Rosemary and Rue Read Online Free PDF

It’s far more flattering.”
    I reddened further. “Did I miss the announcement that today was ‘mock Toby’ day?”
    “Don’t be silly. That’s every day. But if you’d like a new topic, we can talk about something else. For example, what brings you out at such an unpleasant hour? Did you feel the need for a little company and come to watch the sunrise from the privacy of my alley, hoping I’d show up?” He put a subtle stress on the possessive, watching me with a territorial air that was more intimate than I liked. He didn’t like me, and he never had, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t take a certain perverse glee in watching me squirm.
    “I got caught out, Tybalt. I’m only here until I can hide myself and go home.” I had every right to be where I was, and he knew it. Rules are rules, and this one came straight from Oberon: it doesn’t matter whose territory you’re in, you can hide from the dawn. “And this isn’t your alley any more than it’s mine. You should be in the park.” The Court of Cats is hard to find or pin down, so officially it’s part of the myriad fiefdoms of Golden Gate Park. That was probably part of why he was taunting me—I’d caught him out just as much as he’d caught me.
    Tybalt’s answering smile was thin. He wasn’t happy that I’d called him on that one. I spared a moment to consider the wisdom of pissing him off while we were stuck together in an alley and shrugged. It was too late to take it back. “I go where the urge takes me, October; you should know that by now. All places are alike to me, and today I wanted to check on my little fish. To see where she was . . . swimming .”
    The last word was almost a whisper, all smooth edges and insinuation. I stiffened, hands clenching as fury cut through my fear like turpentine through oil paint. “That was uncalled for.”
    “If you can’t take the heat, maybe you should go back to the pond.” His tone was triumphant. He knew he’d managed to get to me, and at that point, I didn’t really care. All I cared about was shutting him up and forcing the memories back into the hole where they belonged.
    “Tybalt,” I said, and paused to choose my words with care. The sunrise lull was ending: I could feel the potential for magic creeping back into my blood, almost unwillingly. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that, and I’m going to leave now. You’re not going to follow me. Understand?”
    “Running away already?”
    “I’m walking away before I do something we’d both regret.” Reaching out, I grabbed a handful of shadows from the alley wall, molding them between my hands as I ordered them to hide me. Illusions have always come easier when I’m angry—I don’t know why, because nothing else works that way. Still, sometimes it seems like I can only craft a really good disguise when I’m so mad I can’t see straight.
    Tybalt didn’t bother to look away as I blunted the tips of my ears and glossed over my eyes with a veneer of human blue. My hair and skin could be left alone, which was a good thing; there are too many steps involved in a stable disguise, and none of them are simple ones. Thanks to my father’s blood, I look almost entirely human. Someone seeing me with my masks off might think I had an unusually fine bone structure, or that there was something wrong with my eyes, but they’d be unlikely to think “fairy-tale creature walking the streets of San Francisco.” Thanks to my mother’s conditioning, I’m basically incapable of taking the risk.
    It was a good five minutes before I shook the clinging shadows from my hands and let them drop, resisting the near uncontrollable urge to pant. The smell of copper hung heavy in the air.
    “Good job!” said Tybalt, applauding. I glared. He grinned, displaying his fangs. “I could almost believe that you were really a trained monkey and not just the worse half of one.”
    “Stick a cork in it, Tybalt. I’m out of here.” The traffic