Chimes at Midnight

“The Library, to start with. Maybe there’s something there about helping a changeling kick a goblin fruit addiction.” If not . . . I had already asked Mags to pull any books on hope chests. I’d been trying to understand how my magic worked. Maybe I could use any information she had for me as a way to find another hope chest and put myself back to normal when I couldn’t do it on my own.

“I will take you anywhere you need to go,” said Tybalt.

“I’m coming with you,” said Quentin.

I wanted to argue with him. I couldn’t do it. With my magic essentially out of commission for the moment, I was going to need all the backup I could get, and he was my squire. He had as much right to be by my side as anybody else, and more than most. “It’s going to be dangerous,” I said.

“That’s nothing new,” he said. “Besides, my knight is pretty stupid when it comes to danger, and she’s the best role model I have for dealing with the stuff.”

I smiled a little. “Just so long as you’re aware.”

“I am.”

“Okay.” I turned to Sylvester. He looked so miserable, standing there next to the wall, watching us make plans to go away and leave him. He’d lost me more times than anyone else in this room. He’d watched me walk away, and he’d never stopped me, not once. He let me grow up. He knew that he had to give me that much.

Pulling away from Tybalt, I walked over to Sylvester and hugged him. This might be the last time we saw each other. I wasn’t going to let my anger and his well-intentioned betrayal be the last things he remembered. No matter how deserved that might be, or how wrong he’d been, I loved him too much for that. I always had.

“Please be careful,” he whispered, before kissing the crown of my head. “I wish you wouldn’t go.”

“I’ll be as careful as I can,” I said, and stepped back. “Tell Jin where I went, and that I’ll have my phone if she comes up with any brilliant ideas about how to get me through this.”

“I will.”

“Quentin, come on.”

My squire walked over to me. Tybalt took my right hand and Quentin’s left, and we stepped into the shadows, and were gone.

FOURTEEN

WE DIDN’T STEP OUT OF THE SHADOWS: we fell, all of us dragged into an ungainly heap by my collapse. Tybalt wasn’t letting go of me, and Quentin wasn’t letting go of him, and the end result was a total train wreck. I, of course, wound up on the bottom of the pile, but I would have been in bad shape either way. The run had been too much for me. My eyes were frozen practically shut, and I was struggling to breathe.

“October!” Tybalt rolled off me, shoving Quentin out of the way—I heard his faint grunt of protest—before gathering me into his arms. “Breathe, dammit,” he commanded, cradling me close as he tried to warm me with his own body heat. “Toby! Breathe!”

I coughed, breaking the frozen seal on my mouth, and began to take great, choking gasps of air. I didn’t even pretend to be sitting up on my own. I just let Tybalt hold me, and kept focusing on trying to thaw my lungs.

“Is she okay?” Quentin, somewhere off behind me.

“I forgot how badly the Shadow Roads used to treat her.” Tybalt sounded guilty, like this was somehow his fault, and not the Queen’s for sending someone to hit me in the face with a pie full of goblin fruit.

A pie. Sweet Oberon, could we get any more slapstick if we tried?

Giggling made breathing harder, but it made me relax, which helped. I sat up straighter, scraping the ice from my eyelashes. “I’m okay,” I said, the wheeze in my voice revealing my words as lies. I coughed again before offering my hands to Tybalt, letting him pull me off the floor. “Really. I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. I realized with a start that I couldn’t make out his expression through the gloom. Humans aren’t equipped to see in the dark the way fae are. I really was running blind.

“I’m sure,” I said, looking around the defunct bookstore. It was, if anything, even more decrepit-looking in the dark; the shelves were just blurs. Even the pixie dust was gone. Its faint glow would have been a real blessing, but humans can’t see pixies, either. Not without fae ointment. Maybe Marcia would give me some. “Quentin, can you get the door? I’m never going to find it on my own.”

“On it,” he said, and moved past us, a pale smudge against the dark bookshelves.

Tybalt took my arm. I didn’t pull away. In my current condition, I needed the help.

“Are you truly sure that you’re all right?” he murmured, pitching his voice too low for Quentin to hear.

“No,” I whispered back. “But for right now, I have to be. So let me be all right. Please.”

“Ah.” He sighed, hand tightening on my arm. “As you say.”

I flashed him a smile—he’d be able to see it, even if I couldn’t see him—and let him guide me to where Quentin was waiting for us. I could see the bookshelves behind him, but no matter how much I squinted, there wasn’t even the glimmer of an illusion.

“Here,” he said.

“Yeah.” I stopped walking, pulling Tybalt to a halt. “Tybalt, you’d better pick me up.”

“Why?” I could hear his frown.