Ashes of Honor
Page 28
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“Okay,” said Quentin.
I tossed him my cell phone. “Here. Call Walther. Let him know we’re coming back to Berkeley. We don’t need a picture anymore, but if he can mix anything that would work as a temporary, nonharmful magic suppressant, I’d love to hear about it.” If we could shut down Chelsea’s ability to open doors for a little while, maybe we’d be able to catch her before she gated herself away. And if whoever took her was on her trail, well…
I felt sorry for them. I was cranky, I was tired, I needed caffeine, and people who kidnap teenage girls piss me off. Call it my way of working through residual anger issues from when Raysel grabbed my daughter, but if I got my hands on Chelsea’s kidnappers, they were going to learn that I don’t play nicely with people who mess with kids.
Quentin dialed Walther’s number and must have reached him, because a few seconds later, he identified himself and started explaining the situation. I tuned him out, focusing on the road instead of my squire. I knew I didn’t need to monitor him. If you’d asked me three years ago whether I would trust my status updates to a teenage boy, I would have looked at you as if you were insane. These days, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
Besides, we were crossing the Bay Bridge, and I’ve always been a little paranoid about that particular stretch of road. Something about being on a giant iron structure suspended over the water rubs me the wrong way.
“Toby?” Quentin lowered the phone. “Walther wants to know how long the power damper needs to work.”
“I don’t know. Long enough for us to keep Chelsea from turning the fabric of the universe into pudding. An hour? A day?”
“Got it.” He relayed this to Walther. There was a pause before he lowered the phone again, and said, “He can do a year if you don’t want it to hurt her. That’s sort of the minimum. Anything that doesn’t last as long will probably mess her up pretty bad at the same time.”
A year was a long time to strip someone of her magic. On the other hand…if Chelsea decided to become human, she wasn’t going to have magic anymore, no matter what. If she chose to become fae, a year wouldn’t matter one way or the other. “Tell him a year should be fine. Anything that lets us get close enough to her to make this stop.”
“Okay.” He raised the phone again, and I returned my attention to the road. My cell phone landed in my lap less than a minute later. It bounced once before wedging itself between my knees. “He’s on it,” said Quentin.
“Good. Did he say when we could pick it up?”
“No. He just laughed and hung up on me.”
I nodded. “Even better.” Working with me has had the unexpected side effect of teaching Walther that sometimes you not only don’t get sufficient time to prepare, you don’t get any time at all. I liked to tell myself it was good for him. It’s too easy for purebloods to get complacent about time management—when you have forever, what’s the point of worrying about whether or not you’ll get your library books back on time?
“You’re terribly hard on your allies,” commented Tybalt’s voice from the backseat. “It’s a wonder any of us remain willing to stand by you for more than a season of abuses.”
I yelped, involuntarily jerking the wheel to the side. We swerved across two lanes of traffic, causing the cars around me to hit their brakes and horns practically in unison. Quentin shouted something I couldn’t make out over the mingled cacophony of the horns and my own steady swearing. I risked a glance in his direction. He was hanging onto the car’s “oh shit” handle so hard that his knuckles were white.
“Really, October, am I worth this much fuss and bother?” asked Tybalt.
“I am going to murder you!” I shouted. The car was mostly back under my control, but we were still straddling two lanes, and the drivers around us were still leaning on their horns so hard that it was hard to hear myself think.
“Now that’s definitely overreacting,” said Tybalt. The scent of pennyroyal and musk filled the cab. I felt the weight of an illusion settle over us. Most of the horns stopped, possibly because the other drivers could no longer see our car.
I got us back into one lane, hit the gas hard enough to send the car lurching forward, and risked looking away from the road long enough to glare at Tybalt in the rearview mirror. “What in the name of Oberon’s ass do you think you’re doing?” I demanded. Something else occurred to me, and I added, “And how did you do that? We’re in a moving car. How did you get here?”
“Cars cast shadows,” said Tybalt. Then he sighed. It was a deep, exhausted sound, and it told me how much effort he had expended in shifting himself into his current position. “The Luidaeg may have provided some small measure of assistance,” he admitted. “I arrived at her domicile only a few minutes after your departure, and once I was able to impress the urgency of my errand upon her, she agreed to help me.”
“I realize I’m the last person in the world who should be saying this, but have you heard of this amazing new invention called ‘the telephone’?” I asked.
“As I have used them to contact you in the past, yes, I am familiar with the concept. This was too important to explain over a telephone line.” He paused. “It concerns my nephew.”
“Raj?” Quentin let go of the handle, twisting to stare into the back. Much as I wanted to do the same, I kept my eyes on the road. Tybalt only needed to be stared down by one of us at a time. “Is he okay?”
“That is yet to be seen.” Tybalt reached forward, placing a hand on my upper arm. “Can you pull over?”
The end of the bridge was in sight up ahead. “In a few minutes,” I agreed. “Tybalt—”
“I wouldn’t be here if this weren’t important enough to be worth the risk,” he said.
“I know,” I said, and I meant it. Now that my first mingled spike of surprise and anger was fading, it was being replaced by a deeper, slower emotion: fear. Tybalt was born before cars existed. He doesn’t like them under the best of circumstances. If he was willing to use the Shadow Roads to get into a car…
This couldn’t be good.
I pulled off the freeway in Emeryville and parked next to a polluted stretch of brackish swamp. A heron raised its head, looking at us without interest before it went back to poking among the cattails with its long orange beak, looking for something to eat. Shoving my phone into a pocket, I got out of the car, slamming the door to make my lingering displeasure clear as I turned to wait for Tybalt to emerge. Quentin did much the same.
I tossed him my cell phone. “Here. Call Walther. Let him know we’re coming back to Berkeley. We don’t need a picture anymore, but if he can mix anything that would work as a temporary, nonharmful magic suppressant, I’d love to hear about it.” If we could shut down Chelsea’s ability to open doors for a little while, maybe we’d be able to catch her before she gated herself away. And if whoever took her was on her trail, well…
I felt sorry for them. I was cranky, I was tired, I needed caffeine, and people who kidnap teenage girls piss me off. Call it my way of working through residual anger issues from when Raysel grabbed my daughter, but if I got my hands on Chelsea’s kidnappers, they were going to learn that I don’t play nicely with people who mess with kids.
Quentin dialed Walther’s number and must have reached him, because a few seconds later, he identified himself and started explaining the situation. I tuned him out, focusing on the road instead of my squire. I knew I didn’t need to monitor him. If you’d asked me three years ago whether I would trust my status updates to a teenage boy, I would have looked at you as if you were insane. These days, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
Besides, we were crossing the Bay Bridge, and I’ve always been a little paranoid about that particular stretch of road. Something about being on a giant iron structure suspended over the water rubs me the wrong way.
“Toby?” Quentin lowered the phone. “Walther wants to know how long the power damper needs to work.”
“I don’t know. Long enough for us to keep Chelsea from turning the fabric of the universe into pudding. An hour? A day?”
“Got it.” He relayed this to Walther. There was a pause before he lowered the phone again, and said, “He can do a year if you don’t want it to hurt her. That’s sort of the minimum. Anything that doesn’t last as long will probably mess her up pretty bad at the same time.”
A year was a long time to strip someone of her magic. On the other hand…if Chelsea decided to become human, she wasn’t going to have magic anymore, no matter what. If she chose to become fae, a year wouldn’t matter one way or the other. “Tell him a year should be fine. Anything that lets us get close enough to her to make this stop.”
“Okay.” He raised the phone again, and I returned my attention to the road. My cell phone landed in my lap less than a minute later. It bounced once before wedging itself between my knees. “He’s on it,” said Quentin.
“Good. Did he say when we could pick it up?”
“No. He just laughed and hung up on me.”
I nodded. “Even better.” Working with me has had the unexpected side effect of teaching Walther that sometimes you not only don’t get sufficient time to prepare, you don’t get any time at all. I liked to tell myself it was good for him. It’s too easy for purebloods to get complacent about time management—when you have forever, what’s the point of worrying about whether or not you’ll get your library books back on time?
“You’re terribly hard on your allies,” commented Tybalt’s voice from the backseat. “It’s a wonder any of us remain willing to stand by you for more than a season of abuses.”
I yelped, involuntarily jerking the wheel to the side. We swerved across two lanes of traffic, causing the cars around me to hit their brakes and horns practically in unison. Quentin shouted something I couldn’t make out over the mingled cacophony of the horns and my own steady swearing. I risked a glance in his direction. He was hanging onto the car’s “oh shit” handle so hard that his knuckles were white.
“Really, October, am I worth this much fuss and bother?” asked Tybalt.
“I am going to murder you!” I shouted. The car was mostly back under my control, but we were still straddling two lanes, and the drivers around us were still leaning on their horns so hard that it was hard to hear myself think.
“Now that’s definitely overreacting,” said Tybalt. The scent of pennyroyal and musk filled the cab. I felt the weight of an illusion settle over us. Most of the horns stopped, possibly because the other drivers could no longer see our car.
I got us back into one lane, hit the gas hard enough to send the car lurching forward, and risked looking away from the road long enough to glare at Tybalt in the rearview mirror. “What in the name of Oberon’s ass do you think you’re doing?” I demanded. Something else occurred to me, and I added, “And how did you do that? We’re in a moving car. How did you get here?”
“Cars cast shadows,” said Tybalt. Then he sighed. It was a deep, exhausted sound, and it told me how much effort he had expended in shifting himself into his current position. “The Luidaeg may have provided some small measure of assistance,” he admitted. “I arrived at her domicile only a few minutes after your departure, and once I was able to impress the urgency of my errand upon her, she agreed to help me.”
“I realize I’m the last person in the world who should be saying this, but have you heard of this amazing new invention called ‘the telephone’?” I asked.
“As I have used them to contact you in the past, yes, I am familiar with the concept. This was too important to explain over a telephone line.” He paused. “It concerns my nephew.”
“Raj?” Quentin let go of the handle, twisting to stare into the back. Much as I wanted to do the same, I kept my eyes on the road. Tybalt only needed to be stared down by one of us at a time. “Is he okay?”
“That is yet to be seen.” Tybalt reached forward, placing a hand on my upper arm. “Can you pull over?”
The end of the bridge was in sight up ahead. “In a few minutes,” I agreed. “Tybalt—”
“I wouldn’t be here if this weren’t important enough to be worth the risk,” he said.
“I know,” I said, and I meant it. Now that my first mingled spike of surprise and anger was fading, it was being replaced by a deeper, slower emotion: fear. Tybalt was born before cars existed. He doesn’t like them under the best of circumstances. If he was willing to use the Shadow Roads to get into a car…
This couldn’t be good.
I pulled off the freeway in Emeryville and parked next to a polluted stretch of brackish swamp. A heron raised its head, looking at us without interest before it went back to poking among the cattails with its long orange beak, looking for something to eat. Shoving my phone into a pocket, I got out of the car, slamming the door to make my lingering displeasure clear as I turned to wait for Tybalt to emerge. Quentin did much the same.
