me, and tucking my phone back into my pocket I gently stroked its neck.
“There we are,” I whispered. “There’s a good half-ton of spite, muscle, and anger.” Cautiously, in case it changed its mind, I swung myself onto its back, and it got to its feet. Well, this officially made me the cavalry. All one of me. Riding a unicorn was more a question of intent than technique, or at least it was if you were me and had to use your status as otherworldly pseudo-royalty to compensate for not knowing what the fuck you were doing. I did my best to guide it towards Safernoc Hall, insofar as I knew where that was.
Snow began to fall. It was so, so not the season for it. Which meant that something intensely spooky was happening. I urged the unicorn on and it carried me through thinning woodlands towards the vast gardens of Safernoc. And while the trees grew sparser the snow grew heavier, so that by the time we’d broken out of the woods and into the grounds of the manor, I could scarcely see for the blizzard and the darkness and the strange shapes that roiled in the clouds overhead.
Shit. I really wasn’t sure how I was supposed to fight the weather.
Except that the snow wasn’t the only thing attacking the hall. Strange, wraithlike images formed in the air—insubstantial but definitely humanoid, forming a chill white army that surged uphill towards the house where in the distance I could make out the shapes of wolves holding the line and a tiny bright point of light that I thought must be Sofia.
I stopped dead. I could have spurred the unicorn on and charged into the back of the blizzard-ghosts. And I might even have been able to push through but then where would I be? Surrounded by evil blizzard faeries with a broken arm and a small iron dagger trying to fend off what looked a lot like the full weight of the Cold and the Dark.
Okay, Kate. Think. Thinking is what makes you different from animals and dead people. This whole place had been a nexus of mystical wibble for centuries, which meant if this was happening now something had changed. And if something had changed it was because someone changed it.
Sebastian fucking Douglas.
I scanned the snowbound blur that was the grounds of Safernoc Hall for any sign of the little bastard but came up short. Of course his tendency to wear all white against what was rapidly turning into a white background wouldn’t have helped.
Then I caught a scent in the wind, a taste in my mouth. Not Douglas, I’d never bitten Douglas, much as he might have deserved it. A taste of copper and ice, the blood of the Merchant of Dreams. The Merchant was a slippery fucker, but I didn’t think they were here in person. Still, blood had power and as I’d discovered with near fatal consequences when the Prince of Wands had tried to climb to heaven over my corpse, us changelings could proxy for our parents perfectly well.
I steered the unicorn towards the scent. Sure, I was basically steering into a head-on collision with either a faery lord, a millennia-ancient vampire, or both, but fuck it. You only live once.
Here lies Kate Kane. Only lived once. Beloved daughter, sorely missed.
The blizzard closed in around me and taloned, elfin-looking creatures swiped at me with claws made of ice. I cut back with an iron dagger and was pleased to see that despite being made of swirling snow and darkness the things still went down when you stuck sharp objects in them. And even with the weather, the unicorn seemed confident in its footing, following my unconscious commands towards the source of that sweet-sharp tang of blood on the air.
Then it went out from underneath me, and—oh yeah, broken arm, fuck—I landed heavily in the snow, my dagger spinning out my hand which was at least better than it winding up lodged in my head.
Struggling to look up, I tried to make out what had taken down the unicorn. I saw it thrashing on the ground while two great white beasts tore into its flesh with savage, bloody jaws.
Werewolves.
One of them turned its head towards me, and I saw that its eyes had been stabbed through with what looked like the shards of a broken mirror. That explained what had happened to the missing wolves. Maybe Tabitha had got off easy.