“I don’t…I don’t know.” Officer Thornton looked briefly, utterly lost. Then his expression hardened, and he said, “There’s a teenage girl missing, and you have a history of being around missing teenage girls.”

Tybalt took his meaning before I did; I heard the quiet growl from behind me, like the sound a cat makes when confronted with a dog on its territory. I paused, my hands going still. “Are you implying what I think you’re implying?” I asked, in a soft voice.

Officer Thornton was smart enough to realize that maybe he didn’t want to continue down this road. He was also clearly strait-laced enough to feel that he had to. “You must admit, there has been a high incidence of crossover.”

“I’m a private detective. It’s what I do. And you followed me to Fremont.”

“I felt I had to,” said Officer Thornton. The confusion was back in his voice.

“Chelsea Ames is my daughter,” added Etienne, not to be left out of what was becoming an increasingly awkward conversation. “I retained Si—Ms. Daye to find her.”

Etienne’s hastily swallowed “sir” didn’t slip by Officer Thornton, whose frown deepened. “Who are you people?” he demanded. “Are you involved with some kind of a cult?”

“Something like that.” I went back to untying the twine around his wrists, being less careful about pulling it tight against his skin. “We’re the good guys here, believe it or not. As exhibit A, I want to present the fact that we’re not the ones who kidnapped and drugged you.”

“Drugged me?” said Officer Thornton, a note of suspicion creeping into his voice.

When all else fails, lie. That’s practically the first rule of life in Faerie. “Hallucinogens in the air supply. I was seeing flying pigs when I woke up. We’re in a warehouse somewhere—I suspect San Jose, but I’m not sure—and it’s hard to tell up from down. So the first thing I need to ask you to do is not to freak out when I take your blindfold away.”

I glanced over my shoulder to see whether Etienne and Tybalt could see where I was going with this. Etienne frowned. Tybalt smirked, curling one lip up to show the inhumanly sharp points of his incisors. Hallucinations could never be this vivid. It was still the best shot we had at convincing Officer Thornton that he hadn’t completely lost his mind.

“Ma’am—”

“My daughter’s life is in danger,” said Etienne. His voice was calm, reasonable, and without compassion. “If you cannot promise to remain in control of your faculties, you will be no use to us, and may endanger her further. I’m very sorry, and I’m sure you’re a very nice man in your own element, but I will not have Chelsea harmed for the sake of your pride. Do I make myself clear?”

Officer Thornton’s frown, which had been starting to fade, returned in force. “I don’t believe I caught your name.”

“That would be because I did not release it.” Etienne turned to look at me. “October. I understand why you feel the need to free this man. I ask you, as a friend and as a father, are you sure this is the right course of action?”

“I’m not leaving him here for Riordan’s goons to beat on when they realize we’re gone. Besides, it’s too late to change my mind. He’s loose.” I peeled the last of the twine away from Thornton’s wrists and scooted down to start working on his ankles. “You can remove the blindfold now, Officer. It’s pretty dark in here.”

True to form, Officer Thornton ripped his blindfold off, glaring into the darkness. “Pretty dark?” he said. “This is pitch black! How am I supposed to see my hand in front of my face without some lights?”

Etienne and I exchanged a startled glance, and I bit back a gust of relieved, semi-hysterical laughter. Human eyes were made for a daylight world. Fae eyes weren’t, and even changelings see in the dark better than any mortal. Etienne and Tybalt were purebloods, and I was fae enough that I hadn’t really realized how little light was coming in the room’s single window. It was even darker in the hall, with just the arrow slits in the walls letting moonlight in. We might actually be able to pull this off without needing to ask the Luidaeg to melt the mind of a San Francisco policeman.

“Your eyes will adjust,” said Tybalt, with almost believable sincerity.

“In the meanwhile, we need to get moving.” I pulled the twine off Thornton’s ankles. “Are you hurt?”

“I’ve felt better,” said Officer Thornton, and levered himself to his feet. He was moving slowly, but he wasn’t visibly favoring either leg. Maybe they’d been gentler with him, assuming that since he was only human, he wouldn’t be much of a threat. He touched his belt and scowled. “My weapon is missing.”

“Our captors weren’t dumb enough to leave us armed.” I offered my elbow. “Here, hold onto me. We’re going to need to be really, really quiet while we make our way down to ground level. Can you keep your mouth shut?” With a human in our party, asking Etienne for another don’t-look-here was out of the question. He could cast it, sure. We’d never be able to make Officer Thornton understand why he had to walk the way we told him to walk—not without a lot of explanations that we really didn’t have the time for.

The look Officer Thornton shot in my direction was withering. Pity it was directed at the wall to the left of my head. “If it gets me out of here, I can be as quiet as you need me to be. But I’m going to be very interested in your statements—all of you. Don’t think that you’re absolved of involvement just because you’re helping me escape.”

“You’re not the only one who’s here against his will, and my…nephew…is missing somewhere in this place,” I said. Looking chagrined, Officer Thornton took hold of my arm. “Good. Now come on.”

We crept out of the room and into the dark, Folletti-free hallway. I paused long enough to taste the air, finding no traces of Daoine Sidhe nearby, and waved the others toward the stairs. Officer Thornton clung to me the whole while, staring into the shadows with blind, intent eyes, as if he could somehow force the world to become bright enough to let him see.

Considering the fact that we were creeping along in a medieval hallway with windows that looked out on a night that was nothing like Earth, it was probably for the best that he couldn’t see a damn thing, even if it did make descending the stairs a little more dangerous. Tybalt stayed in human form all the way down, leaning heavily on the rail. I shot him a grateful look. Explaining his disappearance—or where the cat had come from—would just be one more thing to tax Officer Thornton’s grasp on the situation. Although, at the moment, what Officer Thornton was grasping was mostly the banister.