Ashes of Honor
Page 18

“No,” said Bridget. Her expression softened as she looked at Chelsea’s picture, the hard edges going out of it until she was just a mother, scared for the safety of her child. “She started wearing them when she was six. They’re tinted glass.”
“Rose-colored glasses. Literally,” I said. Etienne’s eyes had a copper sheen to them, glittering, metallic, and inhuman. If his daughter had his hair, the odds were good she had his eyes as well. “How long have you known?”
“That my lover wasn’t human? I suspected from the first, but I told myself I was making up stories. I was new to the department, I missed Ireland, and here was this mysterious stranger come to argue with me and spin me yarns and be exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. I thought he had to be one of the Sidhe, come to save me from myself…and then thought I was being a fool, because everyone knows the Sidhe don’t exist.” The smile she shot my way was bitter. “I suppose that makes me twice a fool, doesn’t it?”
“No,” said Quentin. “It makes us what you said we were. It makes us really good liars.”
I glanced at him, surprised by his quick response. He looked at me and shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed.
“It’s true,” he said. “We are.”
“I just didn’t expect you to say it,” I said.
“That reminds me.” Bridget raised the frying pan again. “I’ll thank you to take off whatever masks you’re wearing. I like seeing who it is I’ve allowed into my home.”
Quentin and I exchanged a look. It seemed like every time I thought we’d broken all the rules, another one popped up for us to violate. “I’m not sure…” I began.
“Please.”
That stopped me. I sighed, once, and let my human disguise wisp away into the smell of cut grass and copper. Quentin did the same, and the smell of our mingled magics briefly overwhelmed the smell of smoke and lilies. It was a pleasant change, even if it didn’t last.
Bridget’s eyes went wide and round. It was one thing to challenge two strangers and declare them to be part of a hidden world existing alongside her own. It was something else to have it proved. It probably didn’t help that the similarities in our human disguises were washed away by our true appearances. Quentin is Daoine Sidhe, bright and vibrant as something from a fairy tale. I, on the other hand, look as though half my color was stolen from me by the villain from some children’s TV show.
Oh, and there were bullet holes in my jacket. Can’t forget those.
“What are you?” she whispered, finally.
“Quentin is Daoine Sidhe,” I said. “I’m Dóchas Sidhe. We’re…cousins, I guess.” It was close enough; both races descended from Oberon, although Titania claimed the Daoine Sidhe as her own. “What we are doesn’t matter. Finding Chelsea is what matters. Can I see her room?”
“Yes, of course,” said Bridget, tossing the frying pan onto the couch before beckoning for us to follow her. Apparently, disorientation made her agreeable. Then again, it might also be the deep conditioning of human history at work, the old lessons that say, “mess with the fae, and you’ll regret it.” Now that she could really see us, maybe she didn’t feel she could fight us anymore. Either way, I was just glad she’d dropped the frying pan.
The smell of smoke and lilies got stronger as we walked down the hall. By the time we stopped in front of a door decorated with the poster from the third Lord of the Rings movie, it was all I could do not to breathe through my mouth to avoid choking.
“This is her room,” said Bridget needlessly.
“I kind of figured,” I said. I sneezed, once, before turning to Quentin. “Wait out here with Bridget, okay?”
“Okay,” he said.
Catching Bridget’s sudden irritation, I explained, “I can sort of detect magic, but it works best when I’m alone.” And better still if someone has bled recently, but since Chelsea was taken from the street, that was probably too much to hope for. “I promise I’m not going to do anything to your daughter’s things. You can even keep the door open and watch me.”
“Oh, I will,” she said…but she opened the door, releasing a cloying wave of lily-and-smoke perfume. “Don’t you dare take anything.”
“I won’t,” I said, and went in.
Chelsea’s room was practically spotless, especially for a teenage girl. There were no dolls or plastic horses; instead, she had rows of neatly shelved secondhand paperbacks, build-it-yourself model kits, and what looked like a working microscope. The walls were covered in Star Trek and Firefly posters, and she had posters for the first and second Lord of the Rings movies taped to her ceiling. A too-small bedspread patterned with spaceships and planets was folded over the foot of her bed, the remnant of a childhood she wasn’t willing to let go of yet. I turned slowly in place, a lump in my throat that wasn’t caused just by the difficulty of breathing through the miasma of Chelsea’s magic. She deserved better than whatever was happening to her…and she deserved better than what was going to happen to her when she was finally found.
I closed my eyes, breathing deep as I searched for something—anything—that might help us track Chelsea. What I found was enough to make me stiffen in surprise. “Oh, oak and ash, that’s not good,” I murmured. Opening my eyes again, I looked around the room, gaze settling on the composition notebook next to the microscope. I reached for it.
“What are you doing?” demanded Bridget.
“I need to check something,” I said. “Both of you, stay out in the hall, please.”
As I’d hoped, a girl who kept her room as neat as Chelsea did, and who had such an obvious interest in science, also kept very careful notes. The notebook was full of columns showing dates, times, locations, and what she called “relevant factors.” Everything was written in heavy block letters, making it easy to read, even if it took me a moment to understand.
“Oak and ash,” I repeated, and added a human, “Fuck. Quentin, can you come in here?”
“Sure.” He walked over to me, followed by Bridget, who seemed to have decided “stay in the hall” only applied as long as she and Quentin were both doing it. I didn’t comment on her presence. I just handed Quentin the notebook.