Ashes of Honor

“Let’s get back to the right side of the Bay, park long enough for dawn to pass, and then swing by Dynamo for the early morning batch. The Luidaeg likes their salted caramel.” Quentin wrinkled his nose. I sighed. “I wouldn’t take us onto the bridge if I thought there was any chance we’d be caught out by the dawn. We have nearly an hour until sunrise. Trust me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Don’t call me ma’am,” I said, and started the car.

Quentin smirked.

His concern wasn’t unfounded. Dawn is anathema to faerie enchantments. Something about the way the sun hits the land during the first moments of the day tears down small spells and weakens great ones, smashing the magic out of the world. It never lasts more than ten minutes, but that was more than long enough to have a fatal car accident if I was behind the wheel when it hit. Dawn isn’t as painful for me as it was before Amandine shifted the balance of my blood, but it’s still impossible to breathe in those few minutes when the air pushes down like a blanket made of lead and everything tastes of death and ashes.

We drove down Colusa with the windows open. Patches of the smoke-and-lily scent that meant “Chelsea” appeared along the length of the street, some fresh, some faded. None of them stood out as the place she’d disappeared from, and Quentin didn’t seem to notice them at all. I stopped the car next to one of the stronger patches, frowning at him.

“Do you smell anything?”

“Not really,” he admitted. “Her room smelled like old magic, a little. Out here, there’s nothing.”

“Great. One more attraction for the freak show that is my life—apparently, Dóchas Sidhe are magic detectors, not just blood detectors. Chelsea was here. She was here a lot. I think she opened some of her doors from this spot.”

Quentin opened her notebook, riffling through the pages. “Is this the corner of Portland and Colusa?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“This says she opened a door from here to…um. To Portland, Oregon. And then back again.” He raised his head, staring at me. “Can she do that?”

“You’ve heard the old stories. What do you think?”

He closed the book. “I think we need to find her.”

“Yeah. So do I.” I glanced at the sky. Our sweep of the street had taken almost twenty minutes. “I guess we’re going to be a little late to the Luidaeg’s. I’m not risking the bridge this close to dawn.”

Quentin looked relieved. “Good.”

I snorted and started the car again, hitting the gas harder as I angled up the hill toward Tilden Park. It’s a protected nature preserve, surprisingly wild for being so close to human habitation, and it’s full of secluded picnic areas where we could wait out the sunrise without being spotted.

The sky was turning rose and gold around the edges by the time I parked in the shadow of one of the old oak groves. Quentin and I didn’t discuss what we were going to do next; we just got out of the car, both of us heading as fast as we could for the shelter of the trees. If any early morning joggers wanted to park in this lot, they’d see the car, but they wouldn’t see us. Hopefully, that would give us time to put on human disguises, hide, or both before we got caught. The car was just out of sight when the sun came up, and the world came down.

“Not as bad as it used to be” doesn’t mean “pleasant.” The light knocked the air out of my lungs. I grabbed the nearest tree, clinging for dear life as I tried to avoid crumpling to the muddy path. Dimly, through my tears, I could see Quentin doing the same thing a few trees away. The ashy smell of broken illusions rose around us.

Dawn is difficult to describe. When I was little, I honestly thought I was dying every time the sun rose. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Chelsea, whose mother couldn’t truly understand what she was going through or why she stopped breathing, like clockwork, every morning at sunrise. It’s the death of magic, the end of faerie time, and it hits us like a hammer.

Dawn passed quickly—dawn always passes—and we were fortunate: no joggers or pre-work dog walkers came down the path before we were able to straighten up, put our human faces back on, and make ourselves look halfway presentable.

“Well,” I said, with forced jocularity. “Ready to go and sit in rush hour traffic for the foreseeable future?”

Quentin looked at me mournfully. “Can we stop for food first? I’m starving.”

“You’re a teenage boy. You’re always starving.”

“That’s a good reason to feed me.”

I had to smile at that. “Drive-through okay?”

“After as much time as I’ve spent with you? Please. I didn’t expect anything better.”