Seanan McGuire - Rosemary and Rue

Tybalt’s answering smile was thin. He wasn’t happy that I’d called him on that one. I spared a moment to consider the wisdom of pissing him off while we were stuck together in an alley and shrugged. It was too late to take it back. “I go where the urge takes me, October; you should know that by now. All places are alike to me, and today I wanted to check on my little fish. To see where she was . . . swimming .”

The last word was almost a whisper, all smooth edges and insinuation. I stiffened, hands clenching as fury cut through my fear like turpentine through oil paint. “That was uncalled for.”

“If you can’t take the heat, maybe you should go back to the pond.” His tone was triumphant. He knew he’d managed to get to me, and at that point, I didn’t really care. All I cared about was shutting him up and forcing the memories back into the hole where they belonged.

“Tybalt,” I said, and paused to choose my words with care. The sunrise lull was ending: I could feel the potential for magic creeping back into my blood, almost unwillingly. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that, and I’m going to leave now. You’re not going to follow me. Understand?”

“Running away already?”

“I’m walking away before I do something we’d both regret.” Reaching out, I grabbed a handful of shadows from the alley wall, molding them between my hands as I ordered them to hide me. Illusions have always come easier when I’m angry—I don’t know why, because nothing else works that way. Still, sometimes it seems like I can only craft a really good disguise when I’m so mad I can’t see straight.

Tybalt didn’t bother to look away as I blunted the tips of my ears and glossed over my eyes with a veneer of human blue. My hair and skin could be left alone, which was a good thing; there are too many steps involved in a stable disguise, and none of them are simple ones. Thanks to my father’s blood, I look almost entirely human. Someone seeing me with my masks off might think I had an unusually fine bone structure, or that there was something wrong with my eyes, but they’d be unlikely to think “fairy-tale creature walking the streets of San Francisco.” Thanks to my mother’s conditioning, I’m basically incapable of taking the risk.

It was a good five minutes before I shook the clinging shadows from my hands and let them drop, resisting the near uncontrollable urge to pant. The smell of copper hung heavy in the air.

“Good job!” said Tybalt, applauding. I glared. He grinned, displaying his fangs. “I could almost believe that you were really a trained monkey and not just the worse half of one.”

“Stick a cork in it, Tybalt. I’m out of here.” The traffic outside was getting more urgent as the city woke. “You should do the same.”

“Should I? Good-bye, then; open roads, kind fires, and all winds to guide you.” He laughed, seeming to fold inward. There was a popping noise as a rush of warm air that smelled of musk and fresh pennyroyal blew over me, leaving a brown tabby-patterned tomcat where Tybalt had been. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said he was smiling.

All Cait Sidhe are drama queens and jerks as far as I’m concerned. Tybalt’s never seemed interested in proving me wrong.

“Good idea,” I said. “You go your way, and I’ll go mine.”

The cat winked and stood, slinking over to rub up against my ankles. I lashed out with one foot, aiming a kick at his middle, but he dodged effortlessly and bounded away, tail held high. Shaking my head, I watched him blend into the shadows at the rear of the alley. “Damn cat,” I muttered, and left the alleyway for the street and the rest of my long walk home.

THE FOG HAD BURNED away with the dawn, and I walked the rest of the way through a city with no illusions at all. There weren’t any fairy tales in the streets around me. If there was ever a Cinderella, her glass slippers shattered under her weight and she limped home bleeding from the ball.

My apartment isn’t in the best neighborhood, but it suits my needs. The roof doesn’t leak, the managers aren’t nosy, and my rent includes a spot in the attached parking garage, where my car languishes day in and day out, thanks to the lack of employee parking at the Safeway. I punched in my code at the side gate, unlocking it, before following the narrow outdoor path to my building. I’m in one of the ground-floor units that actually has an outside door. There are neighbors above and to my left, but there’s nothing to my right but walkway and grass. I like having at least the illusion of privacy.

That illusion didn’t last either. There was a teenage boy slouching in my doorframe, hands jammed into his pockets, every inch of him radiating discontent. The shimmer of magic around him was visible even halfway down the path, tagging him as fae. The air tasted like steel and heather; the illusion that made him seem human had been cast recently, and on my doorstep. He’d been there since before dawn.

I hesitated. I could ignore him and hope he’d let me into my apartment without a scene. I could go to the Starbucks down the street, nurse a coffee, and hope he’d go away. Or I could get rid of him.

Never let it be said that I’d chosen the easy way out or shown a fondness for uninvited visitors. Narrowing my eyes, I stalked down the path toward him. “Can I help you?”

He jumped, turning toward me. “I . . . what?”

“Help you. Can I help you? Because you’re between me and my apartment, and I was hoping to get some sleep today.” I folded my arms, scowling.

He squirmed. Judging by body language alone, he was actually the age he appeared to be, putting him somewhere in his mid-teens. His hair was dandelion-fluff blond, and his eyes were very blue. He’d probably have been beating the girls off with a stick if he hadn’t been dressed like he was about to ask me if I’d accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior. Any kid dressed that formally and standing on my porch at dawn had to be on some sort of official business, and that just made me scowl deeper. I prefer to avoid official business. All it ever does is get people hurt.

“I . . .” he stammered. Then he seemed to remember himself and straightened, puffing out his chest in the self-important manner that seems to be endemic to pages everywhere. “Do I have the privilege of addressing the Lady Daye?” He had a very faint accent. Whoever he answered to now, he’d started life somewhere in or near Toronto.

“No,” I snapped, pushing past him to the door. The red threads that store my warding charms were still taped above the doorframe, almost invisible in the early morning light. Dawn damages wards, but it usually takes three or four days to destroy them completely. I dug for my keys. “You have the ‘privilege’ of annoying the crap out of Toby Daye, who isn’t interested in your titles, or whatever it is you’re selling. Go away, kid, you’re bothering me.”

“So you are the Lady Daye?”

Eyes on the door, I said, “It was Sir Daye, when it was anything at all.”

“I’m here on behalf of Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills, protector of—”

I turned to cut him off before he could launch into a full recitation of Sylvester’s titles and protectorates. Holding up my hand, I hissed, “This is a human neighborhood! I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, and frankly, I don’t care. You can take your message and your on-behalf-of back to Shadowed Hills, and tell Sylvester I’m still not interested. All right?”

The kid blinked, looking like he had no idea what he was supposed to say. My reactions didn’t fit inside his courtier’s view of the world. I had a title, one that had clearly been awarded to me for merit, rather than out of courtesy, if I was insisting on the use of “sir” over “lady.” Changelings with titles are rare enough to be conversation pieces, and changelings with titles they actually earned are even rarer; as far as I know, I’m the only changeling to be knighted in the last hundred years. I had a liege, and not an inconsequential or powerless one at that. So why was I refusing a message from him? I should have been turning cartwheels of joy just to be remembered, not blowing off a Duke.