more accurate description—and I didn’t “quit” so much as “walk out and never come back.”

I wasn’t meant to be a checkout girl. I probably wasn’t meant to do anything that involves dealing with the public, which makes my career choice of “private investigator-slash-knight errant” all the more ironic. Still, when you live in the shady borderland between Faerie and the mortal world, neither beggars nor changelings can be choosers.

The stakeout was for the first of my two vocations, the one that lets me pay the bills with a telephoto lens and a minimum of magic. My employer was a Silene who wanted to know where her husband was spending his spare time. Silene are horses from the waist down: sturdy, practical, and jealous as hell. She should never have married a Satyr if she didn’t want him looking at other women, since that’s basically what Satyrs are built to do. Her suspicions weren’t unfounded: her goat-boy husband was getting a little extramarital action from the Hind two streets over, a doe-eyed lady if there ever was one. A couple of nights in the car, a few incriminating photos, and I was in the rare position of being able to pay for groceries.