How to tell if you are in an October Daye novel

In the style of The Toast‘s How To Tell If You’re In a Novel series, I present a How to Tell for Seanan McGuire’s ongoing October Daye novels (spoilers through to the end of book 9).

You love and grieve for your estranged teenage daughter enormously, enough to mention her in passing periodically.

Your mother is so beautiful that those looking her directly literally risk heart failure. Almost every man you know is in love with her, except for the ones who are in love with you.

One of your best friends has staked first claim on being the one who kills you. Bringing her donuts often smooths things over though.

Your loving and infinitely patient and giving substitute father figure is probably a small-minded villain. However, his identical twin brother, who arranged the years-long torture of his sister-in-law and his young niece, may be redeemable.

Most men you know are either royalty or royalty-in-hiding.

Everyone sufficiently important smells of roses.

Your cats are known spies for the monarch of a kingdom unanswerable to you or your allies. This does not significantly alter your opinion of them. Or of him for that matter.

You got your blood on the carpet again. And on your clothes. And on the walls. And on your enemies, woe betide them.

One of the major relationship issues you and your friends worry about is having a lover who needs to sleep at night-time.

You’re getting a bit tired of everyone harping on about how you have overthrown two monarchs and that you also killed a man that one time.

You like to get high so much that you sometimes alter your biology for an optimal experience.

Teenage boys look up to you and never ever rebel against you.

You drink people’s blood in order to enter their dreams and strip them of half of who they are. They are usually pretty OK about this. You’re somewhat surprised when they aren’t.

You own the knife of a teenage girl who died thinking of you as her hero, and you live with a housemate who ate her soul and later went on to assume your face and memories too. You get on great and think of each other as sisters. It’s somehow clear to everyone that you get to keep the knife.

Prejudice against people who have an animal form or characteristics is deeply disgusting to you, but you know for sure that certain lineages of magic should never ever interbreed. You’re becoming a bit ambivalent about folks with recent ancestors from the plant kingdom too.

You aren’t the species your mother always told you you were. Your friend the part-time cat would have told you this, but he didn’t think you’d believe him.

You ultimately answer to Canada.