Ashes of Honor

IT TOOK ME LESS THAN TEN MINUTES to strip off my shredded, bloody clothes and replace them with a clean black tank top and jeans. I wiped the worst of the blood off my face and hands with some wet wipes I’d snagged from KFC the last time I took Quentin out for junk food. By the time I was done, I looked, if not respectable, at least marginally less like I’d just survived one of May’s trashy horror movies. For a finishing touch, I brushed most of the blood out of my hair and skimmed it into a ponytail. Any Daoine Sidhe who got within ten feet of me would smell it, but most other people would assume it was a weird dye job and move on.

At some point during the process, I ate the first Pop-Tart and most of the second. It says something about how low my blood sugar was that I neither noticed nor cared what flavor they were. I shrugged my leather jacket back on, stuck the last piece of Pop-Tart in my mouth, and opened the bedroom door.

Tybalt was downstairs, leaning against the wall and looking at Cagney and Lacey, who were sitting by his feet with oddly dejected looks on their furry faces. All three of them turned toward me as I stopped on the bottom step.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Your resident felines were explaining how they could allow Samson to burst in without sounding the alarm,” said Tybalt. Catching my expression, he added, “There was nothing they could have done. I am reassuring them, not scolding them.”

“You know, every time I think my life can’t get weirder, it ups the ante.” I started walking again, heading for the kitchen. Tybalt paced me. I gave him a sidelong look. “Did May and Jazz leave?”

“Yes. Danny said hello and that he would have stuck around to talk to you himself, but he was sure you already had enough to worry about, and besides, the Barghests were almost certainly working on eating the backseat.” Tybalt’s pupils narrowed to amused slits as he spoke. “He seemed oddly…unsurprised…to hear that you were unable to greet him because you were upstairs changing into something less bloodstained.”

“I have my friends well-trained.” I opened the fridge, beginning to gather the makings for a ham sandwich. “Let me just get a little more food in me, and then we can get back to Tamed Lightning.” I paused. “Do you want a sandwich? You haven’t eaten anything all day, and you lost a lot of blood, too.”

“I would love a sandwich,” said Tybalt, with enough gravity to make it sound like a formal proclamation. Resolved: that we will have ham and cheese sandwiches.

“Just get the bread out of the cupboard, and I—”

The doorbell rang before I could finish my sentence. I frowned, bumping the refrigerator door closed with my hip before dropping the ham, cheese, and condiments on the counter.

“None of the people who want to kill us right now would use the doorbell,” I said. “It’s probably neighborhood kids selling something.”

Tybalt snorted. “Your range of options is very specialized.”

“Yeah, well. Welcome to my world.” I shook my head, grabbing a handful of air. The smell of cut grass and copper rose around me, mingling with the smell of the blood in my hair, as I wove a quick human disguise. “Wait here. I’m going to go get rid of whoever it is.”

“Certainly,” said Tybalt. He was opening the cheese when I left the kitchen. I closed the door behind me—no point in explaining the pointy-eared man making sandwiches if I didn’t have to—and made my way to the front door.

When I opened it, Officer Thornton of the San Francisco Police Department was standing on my porch. I blinked at him, briefly too surprised to speak. He blinked back, looking almost as surprised to see me as I was to see him. Then he cleared his throat.

“Good evening, Ms. Daye,” he said. “Do you have a moment?”

“I—” When dealing with the mortal authorities, there is no answer to that question that doesn’t begin with “yes.” When dealing with the mortal authorities who had followed me to Fremont, all the answers I wanted to give began with slamming the door in his face.

If I did that, I might as well start packing my things, because I would be moving to the Summerlands full time shortly afterward. I swallowed my panic and stepped to the side, holding the door open wider. “Of course, Officer. Would you like to come in?”

“Yes, thank you.” Officer Thornton looked around with unabashed curiosity as he stepped into the foyer. Fortunately, there was nothing really incriminating in view. We’re an inhuman household, but the detritus that builds up around the edges of our lives is reassuringly normal. It’s the lives themselves that tend to be a little weird.

My stomach sank. Tybalt was in the kitchen without a human disguise on, and the living room was totally destroyed. Unless I could convince Officer Thornton that he wanted to go upstairs with me, I was screwed—and I didn’t even know how to open that conversation without sounding like I was coming on to him.

“Um, Officer, what can I do for you? I thought that there were no charges against me?”