"Lackey, Mercedes - Bedlam's Bard 04 - Spirits White as Lightning - with Rosemary Edghill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

Spirits White as Lightning

by Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill

ONE:
THE SIMPLE GIFTS

The Spirits White as Lightning
Would on my travels guide me

The stars would shake and the moon would quake

Whenever they espied me

                —Tom O' Bedlam (traditional)

Sir Eric Banyon, the Queen’s Knight, known as Silverflute wherever soldiers of fortune gathered together, strode manfully through the thronging crowd, determined to leave the memory of his disgrace at the hands of the foul Frenchman Black Levoisier behind him as surely as he had left the dastardly minions of his Great Enemy in his dust. . . .

Eric dodged around a bicycle messenger just dismounting on the sidewalk, then grinned, startling the bike messenger into an answering smile. Heh. Banyon, m’lad, you ought to go in for writing Hysterical Historicals in your off-hours. He actually was striding—though not exactly “manfully”—through the noontime crowd, heading for the subway and home. His classes at Juilliard were over for the day and no rehearsals (for once!) were scheduled for this afternoon. He could practice as well, or better, at home than in one of the practice rooms, anyway. And he was determined not to sour a perfectly good day with the memory of one jealous teacher trying to make a fool out of him in front of the entire class. Well, all right—maybe not the entire class. Just most of it. And anyway, Levoisier hadn’t succeeded, though he’d certainly done his best.

Missing his midterm last winter (he’d been off saving the world, necessary though it had been) had given Professor Rector the chance he had been hoping for all term. He’d failed Eric, banishing him from Introduction to Music Theory with unprofessional glee. Fortunately, Eric’s work in his other classes and in ensemble had been good enough that he had been given the opportunity to make up the lost Music Theory credit during summer term, and he had taken the chance to add a few more courses in order to lighten next fall’s course-load. Still, this hadn’t quite been the way he’d envisioned spending his July and ­August, which was out on Fire Island with a pitcher of virgin margaritas by his side. And Levoisier made Ethan Rector look like a prince of transpersonal fairness by comparison.

Parisians. Feh. Paris would be such a lovely place without all the Parisians in it, Eric thought grumpily. And the man had certainly been on form today, baiting Eric unmercifully in hopes he’d lose his temper. Once he’d lost it, the professor would have taken him apart in a cool and scientific dissection rendered without benefit of anesthetic.

Levoisier had begun with sarcastic comments about Eric’s depth of experience—on the RenFaire circuit. (Why did they always obsess about that? It couldn’t be jealousy.) Not exactly a concert-hall environment, as the professor had repeatedly pointed out. Nor were the customers who so praised his playing sober . . . or necessarily bright . . . or able to distinguish Bach from Bacharach . . . or a flute from a clarinet. Certainly even an idiot with three tunes in his repertoire could win acclaim on the RenFaire circuit—which only proved, to Eric’s mind, how little Levoisier knew about the RenFaire circuit.

As the professor had expounded on each and every way in which he felt that Eric resembled half-drunk Fairegoers—at exhaustive length—Eric stood there silently. Every single word was calculated to get Eric to explode with temper.

And that would have worked, once, but Eric was a far different person now than anyone that the professor had ever encountered before, at least within the hallowed halls of academe. He had waited, quietly and calmly, until the professor grew frustrated by Eric’s lack of agitation, embarrassment, or any other identifiable emotion.

When Levoisier finally ran out of insults, Eric had simply said, “The Review Committee and the Entrance Committee were satisfied with my performances, Professor, as are the rest of my teachers,” and sat down again. And at that blessed moment, the change-of-class bell sounded, and he was free.

Not as satisfying, perhaps, as telling the professor off would have been. Not nearly as satisfying as pointing out the professor’s own deficiencies as both a musician and a teacher—many of which Eric had already heard for himself during faculty recitals. Yehudi Menuhin, the professor was not.

Yahoo Menudo, maybe.

But the point wasn’t to get the better of the arrogant Frenchman. The point, in fact, was not to even bother with making a point. The point was to take what was good, leave what was bad, and pass through all the name-calling and innuendo like the wind through the grass.

Be Teflon. That’s the only way to handle guys like this. He’s insecure, ignorant, and arrogant. Just let everything slide right off until he gets tired of not getting a rise out of me. By then he’ll probably have gone far enough to expose himself as the trivial goon that he is. That might take the full eight-week summer session, but Eric didn’t mind—while Levoisier was heckling him, he wasn’t picking on the younger and more inexperienced students, who were not equipped to deal with him. The bastard had already reduced Midori to silent tears before he’d turned on Eric.

Well, let him wear himself out on me. Levoisier doesn’t know half of what he thinks there is to know about me. I have a black belt in Verbal Aikido, you arrogant Frog.

Levoisier’s appointment wasn’t an insoluble mystery. Eric knew why Juilliard had such a miserable excuse for a teacher on its staff this year. Levoisier was no great shakes as an interpreter of music, but he was a brilliant technician. Even Eric was willing to admit there was a lot he could learn from the man, if he ever decided to stop humiliating the students and elected to teach. And even at his worst, he was teaching valuable things to his students.

Though he knows it not. Though he intends it not.

It was a cruel, cold world out there, a world singularly lacking in first-chair jobs in fine symphony orchestras and prestigious traveling ensembles, recording contracts, solo tours, and praise—and full of cruel critics and low-end positions teaching in schools or playing in little city orchestras under conductors who themselves had failed to make the cut for a high-end professional musical career. Trial-by-Parisian might harden some of them to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. The students at Juilliard were fairly well equipped to deal with professional rivalry and even sabotage from other students, but they weren’t ready for the real world of real people and the fact that most of them were doomed to eke out a living playing in the Tacoma Sousa Band.

Or playing harps in hotel lobbies, pianos in cocktail bars, clarinets at weddings, and yes, flutes at RenFaires. Anything that Levoisier can throw at them isn’t half of the abuse they’ll get out there. Or, in the dark of the night, what they’ll give themselves.

What had triggered today’s attack, he suspected—given that Levoisier had first gone after Midori, then him—was the results of the placement auditions for the summer-session orchestra. Eric (and Midori) had been placed in second chair.

Now, Eric hadn’t heard Midori’s audition, but there was something that no one, including the Audition Committee, knew about Eric’s. He would never get first chair, because all during his audition, he had been sending out a thread of Bardic magic.

No matter how good I am, you won’t give me first chair, the magic had whispered, carried along on the wings of Debussy. I don’t need the experience, and you should give it to someone else.

In fact, at the end of the audition, one of the committee had taken him aside, apologetically, and had said, “Banyon, you deserved first chair, but frankly, we can’t give it to you. You don’t need—”

“—the experience,” Eric finished, with a grin and a toss of his long chestnut hair. “No worries, Doctor Selkirk. Frankly, what I need is a lot more experience in backing and supporting another flautist. They also serve, and all that.”

Doctor Selkirk had sighed with relief and shook Eric’s hand. “I knew we hadn’t made any mistakes in readmitting you, Banyon. If running around in tights and floppy shirts on weekends would give our students that kind of maturity, I’d assign it as a course.”

Eric grinned to himself again. It’s not as if I need experience in front of an audience. I rather doubt that I’m ever going to face a more hostile audience than a flock of Nightflyers, or a pickier one than an Elven Bard and Magus Major. And it’s not fair to the kids to make them compete with me for something I don’t need or want.

The New York streets simmered with summer heat, and the kind of glare found when the only thing to take the sun’s rays is stone, and glass, and more stone. His local friends told him that August would be even worse—if they got a really hot spell, even the blacktopped streets would go soft underfoot. He hadn’t believed it at the time, but now Eric was just as glad that he’d spent the time last winter setting up bomb-proof spells on all his apartment windows: now, when he opened them into muggy July heat, he got arid January cold. It was a more elegant solution than nursing a power hog a/c along with Guardian House’s cranky electrical system. His computer and stereo systems were already major power hogs, not to mention his pet microwave; he’d learned he had to shut down every other appliance in the place when he vacuumed. An air conditioner would have been the final straw. When Guardian House had been built back in the first decade of the 20th century, all those appliances hadn’t even been distant dreams.

He was looking forward to getting home, opening all the windows, and maybe coaxing Greystone down into joining him for a glass of something cold. It wasn’t likely anybody would miss the gargoyle if he deserted his post—not in a sweltering afternoon in July.

All he had to do was make it through the subway alive. Though most of the cars were air-conditioned to pneumonia levels, only some of the stations had any pretense to climate-control at all. Fortunately, the Lincoln Center stop was one of them. Can’t let the aesthetes and yuppies fry, after all.

Eric joined the stream of humanity descending the steps into the subway, whistling a Bach gigue to purge his brain of any remaining taint of irritation with Professor Levoisier. There was nothing like Bach to rev up the old right brain and let logic take over from emotion.

He let the flow of traffic take him along towards the turnstiles. Hey, it’s Friday. I’ve got a whole weekend in front of me, the sun is shining, nobody wants to kill me, and there’s not a single crisis Underhill or Overhill that needs sorting out. That thought put a bounce in his step. Maeve had been born and Kory and Beth were planning to bring her for a visit. If the weather held, maybe they could make a run up Long Island and see how the other half lived. And if it didn’t, well, if you couldn’t find something to do in New York on a weekend, you were in pretty sad shape.

And when they go back Underhill, if Ria isn’t up to her sculpted eyebrows in Bizness, I might even get her to go out with me to some New-York-Magazine-Approved event. So maybe I ought to have a look for something she might not ordinarily go to. Not that Ria’s actually a party animal at the best of times. How could someone who looks like she looks be such a grind? It’s one of Life’s Great Mysteries.

He turned his mind back to the question of finding something fun he could tease her into attending. Anything musical was a good bet, but it would have to be both competent and something she wouldn’t have thought of for her—

Something teased his ears as he passed the turnstile. A string instrument—

Banjo?

And a very, very familiar tune.

’Tis a gift to be simple, ’tis a gift to be free, ’tis a gift to come ’round where we ought to be—

Someone was playing a banjo in the subway.

That wasn’t all that unusual. Eric had heard everything from bagpipes to string quartets to old-fashioned One Man Bands playing on subway platforms throughout the city. Busking was permitted in the New York subway system and on the city streets as well, but it was a peculiar form of busking. You had to have a license, and you only got the license by passing an audition.

It was a pretty good system, actually. The ears of the public weren’t assaulted by talentless musicians, licensing kept down the territory wars for the best spot, and the beat and transit cops weren’t put on the spot by having to bust a player who was doing the public a favor by being there. Eric didn’t know all of the licensed buskers—New York was a bit bigger than any Faire pitch he’d ever worked—but he thought he was familiar with most of the ones who set up near Lincoln Center on a regular basis and he was sure that none of them played a banjo. The pleasantly jangling notes ricocheted off the echoing tile walls of the subway, the echoes providing a depth and richness to the music that was the reason so many musicians—including Eric—liked to play here. Something else teased his inner ear as well, as he approached the platform.

Magic.

Nothing overwhelming, just a gentle little lilt, a Bardic lilt to the tune, something to tease a little money from the pockets of the passers-by, but only by those who had it to spare. More of a reminder, really, to be courteous.

If you like what you hear, and can spare the money, drop a coin or two—if not, pass on, pass on. . . .

And no one with a New York City busking license was a Bard. Except, of course, him.

A sense of urgency hit Eric in the gut: not only did he want to catch this unknown Bard and find out who he was, he wanted to get to him before he was busted! He hurried towards the platform. The transit cops, who were supposed to enforce the busking licenses, could be along at any moment. Some of them were inclined to turn a blind eye towards the occasional violator, if he was good, if the cop in question liked that particular kind of music. So how many of them like bluegrass?

Eric shoved his way towards the cluster of people around the source of the music, and shouldered his way into the magic circle, ignoring the indignant looks of the two he squeezed in between. “When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we shall not be ashamed—” his mind supplied the words to the tune.

The busker was a tall young man, built like a linebacker. Eric took it all in with a single glance. Blond. Longish hair, jeans, faded blue work shirt—and that indefinable something that said “not from around here” to city-trained eyes. He had an open, friendly face and piercing blue eyes, which held a promise of friendship out to the entire world, if only the world was wise enough to accept it. His banjo case was open at his feet, money in it, as he ran leisurely fingers through the intricate patterns of the old song. An old Army surplus duffle bag rested at his heels.

And the banjo— The banjo—glowed. Not that anyone other than Eric or an elf would have seen the glow. The strings were a network of silver-fire, and blue afterimages danced along the pattern of the busker’s darting fingers.

An enchanted banjo?

There were legends of enchanted instruments in the ancient days. The traditional songs were full of examples. Flutes made from a Bard’s bones. A harp strung with the hair of a murdered girl—

No, that’s a bit too grisly. Nothing like that here. More like . . . an enchanted sword, forged for a paladin. I didn’t know there was anyone left Overhill who could do work like that.

Not that he knew, yet, that the banjo had been made here. But if it were elvenwork, he would have sensed that, and Eric’s Bard-trained senses caught no trace of Otherworldly craftsmanship here, just innate human magic.

A stir caught his attention—the glimpse of a uniform hat down by the turnstile. The transit cops.

The busker finished his song and coins and a couple of bills dropped into his banjo case, accompanying a spatter of applause. And in the pause, Eric pulled out his busking license and propped it in the side of the banjo case, very visibly, then got out his flute. He opened the flute case and put it behind the banjo case, and began fitting his instrument together as he stepped to the side of the very surprised banjo player.

“You need a license to play down here, friend—I’ve got one, and you just became my partner,” Eric muttered under his breath just as the transit cops reached them. “So, ‘Unquiet Grave’?” he said, louder, as if he and the stranger had been duetting for some time.

The stranger nodded, and they both began—quite as if they had been duetting for some time.

Mind, “Unquiet Grave” wasn’t Eric’s tune of choice, but it was the only Appalachian piece he had been able to think of on the spur of the moment. Plaintive and just a little on the spooky side, it wasn’t one calculated to haul in the cash. But that was all right; it made some of the audience clear off, giving the transit cops a good look at the two buskers—and Eric’s license.

And giving Eric a good look at them, just as he nodded to the banjo player to wrap it up. He sighed with relief; they were people he knew, who weren’t going to quibble that his license was for himself alone and not with a partner.

“Top o’ the marnin’ t’ye, constable,” he said in his best “Faire-Irish” accent. Officer Zielazinski laughed.

“More like afternoon, isn’t it, O’Banyon?” the transit cop jibed good-naturedly. “Who’s your partner?”

The banjo player answered before Eric could fumble. “Hosea Songmaker, sir, at your service,” he said in slow syllables sweetened with the honey accent of the hills and deep with respect. Eric could sense the touch of Bard-magic here, too: I am no threat to you; I will cause no trouble. . . . He supposed a man as big and physically intimidating as Hosea Songmaker’d had plenty of use for that particular charm more than a few times in his life, and it made him like his new partner all the more.

Zee laughed, responding unconsciously to the touch of the benevolent magic. “Not from around here, are you! Well, you stick with Banyon; he’ll show you the ropes. He’s pretty street-smart.”

The two transit cops moved on, back to business; there were more important matters to claim their attention in the subway than a couple of licensed buskers.

When they’d gone, Hosea gave Eric a sidelong glance, followed by a slow smile. “Reckon I owe you one,” he said. Eric laughed.

“Just want to keep a good musician out of trouble,” he replied easily. “How were you to know you need a license? Listen, let’s collect a take while the collecting’s good, and I’ll tell you all about what you need to know afterwards.”

Hosea nodded, and combed back the long blond hair that flopped down into his eyes back with a set of strong, brown fingers. “Old standard?” he suggested, and played the first few notes of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”

Eric nodded. Everybody knew that one—the Lester Flat and Earl Scruggs classic had been the theme song to the movie Bonnie and Clyde. And while it was written for banjo and fiddle, there was no reason he couldn’t take the fiddle part.

“Then—how about we follow straight into ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia’ and ‘Mama Tried’?” Eric countered. There. I’m not just a Celtic purist, you know.

“Right.” Hosea’s eyes lit up slyly, and Eric suspected he was about to be given a run for his money. Hosea surged into the opening bars of the “Breakdown,” his fingers blurring on the strings. Eric barely made his entrance in time to take the melody away from the banjo and carry it.

Hosea, like many an Irish player at the Faires, had a wicked sense of humor and liked to accelerate the pace of an already fast piece with each successive pass. But Eric was ready for him—not that it was all that difficult for a Bard to figure out what another Bard was going to do next. By the time they segued into “Devil Went Down to Georgia,” they’d hit light­speed. The crowd around them was thicker than before, and people were grinning and tapping their toes to the Charlie Daniels standard.

He’d had the joy of working with another Bard only Underhill, with his mentor Dharniel. That was always fun—if you could really use that word for anything to do with Master Dharniel—but it was nothing, nothing like working with another human Bard! There was a level of spontaneity and creative spark here that just wasn’t present when he made music with the elves, and it made all the difference. Eric closed his eyes and gave himself over to the purest pleasure he’d ever felt outside of sex—and it certainly lasted a whole lot longer than even the most athletic sexual adventure he’d ever had!

It wasn’t until he opened his eyes as he played the last flourish of “Mama Tried” that he realized they were surrounded six-deep by a gaping, grinning, toe-tapping human audience of people who should have been getting back to their jobs (or on to their lunches). The very moment they finished, money actually began to snow, rain, and hail into the banjo case, a veritable Hurricane Andrew of coins and small bills. Money that missed the case was scooped up and dumped into it by helpful hands, which was a small miracle in and of itself, as applause followed on the monetary accolade.

“Got enough to hold you for the next day or so?” Eric muttered sotto voce with a nod at the case.

Hosea grinned and nodded, his hair flopping into his eyes again. “That’ll get me vittles and a bunk at the Y for a couple days, while I study on what I’ve got to do next,” he replied. “Let’s give these nice folk something to play ’em out on.” His fingers began to move on the strings again.

Of all the tunes that Eric would have suspected Hosea would chose, this would not have been one. He listened as the banjo-Bard’s clever fingers picked out the deceptively lazy little “pink-a pink-a pink-a pink-a pink (pause) pink-a pink-a pink-a pink-a pink (pause).”

Eric recognized it immediately, and knew the tune so well that his flute was at his lips and the soft notes spilling out at exactly the right moment after that second pause. “The Rainbow Connection” from the very first Muppet movie—how had Hosea known how much he liked that tune? And where had an Appalachian mountain boy learned it?

I guess that only proves that we live in a globally connected world, when an Appalachian mountain boy and a Juilliard student can recognize the same tune and play it like a couple of old buddies.

Simple tunes are deceptive things; superficially easy to play, they are the very devil to play well. But in the hands of not one, but two Bards, the very simplicity allows the heart and soul to shine.

When they finished, this time the reward was smiles as well as applause. Eric bowed with a flourish, Hosea with a kind of foot-shuffling modesty. Eric was pretty sure that though Hosea was a practiced musician, he hadn’t been playing for money for very long—at least not as a street musician.

“Ladies and gents, you need to get back to your jobs, I’m sure—” Eric announced with practiced Faire-patter. Groans, and a chorus of “aaawwww!”—surely the greatest music to a musician’s ears—greeted this announcement.

“—so in the interest of making sure you don’t get in trouble, my friend Hosea and I will be taking a break now for a few hours. Thank you all, and we’ll be here off and on for the rest of the week!”

With no display of hurry, but with the efficiency of any busker who has sometimes seen his “take” vanish along with the rear end of a petty thief, Eric shoved the banjo case over behind Hosea’s legs with his foot while he scooped up his flute case and began taking his instrument apart and cleaning it. The crowd dispersed—with a few generous souls lobbing a couple more handfuls of change at the case for good measure as they left.

“This is half yours,” Hosea said, from a bent-over position, preparatory to doing something about the “take.”

“Oh, just pull out enough for some lunch for both of us and I’ll call it quits,” Eric replied absently. “Fifteen bucks should do it; that’ll leave you enough for bus fare to get to the Y and a street and subway map.”

Hosea looked up at him doubtfully, but seemed to sense that Eric was in earnest. He just shoved most of the “take” into the duffle he’d had behind him, keeping out a handful of bills that he crammed into his pocket. He placed the banjo lovingly into his case, and handed Eric his busking license back.

He moved very gracefully for such a big fellow; shortly he stood up with duffle and case slung over opposite shoulders, looking very much at ease and entirely out of place.

“So—your name’s Banyon,” he said, giving Eric a slow and considering once-over with those piercing blue eyes. “Is that a first name or a last?”

“Last. Eric Banyon, former RenFaire player, current Juilliard student, at your service,” Eric replied, making a little bow that mocked his status as “Juilliard student.”

But Hosea’s slow smile wouldn’t accept the mocking attitude. “Figured you had to be from around there,” he said. “Some feller told me it was up that-a-way”—he waved vaguely at the ceiling—“and I reckoned anybody could play like you was probably from there. Well, Eric Banyon, the cop said I was to stick by you, so where do we find lunch?”

Central Park on a July day was as good a substitute for countryside as you were likely to find within fifty miles, and a lot cooler under the trees than the city streets were. The park was a lot bigger, and had more secluded places, than anyone but a native New Yorker would be likely to guess—a lot of them avoided the Park anyway, fearing gangs and muggers. There had been a suggestion, a couple of years back, that wolves should be reintroduced—a suggestion that wasn’t entirely a silly idea. Wolves would do very well here if they could be kept in isolation, but it was inevitable that they’d crossbreed with feral dogs, which in a few generations would only mean that there would be a resident pack of slightly-more-lupine feral dogs in the remoter parts of the place. Probably not the best idea in the world, given the unpredictable nature of lupine-canine crossbreeds. It was bad enough that coyotes had made their way here and had a thriving pack up by the Reservoir: no garbage can—or stray poodle—was safe.

Eric and Hosea gathered hot dogs and drinks from one of the Sabrette’s carts outside the Park, and Eric led his fellow Bard into one of those quieter spots more familiar to the bird watchers than to the Frisbee throwers. There was, in fact, one of the bird feeders that the bird watchers maintained in this little bit of half-tame wilderness, and when they finished their food, Eric watched some sort of tiny birds flitting to and from it.

Hosea had clearly not eaten today, but he hadn’t wolfed down the four (!) hot dogs he’d gotten for himself from the vendor. He’d eaten neatly and precisely, with not a crumb wasted or a bit of mustard smeared. He finished his soda, folded up all the paper neatly, and stuck it and the can into his duffle with the rest of his gear. No littering for this lad, evidently.

“So,” Hosea said at last, breaking the silence. “Where do I get me one of them licenses so I can play for the folks without getting myself in trouble with the law?”

Eric explained the whole process while Hosea listened carefully. “The next audition isn’t for another three weeks, though,” Eric concluded, and as Hosea’s face began to fall, he added quickly, “But don’t worry—you can busk in the Park without one, and you can busk with me in the subway.”

“Ain’t you got classes?” Hosea asked doubtfully.

“I can work around them,” Eric replied, then chuckled. “Besides, look what we did in half an hour together! There’s probably about a hundred bucks there—figure we hit the lunch crowd and the commuters going home, we’ll take in more than enough to cover your expenses until you can get a license for yourself. And you will,” he added, with certainty.

Of course you will. You’re a Bard, how can you not, if you put your mind and magic to it?

Hosea’s earnest gaze met his steadfastly. “You’ve been helping me because . . .” There was a long pause, and for the first time Eric saw Hosea hesitate, as if he weren’t quite sure how to put the thought into words. “Because of the music-magic. You’ve got the shine, too. Right?”

Eric hadn’t expected him to put it quite so bluntly, though after the first few notes he’d been pretty sure that Hosea knew his own gift, and recognized Eric for a kindred soul.

“Well—yeah,” Eric admitted a little sheepishly. “Where I come from, we’re called Bards.”

“Bards.” Hosea rolled the flavor of the word over in his mouth and thoughts. “Like—back in the Druid times?” He grinned at Eric’s raised eyebrows. “You reckon I’m right out of the hills, but we got libraries there, too. And the Internet.”

Eric laughed, a little ashamed of himself for assuming Hosea was as simple as he looked. It wasn’t precisely an act, Eric was coming to realize, but more of another defense against frightening people. Hosea was almost painfully courteous. “No offense meant,” he said.

“None taken. So, I ain’t never met another Bard before, except my Grandma. She had the shine, right enough. Guess I got it from her. I’m right glad you came to my rescue, Eric Banyon.” Hosea’s friendliness was as infectious as his grin.

“Right glad I did, too—” How could he not respond? There was something about Hosea that not only exuded trustfulness, but trustworthiness. He could no more have walked away from the guy than kicked a puppy in the face.

Besides, it isn’t as if I need the money. Eric’s needs were met—and more—by Elven magic. He’d gotten his busking license as much to help out some of the kids at Guardian House as to line his own pockets—or, admittedly, for the joy of playing for a live and mostly uncritical audience. His last assist had been to one of the dancers who lived on his floor—Amity was between dancing jobs and desperate to find something to pay her bills besides waitressing or cleaning houses. Eric had suggested that she bring a small square of “floor” with her down to the subway with him. He’d played, she’d danced, and together they made enough to pay her bills until the next job came along.

“Well, reckon you can find me the YMCA?” Hosea continued. “Friend of mine back home told me that was the place to stay when I got here; told me the rooms was cheap—at least, cheap as anything is here in the big city—and pretty safe. Not that I’ve got too much to worry about. Folks just take a look at me and just naturally think twice about making trouble, I guess.”

Eric grinned. Most people would leave a Bard alone, even if they weren’t sure why. And a Bard who was six-four and looked like he juggled pianos in his spare time was even less likely to attract undesirable attention.

He quickly thought about all the things he’d most needed when he first moved to New York. Bonnie and Kit had been there to get him settled in, but he’d still spent most of the first month getting lost every time he ventured out of his own neighborhood.

“First, we get you a street map, a bus-route map, and a subway map,” Eric decided. “That’ll help you find your way around. Come on.”

A quick stop at a newsstand took care of those immediate needs, and for good measure, Eric picked up a guidebook that would give Hosea a lot of reference points—not just the tourist attractions, but the important buildings, the schools and libraries and other major landmarks. After that, it was no great effort to get Hosea planted firmly in front of the nearest YMCA. Once inside, and only then, Hosea dug the day’s haul out of the duffle and counted it—he might not be street-smart, but he had a lot more common sense than a lot of people Eric knew.

They’d done better than Eric had thought. There was almost $200 there, even if half of it was in quarters and dollar coins, and a lot of subway tokens.

“I’m good for a week—” Hosea said, tentatively. He raised his eyebrows questioningly, offering Eric his share again as he paid for his room and took the key. Hosea didn’t have a credit card—no ID of any kind but a driver’s license and a library card, both from someplace in West Virginia—so the room clerk had asked for cash in advance. Hosea had paid for three days, after being assured he could extend his stay if he wished.

“No worries,” Eric assured him. “Look—here’s my phone number and address, but I’ll come and meet you back here—Sunday night, say. That’s day after tomorrow. We can run through some numbers and set up a playlist. Then at noon break on Monday, wait for me at the main entrance to the school and we’ll do a lunch gig.” He coughed, a little embarrassed. “I’d gig with you the rest of this weekend, but I’ve got friends coming in—”

“Reckon friends got to come before strangers,” Hosea countered, with a grin. “You said that it’s okay to play in the Park, right? So I’ll play in the Park. I’ll do all right. Don’t you worry none about me, Eric Banyon. I’m a big boy and I can take care of myself. You go on and be with your friends.”

Relieved, Eric clapped him on the back—and had to reach a bit to do it. “One of these days—and soon—they’ll be your friends too, if I don’t miss my guess. Okay, Hosea, I’ll be out here Sunday night—about six. We’ll get something delivered for dinner, talk some music, and see what happens.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it,” Hosea said genially, then hauled his duffle up onto his back again as if it weighed nothing and headed for the elevator, his room key jingling in his hand.

Eric just shook his head, watching Hosea go. He tried to imagine all the trouble this guileless country boy could have gotten himself into within thirty seconds of arriving in the city, and couldn’t even calculate it. If he wasn’t a Bard . . .

Well, he is a Bard, and he’ll be fine. And I need to get home and start cleaning before Bethie gets there and has a fit!

TWO:
THE TREES THEY DO GROW HIGH

By turning himself into a cleaning tornado for a couple of hours—and by recruiting Greystone for things like moving furniture while he vacuumed and then used the steam cleaner he’d borrowed from one of his neighbors—Eric got the apartment up to Beth’s standards of hygiene, with all the windows wide open to let in blasts of borrowed winter cold. He even sucked all the crumbs out of the crevices of the couch and chairs—something he hadn’t done since before the last party. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have bothered doing the Martha Stewart thing. The floor and most of the surfaces were clear, and what was the good of being a Bard if you couldn’t set a spell around your home to chase out cockroaches, insects, and rodents, after all?—but Beth was going to be a lot fussier about cleanliness with the baby around.

A baby. Bethie had a daughter. Eric could barely imagine it. And the thought that he might have had any part in the deed seemed to be the rankest fantasy.

“Have I ever told you about the time that Kory discovered microwave popcorn?” Eric called over his shoulder as he shook out a match. Just to be sure that Beth’s nose didn’t twitch suspiciously, he was lighting vanilla-scented candles on top of the bookshelves, while Greystone popped the Chinese he’d ordered into the oven to stay warm.

“No. What’d he do? Pop every bag in the cupboard?” the gargoyle asked with a snigger. Greystone was an actual, genuine, medieval gargoyle. He had a fanged doglike face and curling horns, long apelike arms, and hindquarters like a satyr’s, right down to the cloven hooves. Great bat wings lay against his back like furled umbrellas. Except for his big dark eyes, he was a uniform, textured gray all over, right down to the soot smudges and patches of lichen. And despite the fact that he lived and moved and talked, he seemed to be made of solid stone. He’d been Eric’s first friend in Guardian House, coming that first night to Eric’s tentative request for a friend. And Greystone had been a good one ever since.

“And then some,” Eric said. “Gulls ate well that day. You should have seen Bethie’s face.” It had been a sight, for ­certain-sure; they’d eaten the stuff for breakfast as if it was cereal, with Beth standing over both of them (as if he’d had anything to do with it!) brandishing a wooden spoon to make sure they finished every bite. Even stuffing themselves with popcorn three meals a day, there was too much to eat before it got stale.

But to see the dumbfounded expression on Beth’s face when she’d come into the kitchen that morning and found it full of popcorn had been worth it. Eric smiled reminiscently.

The gargoyle (who normally spent most of the day on the cornice ledge just outside Eric’s apartment) strolled into the living room, still chuckling. Though as much a creature of magic as any Sidhe, Greystone had been anything but isolated from progress during his long life. He’d been a constant eavesdropper on and observer of life in the big city from the time that the building was erected during the late 1800s, and often (if the occupant of “his” apartment was a Guardian or other user of magic) a participant in the ordinary life of a New Yorker—insofar as anyone Greystone would be hanging out with ever had an “ordinary” life, that was. Greystone knew as much about appliances and the amenities of a modern apartment as Eric did.

More, actually. We’d been on the run for so long by the time we went Underhill that I’d gotten out of the habit of being a techno-junkie, and Elfhame Misthold isn’t exactly your local Circuit City.

Greystone had been delighted to discover that Eric wasn’t the type to freak out when a stone gargoyle came to life and tapped on the window. The gargoyle often spent the long hours of late nights watching television in Eric’s living room—but he never, ever imposed. Having him around was rather like having a congenial roommate with none of the disadvantages roommates often brought with them.

And he’s alphabetized my CDs and DVDs. How cool is that?

Greystone cocked his head to the side. “They’re on the way up,” he announced, though Eric heard nothing. “Can I stick around?”

“With Bethie dying to show off Maeve to the world? No question!” Eric said. He was surprised at how relieved he felt.

Beth and Kory already knew about Greystone—they knew about Guardian House as well, at least what Eric knew; that the House had been built to shelter the Guardians of New York, a kind of magical police force set up to protect ordinary humans from those who would use magic against them—or from inadvertently stumbling into the path of the super­­nor­mal entities who shared their world. There were never fewer than two and seldom more than four Guardians living here at the same time—Eric wasn’t yet quite sure how one became a Guardian, as that was a subject upon which the Guardians themselves were rather ­reticent—and the House itself selected those other “normal” people who would live here. If Guardian House wanted you, you saw a “Vacancy” sign in the super’s window. If it didn’t, you didn’t. It was all as simple as that.

Most of the “regular” tenants were artists, dancers, and musicians. Most of them were quietly, but devoutly, religious, although the House didn’t care what their religion was. Most of them had no idea that the Guardians were the sole reason for the House’s existence, that the Guardians even existed, or that they supplied a positive and energetic “atmosphere” for the Guardians to live in.

But a few of the House’s civilian tenants, like Eric, were true magicians, and they knew. They served as a kind of unofficial auxiliary force to be called on in an emergency.

But though the Guardians were powerful and far more knowledgeable than the average human, Eric had found that they didn’t know everything. They hadn’t known, for instance, that there were such things as Bards—or that elves, the real Sidhe of legend, actually existed. Hadn’t, that is, until Eric moved in.

Then they’d found out in spades.

A light tap on the door told Eric that Greystone, as usual, had been right. He flung it open for two figures in motorcycle leathers and helmets, the tall one in blue and the short one in red, with a tiny baby in a matching red leather carry-sack slung across her chest.

Beth pulled off her helmet and shook out her long hair with a sigh of pleasure. She was still keeping the auburn tresses Kory had engineered for her when the Feds had been on their tail—her original hair color had been black, but the auburn suited her. Her skin still glowed with the hormones of her recent pregnancy, and her brown eyes no longer showed that peculiar “haunted” look that had been in them for so long. Instead, there was a softer, more contented expression on her face, especially when she glanced down at baby Maeve.

“Well, Banyon, are you going to keep us standing in the hall all day?” she asked, handing him her helmet. Eric grinned, stepping back to allow them to enter the apartment.

There was the usual moment of kissing and hugging and congestion in the doorway, while Greystone stood aside and grinned. Kory, as usual, looked every inch the Elven Knight, even though he had a motorcycle helmet under his arm instead of a helm, and leathers instead of armor. Tall, muscular, blond as a child of the sun, if any fashion photographer in the world had gotten a look at him, he could have named his price—except, of course, for the pointed ears and green eyes, with their vertical-slit pupils like a cat’s. All elves had those eyes and ears; their natural hair color was blond as well, but not all of them stuck to the natural color. After all, just about anything was possible for an elf, even shape-shifting. Eric had seen elves with heads of pink, blue, and purple hair that would make a punker or raver drool with envy; he’d even seen elves sporting hairdos of feathers, leaves, or tiger stripes. He’d seen them with the gauzy wings of Victorian fairies, or batwings, or feathers—all functional, if not actually capable of supporting flight. Tails, horns, hooves—nothing was impossible, which might account for the sightings of so many kinds of creatures in myth and legend. Kory, however, preferred to keep to the “natural” form—blond hair, slitted green eyes, pointed ears, and otherwise looking human.

Eric carried an armful of leathers and helmets into the bedroom while Beth unpacked Maeve and made sure the baby had survived the trip unscathed. When everyone had settled in the living room, Eric made his introductions.

“Greystone, this is Beth Kentraine and Sieur Korendil, Elven Knight and Magus Minor of Elfhame Sun-Descending. Beth and Kory, meet Greystone.”

“I’ve heard so much about you,” Beth said, smiling. “And this is Maeve.” She held up the baby in her arms, and then, to his horror, offered her to Eric. He had no choice but to take her—it was that or run, and Beth would have slain him on the spot.

Maeve’s flushed face, surrounded papoose-like by a fleecy wrap, didn’t excite much in Eric but apprehension.

“She looks like Winston Churchill,” he said dubiously, looking down at a face with eyes screwed tightly shut and contorted into a disagreeable grimace. A faint whiff of baby powder and milk came up to his nose as she opened her mouth in a silent (for the moment) protest.

“Eric!” Beth exclaimed indignantly, while Kory looked puzzled, tucking his blond hair behind his sharply pointed ears. Elves loved children.

The baby scowled at Eric. Beth had said she was beautiful, but to Eric she was looking more every minute like a wizened old man in a temper. She mewed. It sounded as if she was thinking about howling.

Now what do I do? he wondered, just a hint of panic arising. She seemed to be all knees and elbows, writhing muscularly in his arms as if she very much did not want to be there.

“Don’t be daft, Bard, she’s lovely,” Greystone scolded. “And you’re holding her all wrong. Give her here.” He held out his hands summarily, and Eric, not at all loathe, handed the baby quickly to the gargoyle. Maeve might be his—or rather, he was Maeve’s biological father—but there was no feeling of parental bonding there so far as he was concerned. He’d never been around babies when he was growing up, and they were almost as scarce on the RenFaire circuit as they were Underhill.

With relief he saw Greystone cuddle the tiny creature in sturdy arms that seemed to understand instinctively how to make the baby comfortable.

“There’s a lovely little lady,” the gargoyle crooned, wiggling one finger in front of Maeve’s nose. “Boojie, boojie, boojie wooooo.” The baby looked up at him with blank, blue eyes, but lost that disapproving expression and even made a tentative gurgling sound.

“I think she likes you, Greystone,” Eric said, a little surprised.

“Of course she likes me, ye gurt idiot,” Greystone retorted with fond indignation. “Never saw a baby that didn’t, and I’ve been nanny to every Guardian’s child here since the House was built.”

Eric took the opportunity to beat a tactical retreat, heading into the kitchen to gather plates, cutlery, and the cartons of Chinese food Greystone had left in the oven. He arranged them on a tray and added drinks—designer water for Kory and Greystone, tea for Beth—before carrying the meal out into the living room on a tray. Greystone and Beth were both bent over Maeve, clucking and cooing at her while Kory looked on proudly. The domestic tableau left Eric feeling a little unsettled, as if he were being shut out of something he really didn’t want to be a part of. It was a peculiar feeling.

“Luncheon is served,” he intoned, deliberately breaking the mood. He set the tray down on the coffee table and began setting out the plates.

“Not much Chinese carryout Underhill, huh?” Eric teased, watching Beth and Kory inhale his offerings with a fine appe­tite while Greystone amused Maeve, holding her in one massive arm while scarfing egg rolls with his free hand.

“They still haven’t got the knack of making or even kenning and creating it, and when it comes to carryout, the Fairgoers would rather have pizza anyway,” Beth replied around a forkful of moo shu chicken, “And for some reason I didn’t want anything like this until after the munchkin came. Then I thought I would kill for lo mein.”

Eric and Kory exchanged a wordless masculine look of complete incomprehension. Kory mouthed a single sentence—just a few words, really.

Honey-nut bread and cabbage soup.

Ah, so that was what Beth had craved during her pregnancy! Eric nodded with sympathy, though he privately thought that Kory’d had it easy. Maybe the meals he’d shared with Beth were monotonous, but at least the ingredients were easily obtained Underhill. What if she’d wanted sushi—or birds’ nest soup—or some other weird delicacy?

On the other hand, cabbage soup, while being—ah—fragrant, wasn’t exactly the aroma-of-choice that Eric would have picked for dinnertime. And it did tend to linger.

Finally, the hunger aroused by a long ride from the Everforest Gate to New York City assuaged, Kory and Beth declared themselves sated and Eric cleaned away the plates.

“Bethie, ye can count on me for babysitting any time you’re Overhill,” Greystone announced, handing Maeve back to her mother. He looked up now, and raised an eyebrow like a cliff cornice at her as she beamed at him. “How are ye feeding her, then? Just breast?”

Somehow, Eric had noticed, whenever the gargoyle was around Kory and Beth, his Irish—or pseudo-Irish—accent got thicker. Why a gargoyle should have an Irish accent, and not a French one, he couldn’t fathom. It was just one of those New York mysteries, he guessed. Or maybe the apartment’s first tenant had been Irish. Greystone had to have learned his English somewhere.

Beth blushed. “Well—not entirely. I’m not exactly—well—a Holstein. The healers concocted a formula that Maeve likes; Kory can magic it up for us when we need it.”

Elves, even minor mages like Kory, could always ken an object or substance and conjure more of it up later. That was why Eric himself was, for as long as he was in school, financially solvent—Dharniel and Kory had supplied him with enough gold Krugerrands (which, conveniently enough, completely lacked any identifying serial numbers) to give him a fat and very golden nest egg.

Eric wasn’t surprised that Kory was helping to supplement Maeve’s feeding magically, since as was vividly obvious in the tight motorcycle leathers, Beth’s figure was back to her pre- pregnancy slimness, probably in no small part due to a little help from elven healers Underhill.

And we could make a fortune out here in the mortal world if we could just bottle that! No need for the Jane Fonda Pregnancy Workout if you’ve got the Sidhe on your side.

“Well, good.” The gargoyle grinned. “You can just be leavin’ the little angel with me tonight while ye have some fun out in the city, an’ I’ll be givin’ her the bottle while ye’re gone.”

“Oh, would you?” Beth exclaimed delightedly, and then blushed again. “Oh, that sounds awful, but—”

“But what’s the harm in you havin’ an evenin’ out for a movie or summat?” Greystone countered quickly. “ ’Tis time for a little holiday, I’m thinkin’, and the wee one will be fine here. ’Tis many a nappie I’ve changed in me time—” he chuckled, a sound like rocks grating together “—and it’s a fine thing for me that I’ve no sense of smell to speak of.”

Better you than me, Eric thought, but didn’t say out loud. He’d been worried that their evening plans might have to be adjusted to include a baby—or worse, that Beth wouldn’t want to go out at all. Before she could change her mind, he went straight for the computer and logged on to the net, pulling up the New York Times entertainment web pages.

“Here’re your choices,” he called over his shoulder, while Beth was still protesting that Greystone didn’t have to be a babysitter and Greystone was insisting it would be a fine treat to have a baby in his arms again. Kory got up to peer over Eric’s shoulder with interest—computer technology had changed a lot since the last time Kory’d seen a computer—while Beth paused in mid-sentence, then shrugged and laughed, acknowledging defeat.

“Okay, Banyon. I’m sold. What’ve you got for us this evening, then?”

After some discussion, they decided on The Lion King—it was finally possible to get tickets after months of nothing but sold-out performances, and it was the show Eric thought Kory would enjoy the most.

Movies they could always see later; with help from Elfhame Fairgrove in Savannah, the most technologically sophisticated of the hames, a limited amount of human technology had been brought Underhill for the benefit of Beth and other humans who had sought shelter there. One of those bits of technology was a DVD player—which worked better than the VCR they’d originally had down there did, for some reason. They were still trying to work out how to bring in satellite TV, according to Kory—right now when anyone from Fairgrove wanted to see NASA Channel, Headline News, or (most espe­cially) Speedvision, they had to retire to one of the Fairgrove buildings Overhill.

Eric booked their seats through Ticketron Online—one of the perks of carrying an AmEx Platinum card—and for the first time in a long time, the three of them went out onto the streets of a city, to spend an evening together, as they once used to.

* * *

“That was great,” Beth sighed, much later, after peeking into the portable crib set up in the bedroom to make sure Maeve was all right. Babies, Eric had discovered, needed about as much support gear as the average astronaut, but fortunately Beth, unlike most mortal moms, had a portable hole to carry it in. The amount of stuff she’d unpacked from it before she’d been willing to leave Maeve with Greystone had been purely mind-boggling.

“That was fantastic, in fact.”

They’d made the curtain without any trouble, walking most of the way so that Beth and Kory could get a taste of New York. After the show they’d stopped at Luchow’s for dessert, and were home by midnight.

Kory nodded, his green eyes still shining—literally!—with pleasure. “I forget, sometimes, just what a marvel mortal creativity is,” he said, clearly without thinking who he was with. “Imagine creating something that has never been before, just with the power of the mind!”

Eric laughed. “So what am I, chopped liver?” he asked mockingly, and Kory flushed.

“Nay, Bard, I didn’t—” the elf faltered.

“I know you didn’t! I’m just teasing you!” Eric laughed—but behind the laughter was an inescapable thought. When it was the three of us alone together, he wouldn’t even have put that into a thought, much less words—he’d have wondered, maybe, when I would create something that would be on a stage. Now I’m “Bard,” not “Eric”—and he forgets what I am. As if our life together never happened.

“Listen, something really fantastic happened today,” he said quickly, to drive away uncomfortable thoughts. “I met another Bard!”

The other three settled down to hear the story—though Greystone, being telepathic by nature, already probably knew at least some of it. But like the tactful guest he was, he never flaunted that very useful ability, and in fact, Eric wasn’t really sure how much of his regular thoughts Greystone actually heard.

He told them all about meeting Hosea, about realizing what Hosea was, and about the two of them playing together in the subway. Then he told them about his plans to get Hosea on his feet. He realized he didn’t know why Hosea had come to New York—he was becoming enough of a New Yorker himself to just kind of take it for granted that of course everyone who could would want to come to New York, the center of the world for so many things.

He couldn’t help but get excited about the prospect of playing with the banjo-Bard again. Gigging with another good musician was one of the things he liked to do best, but gigging with another Bard had been an experience so enchanting that he couldn’t wait to do it again. Kory nodded his understanding, and the more enthusiastic Eric got, the more pleased Kory looked—but Beth was frowning.

“I don’t know, Banyon,” she said slowly, her brows furrowing with unease. “This could all be a setup. I don’t like it—I mean, you don’t know anything about this guy—not really! Isn’t it just a little too convenient that he’s busking at your subway station just as you get out of class?” She put down her tea and shifted uneasily in her seat on the couch.

It was hard, now, to remember what Beth had been like when he first met her—hard to remember what he’d been like, come to that—but he knew she hadn’t been this suspicious, jumping-at-shadows paranoid. Since Griffith Park, and everything that followed after, every year Beth seemed to be darker, more intense, more focused—and not entirely in a good way, either. It was as if the person she might have become had been destroyed by this other self—and equally true that she had always held the potential to become either one. He supposed it bothered him more because he’d been counting on Maeve to erase all the scars and make Beth the person she’d been at twenty. But that wasn’t ever going to happen. Done was done, and living things changed.

But some changes weren’t for the better.

“Bethie, this guy couldn’t be a Fed,” Eric answered firmly. “I’ve been here almost a year—if anyone were looking for me, they’d have found me already. Besides, no Fed I ever saw looked or acted like Hosea, or could. They’re just not good enough actors.”

“He doesn’t have to be a Fed,” she argued, leaning forward, her face intent. “What about those people that were using LlewellCo as a front to make mages on crack or whatever it was? What about the guys with the pet Nightflyers that were after us in San Francisco?”

“Not a chance. Trust me, those kind of guys stink of bad juju a mile away,” he insisted. “I’d know. Believe me, I’d know.” I’m a Bard, Bethie. This is what being a Bard is. I’d know.

But Beth still wasn’t willing to drop the subject. “Maybe,” she said grudgingly. “But you have to admit that the story is just—awfully pat. In fact, this sounds like a classic con job to me!”

Oh, Bethie, when did you become so stubborn, so blind? You used to be able to see what was right in front of your nose better than most people!

“He’s a Bard, Bethie,” Eric said patiently, throttling his irri­tation. After all, she had every reason to be paranoid; she wasn’t Underhill ninety percent of her time because she wanted to be, she was there because “They” were after her. He’d never understood why it was Bethie they wanted, and not him or Kory, but there was no arguing with the facts.

“I’m telling you. I couldn’t make a mistake about this. Trust me. I know he’s a Bard; you can’t fake that. I know he’s one of the good guys—it’s in his music. A Bard can’t hide what he is—at least, not from another Bard. And anyway, a Bard isn’t going to try to con another Bard! What would the point be? Anything he can get from me he can get for himself a lot easier just by using his magic!”

“Not if what he wants is you,” Beth said, her jaw set in a stubborn line of temper.

“A Bard would not betray another Bard, acushla,” Kory said, coming to Eric’s defense. He put a hand on Beth’s knee soothingly. “I know this. And our Eric is no fool; he can weigh the human heart as easily as I could weigh an egg.”

Beth looked from Kory’s face to Eric and back again, and finally shrugged and sat back. “I suppose,” she said grudgingly, then smiled with a visible effort. “Well, you’ve done all right so far. I guess”—now it was her turn to falter—“I guess you don’t need us to shepherd you anymore.”

Eric forced a grin, though he’d rarely felt less like smiling. “Like you ever did—or at least, any more than I did the same for you two!” Eric scoffed, and the other two looked a little shamefaced and ill-at-ease.

They were all so uncertain with each other! This wasn’t the easy seamless reunion he’d imagined. It was as if they’d never been friends and lovers, as if they were meeting now for the first time, none of them knowing the others any too well.

And that would never have happened in the past, either.

Greystone got to his feet, stretching his wings. “Well, I’ll thank ye now for a foigne evening, but it’s going I have to be. Can’t be spending all me time away from me duties, y’know.” He clumped across the room to the windowsill and ducked out onto the fire escape. “But any time ye need a sitter for the wee one, just gi’ me a shout, eh?” In moments, he was back in his post on the cornice above.

Once he was gone, a silence descended that was just a bit too uncomfortable, and Eric hastened to break it.

“So is there anything planned for Maeve?” he asked, figuring that the baby was the subject least likely to cause any more awkwardness. “I mean, like a christening or a baby shower or something?”

“Oh, aye!” Kory brightened up again, his delight in Maeve transparently obvious. “There’s the Naming ceremony—you’ll be coming, of course—”

“Of course,” Eric assured them quickly, and was rewarded by smiles.

“She will be brought up to the Court for it—you’ve never seen the Court, Eric—it is a sight beyond compare—and there’ll be the godparents speaking for her, and a ceileighe, of course—”

Kory went on at great length, using a number of words Eric didn’t know, but he did manage to gather that the real reason for the Naming was to have the biggest party Underhill had seen for a long, long time. Guests from every Elfhame known would be invited, and the ceremony itself would serve to confirm Beth’s place as a member of the Underhill community. In one way Underhill was like a family—or the extended family of Rennies—in that it functioned as much as a web of kinships and relationships as after the fashion of a true feudal society. To be known, and to know people in turn, was the very foundation of Sidhe life. As the old saying went: it wasn’t what you knew, but who you knew. . . .

All of this made Eric feel acutely aware of how very much he was no longer really a part of their lives, though he tried very hard not to show it. After all, that was the point of his being here, wasn’t it? He had a different sort of life to lead, now, and it was nothing like theirs. It didn’t even take place in the same world. Literally.

It’s done. The break’s a fact. He’d known that, he really had—but here it was in front of him, undeniable, and Eric’s throat suddenly knotted with a surge of loneliness that took him entirely by surprise.

He was so lost for a moment in his own thoughts that he missed the change in conversation.

“—think you’re going to ask Ria?” Beth was saying hesitantly.

Eric stared at her blankly. To the Naming? You’re asking me that? Beth obviously mistook his blank incomprehension for something else, because she flushed and added hastily, “If it hasn’t been a good idea to bring up her father and how she was born, I understand, but Kory and I haven’t had much luck in finding out anything for ourselves. And I thought . . .”

He shook off his melancholy with a start, and frantically tried to put the bits of conversation together into a coherent whole. Ria—Perenor—oh, of course! Not the Naming. About Sidhe/human crossbreeding.

“I have asked her, actually,” he said, hoping he hadn’t looked too blank. “I even told her why—well, I had to, she came out and asked me,” he added, in response to Beth’s sudden scowl.

“Oh, I’m sure she was only too pleased with that—” Beth snapped.

“She’s not your enemy,” was all Eric said, not defensively, but determined that the feud between Beth and Ria—if there was one—was not going to go on. Maybe bringing Ria to the Naming would be a good idea after all. Beth can’t throw a fit in the middle of a big party, and Ria needs to get on good terms with her relatives. Half her heritage is Sidhe. You can’t just ignore something like that.

“She risked her life to save the Sun-Descending Nexus—and paid a heavy price for her help,” Eric said firmly. “Elizabet and Kayla both say she’s okay. Whatever happened in the past is over with, and if she could have told me anything that would help, she would have.

“Unfortunately, she says—and I believe her—that what Perenor did in order to father a child on her mortal mother was not something we’d want to repeat.” He shook his head, and sighed. He hated to disappoint them—Beth and Kory wanted a child of their own so badly—but Ria’s information had been pretty grim.

“You remember how we found out that Perenor drained all those young kids that would have been Bards if they’d had a chance to grow into their power?” he asked.

“And left them sad, empty husks, aye,” Kory said, slowly, the horror of it dawning on him. “Do you mean—that was what he used to make the woman conceive?” The Sidhe knight drew back in horror, his green eyes wide.

“In a nutshell, yeah. He kept draining them for other reasons and other magics later, but that was the first thing he used them for.” Eric shuddered. He’d seen a couple of the kids—Elizabet, their human Healer-friend, had gotten some of them as patients once she’d known they were there to look for—and in Eric’s personal opinion, they’d have been better off dead. Actually, most of them had died, especially at first, and to Eric’s mind, they’d been the lucky ones.

If anyone had taken the music, the life, the dreams I’d had out of my world and left it gray and drained and empty, I wouldn’t have wanted to live.

Ria had told him that the actual spell Perenor had used had been a bit more complicated than simple draining. Perenor had forced two of the incipient Bards—one of them Ria’s uncle, her mother’s twin—into a kind of mind-bond; they’d hated and feared him and each other, and when they realized what he was doing, it had driven them crazy before it killed them. The backlash had damaged Ria’s hippie mother’s mind, leaving her with so many mental kinks her psyche resembled a ball of steel wool and an insatiable craving for drugs that could not be explained by normal addictions—if you could call an “addiction” normal. Eric got the feeling she hadn’t lasted long after Ria ran away and took refuge with her loving father, either. Perenor probably protected her from herself only so long as she and her friends were useful, literally “minding the baby.”

“You’re right,” Beth said flatly, as Eric’s explanation faltered to a stop. “That’s not something we’d want to repeat. So it’s a dead end. Another dead end.” She seemed to fold in upon herself, as if the disappointment were a palpable weight.

There didn’t seem to be much else Eric could say, and the conversation stumbled awkwardly into another subject. Eventually, around about three in the morning, Eric smothered a yawn and Greystone poked his head in the window.

“Streets are quiet as a nun’s funeral,” he said. “Are ye plannin’ on stayin’ the night, then?”

Beth and Kory looked at each other, a quick sort of “married people” glance.

“You can have the bedroom,” Eric offered quickly. “Just like always. You know the couch makes up into a good bed—you picked it out, remember?—and it won’t be the first time I’ve fallen asleep on it.”

But Kory and Beth exchanged another one of those looks that excluded Eric, and Beth chuckled.

“I don’t think so, Banyon,” she said, not unkindly. “Maeve is as good as gold except for first thing in the morning. And she may not have anything else of yours, but there’s no doubt she’s got your lungs. She’d have the whole building up here, thinking we’re murdering a cat.”

Eric blushed, but laughed along with the other three, for Greystone seemed to find this observation hilariously funny. “Okay, then—I was thinking you’d spend the weekend, but—”

“What, and get in the way of you making a date with Ms. Llewellyn?” Beth asked, with just a hint of bitterness that she tried hard to conceal. “We’ll send you word of when the Naming is—you are coming?” she asked again.

“If I didn’t, you’d kill me,” he pointed out.

“Well—unless you were in a hospital bed, yeah, I probably would,” Beth admitted. Kory went to fetch Maeve from the bedroom, while Beth stood up and gave him a hug and a kiss that was, for one moment, like the old Beth’s. “I’ll try not to be so jealous, Banyon,” she whispered in his ear. “As long as the bitch makes you happy. But if she ever hurts you—”

“That’ll be between her and me,” he replied, breathing it into her ear. “Don’t interfere, Bethie. Not even out of love. I’m a big boy now. You can’t always be trying to protect me.”

She pushed him away, and looked into his eyes for a moment; hers were suspiciously damp. “You’ve grown,” was all she said, but the smile she gave him wavered just a little.

Kory came back with Maeve. He handed Beth the baby to tuck into her carrier, then put an arm around Eric’s shoulders.

“The Bard’s a warrior now, acushla, well-trained and proven in dire battle. He doesn’t need us for protection anymore.” The elf smiled, that kind of smile that just melted the heart. “But I know he will always need us as friends.”

“Always,” Eric said, drawing both of them into a fierce embrace. Maeve was a warm weight between them—between them, Eric now realized, in more ways than the physical. Beth and Kory were parents now, and he wasn’t. “Always. Never doubt it,” he repeated. But it’s a different kind of “always” than I’d planned for. . . .

It was just as well that Beth and Kory left that Friday night, because Saturday turned out to be a day of running around on a hundred little errands that ate up all of Eric’s time from the moment he got up around noon. Light bulbs blew, he ran out of toilet paper, then out of ink for his printer (at which time he discovered that he was out of paper as well). He went down to the basement to do laundry, and discovered he was out of detergent.

If it weren’t for the party this evening, I’d be really bummed.

It wasn’t anything major in the way of parties, but over the past several months those who were in the “know” about the true function of Guardian House—the four Guardians and a few others—had fallen into the pleasant habit of getting together once or twice a month to just kick back and socialize. These gatherings were usually held at Eric’s place—Eric was a Bard, not a Mage, and, as Paul had been happy to inform him, Bards were legendary for their hospitality.

And practically speaking, Mages were solitary types who didn’t much like getting their personal space invaded at the best of times, even if Paul’s computers and reference library, Josй’s birds, and Toni’s kids weren’t taking up all the available entertaining space in their various apartments. And Jemima, being a New York City cop, was particularly possessive about her space, which was her sanctuary from the horrors a patrol cop saw on a daily basis.

Eric had been invited in a couple of times; Jemima had a small one-bedroom decorated mostly in blues and greens, its walls hung with her collection of nature photographs, including an original Ansel Adams. It was a serene yet somehow imper­sonal space, reflecting its owner’s personal reserve. Especially if you never got to see the sword hanging on the bedroom wall, its blade glowing with Runes of Intent. . . .

Eric shook himself free of the reverie with a smile. So what it all boiled down to was that his apartment had become the de facto Mage Community Center for Guardian House. Fortunately, all he had to do was place his standing order with the corner pizza place and look forward to an evening of good talk and good people.

Tatiana and Alex were the first two to arrive. Tat was a book designer; Alex did indexing and research, as well as teaching part-time at the New School. Tatiana was tall and flamboyant, with pre-Raphaelite blonde hair and a gypsy taste in clothes. Alex was dark and saturnine, with a neatly-trimmed black beard and a positive addiction to sober suits. His hobby was stage illusion­ism, and on occasion Eric had seen him pull off feats of sleight of hand that he wasn’t sure he could duplicate even with the help of Bardic magic. Both were what Alex called “research magicians,” devoting more time to the history of the Art than to actual practice. They were members of one of the more close-mouthed magical lodges, New Age by courtesy, though unlike a lot of the New Agers Eric had met over the years, they weren’t “in-your-face” about it. They spoke appreciatively about Eric’s “air-­conditioning,” and Tat poked her head out the window to say “hi” to Greystone while Alex got them drinks—Vernor’s with lime for himself, Schweppes’ Bitter Lemon with ice for Tatiana.

One thing I’ve got to say for magicians—they certainly make cheap dates. Nobody I’ve ever met who had the Gift—and knew what they had—really drinks much. Or smokes, or, well, much of anything in that line. I guess once you’ve plugged into magic, the other stuff all seems second best.

The others began to appear fairly quickly after that, arriving from their various day jobs. Toni Hernandez was the building’s manager, a pretty, no-nonsense Latina in her early forties, a single mother with two kids. As much as such an anarchic group as the Guardians had a leader—and Eric had gotten the feeling that they were a lot more like the Texas Rangers, or four Lone Rangers, than any organized Occult Police—the Guardians of Guardian House looked to Toni.

Jimmie—short for Jemima, and she’d kill you if you used it—was fashion-model tall and slim, with thick, lustrous, straight black hair, very dark eyes, a bronzy complexion under a good, even tan, and high cheekbones in a face too strong to be called “pretty.” She was manic about keeping civilians off the fire line; back when she’d just been starting out as a Guardian, her partner had been killed because she’d been unable to keep him out of a paranormal investigation. Now she was adamant about protecting the innocent.

Paul Kern was a tall elegant black man with a hint of Islands British in his voice, who carried himself with the grace of a dancer. Paul made his living doing something esoteric with computers, and used the same valuable skills to find information about whatever problems the Guardians might face. Though his abilities had come up dry when the Guardians had faced down an Unseleighe Lord last year, Eric had no doubt that by now Paul had managed to corner the world market in elven lore.

Paul entered along with the fourth of the House’s Guardians, Josй Ramirez. Josй was the building’s super, handling the House’s rare mechanical breakdowns, and a breeder of African Grey parrots. He was short and stocky, with the build of someone who lifted weights for use, not show, and the dark craggy features of an Indio Charles Bronson. Of the four Guardians, it was hardest for Eric to imagine how Josй had wound up as a mystical champion of the Light: he seemed so incredibly pragmatic and down-to-earth, not to mention fully involved in both day job and avocation. Eric had visited his apartment a few times—it was almost entirely given over to the birds. To Eric they looked like budgies on steroids, but there was no doubt that Josй loved them—or that his love was returned.

The last of the stragglers had arrived by eight, and the apartment was filled with eddies of talk and laughter. Earlier in the day Eric had filled his CD player with an eclectic mix calculated to appeal to everyone—some old favorites, some new finds—and more than once he caught people paging through the stack of jewel cases, trying to identify the music that was playing. The pizzas had vanished early, but Margot had brought cookies—someone usually did—and Eric had laid in a more than sufficient supply of sodas to fuel conversations far into the wee small hours.

Jimmie had looked pretty beat when she’d walked in tonight. Eric had put that down to the stress of her job—in addition to everything else, the NYPD rotated shifts on a six-week basis, which meant she was always having to get used to new hours—but as the evening passed, the lines of stress in her striking face became more pronounced, not less. Something worse than usual was eating at her, something good friends and conversation couldn’t touch.

“Want to talk about it?” Eric asked.

He’d followed her into the kitchen when she’d gone to get a refill on her tea. Eric had found that a Mr. Coffee did a good job of keeping a pot of herbal tea hot for hours—and after six or seven hours of steeping, even chamomile would get as dark as Lipton’s.

Jimmie sighed, not turning around. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only to someone who knows you,” Eric answered. “I’m surprised the others haven’t been on your case about it already.”

“What makes you think they haven’t?” she asked, turning around, cup in hand, and leaning against the sink. “The only trouble is, none of us can figure this out. I was just about desperate enough to ask you for advice,” she finished, with a faint ironic smile.

Eric smiled back, although he was now a lot more worried than he had been before. The Guardians were good folks, but they tended to be . . . insular. Jimmie’s flat refusal to put civilians on the firing line was only the more extreme manifestation of the Guardians’ general desire not to involve outsiders—no matter how magical—in their business. Either you were already in it up to your neck, so their reasoning ran, or you should take the chance to go live a peaceful, normal life and run with it. The fact that Jimmie was willing to consult him was proof that the Guardians were at the end of their considerable resources.

“Consider the doctor in,” he said, doing his best to cloak his unease with lightness.

Jimmie took a deep breath, obviously organizing her thoughts. Eric glanced over his shoulder, but no one had followed them into the kitchen, and the hum of talk and music was still at an even level. They wouldn’t be disturbed.

“Okay. For about the past . . . six months, maybe a little longer, I’ve been having nightmares. They sort of come with the territory, I know, but these have been something special. Fires, open graves, things . . . chasing me. Pretty grim.

“We tried to figure out a reason for them, sure, but it’s been pretty quiet magically since Aerune tried his little stunt last winter. They can’t really be coming from outside, not with my shields and the House’s. And besides, Greystone doesn’t pick up a thing—at least, not until I wake up screaming. As for work . . . well, the job is the job, and it never changes. But the dreams have. They’ve gotten more frequent, and they’ve gotten worse.” She shrugged, glancing up momentarily to meet Eric’s eyes. “I’m starting to think maybe I ought to take some personal leave.”

These nightmares must be something pretty bad, Eric thought. He frowned. While he could certainly use his magic—with her help and consent—to give her sweet dreams in place of the nightmares, it would only be a temporary solution. The real question was what could break through a Guardian’s shields and leave no trace for the House—or Greystone—to sense?

“And you don’t think they’re coming from outside.”

Jimmie shook her head.

“But they could be.” Eric cudgeled his brains to remember all Master Dharniel’s lessons on magic, but the Sidhe Magus hadn’t been big on lectures. Dharniel had been more the “learn by doing” type. “You’ve pretty much settled that this isn’t something coming from within—if it were, it would probably have resolved itself by now. And I know that the House’s shields would stop pretty much everything, but if you have blood-kin, they can almost always get through any shields you can raise. . . .” His voice trailed off. As far as he knew, Jimmie didn’t have any living relatives.

“Mom’s dead. Dad’s dead. But . . .” Jimmie stopped with a heavy sigh. “There’s still someone. He’s as good as dead, though.”

“Someone close to you?” Eric asked, feeling uncomfortably that he was prying into things that weren’t any of his business.

Jimmie Youngblood smiled bitterly. “Once upon a time I had an older brother. I went into the Academy because of him—he was a cop, like Dad and Grampa. I wanted to be just like him. Only it turned out that he wasn’t a cop just like Dad and Grampa. He . . . cut corners. Did things that no cop can do and stay clean. Dad found out about five minutes before Internal Affairs did. He turned El—my brother—in. He left the Force, and that was that.”

“Do you know where he is now?”

“Eric, I don’t even know if he’s alive,” Jimmie said in frustrated exasperation.

“My advice? Better find him,” Eric said. “I can play you a charm to give you temporary relief, so you can get some rest, but all it will be is a stopgap. It won’t make the dreams go away. And from the kind of dreams you’ve been having, I’d say it’s a possibility that this guy might be in trouble.”

Serious trouble.

THREE:
A DARK HORN BLOWING

In this forest it was always night. A red moon hung eternally overhead, its scarlet light turning the landscape below to ebony and blood, hiding the brambles and pitfalls that could trap a running man. The damp air resounded to the call of hunting horns and the howls of the pack. Whatever mortal encountered them was doomed, for they were the hounds of the Wild Hunt, and once set upon a scent, they never failed to take their prey.

He had seen them succeed four times before. He was the fifth and last, and sometime in this eternal night his end would come in the same way as that of all the others.

He did not know how long any of them had been here, suffering the tender mercies of their tormentor. Weeks or months—or maybe even years. The old stories said that time ran differently under the Hollow Hills than it did on Earth. But the time of year was the least of his worries.

Staying alive as long as he could—and dying well—was what mattered now. Was all that mattered now.

He stopped for a moment, his back to the trunk of a tree of no earthly species, alert for the sound of the Hunt. If he could survive until dawn, he was free. That was what they’d told Hauman, and for a while all of them had hoped to escape—until they realized that in this world, dawn never came.

His antlers caught in the tree’s branches. He shook his head irritably as he freed them. They were another part of the trap. There was no way to remove them. Once Aerune had strapped the gleaming silver antlers to your head, only death would release you. That was one of his tricks, and the Sidhe lord had a lot of them. Elkanah Youngblood had sampled them in plenty during his captivity.

Had the blonde bitch known what Aerune would do to them when she’d abandoned them here? Elkanah hoped so. It made Ria Llewellyn easier to hate, and hate was the only thing that gave him the strength to go on. There was no point in hating Lord Aerune—it would be like hating a mountain, or the sea, or the night itself. Aerune was too inhuman to hate, but Elkanah could fear him, and he did.

Too late now to wish he’d never followed Lintel’s orders back in the day, nor followed the path that had brought him to the outlaw life of a hired gun. Too late to wish he’d died before Robert Lintel had magicked them all into Aerune’s court with his captive espers. Too late to wish he’d turned his own gun on himself while he still could, before he’d become Aerune’s prisoner. All that mattered now was surviving as long as he could without going mad. Or maybe going mad was better. Elkanah didn’t know.

The one thing he did know was that it was marginally better to be ripped apart by the hellhounds pursuing him than to fall into the hands of the huntsmen. Liverakos had made that mistake. He’d held off the dogs until the Hunt had joined them. He’d hoped for clemency, or for a clean death. Instead, it had taken him hours to die, flayed alive slowly by creatures who fed on human pain.

And all of them—the surviving Threshold mercs—had been forced to watch.

Elkanah didn’t know how often Aerune held these hunts. Time had no meaning here. There was being asleep, and being awake, and sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the two. When Aerune got tired of his petty torments, then it was time for another hunt. They’d never known who’d be chosen next to wear the silver antlers. Elkanah had that small advantage over those who had gone before him. When the last of the others had died in the hounds’ jaws, he’d known he’d be next. Maybe that was why Aerune had played him as long as he did, tormenting him with the hope it wouldn’t end for him the way it had for all the others. But this morning—it was impossible not to use the word, even though it was meaningless in this world—Aerune had summoned him to the throne room, and Elkanah had known his time had come.

And now he was here in the bone-wood.

The bone-wood was filled with bare, leafless trees like nothing on Earth. Even when there was no wind, the branches moved, rubbing against each other to produce a sound eerily like human whispering. Maybe if you listened long enough, you could understand what the trees said. Elkanah hoped he’d be dead before then.

Though he suspected spring and autumn never came to this place, the forest floor was covered with dead and rotting leaves. Thickets of leafless bramble grew between the trees, a trap for unwary prey, and somewhere beyond the bone-wood itself was a meadow—covered with sere dry grass that had never been green—and a river. He’d used every moment of the other Hunts to try to make a map of the territory in his mind, hoping it would serve him when his own time came.

Except for the silver antlers upon his head, Elkanah was as naked as any other hunted animal. They’d given him a head start before they released the hellhounds—the Unseleighe Sidhe had a warped notion of fair play—and he’d had a long time to plan for this day.

There was no way out of the forest, and no point in waiting for a dawn that would never come. The only hope he had—and all it amounted to was a choice of deaths—was to make the hunt last as long as possible, so that the rade got bored and didn’t follow the pack very closely. Then he could be sure that the pack would tear him to bits before the hunters reached him. Until that time, he needed to confuse them, lay a maze of false trails, and use every way there was to throw them off the scent. The times he’d ridden with the Hunt to watch the others die would help him there. He could almost say he knew this forest.

The horns sounded again, closer this time, and he could hear the baying of the hounds. They were huge, monsters, like a wolf in a nightmare: four feet at the shoulder, with ivory fangs as long as his thumb and pupilless red eyes that glowed with the light of hellfire. His daddy’d been a jackleg preacher when he wasn’t hard at work at his real job, and in his youth Elkanah had heard all about Hell and its creatures. He could say he knew the territory. If this wasn’t Hell, it was the next best thing.

He turned, and began moving away from the pack at a slow, ground-eating lope. The river was near here. He could wade along it for a few hundred yards, then cross over and double back on his tracks. That should confuse them for a while. Later he’d find a tree to climb, move from branch to branch. Anything to throw them off the scent. He could even pretend that he hoped he could make it to the edge of the forest—assuming it had an edge. Hope could keep you alive, or it could kill you. Right now, hope and determination were the only things he had.

He heard the river long before he reached it. He had to force his way through a thicket of thorns to reach it, and he was bleeding from a hundred scratches by the time he made his way to the water. The surface of the water shone balefully red in the moonlight, and for a moment he worried about what might lay beneath its surface. The river was wider than he remembered, but the far bank was an easy slope. But Agel had made it across before he died, and Aerune’s Hunt had forded it without difficulty. He had to try.

When he stepped into the water, it was as cold as liquid ice. The scratches on his body burned, a silver tracery of fire, before the cold numbed them. Gritting his teeth, Elkanah forced himself deeper, striking out with powerful strokes for the center. The current would be faster there, and do some of his work for him. Always providing the Hunt wasn’t awaiting him downstream, knowing he would do precisely this.

Indecision is your worst enemy. On the battlefield, even a bad decision is better than none, he told himself grimly. You’ve made your plan, now stick to it.

The cold sapped his strength and made his heart hammer madly. He let the current carry him downstream as long as he dared before striking out for the far bank, knowing he had to save some of his strength to battle his way there. He didn’t dare try to drown, though surrendering to the water’s chill kiss was tempting. Aerune’s healers were too skilled for him to risk it. He’d seen them work on the others, bringing a man back from the edge of death to be tortured again. The death that was his only way of winning this game had to be certain . . . and final.

But it was almost a greater effort than he was capable of to drag himself out of the water, and for long moments Elkanah crouched in the thick grass of the bank, gasping and shuddering with the cold. Only terror and determination forced him to his feet to stagger onward through the wood again. All around him the trees seemed to whisper to themselves as he passed, and he no longer cared if what he saw and heard was real or imaginary. Anything might be true here. The only thing he had going for him was the fact that the Unseleighe Sidhe didn’t like to have their games spoiled. Nothing in this forest would hinder him as he ran, or do anything to cheat the Wild Hunt of its sport.

At least, they never had yet. He’d seen some of the other things that lived here—black horses with cloven hooves and ram’s horns, small silvery fox-things that sobbed and cried like children, glowing women as insubstantial as mist. Creatures of nightmare, only here the nightmares didn’t end with waking.

Each time he stopped to rest it seemed like only moments before he heard the hounds again, baying close behind as they followed his trail. He crossed a second, shallower stream, and Elkanah spent several minutes circling back and forth through it, making a tangled scent for the hounds to follow, before forging onward. The ground began to rise, and he realized that the trees were becoming smaller and farther apart.

This was a part of the Night Lands he’d never seen before on any of the Hunts. Perhaps if he reached the top of the ridge ahead, he might find sanctuary. A cave to hide in. Something. He had to hope, had to fool himself that he wouldn’t die tonight. It was the only way he could manage to get through this, and put himself at last beyond Aerune’s reach.

His entire body trembled with exhaustion, and his throat and lungs burned with each rasping breath he took. He didn’t know how far he had run—miles, maybe—and he knew that he couldn’t fool himself much longer. He was at the end of his strength, and the hounds were closer now. He could hear them. For the last few minutes he’d just been running flat-out, too stupefied with fatigue to turn and dodge and confuse the trail. This was open country, anyway. Backtracking wouldn’t do any good. The hounds could see him, and unlike other hunted animals, he had no convenient burrow to hide in.

He risked a look back, and to his horror, he saw that the hounds were not alone. He could see the torches of the Hunt, the glow of the riders’ bodies. Against all hope, this time the rade hadn’t lost interest in the chase, had followed the pack closely.

Of course. Aerune would want to be in at this last kill. He might even deny the hounds their pleasure, saving Elkanah for some new torment.

Behind him, he heard the horn blow victory, the prey in sight. From a view, to a kill.

At that thought, Elkanah’s last shred of control snapped. He could not—would not—die as Liverakos had. He ran, heedless of the stones that cut his feet, up the sloping ground ­toward the ridge.

There was a path cut into the hillside, leading up to the top of the ridge. Earlier he would have avoided it as a matter of course. Now it seemed to provide some haven, and he followed it unthinkingly. Twice he fell to his knees as his strength failed him, and twice he forced himself to stagger onward as the pack howled eagerly behind him. He could hear the riders now, shouting and laughing as they closed in, their horses scrabbling and slipping as they were forced up the steep narrow track. He grabbed one of the loose rocks as he ran. It was a poor weapon, but all he had. He would not give up without a fight.

The trail flattened out as he reached the top of the ridge. The wind was colder here, blowing steadily. He looked around, trying to see where the trail led now. There was a cave ahead. No—he paused to claw the sweat from his eyes—not a cave, just two rocks, leaning against each other to form the shape of a crude doorway. He should have been able to see through the opening to what lay beyond, but all he could see was blackness, blackness that shimmered and twisted like an oil slick on water. A Gate—he’d learned about them in his captivity. But to where?

But he had hesitated too long. The first of the hounds reached him, springing silently to the attack.

He went down beneath its weight, fighting to keep its jaws from his throat. He lowered his head and swung it fiercely back and forth, using the antlers as another weapon. The hound snapped at them, snarling, and that was enough to allow him to bring up the rock he still clutched in his hand, smashing it into the beast’s head.

It yelped at the pain, sounding almost doglike in its surprise. He hit it again, and heard the crunch of bone. It squealed and scrabbled back, glaring at him with those mad red eyes. But it didn’t attack again. It didn’t need to. The pack was only moments behind it. He scuttled backward frantically with hands and feet, not daring to take the moment to stand or to turn his back on the hound. He heard the riders behind them, and fury banished his weakness. He’d been so close, so close. . . .

He felt rough stone at his back, and something more. Something like dark sunlight, a raw electrical tingling that made his bones vibrate. The Gate. With the last of his strength he thrust himself sideways, kicking out to propel his body through to whatever lay beyond.

It didn’t matter what was on the other side.

The Hunt reached the Portal seconds later. The hounds milled about the stones, whining and yelping their displeasure and confusion at their quarry’s sudden disappearance. The huntsmen dismounted and waded into the animals, driving them back with whips.

Aerune rode slowly forward, through the confusion of hounds and huntsmen. Behind him, his courtiers waited in silence for the explosion of his wrath. No one had expected this. Never in a thousand Great Hunts had the prey ever made it this far, nor should the Gate have opened for them if they had.

But Aerune did nothing. He gazed at the Portal for a long moment in silence, and then turned back to his men.

He was smiling. It was a sight more terrifying than his anger.

“Now,” Aerune said with quiet satisfaction. “Now, the hunt can begin. Now I have set my hunter upon the scent.”

When Eric woke up on Sunday morning, he was clear-headed and full of energy—and it occurred to him that although he had made the plan to meet Hosea at the Y for a rehearsal session tonight, the Y might not be the best place to hold it. The walls of those little rooms were notoriously thin, and a flute tended to have a certain piercing quality. The neighbors might not appreci­ate their playing—or worse, might like it too much.

On the other hand, he had a perfectly good apartment here, with thick walls and unflappable neighbors. Why not bring Hosea here? They could play as long as they liked in peace and comfort, and Eric could run the Appalachian Bard past the House, just to be able to reassure Bethie that he wasn’t going off half-cocked here. So, once again he cleaned like a mad thing—polishing away the remains of last night’s party and taking several bags of paper plates and cups down to the trash cans. He realized he wanted to make a good impression on Hosea, and the thought made him smile. There was a time when he would have dismissed a concern like that as sheerest hypocrisy. You’ve come a loo-o-o-ng way, bay-bee, he sang lustily and off-key inside his head. Though he didn’t have Greystone to help him tidy, at least there wasn’t nearly as much to do.

Two cleaning sessions in two days. Am I turning into Mr. Mom or what?

When he stepped out onto the street around four, the day’s stored-up heat hit him like a hammer. He’d been luxuriating all day in his Bard-crafted winter weather (a lot more appealing in July than in February), and the reality of a New York City summer was brutal. The streets outside his Riverside apartment were the next best thing to deserted; in summer New Yorkers tended to retreat into their air-conditioned shells—those who had them, at any rate.

It took him a little over an hour to make it crosstown to the Y—not one, but two trains died the death and had to be taken out of service—and he was hot and sweaty when he got there. But if he’d been looking for relief, he didn’t find it in the lobby of the YMCA. It was only marginally cooler.

Maybe going back to my place was a better idea than I thought.

He didn’t bother to check in at the desk, since he already knew Hosea’s room number. The elevator was slow and creaky, with absolutely no air circulation. He was glad to get out.

The hallway had the smells of long occupation and illegal hot plates. Several of the doors were open, and as Eric walked by, he could see that some of the windows were open as well, filling the hall with the smell of burnt asphalt and baking brick. Hosea’s door was closed. Eric stopped before it, but as he raised his hand to knock, Hosea opened the door.

“I heard you coming up the hall,” he said, stepping back to usher Eric inside.

The room was smaller than most of the dorm rooms Eric had seen lately. There was a twin bed and a battered dresser, a wooden chair and a fold-down shelf that served as a desk. The window opened onto an enchanting view of the airshaft, and the battered air conditioner in the window was doing its noisy best, but not making a lot of difference to the temperature. Despite his surroundings, Hosea looked as if he’d just stepped out of a bandbox: he was wearing a white T-shirt and neatly-pressed jeans. His banjo lay in its open case on the bed, which was made to ­Marine Corps standards of neatness. Hosea held out his hand and Eric shook it, but despite the fact that Eric’s hand disappeared into Hosea’s, the larger man’s grip was firmly gentle. Here was a Bard who knew a great deal about control; Eric had the feeling that Dharniel wouldn’t have much to teach him there.

“Glad you could make it,” Hosea added. “Would you care for something cold to drink?”

“You’ve got something?” Eric asked in surprise. He hadn’t seen any sign of a refrigerator.

In answer, Hosea reached under the bed and pulled out a large plastic sack. He opened it, revealing a selection of ­containers—Cokes, bottled water, and a carton of milk—nested in a couple of pounds of slowly-melting ice. “Easier than running down to the corner store every couple of minutes.” He pulled out a bottle of water and handed it to Eric, who accepted it gratefully. “Cheaper when you buy them at the supermarket, too.”

Eric twisted off the cap and chugged the water gratefully. It was as cold as the ice that had surrounded it, like drinking winter. He wondered if Hosea might have used a little Bardcraft on it, but he wasn’t sure of how skilled in magic Hosea might be. Playing on people’s emotions was a lot easier than affecting the physical world.

“You haven’t brought your flute with you,” Hosea observed, when Eric set down the empty bottle. Hosea picked it up and placed it fastidiously into the battered plastic trash can.

“There’s been a change of plans. I think we’d be better off practicing at my place.”

“Ay-ah, the walls do seem to be a mite thin here,” Hosea said, echoing Eric’s earlier thought. “Though I haven’t noticed anyone ever going to bed at all,” he added ruefully.

“The city never sleeps,” Eric agreed, quoting an old advertising slogan.

“I’ve noticed that. Can’t imagine how you folks get on.”

“You get used to it, I guess.” As he said the words, Eric realized that in fact he’d done just that. When he’d moved here a year ago, he’d thought that the noise and constant bustle would drive him crazy. Now he hardly noticed it.

Hosea greeted this remark with a silent—though eloquent—expression of disbelief. “Well, if we’re going back to your place, just let me get my traps together. No point in putting temptation into the path of some poor weak-willed critter, is there?”

“No point at all,” Eric agreed readily, since this was fitting in very nicely with a nebulous half-plan of his own. It took Hosea only seconds to return all of his possessions to the worn duffle bag and lock his banjo into its case, and only slightly longer to pour the ice-melt out the window and tie the bag full of ice up neatly. On the way out he knocked on a closed door, seemingly at random, and thrust the bag into the hands of its surprised occupant.

“Here you go, Leroy,” Hosea said. “You share that with your friends, you hear?”

Leroy smiled, and said something quick in soft Spanish. Hosea smiled and continued down the hall.

“You speak Spanish?” Eric asked. Somehow it wasn’t an accomplishment that seemed to go with his picture of a banjo-playing hillbilly Bard.

“Nope,” Hosea answered easily. “But it ain’t too hard to figure out what most folks mean, no matter how they put themselves.”

They hit the street and headed for the subway. At Hosea’s urging, rather than wait to get back to the apartment and phone for pizza, they stopped and picked up dinner on the way.

“Save a little that way,” Hosea pointed out practically, and it did mean that once they reached the apartment, they wouldn’t have to wait around for food to arrive. They stopped at the same place Eric had ordered the pizzas from for the party last night—ought to just open a charge account here—and ordered. The heat had pretty much killed Eric’s appetite, but Hosea studied the menu for a moment and ordered three super deluxe sausage calzones, a kind of Moebius pizza with the crust on the outside and the topping on the inside.

“If I ate like that, I’d look like a city bus,” Eric said ruefully, all too aware that a relatively sedentary lifestyle and a few more years had stepped his metabolism down a notch from his freewheeling RenFaire days. Hosea just grinned as he picked up the bag from the counterman.

“I’m a tad bit bigger than you are,” he pointed out. “Reckon it comes from having to wrestle bears before breakfast,” he added, grinning even wider.

“Yeah, right.” Eric snorted. “Pull the other one.” Hosea worked his country-cousin veneer like a wolf with a designer sheepskin. It was protective coloration, but not exactly the whole truth. They continued up the block, and turned the corner onto Eric’s street. Hosea’s eyebrows rose when they stopped in front of Guardian House.

“Being a subway minstrel must pay better than I thought,” Hosea drawled, gazing at the impeccable Art Nouveau ­exterior.

“I get by,” Eric said, leading him inside. After this long, he could enter the ten-digit security code almost as a matter of reflex.

Hosea regarded the fragile-seeming brass elevator cage. “I reckon I’d rather take the stairs, if it’s all right with you.”

Eric grinned. “It’s stronger than it looks, but it takes forever. That’s why I usually take the stairs.”

One more ten-digit code later, the two men were inside Eric’s apartment. Hosea sighed appreciatively at the cool—he probably attributed the lack of a window a/c to central air—while Eric got napkins and plates, and a couple of bottles of ice water.

“I’m gonna have to let her set for half-an-hour or so before we do any playing,” Hosea said, indicating his banjo. “This weather purely plays hob with her tuning.”

“Banjos are kittle cattle,” Eric agreed, setting down his burden on the coffee table. Hosea opened the sack from the pizza place and began tucking into his calzones.

“Listen, I’ve been doing some research, and did you know that the whole banjo modality and a lot of the tunes are derived from bagpipe music?” Eric asked. “Apparently it was hard to manufacture bagpipes and reeds and whatnot in the Appalachians when the Scots and the Irish immigrated there, so musicians borrowed an African instrument—the ancestor of the banjo—and set it up for the kind of music they were used to.”

Hosea stopped chewing. “Seriously? Didn’t know that.”

Eric grinned. “Well, flute and bagpipe aren’t exactly what I’d call natural duetting material, but that means we can probably pull off a lot of the Celtic and folk stuff I know, since that’s Celtic modality.”

Hosea nodded. “You play a tune a couple times, I can pick it up, Mister Bard.”

“Same here.” Eric chuckled. “As if you didn’t know. Mister Bard. Ready to give it a shot? As soon as your lady is tunable, I mean.”

“Suits me.” They cleaned away the debris of the meal and spent a happy half hour going through Eric’s CD collection, then got out their instruments and put them in mutual tune. It took Hosea quite a while to get his lady tuned—no professional kept tension on the strings when the instrument wasn’t in use—and Eric remembered the old joke about the instruments’ notorious temperament. Q: How do you know when a banjo’s in tune? A: It never is. Having silver strings rather than catgut helped a lot, though, and after a little doodling around, they began working out a playlist.

There wasn’t any magic involved in what they were doing, or not overt magic, at any rate, but there certainly was a level of “enchantment” that Eric hadn’t felt since he played with Bethie’s old group, Spiral Dance. In fact, when he compared that experience to this one, it was like predawn and glorious sunrise—which in itself was kind of odd, since according to Dharniel, in the old days, Bards had been, well, tetchy was the word the Elven Magus had used. Easily irritated, and subject to extremes of professional jealousy that would make a modern pop diva turn green with envy.

But in the old days they were regarded as the equivalent of kings, Eric reflected, as he played “Smash the Windows” for Hosea, while the latter listened with a concentration that would have been intimidating to someone who wasn’t accustomed to that sort of reaction at Juilliard. They were treated like nobility, so they acted like brats. Guess having to busk on the sidewalk for their dinners might have cured them of a little of that ’tude. Certainly there was nothing like professional antagonism between him and Hosea—and the way the country boy had pitched right in and helped with the cleanup after dinner without being asked spoke well for Eric’s other embryonic plan.

But it wasn’t until well after dark, when both of them were satisfied that they had a solid list of audience-pleasing pieces—including one of Eric’s favorites, almost a personal anthem, Billy Joel’s “The Entertainer,” which had a killer banjo part built right in—that Eric put the last test in motion. Greystone, of course, had been skimming his thoughts, and only waiting for his signal.

“Well,” Hosea sighed, detuning the banjo and placing it with great care back in the case, “This’s been more fun than I’ve had in a long time, Eric, but I reckon I’d best be getting back.”

Eric nodded slightly at the window. “Would you mind meeting a friend of mine before you go?”

With a quizzical look, Hosea turned around to look behind himself, and froze.

“Y’all pick a pretty neat banjo, theah, boyo,” Greystone drawled, with a wink to Eric. The gargoyle climbed in through the window and stood in front of Hosea.

Hosea thawed a trifle. “Thank you kindly,” he said, punctiliously polite, then cocked his head to one side. Eric sensed little feelers of Bardic magic creeping cautiously towards the gargoyle. Greystone grinned, and opened his wings, just a trifle. “Reckon you may look more than a bit like Old Nick, but you ain’t nothing unchancy—so what are you?” Hosea asked, with more composure than Eric had expected. “Besides Eric’s friend, that is?”

“Oh, now that is a long story,” Greystone replied, dropping the drawl. “Could take a couple of hours at least to tell it.” Greystone turned to Eric. “The House likes him,” was all he said, but that was all Eric needed to know.

“Listen, Hosea,” Eric said, waving a hand to get Hosea’s attention away from the talking gargoyle. “You just passed a couple of—well, tests. You need a better place to stay than that steam bath, I’ve got a perfectly good couch here that won’t cost you anything, and you’ve already got all of your stuff here. Want to stay the night and hear what Greystone has to say? If you’d rather go back to the Y after that, no problem, but I’ve got this big old place with only me rattling around in it, and there’s no reason why you can’t move in for a little bit until you’ve got a stake for a decent place of your own. If you’re planning on staying around New York, of course.”

Hosea looked from Eric to Greystone and back. “Huh,” he said, finally, clearly making up his mind. “Well, I came up here looking for new things; reckon I’d be pretty dumb to run off when what I was looking for shakes my hand and says howdy.”

“Good enough,” Greystone said, genially, and lowered his bulk onto the bench Eric had bought just for him. “Well, the story starts like this. . . .”

She had spent the last six months looking for a place to hide, and here in the mountains of West Virginia she’d found it. She’d lucked into Morton’s Fork while cruising the Appalachian Chain on Lady Mystery. Hillfolk, as a rule, were even more suspicious of the government than she was, and as closemouthed as the dead. Somewhere in these hills she’d hoped for a bolt-hole, and she’d found it here. No one would be looking for her in Morton’s Fork. The town was barely a wide spot in the road. The last excitement in Lyonesse County had been the 1924 WPA project that had left a string of cabins behind. The nearest library was twelve miles away, the nearest supermarket, twenty. There wasn’t even television or radio here—the guy down at the general store said there was something about the area that made it impossible for the signals to get through.

That suited Jeanette Campbell just fine. She’d set up housekeeping in one of the old WPA cabins, and for the last several weeks she’d been here, considering her next move. She’d cached her bike and most of her supplies under a tarp in the ruins of an old building about a mile up the hill—she’d found it by following one of the winding deer tracks that crisscrossed the mountain. She didn’t like having Lady Mystery so far away, but the old sanitarium was the closest thing to a bolt-hole and a back door she could manage. And Lady Mystery would attract attention wherever she went—a big flashy cream-and-maroon Harley touring bike with all the extras, Jeanette’s one extravagance from her time at Threshold. She didn’t want to lose her.

When she’d bailed out on Robert last December, she hadn’t known whether or not it was for keeps. Robert had been the one who’d found her as an outlaw chemist and rescued her from the Feds to head up a secret R&D project at his pharmaceutical company. She’d been chasing a dream—a drug that would unlock the psychic powers inherent in the human brain. Robert’s dreams had been grander and darker, of a secret army of psychic ninja, loyal to him alone.

They’d both gotten more than they’d bargained for. The one hundred fifty-seventh compound of the sixth year of trials—T-6/157—had actually worked. You gave it to people and they manifested psychic powers: psychokinesis, telepathy, thought projection, teleportation, healing. . . .

Of course, it also killed them within hours, but neither she nor Robert had been too worried about that at the time. Neither had Aerune mac Audelaine, when he’d come riding out of Elfland to claim the drug—and the Talents—for his own.

And Robert, like the idiot he was, had decided to declare war on the kingdoms of Faerie.

Jeanette hadn’t stuck around to see how that turned out. Everything she’d ever read told her that starting a fight with the Sidhe was all kinds of a bad idea. She’d taken a stash of the experimental drug, her guitar, some money, and her Harley and taken off before she got caught in the cross-fire. A copy of Time magazine she saw a few weeks later confirmed that she’d made the right decision.

There’d been a blonde woman on the cover, executive chic. She’d been wearing an expression indicating she was bucking for Pope, and the banner on the cover had said something about New Corporate Ethics. The caption identified the woman as Ria Llewellyn, owner of Threshold Labs. That had been bad enough. The story inside had been worse.

Threshold had gone down big time. Robert’s black project was the lead story, along with Llewellyn finding out about it and taking full responsibility (and credit) for stopping it. There was even a photo of Jeanette’s former lab assistant Beirkoff, “Llewellyn’s man on the inside.” Now there was a laugh. Beirkoff had been Robert’s creature first and last, but apparently Robert wasn’t on the game board any more. The article listed him as “missing.” She only hoped Aerune had gotten him: it would serve Robert right. This was all his fault.

It listed her as “missing”—and wanted—as well. Jeanette Campbell, the science behind Robert’s ambition, wanted for questioning in connection with several hundred deaths last winter. There wasn’t a photo, but thanks to Beirkoff there was a pretty good police artist sketch. She’d cut her hair immediately and dyed it black, but that wouldn’t help if anyone took a close look—and with rich-bitch Llewellyn and all her money and power screaming for Jeanette’s head, people would look and keep looking until someone found her. Jeanette’s only hope was to lie low and keep moving, but for that she needed cash money, and her emergency stash was almost gone.

She could have headed south, into Mexico, or made a run into Canada and hooked up with some of her contacts from the old desperado days. There was always work for a good outlaw chemist, and after her years at Threshold, Jeanette had gone from merely good to the best of the best. But leaving the U.S. would make her visible in a way she wasn’t now, and she didn’t want to take the risk if she didn’t absolutely have to. She wasn’t sure how long LlewellCo’s reach was, or how personal Ria Llewellyn meant to get, and Jeanette still had a lot left to lose.

Her choices were few. On the one hand, she could turn herself in to the authorities and cut some kind of deal. On the up side, if Robert was missing-presumed-dead, he wouldn’t be able to say much to contradict whatever story she had to tell. On the downside, with Robert missing, the authorities would need a scapegoat. Jeanette didn’t have a lot of interest in spending the rest of her life in a Federal pen.

On the other hand, she could turn herself over to Aerune, if she could manage to find him. Aerune. A genuine, ­impossible-but-real Lord of the Sidhe. He had a use for the Talents Jeanette created with T-6/157—T-Stroke—and whatever had happened to Robert, Jeanette was pretty sure Aerune hadn’t given up his plans. Once upon a time she could have asked for nothing more out of life than to meet a real live elf, but now the thought of ever running into Aerune again gave her nightmares. She’d used one of Threshold’s Talents to tap his mind, and Vicky Moon had called Aerune “the Lord of Death and Pain.” Jeanette had seen him up close. She believed it.

But though the idea made her shudder in revulsion, it had marginally more going for it than the first one did. Aerune would have a use for her, and from all she’d seen, he wouldn’t care how many people her drugs had killed, so long as he got what he wanted. The only problem there was that she wasn’t entirely sure what it was he wanted, and if she couldn’t give it to him, the penalties were apt to be a lot more severe than a long life in a small cage.

The third choice, which had a certain horrible fascination to it, was to try the T-Stroke on herself and see what happened. That was why she’d wanted to create it in the first place, wasn’t it? To give herself the powers she’d always dreamed of, the powers that would pay back everyone who’d ever teased and tormented her? She’d had a long time to go over her notes on her human test cases, and she thought she might have solved the sudden-death problem. T-Stroke didn’t seem to create these powers, only develop the latent ones that were there. Her subjects had died because they burned themselves out, like an electrical circuit when you put a penny in the fuse box. It was as if they only got halfway through some kind of transformation—the body needed to tap into some outside source of power to use the Talents instead of cannibalizing its own resources, but it couldn’t manage that before the initial dose of the drug wore off.

But if she used massive megadoses of T-Stroke over a period of days or even weeks, would that give the subjects the ability to control their newly awakened abilities and use them without burning out?

Maybe. And the only thing that was stopping Jeanette from testing her theory was the fact that only one in ten people seemed to have any innate Talent at all. It would be the blackest joke of all if she, who’d always thought of herself as so special, was a member of that humdrum ninety percent. And if you didn’t have Talent for the drug to work on, it killed you outright.

It was like a game of Russian roulette with five of the revolver’s chambers loaded.

Decisions, decisions. But a little long green makes them all easier. . . .

Jeanette looked around the little one-room cabin. The walls were papered with yellowing sheets of what passed for the local newspaper: The Pharaoh Call and Record, Published Weekly for Lyonesse County, including the townships of Pharaoh, Morton’s Fork, La Gouloue, Bishopville, and Maskelyne. Heat was a wood-burning stove; water came in bottles from the general store. Her cot was in one corner, along with a folding chair she’d bought from the store and an end table made out of a wooden crate. She had a table, courtesy of the previous tenant, and her provisions were stacked around the walls in battered cardboard boxes. It wasn’t a lot, considering what she’d started with.

But she could still make a living if she dared. She could go back to what she knew best—dealing. She’d always been on the production end before, not the street end, but she supposed she could manage. Only that would make her more visible, and probably put her on a collision course with whoever already had a corner on the local action. So that was her very last resort, when every other option had been exhausted.

This is the scene where the heroine pages through her address book and decides to look up some old friends. Only I guess I’m not the heroine of the story, and I sure don’t have any old friends, Jeanette thought grimly. She’d cut all her ties to people and places long ago—not that she’d ever had many—and now she was alone, her back to the wall. She could turn herself in to the Feds, turn herself over to Aerune, or take the T-Stroke and see what happened. Maybe under its influence she’d be able to see a way out of her problems, or at least a way to fix the formula.

Maybe.

Jeanette sighed, and went over to pick up her guitar. Music was the only thing that had never failed her, the only thing she could love unconditionally. She brushed her fingers across the silver strings, listening to the whispery chords. She’d play for a while. Nobody would hear her, and maybe she could figure out what to do.

All I have to do is figure out which is the lesser of three evils. . . .

Greystone had told his story, all the while managing to ­entirely sidestep the subject of the Guardians, a feat of verbal terpsichore that Eric could only admire. If Hosea got the notion that the House had been built, and Greystone carved, to assist a group of protectors that no longer existed, Greystone had certainly never said so explicitly. And he’d certainly filled his narrative with a number of amusing anecdotes he’d never mentioned to Eric—like the night the Statue of Liberty had decided to go for a walk, why construction on the Second Avenue subway had been stopped, and the real reason the dirigible mooring tower on the top of the Empire State Building was never used. The gargoyle was a born storyteller, and he’d rarely had as appreciative an audience as Hosea.

“Well, laddybuck,” the gargoyle said, sitting back with a sigh of satisfaction around midnight, “that’s my story, and I’m sure our Eric will tell you his, if he hasn’t already. But what about you, Hosea Songmaker? How is it you come by your gift—and that banjo? And what brings you to the wicked city?”

Hosea smiled and shook his head. “Reckon I owe you the round tale, but I guess it ain’t gonna be all tied up as pretty as yours.” He sat back and stretched ostentatiously, obviously settling himself to tell his story.

“I was born and raised in a little place in the hills called Morton’s Fork. I hear tell it’s been a kind of a special place for as long as folks’ve lived there, but with everybody moving to the big city, the countryfolk are pretty much gone by now. My folks died when I was little, and I was drug up by my grandpappy and mammy. Grandpappy Jeb came by his shine honestly—got it from his daddy, and on back to where the first white folks came up into the Fork and settled down with the local folks. After he came back from the War—that’d be dubya-dubya-two—he settled down with my grandmammy Dora. They used to say she could play the devil up out of the ground with her fiddle; she was on the radio when she was a girl and everything. But she took one look at Grand­pappy Jeb and said she hadn’t any mind to making records and touring and suchlike, and Grandpappy, he said he’d seen enough working for Department 23—that’s the OSS—to make him glad to settle himself in the place he belonged. Grand­mammy said she’d got the banjo from her mammy, but she said it was just to hold it in trust, like. It’s pretty old, and I guess just about every part of it’s been replaced some time or another. She told me to always keep it strung with silver, and never to play it for any reason that was mean or unkindly.”

The OSS! Eric sat up a little straighter. Dharniel had always hinted that WWII had been fought on magical turf as well as the mundane, and this seemed to confirm some of the Elven Bard’s cryptic hints.

“So I’d guess you’d say I come by the music-magic naturally, but there wasn’t no one in the Fork that could lesson me how to use it,” Hosea continued. “Grandmammy had the music, and Grandpappy had the shine, but it’d take someone with the two of them together, he said, to really light me up, more than I could study out on my own account. So when I was growed, I went down to the flatlands to get me some more book-learning, but flatland folks don’t know much about shining,” Hosea said with a grin. “So I went back home to help out on my granddaddy’s farm, as he and grandma was getting on in years. When she passed on last year, I knowed it weren’t gonna be long afore he followed her, and so it wasn’t. So I sold up for burying money, took me her banjo like she’d said to, and decided to follow my feet. I reckon somewhere in the world there’s gonna be someone with the music-magic that can lesson me in what I need to know.”

“Well,” Greystone said in his gravelly voice, “it looks like you’ve come to the right place.” The gargoyle got to his feet and stretched, his wings nearly touching the living-room walls on both sides. “I think you’re going to find living here an interesting experience, Hosea Songmaker.”

“Just about everything’s interesting, if you come at it right,” Hosea said. He stood, and offered his hand to the gargoyle. “It’s been a fine evening of yarning, Mister Greystone.”

The gargoyle chuckled and shook Hosea’s hand. “Just ‘Greystone,’ boyo. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d better get back to me post before someone counts gargoyles and comes up one short.” He waddled over to the window and stepped out onto the fire escape. Hosea watched him climb up the side of the building to his perch before turning back to Eric.

“Well, now, it’s been a long day and you look plumb tuckered out, Eric. If you want to show me where to sleep, we’ll call it a day, and maybe make us some music tomorrow,” Hosea said.

“Count on it,” Eric said. A warm glow of contentment welled up in him. Things were working out so well! He had another Bard to gig with, and Greystone and the house both liked him. He wondered if Hosea might see a “Rooms to Let” sign in Toni’s window sometime soon.

As for him, there was a call he had to make, first thing Monday morning. . . .

FOUR:
THE GLASS CASTLE

The carpenters hadn’t quite finished, and the power still tended to flutter unpredictably at times, but it was a pretty impressive job of world-building for five months flat. Ria Llewellyn looked around her domain—corner office, executive suite, barricaded on the umpteenth floor of one of those soulless glass boxes that was taking over Midtown Manhattan. Her new home, and she had to admit that it was a better fit than L.A. had ever been. New Yorkers lived to work, and so did Ria.

She hadn’t meant to move LlewellCo’s corporate headquarters to New York. That had been the last thing on her mind when she’d come out here last December chasing Eric Banyon. But after the Threshold debacle, there’d been no one else to put out the fires that sprang up all over LlewellCo East, and as the days stretched into weeks and started looking like months, the problem seemed to get worse, not better.

It was bad enough that a couple of her subordinates had thought that buying Threshold was a good idea—she didn’t know how far Baker and Hardesty had been in Robert Lintel’s confidence, but they’d certainly known something was rotten there—and had kept on funding it. It was worse that Lintel had come up with the notion of whipping himself up a bunch of ninja-wizard super-soldiers with the help of a chemist who’d used to cook meth for a biker gang, and had decided to conduct field trials for his pet drug on most of the city’s homeless population. But as she’d laboriously unwound the paper labyrinth that tied Threshold to LlewellCo, she discovered that wasn’t, after all, as bad as things got.

What was the worst thing was that buying companies like Threshold and letting them do whatever they wanted had become the sort of thing LlewellCo did.

In a way, it was only to be expected. Ria’s father, the power-mad elf-lord Perenor, had built the company to strike out at his enemies in a way that wouldn’t draw attention from the other elves until it was too late. In its deepest essence, LlewellCo was fundamentally flawed: designed as a weapon, it carried destruction in the bones of its corporate culture.

Not that anyone saw that but her. Ten years ago, she wouldn’t have seen it either—or if she had, she wouldn’t have cared. She was dazzled by Perenor’s profane charisma in those days, still dancing to his piping. But all things—good and bad—come to an end. Hers had come courtesy of a blow from a Fender guitar that had put her into a coma for a very long time, followed by an even longer period of recovery with the help of some very good—in all senses of the word, for a change—people. And while she’d been gone, LlewellCo had continued on its corrupted way.

She didn’t blame Jonathan, her second in command, for what the company had done. Jonathan Sterling was principled and fiercely loyal. He’d done nothing she wouldn’t have done if she’d been there. No one at LlewellCo’s highest levels had really known what Threshold was up to, though maybe a more suspicious sort of person would have called them to account a little earlier. But returning after her long absence—and the wake-up call from Threshold—had made her see things in a different way than she ever had before. It made her see that LlewellCo needed to do more than simply clean up after Threshold. It needed to be reborn. And that meant giving everything—all their holdings, all their policies, all their plans—a very close look, and then changing the way they did things. Everything. Acquisitions, mergers, hirings, firings, R&D fund­ings, and venture capital outlay.

It would have been easier to sack everyone, divest the company of all holdings, dissolve it, and start over, but Ria had never been a fan of the easy way of doing things. That way, the innocent would suffer along with the guilty, and besides, LlewellCo was hers. She would not abandon it.

But—as someone once said about Hell—the paperwork went on forever.

Ria set the report she was reading down on the leather top of her rosewood desk and sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. Monday morning—and she’d spent the weekend here as well, just as she had for the last six months. The Threshold debacle—the lawsuits, civil and criminal, the investigations that unfortunately seemed to lead right back to government at the Federal level—showed no signs of being over any time soon. If not for Eric, she’d be mired in the middle of it, guilty by association. As it was, she was the media’s darling, the valiant corporate whistle-blower who’d stepped in the moment she’d suspected trouble and brought Lintel’s evil empire crashing down.

That particular urban fairy tale was pretty close to the truth for once, and if nobody knew she’d chased Lintel to Underhill and executed him there, it was just as well. There were plenty of other villains to chase. The government clients who’d bought Lintel’s voodoo pharmaceuticals, for one.

Jeanette Campbell, for another. The chemist who’d given Lintel the power to do so much harm.

You can run, but you can’t hide. I’ll find you. And when I do—

 The intercom buzzed.

“Claire MacLaren,” Anita said. “Your two o’clock, Ms. Llewellyn?”

“Sure. Send her in,” Ria said with a sigh. “And send in some coffee, too, would you?”

“Sure thing, boss,” Anita said. Ria could almost hear the phantom popping of gum: Anita liked to project a persona straight out of vintage film noir, but Ria wouldn’t have hired her if she hadn’t been formidably competent. Anita Drake was Ria’s personal assistant, watchdog, and gopher (as in “go fer this, go fer that . . .”). She wasn’t a secretary. Secretaries worked for her. She’d come from someplace like St. Louis, and said she wanted to try a job where everyone wasn’t out to kill you and suck your blood. Just wait till you know this world better, Ria thought. Corporate dueling made the kind done with swords or pistols look bloodless.

The door opened, and Claire MacLaren walked in. She was a private investigator—Jonathan had found her and used her to locate Eric for Ria last year, and Ria had been impressed enough with her work to add her name to the little black book of utterly dependable specialists—some with quite exotic ­specialties—that she kept. Ria’d tried to hire her to come to work for LlewellCo full-time, but Claire preferred to keep her indepen­dence—“It’s to your advantage, dear, especially considering the sort of thing you’re sending me after.”

“Come in, Clairy,” Ria said, rising to meet her guest.

“Ria. Thanks for seeing me on such short notice. I know how busy you are.”

Ria grimaced. “That never changes. But come, sit down. I hope the news is good.”

Claire sighed. She was an uncompromising woman in her fifties, who made no effort to hide either her age or the fact that her figure had long since lost, if it had ever possessed it, the whippet-slenderness of youth. She resembled the Miss Marple sort of detective, gray-haired and kindly, but in spirit she was more akin to the Borderers who had made the wild lands of the Scots borders such a constant trouble to the English. Like her ancestors, Claire MacLaren never gave up.

“It all depends on your notion of ‘good,’ I suppose. But it’s all in my report,” she answered, gesturing with the slim portfolio under her arm. She settled onto the couch with a sigh. “You won’t like it.”

“You haven’t found her,” Ria said, sitting down in a chair opposite the detective.

“Our Miss Campbell is either dead, or very good at disappearing. She hasn’t been arrested, used a credit card, or taken her motorcycle into an authorized dealer for servicing, and there’s been no activity on any of her accounts. No one matching the description I’ve been given has left the country in the last six months—no one who didn’t check out, at least. She hasn’t contacted any of her old associates among the Road Hogs. No unclaimed bodies matching her description have turned up in any morgue in the United States, nor has the gun registered to her turned up. I can keep looking, but I’m afraid it’s a waste of your money. If we’re to find her, she’ll have to make a mistake.”

“She will,” Ria vowed. “She has to.” If Threshold hadn’t sanitized Campbell’s apartment so thoroughly in its own attempt to find her, there might have been something left behind that would have let Ria find her magically, but by the time she’d been able to start looking, the trail was both cold and muddled beyond repair.

“Oh, aye,” Claire answered. “Eventually. But good as I am, as well funded as I am, I can hardly match the FBI’s resources. Why not leave the police to do their job?”

“You know why I can’t,” Ria said.

The office door opened again. Anita entered, pushing a trolley with a silver coffee service on it. She laid out the cups and saucers—fine bone china with the LlewellCo red dragon logo—on the table between the two women, and added a plate of pastries. She poured both cups full, and set the pot, creamer, and sugar down before wheeling the trolley out again.

“The service here is lovely,” Claire remarked.

“I pay for service,” Ria said. She rubbed her forehead again.

“But there are some things that money can’t buy,” Claire pointed out. She added sugar to her coffee and took a pastry. “My dear, if you’ll forgive a presumptuous observation, you look as if you’re worn right out. You need to take a break from all this.”

“And have it fall all to pieces the moment I turn my back?” Ria demanded sharply. She sighed. The headache was making her irritable. “I’m sorry, Clairy. It’s not you. It’s everything. If I don’t find that little bi—find Campbell, we’ll never know everything that Lintel was up to. Most of the people involved in Threshold’s Black Lab operations are dead. Lintel’s records have been destroyed. Beirkoff wasn’t involved with anything beyond the manufacturing of T-Stroke. He can’t tell me what I need to know.”

“You feel responsible.” It wasn’t a question. “But Ria, you’ve done as much as anyone could to repair the damage that brash young gentleman caused. The commitment LlewellCo’s made to the homeless—spin-doctoring or not, it’s doing real good here in the city.”

“ ‘The corporate crusader with a heart.’ ‘The avenging angel of Wall Street,’ ” Ria quoted mockingly. She held up an admin­atory hand. “I know, I know. No one person can do it all. But I have to do what I can. I want you to keep looking, Clairy. I know the police and the Feds will keep looking, too, but they have other things to do. They can’t spend all their time looking for one woman. But I can. And I want her.” Determination turned Ria’s voice harsh. She pulled back from her emotions with an effort and took a sip of her coffee.

“Ah, weell,” Claire said philosophically. “If you won’t be told, you won’t. I’ll keep looking, but you’re going to need a miracle.”

“If you can tell me where to buy one, I’ll get it,” Ria said, forcing herself to smile. “If there’s anything you need . . . ?”

“I’ll ask for it, never fear,” Claire said. She got to her feet. “Shall we say lunch next time? It’ll do you good to get out from behind that desk.”

“Lunch, then,” Ria said, getting to her feet. “And maybe by then I’ll have figured out how to broker a miracle.”

After Claire left, Ria took her cup and stood looking out her window for a while. The streets below were yellow with taxi-cabs, the sidewalks filled with late-lunching pedestrians.

Claire’s news was only what she’d expected, but she still wasn’t happy with it. Though she’d done her best to conceal the fact, she was afraid Claire knew that Ria’s hunt for Jeanette Campbell was something of a vendetta. Claire wouldn’t go along with something like that. She’d made it clear from the first that any information she found about Campbell’s whereabouts would be shared with the police as well as with her employer, and Ria respected her for it. But she had more reason to want Campbell found than simple vengeance.

Wherever she is, she knows how to make the drug that turns ordinary people into mages. And that’s information I don’t trust anybody to use wisely. Especially Lintel’s former clients. They’re probably looking for her as hard as I am, and if she disappears into somebody else’s think tank, there will be hell to pay. Literally, in fact. Aerune’s still out there, and if I know my Sidhe, he isn’t even close to giving up.

And the Sidhe, as befit a near-immortal race, were accustomed to taking the long view. Aerune would be willing to wait years, even decades, for his plans to fall into place. Despite her half-Sidhe heritage, Ria was mortal. She didn’t have the time to outwait him. Campbell had to be found. And neutralized.

The phone rang.

Ria glanced back at her desk. She’d told Anita to hold all calls unless it was a certified emergency, but the light for her private line was flashing. Very few people had that number.

She picked up the phone.

“Llewellyn.”

“Have I called at a bad time?” a familiar voice asked.

“Eric!” Ria felt herself smile—a genuine smile this time. Her relationship with Eric was the one authentic bright spot in her life, stormy as it sometimes was. “How are you?”

“Not as busy as you seem to be. You sound tired.”

“So they tell me,” Ria said shortly. Eric ignored the ­warning note in her voice, though she knew he’d heard it. Eric was a fully-trained Bard. He was a lot smarter about people now than he’d been when she’d first met him.

“It seems like things should be quieting down, though,” he went on, with that guileless note of teasing in his voice. “I haven’t seen a story about you in the news for, oh . . . a week or so.”

“Not so much quieting down as reaching a series of dead ends,” Ria said wearily. “Look, I—”

“So I figured you could use a break,” Eric said, interrupting. “So I wanted to invite you to a party.”

“What kind of a party?” Ria asked, a note of suspicion in her voice. The one thing that hadn’t changed about Eric Banyon in all the time she’d known him was his puckish sense of humor, and it hadn’t been blunted in the least by all the time he’d spent Underhill learning his craft.

“A Naming kind of party. Maeve’s been born, and Beth and Kory want me to come to Elfhame Misthold to see her Named. We can use the Everforest Gate, and be back before we’ve left, or almost. I even promise to talk Lady Day into turning into something with doors and a roof.”

Ria stared at the phone. Maeve was Eric’s daughter by Beth Kentraine, the woman whose Fender guitar had done such a thorough job of rearranging Ria’s life. Eric had ceded his rights in Maeve to Kentraine and the Elven Knight Korendil, since he wasn’t ready for the ties and obligations of parenthood, but apparently Kentraine intended for Eric to play some part in his daughter’s life.

“Either you’ve gone mad, or I have,” Ria said bluntly. “You’re inviting me to come Underhill? To the Sidhe? To a Naming? To a party that Beth Kentraine is throwing?”

“Well . . . yes.” Eric’s voice lost its bantering note as he ­realized this would take some persuasion. “It’ll be fun. You’ve never been Underhill—well, not socially anyway. And I’m allowed to bring a date.”

“ ‘Fun,’ ” Ria echoed. “You want to invite me to one of the Sidhe’s High Holy Days—me—and you think it’ll be ‘fun’?”

The Sidhe loved children. Though Ria was a half-breed, raised in the mortal world, even she knew how seriously the elves took anything to do with children. Though Maeve was of fully human parentage, she was the daughter of a Bard and a witch, and in some sense Korendil’s daughter as well. Elven children were an exceedingly rare occurrence and cherished accordingly. The Sidhe would consider her one of their own, and would take her Naming Day very seriously.

It was hardly the sort of thing to which they’d welcome the daughter of a renegade and a traitor, let alone a half-breed, the circumstances of whose conception were, to the Seleighe Sidhe, the vilest sort of sacrilege. Children born to a Sidhe/mortal pairing were even rarer than full-blooded Sidhe children, and Perenor had used the foulest sort of blood-magic to father Ria on her mortal mother—not to mention the fact that he’d tried to use Ria to destroy the Sidhe of Elfhame Sun-Descending. For years she’d lived in fear that the Sidhe would seek revenge for what she’d done, and once upon a time she’d thought that Eric had been sent back into the World Above to lure her to their vengeance.

And while he’d said that most of them really didn’t care about what she’d done—considering how high a price she’d paid to thwart her late father’s plans—that didn’t mean they’d be happy to see her. . . .

“Okay, maybe not fun,” Eric said as the silence stretched. “But I have a right to bring anyone I want as a guest and witness, and I think it would be good for you to meet some of the Underhill folk. You can’t spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. If you come to the Naming, everyone will see that the Seleighe Sidhe have no quarrel with you, and that starting up with you will be the same thing as starting up with Elfhame Misthold.”

“When did you suddenly become so savvy at politics?” Ria asked, and Eric chuckled.

“Live with the elves for a while, it’s the equivalent of a master class. What else do a bunch of near-immortal wizards have to do with their time? The point is, they owe you for what you did against Aerune, and they need to know that. You do, too.”

“I didn’t do it for them.” It didn’t matter to Ria what feuds the Sidhe conducted among themselves. But Aerune had been after Eric, and that mattered to her a great deal.

“Yeah, well, elves are very results-oriented. It’s what you did that counts.”

“So you want me to come to the party.”

“Yeah. I do. Besides . . . it’d be nice to have someone from this side of the Hill to keep me company. And I think it’s time you and Bethie settled things between you.”

So THAT’s what’s behind all this!

“So you want me to come and help her bury the hatchet?” Ria asked. The notion had a certain perverse appeal—and Eric was right that it could only do her good to form relationships and alliances Underhill. She lived in the human world, but like it or not, she was part Sidhe, and that heritage couldn’t be ignored. “So long as it won’t be buried between my shoulder blades.” She took a deep breath. “All right. When? And what shall I wear? I’ve never been to one of these.”

“Oh, just wear whatever you’d wear to your average Royal wedding,” Eric said breezily. “I’ll pick you up Saturday. That’ll give you a week to shop.”

“In a car,” Ria reminded him. “With seats. And doors. And a roof.”

“I’ll talk to Lady Day. And Ria? Don’t worry. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

Ria made a rude noise of mock outrage, but found her smile staying with her as she hung up the phone. She and Eric made an unlikely romantic pair—not that Ria was entirely sure, sometimes, whether what they had going could be contained by any term so mundane as “romance.” There’d been a bond between them from the first moment they’d met as adversaries, she as Perenor’s pawn and he as the Sidhe’s last hope. Both of them had cut the strings that bound them to the purposes of others, but the tie between them was not so easily broken.

A half-elven sorceress with a Fortune 500 company and a human Bard who prefers busking to playing at the courts of kings. We’re a fine pair.

And if there’s to be more to it than this, it’s going to have to wait until neither of us is quite so busy with our own lives. Whenever that might be . . .

Still smiling faintly to herself, Ria picked up the report on her desk and began to read.

He was home. Or if not home, exactly—for it had been many years since he’d been able to call any particular place “home”—then at least he was back on Earth only a few months after he left.

No one had followed him.

Elkanah Youngblood found himself standing in the middle of a country road. It was night, and it had been raining. He could smell the summery scent of wet earth and growing things. He got to his feet, still aching and bleeding from the injuries he’d taken during his run from the Great Hunt. The antlers were gone, a kind of proof that Lord Aerune’s spell didn’t run here. He took that as a sign that his luck had finally changed. He was free.

He didn’t waste time wondering how it had happened or worrying about what happened next. He had two items on his agenda.

Survive until morning.

And find Jeanette Campbell and wring the bitch’s neck.

Survival was easy. Less than a mile away a hay barn provided shelter while he stole a nap to shake off the worst of his exhaustion. When dawn gave him enough light to see by, he followed power lines to the nearest house. It was an old farmhouse, with nothing around it but fields. He guessed he must be somewhere in the South or Midwest, and smiled grimly. Being in the wrong place with the wrong skin color was the least of his worries right now. He was pleased to see a fine cash crop of mary jane ripening in the field out back of the house: whoever lived here would be less likely to run to the cops than an honest citizen, but just to be sure, he cut the phone lines with a set of shears he’d found in the barn before venturing inside. The back door wasn’t locked, but it wouldn’t have slowed him down much if it had been.

The householders were still in their beds. By the time he woke them he’d found a shotgun. The sight of a naked, six-foot bronze-skinned man holding a shotgun had quieted them both down a good deal. They hadn’t made much trouble when he tied them up and put them down in the cellar. If they kept their heads, they could work themselves free of the torn-up sheets in a few hours. He intended to be gone by then.

When he saw himself in a mirror, he was surprised at how normal he looked. A little thinner, a little banged up. Hair a lot longer. The beginnings of a beard. But no horns or scales or staring red eyes. He’d almost expected something like that, some kind of visible evidence of everything he’d been through. But there wasn’t anything.

If I were dumb and stupid, I could convince myself it was all some kind of bad dream. But I don’t have dreams like that.

Fortunately, none of his wounds was deep enough to need stitches. He washed off the dried blood, and after a shower and coffee, Elkanah made a thorough search of the house. As he’d expected, he found a small recreational stash of goodies, a lot of cash, and some very nice guns. He took the .45 and the .357, and left the shotgun and the rifles where they were. He scattered the drugs around the living room. They’d have to clean the place up before they called in the law, and that would buy him even more of a head start.

The man’s clothes were all much too small for him, but he found a T-shirt and a pair of sweat pants that would stretch to fit and a gimme cap with a movie logo on it. He forced his feet into a pair of the guy’s Nikes. His first stop would have to be for better clothes—if you looked like you belonged, you didn’t attract attention. That was the first lesson of infiltration.

He’d found car keys in the kitchen, so he knew there had to be a ride around somewhere. He stuffed the guns and the money into an old backpack he’d turned up and went to look for it.

Stupid, stupid, stupid . . . Elkanah shook his head. The house and the outbuildings were falling apart, and those idiots had a Lincoln Navigator stuck in the cowshed: about 50K of luxury 4x4. Just the thing for driving to the local 7-11 inconspicuously! As well they lost it then. It probably wasn’t even insured. He was almost doing them a favor.

The engine started on the first try.

By the time he hit the main road, he was pretty sure he was somewhere in Pennsylvania in August. He got directions to the nearest town at the first place he stopped for gas, picked up the local paper, and got the date. It was only about six months since he’d left.

Good. The bitch wouldn’t have had time to run far.

He picked up clothes, a razor, and some basic medical supplies. He changed clothes in the men’s room and slipped out the back, leaving the stained sweats in the dumpster. While he was in the parking lot he took the opportunity to swap the Navigator’s plates for a set on another car. The unsuspecting donor probably wouldn’t even notice. The trouble with people these days was that they just weren’t detail oriented. God was in the details. His pappy’d always told him that.

He still didn’t have a driver’s license, or any kind of ID, but he didn’t think it would matter. From the shopping mall he headed east, not questioning why he chose that direction. From the interstate he switched to the local roads, where he stopped and picked up a couple of bags of groceries, then hit the back roads, driving several hours before finding the place he wanted, an old beat-up no-tell motel, the kind of place that came with hot and cold running roaches, and where the sheets were changed once a month if you were lucky.

It would suit him just fine. He parked the Navigator out of sight of the office and walked back. A few minutes later he had a room for the week under the name Valentine Michael Smith, and he hadn’t had to provide either a driver’s license or a vehicle registration number.

He went in the room, locked the door, moved the dresser over to block the door, stretched out on the bed, and slept for two days.

When he awoke on the evening of the second day, his body was stiff from disuse, and he was lightheaded as though he’d just broken a high fever. But he was still here, and the room was still here, and his sleep had been without dreams.

Find the bitch. That was Job Number One. But before he did that, he should scope out the lay of the land a little. Find out how things stood with Threshold. Pick up one of his spare identities from one of his drops and find out if it was safe to come out. Housekeeping chores, really.

On the other hand, maybe they could wait. If he went straight for the bitch, he’d have a bargaining chip. He knew right where she’d be. He thought she’d told him about it once, this little bolt-hole she had squirreled away somewhere in Godlost, West Virginia. A good place to hide, she’d said, if anything happened she didn’t like. She’d probably run straight to it when the balloon went up and been hiding under the bed ever since.

Morton’s Fork, that was it. She’d said it just like he wouldn’t know where it was, but he’d grown up in Pharoah, about twenty miles from Morton’s Fork, West Virginia.

He shook his head and frowned, a headache starting to build behind his eyes. Hadn’t he . . . ? His daddy had been a New York City cop. He’d never been anywhere near West Virginia. What was wrong with him? He found the bottle of aspirin he’d bought and shook half a dozen into his mouth, washing them down with a bottle of warm beer. The headache faded, and with it the sense of confusion and unease. Of course he’d grown up in West Virginia. He’d been a lot of strange places since, but you didn’t forget the place where you were born. He’d go to Morton’s Fork and find the bitch. That was Job Number One.

And wouldn’t she be surprised when her worst nightmare came calling?

The gigging on Sunday had been great. They’d hit up half a dozen of Eric’s favorite spots, and even without workday crowds to play for, the take had been more than ample. Hosea had insisted they split it right down the middle, and wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

“You’re giving me a roof over my head, Eric, and I’m not one to take charity. If you’re worrying about me getting together a stake for a place of my own, I’ll be keeping what I make playing in the Park while you’re hitting the books, and I guess I’ll do all right.”

There was no budging Hosea once he’d made up his mind, Eric had already realized—and in the same situation, he too would have been reluctant to take a handout. So he’d agreed to the split—but he’d stipulated that he’d be the one buying the groceries. And with the way he packs it away, I think we’ll manage to make this a more reasonable split on the take.

He’d meant to call Ria before he left for Juilliard on Monday, but then he and Hosea had stayed up late talking, and a couple of friends had dropped over, so by the time he remembered Ria, he was nowhere near a phone. But Hosea had been out when he got back—Monday was a half day—and he’d been able to call Ria then. Hosea was good companionship, and fastidiously neat—the couch had been folded up, the sheets neatly folded and tucked away, and as far as Eric could tell, the duffle still hadn’t been unpacked—but he’d been just as glad Hosea wasn’t around to hear that conversation, as it would bring up things Eric wasn’t really ready to discuss with him.

Elves, for one thing. Hosea had been pretty cool about Greystone, but there was something about elves that seemed to trip people’s circuits. Half the time they started babbling about Disney and Elfquest and the Smurfs until you never could get them to settle down again. He didn’t want to go there with Hosea.

But at the back of his mind, even when he’d been talking to Ria, was his Saturday night conversation with Hosea. Hosea was looking for someone to teach him the music-magic, and Eric knew some pretty good teachers. Magic was a peculiar force, and Talents were stubborn things. Once the magic had made up its mind to manifest one way, it was almost impossible to train it into a new path. If Hosea said he needed to be taught by a ­music-mage, he was probably right. Eric wondered how Master Dharniel would take to another human student. At any rate, he’d be seeing Dharniel at the Naming, and Eric could bring the matter up to him there.

It got dark early here in the hills. Jeanette sat at her worktable, measuring white powder into gelatin capsules by the light of a kerosene lamp. A cup of cold instant coffee sat by her elbow.

It was sweltering in the little shack, but she’d closed all the doors and windows and tacked up sheets over them to keep out any breath of air. There was a storm on the way, and all she needed was for a gust of wind to give her a face full of T-Stroke. That’d kill her for sure.

All drugs were poisons. In small doses they cured, but enough of anything, even aspirin, was toxic. Only T-Stroke was different. With T-Stroke, the more you took, the better chance you had of surviving.

Maybe. If she’d guessed right. There was no way to tell without a test.

And the only person around to test it on was her.

Russian roulette, with five bullets in the chamber instead of one.

She kept filling capsules—a thousand empty gel-caps bought from the health-food store in Pharoah when she made her weekly run for supplies. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with them, but they were a lot more portable than a bottle and a needle. Easier to move, easier to take.

If she decided to take them.

She sighed. It kept coming back to that.

She stopped what she was doing and listened intently. She thought she’d heard an engine. Watchman’s Gap Trace ran past the cabin, and people did still use the old road—moonshiners, mostly—but there shouldn’t be anybody out at this time of night. She checked her watch. Two-thirty in the morning.

Maybe it’d just been the wind.

Or maybe the Feds’ve gotten lucky, you spineless git.

She hesitated, and then got to her feet. Her .45 was lying on the bed—Road Hog had always said there wasn’t any point to a little gun, when you wanted to show you were serious—and she picked it up. The oiled weight of it in her hand was reassuring.

She picked up the lantern and moved it to the far corner of the room. She lifted the edge of the sheet spread over her worktable and draped it over the mound of white powder. Then, swallowing hard, she catfooted it over to the door, pushed aside the blanket, and lifted the latch.

The air outside seemed stiflingly cold after the stuffy heat of the cabin. Wet wind dashed droplets of rain against her skin, mingling with the sweat. She could hear the Little Heller creek running hard, and hear the wind tossing the trees.

Nothing else. She stepped outside, letting the door close behind her. There was no light. Even after her eyes adjusted, and she could see the faint shapes of trees against the sky, there was nothing. No lights, no engines.

You’ve come too far to screw yourself over with an attack of nerves, girl. She waited a moment longer—of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my air conditioning the most—then backed inside and closed the door again.

It was a relief to put the gun down. Jeanette actually hated guns. If you were waving one around, that meant things were already out of control and heading from bad to worse.

She took a deep breath, rolling her shoulders to get the tension out. There was still some ice from this morning. She’d crack a Coke and relax for a few minutes before getting back to work. She didn’t like leaving all that powder out loose. It was too dangerous—this shack was a far cry from Threshold’s pristine sterile laboratory conditions.

She opened the ice chest and stood for a moment, rubbing a handful of cubes across her face and throat. She’d thought a thousand times about dumping all the T-Stroke in the creek, but she’d given up so much to get it that she couldn’t bear to, and sometimes now it was hard to remember why she’d wanted it so much.

There was a knock at the door.

Jeanette froze, the ice cubes dripping down her arm. Her mind was scrubbed white with shock and sudden terror—they were hunting for her, and now they’d found her, whoever they were. The knocking came again, hard and slow, as if Death himself were outside.

She dropped the ice cubes and lunged for the gun that lay on the cot. There was a thud at the door, and a creak as the wood gave. Cold air filled the room.

The gun was slippery and heavy in her hands. She scrabbled to get her finger on the trigger, falling to her knees.

Something landed on her. The gun went off and was torn from her hand. It was all over so fast. She lay on the floor, half under her cot, staring down at the soft splintery white pine floorboards of the cabin. She would not look. Whoever it was could kill her, but they could not make her look.

“Is that any way to greet an old friend, Ms. Campbell?”

The voice was familiar. Jeanette bit down hard on her lower lip to keep from bursting into tears. She was furious and terrified, and the game was over, but she would not let him see her cry. After a moment she got her breathing under control and sat up.

Elkanah—she’d never known if he had another name—stood in the doorway, her gun in his hand. He was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. She’d never seen him in anything but his Threshold Security uniform. She’d thought he looked scary then. He looked terrifying now. The door hung inward, and she could see the white splinters where the bolt had broken in half. The blanket she’d nailed over the door billowed in the wind.

“Elkanah.” Her voice came out in a hoarse croak, but steady. She knew her hands were shaking. With an effort of will she got to her feet, hating the fact that he was seeing her barefoot, in a grubby sweat-soaked T-shirt and cut-off jeans. Hating the fact that she was helpless. “What are you doing here?”

“A lot has happened since you left us, Ms. Campbell,” Elkanah answered in that maddeningly slow soft drawl of his. He glanced at her chopped-off hair. “Black isn’t a good color on you. Maybe you ought to sit down. You don’t look well.”

“Neither do you,” Jeanette shot back. Even in the dim light of the cabin she could see that. He’d lost weight. His skin was stretched tight over his bones, and there was a look in his eyes—a glittery, crazy kind of look—that told her he was capable of anything.

Of all the people she’d expected to come looking for her, he was the last on the list. Her legs trembled. She sat down slowly on the edge of the cot, feeling it creak under her.

“Okay. Now what?” she asked.

“Why don’t you just sit there while I have a look around?” It wasn’t a suggestion. She sat, careful to give him no reason to shoot her.

He closed the door, kicking it into place with his heel and letting the blanket drop. She watched as he looked carefully around the room before he moved. First he tucked her gun in the waistband of his pants, then went over to pick up the lantern. He set it back on the table and peeled back the sheet.

“My, my, my. What have we here?”

Jeanette didn’t answer.

“You can tell me, or you can eat them.” Elkanah’s voice was mild, as disinterested as if he were commenting upon the weather.

“It’s T-Stroke. All I have left,” she added, for no other reason than that anything she knew and he didn’t gave her a little power.

“That got us all into a lot of trouble,” Elkanah said. “Mr. Lintel dead, the company gone. A lot of trouble. And that leaves me at loose ends, you might say.”

Jeanette stared at him. She’d thought Elkanah was dead. If he wasn’t, the Feds were looking for him as much as they were looking for her. But that didn’t do her a lot of good while he was standing here with a gun. She had no idea what he wanted, and that worried her. If he’d meant to turn her in to plea-bargain his way out of things, why weren’t the Feds right behind him?

And how had he found her?

“Lintel’s dead?” she asked, just to keep the conversation going. “How did that happen?”

“You know the answer to that.” Elkanah moved away from the table and the glistening pile of white powder. He rubbed his forehead as if it hurt. “It’s your fault.”

“I worked for him the same way you did.” It was suicidal to argue with him, but she couldn’t help herself. “What he did with what I gave him was his business.” But you didn’t have to give it to him, did you, Jeanette? You didn’t have to go to work for him. If Robert killed people, he did it with the weapon you made for him.

“Business. That’s what it all comes down to, doesn’t it, Ms. Campbell? We’re all just doing business. And that’s why I’m here.”

He’d moved back in front of the door again, just as if there were any real possibility she would try to run. Jeanette braced herself to hear bad news.

“That T-Stroke. You can make more of it, can’t you?”

“Yes.” There was no point in lying about that. It was the only thing that might keep her alive, the only thing of value she still possessed. “I’d need a setup and some supplies. But I can make more.”

“That’s good. In that case, I think we can do business. Get your things. We’re leaving.”

Jeanette got to her feet. “Where are we going?”

Elkanah smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. “I think that’s on a need-to-know basis, don’t you?”

I think I’m about to take a bullet, Jeanette thought, but oddly, she wasn’t afraid. The worst thing she could imagine happening had just happened. She didn’t have to be afraid of it any more, and that freedom brought clarity in its wake. Boy, I really made a mess of my life, didn’t I? She moved over to her worktable.

If she were an action-movie heroine, she could blow the loose powder into Elkanah’s face, blind him, and escape. But she wasn’t. She was just another loser with very sharp teeth—she’d spent her whole life being taught that particular lesson. Life wasn’t a movie, and even if it was, Elkanah wasn’t working off the same script she was. He was at the other side of the room, out of reach.

She scooped the loose powder carefully back into its plastic jar and screwed the lid on tight. All the filled capsules were already in their jar. She put the lid on that one, too.

The Harley’s saddlebags with her clothes were in the corner, and for a panicked moment Jeanette thought Elkanah might ask what had happened to her bike. She pulled jeans and a clean T-shirt out and turned her back to him to put them on.

“Afraid I’m going to lust after your lily-white body, Ms. Campbell?”

Jeanette set her jaw. She knew she wasn’t any man’s idea of arm candy, but she was glad Elkanah had spoken. It made it so much easier to hate him. If at all possible, I’ll see to it you die screaming, you Neolithic slab of rent-muscle. She buckled the jeans and slid her feet into her engineer boots. Her leather jacket was way too warm for the weather, but she picked it up anyway. She’d need it later, if there was a later.

Carrying the saddlebags and her jacket, she turned back to the table and picked up the two jars of T-Stroke, glancing at Elkanah to see if that was okay. He didn’t seem to object, so she stuffed the jars into one of the bags and buckled it shut, then slung them over her shoulder. Her guitar, her Walkman, and her tapes she left where they were. Music had always been her vulnerable spot, and she didn’t have any time for vulnerability now.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ve got my things. Now?”

“Now we go, Ms. Campbell.” He stepped away from the door. “After you.”

She went to the door and pulled it open. The top hinge had torn loose when he broke in and she had to drag it. She walked out into the night. It had started raining in earnest, and the rain plastered her short dyed hair to her scalp. She set down the saddlebags and pulled on her jacket.

Elkanah came out behind her. He was holding a flashlight in his hand. There was a red gel over the lens. A faint red beam illuminated the trees and turned the rain into a shower of blood.

“This way,” he said, gesturing with the beam. “You first.”

She stumbled through the rain, hearing him move more gracefully behind her. They were heading in the direction of Watchman’s Gap Trace. His ride was probably parked there. If only she’d bolted the first time she’d heard an engine . . .

Too late for regrets, Campbell. By about a lifetime, I’d say.

She slid on last year’s leaves and stumbled over rocks and branches. He did nothing to help her, but she didn’t expect it. Occasionally he corrected her path, herding her uphill. About the time she thought they’d managed to miss the road ­entirely, Elkanah’s light shone on the side of a panel van. It was painted primer gray—a totally nondescript vehicle. The Sinner Saints had used something like it to make bulk deliv­eries. It was the kind of ride you could park anywhere and have it go unnoticed.

“Stand still.” She stopped. Elkanah walked up close and pulled the saddlebags off her shoulder. He walked past her to the van and opened the passenger side door. He threw the saddlebags in the back. Jeanette winced at the sound of the impact. Lucky everything comes in plastic these days.

The rocker panel on the passenger side door had been removed. There was a length of glittering chain welded to the steel beneath, with a handcuff on the end.

This would be a good time to run, Jeanette thought, knowing she couldn’t do it. There was no place to go. And she was tired of running without a destination. In fact, she was just tired. Tired enough to sleep forever.

“Come here. Hold out your wrist. And be a good girl.”

Sullenly, Jeanette did as she was told. Elkanah closed the cuff around her right wrist. It felt cold and heavy.

“Now get in.”

She climbed onto the seat and pulled the door closed behind her. The inside of the van was shabby and well-used, but scrupulously clean. Sanitized. The rain made a faint tattoo on the roof. Elkanah opened the other door and climbed in. He fitted the key into the ignition. The motor roared to life, and a moment later the headlights flared into brightness, throwing the road and the trees into sharp relief.

The road was so narrow that Elkanah had to drive almost up to the ruins to find a place to turn around, and for a moment Jeanette thought he knew she’d lied and was going after the rest of her stuff. But he just turned around and headed back down the Trace, out of Morton’s Fork.

How did you find me? she wondered again, but she didn’t ask. There’d be time enough to ask questions later.

Or there wouldn’t.

She had to find someplace to get in out of the weather. Damn all well-meaning fools—her last ride had told her she could pick up the main road just over the hill, and now she was wandering around in the rain, no sign of a road, and about as lost as a body could get and still be in West Virginia. Without her flashlight, she’d probably have broken her neck already.

Got to keep going, she told herself stubbornly. At least she was on some kind of a road. Roads had to lead somewhere, didn’t they? Just not always where you were planning on going.

She wished she had something to eat. She wished she had a home where she could feel like somebody’s daughter, instead of like another employee.

But that’s over with, now, isn’t it? You’ve picked yourself up and gone to Canaan, and if Lord Jesus wants you back the way Daddy’s always saying He does, then He can come tell you so Himself.

Her name was Heavenly Grace Fairchild—though she preferred “Ace,” and if she had her way, nobody was ever going to call her by her birth name again. Heavenly Grace, Inc. was her father’s ministry, carried for an hour three times a week on several thousand Christian networks coast-to-coast. Her earliest memories were of riding in the ministry’s bus from one tent revival to the next, of singing hymns at the head of the Heavenly Grace Choir, but that had only been the start of things for Billy Fairchild. He’d had plans—first, for the Cathedral of Heavenly Grace, now a 25-story office building in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and then for a worldwide empire.

But she didn’t want to be a part of that. It seemed that the more houses and cars and thousand-dollar suits her daddy got, the more he and Mama argued. And no matter how righteously her daddy pitched the Gospel, it always seemed to stop the minute the cameras stopped rolling. Jesus had been a poor man, hadn’t he, bringing words of comfort and love to poor people? The older she got, the less she could see how what her daddy was doing had anything to do with Jesus. She’d begged him to let her stop performing, whipping up the audiences with hallelujah hymns in the studio, but he wouldn’t hear of it. And when he’d hired that secretary of his, Gabriel Horn, she’d known that she’d never be allowed to stop. The plans for her going off to college that her mama had talked about so proudly had been set aside. There was plenty of money—there’d always been plenty of money, for as long as Ace could remember—but she wasn’t going to be allowed to leave. Not if Daddy and Gabriel had their way.

So she’d run. She didn’t know where she’d end up, but anywhere had to be better than Tulsa. And maybe they wouldn’t want her back, now that she’d rebelled. Lucifer had rebelled, and been cast down out of Heaven for doubting God’s word, but Billy Fairchild wasn’t God, and Ace thought that sometimes you had to take matters into your own hands.

A flash of lightning turned the sky white, and in the brief illumination she could see a set of iron gates up ahead. That meant a house. Maybe they’d take her in for the night, or maybe at least there was a garage there she could hide out in until it stopped raining.

But when she got to the gates, she saw they were old and rusted, and the building beyond was only an old ruin, charred by fire. Still she kept on, hoping for shelter. The rain had stopped as she walked, and the clouds rolled back, leaving a full moon riding high in the sky. It gave her enough light to see by, but now the temperature was dropping—even in ­summer, wandering around at night in wet clothes was a good way to catch your death. She had dry clothes in her pack. Maybe there’d be someplace here she could change into them.

But when she got inside, she found that the years and the fire had left nothing behind but the house’s shell. The upper stories had caved in and burnt to ashes, and where there had been cellars, those too stood exposed. Tears of disappointment filled her eyes, but she scrubbed them angrily away.

As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw a bundle off to one side, something under a tarp. She set her pack down in the doorway and went over to look.

Somebody’s left a bike here! She pulled the tarp all the way off, staring at it in wonder. A gleaming Harley-Davidson motorcycle, looking just like it had wheeled off the showroom floor. The keys were even still in the ignition.

I won’t take it, she told herself, even if Johnnie had taught her to ride his old Indian before Daddy’d canned him for looking too familiarly at his only daughter. But whoever left it here has got to live around here. I could just take it and ride it down to the road and leave it for them. She hugged herself, shivering, but need won out over scrupulous honesty. She slipped her backpack on again and swung her leg over the saddle.

The bike started on the first try. She wheeled it down the steps and back onto the road.

When she saw the lights off to the side of the road, Ace couldn’t keep her conscience quiet any more. This wasn’t borrowing. This was stealing, and if she did that, she’d be just as bad as Daddy, taking things from people and saying it was okay because he needed them more than the other people did. She sighed, and turned the bike off the road, toward the light. At least she could tell the bike’s owner that it wasn’t a good idea to leave your ride out in the middle of nowhere with the keys in the ignition.

But when she got there, nobody was in the cabin. She knew the bike belonged here—there was a helmet in the corner, maroon and cream just like the bike. It looked like they’d left in a hurry, too—there was a glass of Coke sitting on the table, still cold and fizzy. The light was coming from a kerosene lantern, and it wasn’t a good idea to just go off and leave something like that burning. When she went back to shut the door, she saw it’d been torn off its hinges, and the bolt was snapped clean through.

Somebody in a mean mood broke in here, Ace thought to herself with a shudder. She knew she ought to leave right now, but she was cold and wet and hungry—and worse than any of these, she was tired and lonely. I’ll just stay for a little while, until I dry off and warm up. Maybe I can figure out the right thing to do, something that’ll help me and won’t hurt anyone else. Or maybe they’ll settle their problems and come back.

But she had a cold feeling down in her bones, like whoever’d been here wasn’t going to be coming back any time soon.

I’ll just stay for a little while. Until I can figure out what to do.

FIVE:
THROUGH DARKEST ELFLAND
 WITH GUN AND CAMERA

Saturday morning dawned bright and clear. Eric had told Hosea that he was going to be away for the weekend and so wouldn’t be available for busking, but Hosea took it in good part. He’d discovered the New York Public Library’s reading room, and was spending a lot of his time there. During the week, Eric’d had a spare set of keys to the apartment made, and given Hosea the security codes, so Hosea could pretty much make his own hours. He was an early riser, often gone for the day before Eric awoke. For a man his size—or anyone, for that matter—Hosea was quiet as a cat, and never disturbed Eric on his early-morning exits.

Eric dressed with particular care in his flashiest RenFaire clothes. He buckled on his sword belt, and took his sword down from the top shelf in the closet. He hadn’t worn it since he’d been living in Underhill, but the elves would expect him to wear it, as a symbol of his rank. He didn’t put it on, though. Swords and modern cars were an awkward combination.

Last of all, he took his flute and slipped it into his embroidered gig bag, slinging it over his shoulder. He couldn’t match the Naming Gifts Maeve would be receiving from everyone in Underhill, so he hadn’t bothered to try. He’d gone to FAO Schwartz and bought the biggest stuffed pink bunny he could find, and for the rest, had composed a piece in her honor. Beth would like that—it was a variation on the piece Spiral Dance had always ended their sets with, called “The Huntsman’s Reel”—and what better gift for a Bard to give?

Sword and flute in hand, bunny under one arm, he went down to the parking lot, where a gleaming candy-apple-red Lotus Elan awaited him. It had taken a certain amount of negotiation to get Lady Day to surrender her motorcycle form even for one day; elvensteeds could sometimes be stubborn. As a concession, he’d allowed her to pick the form, and this was what she’d chosen. It took a little work to cram the sword and the bunny into the microscopic space behind the seats, but he managed it and levered himself into the driver’s seat. He almost wished she’d chosen something less conspicuous, but it ought to amuse Ria.

“Okay. Let’s go,” he said, and the elvensteed roared to life with the deep-throated hum of a racing engine.

Ria had offered to pick Eric up, but he elected to meet her up at the Nexus north of Manhattan instead. It was a great day for riding, and besides, on the whole, he didn’t want to get into a habit of depending on her. He was still twitchy about that; the time he had spent in her father’s Underhill domain as her private boy-toy was not among the moments he was particularly proud of. He headed directly for his destination, and only a few minutes after they started, Lady Day was heading over the bridge toward Sterling Forest.

It was surprising the amount of half-wild land there was so close to the city. If he hadn’t known that NYC was 90 minutes away, Eric wouldn’t have been able to guess from the surroundings. Sterling Forest State Park was nestled in the gently-rolling Ramapo Mountains—known for centuries to be filled with haunted places and strange creatures, and for good reason. The Nexus lay in a copse of trees accessible only from a long-disused farm road, the farmhouse itself long abandoned, nothing left but the foundation and chimney.

Behind the house, down a gentle slope, a deer trail led into woods, deep within which lay one special grove of trees that didn’t look as if they’d ever been touched by anything but wind and weather. Where there was a Nexus—a power source that tied Underhill and the mortal world together—there was either a Gate already there, or Eric could make one easily. In this case, there was one already, a Portal that hung as a hazy curtain between two oak trees, visible only to those who had the eyes to see it. He was early; Lady Day had shut down the faux-engine noise she made as soon as they were off the main road, and they rolled up to the Gate surrounded by nothing more intrusive than the cracking of twigs under her wheels. He got out of the Lotus, looking around for Ria.

Eric didn’t have long enough to wait even to wonder when Ria would get there; shortly after he and Lady Day rolled to stop, unshod hooves thudding on the turf warned him that someone was coming. Somehow he didn’t think it was Ranger Rick.

Ria rode into the pocket clearing on a coal-black elvensteed with hooves and eyes of silver, dressed to the absolute nines in something silky and flowing and midnight blue. Eric didn’t pay a lot of attention to high fashion, but this didn’t look like anything he’d seen during glimpses of shows on the news during Fashion Week. It also wasn’t High Elven as he knew it. As always, Ria was setting her own style, it seemed.

“I didn’t know you had a ’steed,” he said, as Lady Day shivered all over and made a transformation herself—into a blue-eyed white horse, who stared down her long nose at Ria’s mount in friendly defiance.

Ria glanced at the giant pink bunny and raised an eyebrow. “It’s more appropriate to say the ’steed has me,” she replied with good humor. “This is Prince Adroviel’s way of keeping track of me. Oh, he’s very gracious about it, but there wasn’t much question—if I want to enter Elfhame Melusine, I’d better be either in your company or Etienne’s, and preferably both.”

“Oh.” There wasn’t much that Eric could gracefully say to that, so he didn’t say anything at all. Ria didn’t seem put out—and she certainly looked fantastic, sitting up there sidesaddle on the magnificent ’steed.

“I hate being fashionably late,” she said pointedly, as he got himself into Lady Day’s saddle with a minimum of awkwardness. After more than a year Underhill, riding still wasn’t second nature to him, but at least he wasn’t as clumsy about it as he’d been when he first arrived there.

“So do I, and this should be a good party,” he replied. “Do you want to key the Gate, or shall I?”

She waved her hand languidly at the shimmer of power between the trees, and he took that as answer that he should open it. It occurred to him a second later, as he whistled the little trill of music that fitted his magic into the Gate and gave it the place it should take them to, that the Prince might not have entrusted her with a key. The elvensteed could take her there, of course, but she and Eric wouldn’t arrive together if it did. . . .

The shimmer brightened, then pulled aside, exactly like a curtain, revealing—nothing. Not blackness, nothing. Emptier than the space between the stars, the path of a Gate had scared the whey out of him the first time he’d seen it; now he just let Lady Day take up her place beside Etienne, and the two of them passed through together.

There was a moment of cold, a faint brush against his face and hands of something like threads spun of liquid hydrogen, and they were through.

They passed instantly from broad daylight into twilight; from the wild and overgrown, untidy forest covert into truly ancient forest, the kind that must have stood in North America before Columbus, that never knew the touch of an axe. Huge trees that would have been dwarfed only by the sequoias and redwoods of California rose all around them. The ground beneath the trees, regardless of the fact that there couldn’t possibly be enough light under the thick branches to support much vegetation, was covered with lush and fragrant flowers in palest pink, faintest blue, and purest white. All except for the path, of course, which was literally carpeted in emerald moss as deep and soft as any high-quality plush number in a Fifth Avenue condo.

The fact was that there would never be any light under these trees; Elfhame Melusine lay in a perpetual twilight. Eric remembered from Dharniel’s few “geography” lessons that Elfhame Melusine was one of the Old World hames, whose members had chosen to withdraw from the World of Men rather than cross to the New World.

“Well,” Ria said, looking around, as the ’steeds paused to allow them to get their bearings. “Not very much like my father’s domain, is it?”

“What, Elfhame 90210?” Eric asked, and was rewarded by her peal of laughter.

In fact, she laughed hard enough that she had to clutch the pommel of her saddle, and even her ’steed gave out a noise that sounded like a snicker. “Elfhame 90210! Oh lord—” she gasped. “90210! That’s gorgeous!”

“Thenkew, thenkew,” he responded, bowing at the waist slightly, and a bit tickled at his own cleverness. “Thenkew verrymuch, I’ll be here all week, leddies and gennelmun.”

“Oh lord—” She straightened up and carefully wiped the corners of her eyes with a fingertip. “It was, wasn’t it? Poor Father! Even he couldn’t keep from copying the mortals he despised.”

“Well, I can’t say that I hadn’t seen places just like it in the Beverly Hills version of Find-A-Home, because I had,” Eric responded truthfully. “And just about every room in one issue or another of Architectural Digest. No two rooms out of the same house, mind, but still . . .”

“Still,” she agreed. “So, what’s all this? It’s not like Misthold or Sun-Descending, is it?”

The ’steeds paced forward onto the carpet of moss, making no sound at all.

“I met a guy from Savannah that calls this Elven Classic,” Eric replied. “He says that over in Outremer they say this is how Elfhames looked for centuries—the ones tied to Groves and Nexuses in the Old World, that is. Some of the Seleighe Sidhe wanted things to look like the way they’d been at home when they moved over here to escape Cold Iron, and some, like Adroviel, want their homes to stay that way. There’re variations, and these days there are even some who’ve remodeled their Elfhames to look like the way we—mortals that is—have described them in literature.”

Ria’s hand flew to her mouth to smother a laugh. “You don’t mean that somewhere Underhill there’s a Last Homely House?”

He grinned. “And a Hobbiton, and Galadriel’s Forest. And, sadly, there’s also places that role-playing gamers would feel right at home in, and a spot that looks like Ridley Scott just left it behind after filming Legend, complete with enough crap permanently floating in the air to give an allergist nightmares.” And every one of them the One True Elfland, for the ones who find it.

She bent over again, laughing so hard that she wheezed. “I guess—that Father’s taste—wasn’t quite as bad—as I thought,” she managed to get out.

Eric shrugged. “He had good taste, really good taste,” he pointed out, as the ’steeds picked their way across a meadow fully of swaying lilies of the kind normally seen woven into the hair of the maidens in Alphonse Mucha posters. “He only imitated the high-quality stuff. That’s their failing, you know, their one big lack—they can imitate like nobody’s business, but they can’t create. That’s what they need us for, or they’d fade away into Dreaming out of sheer boredom.” Maybe sleep and creativity are more closely linked than people think. Elves don’t sleep, either—not normally.

She sobered immediately. “I never thought of that. Why didn’t I ever think of that?” She shook her head. “Father never did anything much with LlewellCo except use it as a way to launder kenned gold until I was old enough to be interested in business—”

Eric raised an eyebrow—a Spock-like gesture he’d practiced secretly for years just on the chance that one day he’d get to use it to maximum effect. “I rest my case,” he said pointedly. “And, need I add, that was probably the major reason why he sired you in the first place. Using you as a spare battery pack was just lagniappe.”

She didn’t look stunned—she looked angry, but only for a moment before letting the anger go abruptly. “It makes perfect sense,” she replied bitterly. “He wouldn’t have to keep taming and training mortals every few decades—he’d figure to get at least a couple of centuries out of a half-breed like me. Though—he couldn’t have known I’d have a head for business, could he?”

Eric shrugged, but she was already answering her own question. “Of course he could; he probably cast all sorts of spells when I was born to bend me in that direction—”

Let’s not go there, shall we? “He probably counted on the natural cussedness of kids to do it for him,” Eric pointed out. “Your mom was a classic hippie, you said—and how many hippie kids turned around and grew up to be yuppies? I think he figured it was pretty well in the bag that you’d run off to be as unlike your mom as possible. All he had to do was leave you with her long enough for you to get tired of living life б la commune, and as soon as you got a chance, you’d bolt for business school.” He cocked his head to one side. “I mean, look at me—my parents wanted a little James Galway of their very own, and first shot I got, I bolted and turned into a busker.”

That turned the trick; she smiled, albeit weakly. “You’re probably right,” she said, and left it at that.

At just that moment, the ’steeds came out of the forest altogether, and paused.

Probably so we get a chance to take in the full effect and are awestruck, Eric thought cynically. He looked down the hill they were on anyway, and so did Ria.

“My god,” she said, not at all in the tone the Sidhe were probably hoping for. “It looks like a matte painting.”

“I don’t think that’s the effect they had in mind, but you’re right,” he said, because the twilight vista stretching out in front of them did look like a special effect. Everything was too—too big, too much, too perfect.

The path stretched down the hill and across perfect fields, just irregular enough to be charming, divided one from another by old-fashioned English hedgerows. Some were full of peacefully grazing sheep, some of red cattle as graceful as deer, some of crops. No one tended them, of course; they were dealt with by magic, and looked as if they’d come out of the dreams of a Pre-Raphaelite landscape artist. Overhead the pale-violet “sky” was studded with “stars” that didn’t move. The road led through the fields to a distant castle, but not like anything ever actually built in the mortal world. If Disney’d had an unlimited budget and could have revoked some of the laws of physics, he might have constructed something of the sort; a confection of tall thin gleaming turrets that should have collapsed under their own weight, of porcelain battlements and ivory crenellations, with shining walls encrusted with carvings; balconies, waterspouts, bridges leading from tower to alabaster tower; gold-embroidered awnings to shade against a nonexistent sun. The whole was surrounded by gardens that even at this distance looked lush. There was even a drawbridge over a moat upon which white swans glided—purely for effect, of course, since not even a military genius could defend a castle that looked like this one.

“Elven Classic,” Eric pointed out. “Possibly modeled on the ideas of some of the changeling kids they took Underhill to protect them.”

Ria smiled again, this time with real warmth. “Now that is something I can get behind,” she said fervently.

“Remind me to connect you up with Keighvin Silverhair,” Eric replied, and smiled himself. Elfhame Fairgrove in Savannah had what you might call an “active outreach” program for troubled youth.

Having given them enough time to be suitably impressed, the black ’steed now led the way down the hill towards the castle, Lady Day hurrying a little to catch up. As they drew closer, the road widened, and soon they weren’t the only creatures heading for what was clearly going to be a bigger deal than Eric had imagined.

Not everyone on the road was elven, either, though they all had to be Seleighe, or they wouldn’t be here. Some of them were downright odd-looking; creatures right out of a Brian Froud illustration. There was a group just ahead of them, with long, spindly arms and legs all gnarled like branches and hair seemingly made of twigs. There was another behind, armored knights riding black horses with flame-red eyes.

They caught up with a band of human-seeming folk who wore fur capes, and whose hems were soaking wet although the road was dry; they left little bits of seaweed behind them at every other step. Selkies, Eric guessed.

A band of fat little ponies overtook and passed them. The beasts wore neither saddle nor bridle, and carried creatures with elven features, but as small as children and with—yes—gauzy butterfly and dragonfly wings attached to their shoulders. If this is Elfhame Classic, I guess those guys must be Sidhe Lite.

“This is going to be some party,” Ria murmured, as the last group passed them.

“I had no idea,” Eric responded, more than a bit dumbfounded. “I really didn’t.”

“Hmm,” was all she said, but she gave him a sidelong glance that he couldn’t read.

He was glad enough to see, when they reached the castle proper, that there were young (at least he thought they were young) guards stationed at the gates to direct the crowds. One of them recognized Eric (or maybe Ria’s steed) immediately and herded them off as expertly as any celebrity handler. Before you could say “VIP suite” he and Ria were being ushered into the castle and a lavishly appointed reception room, where a tall, crowned elven man and woman were chatting with selected guests. At his side, Eric spotted Kory with relief—then Beth with the opposite emotion. Bethie was not exactly on the membership list of the Ria Llewellyn Fan Club, to say the least, and while she knew he was bringing Ria, he’d wanted a chance to warn her so she could get her game face on before the two of them met. . . .

But it was too late now. Eric and Ria were being ushered politely but efficiently up to their hosts by a pair of majordomo types. Eric had just enough time to catch a glimpse of Beth’s incredulous expression before he went into a full court bow, while Ria dropped into an exquisite High Elven curtsey, her skirts spreading around her in a perfect pool of star-spangled midnight.

Oh, I am going to be in such trouble. . . .

Prince Adroviel gestured for them to rise. “My lady Arresael, I present to you Sieur Eric, Knight and Bard of Elfhame Misthold, and his lady, Mistress Arianrhod, daughter of Perenor the Destroyer.”

Eric froze in the act of straightening up. Of course everyone in the room had heard Adroviel’s words—the prince had pitched his voice to carry. He glanced at Ria from the corner of his eye. Her face was impassive, but he could almost feel the shock radiating from her like cold off ice.

“All who share our blood are doubly welcome here,” Arresael said to Ria. She was tall and slender, with cat-green eyes and silver hair: Elfhame Classic. On her head she wore a diadem that on first glance looked like exotic flowers—and on second glance, revealed itself to be crafted of enamel, moonstones, and wrought gold. “And we have heard much of your valiant aid to our kindred of Sun-Descending.” She leaned forward to kiss Ria on the cheek; a formal salute of welcome.

Eric relaxed, realizing what the Sidhe Prince had done. Adroviel had made it perfectly clear that he knew exactly who Ria was and welcomed her nonetheless. There’d be no trouble now, even if anyone would consider making trouble at a Naming.

“Thank you, my lady. You are as gracious as you are beautiful,” Ria answered. She turned to Beth. “Thank you for allowing me to share this special day. I am honored.”

Beth looked as if she’d swallowed a live mouse. “Thank you for coming. I never did get a chance to thank you for saving our . . . bacon . . . back there in L.A.”

Ria opened her mouth to reply, but just then a chime sounded.

“That’s our cue,” Beth said. “See you later.” The look she gave Eric promised him she’d make sure of it.

And she hasn’t even seen the bunny yet.

Another elven courtier appeared at their side. “If you would accompany me . . . ?” he said.

Eric held out his arm to Ria, who placed her fingertips delicately upon his sleeve. They followed the courtier through the door he indicated. A small tingle of magic as they crossed the threshold warned them that wherever they were going, it wasn’t physically connected to the chamber they were leaving.

Eric blinked, looking around. If you’d taken Chartres Cathe­dral and crossed it with the Roman Coliseum, it might look something like this. There was a semicircle of tiered seats rising into the distance, most of them already full. A gilded rail separated them from a row of more elaborate seats, and to either side of the dais were private boxes like the ones in an opera house. Banners hung from the ceiling, their bright silks swaying slightly in the air, and the sounds of music and conversation filled the hall with a susurrus of white noise. They’d come out on the floor below the tiers, and just ahead was a dais large enough to hold a full orches­tra, covered in flawless scarlet velvet that was probably deep enough to hide in. It held two thrones, plus a number of lesser chairs.

Their guide ushered them to one of the boxes and opened the low door. “Does this meet with your approval, my lord?”

“Uh . . . fine,” Eric said. No matter how many etiquette lessons Dharniel had dinned into him, he just didn’t “get” courtly. It always made him nervous.

“Thank you,” Ria said graciously, preceding Eric into the box. It contained two chairs only barely less ornate than the ones on the dais, and was obviously a place of honor.

Eric followed her in. The courtier closed the door behind them and turned away to guide others to their places.

“Well,” Ria said.

“Look, I’m sorry about that—”

Ria waved his words away, sinking into her chair. “Never mind. It was good politics, and good theater. Now everyone knows where the Prince stands; they’d look pretty silly starting something after that. I just wish I’d brought my opera glasses.”

“It’s quite a show, isn’t it?” Eric asked, seating himself beside her. They had a good view of the dais, and their position let them watch the guests without gawking.

A few minutes later, the last of the guests found their seats, and the babble of voices died down a little. There was a flourish of horns, and the hall became absolutely silent. A herald strode out onto the dais.

“All honor to Prince Adroviel of Elfhame Melusine and the Princess Arresael!”

Adroviel appeared behind the herald—must be a Portal back there, Eric thought—leading Arresael by the hand. They took their seats—but not on the two thrones. As the herald called out more names, others appeared to take their seats on the dais, but the thrones remained empty.

“Korendil, Knight of Elfhame Sun-Descending, squire of the High Court, Magus Minor and Child of Danu—!”

Kory appeared, looking regal and knightly. He took a few steps away from the Portal and stopped.

“Mistress Bethany Margaret Kentraine, bringer of new life!”

Beth appeared, holding Maeve in her arms. The baby was wearing what—if they were anywhere but here—Eric would have identified as a christening gown. It was white lace, sewn with small sparkling brilliants, and its end brushed the ground. Beth was dressed in red and gold, a gown that would make any Rennie turn pale with envy. She wore a simple gold circlet on her red hair—a symbol of rank, Eric knew that much. The Sidhe were very picky about things like that: they were doing her great honor here today.

When she appeared, the hall went wild with cheers. She must have been told what to expect; she turned toward the audience, smiling, waiting for the cheering to die down. When it did, Kory held out his hand and escorted her to one of the two thrones, seating himself in the other. Today an elven knight and his mortal consort were ranked above princes.

Elves take children very seriously. If Eric had ever doubted it, here was the proof.

The herald stepped back, and Adroviel rose to his feet.

“People of Underhill. We gather here today in this holy place to welcome new life into the land. In the name of our Holy Mother, Danu, whose children we are, let it be so!”

Elves had some kind of religion, Eric knew, but they didn’t talk about it much, and in all the time he’d spent Underhill he’d never seen anything remotely resembling church on Sunday, or even one of Bethie’s Wiccan Circles. But that he was seeing it now, he had no doubt. The expectant silence was thick enough to cut with a sword.

“She comes among us small and helpless, yet may she grow great with help and love. And to that end, her mother has chosen wise counselors for her, who will guard and guide her as bone of their own, blood of their own, flesh of their own.” He gestured, and a tall stately woman, seated in one of the lesser chairs on the dais, rose to her feet.

“The Lady Coinemance, Lady of Elfhame Misthold and of the High Court, Magus Major and Child of Danu.”

“I do accept this task, this burden and this joy,” Coinemance said. “I vow to teach this child all my arts, to bestow upon her all knowledge of magecraft and sorcery, bone of my own, blood of my own, flesh of my own.”

“And I accept your oath for the child’s sake. May all your arts turn against you should you fail of your vow.”

One by one Adroviel called out names and titles, until four Sidhe stood beside him. Maeve’s godparents, and heavy hitters all. As they stood, each accepted guardianship of Maeve, and vowed to teach her their skills of war, of sorcery, of healing, and of Bardcraft.

Then Arresael rose to her feet.

“Now do I call forth a Protector for this child. As it is written in the Great Book, she shall guard this child until she is grown, putting her safety before any other thing, even the defense of her home and her own honor. May she never be asked to take up her sword! Come forth, Lady Montraille!”

Eric had been expecting another Sidhe, but to his surprise, the woman who came to stand beside Arresael was human—or looked so. Unlike the others, she wore full armor save for her helm. Her red hair was cropped short, her face seamed with age and hard living. She regarded the assembly grimly.

“I come,” she said in a thick French accent. “And I do swear, in accordance with your ancient ways, that I am a bachelor unwed, with neither kin nor mate nor child.” She drew her sword, and held it high for all to see. “From this moment I vow, by this blade and my own heart’s blood, that the demoiselle shall be dearer to me than honor or breath, that her safety shall be more to me than the defense of the hame, that I shall turn away from battle or challenge for her sake.” The warrior sheathed her sword.

“I accept your oath,” Arresael answered gravely. “May your blade and every hand, here and in the World Above, turn against you should you fail of your vow.”

The hall was absolutely still.

“Who names this child?” the Prince asked.

“Her parents name her,” Kory said. He got to his feet and took Maeve from Beth as she, too, stood, then returned the baby to her. Side by side, they walked to where Adroviel stood.

“Her name is Maeve,” Beth said firmly. “Know her name.”

“Her name is Maeve,” Kory answered. “Know her name.”

“Welcome, Maeve,” Adroviel said to the baby. “I give her a second name, a Name of power.”

Arresael stood back. Maeve’s sponsors and protectors clustered around as Adroviel bent down to whisper in the baby’s ear. No one but they would know this Name. For a moment a bright glow surrounded them, fading slowly.

The others returned to their places. Kory, Beth (holding the baby), and Adroviel stood alone together in the center of the dais.

“Now let joy reign unconfined!” the Prince said. “Let there be feasting, and music, and dance—all in Maeve’s honor. Let us welcome her as she deserves! Let the ceileighe begin!”

Once more the horns sounded. The hall erupted in wild cheering, drowning out the sound. Kory was grinning fit to crack his face—Beth looked a bit more uncertain, but still mightily pleased. They stepped forward to the edge of the dais, and Beth raised Maeve higher in her arms. From Eric’s vantage point, he could see the baby yawn and stretch, unimpressed by all the noise, her eyes squinched tightly shut. After a moment, Kory led Beth back to her throne. The shouting diminished, replaced by a hubbub of conversation as people began to leave their seats.

“Pretty impressive,” Ria said, leaning toward Eric so he could hear her.

“I’ll say,” Eric said. Does she wish Perenor had done this for her? Does she miss the chances she should have had—would have had if her father had been anyone else?

There was a discreet knock at the back of the box, and a door opened in the wall. The courtier who had escorted them to their seats was waiting.

“Sieur Eric? Mistress Arianrhod? If you will come this way . . . ?”

A ceileighe meant music and dancing, as well as the presentation of gifts to the new arrival. The presentations were less formal than the Naming had been, but that didn’t mean everyone wasn’t watching. Beth and Kory sat in thrones of honor on a small platform. The gifts were piled high beside them, and as each of the presenters advanced to present his gifts in person (something only a few of them were doing, Eric was relieved to note), a page put his gift into his hand. The gifts were as eclectic as the givers: everything from a golden harp, to a shiny red tricycle, to a tiny but perfect elvensteed with elaborate saddle and bridle.

Eric advanced and was handed the bunny.

“I thought she’d like this,” he said, offering it to Beth.

She grinned. “You’re one in a million, Banyon. And a good thing, too.”

“Aw, c’mon, Bethie,” Eric teased. “Every kid should have a few stuffed animals. I’ve got something else for her, too. I wrote a song for her. I’ll play it later.”

“Glad you’re sticking around. This is going to be some party.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Eric answered. He stepped aside.

Ria was next in line. The page handed her a small drawstring bag. She opened it. There was a gold ring inside. She held it out to Beth.

“This isn’t magic, but it does have my private cell-phone number engraved on it. If Maeve ever needs help in the World Above, she can call me from anywhere. I’ll come.”

“This is a princely gift indeed,” Kory said.

“Yeah,” Beth said. “Thanks. I mean it.”

Ria smiled and stepped aside to make way for the next giver.

“Pretty cool,” Eric said. “Makes my bunny look all no-how.”

“She’ll probably have more use for the bunny,” Ria answered. “I can’t imagine that kid’ll ever need anything I can give her, but I thought it was a nice gesture.”

“It was,” Eric said simply. “C’mon. Let’s go find something to drink. This is going to go on for a while.”

The ceileighe filled several huge rooms. Servants passed among the revelers carrying everything from pitchers to wineskins to silver trays covered with champagne glasses. Ria snagged a glass and sipped it. “Cristalle. Very nice. What about you, Eric?”

“I think I’ll stick to fruit juice. I’m driving.”

A servant appeared at his elbow holding a large silver cup. He bowed and offered it to Eric. “Your cider, my lord.”

Eric took the cup. The servant vanished from sight. He sipped. Pear cider. One of his favorites, and hard to come by even in as big a city as New York.

“Sometimes I wonder why you left,” Ria said. “This kind of service would be very easy to get used to.”

“Maybe,” Eric said. “But I’m not tempted, and neither are you. We belong in the World Above. Down here we’d just wither away and die. There’s no challenge to life here. That’s why most of the changelings go back eventually. To a better life than they left, of course.”

“I guess that’s why the Elfhames never really severed their connection with our world,” Ria said slowly. “And you’re right. Rough as real life is sometimes, I do like a good scrap. If you can have anything you want with a wave of the hand, there’s no savor to it.”

In the next room, musicians were tuning up. The dancers stood waiting impatiently for the music to begin.

Sidhe danced. All the mortal accounts of them agreed on that much, and Underhill Eric had gotten a chance to see how good a dancer you could become if you had centuries to do nothing but practice. The formal dances tended to be elaborate, complicated, and very long: Master Dharniel had told Eric tales of elves so caught up in their dancing that whole Courts had dwindled away into the Dreaming, still dancing.

But while no mortal could live long enough to learn the steps of the Court dances, there were others far less complicated. He and Ria skirted the first set of dancers, following other music already playing, and found themselves in the midst of an Irish jig. The musicians were all wearing plaids—the Great Plaid, twelve yards of fabric and nothing more—and the dancers looked as if they’d just stepped out of Riverdance. The music was like a double shot of uisighe, going straight to the blood.

“C’mon,” Eric said, grabbing Ria by the hand.

He’d expected her to refuse and need to be coaxed, but instead she grinned, as caught by the music as he was, and dragged him onto the dance floor. The other dancers quickly made room for them, pulling them into the dance.

They danced until they were glowing with exertion and the musicians—fiddler, bodhran, and pipes—stopped to refresh themselves from a keg of beer placed nearby. The dancers broke apart, into groups of twos and threes.

All of them were looking at him. They began to chant, clapping their hands rhythmically.

“Bard—Bard—Bard—”

“Oh, hey,” Eric said, raising his hands in protest.

The chanting continued, and now Ria had joined it, eyes sparkling.

Finally Eric gave in and walked toward the stage. He took his flute out of his gig bag and fitted it together as they watched him expectantly.

“Lords—ladies—good gentles all,” he said in his best Faire brogue, “I am but a mere traveling player, not fit to play for such a grand company—”

Happy catcalls, whistles, and hoots greeted these remarks, and Ria was shouting as loudly as any of them.

“—but since you’re so insistent, it’s an exception I’ll be making for your foigne selves.” He bowed deeply, and then raised the flute to his lips.

Nothing sad or solemn today, no reminders of ancient battles or beloved dead. He blew an introductory trill and swung directly into “Susan Brown,” one of the pieces he and Hosea had worked up together. Fiddle in the middle and I can’t dance, Josie/Fiddle in the middle and I can’t get around/Fiddle in the middle and I can’t dance, Josie/Hello, Susan Brown! The dancers whooped and flung themselves into the music. He followed the tune immediately with another—“Turkey In The Straw,” a fine old dance tune—and then another. After the first few, the musicians joined him, their instruments blending seamlessly with his own.

At last, fearing he’d be here all night, Eric played a last song, Mason Williams’ “Cinderella Rockefeller.” It was slow and sweet, and very silly, even without the lyrics, and by the time he was done, the dancers had all stopped to listen.

“Thank you, ladies and gentles all,” Eric said. “It’s been a great honor to play for such fine folk, but too much honor can kill a man with thirst. And so I leave you in good hands!” He bowed to the dancers, who cheered him lustily, and quickly made his escape to where Ria stood on the sidelines.

She handed him his cup, and Eric drank deeply. The pear cider was still cold, and the cup was still full, but he was used to that. The rules for normal were different in Underhill.

“Juilliard doesn’t do you justice,” Ria said. “You’re at your best in a situation like this, playing for an audience who feels the music.”

“I didn’t go back to school to learn to perform for a crowd,” Eric said. “I wanted to learn what I don’t know, not what I do. C’mon, let’s go find the food. I’m starved.”

They passed other groups of dancers and other musicians—wild Cajun fiddles playing for an enthusiastic band of selkies; another fiddler and a caller playing for a group of centaurs whose square dancing more resembled polo; a small chamber orchestra playing a minuet for Sidhe in stately Georgian dress. Every form and period of music was represented—every form of acoustic, that was. While many of the Sidhe were passionate rockers, rock didn’t mix well with unamplified venues and would be off in a separate space of its own.

Eventually they were forced to ask one of the servants where the dining hall was. He pointed to a Portal; once Eric had seen it, he could see others hanging in the air as well. They passed through. Here the musicians played for listeners, not dancers, and the air was filled with savory smells.

Soon they were sitting in what looked like a garden. It was night here, but the trees were filled with golden fireflies, and glowing will-o’-the-wisps floated gently through the air, shedding multicolored pastel light. Just inside the doorway stood the original Groaning Board where they’d filled their plates. Elsewhere in Adroviel’s castle tonight there was everything from a formal sit-down banquet to world-class sushi chefs preparing food to order, but this was the first place they’d found.

“If I eat this, will I be trapped in Underhill forever?” Ria asked, holding up a cluster of Underhill grapes. They glowed with a soft violet light.

“That’s just an old tale,” Eric told her, biting into a hot roll. He’d loaded his plate with prime rib—all that playing and dancing had given him an appetite, and the evening was far from over. “It only works if the food’s bespelled, and nothing here tonight is. Try them. They’re good.”

They weren’t alone in the garden. Around them were other guests taking the opportunity to rest and refuel. Between the trees, the ground rose up in couch-shaped hummocks carpeted in green moss. They were just as soft as they looked. Eric saw a woman with green hair and skin who wore a garment of shining leaves. Her plate was piled high with bread and fruit—a little cannibalistic, considering that she was probably a dryad, but who was Eric to judge? Her dinner companion was a satyr. His small horns were wound with ribbons, and his hooves were polished and gilded. The Sidhe can look like anything humanity can imagine, and a number of things they can’t.

It was peaceful here. “We’d better go find Beth and Kory after this, or we never will. They should be done with opening baby presents by now.”

“It’d be easy to miss them in this mob,” Ria said. “Fortunately, no matter how long we’re here,  Etienne can get me back to nine o’clock Saturday night. I’ve got a lot of work to get through tomorrow.”

“You should take a day off once in a while,” Eric said.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Ria answered. She tossed a grape at him; he grabbed for it, but a flying critter snagged it out of the air before he did. “You’re so easy to tease, Eric. Always worrying about everyone but yourself. Who’s going to worry about you, eh?” She reached out to brush a lock of hair back from his forehead.

“You are,” Eric answered. He leaned forward, into the kiss.

There was scattered applause.

Both of them recoiled in opposite directions. They had an audience of tiny Sidhe, naked and sexless as kewpie dolls. The creatures had bright butterfly wings, and each wore a different full-sized flower as a hat.

“Scat!” Eric yelped, swinging at them with his flute. They scattered and ran, giggling in high squeaky voices. He glanced at Ria, who was at least trying not to laugh.

“Why don’t we go find your friends?” Ria said after a long pause.

Beth and Kory were dancing—one of the simpler Sidhe dances. Five rings of dancers, each rotating in a different direction, jumped and spun and twirled to the music. At intervals, the rings would break into sets for a measure or two, as dancers worked their way into the inner circle of dancers and back out again. The two of them were completely intent upon the dance—it wasn’t as simple as it looked, as the pairs bowed and curtseyed and flung themselves into the air.

Kory saw them and waved, and in a few minutes they worked their way to the outermost ring and freed themselves from the dance. There were others more than ready to take their place; the music itself seemed to have no end.

“Master Dharniel’s looking for you,” Beth said, only slightly out of breath from her exertions. “He’s in charge of the playing order for the Bards.”

Eric winced. Not even the sanctity of a Naming could squelch the dueling egos of most Bards, a circumstance not calculated to improve Master Dharniel’s temper. No matter what order they went on in, someone wouldn’t like it.

“I’d better go find him,” Eric said. And do what he could to soothe matters. He glanced at Ria.

“Oh, I’ll stay here,” she said with fulsome sweetness. “I’m sure Kory and Beth will take very good care of me.”

He had no choice but to leave her there, and of the two women, he wasn’t sure which one he was worried about.

“So,” Beth said. “Are you enjoying the party?”

“It’s lovely,” Ria said. “And you?”

“Oh . . . hell,” Beth said, grimacing. “We could go on billing and cooing until the end of the world. I’d rather get real. Eric vouches for you, and the Prince and his lady accept you. I don’t know whether I like you or not—I never had much in common with corporate types.”

“Like me,” Ria said. “And I don’t know that I care much for elves, myself.” She gave Kory a mocking glance.

“But you’re . . . oh.” Beth said. “Yeah, I guess I can see that. But all the Sidhe aren’t like . . . your father.”

“ ‘Perenor the Destroyer.’ How pleased he’d be to know he was so fondly remembered. Still, done is done: he’s dead, and Sun-Descending is still there, keeping the wells of ima­gination flowing in southern California. Isn’t it odd that the Sidhe, who aren’t creative themselves, seem to inspire so much of it? Ireland . . . Canada . . . California . . . New York . . . wherever there’s a hill, it seems to bring out the best in ­humans.”

“Or the worst,” Kory suggested. “Just as humans do, we cherish most what we lack. Mortals create. The Sidhe live nearly forever. You would not trade your imagination for our long lives, if you truly knew what it would entail.”

“I, on the other hand, have the best of both worlds,” Ria said lightly. “Human creativity, and at least a little of the Sidhe longevity.” She looked at Beth. “Just as any children you and Kory produce will have,” she said pointedly.

“Why don’t we go somewhere more quiet?” Beth said. “Eric will find us.”

Kory gestured, and a Portal opened in the air. The three of them walked through.

“This is the day nursery,” Beth said. “Maeve’s through there. Don’t worry. We won’t wake Maeve. Once she’s asleep, she’s dead to the world.”

“Do you want to see her?” Kory asked.

“Yes,” said Ria honestly. “I’d like that very much.”

They went through the doorway into the night nursery. In the middle of the room stood an elaborate bassinet, covered with ribbons and lace. Lady Montraille sat watching over Maeve, unlikely though it was that anything might happen here. With her were more ordinary nursemaids—in this case, three gleaming balls of light, one pink, one blue, one green—­hovering above the bassinet. If Ria squinted, she could see a tiny figure at the center of each light.

She approached the cradle and looked down. Maeve no longer wore the elaborate christening gown, just a simple pink T-shirt and Pampers.

“I grew up in a commune until I was four,” Ria said, speaking softly, looking down at the baby. “I hated it. There was never enough to eat, never anything good to eat—I slept in the same room with all the other kids. The older ones used to scare the littlest ones to make them cry, creeping around the floor growling like bears. I never cried. I already knew there were worse things than bears.”

Beth sighed. “The more I see of other peoples’ childhoods, the more I appreciate my own.”

For some reason, that felt more real to Ria than expressions of sympathy or horror would have been, and she acknowledged it with a nod. “I didn’t see much of my mother. She spent most of her time getting high any way she could. She didn’t have much time for me. I suppose I don’t blame her. She was just doing her best to stay alive after my father’s magic fried her mind and killed her twin. She used to have terrible nightmares, waking up screaming about drowning in blood. I guess the others thought it was just acid flash. I don’t know what I thought.”

“What could you think?” Kory asked. “You were only a child. I suppose you accepted it; young things are like that, they accept whatever form the world takes, however cruel or strange.”

That, too, was more sincere than Ria had expected. Now the words she had so much difficulty in forming flowed from her. “Then one day my father came for me. Perenor always liked to leave the dirty work to others. Now I was old enough to follow orders and be an asset.” She shook her head, plunging back into a memory that had seemed golden at the time.

“I thought he was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen. He came driving up in a big black limousine. He brought me candy. It was the first time I’d ever had chocolate. I suppose he gave it to me to see if it would kill me, if I’d inherited more from the Sidhe side than the human.” And now, she recalled the calculating look on his face as she devoured the treat, the satisfaction when she asked for more. “He took me back to the commune and started to leave, and I ran after him, ran after the car. I’m sure he was waiting for that. Basically, he abducted me, not that anyone there ever cared. At the time, all I knew was that it was wonderful. He took me to a toy store and let me buy anything I wanted. I had pretty dresses, my own room, a governess who let me do anything I chose—it was paradise. But it came at a price. A few days later, when I started asking whether my mother was going to join us, he told me she’d killed herself. When I was old enough, I checked that out for myself, and he hadn’t lied. She’d lost the battle. The commune was on the coast; she just swam out into the ocean and didn’t swim back.”

Beth and Kory both nodded, saying nothing, and she was grateful for that. Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, that particular memory gave no pain. Her mother had never been more than one of the “chicks” who cooked, tended the kids, and did the housework when they weren’t stoned. In fact, she’d seen less of her mother than any of the others because her mother had been stoned more often, trying to escape.

“He never stopped telling me how fortunate I was to be alive; how he’d wanted me so much he’d used special magic to sire me on a mortal woman. The only way that can happen is for the human partner to somehow become equally a . . . oh, I don’t know, ‘creature of magic’ sums it all up. So either the Sidhe partner has to be weak and close to death, or the human partner has to become a temporary mage. Of course, that was the method Perenor chose. He found some potential mages—about ten percent of humanity has that potential, or so I’m told—and stole their power: their joy, their hope, their creativity—all of it—and fed it to my mother. One of them was her twin brother—that was one of the reasons he picked her, because her brother was a nascent Bard, and Power ran in her Line. Of course, along with the power of everyone Perenor sucked dry, she got their dreams, their memories, and their deaths. No wonder she went mad. Later, of course, he found other uses for that power.”

“That much, we know,” Kory said, stern and sad, though neither of those emotions was aimed at her.

Of all the ways this particular encounter could have gone, this was not one of the ones Ria would have put high on the list of “likely.” She felt a catharsis, finally telling someone just what kind of burden her father had laid on her young shoulders in an effort to make her as hard as he was. She’d never dared say these things to Eric. Eric cared too deeply, felt too much. It would have hurt him. “Perenor made certain I would know exactly how much my life had cost. I don’t suppose it ever occurred to him that having a dozen teenagers—and my mother, in the end—die so I could be born would bother me. After all, why should the strong care about the weak?”

“But that can’t be the only way,” Beth said despairingly. “There have to be others!”

“Crossbreeds are rarer than elven children,” Ria said bleakly. Suddenly, she had to give them hope. Beth’s naked anguish, although she didn’t exactly understand it, had to be answered. “Perenor chose the most convenient method, but he knew most of the others. They all have the same basis: parity between the energy states of the two partners. Either find some way to turn yourself temporarily into a Sidhe without killing anyone—or turn your elf-friend here temporarily human.” Kory and Beth looked at each other with an unreadable expression. “He did find some hints that Sidhe who’d slipped into Dreaming were more fertile with humans than normal Sidhe, but I don’t imagine that’s an experiment you wish to try?”

Kory shuddered, and Beth took his arm protectively. “There has to be some other way.”

Ria looked at Beth’s woebegone expression, and again offered a breath of hope. “It isn’t impossible to find a way, you know, even if Misthold or Sun-Descending or even Melusine doesn’t know how to get its hands on enough life-force. There’s more to the World Underhill than the parts of it the Sidhe live in, and creatures out there old and powerful enough to make the ­Emperor Oberon look like a wet firecracker in comparison. Do what you’d do faced with a problem like this in the World Above. Find an information specialist and consult him. There have to be trade fairs of some kind here—the inhabitants may not be human, but they’re not that different.”

“I know of one.” Kory spoke up. “I do not think it is precisely the sort of place you mean, but we may begin there.”

“Do,” Ria suggested. “And let me know what you find out, okay? Who knows? The day may come when I need to know myself.”

One of the will-o’-the-wisp servants guided Eric through the labyrinth of interconnecting castle rooms all filled with revelers, finally arriving at the castle’s equivalent of the RenFaire’s Main Stage. Here only the most elite performers would present their work for the entertainment of the high-ranking nobles and their own coteries.

When Eric got there, Dharniel was talking to the Lady Harawain, one of Maeve’s sponsors, and a famous Bard. He’d played her work many times while under Dharniel’s tutelage. Her instrument was the harp, and she carried it with her now, slung over her shoulder in a velvet bag. She was one of those Sidhe who had chosen to modify her natural form: her hair and skin and eyes were all in shades of gold, until she looked like a statue of living amber.

“—the young Bard must go last,” she was saying in firm tones. “He’s the one everybody will want to hear today, being Maeve’s father as well as a great hero.”

Me? Eric thought. They can’t be serious.

“My dear Lady Harawain, your own natural humility keeps you from seeing what is truly the proper place for so honored a guest. He must go first, of course.” The speaker was an elegant and very dandified Sidhe, with waxed moustaches and a goatee. He held a lute festooned with trailing ribbons by its ivory neck.

“If first is such a desirable place, Pirolt, by all means, it should go to none but yourself,” Harawain shot back silkily. “Don’t you agree, Lord Dharniel?”

“Oh, but I regret that I cannot accept. My lute, she is a temperamental mistress, and I could hardly be ready in time. I will, of course, be more than willing to perform last,” Pirolt said hastily.

From his days on the RenFaire Circuit, Eric knew that the end position was the one most coveted by performers. It assured that yours would be the piece the audience remembered best because they’d heard it last, gave you plenty of time to warm up (and the audience to assemble and warm up for you), and meant you didn’t have to spend the day waiting around for your turn or rushing to fill in if something happened to someone else. First was also good, for a lot of reasons, but the star attraction always went on last.

And Dharniel was saving that slot for him?

“Eric goes last,” Dharniel said. “I am Master of the Revels and that is my decision. Pirolt, your concern for my protйgй does not go unremarked. You will play first, so I suggest you begin tuning now.”

The foppish elf drew himself up to his full height. His eyes flashed dangerously.

“You will find in me an implacable enemy, Master Dharniel.”

“And you will find in me your last one, Master Pirolt. But do take your complaint to Prince Adroviel, by all means. I’m sure the prince would relish the chance to settle your dispute.”

Pirolt looked as if he might say more, but settled for spinning on his heel and stalking off.

“Harawain, dearest lady, I place you just before Eric,” Dharniel said.

Good lord—is Dharniel smiling? I thought his face would crack if he ever did that.

“The best of the Old Ways followed by the best of the New,” she said without ego. “It is a pretty conceit, Master Dharniel. And here is the young Bard now.”

Dharniel turned to Eric as Lady Harawain gracefully made her exit. “I suppose you, too, have some complaint of your position in the order of play?”

“None,” Eric said hastily. “But there was actually something else I wanted to talk to you about. But if this isn’t a good time . . . ?”

“So long as it is not a matter of artistic temperament,” Dharniel said. “But stay. You will need your keeper so that you can attend upon the music in good time.”

He plucked a knot of glowing ribbons out of the air and touched it to Eric’s shoulder. Eric heard a faint chime, like the ringing of crystal bells.

“It will sound when it is time for you to come to the stage. Do not fail to heed it.”

“I won’t,” Eric promised. As if he’d stand up the biggest audience he was ever likely to have, or miss the chance to hear the cream of Underhill Bard-dom play!

Dharniel regarded him, and Eric realized the elven mage was waiting for him to speak.

“I’ve found another Bard, Master Dharniel. A human Bard, in New York—”

Quickly he told the story of meeting Hosea Songmaker in the subway, of sensing his Talent, and related the bits of personal history Hosea had confided in him.

“And he’s got a lot of natural talent, but he’s looking for a teacher, so I thought . . .”

He stopped. Dharniel was smiling again. Mockingly.

“Congratulations, young Bard. You have just acquired your first apprentice.”

“I—Me—? But I thought . . . I don’t know how to train anyone, Master Dharniel!” Eric sputtered.

“So—as I thought—you slept through all my lectures. Well, no matter. As you are so fond of saying, you can always ‘wing it.’ ”

“But I can’t—” Eric said in panic.

Dharniel’s face took on an expression of sternness. “Eric, for every Bard comes the time when their first apprentice is sent to them. None of the good ones think they are ready for such a responsibility. But you have learned everything I have to teach you, and learned more in your own life. Who better than a human Bard to train another? I shall look ­forward to meeting him when he is ready to present his masterwork.”

And that seemed to settle that. Eric gulped. “I— Um, thanks, Master Dharniel. I think.”

Maybe Hosea won’t want me for a teacher, Eric thought hopefully, then banished the matter from his mind to think about later. Right now he had more immediate things to worry about.

All too soon it was time for him to go on. He’d switched from pear cider to plain water awhile back, and was glad he had—there was enough magic floating around in the air to make him dizzy.

The magic had another effect as well. Music—good music, no matter the style—was always about real things: hope and heartbreak, people and places long gone or yet to be.

Here, music made them real.

Music and magic went hand in hand; Bardcraft had always been about magic as well, about the controlling or the unleash­ing of power. But now he was seeing what that actually meant.

When the Bards performed, what their music spoke of became real for everyone to see. It was like stepping into virtual reality, bringing the audience with you.

Some of the Bards went for simple flashy effects—fireworks, showers of flowers. Others worked more subtle and more powerful magics. For her last piece—each Bard was restricted to three—Harawain had played a Homecoming Song that had left the audience weeping tears of joy—and Eric, too, even though he wasn’t quite sure why. But at that moment, it had all been real: the cry of the gulls, the salt smell of the ocean, even the deck rocking gently beneath his feet.

A tough act to follow.

He knew better than to try to beat the Sidhe at their own game. For this performance, he was going to give them human music, ending up with “The Huntsman’s Reel,” the piece he’d composed for Maeve.

He started with “Bouree,” a bouncy flute piece he’d found on an old Jethro Tull album and liked instantly. A touch of magic, and he was playing all four parts of the contrapuntal melody in perfect harmony with himself—a neat trick, and one he’d worked hard on. The music spun shapes of pure geometry in the air, sparkling and changing with each note. As the last note died, delighted applause washed over him. He could see Kory grinning—he, Beth, and Ria were seated beside the Prince and Princess in seats of honor—and Beth shot him a thumbs-up of approval.

For his second piece, he’d used Mozart’s The Magic Flute as his inspiration. No magic this time beyond what the music itself produced, but that was enough. He lowered his flute at the end of the piece, and there was a moment of hushed silence before the applause began. When it had died down, he stepped to the edge of the stage.

“Your Highnesses, ladies and gentlemen, for my last piece I would like to play a new composition, dedicated to the Lady Maeve and written in her honor.”

Suddenly there was a new quality to the respectful silence. An electric anticipation, almost hunger, that he had never felt before. After a moment, he realized why.

A new piece. New. I spent all day explaining to Ria that elves never create anything because they can’t, and never stopped to think what an effect something like this would have. Even the Sidhe Bards don’t create new music—they just adapt the old. What have I set myself up for?

There was no choice now but to go on with it.

He raised his flute and played.

The inspiration for the piece was a dancing tune, and the dance was still in its heart—but this was the mortal dance through life, growing and learning. Each time he returned to the original melody it was more complex, deeper, as the child became a woman, then a mother, then a wise counselor to her children’s children. Then he stripped away all the ornament and reprised the motif as the woman stood alone, wise and full of years, looking back on all she had done.

When he stopped, there was a long silence from his ­audience, and for a moment, Eric was sure he’d mortally ­offended them. These were the Sidhe—firstborn of Danu, Folk of the Air, eternal and unchanging. What had ever possessed him to play something that was nothing less than a celebration of human mortality for them?

Then the cheering began. One by one, the audience stood, clapping and cheering. The Prince wept unashamedly. Beth was alternately hugging Kory and bouncing up and down. Ria, standing behind them, spoke silently, but he could read her lips:

“Only you, Eric.”

He guessed he’d better get off stage while they were still applauding. Master Dharniel was waiting in the wings, most of the other Bards clustered behind him. The cheering could still be heard, though more faintly than it would be in a World Above venue.

“You’re more than ready for an apprentice,” Dharniel said curtly, turning away abruptly.

“As I said, the best of the New,” Harawain said. She reached out to touch him gently upon the shoulder. “Won’t you stay here with us, in Underhill? Your own kind will never value you as we do,” she said wistfully.

“I’m sorry.” Eric smiled regretfully.

Just then the first of the well-wishers arrived, the Prince among them. His presence kept things from turning into a mob scene, but Eric was still glad to make his escape. Fortunately, on this particular night, Beth could have anything she wanted, even the Bard that everyone wanted.

“Oh, Eric, you rock! That was so . . .” She stopped.

Eric grinned. “Just so you know there’s more to me than bunnies, m’lady.”

“You could have given us no richer gift,” Kory said. “Truly this will be a night long remembered.”

“ ‘And gentlemen in England now a-bed/Shall think themselves accursed they were not here/And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks/That fought with us upon St. Crispin’s Day,’ ” Ria said lightly, quoting Shakespeare to good purpose. Beth shot her a wicked grin—it looked as if they’d settled whatever issues still remained between them, Eric noted with relief.

“So what do we do now?” Eric asked.

“What else?” Beth answered. “Party like there’s no tomorrow.”

SIX:
TO RIDE THE NIGHT—MARE

You could get used to anything, even fear. After a while, Jeanette Campbell stopped worrying about a bullet to the head.

There were worse things than death.

Being a madman’s captive, for one.

There was something not right about Elkanah. She hadn’t noticed it at first, of course. She’d been trying to get used to the idea of being dead. But after a while it’d become clear to her that he didn’t mean to kill her—not immediately at least—and her mind had turned, with inevitable self-preservation, to what would happen next. Escape. Survival.

They drove all through that first night and well into the next day. He stuck to the back roads, so she still couldn’t tell where they were going. She had the growing feeling that he wasn’t sure either, and that was the first thing that worried her. The second was his driving. She’d stayed mouse-quiet, hoping to convince him she was no threat, but when the van began to weave from side to side on a road that was only a car-and-a-half wide—if that—fear of immediate death made her bold.

“Either find a place to pull over or let me drive. I don’t want to end up dead at the bottom of a ditch.”

Elkanah slowly turned to look at her, letting the van drift to a stop. His eyes were almost yellow, she noted with clinical detachment, and the skin beneath them looked bruised and puffy with sleeplessness and something more.

“Let you drive?” he said, in slow echo of her words. “And where would you go, Ms. Campbell?”

“How should I know? This was your idea,” she snapped. “I don’t even know where we are!”

He chuckled, an almost-soundless rasping that came from deep in his chest. “Don’t you? I think you’re funning me, Ms. Campbell. I think you know exactly where we are. You shouldn’t’ve been so talkative back in the day, Ms. Campbell. I knew just where to find you.”

There was no answer she could give to that because she’d never talked to him at length at all, and so she just stared at him, scared and defiant. After a moment, he put the van into gear and began driving again. But an hour later they’d reached a more traveled road, and he followed a weathered billboard advertising “Lester’s Country Rest.”

It wasn’t much of a rest, but it was certainly country. He left her in the car alone—shackled to the door, of course—while he went to talk to the owner, and came back a few moments later with a room key in his hand.

“I guess you won’t mind sharing a room.”

He drove the van around to the back of the little row of battered cabins, got out, and came around to her door to open it. Mutely, Jeanette held out her wrist, and he unlocked the shackle. She rubbed her wrist, still able to feel the weight and coldness. She climbed down out of the seat, feeling stiff and unsteady on her feet.

“Come on.” He put a hand on her arm and led her to the end cabin. The cabin door stuck, and he shoved it open. A wave of musty hot air rolled out. She walked inside, and when she turned, Elkanah was pulling another set of cuffs out of his pocket.

“Now, Ms. Campbell, I figure we can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”

Jeanette swallowed hard. “What’s the easy way?”

He smiled then, an expression more frightening than his bland disinterest had been. “I cuff your hands behind your back. And you stay put.”

She nodded agreement, unable to trust her voice. As he approached her she turned her back, holding her wrists out behind her. As soon as the cold metal settled over her wrists, she realized she should have asked to take off her jacket first. It was hot in here, and would only get hotter as the day progressed. But something inside told her to stay as quiet as she could, not make him think about her too much.

She sat down on a corner of the bed as Elkanah went back outside to the van. She knew it was a test. Elkanah was armed, and somehow she didn’t think that Lester would call the cops if he heard a shot. She’d been shot before, once a long time ago when she’d gotten careless. It was an experience she had no desire to repeat.

Elkanah returned carrying a small backpack. He shut the door, and then picked up the end of the bed and dragged it over in front of the door. Jeanette, caught unawares, fell to the floor. With her hands cuffed behind her it was an awkward fall, but she didn’t complain. She thought that for just a moment Elkanah had forgotten she was there, and that was another disturbing thought to add to all the others.

He continued to ignore her, opening the pack and pulling out a can of beer and a small bottle. It was labelled “aspirin,” and she only hoped it was, watching him shake the tablets directly into his mouth and wash them down with a long slug of warm beer. The situation was grim enough without adding drugs to it.

And drugs were what got you into this, weren’t they, Campbell? And to think, this all started out with you wanting to be an elf. She rolled to her knees and sat cross-legged on the floor, watching him carefully.

Elkanah rubbed his forehead and sighed, and seemed to notice her again. “Would you care for a drink, Ms. Campbell?”

“I . . . sure,” she said, realizing only then how thirsty she was. He walked over to her and held the can to her lips. She gulped awkwardly, spilling it down her T-shirt—it was warm, and she’d never cared for beer particularly, but at least it was wet.

“Now, I’m going to get some sleep. You just behave yourself,” Elkanah said when the can was empty. “Or we can do this the hard way.”

“No,” Jeanette said. She had absolutely no desire to find out what “the hard way” might be. Her answer seemed to satisfy him, because he turned away and lay down on the bed. Within moments he was asleep.

She squirmed around until she got her jacket down off her shoulders. It cushioned the cuffs and she stretched out, half on her side. There was no rug, only bare and crumbling lino­leum, and she had a fine view of the dust bunnies under the bed, but it was a better place than she’d thought she’d be in when he’d broken down her door a few hours earlier.

Sleep wasn’t possible, and she had plenty of time to think. Her thoughts weren’t good. Back in the van, he’d said it was easy to find her, talked like she’d told him something once that’d let him find her.

But even if she had ever had any conversations with Elkanah back at Threshold—and she hadn’t—she’d wandered into to Morton’s Fork completely at random. She couldn’t have told anyone where she was going, because she hadn’t known ­herself.

So how had he known? And why was he lying about it?

Who’s he working for? He’s hired muscle. He has to be working for someone.

Nothing about this felt right. It didn’t match any way of doing business she knew of, legit, criminal, or any of the shades of clandestine in-between. Elkanah had been Robert Lintel’s right-hand thug, a hired frightener. If Robert was gone, Elkanah should be too.

Unless Robert wasn’t gone. Unless somehow he’d survived, and was putting the Black Ops program back together again. She shook her head in frustration, stifling a sneeze. At least Elkanah meant to keep her alive for now. At least she knew that much.

She just wished she knew why.

She must have slept, because she was startled out of confused dreams by Elkanah hauling her unceremoniously to her feet. It was dark outside, and the room was lit by one bare 40-watt bulb.

“What time is it?” she asked groggily.

“Time to go,” Elkanah said, turning her around to unlock the cuffs. He gave her a push toward the bathroom. “You go wash up. We’ve got miles to go.”

“Miles to go before I sleep.” A scrap of an old poem she’d had to learn in high school surfaced in her mind. Mr. Johnson had said it was about death. She wished she hadn’t remembered it now.

The bathroom was small and grimy, its tiny window painted shut. She ran water in the sink until it ran clear, then scooped up several tepid handfuls, gulping thirstily and rubbing it over her face and hair. There was a mirror over the sink. Her face looked blotched and puffy, her eyes big and scared. The dyed black hair looked unconvincing and dull—he’d been right, it looked awful, and with her hellbound for death or slavery, why should she care?

I don’t care, she told herself. I don’t care what anyone thinks of me, or how I look. I don’t. She wished she could stay in there forever, but he’d only come in after her. She slicked her hair down as best she could and washed the beer out of her T-shirt and opened the door. Elkanah was waiting for her. He handed her a warm can of Coke and a granola bar.

“Breakfast.”

She didn’t argue.

The next day followed the pattern of the first. Elkanah drove, almost aimlessly, and Jeanette sat, chained to the door, and tried to make sense out of what was happening to her. She supposed she ought to be putting her soul in order and repent­ing her misspent life, but it didn’t seem to her that any of this was her fault. She’d never told Robert to kill all those people. When she’d been an outlaw chemist, she’d never forced her drugs on anyone who didn’t want to buy.

But they couldn’t have done it without you, a remorseless inner voice said. She tried to shut it out, but there was nothing to do but listen to it, and finally she gave in. Okay. If the Sinner Saints hadn’t had me, they’d’ve found someone else to cook for them, but that’s no excuse. If Robert hadn’t found me, he’d have found someone else, but that’s no excuse either. I didn’t have to do those things. I’m responsible for what I did.

But how could I have not done them? Once I got started all the way back in high school, how could I have done anything different than what I did?

“Pretty good, you tracking me down like that,” she finally said. It was crazy of her to bait him that way, but the only other choice was to listen to that accusing voice inside her head. Anything to shut up her inner Jiminy Cricket.

Her only answer was a grunt.

“I thought I’d gotten away clean. It was more than six months. I read about Threshold in the papers. I thought they’d got everyone else.”

Another grunt.

“I guess you must’ve given them the slip.”

Now he glanced toward her. “I’m here,” was all he said.

“Pretty good going,” Jeanette offered, but Elkanah said nothing more. But now that she’d started, she didn’t seem to be able to stop talking.

“You must have high-level backing. Robert did. All I do is make the stuff.”

Now he looked directly at her. “That’s enough. That’s what he wants.”

“Who? Robert?” But Robert was dead, wasn’t he? Elkanah had said so, back in the cabin.

For a moment she thought she’d pushed him too far. Elkanah cut the van sharply over to the side of the road, stopped, and got out. But he wasn’t coming for her. He opened the door into the back. She heard the rattle of the aspirin bottle, and craned over the back of the seat to see. He was standing in the doorway—no, hanging in the doorway, looking like Death on roller skates, slugging back dry aspirins as if they were jelly beans. He looked up as she moved, and for a moment she saw a silvery flash, like the reflection of light in a mirror, but it passed too soon for her to be sure of what she saw.

“You talk too much,” Elkanah said.

“I want to know what’s going to happen.”

He laughed. The sound came as if forced, ending in a wracking cough. “No you don’t. You don’t want to know what’s going to happen.”

“What?” she asked, fear breaking through her forced calm. “What’s going to happen? What are you going to do with me? Where are we going? Who are you working for? What does he want?”

“Who said I was working for someone?” He glared at her in sullen anger.

You did. Just now. You said he wants me. “All I want to know is—”

“Shut up.”

She did.

They stopped again soon after that at a convenience store. Elkanah bought sandwiches and coffee for both of them, a pair of dark glasses, and all the aspirin the store had. She watched him chase another half bottle of pills with scalding coffee.

He didn’t have headaches like that when he was working at Threshold. If there’d been anything wrong with him then, that Healer we killed would have spotted it. She didn’t like Elkanah, didn’t care about him, but suddenly it seemed terribly important to her that he be well and whole.

“Caffeine helps,” she said hesitantly. “You should get some No-Doz. It’s got more caffeine than coffee does.”

For a moment she almost thought he’d hit her, but instead he got out of the van again and went back into the store. She could see him talking to the clerk.

I should get out of here. I could scream. Make a fuss. Jump out of the van.

But if she did, she was still chained to the door. And the man she was with was entirely capable of taking off and dragging her. Her jacket would protect her from the road, but not for long. She sipped her coffee, hating herself for her cowardice. It wouldn’t be an easy death, but it might be better than what Elkanah was taking her to. She shivered, suddenly cold. “You don’t want to know what’s going to happen.”

He came back with a handful of bottles, tossing them onto the dash. Something called “Truckers’ Pick Me Up.” Watching him carefully for signs of displeasure, she reached for one of the bottles. Caffeine pills. He’d taken her advice. That was something.

They drove through the night without stopping except for gas. Near dawn he began to talk—to keep himself awake, she suspected—but it was information, all the same.

“Never did think about all the people you hurt, did you? Never thought about everybody you left. Little blonde bitch, left us all there. Didn’t think I’d be back, did you? Didn’t think I’d find you. Too smart for you. Miss Ria Llewellyn. Blonde bitch. Thought you could throw me off with a haircut. Too smart. Gonna take you back. Make you run. Fix everything. Teach you to leave us there.”

Did he think she was Ria Llewellyn? He couldn’t. He’d known who she was when he’d come for her. He’d talked about a partnership, made sure to take her stock.

“I didn’t leave you,” she said softly, not knowing what else to say.

Her voice seemed to rouse him. He glanced at her.

“I ran out on you—on Threshold, on Robert—but you were free to do the same.”

“I guess you think we ought to stop,” he said, as if they’d been having some other—more normal—conversation.

“That’d be good. I guess we still have a long way to go?”

He didn’t answer, but a few hours later, as the sun was coming up, they stopped again.

She’d been too tired to really notice when it happened, but at some point during the night they’d gone from winding local roads to the main state roads. They were heading east. Toward New York. She was sure of it now.

Main roads meant a better class of hotel, too. This time the room had two double beds. They were bolted to the floor, so this time Elkanah took the pillows and blankets and made himself a bed in front of the door. He unplugged the phone and took it with him, falling asleep at once and leaving her to her own devices. This time he didn’t even bother to cuff her hands. Confidence that she couldn’t escape—or was he getting sloppy?

It didn’t really matter. The windows didn’t open, and they were on the second floor. She could throw a chair through the window or set fire to the curtains with the lighter in her jacket pocket, but that was about all. She didn’t think he’d sleep through either activity. She wouldn’t escape, and she’d be in a worse situation than she was in now.

She could break one of the bathroom glasses and cut her throat, but aside from that, her options were limited.

She honestly considered doing that, staring into the mirror, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Down deep in her heart, Jeanette was afraid that death wasn’t a final end, and she was afraid of what lay on the other side—balance and payment exacted for the crimes and weaknesses of a lifetime. Her hands shook, and tears prickled at the back of her eyes, but she couldn’t even cry. Something horrible was going to happen to her, and she knew she deserved it, but she couldn’t help shrieking inside that it wasn’t fair, that she hadn’t known what would happen back when she could still change things, back while it would have done any good. And now, nothing she could do could ever make up for what she’d done. She didn’t think she could do good if she tried.

So life isn’t fair. You always knew that. But I just wish . . .

She shook her head. Might as well wish she’d never been born. Where had her life gone twisted? When she’d started selling drugs? In high school, when she’d dreamed of revenge on her tormentors and vowed she’d pay any price to get it? In kindergarten, when everyone had laughed at her for some reason she’d never understood and she’d hated them for it? How far back did you look for reasons, for the first failure of nerve or spirit that led to all the rest? Should she blame her parents, and their unspoken agreement that she deserved whatever happened to her, no matter what it was? If they’d been one of those happy loving TV families that stuck up for each other, would she have turned out quite the same?

Who knows?

Wearily, going through the motions of living that almost—but not quite—didn’t matter any more, she stripped and showered. At least she could be clean when she died, even if she had nothing to wear but the clothes she’d been living in for days. Afterward she sat in a chair, watching the sun rise, watching Elkanah sleep, waiting for him to wake up and deliver her to her fate.

He woke in the late afternoon and took her back to the van. This time he didn’t chain her to the door. He headed for Interstate 80, confirming her guess that they were heading for New York.

“Maybe it’s time for you to fill me in,” she said, trying again for information because it was the only thing she could do. They were on a high-speed road now, one filled with big trucks and drivers who all thought they were James Bond. He’d have to pay more attention to the road. Maybe he’d get careless. Maybe they’d crash and the Smokeys would come and arrest them both. Somehow a lifetime spent in prison didn’t seem so bad any more.

“Back in Morton’s Fork, you asked if I could make more T-Stroke. You said we could do business.”

“What?” Elkanah glanced quickly toward her, his face blank with surprise, then quickly back to the road.

“What do you want me for?”

“I don’t,” he said flatly. Then: “It’s dark.” And it was, but there were headlights all around them, and somehow she didn’t think that was the kind of darkness he was talking about.

“Just you wait until we get to New York, Ria Llewellyn . . .” His voice trailed off. And though she repeated her questions over and over again at prudent intervals, she never got any clearer answer. It was almost as if he didn’t know she was in the van any more.

She’d made up her mind to run for it and damn the consequences when they stopped at the toll gate on the George Washington Bridge, but to her dismay they didn’t head for the bridge. Elkanah went around the city, switching from the New Jersey Turnpike to the Garden State Parkway, and then to Route 17, a two-lane road that twisted through dark countryside.

“Where are we going?” she asked desperately.

“To New York,” he said, in a terrifyingly reasonable voice. “We’ll be there soon.”

But they’d passed New York an hour before.

He was crazy. She knew it with a sick certainty. She’d counted on his sanity more than she’d known until the last hope of it was gone. He’d never been looking for her. He must have found her by accident—it was possible—and all the rest: about business, an employer, his accusations of something Ria Llewellyn had done, were all a smoke screen over his madness. Maybe he’d killed Robert Lintel. Maybe he’d killed all of them. And now he was going to kill her. Fear of capture had paralyzed her thinking until it was too late.

“We’re going to need to stop for gas,” she said, glancing at the fuel gauge. Anything, anything, to make him take her where lights and people were! She wasn’t chained up now, and now, knowing what she knew, she’d do anything to keep him from chaining her up again.

“No need. We’re almost there,” he said, turning off the road onto a one-lane track. A sign flashed by almost before she could read it: Sterling Forest Park.

“Look. Could we stop and get something to drink? I’m really thirsty,” she said.

“There’s stuff in the back,” he said, his eyes on the road. Though it was bumpy and narrow, he hadn’t slowed at all. She would have jumped from the van if he had. But this was a chance, at least. She climbed around the seat, into the back of the van, and turned on the light.

Her saddlebags were still there, next to Elkanah’s duffle. She scrabbled through her bags, hoping he’d brought her gun, but there was nothing in them but clothes, the jar of T-Stroke powder, and the two bottles full of filled capsules. She reached for Elkanah’s duffle.

Aspirin. Caffeine pills. Bundles of cash. Half a six-pack of Coke, and one of those big plastic cups with a straw built into the lid that you got at highway rest stops, the kind that held 64 ounces. No weapon.

But she had a weapon, if she wasn’t afraid to use it.

With shaking hands, praying he wouldn’t turn and look, she unscrewed the lid of the brown plastic jar and dumped several ounces of powdered T-Stroke into the cup. A low dose kills, a higher dose delays death. She held it between her knees and ripped back the tab on a can of Coke, pouring it in over the powder. It foamed up the sides and she swirled it around. The powder melted away, leaving a murky brown liquid. She added a second can of Coke and clamped the lid on. Her hands were freezing. New York in August, and she was cold.

Cold as death.

Revenge is always an option. She used to think the phrase was cool, glamorous, a creed to live by. Now all she felt was despair.

The van was starting to slow down. Stopping. She stuffed the jar into her pocket and grabbed for the two bottles of capsules. A low dose kills. A higher dose might let you live.

He turned off the engine but left the headlights on as he climbed out of the van. A moment later he pulled open the sliding door of the van. In the wan light his skin was stretched tight, gray and shiny. Oily beads of sweat stood out on his face like sequins, gleaming in the light. He looked like a dying man.

“What’s that you got there, Ms. Campbell?”

“Coke.” Her voice was hoarse but steady, a tiny triumph to set against the sins of a lifetime. “Want some?”

“You first,” he said, unsmiling.

She put the straw to her lips and sucked hard, tasting brackish warm sweetness, a faint tang of carbonation, and nothing more. She gulped hard, forcing herself to swallow the contents of the cup. Forcing herself not to know she was drinking poison.

“Here,” she said, holding out what was left.

He took it and drank deeply, and as he did, his expression changed. Realization. Terror.

But not of her. Not of what was in the cup.

Bright pale spots appeared on his forehead. She watched in horror as something glittery burst through his skin, shooting out, branching, shining bright as chrome.

Horns. Antlers. Silver antlers.

He screamed, dropping the empty cup.

Then he reached for her, fast as a striking snake, yanking her out of the van and onto her knees on the summer-damp ground.

“Run, girl! As you love Jesus—run!”

She scrabbled away from him, moaning low in her throat with pure terror. Elkanah was clutching at the antlers, trying to tear them from his head, oblivious to her now. She managed to make it to her feet, staggering into the glare of the van’s headlights, unable to make sense of what she was seeing. He swung his head from side to side, striking the antlers against the side of the van in his frenzy to remove them. The sound they made was a chiming like struck crystal, a high sweet ringing that grew louder instead of softer, growing and changing until the air was filled with deafening music.

Hearing it, Elkanah turned and ran, crashing off into the night. The horns he wore glowed as if they were made of starlight.

The music stopped. The grass crackled as it froze, turning from green to silver.

Oh, please, no.

Jeanette clutched at the hood of the van for support, then turned, clumsy with terror, to put her back against it.

An armored figure on horseback stood silhouetted in the glare. His black horse gleamed like polished stone. His armor was like something out of a medieval fever dream, fantastically ornate, the gleam of pure silver sparkling beneath a coat of night-black enamel. Long black hair flowed down over his shoulders, framing a face of inhuman beauty, such beauty that she wanted to run to him, throw herself beneath his horse’s hooves, weeping, and beg his forgiveness for her ugliness. Behind him the night rippled, as if it had been shattered into a thousand pieces and re-formed once again. He was death and ruin, despair and pain, the end of all hope, all light.

She knew him.

“Aerune,” she whimpered, sliding to her knees. Her heart hammered, flushing the T-Stroke through her system, promising her death or transformation, but neither soon enough to save her.

Aerune mac Audelaine, Dark Lord of the Sidhe, Prince of Air and Darkness.

Lord of Death and Pain.

Nothing could save her.

She closed her eyes, hearing the soft chiming as Lord Aerune walked his horse slowly forward.

“They said my hunt had failed.” His voice was like ruined music, making her ache with sorrow. “But my hound has brought me the quarry I sought. Look at me, human girl.”

Her eyes snapped open as if he had shouted, and she stared up into his eyes, wanting to look away, unable to do anything but obey. She felt herself lost, felt as if she were falling into a deep pit lined with the sharpest of knives.

He leaned down from his horse and took her chin between his fingers. His touch was so cold it burned, as if his touch alone could wither her flesh and turn her skin to ash.

“You are the mortal alchemist who crowns men with fire?” he asked.

She didn’t understand what he meant, but something inside her must have. Without conscious volition Jeanette felt her throat move, felt lips part and tongue move to form a single word.

“Yes.”

Aerune straightened in his saddle, releasing her. Warmth and weakness flowed into her as he released her; she fell forward into the dirt, catching herself on her hands.

“And now the same unnatural fire flows through your veins.” He sounded lightly amused. “No matter. Now you will be the hound to my hunting, mortal child. Now you are mine. Get up.”

Once more his voice acted upon her as if it were a physical force. Jeanette lurched to her feet, swaying unsteadily before him. He held out his hand, and his eyes gleamed cold and black. “Mount up and ride with me, Child of Earth. We have far to go, you and I.”

Numbly, helplessly, incapable of doing anything else, Jeanette reached for his hand. All her questions were answered now: Elkanah had found her because he was Aerune’s hound, given the magic to seek her out in the World of Iron. Aerune had given Elkanah another gift as well: forgetfulness, so that he did not understand why he hunted her or how he succeeded. His bruised and tormented mind had woven fantasies to cloak the workings of Aerune’s magic, while all along Elkanah worked to bring Jeanette to Aerune, not knowing what he did.

Aerune pulled Jeanette up behind him on the horse, and wheeled his mount in the direction of the shimmering black rainbow. A moment later they were gone, leaving the park to slow darkness as the van’s lights dimmed and faded.

SEVEN:
WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH,
THE TOUGH GO SHOPPING

It took her a few days to recover from the ceileighe—when the Sidhe threw a party, they threw a real party—but Beth spent that time planning her quest. Meeting Ria had not been particularly enjoyable, but Beth was honest enough with herself to admit that a lot of her current reasons for her feelings toward Ria were rooted in envy.

Back in her television days, Beth had always hated the game-playing necessary to get the job done. Working in television was as much a matter of playing political games as having the needed skill set to do the job, and she’d always resisted following the unspoken codes of flattery and expediency that allowed you to get and keep an assignment.

Hell, she’d even hated it in the RenFaires. But Ria Llewellyn seemed to swim through that treacherous sea with ease. Partly it was the power that came from being majority stockholder in a multibillion dollar company, Beth was sure—no groveling and scraping for jobs or funding there—but mostly it was Ria herself. Take everything away from her, and she’d build it back up with ease.

Beth wished she could be that kind of person. But everything she’d ever had—the glamour job in TV, the music gigs with Spiral Dance, the busking at RenFaires, even her place Underhill—she’d had to work hard to claim in an arena where ability counted no more, and sometimes far less, than networks of favors and friendships. As a small child, her battle cry had always been: But that’s not fair! and she’d always been willing to do battle with the world as it was in the name of Fairness. It was one of the things that had drawn her to Wicca. The Craft placed a great premium on taking responsibility for your own life, working to ensure fair-dealing and justice for all, not just its own members.

Even going Underhill with Kory had seemed to her to be a defeat sometimes. The people chasing her had no right to do what they did. But while they didn’t have Right on their side, they did have superior force. And so the three of them had gone: she to exile, Kory back to a home that sometimes chafed, as home did.

But Eric . . . for him Underhill had only been a way-­station, not a final destination or a goal. He’d learned and grown, and gone back to take his place in Ria’s world. To put it most unfairly, he’d succeeded where Beth had failed. Even having Kory’s love wasn’t enough to make up for that sometimes.

But having Maeve had changed everything. Through all the long months of her pregnancy, impatiently awaiting the birth of her daughter, Beth had thought she was ready for motherhood, willing to take up the responsibility, eager to protect and guide a new life.

She’d had no clue.

The moment she held her daughter in her arms, felt her weight and smelled her baby scent, looked into her kitten-blue eyes, the whole world had changed. Beth became the second most important person in her own life. All the old stupid clichйs were true: she no longer cared about things because Beth wanted them, but because Beth-and-Maeve were important. Beth looked into a future that had to be put in order because Maeve would live there; she had to think and plan and prepare for the future because Maeve would be the one to grasp the opportunities there, this utterly beloved one who wrapped Beth in a gossamer web of responsibility for every detail of her existence.

It wasn’t crushing. It was liberating and ecstatic and joyful all at once. Maeve didn’t diminish her. Maeve gave her a strength and power she had never imagined possible—and suddenly so many things she hadn’t thought about were vitally important. She wanted Kory’s children for the joy they would bring to both of them, but now she also wanted those children for Maeve—­brothers and sisters to tie her human daughter firmly into the web of kinship that linked all Underhill, friends and allies and protectors to share Maeve’s grief and happiness as no one else—even her mother—ever could.

Suddenly all the things her friends with kids had said made perfect sense. Maeve completed her, changed her, made her stronger. Made her whole.

Made her worry every moment, even when she knew that at least some of those worries were irrational.

Beth grinned, leaning over the bassinet. No meteor was hurtling toward the Earth. No war was about to break out to ravage the halls of Elfhame Misthold. It didn’t even rain. “And there’s a legal limit to the snow here. . . .” Maeve had her very own Protector. And the Seleighe Sidhe adored children—all children—with a single-mindedness that was almost enough to satisfy a new mother’s fierce protective instincts. It wouldn’t be easy to leave Maeve behind, but Beth had no fear that she’d return to find anything other than a very pampered Elven-American Princess. It was for Maeve, for the future, for her daughter’s unborn siblings, that she was going. And if she didn’t come back . . . well, she was doing what mothers did, and she felt a peace in her soul that hadn’t been there for a very long time.

Yep. It’s a whole new Beth Kentraine . . . and ain’t that a kick in the head?

Kory had taken care of the practical preparations for their trip. This was the first time Beth would be going outside the boundaries of one of the Elfhames, but to find what they needed would take them out into the Lands Underhill, and that world was far wider than the territory claimed by either Sidhe Court.

“If you need information, find an information specialist,” Ria had said. This was the first step. Kory had consulted one of Prince Arvindel’s advisors, the Lady Vivalant (who was also the librarian of his very eclectic collection of books) for infor­mation about a place called the Goblin Market. He’d told Beth that it was said that all roads Underhill led eventually to that place, and there you could find anything you sought. It was the closest thing to a trade fair that Underhill held.

There were dark rumors about the Goblin Market as well. It was said that you could buy nothing you did not already possess, nor sell that save what you wished to keep. But both Kory and Vivalant—and Master Dharniel as well, when she’d nerved herself to ask him—had thought it was still worth trying.

There was no day or night in a hame, but it still felt like early morning when they left. The elvensteeds stood ready, their saddlebags packed with the necessities of the journey, as well as some trade goods from the World Above: coffee, chocolate, and even a couple of six-packs of Classic Coke.

Beth had been mildly shocked—all three contained caffeine, a deadly drug to all the Children of Danu—but Kory had assured her that not everything living Underhill shared the Sidhe’s liability, and that such items were often eagerly sought.

“Figures. Next thing you know, McDonald’s will be opening a branch down here.”

Kory grinned at her, tightening his mount’s girth. “Ah,” he said wistfully. “Chicken McNuggets. Thick creamy shakes. And ketchup.”

He was dressed in his full knightly regalia: elvensilver armor and sword, and looked every inch the faerie knight. Somehow the wistful look at the mention of Mickey D’s didn’t seem to go with the rest. Cognitive dissonance, that was what they called it.

“Don’t,” Beth begged, grinning. She’d lost her taste for junk food while she was pregnant and had never regained it, but ketchup was something she still missed.

“And Chinese food, no MSG. And pizza,” Kory continued teasingly. “ ’Tis a pity we could not bring any of that with us. We could gain empires.”

“You’re right at that, kiddo. I guess when we get back I’m going to have to set up a kitchen and see about satisfying some of your . . . cravings.” She winked at him, camping up her saucy Faire-wench persona—though her costume would certainly never have passed muster with any of the Authenticity Nazis. Beth was wearing woven leggings—embroidered down the outside of each thigh with a pattern of fruits and vines in glittering thread—tucked into high soft boots of green and gold. Above that she wore a cowled tunic in a green to match her boots, its hood, now lying over her shoulders, lined in a gold satin that matched her leggings, and around her neck a glowing pendant, warning any who could read it—and that was practically everyone they would meet—that Beth Kentraine was under the protection of Elfhame Misthold: mess with her, and you messed with them. Her tunic was gathered in with a wide belt of tooled leather, from which hung a very businesslike dagger. Under her tunic was a chain mail shirt of elvensilver worn over a linen shift, and beneath that, in a protective silk pouch embroidered with spells and hung from a thong about her neck, was her old flip-knife. Its blade was Cold Iron, anathema everywhere Underhill, carried only to be used as a last resort if things turned really bad.

She’d thought about asking to wear armor, but elven armor was as much for display as for protection. Kory’s armor proclaimed him a Seleighe knight, and Beth, he’d insisted, should dress to reflect what she was as well. She’d drawn the line at the idea of wearing a long dress, though. She’d always been more of a blue-jeans person—and besides, neither she nor Bredana really cared for the sidesaddle that went with the dress.

Kory patted Mach Five on the shoulder—named long ago out of a Speed Racer cartoon, he’d once explained blushingly. The elvensteed whuffled and stamped his foot, and Kory turned to inspect Bredana. Finding everything there to his satisfaction (it was amazing, Beth reflected, how much of Pony Club stayed with you through the years), he held out his hand to Beth.

“All is in readiness, my lady. Shall we away?”

“You’ve been reading Howard Pyle again,” Beth said, giving his shoulder a playful shove. He knelt and made a stirrup of his hand—elven armor was far lighter and more flexible than its World Above counterpart—and Beth stepped up, swinging her leg carefully across the saddle. The cantle was higher than a modern saddle; though Bredana could have created saddle and tack to look like anything, for this trip it was best that everything be Sidhe Classic. In a lot of places Underhill, it was safest to look like exactly what you were.

Kory mounted Mach Five and took up the reins. Grooms rushed to open the stable doors, and the two of them rode out.

The park was lit with the silvery unchanging light of Underhill. The air smelled of roses and apricots, and the world was filled with the singing of birds. In the middle distance, Beth could see another party, much larger than their own, lords and ladies out for a morning of hunting.

Beth had never been to the edge of the parklands that made up Elfhame Misthold—or rather, she had, but the magic had simply brought her back to the far side of the park, as if the whole place were somehow built on a Moebius strip, which for all she knew, it was. But today they were going through a Gate that would lead them into the world beyond.

Every Gate was essentially the same, Kory had told her, just as the essential magic of all the Lands Underhill was the same. Most Gates could be set to take their user to any of six “pre-set” destinations. Some could be set to open only to the proper code, others operated by anyone. You had to travel overland, hopscotching among friendly or neutral Gates, until you got to where you were going. Most of them led in and out of neutral or unclaimed territory; you couldn’t just ride through a Gate and find yourself in the middle of somebody’s living room. The Gate that led into someone’s personal domain was usually well-guarded or well-defended—or both—and whoever was behind it would have a lot of warning that you were coming.

The Gate that led out of Elfhame Misthold was a golden archway—some long ago elfmage’s pun on the Golden Gate, since Misthold’s anchoring Nexus was in the San Francisco Bay Area—with an ornate design covering every inch of its surface. The space in the center of the archway shimmered faintly, like a curtain of gold chains. Two Sidhe in full armor stood before it. Once upon a time Beth had been surprised that with magic available for the asking, the Folk performed so many mundane tasks for themselves, like guarding doors and sweeping out stables, but at heart the Sidhe were warriors who knew that someday they might be called upon to fight. There were hames as decadent and luxurious as she could possibly imagine, and even hames where all the work was done by human changelings, but Misthold wasn’t one of them.

Age and power seemed to radiate from the Misthold Gate. One of the knights saluted as they drew near.

“Fair morrow, Lord Korendil, Mistress Beth,” he greeted them formally.

“Fair morrow, Sir Vinimene. My lady and I ride upon quest, at my lord Arvindel’s good pleasure,” Kory answered, equally formally.

“Quest well and come home safe,” Vinimene answered. He stepped back, and Beth and Kory rode through.

She’d gone through Gates a lot of times, traveling between Earth and Underhill, but they’d always seemed to go from outdoors to indoors, or the other way around, and her mind had accepted the change. Here, it was as if the whole world vanished in an eyeblink. The flare of bright sunlight—­sunlight?—caught her by surprise, and she swayed in the saddle just a little.

“Beth?”

“I’m okay. Just wasn’t ready for it. Kind of weird, isn’t it?”

“I remember being just as surprised the first time I saw a movie,” Kory said fondly.

“But what’s with the sun?” Beth asked, squinting up at it. “We aren’t back on Earth, are we?”

The landscape resembled the park they’d just left—a little raggeder around the edges, the colors less bright, but still beautiful. She glanced over her shoulder. The Gate on this side was also golden, but smaller and plainer. It, too, was guarded by a set of armored knights.

“Perhaps in a land much closer to it than Underhill,” Kory said, considering. “Or perhaps it is merely there for decoration. Either way, we will not be here long.”

“Lead on, Kemosabe.”

After riding for several hours, through a succession of Gates that led through some eye-poppingly strange places, Kory called a halt.

“We are here.” He pointed.

It’s the Faire! The old Faire—the one they bulldozed!

For a moment Beth’s heart leapt with a pang that was not only homesickness, but nostalgia. The best parts of her young life had been spent at the Faire.

But when she looked again, she realized it wasn’t her Faire. There was a scatter of brightly-colored tents and garlanded booths, and banners belled in the soft noontime breeze. But the longer she stared, the less it looked like the SoCal Faire, until she couldn’t figure out how she’d ever confused the two.

“It’s magic, isn’t it?” she asked. “I mean, even more than usual.”

“Yes.” Kory didn’t seem completely happy about it. “But we will take no harm here. Should a warrior meet his worst enemy at the Goblin Market, he must smile and pass him by. No weapon may be drawn in anger here, no power summoned to bind or harm a foe. Here is the place where all worlds meet. Even yours.”

“I guess that’s why it all looks so familiar,” Beth joked, trying to conceal her unease.

“Do not trust it,” Kory said. “The Goblin Market is . . .” He seemed to be at a loss for words. “It is a neutral place. In the human expression, ‘proceed at your own risk.’ If you come here, they feel you have accepted the risk.”

“Gotcha,” Beth said. “Lead on.” She forced a smile, feigning a confidence she did not feel.

They entered the Market between two black-and-white striped posts—about eighteen feet tall and slender and straight as teenaged telephone poles. Kory turned Mach Five sharply left, riding along the edge of the fair until he reached what was obviously a parking lot of sorts. There were lines of hitching posts right out of the Old West, but the things hitched to them were anything but ordinary.

There were horses, both in the usual range of colors and in all the colors of the rainbow. Some she recognized as elvensteeds, others were ordinary horses, and some of them were neither one, but something else entirely in a horse’s shape. But that wasn’t the extent of the livestock. There were giant ostriches. Bridled lizards that hissed and snapped as the two of them passed. Even a hippogriff—half horse, half eagle.

Motorcycles. Bicycles. Hovercraft that looked like they’d been assembled by a mad Victorian inventor. A genuine antique Model A flivver painted a glaring yellow. A classic VW Beetle with an iridescent paint job. It flashed its headlights at them, but Beth was already staring past it, at a brass bed with ornate bed-knobs, complete down to the patchwork quilt and lace-trimmed pillows, that hovered several inches off the ground.

“I guess people come here from all over,” Beth said in a strained voice. Next to the brass bed was a carousel horse that turned its head to watch them as they passed. Beyond it was a green tiger with purple stripes wearing a saddle and a glittering rhinestone collar.

“From everywhere there is,” Kory answered. Beth was cheered to realize that he was staring just as hard as she was. “And from some places there aren’t.”

They found an empty post a safe distance from some of the more irritable mounts, and dismounted. The elvensteeds would stay unless summoned, and were more than capable of defending themselves.

“Hi, there. Need a guide?”

Beth stared. She was looking at a fox. A talking, five-foot-tall, cartoon-style fox. It was wearing a red James Dean jacket. Around its neck was a gold collar with a gold tag dangling from it. Engraved on the tag were the letters “FX.”

“Special effect”? Oh, yeah. . . .

It swished its tail, and Beth blinked again. Not tail. Tails. Three of them, in fact.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” the creature said, with a deep sweeping bow. “I am Foxtrot-X-ray. But you can call me Fox. Or you can call me handsome. Or you can call me adorable. Just call me, beautiful lady!”

“Uh, hi,” Beth said, smiling in spite of herself. “Come here often?”

Kory had come to her side and was regarding Fox warily. Fox grinned, exposing a mouthful of gleaming teeth. “Hey, pretty lady, are you doubting my expertise?”

“No,” Kory answered bluntly. “Only your sincerity.”

“I’m hurt,” Fox said, though he didn’t sound it. “But if you’ll pardon me for mentioning it, Sieur Sidhe, it’s plain to see that this is your first time at our lovely fair, and I thought you might like a little help. No offense.”

“And you would offer us this help freely?” Kory asked.

“Naw-w-w . . . but I figure, high-class folks like you, you might have a little something to make it worth my while. And I know where everything is. You could spend days wandering around here by yourselves.”

“We don’t—” Kory began. Beth put a hand on his arm. Hadn’t Ria said to consult experts? If this creature was on the level, he could save them from spending a lot of time here, and Beth had the feeling that the less time they spent at the Fair, the better.

“I suppose you have references?” Beth asked.

“Absolutely!” Out of nowhere Fox produced a large parchment scroll tied with a bright red ribbon. He yanked the ribbon free, and the scroll unrolled.

And unrolled . . .

And unrolled. . . .

Beth walked over and peered down at it. It was covered in writing from many different hands, some of them even in English.

“Much have I travel’d in the realms of gold/And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;/Round many western islands have I been/Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.—J. Keats.” She read. “He’s the best there is at what he does, even if what he does sometimes isn’t very nice.—W. Logan.” “Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean.—R. Chandler.”

“Ri-i-i-ight,” Beth said, sighing. “C’mon, Kory.”

“No, wait!” Fox yelped, jumping in front of them. The scroll vanished. “I’m one of the good guys! And you—you’re those folks that saved the Sun-Descending Nexus, aren’t you?”

There was a hiss as Kory’s sword cleared its scabbard.

“Who asks?” the elven knight demanded in a low dangerous voice. Beth stared at him. Hadn’t he said it was dangerous to draw steel at the fair?

Fox jumped back in terror or a good imitation, ears flat and eyes wide. “I’ve got friends—in the World Above. Friends of yours, too.” He held his hands wide in a gesture of harmlessness.

“Names,” Kory said, his blade still pointed at Fox’s throat.

“Keighvin Silverhair—well, he’s not really a friend of mine, but I do know somebody who knows him. Tannim. You know—he races cars at Elfhame Fairgrove?”

The names meant nothing to Beth, but they seemed to mean something to Kory. He sheathed his sword again and held out his hand. “The references again.”

This time, Fox produced, not a scroll, but a perfectly mundane envelope, with the logo of a Holiday Inn on it. Kory opened the envelope and withdrew a single sheet of paper. Beth read over his shoulder.

“To whom it may concern: Fox is okay. —Tannim.”

The words flared bright with magic, and slowly vanished from the page. Kory handed the paper and the envelope back to Fox.

“Very well. But I know your kind, kitsune. The fox kin are tricksters all,” Kory said sternly.

“Yeah, but me, I got a soft spot in my heart for suckers,” Fox snickered. “And you did say you’d pay.”

Kitsune were Japanese fox-spirits, tricksters like Coyote or Raven. But the pranks they played were often harmless, and there were legends of them helping people in need, or so Beth had read.

“I said no such—” Kory stopped himself. “What do you want?”

Fox drew himself up with an elaborate display of unconcern. “Well, I couldn’t help noticing when you rode in that you’ve got some fine trade items with you. Like . . . chocolate?” The kitsune licked its chops with a long pink tongue. “There’s this girl I know. She’s just crazy about chocolate, and I kind of thought . . .” He looked hopeful and abashed all at once, black-tipped ears swiveling out to the side. Beth wondered if that fur was as soft as it looked.

“If we give you chocolate, will you take us where we need—where we want to go?” Beth asked, catching herself just in time. One lesson that had stuck with her from all her fairy-tale reading was that the Fair Folk could be as literal-minded as any computer, and positively reveled in the chance to lead you into disaster by doing exactly what you said.

“Hey, pretty lady, I told you: I’m on the side of the angels. Give me chocolate, and I’m yours to command!” Fox said eagerly.

Beth turned back to Bredana and fumbled with the buckle on the saddlebag, reaching inside and pulling out one of the big Hershey bars. They’d brought smaller ones, but it didn’t pay to be stingy. She tossed it to Fox, who examined it carefully, held it under his nose as if it were a fine cigar, and then tucked it away inside his jacket, regarding her brightly.

“We need to find an information specialist,” she said carefully. “Someone with a lot of access and resources, who can do research on a project of ours and come up with answers. Trustworthy and reliable a plus.”

“Woo-hoo!” Fox said. “You don’t want much, do you? A research geek who stays bought. I might—might!—know someone like that.”

“We don’t care what you know,” Kory interrupted. “You offered to guide us through the fair to where information about such a person can be found.”

“O-kay, Mister Spock—meaning no offense, milord—” How Fox could grovel and look impudent at the same time was a mystery to Beth, but somehow the kitsune managed it. “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” He bowed elaborately again, hand over his heart, tails lashing. “Follow me.”

They followed Fox into the Fair, past a large sign that read “No Violence Beyond This Point.” That explained why Kory had been able to get away with drawing his sword in the parking lot, at least.

The Market was a swirl of distraction and color. Beth held tight to Kory’s hand, fearing to lose him in the crowds. This wasn’t like Elfland, where, weird as it was, everything seemed to be drawn from the same basic set of givens. The Sidhe were fond of experimenting with their forms, changing shape and size and color to suit a momentary whim, but here, a thousand totally-different realities rubbed shoulders. She saw men in medieval armor as elaborate as Kory’s, and others in what she could only think of as space-armor, with blasters at their sides. There were anthropomorphic animals, things that looked like they’d walked right out of the Cantina scene of Star Wars, creatures whose bodies had the bright flatness of two-­dimensional cartoons, and others that seemed to be humans (dressed in everything from feathers to blue jeans), or robots, and some who were both, like the woman whose body seemed to be made of golden rings, the featureless face dominated by a glowing turquoise bar where the eyes should have been. She moved with the grace of a dancer, and Beth craned her head to watch until she disappeared from sight.

But the fair-goers, exotic as they were, paled to normalcy beside the stalls of the vendors and the wares they sold. Half the stuff was so weird she couldn’t even imagine what it was, other wares were so prosaic it was somehow an even greater shock—like the bookstall displaying a collection of paperbacks that wouldn’t have been out of place on the shelves of any Barnes & Noble. The air was filled with smells—cooking food, fresh fruit, perfume, incense, wood smoke—and she heard scraps of music ranging from medieval to heavy metal.

Meanwhile, Fox led them on a twisting trail among the booths. To call their progress labyrinthine would be a grave insult to labyrinths everywhere. She lost all sense of direction after the first few turns, and could no longer tell where they were in relation to where they’d left the elvensteeds.

It was all too much. Beth clutched tighter at Kory’s hand, feeling a familiar sense of vertigo and panic begin to overwhelm her. Everything was closing in, crushing her. . . .

No! Beth Kentraine, you are stronger than that! You’ve shopped at Macy’s during the Christmas rush, by the Gods. You are not going to be gotten the better of by one lousy interdimensional Bazaar of the Bizarre!

She took a deep breath and held it, willing the panic to fade. Fox appeared at her side, looking worried.

“You okay?” he asked anxiously.

Kory stopped, looking at her questioningly. She could see fear in his eyes—whether for her, or of the Fair, or both, she wasn’t sure. Beth let her held breath out slowly, willing calm.

“It’s a little much,” she said, and was pleased that her voice was steady.

“There’s no place like this place anywhere near this place, so this place must be the place,” Fox answered gaily. “Chin up, pretty lady. We’re almost there. And you look like you could use a drink.”

“A good stiff one,” Beth muttered to herself.

They’d been moving in toward the center of the Fair, where tents replaced the booths and were mixed with more permanent structures.

“Up ahead,” Fox said, pointing.

Surfeited with wonders, and used as she was to the Under­hill habit of co-opting bits of the World Above and turning them to their own uses, she still wasn’t prepared for what she saw when she looked where Fox was pointing. At the end of the lane was a large stucco building in a Moorish style. Its wooden double doors were studded with large square hobnails, and over the door was a blue neon sign that said “Rick’s Cafe Americain.”

It looked exactly like the Warner’s set.

“Everybody goes to Rick’s,” she and Fox said in chorus. He looked hurt, as if she’d stepped on his punch-line.

“Casablanca used to be one of my favorite movies,” Beth said darkly. Humphrey Bogart, where are you when we need you?

“Hey, I didn’t design it,” Fox protested. “But this is what you guys said you wanted.”

“A place to find the specialist we need?” Kory asked suspiciously.

“Rick knows everything that happens at the Market, and a lot of other places, too,” Fox said. “He’ll know where you can find this researcher—or someone else there will.”

Beth looked at Kory and shrugged. She guessed a bar was as good a place as any to start looking, especially when you weren’t quite sure what you were looking for.

As they watched, the doors opened, and a large white rabbit stepped out, blinking at the daylight. He was wearing an elaborate waistcoat, with an ornate watch chain hooked across the front. He pulled a large gold watch from his pocket and gazed at it, then hurried off muttering to himself.

“Come on,” Beth said.

“Uh-uh. This is where I leave you,” Fox answered. “I’m not . . . well, let’s say that Rick would prefer I didn’t come inside after what happened the last time. You know how it is.”

“The letters of transit are hidden in Sam’s piano,” Beth said cryptically.

“And Rosebud was his sled,” Fox answered, mixing movies with gleeful relish. “Well, see you around.”

“Be sure of that, if you’ve led us astray,” Kory answered.

Fox vanished with a pop, like a soap bubble in a cartoon. A moment later, just his head reappeared, floating in midair like a fanciful balloon. “And don’t say I didn’t warn you,” it said, and vanished.

“Although he didn’t,” Kory footnoted. “Though the Market itself is warning enough, I think.”

“I thought I told you not to say that!” Fox reappeared, shaking a finger at them warningly and vanishing again instantly.

Beth shook her head, sighing. “Is everything here like him?” I don’t think I can deal with Life As Sitcom.

“We’ll see, won’t we?” Kory answered. He took her hand once more, and the two of them walked up to the door.

It took a moment for Beth’s eyes to adjust to the gloom, but once she did, they widened. The inside had no connection to the tumble-down exterior, nor to the movie Casablanca. It was several times larger than the outside, for one thing. For another, it looked like the unnatural liaison of an MGM musical and a Turkish bordello.

The central area directly ahead was filled with small round tables swathed in immaculate white linen, most of them occu­pied. Beyond them was a dance floor that looked as if it had been carved from one giant slab of blue goldstone. Its surface glittered like a starfield, and behind it stood a bandstand with an old-fashioned stand mike and a glistening white piano. To the right, the wall was lined with a series of curtained alcoves, their gold draperies shimmering. Some of the curtains were drawn back—Beth couldn’t see the occupants very well, but she could see glowing eyes in a variety of colors—and arrangements—and pulled her gaze quickly away.

To her left was the bar—a long glowing sweep of something that looked like purple mahogany. Behind it stood the barkeep, in white dinner jacket and black bow tie, rubbing the surface with an immaculate polishing cloth. He looked just like Humphrey Bogart—if Humphrey Bogart had bright blue skin, long pointed ears and a ponytail.

“That must be Rick,” Kory said. Beth nodded. Okay, it’s official. I’ve sprained my Sense of Wonder. . . .

As they stood there, two men passed them, leaving. One was huge, muscled like Arnold Schwarzenegger. He had bright red hair and a beard, and was dressed in bearskins and a long red cloak. His companion barely came to his elbow, as small and slender as the other was huge, and dressed all in gray, down to his hooded cloak.

“I told you we shouldn’t have come here, little man,” Redbeard said.

“Ah, where’s your sense of adventure? Even a barbarian like you—” the rest of Greycloak’s rejoinder was lost as they exited.

Funny. Those guys look almost familiar. . . .

“Come on,” Kory said. He led Beth to the bar, where they found seats between a red-headed woman carrying a sword and dressed in a bikini that seemed to be made entirely out of silver disks and a six-foot ferret wearing a gold collar and drinking tea in the Russian style.

“What’ll you have?” Rick approached them.

“Water,” Kory answered, pushing a gold coin across the gleaming wood.

“Lemonade,” Beth said. “And information.”

“Ah. Drink I’ve always got.” The barkeep brought two tall glasses and a black bottle from beneath the bar, making the coins vanish at the same time. He poured both glasses full—but while Kory’s glass was full of clear still water, Beth’s was filled with lemonade, sliced lemons, and ice.

“Neat trick,” she said.

“It passes the time,” Rick said, smiling Bogie’s crooked smile. His teeth were long and white and very pointed. “Oh, by the way. A friend left this for you. Said you’d be wanting it.”

Beth stared at the blue ceramic ashtray for a minute before the penny dropped. She giggled. “Fox didn’t lead us a-stray. He led us to an ashtray. . . .” Incorrigible punster: do not incorrige.

She missed the little critter already. Almost.

“And information?” Kory asked.

“Well, now, that depends,” Rick drawled. “On who’s asking, and what for. Don’t believe everything you’ve heard about this place.”

“What I heard is that here we might be able to find a research specialist. We are looking for information.”

“If you can’t find it in an Elfhame, that must be some information,” Rick said. “Well, this is the Cafe Americain. You may find what you’re looking for. ’Scuse me.” He moved quickly down the bar toward a new customer.

Beth picked up her lemonade. Frost was forming on the glass. She sipped. Tart and sweet, not too much sugar, just the way she liked it. “I wonder what he’d have done if I asked for coffee?” she asked idly.

“Brought you a cup,” Kory said. “Or if you had asked for Coca-Cola, or the Red Wine of Hengist, or ambrosia, or human blood. The laws of other realms do not apply here.”

“Um,” Beth said. An anarchist’s paradise—no law but your own common sense. But freedom was a double-edged sword. If you could do anything you wanted, you could manage to get yourself into real trouble, too, with no one and nothing to get you out.

Several musicians had moved onto the stage and were setting up their instruments—a full-sized concert harp, a cello, violins, and a flute. They were all dressed in the height of 17th-century fashion, in lace, pink satin, and powdered wigs, but not one of them was human. There was a badger, a frog, something that looked more like an owl than not—although it had hands and fingers—a sheep, and some others whose species she couldn’t place from what she saw. Once everything was arranged, they began to play. The music matched their garb, stately and baroque. Several couples got up from their tables and moved onto the dance floor.

Rick didn’t look like he was coming back their way any time soon. “Why don’t we go get one of the tables?” Beth suggested. “I’d kind of like to watch the floor show.” She picked up her glass.

* * *

The entertainment at Rick’s was certainly eclectic. The chamber-music group was followed by a black-leather-garbed crooner doing vintage rockabilly, but in a language Beth didn’t know. His face was long and lupine—not quite a wolf, but not human either. More like a B-movie werewolf than anything else, Beth decided.

“You the folks lookin’ for help?”

The speaker had slipped into a vacant chair while Beth was watching the stage. She looked—though by now Beth doubted anything here was exactly what it seemed—like a teenaged girl, and though it was hard to hear beneath the music, Beth thought she spoke English with a pronounced American accent. She had fire-engine-red hair with a silver streak in the front; it hung in an unkempt shoulder-length mop, and her eyes were the bright foil-green of Christmas paper. She was wearing a white T-shirt, a black vest, Levis, and motorcycle boots with spurs. Strapped to one leg was a battered and clangingly futuristic firearm.

“We’re looking for information,” Kory answered warily.

“Same dif.” The girl signaled a waitress, who hurried over and set a drink in front of the girl. The drink was pink, with a paper parasol stuck in the top, and it smoked. The waitress hovered pointedly until Kory handed over another gold coin.

“So. Why don’cha tell me a little about yourselves?” The girl picked up her drink—she was wearing white leather driving gloves—and sipped daintily, wincing. “This stuff’ll kill you.”

“I am Sieur Korendil of Elfhame Misthold, and this is my lady, Beth Kentraine.”

“Pleased ta. You can call me Cho-cho. What kind of information?”

“Can you help us find it?” Beth asked.

“Depends. You’re Seleighe Court, right? I don’t do business with the other guys.”

“Would you believe us if we said we were? If we were of the Dark Court, we’d lie,” Kory pointed out.

“You lie to me, buster, and you don’t get a chance to do it twice,” Cho-cho said. “I got connections.” For a moment she seemed to shimmer, and Beth felt a flash of cold, as if someone had opened the door to a walk-in freezer. “But we’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ Now. Here’s the giggy. You tell me what you want, the more details the better, and I tell you if I can supply it. Then we argue about the price.”

“Fair enough, Mistress Cho-cho,” Kory answered. “Beth?”

Beth took a deep breath. Telling Ria her problem had been hard enough, but telling this total stranger was downright embarrassing.

“Kory and I want to have a baby together. More than one, actually.”

“Mazel tov,” Cho-cho said, sipping her drink. “There’s more?”

“It takes magic. But the only methods we’ve been able to find are . . . Unseleighe,” Beth said delicately. “We’re looking for another way. So we need help. Research help.”

“Huh. You wanna find something out, ask a librarian. Or somebody with a library.” Cho-cho smiled, as if at a private joke.

“Do you know someone possessing such resources who would be willing to help us?” Kory asked.

“You need another drink,” Cho-cho said. She signaled the waitress and turned away from them to watch the stage.

A waitress brought their drinks. The wolf-boy left the stage, to be replaced by a torch singer and her accompanist. The singer was wheeled out onto the stage in a large crystal fishbowl, her silvery tail glinting in the houselights. Her accompanist was a satyr—Chippendales dancer above, goat below. His horns were gilded, and his eyes were elaborately painted in the Egyptian style. The mermaid reached out of her bowl to grasp the mike and began to sing: “Stormy Weather.”

Cho-cho sat through a medley of Cole Porter hits in silence. Finally she turned back to them.

“I got a line on a guy,” she said. “If he don’t know it, he can find it. Whether he’ll help, that’s between you and him, but he’s got a kind of soft spot for humans with problems, and he’s on the side of the angels, more or less. What you pay me don’t cover what you’ll owe him. I can tell you where to find him, that’s all.”

Beth glanced at Kory. His face was unreadable.

Was this a good idea? A stranger who could help, but might not? On the other hand, she didn’t see anyone else lining up to help them. She nodded ever so slightly.

“And your price for this information—his name and his location both?” Kory asked.

“What’ve you got?” Cho-cho asked with interest.

“Gold?”

She snorted. “I can make that myself.”

“Coffee?”

“I look like a wire-head to you, Mister Korendil?”

Kory shrugged. Neither of them knew what a “wire-head” might be, but it seemed to eliminate coffee as a bargaining chip. “I take it then that you would find neither chocolate nor Coca-Cola suitable either?”

For a moment she looked wistful, then shook her head firmly. “Can’t use ’em.”

“You must have something in mind,” Beth said, playing a hunch.

“Sure. Depends on if your friend’ll go for it, though.”

Kory regarded the girl inquiringly.

“Safe passage through the elven lands.”

So it all comes down to “Letters of Transit” in the end, Beth thought wryly. She wasn’t sure how big a deal that was, and Kory’s face gave nothing away, but Beth thought he’d twitched, just a little.

“And I to stand surety for whatever you do there,” Kory said through gritted teeth.

“I don’t want to do anything there,” Cho-cho said. “All I want . . .” She stopped. “I just want to go home. They need me there.”

“Wherever ‘home’ is, there are other avenues to reach it,” Kory said. “From here, you can go anywhere.”

Cho-cho shook her head. “You know how it is. ‘You can’t get there from here’? Believe me, I’ve tried, for longer than the two of you have been on this earth, kids. The only clear way is through the elven lands . . . and I’d rather not mess with the Dark Court. We got a history, y’see.”

Everybody here seemed to have a history of one kind or another. “And where is home?” Beth asked.

Cho-cho grimaced. “You pay for that info, too, if you really want it, and I don’t think you can afford it.”

“You ask a high price for your help,” Kory said.

“You don’t have anything else I want,” Cho-cho said simply. “Maybe someone else here wants what you got. And maybe they don’t have anything you want. Your choice.”

Impasse. The two parties stared across the table at each other, neither willing to give in.

“If I were to give you a letter of safe conduct—under guard—to my lord, Prince Arvindel of Elfhame Misthold, you might plead your case to him. More I will not do. Nor,” Kory added, smiling a wolflike smile, “can I guarantee he will hear you, should he know more of you than I.”

There was a long pause. Beth held her breath, afraid that Cho-cho would get up and walk away. “It isn’t much,” the girl grumbled.

“Nor is what you offer us. Only hope, no more.”

“Okay,” she said, putting both hands on the table. “We have a deal. You don’t mind if I get the goods up front, do you?”

“I would expect nothing less,” Kory answered.

Cho-cho snapped her fingers, and an iridescent lizard-maiden with improbable gauzy butterfly wings came over to the table. She had a tray slung around her neck, like the cigarette girls in old-time nightclubs. Beth couldn’t see what it held.

“Pen, ink, paper, and seals,” Cho-cho said.

It must have been an ordinary sort of request, because the lizard-woman produced the objects without hesitation from among the contents of her tray. Cho-cho pointed, and she set them in front of Kory. He dipped the pen into the inkwell and wrote: the letters sparkled and seemed to sink into the vellum as he inscribed them flourishingly. When he was done, he took off his seal-ring and picked up one of the disks of wax. He placed it on the paper and touched it with a finger. It softened and glistened, suddenly hot, and he pressed the ring into it until the wax began to harden.

Cho-cho reached for it. Kory didn’t let go.

“Now you.”

Cho-cho sighed. “Okay. This guy I know . . . you know anything about dealing with dragons?”

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Beth asked, quite a long time later.

They were standing in the middle of . . . nothing. Grey river mist surrounded them, thick and warm. It smelled like jasmine. The ground beneath the elvensteeds’ hooves was covered with thick white sand. It sparkled whenever the sun broke through the mist above.

It was morning—again. They’d passed through so many different time zones that Beth wasn’t completely sure how much time had passed. Elves didn’t need sleep, of course, but she had the jet-laggy feeling that it was two million o’clock in the morning. If she fell asleep, Bredana would see to it that she didn’t fall off, but Beth was hoping for a real bed. And soon.

Cho-cho had given them a name—Chinthliss—and drawn them a map. Or more precisely, she’d drawn an arrow on a map, but the arrow always pointed in the direction they needed to go. Ahead of them stood a Gate. Kory had examined it. It held only one destination, and Kory thought it led directly into the dragon’s lair. Apparently this Chinthliss didn’t mind being easy to find, and Beth knew enough about the Underhill way of doing things to know that meant he had power—power enough to deal with any enemies who might come calling.

He also seemed to have a sense of humor.

She looked at the sign that stood beside the Gate again. It was battered and weathered. Painted on it in English in big black letters were the words: “I’d turn back if I were you. Signed, the Management.”

“Fair enough,” Beth said aloud. “But we aren’t going to.”

The Gate itself was huge—two stories high, and wide enough to drive a matched team of semis through—and solid bronze. The decoration seemed to be more Oriental than anything else, flowers and birds and branching trees.

“But we are going to be very careful,” Kory said seriously. “Dragons are very particular about matters of etiquette. It would not do to annoy him.”

“Best behavior and company manners,” Beth agreed. She yawned, unable to stifle it.

They dismounted, and led their horses forward past the sign. There was a large square red button at doorbell height at the edge of the frame. Beth was pretty sure it hadn’t been there a moment ago. She looked closer. There was writing on it, one word: enter.

“Press ‘Enter,’ ” Beth said. Something with this kind of a sense of humor couldn’t be all bad, could it?

Kory pressed the button. With a shudder that seemed to shake the world, the great bronze doors swung inward, opening into mist. Kory reached out and took her hand, and slowly they walked forward, leading the horses.

They were in a hall. Its scale made the doors they’d just come through look petite. The walls were yellow, lined with enormous pillars painted Chinese red, and the floor was black. Burning torches in bronze baskets lined the walls, their glow almost lost in the chamber’s vast dimensions. The air smelled of incense. Several football fields of distance away, a long flight of shallow stairs led to a curtained archway. On each step stood a large porcelain cache pot, each filled with a full-sized flowering tree. They were completely alone, and nobody seemed to be rushing to welcome them.

“Now what?” Beth asked in a whisper.

“Now we offer gifts and wait, most respectfully, for that is the first rule when dealing with dragons.” Kory turned to Mach Five and opened his saddlebags. He began piling the trade goods they’d brought on the floor in front of them. Beth emptied her saddlebags as well. Four six-packs of Coke, twenty pounds of Hershey bars, and several large bags of whole-bean Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee. They looked very odd sitting in the middle of the floor of a dragon’s temple.

“Great Chinthliss,” Kory said after a few moments, “please grace us with your presence. We have traveled far to seek your wise counsel.”

The curtains opened, and a slender man stepped out and slowly began to walk down the stairs. He was wearing an impeccable Armani business suit in a deep rich bronze, and instead of a regular necktie, a bolo tie around his neck, held closed with a bronze jewel at the throat.

Uh-oh. Looks like he’s sending in the high-priced lawyers.

As the man came closer, Beth could see that he had skin the color of old ivory and brilliant amber eyes. His gleaming black hair was almost waist-length, brushed straight back from a high forehead and a deep widow’s peak, and his topaz eyes gleamed from beneath heavy lids. He looked vaguely but not entirely Oriental. More like . . .

A brow like Shakespeare and eyes like a tiger . . . Holy Mother, we’re having tea with Fu Manchu!

“Enchantй, madame,” he said, bowing over her hand. His shirt was linen, with French cuffs, and the cuff links and the slide of the bolo tie both were in the same design: a curled bronze dragon with gleaming amber eyes. He smelled faintly of burning cinnamon. “How lovely to make the acquaintance of one so fair.”

He turned to Korendil, who inclined his head respectfully. “Lord Chinthliss.”

“He’s the dragon?” Beth blurted, unable to stop herself.

Chinthliss regarded her, one eyebrow raised. Though his expression was bland, Beth could swear he was laughing at her.

“Does my appearance disappoint you, fair lady?” he asked mildly.

“I was expecting someone taller,” Beth said, startled into bluntness by lack of sleep.

“Like this?”

The man was gone, his form dissolving like mist. In his place stood a dragon. A very big dragon. A gleaming bronze dragon big enough to fill the entire hall. His tail snaked up the stairs, its tip hidden behind the curtain, and his mantled wings brushed the walls. He lowered his head—it was the size of a bus—down to Beth’s eye level, and regarded her with glowing yellow eyes. Tendrils of steam curled from his nostrils, and Beth could feel heat radiating from him as if from a stove.

“Um . . . yeah,” she said weakly. “That’ll do.”

The dragon bared its teeth in a draconic grin.

“Excellent. I would hate to disappoint so fair a guest.” The dragon was gone, and in his place stood the Oriental gentleman once more. “But you have come a long way and are weary from your journey. Please. Allow me to offer you the poor comforts of my little house. We can discuss your business after you have rested.” He snapped his fingers. Two women appeared, dressed in full kimono. Except for the fact that they were slightly transparent, they looked as if they’d just stepped out of a Japanese scroll painting. “My servants will see to your animals.”

The geisha took the elvensteeds’ reins and led the horses toward the wall, vanishing before they reached it.

“Come.” Chinthliss beckoned, smiling.

They followed him back up the long flight of stairs. Beyond the curtain was . . . a palace. High windows opened onto vistas of exquisite gardens that seemed to stretch into infinity. The walls were covered with painted murals done with such skill that it was hard to tell where the real garden ended and the painted one began. Beth tried not to gawk.

“I trust you will find these poor accommodations to your liking,” Chinthliss said, stopping in front of another set of double doors. These were of sandalwood, carved and oiled until they gleamed like gold. They opened at a touch.

“Thank you,” Beth said. “You’re very kind.”

The dragon smiled. “And now I will leave you. Do not hesitate to summon any of my servants to see to your needs.” He bowed.

Beth stepped inside, Kory following. The suite was decorated with as much lavish ornamentation as the rest of the palace, but was obviously scaled to human size and needs. There were Western-style couches and chairs, a bookcase filled with books, and at the far end of the room stood an enormous canopy bed. Golden dragons twined about its ebony posts, and the hangings were all of scarlet silk embroidered in gold. In the center of the room stood a table filled with covered dishes. Whatever they contained smelled wonderful.

“My,” Beth said.

“We are safe, for now,” Kory said. His sword and armor had vanished, and he was dressed in more ordinary clothes. He approached the table and lifted one of the silver covers.

“Hey, look at this!” Beth had gone through the doorway to the right of the bed. She was standing in a bathroom that any Roman emperor would have killed for. A tub big enough to do laps in stood in the middle of the room. “Big enough for two,” she said invitingly, when Kory joined her.

“Yes.” Kory put an arm around her. “Why not? It would be churlish of us not to accept what is offered.” He walked over to the tub and touched one of the taps—gold, in the shape of a leaping dolphin. Water immediately began jetting from it, filling the tub with hot water and perfumed bubbles. “And then you will eat and rest,” he said firmly.

“And after that, business.”

Beth couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so well and so deeply. She awoke in the morning—or at least, after long slumber—to the smell of bacon and eggs, and sat up in bed to see more of the semi-transparent servants laying the table for breakfast.

“Good morning,” Kory said, sitting down on the bed beside her. “Did you sleep well?”

Elves didn’t sleep—not under normal conditions, at any rate. More time for them to get into trouble, Beth had always thought, but lately she’d started to wonder what it was really like to have all that free time. It was almost as if Kory had a secret life, one she couldn’t be any part of.

She yawned and stretched, banishing all such vague morning thoughts. “Did you have a good night?”

“The tea was hot, and the books were entertaining,” Kory answered seriously. “And I had a great deal of time to think. Dragons are . . . experts at solving the problem we face. He can help us, I think, if he will.”

“But what will he want for his help?” Beth said. Kory stood, and she swung her legs over the edge of the bed. “That’s the real question, isn’t it? Whether we can afford to pay?”

“For your happiness—for Maeve’s—I will pay any price, but—”

“But some prices are too high,” Beth finished firmly. Nothing that would endanger the elves, or anyone else for that matter. “Well, we’ll see.”

One of the nice things about magic was that the food was always hot, Beth reflected. They were just finishing—bacon and eggs, blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup, fresh-squeezed orange juice, herb tea—when there was a knock at the door. It opened, and instead of one of the little flowerlike geisha, the travelers were presented with the awesome sight of a Real English Butler in full formal livery.

“Good morning, Lord Korendil, Mistress Bethany. May I trust that you have found everything to your satisfaction?” His accent was as English as the BBC.

“Of course,” Kory said graciously. “And we are looking forward to speaking with your master at his earliest convenience.”

The butler bowed. “I believe Lord Chinthliss is in the conservatory at this hour. If you would care to accompany me to his receiving room, I shall inform him that you are awake.”

Chinthliss’s receiving room bore a strong resemblance to the library of an English country gentleman. There was an Oriental rug on the floor, and the oak-paneled walls were lined in books. A massive desk with a top carved from a single slab of green malachite dominated the area before the windows, which gave a magnificent view of a formal garden. If the view didn’t match that available from the other windows, Beth didn’t mind. This was magic, after all.

As they had been left to their own devices, she wandered around the room. There were some surprises: the elaborate stereo system tucked into one corner—

Nakamichi. Nice. I wonder how he runs it down here without electricity?

The silver-framed photos on the walls were another thing that didn’t quite fit in with Beth’s notions of a feudal draconic sorcerer: most of them were of race-car drivers, and signed.

Tannim Drake . . . Brian Simo . . . Doc Bundy . . . Fox mentioned someone named Tannim was a friend of Chinthliss . . . can’t see Fox driving a race car, somehow.

She looked again at the black-haired young man, caught in the act of giving a grinning thumbs-up in front of his car. The words “Fairgrove Test Driver” could be seen on his coveralls. She’d heard of Elfhame Fairgrove. I guess Eric and I aren’t the only ones who’ve fallen in with elvish companions.

Hanging near the picture of Tannim was a carved rosewood shrine, its doors standing open. Inside, on a small purple velvet pillow, stood another incongruous item: a Ford key, with a Mustang logo key chain. Obviously this was an item the dragon cherished. I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out the story behind all this.

The door of the study opened, and Chinthliss entered. He was dressed as he had been before, in the height of Western fashion, and this morning had added a set of lightly-mirrored designer shades to his ensemble. You could have dropped him anywhere in Hollywood and not raised a single eyebrow.

“My young friends. I trust you are now refreshed from your journey?” He crossed the room and seated himself behind the vast desk. “And now, what is it that I can do for you? Please, be frank.”

How can I be Frank when I’m already Beth? she thought, but while she would certainly have answered Fox that way, Chinthliss seemed far too dignified to descend to the level of a punning contest. She and Kory sat on the chairs arranged in front of the desk.

“I— I’m not sure where to begin,” Beth said hesitantly. She glanced at Kory. He shrugged minutely.

“I always find it is best to begin at the beginning,” Chinthliss told her.

Begin at the beginning, go on till you get to the end, then stop. Humpty-Dumpty’s advice to Alice echoed through her mind. C’mon, Kentraine. You’ve made harder speeches. Beth took a deep breath and began.

Haltingly, she explained the whole story—about meeting Kory for the first time, her desire to start a family with him, about Maeve, and wanting her to grow up with brothers and sisters around her. It seemed to take a long time to tell, and Beth found herself rambling. Finally she stopped.

“And you, Sieur Korendil?” the dragon asked. “Do you concur?”

“All that she says is true,” Kory said. A look of wistfulness crossed his face. “To have children—children of our own . . . that would be a blessing such as I had never hoped for, before I met Beth. Yet some prices are too high to pay.”

“Perenor didn’t think so,” the dragon observed.

“Perenor was wrong,” Kory said flatly. “To create new life, yes. But not at the expense of the suffering and death of others.”

“Agreed,” the dragon said. “And I’m delighted to tell you that my library does contain the information you seek.”

“So all we have to do is get inside,” Beth said.

Chinthliss raised his eyebrows, and said nothing.

He’s waiting for us to offer him something.

Beth thought hard. What could she possibly offer someone of Chinthliss’ resources? He didn’t need money, that was for sure, and she doubted there was anything the elves could do for him that he couldn’t do for himself.

She had an idea.

“That’s a pretty nice music system you’ve got there.”

Chinthliss preened. “A gift from a friend.”

“Kind of hard to get CDs here, though, isn’t it?” she asked idly. “Oh, well, I guess Amazon can ship just about anywhere, these days. And there’s always MP3s.”

“Alas.” Chinthliss looked regretful. “I regret to say that even with all my arts, it has so far been impossible for me to get Internet access here. Computers, you see . . .” He shrugged.

Gotcha! Beth crowed silently.

The horse trading began in earnest.

Chinthliss insisted they remain his guests for the rest of the day, but the following morning saw Beth and Kory on the road once more, headed back for Elfhame Misthold. Without the need to make the side trip to the Goblin Market, the trip home should be relatively short and uneventful.

“This is great!” Beth said. “Chinthliss’ library contains every­thing ever written about cross-species reproduction—and he’ll let us spend as much time there as we need.”

“Once we have met his price,” Kory reminded her. “A computer that works Underhill—how are you ever going to deliver such a thing?”

“If his Nakamichi works there, a computer will, too. Computers are mostly plastic these days, and the newest models don’t need a phone line to hook up to the net.” Beth grinned, sensing victory within her grasp. “All I need to know is where to shop and what to buy. As for finding that out . . . I’m going to consult another expert.”

EIGHT:
IT’S A SATURDAY NIGHT
AT THE WORLD

Just as promised, the elvensteeds returned Eric and Ria to the World Above the same day they’d left—or, rather, very late that same night. Eric had never been so grateful for Lady Day’s autopilot abilities: he’d done a lot more playing—and ­dancing—after the Bardic competition. And it had been a competition as much as a performance, he’d found to his chagrin. Adroviel had led all the performers back out onto the stage to take their bows before the company—and then presented Eric with the golden laurel crown.

After that, the evening had been pretty much a blur, though alcohol wasn’t to blame for that this time. But, as Eric had discovered, ambient magic could have much the same effect. . . .

He barely remembered saying good night to Ria at the door to her Park Avenue apartment, and remembered nothing at all after that until he awoke in his own bed with Sunday morning sun shining down on him.

Jumbled unreal memories of leaving Lady Day in the parking lot behind the building, of tiptoeing in past the sleeping Hosea and somehow getting his boots off before he flung himself in bed, surfaced as he lay looking at the ceiling. He was still wearing his Court clothes, and investigation proved that he’d gone to bed with both sword and flute.

But it’d been a heckuva party.

Just so long as there isn’t another one any time soon, he thought, stretching. Visits to Underhill are fine, so long as they’re just that . . . visits.

He checked the bedside clock as he rolled out of bed: 11:30. Not too bad for the morning after a late night. He could hear Hosea moving around the apartment. He’d better pull himself together so they could hit up a few of the better gigging sites. There’d be another audition soon, so Hosea could get a performer’s license of his own, but not until the middle of August, still a couple of weeks away.

And August means the Sterling Forest Faire will be opening. I wonder if I should make arrangements to play up there for a couple of weekends? It would be fun to introduce Hosea to the Rennie world, and with a little Bardic magic, some of Eric’s outfits would fit the Appalachian Bard.

Thinking about Bards made Eric remember Dharniel’s comments last night. He wondered how Hosea would take to the idea of being taught by Eric—there was a lot more about his past he’d have to come clean with Hosea about, if he did. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

I can think about it later.

He stripped off his Court clothes, flinging them into the back of the closet, grabbed his robe, and headed for the shower. When he came out a few minutes later, wet and dripping, he felt a lot more “grounded on the Earth plane,” as Beth’s friend Kit always used to say.

“Morning,” Hosea said, as Eric wandered into the kitchen. “Must’ve been a pretty fine party last night.” He held out Eric’s laurel garland.

“Um . . . thanks.” Eric took it. The leaves were made of pure gold, twined with a silver ribbon on which elvish letters burned with blue fire. Not your ordinary sort of party favor.

How do I explain this? How do I explain any of this? Suppose Hosea doesn’t want me for a teacher?

He tucked the crown under one arm awkwardly.

“There’s coffee brewing. Looks like you could use a cup. Oh, and someone named Margot came by and dropped off something for you. Looks like a letter.”

Although with Margot one can never be sure. Eric cracked wise, if only to himself. He’d been Overhill long enough now to have gotten back his coffee habits—and had already needed the caffeine more than once. “I’ll look at it after I get dressed,” he said, and made a less-than-graceful exit from the conversation.

Dressed, caffeinated, and with the last evidence of his Underhill sojourn tucked safely out of sight, Eric adjourned to the living room, where Hosea was reading a book. He set his cup down on the coffee table and picked up the envelope.

It said “Eric” on it in bright purple calligraphic ink, and the envelope was liberally dusted with spray-on glitter. Definitely a Margot touch. It wasn’t sealed. He opened it and pulled out a glittery violently purple sheet of paper.

“Calling the Usual Suspects: Lammas Party Next Saturday! 7:00 till Sanity intercedes! Bring yourself, bring a friend, bring munchies! Venue: the Basement!”

Every few weeks most of the building’s tenants got together for a sort of informal mixer down in the building’s basement. While only a minority of Guardian House’s tenants were Wiccan, the eight festivals of the Wiccan year fell approximately 45 days apart, making a convenient schedule for parties.

Eric passed the flyer to Hosea. “You’re certainly welcome to come—the building is mostly artists, so we tend to show off our latest work, play a little music, unwind a bit.”

“Sure,” Hosea said, passing it back. “Be mighty nice to meet a few more of the neighbors.”

* * *

Hard to believe I was in Elfland just a week ago today, Ria thought, staring down at the mound of work on her desk. All the glamour—in the oldest sense of the word—seemed pretty far away when she was staring at the latest pile of paperwork on her desk. And she’d cross-her-heart promised to show up at a party Eric’s friends were having at Guardian House later tonight.

Not her usual sort of entertainment; Ria’s tastes ran more to the thoroughly civilized, such as ballet and opera. But there was no denying that Eric’s friends were likely to be an engag­ing crowd . . . and that Eric was the main attraction.

Their relationship was an interesting one . . . doomed, you might say. Eric was a thoroughgoing do-gooder and idealist, believing, like Spider-Man, that with great power came great responsibility. Ria was more of a pragmatist: stone-cold dead cuts recidivism by 100%.

And they were opposites in so many other ways, too. She thought Eric was too trusting. He thought she was paranoid. She liked a mannered, organized life. Eric Banyon was the original free spirit. She thought that discipline was the most important thing about making your way through life. Eric thought that Love conquered all. LlewellCo—a billion-dollar multinational—was her entire life. Eric had no idea what he was going to do with his life once he got out of Juilliard. Ria hobnobbed with presidents and kings. Eric hung out with elves and street musicians.

Insurmountable. But somehow they were making it work—so long as each of them took care not to step too far into the other’s life. But how long could they keep up this balancing act? Eventually Eric would be done with his schooling, and she’d be done with her work on the East Coast. What then?

You’re daydreaming like a schoolgirl, Ria. She sighed, shaking her head, and reached for the file in front of her.

The phone rang. Ria reached for her desk phone before she realized her cellular was ringing. She’d set it to roll over calls from the apartment. But who could be calling?

“Ria Llewellyn.”

“Ria? It’s Elizabet.”

Elizabet Winters was the Healer who had saved Ria’s life. In mundane life, Elizabet was a psych therapist with the LAPD, dealing with crime victims and other trauma cases. She and her apprentice and adopted daughter, Kayla Smith, had brought Ria back from coma and insanity in the wake of the battle for Elfhame Sun-Descending.

“Elizabet!” she said warmly. “How wonderful to hear from you. Are you in town?”

The other woman chuckled. “No such luck. I’m stuck behind my desk with an ever burgeoning caseload. No, I’m calling about Kayla. I wanted to let you know that she’s decided to take you up on your offer. I think its fair to warn you that the child still has champagne tastes.”

Ria laughed. “So she’s decided on a college and a major? Where?”

“Columbia,” Elizabet said. “She got the acceptance letter last week. They’ve got a good computer school. She’s thought the matter over carefully and decided she wants to train to be a Web designer.”

“Well, she’ll never lack for employment,” Ria answered. More to the point, Web designer was a solitary profession with odd hours. Though Kayla’s great Gift was Healing, you couldn’t set yourself up as a free-lance medic without running into legal trouble, and even if Kayla’d had the patience, taking a medical degree to legitimate her skills would have been nothing more than a quick trip to early burnout or even death. A Healer and Empath needed a lot of time alone to process the pain from those she touched. There were going to be a lot of times when she’d really need to get away from people altogether, and Web designer would be a career where she could tailor both her hours and her interactions with others.

“And certainly I can cover her tuition. Just have the billing office get in touch with me. Which dorm will she be in?”

“Well, that’s another thing I wanted to talk to you about.” Elizabet sounded hesitant. “Columbia doesn’t really have a lot of student housing, and I’m not really sure I’d be all that comfortable with Kayla around a couple of hundred other teenagers. She’s a great kid, and of course she wrote the book on street smarts, but I think sometimes that we just tend to forget that she is a kid. I was hoping more for a situation where she’d have some adult supervision.”

I think I know where this is going. Of course Elizabet was right—dropping an Empath into a cauldron of teenaged angst would be like dropping a firecracker into a tank of gas, personality issues aside. And Ria owed both Kayla and Elizabet so much that anything she could do in return would never be enough.

“I’ll be happy to keep an eye on her,” Ria said. “I’ve got a huge apartment that I hardly ever see. I’ll be glad to have her stay with me.”

Elizabet let out a sigh of relief. “I was hoping you’d say that,” she said. “I know that babysitting a teenager is nobody’s idea of fun . . .”

“Kayla’s hardly your typical teen. And street-smart or not, she’s never seen anything like New York before. Here, I’ll give you my home address. Just crate her stuff up and ship it when you’re ready. I’ll be sure to meet her plane.”

“You’re a doll, Ria!”

They chatted for a few minutes more about various things, and Ria gave Elizabet the address of her Park Avenue apartment—and be damned to the co-op board if they don’t like it; I can always buy the building!—and several emergency phone numbers. She also made a promise that they both knew was empty: that she’d do her best to keep Elizabet’s young apprentice out of trouble. Kayla was drawn to trouble as the moth to the flame.

What am I getting myself into? Ria wondered as she hung up the phone.

What am I getting myself into? Eric wondered, not for the first time that week. He still hadn’t been able to bring himself to mention the idea of becoming Hosea’s mentor to Hosea; every time he rehearsed the words in his head they ended up sounding arrogant and stupid. But the longer he delayed, the guiltier he felt. Tonight. At the party or after. For sure.

They’d made the rounds of the usual spots this afternoon. The take was a little lower than usual—it was August, and a lot of Gothamites were fleeing the city for cooler climes—but still respectable. Hosea had insisted on knocking off early; he had a recipe he wanted to try for the party tonight. He’d called it “pocket dumplings,” but when he described them, Eric recognized the recipe for Cornish pasties. Makes sense. Just about everyone from that neck of the woods hailed from the British Isles originally. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a Grove tucked away somewhere in those hills . . .

So they’d gone shopping, and then Hosea had firmly shooed Eric out of the kitchen. “I’ve seen what a kitchen looks like once you’re done with it, Mister Bard. You just do your part and eat what I cook.”

Eric had wandered around the living room for a while, unable to settle. He thought about going for a walk, but the idea held little charm—Manhattan in August was hazy, hot, and humid, and he hated the thought of leaving his spell-driven air conditioning.

I wonder how Jimmie’s doing? He hadn’t seen her in the last couple of weeks; she’d been working on Friday when they’d had their get-together. But Paul had told him her schedule, and she should be home now. He decided to go see her, maybe cadge a cup of tea.

A few minutes later he was standing in front of her door. He knocked gently, and after a few minutes heard her walking down the hall. She opened the door.

“Eric. How are you?” She tried for a smile and missed. Eric tried to keep from looking as shocked as he felt. Jimmie looked like something the cat had dragged in—deep puffy black circles under her golden eyes, and lines in her face that hadn’t been there a month earlier.

“I’ve come at a bad time,” he said.

“No.” She opened the door wider. “Come on in. Really.”

He stepped past her, into the hall. It was lined with shelves full of books on every conceivable subject—Jimmie Youngblood was a voracious reader.

In the living room window, an elderly a/c wheezed and thundered, working hard to cool the room. Eric walked over to it and touched it lightly. He reached out with his power, asking it to remember the days when it was new. It instantly began to purr quietly, and the temperature dropped appreciably.

Jimmie sighed in relief. “Thanks. You could make real money doing that.”

“If I ever need a second job,” Eric said. “But are you sure this isn’t a bad time? ’Cause frankly, Scarlett, you look like hell.”

Jimmie shrugged. “Going from days to nights is always hard, and I haven’t been sleeping well. It’s not the nightmares. That charm you did for me worked fine, and they haven’t come back. I’ve just got this feeling of impending doom. Every morning I wake up expecting to go into the bathroom and see a banshee doing laundry in my sink.”

Eric smiled at the feeble joke. Legend held that those who saw a banshee washing her bloody garments were doomed to die within the fortnight. “But neither Greystone or the House has noticed anything?”

“Nothing,” Jimmie answered tiredly. “I’m starting to wonder if I’m turning into one of those cranky old ladies who goes around prophesying the end of the world.”

“Not you,” Eric said gallantly. “Are you sure there isn’t anything I can do to help? I mean, I know I’m not a ­Guardian—”

“You wouldn’t want to be,” Jimmie interrupted, cutting him off. “Once you get the Call, your life doesn’t belong to you any more. You never know where you’re going to be sent, or what you’ll have to do. And it’s not like there’s an instruction manual for being a free-lance occult do-gooder. Sometimes I wish there was.” She walked into the kitchen and came back a few moments later with two tall glasses clinking with ice. “Tea. Or as Grandma used to say, ‘sweet tea.’ ”

Eric took his glass and sipped. It was sweet—sweet and cold and delicious, tasting faintly of mint.

“The secret, so she told me, was to put the sugar into the hot tea, so it dissolves completely. Then add the mint, wait for it to cool on its lonesome, and chill. I sure do miss her. She came up North to take care of us kids after Mama died, and never stopped complaining about Yankee ways until the day she died.”

“You’ve never said much about your family before,” Eric said.

“That’s because I don’t have one anymore—well, outside of Toni and the guys. And you, Eric. You’ve been a real friend. I’m glad the House chose you,” she said, sitting down on the couch beside Eric.

“Me, too,” Eric said. He sipped his tea. “Hosea’s cooking for the party tonight, and suggested I could be of the most use by making myself absent.” He hesitated, wondering if he should mention that he might be taking Hosea on as an apprentice. “When a Guardian trains their successor . . .” he began.

He was interrupted by a healthy snort of laughter from Jimmie. “Oh, my! I just wish we did! But that’s not the way it works for us. If we’re lucky, we get to meet our successor and pass on the Call in person, but that’s about it. Usually it arrives like a bolt out of the blue, and then it’s sink or swim time.”

“Doesn’t sound really efficient,” Eric said, probing gently.

Jimmie grinned, savoring a private joke. “Who are we to argue with the Powers that Be’s way of doing business? But seriously. There’s no way to train for this job. You can either handle it, or someone else comes along pretty quick to ­replace you, on account of you taking a quick trip on the hurry-up wagon. Of course, you can spend a long time fooling yourself. I was pretty stubborn when my Call came. Thought I was losing my mind. It’s different for everyone. Paul stepped right up like he was born to it when his Call came—but then, he’d been involved in the occult for years. I was just a dumb street cop.” She drained her glass in several long swallows and set it down on the floor beside the couch. “And I sure wish I could shake this case of the blue-devils. I even took your advice . . . I did something I swore I’d never do.”

Eric raised his eyebrows inquisitively. Jimmie sighed.

“I tried to get ahold of my brother. All I had was a P.O. box address from about a dozen years back. I wrote to it. But he never wrote back. I could use my contacts on the Force, maybe; see if he’s Inside somewhere. But I don’t really want to rake up old bones at the Job. Y’know, sometimes it doesn’t seem like it when the Post gets going, but there’s nothing a good cop hates more than a bad one.”

Eric waited, sensing there was more to say. But if there was, Jimmie drew back from it.

“He didn’t even resign. Just disappeared when Internal Affairs came calling. Damn near broke Dad’s heart.”

And yours, Eric thought, but didn’t say so.

“So what’s the deal, Eric? You look like somebody with something on his mind besides my little problems.”

“Yuh got me, podnuh,” Eric said. “It’s not really a problem. It’s just . . . Hosea came to New York looking for someone to train him as a Bard. And I’ve got an awful feeling I’m it.”

“Can you?” Jimmie asked, cutting to the chase.

“Yeah, well, technically . . . yes. My teacher thinks so, anyway.”

They sat in silence for a few moments. Eric could almost hear Jimmie thinking it over.

“So, don’t you like him?” she asked.

“Sure I do,” Eric said quickly, leaping to Hosea’s defense. “He’s a great guy. It’s just that . . . what if I screw up?”

He’d never been responsible for anyone but himself, not even Maeve. That was what it came down to. She was Kory and Beth’s. Not his. Saving the world was one thing (though he wasn’t over-confident about his abilities there, either, if truth be told), but crises tended to boil up and blow over pretty quickly. Taking on an apprentice was a long-term commitment to another person—and at Juilliard, he’d had ample chance to see the harm that a bad teacher could do.

“What if you don’t—screw up, I mean?” Jimmie asked reasonably. “Spend all your time worrying about what might happen, and you’ll never get anything done. Good advice. I ought to take it sometime,” she said broodingly.

“I’m sure you’ll figure this out eventually,” Eric said. It sounded like hollow comfort, even to him. “Maybe it’s all blown over and this is just the aftershocks. Meanwhile, why not come to the party this evening? Shake off that gloom’n’doom feeling?”

“I should,” Jimmie said. “I will. Wouldn’t miss the chance to sample your friend’s masterwork.”

She forced a smile, and the talk turned to other things.

The basement was already full when Eric and Hosea came down, balancing two large cookie sheets covered with warm, golden-brown pasties. Alex was there, talking computers with Paul, and Margot and Caity were spreading a paper tablecloth over the top of the washing machines, converting them to a makeshift buffet for the evening.

The basement of Guardian House ran the entire length of the building. Part of it was walled off, forming the “magical bunker” that Toni had told Eric about in his first days in the building, and there was even an apartment down here—a small studio, its only access to the outside world a high narrow strip of windows along one wall. No one lived there; it’d been vacant since her predecessor’s time, Toni had told him once, and was now used for storage.

Eric introduced Hosea to the others. Tatiana—in full war paint and more trailing shawls than Isadora Duncan—camped and vamped at him, cooing about “big, strong men” until Hosea actually blushed. Seeing that, she relented, and went off to get them drinks from the bar-by-courtesy, though aside from a couple of bottles of wine, there was nothing stronger than fruit punch there.

By the time Ria arrived, the party was in full swing. Someone had brought down a boombox, and a World Music sampler—mostly ignored—vied for attention with the fragmented sounds of various musicians trading licks. The live music usually came later in the evening, when everyone had mellowed out and finished exchanging gossip and news. Hosea’s pasties had vanished early on, but Toni had brought empaсadas—a Puerto Rican ­specialty—and Paul had brought a couple gallons of the Famous Punch (a mixture of exotic tropical fruit juices, savory and non-alcoholic). Eric had a glass of it in his hand when he “felt” Ria arrive, and went upstairs to guide her down.

“Cozy,” she said, looking around the basement. “Done in early catacomb?”

She was wearing a pale gray silk business suit and looked like the well-tailored heroine of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. She had on a pair of green jade earrings that played up the green of her eyes, and her ice-blonde hair was held back by a wide clip of the same material.

“Think of it as a trendy after-hours club,” Eric said cheerfully. “C’mon. I’ll get you a drink.”

“I brought my own,” Ria said, brandishing a large bottle of white wine. “After the day I’ve had, I could use a drink.”

“Trouble?” Eric said, leading her over toward the buffet.

“More in the line of chickens coming home to roost. You remember Kayla, Elizabet’s student?”

“How is she?” Eric asked.

“Starting school at Columbia this fall. And living with me while she does.”

Eric was startled into laughter. “The punkette and the Uptown Lady—how’d you get rooked into that one?”

Ria looked faintly cross. “Elizabet asked me, as a favor. She doesn’t want Kayla living in the dorm, and wants somebody local keeping an eye on her. L.A.’s a long way from New York.”

“And you’re elected,” Eric said.

“I volunteered,” Ria corrected him. “But as for what I’m going to do with her when I get her here . . .” She sighed, shrugging. “How bad can it be? But I’ve got to say, what I know about teenagers you could engrave on the head of a very small pin.”

“Well, she’s not exactly your ordinary teenager,” Eric said, imagining Kayla in Ria’s posh uptown apartment. Let’s just hope she doesn’t decide to redecorate. “Kayla’s a good kid. And like you said: how bad can it be?”

“I’m sure I’ll find out,” Ria said darkly. “And pretty soon, too: Elizabet’s going to send her out here as soon as she can get a cheap flight so she can settle in and get her shields up to speed.”

Though Los Angeles was a major city, it was far more sprawling than New York was. Manhattan’s population density would pose special problems for an Empath and Healer.

“You know you can count on me for help. Babysitting, and so forth.” He expertly peeled the wrapper off the neck of the bottle and twisted the cork out, pouring a plastic cup half-full for Ria.

“I’ll remember that,” Ria said. “And if you’re good, I won’t tell Kayla that’s what you said.”

“Truce!” Eric cried, throwing up his hands in mock surrender. “The last thing I want is to have Punky Brewster mad at me. C’mon, I’ll introduce you around.”

The tenants were mostly cool—there were only a couple of remarks of the “you’re that Ria Llewellyn?” sort—and finally Eric steered her over to where Hosea was.

He was leaning against the wall, his banjo slung across his chest, intently trading riffs with Bill, a guitarist and sometime member of various Soho bands.

The two of them waited politely until the musicians had finished, then Eric caught Hosea’s eye. “Hosea, Bill—I’d like you to meet Ria Llewellyn. She’s a friend of mine.”

There was a moment as Hosea and Ria sized each other up, each recognizing the power in the other. Then Hosea held out his hand.

“How do you do, Miss Llewellyn. Eric’s said a bit about you, all good.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Ria said. “Are you still looking for an apartment?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hosea said. “But at the prices you cityfolk are charging, you’d think I wanted to buy the place, not just live there.”

Even the most run-down studio apartment in a bad Manhattan neighborhood rented for $600–800 a month, and some Gothamites were paying a couple thousand a month for a place smaller than Eric’s living room.

“I may have a solution, at least a temporary one. LlewellCo is going to be putting up some new low-cost housing on the Lower East Side as an anchor point for redevelopment of some pretty grungy neighborhoods. We’re relocating the current tenants, of course, but it’s going to be November or so ­before the building’s actually condemned. Meanwhile, the place is standing half empty. I’d been going to put in a security guard—idle real estate being the devil’s workshop—but if you’d like to move in and keep an eye on the place until we raze it, you’d have a place to stay—free—and I wouldn’t have to worry about squatters moving in and making trouble for the remaining tenants.” She smiled hopefully at Hosea.

Wow. She sure played that one right, Eric thought in admiration. He knew Hosea wouldn’t even consider taking charity, but Ria’d figured out a way to offer him a free apartment that he’d still be paying for, in a sense—and she wasn’t lying when she said she’d need someone looking after the place.

He watched Hosea carefully turning the offer over in his mind, considering it from all angles. Finally he smiled. “That’d be a kindness, Miss Llewellyn. I’ve been taking up Eric’s couch for too long already. I expect he’d like his living room back.”

“It’s no problem,” Eric protested. A guilty twinge reminded him he still hadn’t suggested to Hosea that he take him on as a pupil, and part of him realized that Hosea having his own place would make that easier. Emotions between teacher and student could sometimes run high, and it was better not to add that dynamic to the fact of living under the same roof.

“Why don’t you come down to the office on Monday?” Ria said, fishing a business card out of her jacket. “I’ll make sure Anita has the keys; she can run you over there and get you settled in. There should be enough cast-off furniture there to take care of you, otherwise we can just rent some for a few months. You don’t want to be sleeping on the floor. I’ve been there—some of the roaches are big enough to saddle and ride.”

Hosea grinned, tucking the card into his shirt pocket. Unwanted insect life was no problem for a Bard—a few tunes, and the critters tended to go elsewhere. But he only thanked her again for her kindness.

The party broke up around two. Ria had left earlier, pleading a heavy workday on the morrow. Eric and Hosea stayed to help with clean-up—despite her promise to attend, Eric hadn’t seen Jimmie Youngblood anywhere tonight—and then headed upstairs.

“Y’know,” Eric said tentatively, once they’d gotten into the apartment, “there’s something I’ve been meaning to bring up with you, but I didn’t know just what to say.”

Hosea stopped and regarded him placidly. “Ayah, you’ve been looking as broody as a hen with one chick for nigh on a week. Guess it’ll be easier now that I’m moving on.”

“It’s not that,” Eric said quickly. “It’s . . . when I went to that party the other week, I got a chance to talk to my old teacher. I knew you were looking for somebody to train you as a Bard, and I thought he might be able to recommend somebody.”

Hosea waited, listening intently.

“He did. Me.”

He saw Hosea wait for the punch line, realize there wasn’t one, and consider the matter. “Would you be willing to do that?” he asked in his slow mountain drawl. “ ’Cause I don’t think you could pass me the shining without you was willing, and I can’t think of any way I could pay you back, leastways not for a long while.”

“Don’t even think about paying me,” Eric said firmly. “You don’t pay this back. You pay it forward. The question is, do you want me to teach you, if I can? I’ve never done anything like this before.”

The anxiety with which he waited for Hosea to answer surprised Eric. Somewhere between here and Maeve’s Naming Day, it had come to matter to him very much that Hosea think Eric worthy of being his teacher. He valued his new friend’s opinion that much.

Hosea grinned. “Then I guess we’ve got a lot to learn together, Mister Bard.” He stuck out his hand. “Let’s shake on it.”

Eric took his new student’s hand. “Done deal. I’ll teach you everything I know, however much that turns out to be. And I guess I’ll be learning a lot of things, too.”

Patience is the first lesson a teacher learns. A memory of Dharniel’s voice echoed in his mind. “We can start as soon as you’re settled into your new digs.”

On Monday mornings Eric didn’t have any classes until after noon, and he usually took advantage of that fact by sleeping late. “Morning person” was not in his job description, and even busking with Hosea, they generally skipped the morning rush-hour crowds.

This morning was different.

Screams woke him—no, not screams. Scream. The House itself was screaming, a soundless air-raid-siren wail of protest. And beyond that, audible to his ears and not his mind, the sound of a door slamming, over and over.

:Scramble! All units scramble!: he heard Greystone shout in his mind. He lunged out of bed and flung himself into the living room, clawing his hair out of his eyes.

Hosea wasn’t there. The front door was slamming itself rhythmically and springing open again.

:Greystone!: Eric mind-shouted. There was no answer.

He couldn’t stop the House’s alarms, but he could shut them out with a spell of his own. He did so automatically, and as it faded to a thin wail of protest, he apported the first clothes that came to mind—the jeans and T-shirt he’d been wearing last night—and ran for the door. It banged open and stayed that way as he passed through it.

Several of his fellow tenants were standing in the hall in various states of dress from business suits to nudity, all talking agitatedly at once. Most of them seemed to feel there’d been either an explosion or an earthquake, unlikely though the latter was for New York. Someone—he didn’t stop to see who—was holding a broadsword, its blade glowing a deep black-light purple.

Eric lunged down the stairs, barefoot, taking them three at a time. He was heading for the lobby. Whatever the source of the disturbance was, it was there. He could feel it.

But when he reached the ground floor, all he saw was Hosea, standing there in bewilderment. He had his duffle bag and his banjo with him.

Of course. He was going to pick up the keys from Ria today.

The wailing was louder here, loud enough to pierce his hush-spell. As Eric reached the lobby, Toni came charging out of her apartment. She was wearing an apron and carrying a baseball bat.

“Get back in there!” she shouted behind her at her two boys. The door slammed shut the way Eric’s had.

“What?” she demanded, staring around wildly, looking for the threat.

“All I did—” Hosea began.

Footsteps on the stairs behind Eric told him that the other Guardians were coming. Paul had obviously been in the shower when the alarm came—his hair was still full of shampoo and he wore nothing other than a terry-cloth bathrobe. Josй had been asleep—he was wearing a pair of striped pajamas and looked as confused as Eric felt. As for Jimmie, she arrived with gun drawn, looking as if she hadn’t slept yet.

“All I did—” Hosea began again. He took another step back from the door.

“Enough. Quiet,” Toni said, though not to them. Eric breathed a sigh of relief as the wailing ceased.

:I dunno, Boss. It’s quiet as church on Sunday out here. Gotta be something inside: Greystone said, cutting Eric in on his side of the conversation.

“What’s going on?” Jimmie demanded. The four Guardians seemed to commune silently for a moment.

Josй ran a hand through his disordered hair. “I’ve never heard anything like that in my life. It even woke the little ones,” he said, speaking of his beloved parrots.

“As well as everyone else in the building, Sensitive or no,” Paul said tensely. “You might have a little explaining to do, Toni.”

“What was—or is—it?” Toni demanded, more sharply this time.

Jimmie slowly lowered her gun. Eric heard the click, loud in the stillness, as she put the safety on.

By now several of the tenants had reached the first floor. Without seeming even to notice the gathering in the lobby, they hurried past them and out the front door, to cluster in a tight knot on the sidewalk staring anxiously back at the building.

“Well, if that don’t beat all,” Hosea said, gazing at the door with surprise. “It was locked when I tried it just a moment ago.”

“Locked?” Jimmie said. “It’s never locked from the inside.”

The exodus of tenants had ceased and the door had swung closed again. Jimmie walked over to the door and grasped the handle. It opened easily. She stared at the others in confusion.

“Try it again,” she said to Hosea, stepping back from the door.

He glanced back at Eric, who nodded.

As Hosea approached the door, they all felt the House tense, as if preparing to give voice again.

“Wait,” Toni said. Hosea stopped, his hand inches from the door. “You try it,” she said to Eric.

Shrugging, Eric walked over to the door. He hesitated for a moment, steeling himself for the psychic equivalent of an electric shock, but there was nothing. The door opened silently and easily. He opened and closed it several times. Nothing.

“No one else had any problem; neither Bard, Guardian, nor civilian. Only this young man,” Paul said.

“I think we’d better find out why,” Toni answered grimly. She glanced out at the cluster of people on the sidewalk.

“You figure out what to tell them, and with Eric’s permission, we’ll convene a council of war at his place—in, say, about fifteen minutes?” Paul said.

“Sure. No problem. I’ll put up some coffee.” And maybe get my heart started again. “C’mon, Hosea. No point trying to leave now.”

* * *

The hallway outside the apartment was empty when Eric and Hosea reached it. Eric’s door swung open peremptorily as soon as they reached the top of the stairs, but, to his relief, stayed still and allowed him to close it himself. He didn’t bother to lock it. He’d just had a taste of how very efficient the House’s security systems were.

“Just the way I’d want to start a Monday morning,” he said, sighing. He looked at Hosea with what he hoped was a reas­suring smile. “I know you’re going to have to go over it again when the others get here, but . . . what did you do?”

Hosea looked troubled, and when he spoke his Appalachian drawl was thicker than Eric had ever heard it. “Nothing I ain’t done most every other morning. I figured I’d just take my traps with me when I went down to Miss Llewellyn’s office, and that way I wouldn’t have to double back to get them. So I locked up, same as I always do, an when I got to the front door, it was locked. And all of a sudden, something started hollering in my head.” He shook his head ruefully. “I hope Miss Hernandez ain’t too put out with me. That woman’s got a temper on her when she’s bothered, and that’s the certain truth.”

Eric regarded Hosea, puzzled. He knew the other man was telling the truth—and the whole truth, as he knew it, at that. Unfortunately, it didn’t answer any of Eric’s questions.

“Why should everyone else be able to leave and not you? Why this time and none of the others?”

It was a question still unanswered half an hour later, as Eric, Hosea, and the four Guardians—with Greystone listening in from his perch outside the window—gathered in Eric’s living room. Toni had given the other tenants the cover story that there’d been an explosion in the boiler that provided the building’s steam heat, but that it was all taken care of now and the building was perfectly safe. The explanation would do as long as nobody thought too closely about it, though of course, those who had sensed the House’s alarm for more or less what it was would have to be told something more. And the six of them were no closer to the truth than they had been downstairs.

“So what was different about this time?” Jimmie asked Hosea.

The country Bard shook his head in bafflement. “Nothing I know of. I was going to go and get settled in to my new place, and then come back here to pick up Eric—you know, so we could go busking in the subway?”

“Wait a minute,” Jimmie said slowly. “What ‘new place’?”

“I’m moving out. Miss Ria, Eric’s ladyfriend, she offered me a place to hang my hat for a few months, an—”

“That’s it,” Paul said, interrupting him. “It’s got to be. It’s the only thing that’s changed. This time you weren’t just going out for a few hours. You were leaving.”

The six of them looked at each other.

“Well, now we know that much,” Toni said sourly. “Not that we know anything at all.”

“We know that the House doesn’t want Hosea to leave,” Jimmie said slowly. The four Guardians looked at each other. “And we know what that means.”

“No we don’t,” Eric said. “At least, the two of us don’t.”

Jimmie and Toni looked at each other, and again Eric had that sense of unspoken communication. After a long moment, Jimmie answered him.

“You know that the House picks its tenants for its own inscrutable reasons. If it wants you, you can stay. When it doesn’t want you, you go—you have to. But sometimes, it really wants somebody. And when it does, it encourages them—strongly!—to stay. My guess is that your friend here wasn’t taking the hint. So it stopped hinting—and yelled.”

“But there are four of us,” Josй said, as if continuing a different conversation. “There’ve never been more than four. Why him? Why now?”

The House wants Hosea? As a Guardian? Eric thought blankly. Josй couldn’t mean anything else.

“It’s not as if there’s a hard-and-fast set of rules about this sort of thing,” Paul offered, looking thoughtful. “There are four of us, and as we know, that’s a lot of Guardians to gather in one place. Why not five?”

“No vacancies?” Toni suggested. “The place is full, Paul. Every apartment’s rented, and they’re all good people. Who am I supposed to evict?”

“There’s that studio in the basement,” Eric said. “You could clean that out. We’d help.”

“Just a doggone minute, here,” Hosea said. “What’s this all about?”

“I think,” Eric said slowly, “that it’s about you joining the Occult Police. Becoming a Guardian.”

“I can’t do that!” Hosea protested. “I ain’t a—a—” He groped for the word. “A root doctor like you folks. I got me a little shine, sure, but I’m a Bard—leastways, I’m gonna be one as soon as Eric here gets to training me. Right now I don’t know much of anything.”

The four Guardians looked at each other again.

“Well,” Paul said, “it does look like you’re going to have the time to learn whatever it is you’re here to learn, my young friend. Because no matter for what purpose the House wants you, I truly don’t believe you’ll be allowed to leave until you agree to stay.”

“As much sense as that makes,” Jimmie offered.

“The basement apartment’s not much, but I can get it cleaned out and painted by the end of the week,” Toni said. “Then it’s yours.”

“I don’t want no charity,” Hosea said, looking stubborn. “I’ve got a place to go to, all ready and waiting for me. I don’t have to stay here.”

Oh, brother! Eric thought. No wonder the House’d had to shout, if that was how Hosea had been responding to its gentler suggestions.

“You may be stubborn as a pig in mud, but I guarantee, this place is stubborner,” Jimmie said. “Don’t pick a fight you can’t win, Hosea.”

“Por favor,” Josй begged. “For the sake of my little ones. And to spare me another awakening like this one.”

Toni was looking at Hosea critically. “Well, maybe you’re wrong, Jimmie. As far as I can tell, he hasn’t been Called.” The others nodded agreement, seeing something Eric couldn’t. “But the House wants him to stay. Mr. Songmaker, would you consider doing us all a very great favor and staying on until we can get this sorted out? The rent won’t be much for that small a studio, and I’ve got a certain amount of latitude in what I charge, anyway. Eric tells me you’ll be getting your busking license soon, and I can wait for the rent until then. Besides, if you do stay, I won’t have to wake Josй up any time I need some heavy lifting done,” she added with a grin.

Hosea still hesitated.

“Do it,” Eric said firmly. “I don’t want another wake-up call like that one, either. We need the time to figure this out.”

“I hate to disappoint Miss Ria that way,” Hosea said tentatively.

“She’ll survive,” Eric said. “You aren’t irreplaceable there. But it looks like you are here.”

“Well . . . okay,” Hosea said. “I accept your kind offer, Miss Hernandez. And I’d just like to say that I’m sorry for putting you good folks to all this trouble on my account.”

“Don’t mention it,” Jimmie said, smiling crookedly. “Battle, murder, and sudden death our specialty. And I’m just as glad to know that we aren’t going to have to find out what kind of crisis requires five Guardians on tap.”

“It’s settled, then,” Toni said briskly. “C’mon, Hosea. You can help me empty that place out and figure out where to stow all that junk.” She got to her feet.

“I guess I’ll go knock on a few doors and reassure our Sensitives that the Last Trump hasn’t blown,” Paul said, also getting to his feet.

Toni and Hosea left, and in a few moments the others followed.

“Hey, Jimmie? A word?” Eric said, as she prepared to follow them out.

Jemima Youngblood stopped and turned back to Eric, closing the door.

“What’s really going on here?” he asked. “Is Hosea a Guardian now, or what?”

“I wish I knew,” Jimmie said, sounding as puzzled as Eric felt. “I’ve never heard the House alarms go off like that for anything else—not even the time it suckered that child molester into the basement so we could deal with him quietly, or the time one of our other tenant’s guests found his ritual tools and decided it’d be fun to conjure up a demon. But . . . you recognized Hosea as—what? a fellow Bard?—the first time you laid eyes on him. Well, it’s the same for us. One Guardian always knows another. And as far as that recognition factor goes, Hosea isn’t a Guardian. I just wish I knew what the House knows that we don’t.”

Yeah. Me, too, Eric thought. “Oh, well. At least he’ll be close by for his Bardic training.”

“Look on the bright side,” Jimmie agreed. She glanced at her watch. “Nine-thirty. And I’m working four to midnight this month. If I don’t get my head down soon I’m not going to be worth much at all.”

“You’d better go on and get some sleep, then,” Eric said. He opened the door for her. “Sleep well.”

“Thanks,” Jimmie said. “And thanks for convincing your stubborn friend to take the path of least resistance. I’m not surprised the House had to yell to get his attention.”

“We’ll try to avoid that in the future,” Eric agreed.

But how? he wondered, long after Jimmie had left.

NINE:
PUT YOUR HAND INSIDE
THE PUPPETHEAD

Bonnie Wing and Kit Duquesne were friends of Beth’s from the old days back in L.A.—Bonnie was a scriptwriter for animated series, and Kit had been a show runner until decid­ing that the Hollyweird pressure cooker wasn’t for her. By a flukey stroke of luck, a spec script of Kit’s had been auctioned about the time she was deciding to get out, and she’d used the money to put a down payment on a down-at-heels New York apartment building that faced Inwood Hill Park. With her lover Bonnie, Kit had moved back East and started fixing the place up.

Beth, Kory, and Eric had stayed with the two of them last year when Beth and Kory were getting Eric settled in to his new digs, and Beth had welcomed the opportunity to renew her friendship with the two women. Beth and Kit—a tall regal blonde, equally adept with ritual blade and rattan sword—had been in the same coven back in Los Angeles, and Kit had started another one when she’d moved back East; Kit was the closest thing to a real-life Rupert Giles of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame that Beth knew. If anybody could solve the problem that Chinthliss had set them, it was Kit Duquesne.

“Beth—and Studly!” Kit stared at them in surprise through the crack in the door. There was a rattle of chains and deadbolts, and then she opened it all the way. “Come in—when did you get back?”

“We’re just in town for a day or so. We left Maeve with Kory’s family, but we did bring pictures,” Beth answered. “Sorry to just drop in like this. . . .”

“No! It’s great to see you both! I’ll put on the tea. Bonnie’s on a deadline, for BattleMages or Teddybear Bikers from Hell or some damn thing. She’ll be out in about an hour.”

Kit walked off to the kitchen, leaving them in the large sunny living room for a moment. Two futon couches were angled to take full advantage of the high windows, and a large air conditioner wheezed and rattled as it did battle with the August heat. Hallow, a very large gray tabby, slept atop it, oblivious to the noise. Two more—a tiny black kitten (new since Beth’s last visit) and a regal long-haired white cat (Mistwraith)—drifted over to inspect the newcomers. Kory knelt down, and the kitten, taking this for an invitation, promptly swarmed up his arm and settled itself on his shoulder, purring noisily.

“Do you really think she can help us?” Kory asked quietly, straightening up and offering his fingers to the kitten on his shoulder, which promptly bit down with an expression of blissful contentment.

“I hope so. I don’t know of any Sidhe with the kind of experience we need,” Beth said.

“And how,” Kory asked her, “will you phrase the question?”

“Talking secrets?” Kit asked, walking back in carrying a tray. “Bonnie’s been baking—she always does when she’s putting off work—and you reap the fruit of her procrastination. Ah, I see you’ve met Beltane. Don’t let her bully you. Hallow is terrified of her,” she added, indicating the sleeping tabby.

She set the tray down on the large handmade coffee table in the center of the room. Mistwraith instantly hopped up to investigate, and was set on the floor—several times—by Kit.

Maeve’s baby pictures were brought out and admired, herb tea and orange muffins were served and consumed, and idle chitchat about the building, Bonnie’s work (in addition to her various cartoon gigs, she also wrote a comic called The Elite, which was starting to gather a following), and various events mainly of interest to New Yorkers occupied several minutes.

“Now,” Kit said, putting down her empty mug. “What’s the deal? It can’t be love of the Big Apple that brings you here twice in three months. Are you and Studly Do-Right here on the lam again?”

Beth smiled. “No, but we do have a problem we need some help with. It’s kind of a long story.”

Kit sat back on the futon couch. “We’ve got all day.”

Beth looked helplessly at Kory. Coming here had seemed like such a great idea, right up until the time came to tell Kit why she was here. Kory was right. Figuring out what to say was going to be harder than she thought.

“We need to buy a computer system for a dragon,” Kory said simply, “and we’re not sure what kind will work in his kingdom. Beth thought you might be able to help.”

Beth’s jaw dropped.

“Uh-huh,” Kit said, poker-faced. There was a long pause. “What does a dragon need with a computer?”

“Dragons prize novelty and innovation above all things. Also, he wishes to ‘surf the net,’ ” Kory added, with the pride of one who has mastered an unfamiliar vocabulary.

Kit looked at Beth. Beth smiled weakly. Somehow, telling the simple truth had not been on her list of approaches to the problem of getting Kit to help them.

“Joke?” Kit asked, when it became apparent that Beth wasn’t going to say anything.

“No joke.” Beth sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound. . . . “Kory, it might help if you showed her.”

Kory glanced at her, eyebrows raised, then dispelled the glamour that made him look like nothing more exotic than a very tall human. Beltane purred harder, and Mistwraith jumped up into his lap.

Kit stared at Kory and said nothing—very eloquently—for several minutes. “Bright Court or Dark?” she said at last.

“Bright,” Kory said, sounding faintly miffed.

And that’s a hell of a first question for someone who ought to never have seen an elf before, Beth thought.

“That’s all right, then,” Kit said. “And you aren’t planning to start a War of the Oaks in Central Park, or anything like that?”

“Why does everyone ask that?” Kory wondered plaintively.

“It’s a book,” Beth explained. “Several books, actually. No, we’re just passing through, Kit, honest. Most Sidhe don’t want to have anything to do with New York. There’s too much Cold Iron here for them.”

“Uh-huh,” Kit said again, still in that noncommittal tone. Whether she believed them or not, Beth still wasn’t sure. “So, you want a computer that will work in Elfland? It won’t be cheap, I can tell you that.”

“No problem,” Kory said.

The story of whatever experience it was that had made Kit so ready to believe in elves would be a tale for another time. Kit didn’t go into it and Beth wasn’t sure she wanted to ask right now; Kit simply accepted Kory and moved on to a series of questions about the computer. Beth wasn’t sure whether she was disappointed or not. Over the years, she’d kind of gotten used to people being weirded out by the idea of Real Live Elves, and here Kit was taking it far more calmly than she’d taken the news that Beth was going to have a baby.

And if Beth had hoped for more dramatics from Bonnie, she was to be disappointed there as well. When Bonnie finally emerged from her office (looking rumpled and distant, most of her mind still obviously on her writing) and saw Kory—who had seen no reason to restore his human-seeming—she barely blinked. Bonnie was petite and dark, her classic Oriental beauty making her look fragile and innocent. This impression usually lingered with new acquaintances until they saw her fight.

“SFX?” Bonnie asked Kit in the shorthand of long partnership.

“Nope. True gen: Sidhe,” Kit had replied. By now she was surrounded by reference books, in which she was looking up this and that esoteric factoid.

“More of them?” Bonnie asked in disbelief, as though she were talking about tourists or butterflies. Dearly as Beth would have loved to chase down that remark, she was not to be given the chance. Bonnie had her workout bag over her shoulder, and was obviously on her way to the dojo. “Grins. Bang-boom. Later?”

“Yeah. Gonna take ’em down to see Ray. Deep pockets for this one. Script done?”

“Bang. Boom,” Bonnie said. “Kiss-kiss.” She waved to Beth. “Late. Toodles.” Explanation delivered, she left.

“ ‘Ray’?” Beth asked, eyebrows raised.

“Friend of mine,” Kit said. “Tenant, too. Knows way more about all this stuff than I do, but that’s not the point here. I know enough spelltech and psionics to figure out that side of it, but I know jack about computers. Meanwhile, we can decide what to do about dinner. Bon eats out on class nights, so we don’t have to wait for her.”

Over dinner preparations, Kit told the two of them a little more. Ray—Azrael Arcane if you were being formal—lived on the floor below Kit and Bonnie and built special-needs computer systems—and if Beth’s project wasn’t a special-needs system, Kit said, she didn’t know what was. She’d inherited him from the previous owner of the building, and as far as she knew, he never left his apartment. He wouldn’t be available until a few hours after sundown, Kit explained, so they made spaghetti and garlic bread, in between bouts of rescuing Hallow from Beltane and insuring that Mistwraith ­remained a white cat and not a tomato-colored one.

Beth found herself relaxing, because now the big secret was out and nobody seemed to care—and Kory had the Sidhe knack of easy charm, which he exercised in full measure.

“Is that name for real?” Beth said, returning to the subject of their evening’s appointment following a luxurious dessert of strawberries in crиme fraiche. Kit had wanted to serve them tiramisu, but the coffee and chocolate it contained would have been deadly to Kory.

“It’s on his rent checks. And you’re a fine one to talk, Miss If-It’s-Tuesday-I-Must-Have-A-New-Alias,” Kit teased.

Kit was one of the few people who Beth had kept in touch with following the Griffith Park Massacre, and one of the few who knew anything about the real situation of Beth’s life, though of course Beth had been careful about what she’d told her. Now, she wondered if she’d needed to bother. Kit obviously didn’t boggle at elves. “That’s different,” Beth said defen­sively. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“Yeah, sometime you’re going to have to tell me the whole story—the whole story—about that. It just seems a little too X-Files to believe—you know, the government being after witches?”

“Psychics, really. And you’re a fine one to talk. You don’t even blink at seeing Kory, and you think a government conspiracy is too weird?”

“Not too weird. Too done-to-death. You’d think even the government would be bored with conspiracies by now,” Kit amplified, tossing strawberry hulls for the cats to chase. “If you want conspiracy theory, talk to Ray. He’s up on all of them from Gemstone to Trapdoor.”

“Is he Wiccan?” Beth asked, because Kit spoke as if she knew him well.

“He’s . . . eccentric,” Kit said measuringly. “But systems ­designers can afford to be. I think he can help you, and he owes me a favor. Beyond that, there are things that woman was not meant to know. It’s late enough now. Let me go call and see if he’s around.”

“Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice said,” Beth commented to Kory when Kit had left the room.

“I suppose it is presumptuous to ask sorcerers to be commonplace,” Kory said musingly. “Like Bards, their lives are their art.”

“Eric’s normal,” Beth said, stung by the implication.

“In Bards, such normalcy is eccentricity beyond compare,” Kory pointed out inarguably. “I love and value him, but Eric strives for the commonplace as others quest for dreams and far enchantments—much as if I were to drive a taxi and live in Queens.”

“I’d love to see that,” Beth muttered under her breath.

“The doctor is in,” Kit announced, returning from her call. “C’mon. I’ll take you down.”

After what both Kit and Kory had said, Beth thought she was braced for every possible sort of Earth-plane weirdness—or at least, for the sort of theatrics and eccentricity she’d grown used to from her New Age acquaintanceship. But Azrael’s bizarrerie was of an entirely different order.

There was a keypad lock affixed to his door in place of the usual sort of key and cylinder lock, and Kit tapped out a quick nine digits then pushed the door open into darkness. The hall lights illuminated a long hallway with floor, walls, and ceiling painted matte black. Kit ushered them in and closed the door behind her.

“Don’t mind this. The light hurts his eyes, so he keeps the place pretty dark.” She led them down the hall and into the living room, which was lit by a faint red glow.

It, too, was painted flat black, making Beth feel as if she were floating in a vast empty space. It was disorienting, but comforting, too—on a level far below consciousness, she was aware that nothing could harm her here. Despite its outrй appearance, this was a safe place, a good place.

As her eyes adjusted, she could make out more details of her surroundings, and spared a pang of envy for Kory’s natural advantages—elf-sight could see everything as plain as if it were broad day. There were several computers racked against the far wall, but all the screens were dark; the green and amber status lights giving the only sign that they were powered up. She could make out a sectional sofa—also black—that lined two walls, and the window was covered with heavy blackout drapes, drawn against the mild summer night. Despite this, the air was cool and fresh—somewhere a very quiet air conditioner and ozone generator must be running. The only illu­mination came from a strip of red neon that ran all the way around the ceiling.

“Hello, Kit. You must be Kory and Beth. Welcome.”

And in all this, he wears dark glasses, Beth thought in disbelief, seeing their host at last. The self-styled Azrael Arcane got to his feet and came over to them, leaning heavily on a silver-headed cane. He was indeed wearing dark glasses: square-lensed, faintly antique-looking things, whose lenses appeared entirely black in the weird scarlet light. He had long straight hair, as pale as Kory’s—though in the neon it looked candy-apple red—that fell straight down his back, and was wearing an open-collared Poet Shirt beneath a dark suit of the Earlier Victorian period. He was barefoot. The whole effect was exotic in the extreme.

He held out his hand for Beth to shake. Seeing the darkness of her skin against his, she realized what the eccentric lighting was designed to conceal—Azrael Arcane was an albino.

No wonder it’s so dark in here. If his albinism is acute, he’s practically blind in strong sunlight. Well, that explains a lot.

I think.

Maybe.

He shook hands with Kory as well, who had resumed his human disguise, and motioned them toward the couch. “Sit down, please. Kit tells me you need to consult about the specs for a special needs computer system. Environment or user?”

“Environment,” Beth said, remembering that Chinthliss could look perfectly human when he chose, and so would not need something that could be operated by someone the size of a small aircraft. “What we really need is a top of the line, newer than tomorrow system that’s totally self-contained. No outside power source, no hookup to phone lines—” let Chinthliss figure out his local ISP; that part wasn’t her problem “—and it has to be stable in . . .” She faltered. Just how did you describe the physical conditions of Underhill without describing Underhill itself?

“In Between-the-Worlds conditions,” Kit supplied smoothly.

“You want to run a computer in a Circle without interfering with the raised power?” Azrael asked. “Why not just do your computing after you take the Circle down?”

“We can’t,” Beth said quickly. “This is a sort of . . . permanent Circle.” She looked at Kory, who nodded agreement.

Now why didn’t I come up with that explanation earlier? Not that Kit would have bought it for a New York minute. Elves would have had to come into it somewhere.

But Azrael didn’t seem inclined to pry, taking the explanation—and the parameters—at face value. “Well, it can be done, of course,” he said, sounding puzzled. “But it will take a lot of space, and a lot of money, and it’ll eat batteries like nobody’s business. Your best bet might be a small gas-­powered generator—”

“This must be done without Cold Iron,” Kory said. “As much as possible.”

Azrael glanced at Kit, and some unspoken communication passed between them. “You like a challenge,” she reminded him.

“Hm. Well, some of the new Lithium-Ion batteries have a pretty long life, or you might want to run it off solar; the new ones run on what comes through on a cloudy day. If you use solar cells to charge your LION pack, you can recharge while you’re not using the computer. Is iron-free your only restriction?”

Beth glanced at Kit, who seemed to know where Azrael was going with this and was able to translate. “That’s all. We don’t have to worry about planetary influences with the other metals.”

“And price is no object?” Azrael asked. “We’re talking thousands, here. Several thousands—possibly several ten thousands, even waiving my usual exorbitant fees.”

Kit looked at them.

“None,” Kory said firmly. “And we will be happy to pay your fees as well.”

There was enough kenned gold on deposit in a special bank account that Elfhame Misthold used for its World Above purchases to cover almost any need, and when funds ran low the elves could always ken more gold. There was no fraud involved, for the gold was good—true metal, not faerie gold, to vanish when the spell dissolved.

“No, this is a favor to Kit. Okay. If you can give me a day or so to make some calls, I can give you a set of plans for the cage, and a shopping list for the computer. Your best bet is probably to hit up Comdex next month and pick up something there. You said top of the line?”

“The newest and most fancy,” Beth said, on secure ground when it came to shopping. “But . . . what cage?”

“A Faraday Cage, of course,” Azrael said. “Named for the magneto-optic effect in which the polarization plane of an electromagnetic wave is rotated under the influence of a magnetic field parallel to the direction of propagation.”

Beth blinked, having gotten lost somewhere around “magneto-optic.” Azrael smiled and took pity on her.

“Michael Faraday was a nineteenth-century inventor who discovered that an electrical discharge, such as lightning, would flow outside and around a metal cage to go to ground. This is the reason airplanes and cars can be struck by lightning without harm to the occupants: they’re a type of Faraday Cage. But when you build one out of copper or some equivalent neutral conductor and run a current through it, it cancels out all electromagnetic field energy. Cages of this type are used to shield delicate electronic equipment from stray EMF fields, and when J. B. Rhine was doing his ESP experiments at Duke University back in the last century, he discovered that his subjects’ accuracy tended to skyrocket when they were placed in a Faraday Cage, leading to the theory that psionics—and, by extension, magic—involves some kind of manipulation of electromagnetic or bioelectric fields. What this means for you is that the computer’s magnetic field and sphere of influence will stay inside the cage, and the magical energy will stay outside the cage, and never the twain will meet.”

“But won’t that kind of insulation keep the computer from connecting with the Internet?” Kit asked.

“Possibly. I couldn’t say for sure unless I saw it up and running in its host environment. The simplest solution is just to run a copper ground to your landline, but it might need to be tweaked with. You’ll probably need to run a few tests to see how well your system connects—it will, however, run without disrupting the magical environment, so long as it’s in the cage and the cage is powered up.”

“Can it really be so simple?” Beth marveled.

“Only in the sense that it can be conceived and described. After that, you’re talking money—large cartloads of it, and that’s where you run into trouble. Most magicians have more interest in the Great Work than in getting rich. Governments commonly have large cartloads of money, but have trouble attracting competent magicians. Magic is anarchic by its very nature—Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law doesn’t get along very well with beancounters in suits. Any competent tyrant with any awareness of the Unseen World starts out by restricting access to it: Hitler didn’t round up all the Adepts he could get his hands on in the 1930s—from astrologers to Freemasons and everything in between—just to be mean. He saw them as a threat to his power. Fortunately, these days nobody takes magic that seriously. Something to be thankful to the New Age fluffy bunnies for.”

“Some people do,” Beth said, repressing a shiver.

“Well, there’s Sun Streak and Stargate and things like that, but those projects seem to be focusing more on psionicists, fortunately. So long as they’re concentrating on natural Talents, and not on Adepts, they should lose interest eventually. And if they do decide we’re a nuisance, probably all they’ll do is make study of the Art illegal. We’ve been underground before. We’ll survive.”

“Except for the people who get caught,” Beth said tightly.

“That’s right,” Azrael said levelly. “Except for those who get caught. But I’m sure Kit warned you both about my hobbyhorse, and I don’t think I’m going to transgress the bounds of hospitality by riding it tonight. You’ll forgive me, I know.” He smiled at them engagingly, and Beth found herself liking him more and more.

“I think—in the long list of people the government is likely to build internment camps for—that occultists come way, way down the list,” Kit said.

Beth and Azrael exchanged glances of wordless disagreement. Both of them thought that Adepts were much higher on that list than Kit seemed to—and when you came right down to it, it didn’t matter if they were at the top of the list or the bottom, if they were on the list at all.

“Well, that’s enough for tonight, ladies and gentleman. I’ve got places to surf and people to annoy. I should have that stuff you need by tomorrow night, and after that, it’s up to you,” Azrael said.

“That seems fair,” Kory said.

“More than fair. You’ve been a great help. Are you sure there isn’t anything we can do in return?” Beth asked.

Azrael smiled. “Sure there is. When you get it up and running, let me know how it works, okay?”

“We will,” Beth promised.

After Hosea left to go and clean out the basement room, Eric paced around the apartment, still edgy. There was no real point in trying to go back to sleep—not with the adrenaline surging through his system. He fielded a couple of calls from friends who lived in the building—mostly they wanted to compare notes on what he thought had happened. Finally he decided he might as well get his stuff together and go on over to the school. At least at Juilliard, he’d face a different kind of annoyance. And maybe he could shake his feeling that there was trouble on the horizon—distant still, but surely coming.

Must’ve picked that up from Jimmie. But the Guardians are supposed to have some kind of Distant Early Warning System, and it doesn’t seem to have gone off. Every attack of the blue megrims doesn’t have to herald the end of the world—I guess it’s true what Freud said: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

He was on his way out the door when the phone rang again. At first he just looked at it, unwilling to answer it and field yet another set of vague yet apprehensive questions. All the psychics in the building knew perfectly well that there hadn’t been trouble with the boiler this morning, but even if he wanted to tell them the whole truth, he wasn’t sure what it was. So far, this morning was a story without an ending. None of the Guardians, or Eric for that matter, knew why the building wanted Hosea, or for what—and Eric wasn’t sure if the discovery that Guardian House could act independently of the Guardians wasn’t the creep-worthiest part of the whole thing.

After the fourth ring, though, he turned back to answer it. Might as well do his damage control now as later.

“Eric? I was afraid I’d missed you!”

“Bethie?” She wasn’t quite the last person he’d expected to be calling him, but she was certainly in the bottom ten. “Where are you? Is everything all right?”

“We’re at Kit and Bonnie’s up in Inwood. Everything’s fine, actually, for a change. Kory and I are off to Comdex tomorrow to buy a computer system for a dragon—we took Ria’s advice, and it worked out great!”

She sounded happy and excited. Beth was in better spirits than Eric had seen her for quite a while—more like the old, pre-everything self, bubbly and effervescent.

“Wait—wait—wait—slow down. You’re buying a dragon?”

“A computer for a dragon,” Beth corrected, laughing. “His name’s Chinthliss, and he can help us—Kory and me—figure out how to have kids. He’s a friend of someone named Tannim, at Elfhame Fairgrove, he says—you know, with the race cars? All he wants is a computer system that will work Underhill, so he can surf the net, and Kit’s friend Azrael figured out how to make it work—all you need is a Faraday Cage and some really big batteries—this is going to be great!”

Beth was burbling, and well she might, if this Chinthliss had solved the problem of her and Kory’s future offspring. How had that been Ria’s idea? He’d have to ask her.

Are you sure you can trust this Chinthliss? Eric wanted to ask, but kept himself from asking. She’d said Kory was with her, and Kory would cut his own throat before he let Beth wander into any perils Underhill. If the two of them had cut a deal with this dragon, Chinthliss must be all right.

“So where are you going to find this computer?” Eric asked, when Beth ran down a little.

“Comdex. That big trade show they hold in Las Vegas every September. Kory says he thinks there’s a hame there—some of the Seleighe Sidhe took over an Unseleighe casino, if you can believe that, so we’ll have a Gate right there. And then we bring the stuff back through to Chinthliss’ place, and he’ll give us the information we need! He said so! Oh, Goddess, I can’t wait to get home and tell Maeve she’s going to have a little brother or sister!”

Eric smiled, listening to her cheerful prattle. At least things were looking up for someone. He wasn’t quite sure where that thought came from; his life was doing okay. This thing with Hosea would work out, he and Ria were doing fine, and nobody was even trying to kill him lately.

“Well, that’s great,” he said, a little lamely. Beth picked up on his tone at once.

“You sound a little down. Things working out okay at your end?”

“Oh, sure,” Eric said hastily. “I just got up way too early this morning. It looks like Hosea’s going to be living here—there’s a studio apartment available in the basement, and he’s getting it cleaned out now. He’s okay with my teaching him, too. I’m the only one who’s worried about that.”

Beth laughed. “Banyon, sometimes you worry way too much! You’ll be a great teacher. You wouldn’t want to contradict Master Dharniel, now, would you?”

“Perish forfend,” Eric said, smiling in spite of himself. He found that deep inside he was actually looking forward to the day he could introduce his new student to his old master. “Hey, I hate to cut this short, but I’ve got class and I don’t want to be late. You guys going to be around this evening? We could get together, maybe.”

“I wish we could, but Kory and I are going back to Everforest in an hour or so and then out to Lost Wages, and then from there to Chinthliss’. Come see us when we get back?”

“If I can,” Eric promised.

“Gotta run,” Beth said. “Love you!”

“Love you, too,” Eric answered. He stared at the phone for a long minute after he hung up. Beth’s good news ought to have made him feel better, but the strangely unsettled feeling he’d had all morning didn’t want to go away. He hadn’t wanted to burden Beth with his own problems, but ignoring them didn’t make them go away, either.

Just what did the House want with Hosea . . . and why?

She’d thought she’d been afraid before, but it was nothing to the terror Jeanette felt now, clutching at Aerune as he rode through the shadows of this unearthly place. She could feel the T-Stroke burning through her veins, pulling her down into darkness. She fought its effect frantically. If she lost consciousness here and fell from Aerune’s horse, she did not know what would happen to her.

They were no longer on Earth. Somehow she knew that, though there was little she could see. Aerune’s cloak whipped back over her, blinding her, as the stallion moved from a trot to a canter, and the chill surrounding her fought with the fire in her blood. She could see a full moon above them, horribly distorted, and around the horse’s legs shadowy pale things yelped and gibbered, leaping into the air to attack the riders and falling back in defeat.

Then the moon was gone in a blinding flash of light, and they rode across a sun-hammered desert of cracked clay beneath a dark brass-colored sky. Furnace heat struck like a blow, and in the sky above, black shapes wheeled and screamed.

Then darkness again, and on the horizon, torn by the black peaks of mountains, a distorted, blood-red sun filling half the sky. The air was thin here, and Jeanette found herself gasping for breath. Her lungs burned with the need for oxygen, and the sky above was black, filled with unwinking stars.

Then air and light—the foggy dimness of a swamp filled with giant trees festooned with corpse-pale moss. Aerune’s stallion splashed and skidded through the slime, and with each step it filled the air with the stench of rot. She looked down, and saw that the black water was filled with writhing white worms, each longer than a man. She shut her eyes tightly then, and did not open them until a shock of cold told here that they were again elsewhere.

—An arctic plain, the snow only marginally whiter than the sky overhead. In the distance, a vast structure of black stone, and the sound of a strange high-pitched refrain: Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!

—Darkness more absolute than blindness, the only sound the stallion’s running hooves.

—Cold again, the stallion running faster, along a thin shining bridge only inches wide. Stars above and below, shining dimly through veils of violet haze. Ahead the bridge ended, and the stallion gathered itself to spring, leaping out into nothingness. She screamed then, the sound thin and flat as the world shifted once more.

The stallion slowed to a walk.

They were in a forest. It was dark, but this time the almost-comforting dark of night. Everything was lit by faint greenish moonlight, though she could see no moon. The trees were like nothing she’d ever seen: black and smooth and leafless, looking unpleasantly like polished bone. The ground was covered with a low white mist that reached to the horse’s knees concealing everything beneath it. She felt flushed and nauseated as the drug worked through her, and Jeanette knew she had only a few minutes of consciousness left. The trees wheeled dizzyingly around her, and she could not tell whether that was an effect of the drug, or whether they really were moving.

When they finally left the forest, Jeanette could see the source of the light. Far in the distance, at the top of a peak that rose up out of the center of the bone-wood, stood a tall gothic castle, shining with a baleful moth-green light. Try as she might, she could not see it clearly; walls and towers seemed to meet at impossible angles, and it wavered in her sight like a heat mirage, though the night was damp and cool. The castle grew to fill the entire world, burning brighter and then blindingly bright.

And then there was nothing at all.

Consciousness returned in slow stages. For a long time she drifted back and forth, aware enough to know she was awake, but unable to remember why that might be odd. Finally, a single fact floated to the front of her mind, pulling awareness with it like a train of boxcars.

She’d taken T-Stroke.

Aerune had kidnapped her.

The T-Stroke hadn’t killed her.

She was somewhere in Elfland.

Aerune’s castle?

Jeanette opened her eyes, rolling over in the same movement and crashing to the floor as she fell off the narrow bed she had lain on. The pain completed the process of her awakening, and the last few hours settled back firmly into memory. She looked around.

She’d been lying on a narrow shelf cut into a wall. She was in a small room, much taller than it was wide. Twelve feet up there was a door set into the wall; a latticework of iron bars through which light spilled. The walls and floor were made up of large gray stone blocks, like every dungeon in every movie ever made. Torches burned in iron brackets on the walls, but the light was white and directionless, too steady to be coming from the flickering orange flames or the doorway above.

It’s like a stage set.

She got to her feet and quickly sat down on the bed, her heart racing with excitement and fear. She’d gambled and won: by the very fact that she was alive, she knew she was one of the lucky 10%—she’d survived her dosing, and now, by rights, she should be able to manifest some sort of paranatural power.

But what? She felt no different. All the test subjects had used their powers instinctively, but she felt no instinctive pull to do anything out of the ordinary.

What was true was that she was dying. All the subjects who had received T-Stroke had died in a matter of days or hours. She felt a small thrill of triumph at cheating Aerune of his victory by dying, but quickly stifled it, unwilling to look beyond this moment to her own death. If Elfland existed, then so must Hell, in some form or another, and Jeanette knew that Hell was her destiny for what she’d done in life. To distract herself, she resumed her study of her cell and herself.

The clothes she had come here in—jeans, jacket, boots—were gone: she was barefoot, wearing a sleeveless grayish knee-length tunic of some coarse stiff fabric. There were chains and shackles set into the walls, and she walked over to inspect them, hefting the fetters in her hands. By rights they should have been black iron, and they were black, but the sheen and smoothness told her they were not iron. If anything she’d read about elves was true, cold iron would burn them like a red-hot poker, so the metal must not be either iron or steel. Pewter? Silver? More mysteries. It did explain the absence of her clothes, however. Everything but the T-shirt had iron in it—the studs on her jacket, the toe caps of her boots, the hooks and eyelets on her brassiere, even the snaps and rivets on her jeans. All steel, and thus taboo in this place—or should be. How much of what she’d read in old books could be trusted, and how much was sheer fabulation? Trusting anything she thought she knew could be fatal.

She did know one thing for sure and certain, however. Aerune had not brought her here just to lock her up and leave her to rot. And there was only one thing that made her valuable: her ability to manufacture T-Stroke.

But what did a faerie lord want with a drug that gave humans psionic powers? Jeanette frowned, puzzled. Elves had magic powers—she’d certainly seen enough hard evidence of that from Aerune—so she couldn’t imagine why they’d need what T-Stroke could do for them. T-Stroke didn’t give anyone magic powers, anyway; it gave them psionic powers—a fine distinction, but a real one. While magic could play cut and paste with the laws of physics, psionics were essentially bound by them: with psychic powers you might be able to read minds or see the future—or heal—but you couldn’t turn lead into gold, raise the dead, or teach a pig to speak English. And while natural psychics might manifest several different psychic gifts in varying strengths, her T-Stroke-created Talents only seemed to be able to do one particular thing, which must make them doubly inferior to an elven magician—though it was also true that Aerune had wanted her test subjects, inferior or not. Back in December he’d been grabbing them before she or Robert could get to them, though presumably he could do everything they could do and more. She’d never found out why; she supposed she’d find out now.

She knew she should be more afraid than she was, but all Jeanette felt was numb. Shock, she thought—that and the certain knowledge that she would die soon whether Aerune tortured her or not. Death was such a final answer—and however much she feared it, she couldn’t escape it—so why not embrace it as much as she could?

Because she was too afraid to, that was why.

Just then there was a rattling sound from the doorway above. She looked up, just in time to see the doorway sink majestically downward through the stone like a descending elevator cage, until the opening was level with the floor.

Two trolls—they couldn’t be anything else—gazed through the bars at her.

Their smooth shiny skin was the greenish color of tarnished copper, and a wave of stench like rotting frogs rolled into the cell from their presence. They were about five and a half feet tall, alike as twins, and cartoonishly muscled, with shoulders nearly as wide as they were tall, and arms that dangled below their knees. Their faces were like a caricature of Early Man: flat noses, massive jaws, and heavy beetling brows from beneath which their eyes glowed with the silvery redness of beasts’. The long tips of pointed ears extended for an inch or two above their flat skulls, and dull lank hair the color of old moss began low on their foreheads and straggled down their backs. They were dressed in a parody of medieval costume: knee-length chain mail shirts beneath black tabards with a crimson blazon, bronze bracers laced onto their huge forearms, and shaggy boots that seemed to have been crudely made from imperfectly-emptied bears. Each of them held a seven-foot billhook in his hand.

One of them reached for something she could not see from inside the cell, and the portcullis rose with a rattle of chains.

“Come out, little girl,” the other said, leering. His voice was low and hoarse, like granite boulders mating. His teeth were huge and yellow, like a horse’s, but with long upper and lower fangs. Jeanette could smell his breath six feet away. It smelled like rotting meat.

“Bite me,” Jeanette said sullenly. No matter how unnatural they looked, they were only another incarnation of big, stupid street muscle, the sort she’d dealt with when she ran with the Sinner Saints. They answered to a master—Aerune—and to show them either fear or deference would be a bad mistake.

The troll looked puzzled, trying to decide whether to be angry. He shifted uncertainly, gazing at his partner.

The other troll walked into the cell. He was not so much tall as massive—must weigh close to a thousand pounds—Jeanette estimated. He bowed, holding the billhook to one side and resting the knuckles of his free hand on the floor.

“Mortal lady. The great prince Aerune requires thy presence, and we are sent to escort thee into his presence.” The words were subservient, but his manner wasn’t.

The smart ones are always trouble. He made her feel like Elkanah always had—as if he knew something she didn’t, as if all the knowledge and power she possessed would be useless against that secret wisdom. She got to her feet.

“Okay. Fine. Let’s go.”

She stepped past him, out into the corridor. The stone was rough beneath her bare feet, and cold. Torches lined the walls, but again the illumination was flat and directionless, as if the torches were only a sort of window dressing, and not the real source of the light. Barred doorways, such as the one she’d come through, lined the walls all the way to the ceiling. From some of the higher ones, liquid trickled down the wall, staining the gray stone to black. There was a faint whiff of latrine, perceptible beyond the ripe rankness of her guards. She felt queasy and ill, as if she were coming down with the flu, but put it down to a combination of emotional shock and T-Stroke. She steeled herself against showing how she felt; any show of weakness could be fatal, and she still had to face the main event—Aerune.

The dumb one led the way, and the smart one followed. They went up a winding staircase, the steps sized for trolls and not humans; Jeanette was aching and breathless by the time they reached the top. Here the workmanship on the stones of the corridor was finer, the doors of solid wood.

They walked for at least half an hour, seeing no one, as the corridors slowly changed, becoming more refined and upscale, until at last Jeanette was walking across smooth mosaic floors between walls of carved alabaster hung with tapestries. She felt less sick now, though all around her there was the same sort of waiting tension that heralded the storm. There were guards here and there along the way—elven knights, this time, not trolls, wearing elaborate jeweled armor and holding long silver pikes. At the end of one corridor, her captors stopped before a pair of them. The elves’ faces were invisible within their helmets, but she could see the faint red spark of eyes deep within the shadows.

“Here is the woman whom Lord Aerune has summoned, lord,” the smart troll said.

The elven knight bowed silently, and gestured for her to advance.

“Be good, human girl,” the smart troll said. “Or the prince will give you back to me to do with as I choose.” Despite the unspoken threat, Jeanette had the odd feeling the words were kindly meant.

“And if you can’t be good, be careful,” she said in return.

“Silence!” one of the elves snapped.

This time both members of her escort preceded her, obviously unable to imagine that she would run (they were right, but she still thought they were stupid). They walked only a short distance before stopping before a pair of gigantic doors that seemed to be carved of one giant sheet of black jade. As they approached, the doors swung open, and she followed her guards into Aerune’s throne room. Once inside the doorway her escort stopped, and waited for her to go on alone.

The throne room was enormous—big as a sound stage or a church, and empty save for Aerune. The walls were carved in the semblance of a forest, copies of the same black trees she had seen upon her arrival, their carved branches rising to form a vault above the room.

The floor beneath her feet was the glassy dull silver of liquid mercury, treacherously smooth. In the center of the room, atop a round three-step dais of the same smooth black material as the doors, stood a throne. It was black, massive, and intricately figured, but somehow it was not quite there, as if parts of it curved off in directions the human eye was not equipped to perceive.

And on the throne sat Aerune.

This was the first time Jeanette had gotten a really good look at him, and once again her heart twisted at the sight of his beauty. Save for the helmet—for Aerune’s head was bare—he wore the same full ornate field plate armor as his guards, but of a silver so dark it seemed black. On his head was a black crown set with cabochon rubies that glowed as brightly as if they were lit from behind, and on his black-gloved hand he wore a matching ruby ring.

All her life Jeanette had dreamed of a moment like this, when she could cast aside the bonds of Earth and walk the halls of Faerie. And now that the moment had arrived, she could think of only one thing.

He can’t be serious.

Everything that she’d seen was just too overblown, too derivative, too much. It was all done with money to burn, but it still looked like an episode of Dr. Who. It had no heart to it. Actually, Dr. Who had heart; it didn’t take itself seriously and it was on a bargain budget, so heart was all it had, but it had a lot of it. No, this looked as if some avaricious goon with all the money in the universe had decided to copy Dr. Who on an infinite budget without the least understanding of what made the BBC series live for its fans. This place was hollow—the exact opposite of creative.

So now you know why they call them The Hollow Hills. Good going, Girl Detective.

“So, mortal girl. At last you face your ultimate desire—for I am Death, and Pain, and the end of all things.”

Jeanette wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry, or just stamp her foot in frustration. She’d ruined her life, killed hundreds, to get here . . . and this was all there was? This fanboy weenie from hell?

And worst of all, she was still terrified. And he was still beautiful as the morning.

As she stepped onto the floor, something lying at the foot of the throne raised its head. She hadn’t seen it before because it was so black; it looked a little like a wolf crossed with a Doberman, if the result were the size of a small pony and had eyes that glowed a featureless red. It opened its mouth and yawned, ­exposing ivory teeth and a blood-red tongue, then put its head back down, joining the other creatures coiled at the foot of the throne in sleep.

“Lord Aerune,” she said, reaching the foot of the shadow throne and looking up at him.

“Come, little alchemist. Kneel at my feet, and I will tell you how you may serve me.”

Despite herself, Jeanette stumbled forward and up the steps of the dais to kneel at his feet. One of the hellhounds growled as she approached, and Aerune held out his hand to silence it.