Late Eclipses
Page 22

It couldn’t be a coincidence that Karen made me dream about Oleander the night before I picked up traces of the bitch’s magic in a crowded room. There were no good reasons for Oleander to be at Shadowed Hills, but there were a hell of a lot of bad ones, and I wasn’t willing to take the chance she’d get away while I was playing it safe.
I started down the terrace. The light filtering through the curtained double doors into the ballroom made navigation easy, as long as I stayed close to the side of the building. Silver stars sparkled in the sky overhead, throwing down rays of frosted light that managed to be brighter and gentler than mortal moonlight.
I paused at the first corner, listening for footsteps, but all I heard was the muted sound of the Ball coming from the windows. I started forward again, walking along the stretch of terrace above the main rose garden. Something rustled to one side, and I whirled, hands going to my knives.
One of the climbing roses that crawled up the side of the hall had pulled loose from its trellis and was slapping against the rail. I took a deep breath, counted to ten, and started walking again. Jumpy? Me? Damn right. I spent fourteen years wearing fins the last time I got near Oleander de Merelands. That’s not the sort of thing you forget. That’s the sort of thing that—
I stopped in my tracks. That’s the sort of thing that should make you too smart to go wandering around alone, in the dark, with no real guarantee of backup.
“What the hell am I doing?” I muttered.
The light from the ballroom didn’t quite extend to the rail surrounding the terrace. The figure standing there was almost obscured by the shadows, right up until she turned to face me. For a single heart-stopping moment, it looked like Oleander: long dark hair, slim hands, and a smile full of poison. I snapped into a fighting stance, all hesitation forgotten . . . and the woman laughed, stepping forward.
The light shifted, revealing her smile to be sweet, if weary, and her hair to be a deep, true brown. “Am I that fearsome, or did Sylvester send you to put me out of my misery after dealing with those meddlesome ‘guests’ from Roan Rathad?” asked Luna. “I’ve dodged them for now, thank Titania.”
“Luna?” I dropped my hands away from my knives, reeling at the enormity of my own mistake. If I hadn’t realized who she was before I drew . . . “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.”
“That was my intent, given the delegation I was just meeting with. Have you seen them? Please tell me they didn’t follow you.”
“Not that I noticed,” I said, still trying to swallow my dismay. My conviction of Oleander’s presence was fading, replaced by confusion and a pounding headache. “Has anyone passed you in the last few minutes?”
“No, no one.” She turned to pluck a goblet from the rail behind her before flashing me a concerned look. “There were people here when I first came out, but they’ve gone back inside. October, what’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I’m starting to think I have.” My headache was getting worse. Where the hell were the guards? Connor was the husband of the presumptive Ducal heir. Even if they thought he was being crazy, they should have humored him and come looking for me.
“What are you talking about?” Luna’s question dragged my attention back to her. She was frowning, her silver-furred tails beginning to twitch. She wasn’t born Kitsune, but she’d picked up a lot of the body language after wearing a Kitsune skin for over a hundred years. I never would have suspected her of being something else if I hadn’t met her parents.
“I thought I was following someone,” I said lamely.
“And this phantom would be . . . ?”
There was no point in lying. If nothing else, I’d have to explain when the guards showed up—if the guards showed up. “Oleander de Merelands.”
Luna’s eyes widened in justified dismay. “That’s impossible. She’d never . . . she’d never dare!”
Sixteen years ago, Luna and Rayseline Torquill vanished into thin air. Our only leads pointed to Sylvester’s brother; that was why Sylvester sent me to find him. I learned a lot of things from that little errand, including what it’s like to be a fish . . . but I didn’t find the missing Torquills. They beat me home by almost three years, and I still don’t know how. Sylvester normally tells me everything. He won’t tell me that. All I knew for sure was that they made it home before I did, and that Raysel came home broken.
“It was her,” I said, trying to sound confident. Oak and ash, could I be wrong? Did I want to be right?
“It’s not possible. The roses would tell me.” Luna meant that literally. Her mother was the Dryad Firstborn, and Luna was essentially a Dryad of roses before she hid herself inside a Kitsune skin.
“I just—”
“We all make mistakes.” Luna nodded like she was trying to convince herself. “This must have been one of them. You’ve had a hard few days.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, uneasily. “I was meaning to find you anyway.”
She glanced away. “I thought you might. Sylvester sent a messenger to the Tea Gardens to ask if there was anything we could do to help, but we haven’t heard back.”
“Lily’s subjects are a little distracted right now,” I said. That was the understatement of the night. “Have you ever heard of anything like this? I mean, Undine aren’t supposed to get sick, are they?”
“No. They’re not.” She took an abrupt gulp from her goblet and grimaced like she’d tasted something bitter. “Maeve’s teeth, I have no idea what convinced our steward to stock this vintage . . . Undine are born of water, they live by water, and they don’t get sick. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Right.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. Medicine gets a lot more complicated when half the people involved aren’t technically “alive” by any normal standard of measurement. “Would your mom know anything?”
“No, October.” Luna actually sounded amused. “Her children are plants. We drink water, we’re not made of water.”
I lowered my hand. “I had to ask.”
“I know. I’ll send word to Mother, see if she might have encountered this sometime in the past. It’s a long shot, but since we can’t ask my grandmother . . . ”