“I’ll do what I can to find out what’s going on, Carys. And if I can help stop it, I will. You have my word on that.”
“I’ll take it,” she said, opening up the pouch that the Ghillie had given her as he’d passed. It held a small jar of herb-scented unguent, and Carys knelt by Sonny and began massaging it into his aching shoulders. He tensed at the touch of her fingers, but the pain began to lessen almost immediately. If he closed his eyes, he thought, he might almost be able to imagine that those fingers belonged to Kelley. . . .
“Tell me, Carys,” he said, “if there are rifts appearing everywhere in the Gate, why aren’t the Lost Ones using them to escape back to the Otherworld? To avoid being hunted?”
“Some tried. But the Gate is unstable and the rifts are full of danger. Fair Folk are traveling between the worlds—in both directions—but only if they are desperate or mad. Even the Faerie monarchs are not immune to the predatory behavior of the things that lurk in the Between.”
Sonny was silent.
“Speaking of Fae royalty,” Carys asked, “where is your little princess, Janus? Last time I saw you, you had the look of one love-struck. Now you just look . . . stricken.”
“What would you know of love, Carys? You or your kind.” Sonny didn’t necessarily mean to sound harsh as he asked the question. He was actually almost curious.
“You think the Fae incapable of love?”
“I know it.”
He plucked a flower from the mossy ground and held it up before his eyes: it was purple and shining, just like Kelley’s wings. His relationship with Kelley had, ultimately, turned out no better than the time when he had accompanied Auberon on a visit to Titania’s court. In the woods, he had met a beautiful Summer Fae. Sparkling and scintillating, she had led him far from court, along a twisting path to a sunlit meadow. . . .
For some reason, he found himself telling Carys the story.
“And what happened next?” she asked, working the salve into his skin, as if the tale was no more than a fireside amusement told by a traveling bard.
“Days passed in the forest,” Sonny continued. He could almost believe, as he sat there, that it was just a story. That it had happened to someone else or not at all. Not to him. “And then more days. And she led me to believe she was in love with me. More—that I was worth being loved.” He crushed the flower between his fingers. “And then . . . when I told her that I loved her . . . she laughed.”
Carys’s hands paused on his neck.
Sonny shook his head, remembering. “‘Silly thing!’ she said. ‘You’re just a boy. A mortal boy. I could no more love you than I could an animal. . . .’” Sonny heard his voice saying those words and he felt for the boy in the tale. He’d been very young. “Her eyes flashed coldly, and it was like a thunderhead suddenly darkening the sky. All the light went out of the day. I fled the meadow. Her laughter followed me. Mocking, ringing in my ears, as I crashed through the grasping trees to fall, bleeding and ashamed, at Auberon’s feet.”
“And what did the king do?” Carys asked.
Sonny laughed a little. “He told me gently that, of course, the sylph had only been playing games with me. That was what the Fair Folk did.”
“And you believed him.”
“Was it a lie?” he asked, glancing back at her over his shoulder.
“We don’t lie.” Carys shrugged and looked away, the faint shadow of a frown on her lovely face. “But you thought it would be different with your princess.”
“I did. It wasn’t.” Sonny cast around for some other topic to change the subject. He didn’t want to think about just how different he’d thought it would be with Kelley. “Why are you here, Carys?” he asked to smooth his momentary lapse. “In the Hereside? Were you caught like some of the other Lost Ones when Auberon shut the Gates?”
“No.” Carys grinned. “No, I fought my way past the Janus Guard and into this realm some years ago. I am here by choice because I like humans. I like . . . humanity. This is what Faerie like Auberon . . . and even Gwynn ap Nudd . . . do not understand. Once the Greenman found this world, we Fair Folk were doomed to want to be a part of it. You mortals are chaos incarnate. It’s intoxicating.”
Speaking of intoxicating . . . Sonny’s head spun a little and he remembered belatedly the kind of kick that Faerie drink often delivered. Carys put away her jar of salve and refilled their glasses. She leaned back on one elbow, gazing at him. “You spoke before of the Summer Fae. The one who scorned you.”
Sonny frowned. He had. It had been an unguarded moment, and he wished now that he could take the words back.
“She was a fool.”
Sonny glanced at the lovely Fae. Her expression remained remote, polite, but Sonny thought that there was a spark in her golden eyes that hadn’t been there earlier. He swallowed more wine.
“And your princess . . .”
“Carys—”
“She was twice the fool,” the huntress said, her voice low.
Sonny looked away, back toward where the other Lost hurlers were drifting back toward the pitch, eager to continue the contest with another match. Thanks to Carys’s ministrations, his shoulders no longer ached and there was every possibility that the competition would go on until he dropped from exhaustion. The Fae would play their games until the crack of doom if it pleased them.
Maybe it would please him.
“I . . . I should go,” Sonny said, sitting up and reaching for his shirt. Even as he said the words, he felt the tug on his spirit that urged him to return to the pitch. To keep on playing. A whisper in the back of his mind told him that he need never leave this place. Or the gorgeous creature at his side . . . “Really. I should. Leave, that is . . .”
Carys schooled her expression, wiping the brief look of what might have been disappointment from her face, and nodded her head. “As you wish.”
Part of Sonny truly wanted to stay, but he hadn’t been home in . . . what? It might well have been days, at that point. The Faerie games had acted upon him like a drug. So had the wine. And, if he was honest, the company.
If only to hold on to his sense of self, he had to leave the reservoir. He pulled his shirt back on over his head and stood, holding out a hand to help Carys to her feet. She rose gracefully without his help, and then took his offered hand in a gesture of farewell.
“You are welcome here again, Janus,” the huntress said, gazing at him in a way that made him feel as though she really meant it. She gave him a password that would let him return safely to the sanctuary in case he changed his mind. Her eyes lit with sly mirth as she said, “You are . . . what do the Here-siders say? You’re ‘all right.’”
Chapter VIII
Kelley woke with a start. She’d had the dream again—the one where she found Sonny lying on the sidewalk, his chest perforated by bullet wounds . . . the same kind of wounds that Herne had told her killed the Greenman back in 1903. The images of the dream were so clear to her, she could see the light fading from Sonny’s beautiful silver-gray eyes, the blood bright at the corners of his lips. Lips that Kelley would give almost anything to be able to kiss again. Her arms ached to wrap around Sonny once more but, in order to do that, she had to keep him safe from the fate that she saw played out night after night in her dreams. Sonny’s blood, seeping into the ground . . .
She didn’t know how—yet. But she was going to find a way, and then they could be together again—for real and forever. If she could only learn how to control her own magick, maybe she could find a way to protect him. Or help him use his power in a way that wouldn’t result in disaster-movie carnage.
Sure, she thought. Except that you can barely manage the occasional pair of Faerie wings as it is.
If she’d been raised in the Otherworld, she wouldn’t have this problem. Instead, she felt more a part of the mortal realm than anything. Her stomach growled with hunger as if to remind her of that. Kelley wondered if the Fair Folk felt hunger the way she did. Or if what she was feeling was all par
t of the illusion of “Kelley Winslow” and just another lie. She wondered what Sonny’s favorite food was. She didn’t even know.
Kelley sighed and got out of bed before she spiraled into a gloom deep enough to keep her under the covers for the rest of the day. She threw on a pair of jeans and a hoodie and went out into the living room. Tyff’s bedroom door was shut and Kelley had to stop herself from knocking to see if her roomie was awake. She could really use someone to talk to, but she wasn’t sure how open Tyff was to indulging in a heart-to-heart chat. Tyff had finished her spell on Harvicc and herself the night before, and the ogre was gone from their apartment, but Kelley had seen how much it had taken out of the Summer Fae, dimming her usual radiance to the point where Tyff had looked almost like a normal girl. Better to let her get her beauty sleep, Kelley thought ruefully. Or suffer her wrath.
She went to the kitchen to make herself some tea. Which, it seemed, they were out of. No tea, no coffee . . . barely any provisions at all. Kelley wistfully shook a half-full box of Lucky Charms and wished that the kelpie who had spent almost two weeks standing in her bathtub last autumn was still there. Lucky’s calm, soothing presence had always managed to make her feel better. She wished she knew what had happened to the Faerie horse. She missed him. Not as much as she missed Sonny, but still . . .
Kelley put the cereal away—they were out of milk, too—and decided to head out to the corner café for a cruller and a bucket-sized cup of caffeine. She was surprised to see her fellow actor Alec Oakland sitting on the front steps of her walk-up, texting on his cell phone. He jumped to his feet when he heard the door open behind him. “Uh. Hey, Kelley. Hi . . . ,” he stammered.
“Hi, Alec.” Kelley tried to force a smile onto her face as she started down the stairs. Alec fell into step beside her. Which was exactly what she didn’t need just then—more complications. “What are you doing here?”
“Well . . . it’s just that . . . you’re a tough girl to get hold of.” His voice was quiet and he stared at his shoes as he walked, but there was determination in his words. He nodded his head back at the apartment. “I rang the buzzer.”
“I was asleep. I didn’t hear it,” Kelley said. She really hadn’t—although it might have been the thing that had woken her from her nightmare. She supposed she should be grateful.
“And I’ve called your cell about a billion times,” Alec said.
“Sorry.”
“Please tell me you’re not screening my number. The eternally deferred coffee date, I can handle—I live in hope. But rejection on that kinda scale, my fragile ego can’t take.” He was trying to be funny, but Kelley could hear an echo of hurt in his voice.
Great. Another name to add to my injured list. I’m getting good at this. . . .
“I lost my phone a little while ago,” she said by way of explanation. She didn’t bother to tell him that she’d lost it in a raging river in the Otherworld. By now, she figured, some Siren had probably found it and was scrolling through her ringtones, stealing the tunes for her own personal pleasure and the luring of doomed souls.
Yeah. Alec definitely doesn’t need to know the details.
They walked the rest of the half block in uneasy silence until they reached the café. Alec hung back as Kelley ordered her pastry and a coffee, debating whether or not she should offer to buy Alec one. But she decided that to do so would just add insult to the “eternally deferred coffee date” injury.
“I guess you probably heard,” Alec said finally, as they started the walk back to her building. “About the Avalon.”
Kelley nodded, not trusting herself to say anything.
“Right. Well . . .” Alec stayed doggedly in step with her. “Mindi’s called everyone to let them know that Quentin is on his way back from London. She said that she hadn’t been able to get a hold of you, so I told her I’d give it a try. The company is having a meeting. We’re gonna get together to decide what to do about the theater.”
“There is no theater, Alec,” Kelley said. “There’s not enough left of it to put on a puppet show.”
A pained expression crossed Alec’s handsome face. “Yeah. Well. ‘The show must go on,’ you know?”
That was what she’d always thought. And her heart quickened at the prospect of the company rising from the ashes of the ruined theater, but . . . “I can’t,” she said. “I have . . . other priorities right now. Responsibilities.”
“Different ones than you had last week?” They were almost back at her apartment, and Alec stopped her with a hand on her arm before Kelley could bolt up the stairs and disappear into her building again. All of his levity had dropped away and he looked as though he was on the verge of being genuinely angry with her. “What the hell? Catastrophe strikes and you just walk away. Like the Avalon can’t do anything more for you, so you’ll just abandon it?”
“Alec—”
“Where’d you learn that from?” He let go of her, but he didn’t back off. “I know you’ve only done one show with us, but we’re not just a bunch of actors, Kelley. The Players are a family. Even Barbara deWinter is crawling out of her catacombs to offer any help she can. I thought you were one of us.”
“That’s not it. It’s just . . .”
Her protestations faltered as Alec stared at her, waiting for some kind of reasonable answer. How was she supposed to make him understand that Sonny came first? That Sonny was in danger and she was the only one who could help him? She stood there, conflicted and miserable.
“There’s been talk of maybe doing a benefit gala,” Alec said. “After Midsummer, it was your name on the marquee that was gonna be the big draw. ‘Rising star Kelley Winslow.’ It still could be.”
Whatever expression crossed her face in that moment, it was enough to make Alec relent slightly. He sighed and for a long moment looked away, off down the street.
“Look,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on with you. Obviously. I mean—it’s not like you’ll let me get close enough to find out.” He took a deep breath and turned back to her. “We’re meeting this afternoon at two, if you decide you’re interested. At the Tastee Burger on Forty-third—you know, that place where the cast sometimes went for lunch during rehearsals. Together.”
“Alec—” She was about to apologize, but he didn’t give her the chance. Message delivered, Alec Oakland turned on his heel and walked away.
Kelley went back inside the apartment to find Tyff leaning on the frame of the open window in the living room. She still looked paler than normal, but some of the brightness had returned to her eyes. Her expression, in that moment, was a carefully composed blank.
“Hey,” she said blandly by way of greeting.
“Hey.” Kelley kicked off her shoes and headed toward her bedroom.
“Harv’s gone back to the River, but my whammy worked. He won’t be a problem,” Tyff said. “Neither will I. You owe me big.”
“Oh—okay.” Kelley nodded. “Good. Thanks.”
“Your aunt just called. She’s back from Ireland.”
“Okay.” The conversation with Alec was swimming circles in Kelley’s brain.
“There’s a tree frog in your hair.”
“Okay . . .”
“Kelley—stop.”
Kelley turned her unfocused gaze on Tyff, who glared back at her in frustration.
“You didn’t actually listen to a thing I said just now, did you?”
“Uh. No . . .” Kelley was yearning to go to the cast meeting. The Avalon Players were her family. But Sonny . . . Sonny was her life. And, besides, it was all her fault that the theater had burned to the ground in the first place. Maybe they’d be better off without her. “I’m sorry. I’m going to go take a nap, Tyff. I have a headache.”
“That’s a lie.”
Kelley winced at the flat, disapproving tone of Tyff’s voice.
“You don’t have a headache. You’re just trying to avoid me.” Tyff nodded in the direction of the open window. “Like you’re trying to avoid t
hem.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Kelley . . . you can’t push everyone in your life away.”
“Tyff, I—”
“You can’t protect people that way!” Tyff almost shouted. “I know! Believe me. In the end, you just wind up hurting them even more.” She ran a hand through the messy cascade of her hair as she gazed at Kelley. Her blue eyes were full of compassion—and more than a few centuries of her own regrets.
Kelley looked away before she lost her own composure under the weight of that stare.
Tyff sighed and softened her tone. “There’s one thing I’ve learned about mortals. They’re a lot more resilient and a whole bunch more resourceful than they usually give themselves credit for. Why else do you think the Fae have always had such a fascination with them? Why d’you think Auberon uses changelings to guard the Gate? Trolls are stronger, cheaper, more plentiful, and nobody cares if they get exploded or ripped to pieces. But he uses mortals. Because they’re full of hidden strengths.”
“Tyff—what are you talking about?”
“Well—for starters—I’m talking about those actor people of yours. Don’t turn away from them, Kell. They can probably help you as much as you can help them.”
“I can’t help them.”
“Your little Romeo buddy seems to think you can.” Tyff jerked a thumb at the open casement window. Kelley’s argument with Alec had obviously carried on the breeze.
“Alec’s a nice guy.” Kelley shook her head. “But he’s wrong. He just doesn’t know anything.”
“And you’re suddenly all worldly wise?” Tyff scoffed. “Since when? Give yourself a couple hundred years and then you can go around telling me about how naive guys like Alec are. Sounded to me like he pretty much had you pegged. You’re giving up.”
“I am not! Right now I just have to concentrate on figuring out how to keep Sonny safe.”
“What?” Tyff looked at her sideways. “What on earth makes you think Sonny can’t take care of himself?”