I wasn’t going to get any of that in the courtyard. Murmuring a quick farewell to the fallen handmaid, I turned and ran back down the steps to the door, heading into the hall and pausing only long enough to reorient myself to the distant sound of ghostly voices. They were coming from farther down the hall. I started toward them, slowly at first, and then breaking into a run that stopped only when I reached the door to what Dean called “the cove-side receiving room.” It hadn’t existed when Goldengreen was mine, but knowes can rearrange themselves. The current Count was a mermaid’s son. Of course there would be a seaside entrance.
Opening the door brought light back into the world. The spiraling stone stairway that descended toward the receiving room was lit by glowing abalone shells, which might have seemed tacky under other circumstances, but here and now were a welcome change from the unyielding dark. The voices were louder now. Moving cautiously, lest I attract attention I didn’t want, I started walking down the stairs.
The voices continued to get louder. I felt a small knot of tension in my shoulders give way as I realized that one of those voices belonged to Dean Lorden. He was shouting something I couldn’t make out, and he sounded every inch his mother’s son: imperious and angry, and ready to kick the world in the teeth until it started giving him what he wanted.
If Dean was alive, maybe Goldengreen hadn’t fallen quite yet. I still didn’t believe he was the one who had sealed the wards—not against his mother, not against me—but he was fighting, and that made a huge difference in his survival prospects. I sped up, taking the stairs as fast as I safely could, and wishing I dared to pull the “sliding down the banister” trick that had worked for me in the false Queen’s knowe.
Then I came around the last curve in the stairs, and froze, staring at the scene beneath me.
The receiving room was large enough to seem like it couldn’t possibly fit inside the knowe, with a redwood deck covering half the floor, while the rest gave way to sandy beach that yielded in turn to a small, private cove. The cliff wall extended down past the surface of the sea; I wasn’t sure what the seaward entrance actually looked like, and I didn’t want to know. Over a dozen of Goldengreen’s subjects were clustered together at the water’s edge, all but one standing as close behind their Count as they could. Dean stood at the front of the motley little group, a trident in his shaking hands, aimed at the person in front of him. Marcia was to his right, holding a butcher knife. Her hands weren’t shaking at all. She looked perfectly calm, and like she was ready for whatever was going to happen next.
In front of them on the sand was a woman who couldn’t possibly have been there. Her skin was so pale that poets could have been forgiven for calling it “as white as snow,” and her dark hair wavered between black and purple, casting off wildflower highlights when the light struck it just so. Her hands were empty, but you wouldn’t have known it from the terrified expressions of the people standing in front of her.
It was impossible. It was unbelievable. It had to be some kind of a trick. And yet . . .
“Evening?” I asked.
She turned, smiling at me with those familiar blood-red lips, looking somehow satisfied.
“Hello, October,” said Evening Winterrose, once Countess of Goldengreen. “It’s been a long time.”
THIRTEEN
“BUT . . . BUT YOU . . .” I STAMMERED, BEFORE words deserted me and left me speechless, cold, and confused. Evening raised her eyebrows, giving me an impatient look as familiar as it was disorienting. This couldn’t be happening. None of this was even remotely possible. I seized on that fact and wailed, “You’re dead! You can’t be here, because you’re dead!”
“That was the rumor, and yet.” Evening spread her hands. “Here I am.”
She looked exactly like she had the last time I’d seen her, before her murder had yanked me out of my self-imposed exile and back into Faerie, like it or not. Her hair was down, falling to her waist in an inky wave, and she was wearing a dark brown velvet dress with a white lace accent panel down the front, cinched at the waist like something stolen from a production of Wuthering Heights.
“Here you are,” I parroted numbly. Then I paused, eyes narrowing. “But this isn’t possible. Whoever hired you gave you the wrong face to borrow, lady.”
Evening blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“I’ve had doppelgangers used against me before. If your employer wanted you to achieve your mission without attracting attention, they should have suggested you mimic somebody who’d been dead for a little less time. Like, I don’t know, no time at all.” I drew my knife, keeping my eyes on Evening as I called, “Dean? Everybody okay over there?”
“I’ve had better days,” he said, almost laconically. “You’re all wet.”
“Yeah, well, I stopped off to talk to your mother. She’s a little concerned about the locked wards on your knowe.”
“The knowe is mine, not his, as well you know,” snapped Evening. “What’s more, the wards were closed by my hand, and because I needed to determine what had gone awry here in my absence. How did you get inside?”
I frowned, looking past her to Dean. “Is she telling the truth? Did she close the wards?”
“She came in through the cliffside entrance,” said Marcia. “She just walked in like she owned the place. We were in the courtyard, and . . . and . . .”
“And I reacted to a home invasion—to vagrancy—as I saw fit,” said Evening. “The law allows me to defend my home.”
“This isn’t your home!” snapped Dean. “I’m the Count here, and you’re a trespasser who is sorely trying my patience!”
Evening started to turn toward him, the smell of roses and snow wisping through the air like the beginnings of a venomous prayer. I gasped. I couldn’t stop myself.
Doppelgangers can steal faces. They can mimic a person to the point where that person’s loved ones would never know the difference. But the one thing no one can mimic is the scent of someone else’s magic. Even if they share an element—roses are common, for example—they’ll never be able to get the exact balance right. A person’s magic is a glimpse into their soul.
“Oak and ash,” I breathed, everything else forgotten as I stared at the miracle in front of me. “Evening. How are you alive?”
Evening stopped mid-turn and swiveled back toward me, a smug smile twisting at the corners of her lips. “Oh, now you believe that it’s me? What have I done to earn this honor?”
“Your magic started to rise,” I said, taking a step forward. My waterlogged sneakers squelched unpleasantly. “Roses and snow. You’re you. There’s no one else you could be. But how . . . this isn’t possible. You died. You cursed me, and then you died.”
“Did I?” She put a hand on her hip, Dean and the others apparently forgotten now that she had the opportunity to needle me. That, too, was familiar. Evening Winterrose had been the best enemy I’d ever had, always ready with a taunt or a harsh word that would still somehow manage to set me on the proper path. “I cursed you, yes, because I was afraid that ruffian Devin was going to try something, and I needed backup. If you’d been answering your phone that night, I wouldn’t have been forced to go so far. But I seriously doubt that I died.”
“The night-haunts came for your body,” I said. “That constituted proof of death to me.”
“The night-haunts can be bribed, if you know what they desire,” said Evening, dismissing my evidence with a wave of her hand. “As for the rest of it, I think it’s fairly clear that I’m alive. I was attacked in my apartment, and wounded to the point where the night-haunts came. It took me some time to recover. When I did, I returned to my knowe to finish the healing process, and found it infested with vermin. Perhaps now that you’re here, you can convince the vermin to leave.”