“Of course you can,” Tybalt agreed, planting a hand on the small of my back and urging me to begin walking. “You are, after all, a perfectly reasonable, competent woman. It’s just that at the moment, you’re so drunk you can’t remember whether or not you’re wearing your own face, and I would really rather not scrape you off the sidewalk.”

His hand was a firm, insistent pressure. I began to walk, steadier now that I had something to lean against. “Nah, no sidewalk-scraping. You’d find me in an alley somewhere.”

“Probably true.”

We walked for a few blocks, with me wobbling along on clattering heels and him pacing silently by my side, only correcting my path when it seemed like I was going to fall off the sidewalk altogether. Finally, I said, “I don’t understand why you’re doing this.”

“I’m a cat. We aren’t required to make sense.”

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find any logical failings in that statement. It didn’t help that my head was starting to spin. I yawned.

“This is too slow,” Tybalt said, and, with that simple pronouncement, scooped me off the sidewalk and into his arms. I squawked. Amused, he said, “Oh, don’t bother. We both know how this ends, and it’ll be more pleasant for both of us if you just don’t struggle. I trust you haven’t moved?” I nodded. “Good. Now hold your breath; I know a shortcut.”

That was code for “I’m going to take you into the Shadows.” The Cait Sidhe have a lot of powers that my line—the Daoine Sidhe—don’t share. That includes access to the Shadow Roads, a gift that is, as far as I know, unique to the Cait Sidhe. Frankly, they can keep it. The Shadow Roads are dark and bitterly cold. It’s impossible to breathe there; your lungs would freeze. Tybalt seemed to take a perverse delight in hauling me through the Shadows, a convenient process neatly balanced out by the discomfort that it caused.