Seanan McGuire - Once Broken Faith

In some ways, Jessica still hadn’t made it home. She was terrified of the dark. She was even more afraid of any sort of wavering or flickering light. She wet the bed, she woke up screaming, and she refused to be in a room with me. Even though she knew intellectually that I’d saved her, part of her had associated me so absolutely with Blind Michael that she couldn’t be near me. It was hard. I tried to understand, I really did, but . . . that didn’t make it easy.

It was almost a relief to step into the kitchen and find myself looking at a glittering portal in the air. The smell of sycamore smoke and calla lilies had been lain over the top of the more ordinary chocolate chip cookies. I blinked. Then I grinned.

“Guess that potion wore off, huh?”

“Hi!” A girl’s head popped around the edge of the portal, black-haired and copper-eyed and beaming. She looked pleased with herself. I couldn’t blame her. “Oh, gosh, it really worked, didn’t it? Dad! Dad, I opened a door to San Francisco!”

“What?” Etienne sounded equal parts bemused and concerned. He stepped into view, automatically centering himself on the portal. His expression turned nonplussed when he saw me. “Oh. Hello, October.”

I didn’t bother to muffle my grin, which was only getting wider. “Hi, Etienne. I see that everyone’s powers are back to normal.”

“Yes, the potion wore off as scheduled . . . I’m sorry about this. I thought we’d agreed that she would wait to open a gate to your home until after I had called to get your consent.” He slanted a quick, irritated glance at Chelsea—but all the irritation in the world couldn’t conceal his pride. He was still pretty new to the whole “father” gig, having only learned that he had a teenage daughter the year before. For most of that time, Chelsea’s natural abilities had been suppressed by an alchemical tincture. Now it was gone, and she was showing her dad what she could do.

“Raj invited me,” said Chelsea. “I haven’t been to a slumber party in years .”

“Chelsea?” As if the sound of his name had summoned him, Raj appeared behind me, standing straighter than normal, like he was trying to make himself look taller. His cheeks reddened at the sight of her, but his expression remained as imperiously calm as ever. “I see the homing stone I gave you has worked as intended. We have chips and dip in the front room.”

“Come on, Dad, can I go through? Please? Pretty please? The gate looks stable, it’s not going to snick me in half or anything, pleeeeease?” Chelsea turned fully to her father, expression pleading. Only the rolled-up sleeping bag under her arm spoiled the illusion of absolute need. Like Karen, she was wearing pajamas. Unlike Karen, her pajamas were patterned with spaceships and planets.

“It appears stable,” said Etienne. “First, you must ask Sir Daye for permission. It is never appropriate to use a gate to enter a knight or noble’s home without their consent.”

Chelsea sighed, looking briefly like the teenage girl she was. Then she turned to me, and said, with perfect courtly grace, “Sir Daye, may I answer your invitation and cross the threshold from my halls into yours?”

It took everything I had to swallow my grin. May was less successful, but as she was out of Chelsea’s line of sight, she probably wasn’t trying as hard. “Yes, you may,” I said. “Come on through. We’re going to order the pizza in about half an hour.”

“Yes!” Chelsea jumped straight through her transit gate, spinning on her toes to wave at Etienne and chirp, “Bye, Daddy! I’ll see you in the morning!” She waved her hand, making a closing gesture, and the gate slammed shut before Etienne could get another word in.

“I don’t know whether that was slick or rude,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Raj, grabbing Chelsea’s wrist and hauling her out of the kitchen without leaving her time to do more than wave to the rest of us. The argument in the front room changed timbre again only a few seconds later.

I looked at May. She grinned. I grinned back.

“Okay, this was a fantastic idea and we should do it every week,” I said. As if on cue, there was a knock at the back door. I crossed the kitchen to answer it.

Dean Lorden—slightly older than the rest of our guests in chronological terms, slightly younger in terms of experience with the world outside the Undersea—was standing on my back porch, a backpack slung by one strap over his left shoulder. He was dressed in his usual Court clothes, which meant he looked a little old-fashioned, like he’d just stepped out of the 1920s and didn’t understand the concept of “denim.” He looked unsettled.

“Marcia drove you, huh?” I guessed.

“She says I need to get used to riding in cars if I want to live in the human world,” he said, and stepped inside. He released the illusion making him look human as soon as he was over the threshold, adding a layer of eucalyptus and wet rock to the bizarre mix of magical scents already hanging in the air. His clothes remained the same; only his features shifted, becoming sharper and indefinably inhuman. He was a handsome kid, with his mother’s sand-colored skin and his father’s bronze hair, complete with a patina of verdigris highlights. His eyes were dark blue, like the sea at night, and his ears tapered to sharp points. He’d be a heartbreaker when he got a little older.

I was just hoping the heart he chose to start with wouldn’t be Quentin’s. Dean and my squire had been seeing each other for a few months. I wasn’t sure yet whether “dating” was the word. Dean had grown up in the Undersea, and I had no idea what their formal courtships looked like; Quentin was a pureblooded scion of the Daoine Sidhe, destined to become High King of the Westlands. He’d dated once before, a human girl named Katie. It hadn’t ended well. As long as he and Dean were being careful with each other, I was fine with their relationship, but the second I felt like someone was going to get hurt, I was going to . . .

Oak and ash, I didn’t know what I was going to do. This was all outside my realm of experience, and I was as confused as everyone else.

May handed Dean a plate of cookies. “Take these to the front room,” she said. “Everyone will be delighted to see you.”

He smiled shyly. “Okay,” he said. To me, he added, “You have a lovely home.” Then he was gone, following the sound of shouting toward the rest of the party.

I walked over to one of the unoccupied kitchen chairs and collapsed into it. “Five,” I said mournfully. “There are five teenagers in my house right now. Who thought this was a good idea? It can’t have been me. I have more common sense than that.”

“No, you don’t,” said May, setting a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie down in front of me. “If you did, you wouldn’t be you.”

“I hate you all,” I muttered, and reached for the cookie.

Someone knocked on the back door.

Slowly, we all turned toward the sound. Jazz spoke first. “I thought everyone was here already,” she said warily.

“And Tybalt doesn’t knock,” said May. “He just sort of shows up. Like the plague.”

“Tybalt is busy at his court tonight,” I said, standing. Being engaged to a King of Cats has come with its share of adjustments. Getting used to the idea that sometimes he wasn’t going to be available, no matter how much I wanted him to be, had been one of the bigger ones. Raj was his chosen heir. Because of that, for Raj to have an official “night off”—as opposed to all the nights he spent unofficially hogging the remote and eating all my food—Tybalt needed to be with his people. It was going to get interesting when the time came to go out of town for our wedding. Raj was going to be livid if he didn’t get to come, but I couldn’t see any way the Cait Sidhe were going to go for that.