“Where are we?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, just kept pulling.
Oh, I was getting tired of this. I dug my heels into the next crack in the sidewalk, bracing myself against one of those intrusive roots. Sir Etienne’s grip slipped as my sudden motionlessness dragged him to a halt, and he turned to glare at me.
His glare was less impressive when filtered through a human disguise. I wondered if that was true of everyone. Maybe Father’s patron wouldn’t be so terrifying if I could just get her to filter herself through humanity before she came to remind me of how inferior I was.
“You agreed,” he snapped.
“I said I’d help you if I could, not that I’d let you toss me around like a sack of potatoes and drag me unfamiliar places without explanations,” I said. “You want me to help you, I said I would try, we’re fine there. But you wouldn’t be doing it like this if it were something you could tell your liege, which means you can’t exactly tattle on me if I don’t give it my all. You want the best of me, you need to tell me why I’m here.”
His temper flared, eyebrows drawing together as he scowled and snapped, “You will speak to me with civility, you little—” The flash of anger faded as quickly as it had come, replaced by what looked like sincere regret. He finally loosened his grasp on my wrist, allowing me to pull free and hug my arms against my chest, trying to make myself feel marginally better.
Somehow, the regret made me feel worse than the anger. Purebloods weren’t supposed to look at me like they’d been in the wrong for raising their tempers, like I was somehow deserving of apologies. After January’s impossible thanks, I was even more on edge than my surroundings justified.
“I’m sorry, October,” he said, voice dropping and turning raspy with what sounded like sincere regret. “I’ve just been carrying this for so long, and to have a resolution possibly within my grasp . . . You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for the chance to fix this, to finish it. It’s going to destroy me, and I’ll be glad to go, if it means I’ve made things right.”
This was starting to sound serious, and far more important than anything a mere changeling should be involved with. “Can you tell me exactly what’s going on?”
“Not out on the street,” said Etienne. “We arrived here because my . . . friend . . . dislikes it when I enter the house through other means. She says it’s disrespectful. I’ve already done enough to ruin her life, I prefer not to upset her further.”
“But you’re not intending to hurt me, or force me to hurt anyone else?” My head was still pounding. I wasn’t sure how much of a fight I’d be able to put up if he tried to make me do something I really didn’t want to do.
Hopefully, I wouldn’t need to find out.
“Stars, no!” said Etienne, sounding properly horrified. I realized I’d stopped thinking of him by his honorific sometime during this conversation on the street. He was a man like any other, and he should be allowed all the complexities that included. “I expect I’ll need to ask for bloodshed, but I don’t know that it will be yours, and any request would be consensual.”
“I stopped because I wanted to know more, and now I feel like I know less,” I complained, as I started moving again, stepping up next to him and gesturing for him to keep going. “But you’re right about some things not being safe to discuss out on the street. What is that smell?”
“Car exhaust,” said Etienne, turning off the sidewalk and onto the short walkway up to the house we’d been moving toward. “At least, I assume you know what a bonfire smells like.”
“Ha ha,” I said, and then winced, barely able to believe that I’d been sarcastic in the presence of a pureblood who wasn’t my sister. August would have thought it was funny, not inappropriate. August would probably have congratulated me for finding the nerve.
To my surprise, Etienne also found it funny—or at least funny enough to chuckle, the sound dry and brisk. “As I said, I assumed you’d know the other scents. Car exhaust is the result of motor vehicles burning a mixture of petrochemicals for internal combustion. The smell can be . . . quite surprising, when you’re not expecting it.”
I was beginning to think I should stop asking for explanations, if every one of them was just going to add further incomprehensibility to the mix.
Etienne shot me an anxious look, no longer laughing. “What you’re about to see is private. You can tell no one. Not even your family. I apologize for asking you to keep secrets, but for reasons of safety, I must.”
“I . . . I will do my best not to create a situation where I would be asked directly,” I said. If someone commanded me to tell them, I would be unable to stop myself.
Etienne nodded gravely. “That may be the best I can hope for.” He pressed a small button next to the door.
A bell rang somewhere inside the house. I tensed, moving to stand partially behind him. Etienne shot me a reassuring look, then turned back to the door, clearly waiting.
Seconds ticked by, and I became more and more uneasy standing on this human street in the late afternoon, sunlight all around us and cars occasionally driving by, adding more “exhaust” to the already-heavy air. I was about to grab Etienne’s arm and ask him to take me away from there when the door finally swung open, and I saw the last thing I could have possibly expected standing there.
A human woman.
Sure, this was a human neighborhood, and sure, Etienne wore a human disguise, but somehow I had expected some greater secret than the existence of a human where the other humans lived. She was wearing some sort of loose blue shirt with long sleeves and a neckline that had been stretched all out of shape, blue, with the word CAL written across the front in large yellow letters. She had the same sort of trousers on as I did, and they looked no less indecent on someone else.
Her hair, shaggy and brown, was pinned atop her head in a loose knot, held there with several pencils that had been shoved haphazardly through the tangles. Her skin was a few shades lighter than Etienne’s, a few shades darker than mine. And she seemed entirely unsurprised to find him standing on her porch.
“Etienne!” she said, stepping back and holding the door open wider. “Come in, come in. I’ll make you a cuppa. Who’s your friend?”
There was a wariness I couldn’t quite read in her question, but I still followed Etienne as he stepped over the threshold. He placed his hands to either side of her face and kissed her forehead while she tilted her head back and beamed at him, utterly at peace, utterly trusting. It ached, for some reason I couldn’t quite define, to see them so.
“This is October,” he said, letting her go again and gesturing to me. “She’s the younger of the two girls I told you about.”
“Ah.” She looked at me, expression sharper now. “You’ve gotten an agreement, then? Or you’ve abducted the poor child for your own ends?”
“A bit of both,” he admitted. “October, this is Bridget. Bess.”
He paused then, stepping closer to her and putting an arm around her shoulders. Seeming to catch her cue, the human woman—Bridget—leaned up against him, sending a polite smile in my direction.