An Artificial Night - BK 3 by Seanan McGuire

alien by feline pupils. He had a cat’s casual elegance and an athletic build, combined to irritatingly good effect with the sort of face that made women give him pretty much whatever he wanted. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d had the decency to freckle or at least tan, but I guess freckling is beneath the Cait Sidhe.
    Tybalt and I have a complicated relationship, and it seems to get worse as often as it gets better. He was civil, even friendly, when we were tracking a murderer through Tamed Lightning . . . and he disappeared as soon as we were done. I hadn’t seen him since, despite spending several nights wandering the alleys of San Francisco searching for the Court of Cats.
    I tried to tell myself that I just wanted to give him back his jacket. I’ve never been good at believing my own lies; I wanted to see him, nothing more or less than that. It was ironic, in a way, because if somebody had asked six months ago how I’d feel about Tybalt deciding to mind his own business and leave me alone, I would have answered “relieved.” When he actually did it, I was hurt. I wasn’t sure how to deal with that, so I went for the easy option. I got pissed.
    He looked at my expression and sighed again. “I take it my apology isn’t accepted?”
    “Was there a particular reason you decided you needed to vanish?” I finally got Karen’s seat belt undone and hoisted her out of the car, trying to balance her against my side long enough to let me lock the door. Spike barely jumped clear fast enough to avoid being stepped on.
    “I had business to take care of.” Tybalt moved almost too fast for my eyes to follow, suddenly taking the bulk of Karen’s weight. “Let me help you with that.”
    I eyed him but didn’t object as I finished locking the door. “What do you want?”
    “Do I have to want something?”
    “You haven’t spoken to me in more than two months, so yeah, you have to want something.”
    “Good to see you haven’t changed,” he said, the ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. He eased Karen fully into his arms, holding her easily. “Where are we going?”
    “There’s no ‘we’ here, Tybalt. Karen and I are going to see Lily. You can go wherever it is you go when you’re not bothering me.”
    “And here I thought you’d missed me.” His smile remained, growing a bit more solid as he said, “You’re still wearing my jacket.”
    “Yeah, well. It was the only thing I wasn’t worried about damaging.” I forced myself to keep looking at him, denying the urge to blush and look away. “What do you want, Tybalt?”
    He looked at me, smile fading. “I need your help.”
    I hadn’t expected that. I blinked. “What?”
    “I need your help.” He looked down at Karen like he was addressing his words to her instead of me. “Five children vanished from the Court of Cats this morning.” His tone was infinitely weary. I stared. “Three were changelings living with their fae parents. One was a quarter-blood living with her changeling mother. The last was pureblooded.” He glanced up at me, and now the weariness was in his face as well as in his voice. “It’s my brother’s son. The only royal Cait Sidhe born in my fiefdom in the last sixty years.”
    “They just vanished?” My mouth was suddenly dry. Spike rattled its thorns, almost like it was punctuating the question. Cait Sidhe tend to be even more nocturnal than most fae; their feline natures usually keep them unconscious through the days. “Are you sure?”
    “The quarter-blood is the youngest—she’s only six, and she’s still living as a human. Her mother woke to find her missing and notified the Court, thinking we might have taken the girl. That was enough to make us check on the others.”
    Oh, oak and ash. Pushing the panic down to keep it out of my voice, I asked, “Why are you coming to me with this, Tybalt?”
    “I could say a lot of pretty things that don’t mean anything, but the fact is, you’re the only person I