A lump formed in my throat. Sylvester only brought Raysel to visit the apartment I shared with Cliff once; it was too dangerous to take a noble child in the open often, and there was too much risk that Raysel would say something she shouldn’t. But Sylvester wanted to meet my daughter, who was too close to human to enter the knowe, and he wanted Raysel to start getting accustomed to the human world. We sat in the postage stamp yard behind the building for hours, drinking lemonade, talking, and watching Raysel chase pixies around the three stunted eucalyptus growing by the back fence.

Before they left, she asked me if she and Gilly were going to be friends. Maeve help me, I told her they would. Six months later, Raysel was gone. Not long after that, so was I. Cliff moved out of that apartment while I was missing, and I’d never been back.

“Yeah,” I said. “That sounds about right.”

We pulled up in front of my apartment complex only a few minutes later. Danny stopped at the curb, saying apologetically, “I’d come in an’ be social, but I gotta get home and feed the kids. You gonna be okay?”

“As okay as I can be,” I said, and got out of the cab.

“I’ll call as soon as I know anything,” said Danny. Then he was gone, merging swiftly back into passing traffic.

I hugged my waterlogged clothes to my chest as I walked up the sidewalk to the gate. Walther’s car was parked in one of the visitor’s spots, jammed in at an angle that made it clear how fast he’d been going when he arrived. I walked a little faster. If he was here during school hours, it was because he had something he needed to share.

The wards on the door were open. That was a relief. Maybe it’s unkind of me to expect May to sit around playing secretary, but I don’t trust answering machines anymore, and people needed to be able to reach me. I undid the locks, calling, “I’m home,” as I stepped inside.

“Oh, thank Oberon!” May came flying out of the kitchen, throwing her arms around my shoulders before she fully registered how wet I was. She squawked and pushed me away from her. “Toby, you’re soaked!”

“Didn’t Quentin tell you where I was going?” Sudden fear lanced through me. Danny hadn’t mentioned driving Quentin home; I’d just assumed he must’ve, that Quentin would have sent him to wait for me. If he hadn’t—

“Quentin’s asleep in my room,” said May. “He wasn’t making sense when he got here. He said you ran away with the mermaids. I put him to bed when the sun came up.”

“That’s pretty much exactly what happened.” I shook my head. “I went to Saltmist with Dianda, to look for clues about what happened to the boys.”

May’s pale eyes went wide. “Did you find anything?”

“It was Rayseline. Any doubts I may have had . . . is Walther here? I saw his car.”

“He’s in the kitchen. We were showing Raj how to use the cappuccino setting on the coffee maker.” Something clattered in the kitchen, illustrating her point.

My relationship with the coffee maker is very dear to my heart. I grimaced, picturing my overenthusiastic Fetch taking it apart. “Okay. Tell him I’m going to go change into something dry, and then I’ll come in to review what we know. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Back in a minute,” I said, and started for my room.

Getting out of my wet clothes was the first order of business, to be followed by figuring out how to dry my leather jacket without destroying it. They were comfortably mundane problems, and the fact that they’d come about for distinctly nonmundane reasons was secondary at best.

I peeled my leather jacket off as soon as my bedroom door was closed, hanging it from the doorknob to keep it from dripping—much—on the rest of the room. Everything else went into the hamper. I dried my hair with the discarded towel from last night—oak and ash, had that really only been last night?—and shrugged on my bathrobe. Walther and Raj could deal with me being in a state of mild undress. I wasn’t going to try putting on dry clothes until I had dry skin to go under them.

I was emptying my jacket pockets when there was a knock at the door. “You all right in there?” called May.

“Just soaked,” I called back. “Something up?”

“Raj did something to the coffee machine. It’s making foam, and Walther won’t stop laughing. You should come take a look.”

“Coming.” I checked the knot on my bathrobe, giving my rat’s-nest hair an irritated glance before grabbing my jacket. If anyone could get the salt off without ruining the leather, it was Walther.

The coffee party was in full swing in the kitchen. May had managed to divert the promised flood of foam, probably through means I didn’t want to hear about. She and Raj swabbed the floor with dish towels while Walther sat at the kitchen table, holding a mug and grinning. Spike was perched on Walther’s shoulder.

“Today we’re learning why it’s bad to use hearth magic to accelerate brewing,” May said, turning to wring her towel out over the sink.

“It was educational,” said Walther.

Raj beamed. “May said I couldn’t possibly mess up the new coffee maker.”

“I’m proud of you. Once again, you’ve managed to exceed all expectations. Never hex my coffee maker again.” I held up my jacket. “Walther, any chance you can get the saltwater out of this?”

Walther turned to face me, and blinked. “I can try,” he said, standing. Spike jumped down to the table. “Did you really visit the Undersea?”

“Well, first I rode a pissed-off mermaid down Leavenworth,” I said, handing him the jacket. “After that, yeah, I went to visit the Undersea. It was a weird night, and it’s already shaping up to be a weird day.”

“More and more, you convince me that taking a job in a nice, safe classroom was the smartest thing I ever did.”

“Yeah, well, it probably was,” I replied. “Why aren’t you there now?”

“I took the day off. The threat of war seemed slightly more important than keeping my freshman chemistry students from burning down the building.” Walther squinted at the leather. “What did you do?��

“Again, I visited the Undersea.”

“I don’t know why I bother asking.” He removed his glasses, tucking them into his coat pocket. He doesn’t need them—the only pureblood I’ve ever met who needed glasses was January O’Leary, and her eyes were actually damaged. Walther’s glasses are part of his whole Clark-Kent-isn’t-Superman routine, since no human disguise can hide the piercing Tylwyth Teg blue of his eyes. He doesn’t look at people as much as he looks through them. The glasses are intended to dampen the effect, since a little window dressing is better than having his students flee screaming on a regular basis.