ONE

September 7th, 2014

Away from light steals home my heavy son
And private in his chamber pens himself,
Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out,
And makes himself an artificial night.
—William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

ONE THING I’VE LEARNED IN MY TIME working as a private investigator-slash-knight errant for the fae community of the San Francisco Bay Area: if something looks like it’s going to be simple, it probably won’t be. Some people might consider that an easy lesson. I must be a slow learner because it’s been anything but easy. I’ve been turned into a fish, cursed, nearly drowned, impersonated, slashed, shot at, and had my car blown up—thankfully not while I was inside it, although it was a close call—and now I was chasing Barghests around Dame Eloise Altair’s feast hall, trying not to get myself hurt. Also not easy.

“Toby! Duck!” Danny didn’t sound particularly worried. Danny’s also a pureblood Bridge Troll, which means he has skin that’s as hard as granite and twice as difficult to damage. As a half-breed Daoine Sidhe, I’m a lot easier to hurt.

I ducked.

A Barghest sailed overhead, impacting the wall with a pained thump. Barghests are nasty semi-canine monsters with horns, retractable claws, and venomous stingers in their scorpion tails, but there’s one thing they don’t have: wings. I glanced over my shoulder long enough to confirm that the thing hadn’t been killed by impact—it was still twitching, which made death seem unlikely—before turning to wrinkle my nose at Danny.

“Changeling, remember? Can you at least try not to hurl spiky critters at my head?”

“Sure thing,” said Danny blithely. Too blithely. In my experience, people who sound that calm about requests that they not throw things have no intention of changing their behavior.

My name is October Daye; my friends call me Toby, largely because it’s difficult to call a cranky brunette changeling with a knife October and get away with it. And this is not the way I usually prefer to spend my Saturday nights.

Every private investigator gets her share of weird calls, and the fact that I’m the only fae PI in the Kingdom means I wind up with more than most. Even worse, most of the weird calls come from the local nobility, which means I can’t turn them down. Lucky me. I shouldn’t complain. Work is work, and playing whack-a-mole with Barghests in Dame Altair’s feast hall was better than going back to checking bags at the grocery store. Not that the grocery store was likely to rehire me, considering that I’d abandoned my job without warning when a friend of mine went and got herself murdered over ownership of a legendary fae artifact. Not the sort of thing I could explain to human resources. Stress on the “human.”

Changelings rarely do well in jobs with fixed, dependable hours. We get that from the fae side of the family, while the human side makes us too stubborn not to try.

Dame Altair called on Monday to report that “something” was trashing her pantry, frightening her staff, and generally making life more complicated than she wanted it to be. By Wednesday, I knew that we were dealing with a Barghest infestation. I could try to claim the discovery was solely due to my awesome investigative skills, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. The truth was, I stepped on one while I was searching the place.

The fact that it was “just” Barghests was a relief—for me, anyway. It could have been a lot worse. Dame Altair didn’t seem particularly relieved, but they were nesting on her property, and that probably made them a lot more annoying. I explained the situation, requested the necessary supplies, and called Danny.

Danny McReady possesses a lot of positive qualities if you ignore his tendency to chuck Barghests at my head, but when it comes to monster hunting, “practically indestructible” is the one that counts. He’s also a San Francisco taxi driver, which leaves him with a lot of pent-up aggression. The chance to spend the night playing whack-a-mole with Barghests was too much to pass up.

Dame Altair had evacuated the knowe by the time Danny showed up. We grabbed the enchanted rowan-wood crates she’d provided for us to stuff them into, paused while I pulled on my gloves, and marched back inside to deal with things.

There were a lot of things to deal with. Barghests breed about once a century, and like many of Faerie’s more monstrous denizens, they balance a high mortality rate with a necessarily high birthrate. I’d counted at least eight before I gave up and asked the Dame for a bunch of boxes. She thought I was insane for not wanting to kill them on the spot, but even Barghests have a right to live. Just not in Dame Altair’s feast hall.

Where we were actually going to put them was a problem for later; the problem for now was catching them without being seriously injured in the process. They were only pups, about the size of corgis. They were still equipped with multiple ways of killing a person, and they were absolutely not interested in coming quietly.

“This is the sort of thing I mean.” One of the Barghests was chewing on Danny’s leg, probably hurting itself in the process. “I ask what you’re doing on a Saturday night, and you say ‘hunting Barghests.’ Forgive me for nagging, but you should maybe try getting a social life.”

“I’m getting paid to be here, remember?” Another Barghest charged me with its tail raised in strike position. I parried with my butterfly net, almost managing to catch it before it popped its claws and ripped through half the mesh. Swearing, I tried to net the thing again before I added, “Besides, I have a birthday party to go to after this.”

“The Brown kid, right?”

“Yeah.” Mitch and Stacy’s youngest son, Andrew, was turning four. “I promised to make it in time for cake.”

“You’ll make it.”

“Starting to have my doubts,” I muttered. One of the Barghests was slinking on its belly to my right. I leaned over, whapped it on the head with my net, and swept it into the first box. “Get that closed!”

“Got it.” Danny plucked the Barghest off his leg, bowling it into the box after its sibling before slamming the lid. “That’s two. I’m just saying you could benefit by going out sometimes. Live a little. In ways that don’t involve maybe making yourself dead.”

“But I’m so good at maybe making myself dead.” I whacked another Barghest. “I wouldn’t have taken this job if I’d known it was going to mean playing with poisonous things. Dame Altair thought the pantries were emptying due to theft.”