Ashes of Honor

I swallowed hard, trying to figure out what to say. “I’m sorry” seemed insufficient. She was right. I should have been here when Samson came; I should have called and warned her that she might be in danger, if nothing else. But it had never occurred to me that he might come here, or that he’d take his anger at me out on my Fetch and her girlfriend.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally, choosing insufficiency over silence. May’s expression hardened further, until she might as well have been made of stone. “I didn’t know he would come here. Please believe me, I had no idea.”

“And I don’t understand why he would,” said Tybalt. “There was nothing here for him.”

“We may not be Toby, but we’re not ‘nothing,’” snarled May.

Tybalt put his hands up. “I did not mean to imply that you were nothing, merely that there was nothing here for Samson to find. Whatever he was looking for—”

“He was looking for me,” I said. All three of the other people in the room turned to me. I kept talking, saying, “The last he saw, we were falling into a hole that Chelsea tore in the world. I was pretty hurt, but he’s smart enough to know that I was going to heal and you weren’t. The smart thing for us to do would have been to split up, send you one way to get medical care, send me the other way to take care of Chelsea. How was he supposed to know we’d be total morons and stay together?”

“And the logical place for you to go would be here?” asked Tybalt.

May sighed. “Okay. Now we’ve hit something that’s not her fault. It’s mine. Tracking spells sometimes decide that I’m Toby. Something about me being made from her blood and bone confuses them, even though I’m not Dóchas Sidhe.”

“So he used a tracking spell, it led him here, and then he got pissed when he couldn’t find me,” I said. “That’s a big risk to take. I mean, killing me is going to open a pretty big can of worms…”

“But if his son has just been elevated to the throne of the Court of Dreaming Cats, he need never again enter a place where those consequences are his to face,” said Tybalt. He rubbed his face with one hand, looking unbearably weary. “Milady Fetch, I beg your forgiveness.”

“I’m not the one with the broken arm,” said May, putting a protective arm around Jazz’s shoulders. “Is he going to come back here?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I glanced to Tybalt, then back to the pair of them. “Call a taxi. Have it take you to Goldengreen. Count Lorden will let you stay there, and Marcia—”

“Isn’t a real healer,” snapped May, her arm tightening. Jazz whimpered. May loosened her grip. “I’m sorry, baby. You need a healer. She needs a healer!”

“Jin is in Tamed Lightning right now, but we can’t take you both through the shadows,” I said. “Even if Tybalt could carry all three of us—”

“Which I could not do, at present,” interjected Tybalt.

“—even if he could, Jazz is hurt, and neither of you is used to it.”

May grimaced. “I remember the Shadow Roads. The first time…”

“Remembering them doesn’t mean your body has adjusted,” I said. “It wouldn’t work.”

“Goldengreen doesn’t even have a real healer,” said May.

“Marcia does okay with a first aid kit, and she can put together a sling until we can get Jin to Goldengreen or Jazz to Shadowed Hills. With Samson on the loose out there, you can’t spend an hour in a cab to get to Sylvester or two hours to get to Tamed Lightning,” I said. The pounding in my head was fading, replaced by spinning as the bones of my skull knitted back together and burned through more of my body’s denuded resources.

“She’s right,” said Jazz. She straightened a bit, standing on her own. “Goldengreen is the best place for us right now.”

“Honey—”

“I mean it. We can’t stay here.” Jazz shuddered. “If he came back…”

“He won’t come back.”

“But if he came back. He’d kill us. And we can’t go to a human hospital, not without getting a whole bunch of questions I’m not ready for.” Jazz shook her head. “Goldengreen is the only answer. We have to go.”

“I’ll call us a cab. Danny will be thrilled to drive us, as long as we don’t bleed on the seats,” said May. Moving with surprising speed, she leaned over and grabbed my wrist, jerking me toward her. I somehow managed not to fall over as I stumbled across the floor. “Come on, Toby. You’re the one who has his number memorized.”

I knew the half-murderous, half-grim look on her face. I had to go with her, or she was going to start swinging. “Tybalt, keep an eye on Jazz,” I said, letting myself be pulled out of the living room and across the hall into the kitchen.

May let go of me long enough to close the kitchen door. Then she turned to face me, slowly looking me up and down. “How bad was it?” she asked finally.

“If you were still my Fetch, you’d probably be feeling pretty shaky,” I said. “And if Amandine hadn’t shifted my blood, I’d definitely be dead. I think I saw my own intestines.”