Chimes at Midnight

The streets changed around us as we drove, careful maintenance giving way to benign neglect, then wanton vandalism, and finally the sort of disrepair that implied the residents had abandoned all hope. It was just another facade. The people living in the Luidaeg’s shadow enjoyed some of the lowest crime rates in the city. When we had earthquakes, their foundations didn’t crack; when it rained for a week, their roofs didn’t leak. The residents of the blocks surrounding the Luidaeg’s dockside home were her last passive line of defense against strangers, and she took care of them.

No one lived on the Luidaeg’s block. There was maintaining a neighborhood, and then there was putting up with neighbors. One was good sense. The other was likely to get someone killed.

I parked on the street, reclaiming my coffee from Tybalt and letting Quentin carry the burritos as we walked down the alleyway to the Luidaeg’s door. It was old, faintly bloated wood, set into a frame that looked so water-damaged it might fall apart at any moment. Appearances can be deceiving, especially where the Luidaeg is concerned. I knocked lightly. Then I stepped back, sipped my coffee, and waited.

“Think she’s up?” asked Quentin, rummaging through the bag of burritos.

“If she’s not, we’re probably all about to be torn limb from limb. Get ready to run.” I peered into my cup. “Maeve’s tits, I think they pumped this stuff up from the center of the Earth. It’s not coffee. It’s fermented dinosaur blood.”

“Cool.” Quentin pulled a foil-wrapped burrito out of the bag and began unpeeling it.

I raised an eyebrow. “‘Cool’? That’s all you have to say?”

“Be glad he’s not grilling you about the comet that killed them all,” said a dry voice. We turned, almost in unison, to see the Luidaeg standing in the alley behind us, two paper grocery bags in her arms. She looked faintly puzzled, but not annoyed. I’d take it. “What the fuck are you three doing here?”

The Luidaeg is fond of human profanity, I think because it tends to shock the purebloods. I shrugged. “We were in the neighborhood.” I didn’t want to tell her I’d been exiled until after she’d agreed to let us in.

“Uh-huh. Is there a burrito in that sack for me?”

“Lobster, shrimp, and every pepper in the store,” said Quentin happily.

“Ew,” I said, and took the bag. If I left it alone with the two of them, Tybalt and I weren’t going to get any.

“You don’t have to eat it.” She turned her deceptively normal-eyed gaze on me, considering my dress. Finally, she said, “You reek of the bitch-Queen’s magic, and you don’t normally bring the kitty-cat here. What’s wrong?”

“Can we talk about it inside?” I asked. “Please?”

The Luidaeg smiled, showing too many teeth. “I love it when you beg. Come on in.” She pushed past us to the door. It swung open at her touch, revealing a dark hallway. She stepped inside, calling, “Hurry up, I don’t have all night,” without turning back.

“You know, the first time I came here, she used a key to get in,” I commented to Quentin, as we followed her.

“I guess she doesn’t feel like she has to pretend as much,” he replied, pausing long enough to close the door behind him.

The idea that the Luidaeg wasn’t pretending for us anymore was reflected by the hall itself, which was pristine, in that slightly shabby, lived-in way older apartments get when they’ve been well-cared for and well-loved for long enough. The air smelled like clean saltwater, a scent that implied there was a beach somewhere in the house, if we were brave enough to look. Knowing her, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a stretch of shoreline inside the pantry, waiting for beachcombers and human sacrifices.

It was almost a relief when I saw a cockroach scuttle across the floor. No matter how much she cleaned the place up—or how much of the mess had been an illusion—she was still the sea witch we knew and liked more than was probably good for our health.

We followed the Luidaeg down the hall to the kitchen, where she began unpacking her groceries. Tybalt and I stayed in the doorway, watching, while Quentin moved to help her put away the cans. There was no illusion-sheen in the air around her because she wasn’t wearing one: she was the oldest among us, and her nature was protean enough that she didn’t need anything as crude as an illusion when she wanted to pass for human. She just changed herself.

She looked like she was somewhere in her early twenties, with the fading ghosts of acne scars under the freckles on her cheeks and strips of electrical tape holding her thick brown pigtails in place. I’d seen her fae nature slip through a few times, but never for long, and never all the way. I was pretty sure that the day I saw the Luidaeg’s true form would either be the day she killed me, or the day when I had much bigger things to worry about.

She placed a twelve-pack of Diet Coke in the fridge before turning to face me, folding her arms, and saying, “Well?”

“Well?” I echoed. “What ‘well’? Did I miss something that would trigger a ‘well’?”