Ashes of Honor

I blinked, swallowing my mouthful of Twinkie before I asked, “How can you evacuate? Isn’t your main server inside the shallowing?”

“It is,” confirmed April. “I can survive on backup power for up to nine days before I encounter permanent systems failure. I am more concerned about our data storage and the employees in the basement, who cannot be moved into a mortal environ without raising questions we will be unprepared to address.”

“Employees in the…oh.” I stopped talking, turning my attention to my orange juice instead. It seemed safer, or at least a little less macabre.

The murders at Tamed Lightning two years ago weren’t the normal kind of killings. All the victims were purebloods, and they were killed in a way that meant the night-haunts wouldn’t come for their bodies. Faerie flesh doesn’t decay. The last time I’d been to Tamed Lightning, all the victims save one—January, who hadn’t been killed like the others, and whose body had been burned—were still in the basement, waiting for April to put together the necessary pieces and find a way to bring them back.

“Um, ew,” said Quentin, clearly following the same train of thought as I was.

“It would cause complications with the mortal authorities if we were to remove them,” said April, seemingly oblivious to the fact that other people might find a basement full of dead people creepy. “This is aside from the fact that they are presently unable to conceal their fae natures, you understand.”

“Right,” I said, and stuffed the second Twinkie into my mouth to save myself from needing to come up with anything else to say.

“Now that Toby isn’t on the verge of collapsing, can someone please tell me how Etienne’s daughter was able to open a door to Annwn? Does Sylvester know about this?” Jin paused and answered her own question: “Of course Sylvester doesn’t know. If he knew, he’d be here making sure you idiots didn’t get yourselves killed. Good job on that, by the way.”

I swallowed without chewing, grateful for the spongy nature of Hostess products. “Etienne said he was going to tell him.”

“I am,” said Etienne. “I just found out Chelsea existed. I wanted to have her safely recovered before I went to His Grace with the news.”

“This is a whole new level of ‘better to beg forgiveness,’” said Jin. “Annwn? Really?”

“Turns out Chelsea didn’t inherit the blocks that keep most Tuatha from using too much power and blowing themselves up,” I said grimly, digging the Luidaeg’s Chelsea-chaser out of my pocket. It was glowing a serene white, caught in its neutral state. “Quentin and I each have one of these. The Luidaeg gave us these to track Chelsea down. So far, we’ve managed to get to where she’s been a few times, but we only wound up where she was once, when Li bent our luck to bring us all together.”

“An endeavor for which I am very grateful, as it no doubt saved both our lives.” Tybalt took the hand I had left resting on his shoulder, lacing his fingers with mine as he stood. “The fact remains that she is loose, somewhere, she is afraid, and she is doing a great deal of damage.”

“I think we’re all on board with the idea that we need to find Chelsea and get her to stop punching holes in things,” I said. “We’re not covering enough ground.”

Etienne frowned, sudden resolve washing over his face. “I will stay,” he said.

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I will remain with you. I can’t ask you to do this for me and not be willing to help—or do you think having another teleporter won’t be an asset? You have a mechanism for tracking my daughter. I am a mechanism for following her if she opens a door while you’re in pursuit.” Etienne’s frown deepened. “If you’re concerned about getting paid—”

“If you finish that sentence, I’ll have to hit you, so how about you don’t?” I shook my head. “We’re glad to have you. We need all the help we can get, especially since Riordan—”

I was interrupted as the shadows behind the nearest vending machine rippled like a black muslin curtain, and Raj stepped into the room, a revolver in his hands. He leveled it on Tybalt before any of us had a chance to react. “Hello, Uncle,” he said. “I’m here to kill you now.”

Oh, this day just got better and better.

NINETEEN

I STARED. SO DID QUENTIN, Jin, and Li Qin. April frowned, irritation evident.

“I did not consent to your presence,” she said peevishly. “Please depart, and attempt your political assassination on someone else’s property.”

Tybalt just smiled. He took my hand off his shoulder and stood. Then he raised my hand to his lips, pressing a light kiss against my fingers, before letting me go and walking, with the utmost calm, toward Raj.

“Tybalt, what—”

“It’s all right, October,” he said, and kept walking. Raj trained the revolver on his uncle’s chest, the shaking spreading from his hands to his arms, until his entire body seemed to be caught in a wind that none of the rest of us could feel. Tybalt reached out and placed his hand atop the muzzle of the gun, pushing it gently downward.