NE August 22nd, 2012 We have heard the chimes at midnight,
Master Shallow. William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part
II. LIKE MANY PORT TOWNS, San Francisco is a city built on top
of its own bones, one where broad modern streets can exist side
by side with narrow alleys and abandoned thoroughfares. Its a lot
like Faerie in that regard. Both of them are studies in
contradiction, constant wars between the old and the new. I
prowled down one of those half-hidden alleys, the sky midnight
dark above me and my shoulders hunched against the growing chill.
Im inhuman and borderline indestructible. That doesnt make me
immune to coldmores the pity. Id been walking down the alleys of
the city since a little after ten oclock, when most of the mortal
population was safely inside and the streets informally switched
their allegiance to Faerie. The air around me smelled faintly of
cut grass and copper, as well as the more normal scents of
garbage and decay. The dont-look-here I had cast over myself was
holding, for the moment. Somewhere in the alleys around me, a
tabby tomcat was prowling, and a woman who looked enough like me
to be my sister walked shrouded in her own dont-look-here.
Quentin and Rajmy squire and Tybalts heir, respectivelywere back
at the house watching horror movies and pretending not to resent
the fact that we wouldnt let them come along. Ive dragged Quentin
into plenty of dangerous situations, but even I have my
limits. We were hunting for goblin fruit. Its a
naturally-occurring narcotic in Faerie: sweet purple berries that
smell like everything good in the world and give purebloods
beautiful dreams. The effect can be concentrated by making the
fruit into jam, dark as tar and more dangerous than any mortal
drug. Whats just pleasant for purebloods is an unbreakable
addiction for humans and changelingsthe crossbred children of the
fae and human worlds. They waste away on a diet of nothing but
sweet fruit and fantasies. Goblin fruit isnt illegal. Why should
it be? It doesnt hurt the purebloods who love it, and its usually
too expensive for changelings to get their hands onwhich didnt
explain why the stuff had been appearing on the streets of San
Francisco with increasing regularity. My old mentor, Devin, used
to control the citys drug trade. He kept the goblin fruit out . .
. at least until he died. It took me too long to realize what a
hole his passing would make. In my defense, I was busy trying to
keep myself alive. That excuse wasnt going to hold much water
with the people who were already addictedor with the ones who
were already dead. Word on the street was that half a dozen
local changelings had vanished recently, there one day and gone
the next. They hadnt taken any of their possessions, if they had
anything to take; not all changelings did. They hadnt told their
friends where they were going. A few were known criminalsthieves
and petty thugs. Others were just kids whod been bunking in the
independent fiefdoms of Golden Gate Park while they tried to
figure out what to do with their lives. And then, suddenly, they
were just gone. Changelings are the perfect victims in Faerie.
Were a born underclass, and very few of us have anyone to miss us
if we disappear. I might never have heard about the problem at
all, if I hadnt been one of Devins kids, once upon a time. A few
of my fellow survivors came to me to see if there was anything I
could do. I agreed to try. Id been out on the streets every night
for a week doing just that. So far, Id busted three goblin fruit
dealers, stopped a mugging, and stopped for coffee at half the
all-night diners in the city. But I hadnt seen any of the missing
changelings. I honestly wasnt sure whether that was a blessing or
a curse. A raven cawed harshly from somewhere overhead. It would
have been a perfectly normal sound in the daylight, but here and
now, this late at night . . . I looked up, scanning the rooftops
until I spotted the outline of a large raven perched on a broken
streetlight. It cawed again and then took off, flying west. I
swore under my breath and chased after it, trying not to let it
out of my sight as I ran along the alley. The
uncharacteristically night-flying raven was the animal form of
Jasmine Patel, my Fetchs girlfriend. Shed been keeping lookout
over the whole area. If she was calling for backup, shed seen
somethingand whatever it was, it was pretty much guaranteed to be
nothing good. Jazzs caws guided me through the maze of narrow
streets, until I skidded around a corner and into a dead-end
alley. There was a dumpster at the far end, so overstuffed with
garbage that it had practically become a tiny, localized
landfill. A figure I knew was standing at the edge of the mess,
her head bowed in evident sorrow. She was my height, with
colorless brown hair worn short and streaked with neon pink. Her
clothes were almost shockingly bright in the dim alleyorange
corduroy pants and an electric blue sweaterbut somehow, that
didnt do anything to lessen the impact of the scene. May knew
what death meant, maybe better than any of us. She was a Fetch,
after all. I stepped up next to her, releasing my dont-look-here
as I joined her in looking at the heaped-up trash. She put a hand
on my shoulder, sniffling. Yeah, I said softly. I know. There
was a girl lying sprawled in the garbage. Her skin and hair were
the ivory color of old bleached bones, with a faint waxy sheen:
she was half Barrow Wight. Only half; her height, and the square
lines of her jaw, came from her human parent. She was thin enough
to look consumptive, and she wasnt breathing. I walked forward,
kneeling to touch the girls wrist. Her skin was still warm. Shed
been alive when we started prowling the streets. There was a
faint, sickly-sweet smell to the garbage around her, too dilute
to be tempting, but strong enough to make her cause of death
plain. Goblin fruit. Wed finally found a changeling who had been
killed by goblin fruit. Luck was with us. Luck was nowhere in
the picture. Toby? Mays voice was very soft. What do you want to
do now? There was only one thing that we could do. I stayed
crouched beside the girl, my fingers still resting lightly on her
wrist. We wait for the night-haunts. The soft scent of musk and
pennyroyal tickled my nose. Are you sure that is the wisest
course of action? asked a male voice, sounding faintly
concerned. I promised not to summon them again. I didnt promise
not to hang around and say hello. I straightened, turning to face
him. I couldnt quite conceal my relief at the sight of Tybalt,
standing there in a wine-colored shirt and tight black pants.
Unlike May and I, he hadnt bothered trying to make himself look
human: the black tabby stripes in his dark brown hair were
clearly visible, and his eyes were banded malachite green, with
vertical pupils. His expression, however, was as sorrowful as
Mays. If I hadnt already loved him, I think I would have started
to in that moment. The night-haunts arent friendly people, Toby,
said May. I know. I used to be one. Do you have a better idea? I
shook my head. Its not like we can break into the county morgue
later and examine her body. Even if we had forensic training, it
wouldnt matter. This is the only way. If the girl had died a
violent death, I could have sampled her blood for clues. This was
different. If I tried to do blood magic and ride her memories, I
could wind up getting addicted to goblin fruit in the process. I
cared about justice. I cared about cleaning up my streets. There
were some risks I still wasnt willing to take. The night-haunts
were a risk of a different variety, and one that I had taken
before. They were one of the deep, dark secrets of Faerie, the
shadows that came for the dead and carried them away, leaving
perfect human replicas in their place. The work of the
night-haunts allowed Faerie to exist without worrying that the
bodies of our dead would betray us. The trouble was, they also
made it impossible for me to know how many of the missing
changelings had died and been replaced by human m