A Local Habitation
Page 15

“That’s not what he thinks,” I said. “January Torquill, I presume?”
Her eyes narrowed, and for a brief moment, I thought she was going to argue. Then she deflated, shoulders slumping, and said, “Not really. I mean, I’m January. I’m just not January Torquill. I never have been.” She shrugged, a flicker of humor creeping into her voice. “As far as I know, no one’s January Torquill. Which is probably a good thing—that’d be a terrible name to stick on a child. It sounds like something out of a bad romance novel.”
“So if you’re not January Torquill, that makes you . . . ?”
“January O’Leary. I’m not full Daoine Sidhe—my father was half-Tylwyth Teg, and his last name was ‘ap Learianth.’ That doesn’t exactly work on a business card. We settled on ‘O’Leary’ as the abbreviation when we incorporated.” She smiled again. This time, the expression had an edge I recognized all too well. Sylvester smiled that way when he was trying to figure out whether something was a threat. “It’s interesting that Uncle Sylvester didn’t tell you that. Considering the part where he sent you here, and everything.”
“You have a phone,” I said. “You could call him.”
“I already tried that while Elliot was stowing you and the kid in the cafeteria.”
“And?”
“No one answered.”
“I have directions in your uncle’s handwriting.” I held up the folder.
“Handwriting can be faked.”
I bit back an expletive. Half the Kingdom knew me on sight and expected me to start breaking things the second I walked into the room, while the other half wanted three forms of photo ID and a character witness. “Alex and Elliot knew who I was.”
“They know who you look like. There’s a difference.”
Sad to say, she had a point. I nearly got killed last December by a Doppelganger who impersonated my daughter. In Faerie, faces aren’t always what they appear to be.
“Okay. If you know who I look like, you presumably know what . . . that person . . . can or can’t do. Right?” January nodded. “It’s sort of hard to prove that I can’t cast a spell, so that won’t work. If you want to give me some blood, I can tell you what you did for your fifth birthday . . .”
“That’s okay.”
“Didn’t think so.” I sighed. “I don’t suppose dropping my illusions and letting you poke me with sticks would do it? I’d really like to get this sorted out.”
She frowned. “It’s a start,” she said.
“Got it,” I said, and let my human disguise dissolve, wafting away in a wash of copper and cut grass.
Jan watched intently, nostrils flaring as she sniffed at the air. Then she grinned. If her smile was bright before, it was nothing compared to the way she lit up now. It was like looking at the sun. “Copper and grass! You are you!”
“No one’s ever been that happy about the smell of my magic before,” I muttered. “How do you . . .?”
“I have files on my uncle’s knights, in case someone tries to sneak in.” There was a brutal matter-of-factness to her tone. She was the Countess of a County balanced on the edge of disaster, and this was just the way things worked. “We’ve had people who could fake faces and pass quizzes, but nobody’s been able to fake somebody else’s magic.” The word “yet” hung between us, unspoken.
“Well, your uncle’s worried, and he asked me to come see how you were doing. Why didn’t you tell me who you were when I got here? We could’ve taken care of all this an hour ago.”
“Do you know where you are?” she asked.
I frowned. “I don’t see what that has to do with . . .”
“Humor me.”
“I’m in the County of Tamed Lightning.”
“Do you know where the County is?”
“Fremont?”
“Fremont, where we’re sandwiched between two Duchies that don’t get along. We’re a shiny little independent County right where it’s not a good idea to have an independent County.”
“I was under the impression that things were stable.” That could change at any time, of course, and there’s always a risk of small-scale civil war in Faerie—it’s something to do when you’re bored and immortal—but the modern world has reduced that risk substantially. The fae are poster children for Attention Deficit Disorder: give them something shiny to play with and they’ll forget they were about to chop your head off.
January sighed. “Uncle Sylvester is respected around here. Something about him having a really big army he could use for squashing people like bugs.”
“So that makes you even safer. Dreamer’s Glass would never bother you with Shadowed Hills standing right there.”
“That’s the problem.”
“Okay, now you’ve lost me.”
“People think that because Sylvester’s my uncle, Tamed Lightning is an extension of his Duchy here to make him look ‘egalitarian and modern,’ and one day he’s going to pull us back in.” She slid off the desk, starting to pace. “They treat us like we don’t matter, or they assume we can get them favors and come around sniffing for political leverage. It got old, fast. So we stopped helping.”
“You thought I was here to ask for a favor?”
“The thought crossed my mind.”
“Well, believe me, I’m not. I’m here because you stopped calling your uncle.”
January shook her head. “That’s not true. I’ve left about eighteen messages. He just hasn’t been calling me back.” A wry expression crossed her face. “I know his phones work. I installed them.”
“Why haven’t you just gone to Shadowed Hills?”
“Same reason he hasn’t come here: if I leave, there’s a good chance Dreamer’s Glass will see it as an opportunity and invade.” She looked suddenly tired. “Welcome to my life. I just have to keep calling.”
“What’s so important that you need to keep trying to reach him? Why didn’t you send a messenger?”
She straightened, another smile blooming across her face. “Where are my manners? You can call me Jan. We’re not big on formalities here. Do you prefer October, Sir Daye . . . ?”