Late Eclipses
Page 43

The truth is sometimes the most effective weapon. I hadn’t known that, and I’d never tried to find out. I squared my shoulders, drawing myself to my full height. She barely came up to my chin. It wasn’t much of an advantage, but it was what I had. “Don’t talk about Lily.”
“Or you’ll do what? Cry? Beg for mercy? Murder another one of your friends? Really, I can’t wait to see what you’ll do next.”
That was all I could take. I lunged—
—and grabbed empty air. I whirled, already searching for her as I tried to figure out what was going on. She’d been casting a shadow! The Tuatha can teleport, but I’d never heard of Oleander possessing that particular talent. Faerie magic matures as people get older, but it usually stops after the first century or two; adults rarely develop new gifts. So if she wasn’t an illusion, what did her disappearances mean?
Oberon help me, I was afraid to find out.
“Surely you’ve figured it out by now.” She was ten feet away, smirking. Her clothes had become skintight and a decade and a half out of fashion—the outfit she wore the day I caught her in the Tea Gardens. “You’re not that stupid.”
“Figured what out?” I asked, resisting the urge to charge her again.
Her smile faded. “You have to know I’m not here, October. Do you think I’d endanger myself to get back at you?”
“What are you saying?” I asked, around the sinking numbness in my stomach. My head was starting to pound again. I knew what she was trying to tell me.
I didn’t want to hear it.
“Do I need to spell it out? Fine, then. I’m. Not. Real.” She vanished. She cast a shadow. But when April O’Leary—the only teleporter I knew who didn’t open some sort of visible door—moved like that, there was a flare of ozone and a rush of displaced air. When Oleander did it, there was nothing but emptiness. She wasn’t there.
Her voice came from behind me: “You’re a changeling. You knew this would come.”
“I’m not crazy,” I said. I wasn’t sure which of us was lying, and that was the worst part: the uncertainty. Because her words didn’t sound false to me.
“So why am ‘I’ only targeting your friends? Why would ‘I’ do such a thing? You did it, all of it. It’s happened. You’ve gone over the edge.” She giggled. “Devin did it. Gordan did it. Even your mother did it—she’s as crazy as any changeling. It comes of confusion in the blood, and she was always confused. Falling doesn’t hurt you. Just the people you care about, and once you’ve fallen far enough, they won’t matter.”
“You’re lying! ” I whirled. I was half-blind with tears, but I knew where she was standing. I could grab her before she had a chance to run.
There was no one there.
EIGHTEEN
THE BASEBALL BAT SLIPPED FROM MY nerveless fingers, clattering against the ground. The noise was enough to break the haze and let me start moving. It was also enough to let me start thinking again. Taken together, those two things weren’t much of a mercy.
I dropped to my knees, barely noticing the gravel biting through the thin denim of my jeans. I was alone, just like I’d been in the botanical gardens, just like I’d been on the terrace with Luna. I was alone, and Oleander . . . she had to be lying. If I was losing my mind—if I was the one doing these terrible things—I’d know. Wouldn’t I?
Footsteps approached from behind me. I stood, slamming my back against the side of the car. The man who’d been jogging toward me stopped, expression concerned. “Miss? Are you all right?”
“I—what?” I couldn’t see an illusion-haze around him; that was good. It meant he was probably human, and mankind’s instinctive tendency to ignore the fae would protect me if I could get him to stop focusing on me. Unfortunately, the words to reassure him wouldn’t come. I’ve always been good with words, and they’d deserted me. “I’m fine.”
“I’m Paul,” he said, holding his hands out in the palms-upward gesture men always seem to use with distressed women they don’t know. I tentatively filed him under the mental category of “harmless.” My panic was fading, replaced by numb focus distorted by the pounding in my head. “Did something happen? Should I go for help?”
“I’m fine,” I repeated. People need to be reassured; he’d leave when he was sure I wasn’t hurt. He’d probably be glad his good deed had been so easy. “It was the heat.”
That was an answer he could understand. He offered a relieved smile. “It’s getting warmer. You shouldn’t be wearing that coat, especially if you’re going to park your car back here near the vents. Be more careful, okay?”
I forced myself to smile. The numbness made it easier. “Sure thing. I’ll head straight home and change.”
“Good.” Turning, he jogged on toward the parking lot. I waited until he was out of sight before bolting for the botanical gardens, heading for the hawthorns where the shadows would be deepest.
Oleander was a liar. I knew that . . . but suppose, just suppose that “she” was a figment of my imagination, a little part of me trying to tell myself the truth. If I was going crazy—if I was losing time—I didn’t know it. But that didn’t make it impossible.
Luck was with me in at least one regard: I didn’t see any tourists as I ran to my destination. The day was bright enough that even the shadows around the hawthorns were shallow, and they didn’t part at my approach. I had no key to the Cait Sidhe kingdom. I didn’t know how to get their attention, but I had nowhere else to go, and nothing else to try. I flung myself at the bushes, beating my fists against the thorns.
“Tybalt!” Maybe I was going crazy and maybe I wasn’t, but there was a killer on the loose and I didn’t know what to do. Worse, I didn’t know whether that killer was me. I needed Tybalt, and I needed him now, because I trusted him enough to let him be the one to decide whether he couldn’t trust me anymore.
I called his name until the words were gone and there was nothing left but sobbing, and still I kept beating my hands against the thorns. My head was killing me, and I couldn’t think, and I was so scared . . .
Tybalt’s hands gripped my shoulders, pulling me away from the hawthorns. I didn’t question how he’d managed to get behind me; I just huddled against him and cried, cradling my bloody hands in my lap. He plucked the twigs out of my hair, one by one, before putting a hand under my chin and turning my face toward him.