it would be a good idea for me to escort you home.”
“I don’t need you to.”
“That’s nice,” said Tybalt, shrugging out of his jacket and draping it around my shoulders. “You look cold.”
“I’m not cold.” That was a lie—it was a nice night, but even the nicest night gets chilly after midnight in San Francisco. I pulled the jacket tight, trying to preserve the illusion of dignity. The leather smelled of Tybalt’s magic, all pennyroyal and musk. “I can get home just fine.”
“Of course you can,” Tybalt agreed, planting a hand on the small of my back and urging me to begin walking. “You are, after all, a perfectly reasonable, competent woman. It’s just that at the moment, you’re so drunk you can’t remember whether or not you’re wearing your own face, and I would really rather not scrape you off the sidewalk.”
His hand was a firm, insistent pressure. I began to walk, steadier now that I had something to lean against. “Nah, no sidewalk-scraping. You’d find me in an alley somewhere.”
“Probably true.”
We walked for a few blocks, with me wobbling along on clattering heels and him pacing silently by my side, only correcting my path when it seemed like I was going to fall off the sidewalk altogether. Finally, I said, “I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”
“I’m a cat. We aren’t required to make sense.”
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find any logical failings in that statement. It didn’t help that my head was starting to spin. I yawned.
“This is too slow,” Tybalt said, and, with that simple pronouncement, scooped me off the sidewalk and into his arms. I squawked. Amused, he said, “Oh, don’t bother. We both know how this ends, and it’ll be more pleasant for both of us if you just don’t struggle. I trust you haven’t moved?” I nodded. “Good. Now hold your breath; I know a shortcut.”
That was code for “I’m going to take you into the Shadows.” The Cait Sidhe have a lot of powers that my line—the Daoine Sidhe—don’t share. That includes access to the Shadow Roads, a gift that is, as far as I know, unique to the Cait Sidhe. Frankly, they can keep it. The Shadow Roads are dark and bitterly cold. It’s impossible to breathe there; your lungs would freeze. Tybalt seemed to take a perverse delight in hauling me through the Shadows, a convenient process neatly balanced out by the discomfort that it caused.
I took a deep breath, scrunching my eyes tightly shut. Tybalt chuckled, and I felt the muscles of his chest and arms bunch as he took two long steps and broke into a run.
The world flashed cold around us, all the heat ripped away in a few seconds. I nestled down against him without thinking about it as I started counting down in my head from ten, measuring the distance by the feel of Tybalt running. Drunk as I was, the experience was less disconcerting than it had been the first time Tybalt pulled me through the Shadows. It would have been almost pleasant, if it hadn’t been for the cold.
My silent countdown had just reached three when we plunged back out of the cold and into the comparative warmth of the June night. I opened my eyes, squinting through the ice crystals on my lashes. We were at my own front door. To fae eyes, the edges were marked with the glowing red tracery of the wards I’d set before heading out for the night.
“Much simpler,” said Tybalt. He walked up to the porch, noting, “I can’t go any further than this, I’m afraid. Wards.”
“Mmm.” The cold had made me drowsy, and I was comfortable where I was. Waving a hand, I mumbled, “Hey-diddle-diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.” The wards flared and disappeared, leaving the coppery scent of my magic hanging heavy in the air. I closed my eyes again. “There.”
“Nursery rhymes?” He sounded amused.
I shrugged. “They work.”
“Even so. The key?”
“Oh.” I freed a hand to dig into my tiny purse, finding my house key by feel. Tybalt plucked it from my fingers, juggling me effortlessly as he unlocked the door and carried me inside.
I fell asleep somewhere between the living room and the hall.
TWO
WAKING UP WAS COMPLICATED by the fact that I had absolutely no idea where I was. I opened my eyes, blinking at the ceiling. The air tasted like ashes. It wasn’t long past dawn; that was probably what woke me.