One Salt Sea
Page 27

I grimaced. “I’d rather talk to her in person if I’m going to be asking her to do something for me. Besides, knowing her, she’ll just tell me to come over if I call.” It’s harder to make me drink disgusting things when I’m not in her living room.
“I see. And you’re forgetting an errand.”
“I am?”
“Unless you wished to let my people invade your knowe without warning those already there? A second war could be amusing, but probably unproductive.”
Images of Marcia trying to shoo the entire Court of Cats out with her broom filled my head. I sighed. “Right. Adding a stop at Goldengreen to the agenda.”
“Well, then.” Tybalt straightened. “With so much to do before tomorrow night, we should be underway.”
“True enough.” I poured the contents of the coffee pot into the thermos. They fit nicely on top of my original mug of coffee. “If you’re planning to be underfoot all night, you can get me the milk.”
“As you like.” Tybalt opened the fridge and pulled out the milk. Our fingers grazed when I reached for the carton. I felt my ears go red, and Tybalt smiled, a slow, cat-with-a-canary expression that did its best to chase all thoughts of war—and Connor—from my mind.
Connor. Oh, oak and ash, what was going to happen if we wound up on opposite sides of a war? Would the Undersea blame him if his ex-wife turned out to be the cause of their current situation? Maeve forbid, would the Queen?
I snatched the carton from Tybalt’s hand with a quick, almost jerky motion, topping off the thermos before thrusting the milk back at him. “Put this away.”
“Certainly,” said Tybalt, taking the milk.
“Be right back.” I trotted down the hall to bang on May’s door. “Hey!”
She didn’t open it. “Hey, what?”
“I’m going out. Call Danny if I’m not back by sunrise. Got it?”
“Got it!” She didn’t ask any questions. May knows me well enough to know better. Any answers I gave would just make it harder for her to stay calm.
There wasn’t anything else I could do in the apartment. I walked back to Tybalt, sure I was making a mistake, and utterly unable to guess what that mistake might be. “All right, come on. If you want a ride, now’s the time.”
“After you,” he said, and followed me to the front door.
I grabbed my leather jacket from the rack as we passed. Even in June, the nights can be chilly in San Francisco. The fact that my jacket originally belonged to Tybalt didn’t make any difference at all. Honestly, it didn’t . . . and maybe if I kept telling myself that, it would start being true.
With Tybalt behind me and the thermos in my hand, I stepped out into the night.
NINE
TYBALT DIDN’T SAY ANYTHING as we drove; he just stared fixedly out the window. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out what I’d done wrong this time before I realized that it wasn’t about me at all. Tybalt’s older than I am. I’ve never asked how much older, but some of the things he’s said make me guess that he’s at least three hundred. I grew up with cars, and he didn’t.
That’s the thing about living forever. You eventually stop getting used to the way the world changes. “We’re almost there,” I said, as reassuringly as I could.
He shot me a grateful look before catching himself and sitting up in his seat. “Are we? I was enjoying the scenery.”
“Well, we could go around the block a few times if you want—”
“No,” he said hurriedly. Then he sighed, rubbing his face with one hand. “No, please. I’m quite prepared to be out of this infernal construction. We could have walked the Shadow Roads, you know. We would have been there long since.”
“What, and miss the fun of driving?” I offered a sympathetic smile. “It’s okay. Have you been to the Luidaeg’s before?”
“I have never had the privilege—or the need.” It was his turn to smile, putting a trace of wryness under the expression. “It seems you spend more time than most in a state of sheer emergency.”
“It’s a gift.”
“Yes.” He chuckled. “I suppose it is.”
We drove in silence for a while longer. I was thinking about turning on the radio when Tybalt said, almost to himself, “I don’t understand why it always comes to this.”
I barely stopped myself from twisting to look at him. That would probably have sent us careening into the nearest tree. “I don’t understand.”
“War. It seems that in Faerie, conflicts such as these must always come to war.”
“But . . . you’re Cait Sidhe. No offense, but your people are some of the most violent I’ve ever seen. You fight constantly.”
“Yes; we fight from the day we’re born—and we learn that fights have consequences. When you cut someone, he bleeds. When someone cuts you, you scar. Nothing is free. Sometimes I think we’re the only ones in Faerie who remember that.”
I slanted a frown toward him. “Everyone knows wars have costs.”
“If they did, they wouldn’t fight them. Watch. The veterans are smart enough to leave for other Kingdoms while they still can; most of the ones who come when the call goes out won’t have ever fought a war before. They’ll come because they think it’s honorable, or because they want to be called heroes. They’ll show up in their pretty armor, and they’ll litter the battlefield like leaves.” He sighed, running a hand over his face. “I’ve been to war. Believe me. What’s coming won’t be anything honorable.”
“I thought Cait Sidhe didn’t have wars.” Bloody, brutal battles for succession, sure, but not wars.
“We don’t.” Tybalt flashed a humorless smile. “What makes you think you’re the first of your kind to befriend me? I’m older than you. I’ve had time to put some skeletons in my closet.”
“It’s the ones you buried in the backyard that worry me.” My attempt at levity sounded flat even to my own ears. If we went to war, people were going to die.
The joke pretty much killed the conversation. He shook his head, turning his gaze back to the window. I sighed and kept driving. Only a few blocks later, we entered the Luidaeg’s neighborhood, and a thick fog that smelled like brine and ashes rose to envelop the car. The buildings that lined the street were dark, the mist blurring them into architectural ghosts. I was willing to bet that the Luidaeg’s mortal neighbors, few as they were, had been gripped with the sudden desire to visit friends or relatives as far from the coast as possible, leaving their homes abandoned.