Of course, I wouldn’t have been managing anything if Tybalt hadn’t interrupted those drug dealers. Maybe Tybalt was right when he said that we needed to have a conversation about the way I’d been acting lately. Maybe—

The lingering scent of magic in front of the Ames house hit me so hard that I stopped, staggering backward as if someone had punched me in the stomach. Quentin stopped in turn, his expression broadcasting confusion and alarm. “Toby?”

“Hang on.” I raised a hand to quiet him, taking deep, slow breaths as I tried to figure out what I was standing in the middle of. He stopped talking but didn’t move away.

My mother, Amandine, raised me as one of the Daoine Sidhe. I didn’t find out until recently that she was lying the whole time. She was Firstborn, the daughter of Oberon and an unnamed woman, and I was the first of a new race of fae—the Dóchas Sidhe. Exactly what we were for was yet to be determined. But if there was one thing we were made to do, it was blood magic, and the unique scents that accompany each person’s spellcasting are fundamentally tied to who and what they are—their blood.

Etienne’s signature was cedar smoke and lime juice. This scent was similar enough that I would have known the caster was related even if we hadn’t been looking for his daughter. Not cedar smoke, though; this was sycamore smoke. It was covered by a delicate veneer of calla lily flowers, softening and sweetening it. The trace was complicated, and got more complicated as I looked deeper. Some of it was fresh, but some of it was old—months, even years of little spells overlaying this one spot. Chelsea had been coming into her powers for a while before she disappeared. That wasn’t a good sign.

“Oak and ash,” I breathed.

“Toby?”

I shook my head. “We’re on the right track. This is the way she walks to school.”

“Yes, it is,” said a voice behind me—female, with the faintest trace of an Irish accent, as though the speaker had been away from home for so long that her roots were just another story. “Now would you like to tell me what you’re doing out here, or shall I be calling the police now?”

There are times when I think the universe is only happy when it has an excuse to make me miserable. “We’d rather you didn’t do that, if you don’t mind,” I said, turning. The woman on the sidewalk about six feet away was wearing a blue bathrobe and holding a cast iron frying pan in one hand. “Is there a problem?”

“Etienne sent you, didn’t he?”

I couldn’t keep myself from flinching. My reaction was slight, but it was enough. Her eyes narrowed, and she brandished the frying pan at us like a weapon.

Slowly, enunciating each word with great care to be sure I couldn’t misunderstand her, Bridget Ames said, “Give me back my daughter right now, or I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”

Oh, great. It was going to be one of those nights.

SIX

QUENTIN WAS SMART ENOUGH to stay behind me. I raised my hands in a placating gesture, saying, “I don’t know who you think we are, but we don’t have your daughter. We’re not kidnappers.”

“Then hold this.” She thrust the frying pan toward us. It was cold—it had to be, or she wouldn’t be able to hold the handle—but it might as well have been heated to the point of melting from the way it seemed to twist and warp the air when she got it close to me. I must have looked like I was going to throw up, because a triumphant smile twisted the corners of her lips as she said, “I keep it rubbed down with a mixture of crushed juniper berries and rowan ash. Don’t you like the way it makes the metal shine?”

That explained the heat. Normal iron hurts, and it’s possible to get iron poisoning from staying close to the stuff for too long. It’s not a pleasant experience; I don’t recommend it. But rubbing the frying pan with two of the oldest charms against the fae had amped its natural properties to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised if touching the metal burned my skin.

“It’s lovely,” I said, taking an involuntary half step back. “Really, though. I don’t like to handle other people’s cookware.”

“That’s the best you can manage? That’s your bright, bold lie?”

“Look, lady, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had somebody corner me on a dark street and try to hand me a frying pan before,” I snapped. I could hear Quentin moving. I hoped that meant he was getting farther away, not preparing to do something stupid. Sadly, after spending so much time with me, he was just as likely to be getting ready to charge.

Bridget blinked before barking a single, sharp sound I assumed was a form of pained laughter. “This is what the Fair Folk have come to? This is the great threat of the hollow hills?”

“Um, no. This is a San Francisco native and her—” I struggled to find a word that existed in the modern mortal parlance, and settled for the Batmanesque, “—ward, wishing you’d stop waving that thing at us and back the hell off. We don’t want your frying pan.”

“Because you can’t touch it, is that right?” Bridget’s lips firmed into a resolute line. “My shirt’s inside-out, there’s bread in my pockets, and I’ve a firm grasp on this pan. Take a step toward me, and you’ll regret it.”

“But you’re between us and the car,” said Quentin, with puzzled practicality.

“I’m not sure she’s thinking clearly right now.” I lowered my hands. Shooting for a soothing tone, I asked, “Is there a reason you’re out here threatening us with your frying pan?”

Bridget gave me a withering look. “You can refuse to talk to me. You can lie to me—lord knows, it’s what your people are renowned for. But don’t you dare talk to me like I’m an idiot. My little girl is missing. You bastards left us alone for sixteen years. Why couldn’t you have stayed gone? No one believes in you anymore. Why couldn’t you let us be?”

I hesitated. The pain on her face was familiar; it was a pain I’d felt myself, when it seemed that the human world had stolen my daughter from me. No mother should have to feel that way. The secrecy of Faerie is one of our oldest traditions…but it had already been broken where Bridget was concerned. Etienne broke it long before I appeared on the scene, while I was still wearing fins and scales and unable to do anything for anyone, not even myself.