Ashes of Honor

“Thankfully, no.” We looked oddly similar with our human disguises on—we both had blue eyes, although his were dulled down from his true appearance, while mine were oversaturated compared to their natural colorless gray. His dishwater blond hair was lightened from its natural bronze, while mine was barely changed. As long as we looked human, we looked enough alike to pass.

“Okay, big sis.”

“Don’t push it.” I climbed out of the car. The air was warmer than it was in San Francisco, but not by much; the smell of the sea and the eucalyptus trees was replaced by freshly mowed grass and wood-burning fireplaces. Everything was silent. This was suburbia, and it was a whole different world from the one we were used to.

“We passed a high school about a mile back,” I said. “Think we should check it out?”

“Are you going to care if I say ‘no’?”

“No.”

“Then yes.”

“Good squire. Come on.” We walked down the sidewalk, stepping over cracks and around broken pavement where tree roots had managed to break through. There was something comforting about the silence between us. It was free of subtext and accusations and expectations. Quentin just wanted me to be there for him. So far, I was managing that much, if not much more.

Of course, I wouldn’t have been managing anything if Tybalt hadn’t interrupted those drug dealers. Maybe Tybalt was right when he said that we needed to have a conversation about the way I’d been acting lately. Maybe—

The lingering scent of magic in front of the Ames house hit me so hard that I stopped, staggering backward as if someone had punched me in the stomach. Quentin stopped in turn, his expression broadcasting confusion and alarm. “Toby?”

“Hang on.” I raised a hand to quiet him, taking deep, slow breaths as I tried to figure out what I was standing in the middle of. He stopped talking but didn’t move away.

My mother, Amandine, raised me as one of the Daoine Sidhe. I didn’t find out until recently that she was lying the whole time. She was Firstborn, the daughter of Oberon and an unnamed woman, and I was the first of a new race of fae—the Dóchas Sidhe. Exactly what we were for was yet to be determined. But if there was one thing we were made to do, it was blood magic, and the unique scents that accompany each person’s spellcasting are fundamentally tied to who and what they are—their blood.

Etienne’s signature was cedar smoke and lime juice. This scent was similar enough that I would have known the caster was related even if we hadn’t been looking for his daughter. Not cedar smoke, though; this was sycamore smoke. It was covered by a delicate veneer of calla lily flowers, softening and sweetening it. The trace was complicated, and got more complicated as I looked deeper. Some of it was fresh, but some of it was old—months, even years of little spells overlaying this one spot. Chelsea had been coming into her powers for a while before she disappeared. That wasn’t a good sign.

“Oak and ash,” I breathed.

“Toby?”

I shook my head. “We’re on the right track. This is the way she walks to school.”

“Yes, it is,” said a voice behind me—female, with the faintest trace of an Irish accent, as though the speaker had been away from home for so long that her roots were just another story. “Now would you like to tell me what you’re doing out here, or shall I be calling the police now?”

There are times when I think the universe is only happy when it has an excuse to make me miserable. “We’d rather you didn’t do that, if you don’t mind,” I said, turning. The woman on the sidewalk about six feet away was wearing a blue bathrobe and holding a cast iron frying pan in one hand. “Is there a problem?”

“Etienne sent you, didn’t he?”

I couldn’t keep myself from flinching. My reaction was slight, but it was enough. Her eyes narrowed, and she brandished the frying pan at us like a weapon.

Slowly, enunciating each word with great care to be sure I couldn’t misunderstand her, Bridget Ames said, “Give me back my daughter right now, or I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”

Oh, great. It was going to be one of those nights.

SIX

QUENTIN WAS SMART ENOUGH to stay behind me. I raised my hands in a placating gesture, saying, “I don’t know who you think we are, but we don’t have your daughter. We’re not kidnappers.”

“Then hold this.” She thrust the frying pan toward us. It was cold—it had to be, or she wouldn’t be able to hold the handle—but it might as well have been heated to the point of melting from the way it seemed to twist and warp the air when she got it close to me. I must have looked like I was going to throw up, because a triumphant smile twisted the corners of her lips as she said, “I keep it rubbed down with a mixture of crushed juniper berries and rowan ash. Don’t you like the way it makes the metal shine?”