Chapter 20.

Seth stood with Bananach in one of the older graveyards in Huntsdale; it was an oasis set off from ruined buildings and graffiti-decorated walls. It was a place he'd come with friends, a familiar s.p.a.ce where he and Aislinn had spent hours walking among the dead. Today, the sense of comfort he usually felt there was replaced with trepidation.

"This is it? The door is here?" he asked.

"Some days. Not always." She motioned him forward, past a pair of crooked stones leaning together. "Today it is here."

Between the Sight and the charm-impeding glamour, Seth could see the barrier that stood in front of them. He'd seen barriers elsewhere-at the park by the loft, at Donia's house and cottage, and at the Rath. There were still others shimmering around places where a lot of faeries frequented or nested. But none of the barriers he'd seen were this substantial. The others were misty, like smoke or fog that he could slip through. Contact with them felt uncomfortable as he crossed them, so much so that if he didn't know they were there-or that faeries were real-the barriers would deter him from crossing. It was what they did: kept humans out.

This was different in every way. Neither smoke nor illusion, a veil of moonlight hung from higher up than he could see and touched the earth. The solid fall of it bespoke weight, like thick velvet drapes. He reached out a hand to touch it. He could not push through.

As Bananach moved forward, the barrier rippled out in tiny disturbances as if she had fallen into still water. Then she jabbed her taloned hands into the moonlight veil and parted it. "Come into the heart of Faerie, Seth Morgan."

The voice of caution-a warning that he was on the edge of a decision that would change everything-hummed in his mind. He could see faeries walking through a city that hadn't been visible when the veil was closed. Behind a barrier thicker than any he'd seen in Huntsdale, an entire world was hidden. Something about it was wrong. Logic insisted he pause, consider the dangers, weigh the consequences-but Sorcha was in there. She had the ability to solve his problems. If he could convince her to help him, he could be with Aislinn for eternity.

With Boomer draped around him like a scarf, Seth crossed the veil.

Bananach cackled. "Brave little lamb, aren't you? Walking into a cage without but a moment's pause. Trapped little lamb."

Seth put a hand on the moonlight veil: it didn't part. He tried to push his fingers through it as she had done. It was as steel. The murmured fears in his mind grew to cacophonic levels.

He turned back to her, but she was already walking away. Faeries were moving out of her path, not quite running but obviously fleeing. Bananach strode down a street that could've been in any city, but somehow couldn't be in any of them. It was an area that had clearly been a regular human city before, but everything seemed a degree off of normalcy. Buildings were stripped of most metals and had earthy replacements: hardened vines with perfumeless blooms clung to buildings in lieu of fire escapes; wooden poles supported awnings; rock and mineral slabs were shaped into fences and frames.

He glanced behind him and could no longer tell where the veil was. The graveyard and the rest of the city he knew were hidden as surely as this part of the city had been hidden when he was surrounded by the familiar gravestones and mausoleums. He tried to convince himself that this wasn't any more unusual than the things he'd seen since Aislinn revealed the faery world to him.

It wasn't just the earthiness that seemed surreal. The entire place had an atmosphere of order and precision. Alleys were bright and immaculate. A group of human-looking faeries played soccer in the street, but they were serious as they did so. No shouts or loud voices could be heard anywhere. It was akin to walking into a theater showing a silent film-but with a layer of Daliesque oddity to it.

Bananach paused at the entryway of an old hotel. Pale gray stone pillars stood on either side of a doorless opening. Burgundy drapes were held back with gilt leaves. It looked old Hollywood, except it wasn't. Instead of a red carpet, a long roll of emerald moss extended out from the doorway.

The raven-faery stepped onto the moss.

"Come, Mortal," she called. She didn't look his way to see that he followed; she simply expected he would obey.

And Seth didn't see many choices. The veil he'd crossed was impermeable. He could continue standing in the street, or he could follow her farther.

I didn't come here to run away at the gate.

Hoping he wasn't making a mistake, he crossed over to the moss carpet and into the bright doorway.

The hotel lobby was filled with faeries talking in small groups, curled into chairs reading, and in a few cases staring silently at focus objects. Books were stacked in orderly piles on side tables. A white-veiled man was dusting a faery who'd apparently been meditating for some time.

Glancing neither left nor right, Bananach walked past them into a sterile-looking corridor. The faeries who'd noticed her tensed. Some slipped away. Whispered words twisted into an overall breathy hiss in the still of the room as Seth pa.s.sed among them. Their Otherness was more p.r.o.nounced than the Summer and Dark Court denizens. Many of them looked almost mortal, but they radiated a stillness that felt alternately rapacious and dismissive. It was frightening.

The raven-faery seemed oblivious. Her feather-hair fluttered like pennants trailing behind her as she swept through hallways, went up and down stairways, and took sudden turns. He felt and heard the low sound of battle drums throughout the building. Pipes and horns wound through the thunder of the drums. The noise sent his pulse racing in dread, but he continued to follow Bananach.

The tempo of the music increased as they raced through empty s.p.a.ces, building to a fierce cadence that would burst a heart if it tried to keep pace. Then it stopped mid-beat just as Bananach put her hand, flat-palmed, on a closed door and murmured, "There you are."

She opened the door into a vast ballroom. The floor was cut blue marble. Tapestries and art that belonged alongside the most revered masterpieces lined the walls. Some art was framed by pieces of silver that had been left in their natural threadlike state; others were held by simple wooden frames; still more were in what seemed to be gla.s.s frames. Vine-wrapped marble pillars stood at regular intervals in the room, supporting a star-scattered ceiling. Seth knew they couldn't be real stars, but he gaped at the illusion all the same.

While he stood awed by the stars and the art, Bananach put herself in front of him and said, "I brought you a lamb."

Reluctantly, Seth took his attention from the wonders around him to look at the faery who sat on a stiff-backed chair in the empty expanse of the room. She was the one who could save him-or crush his every dream. Her hair was like fire: flickering shades of heat shifted in and out of sight as he tried to watch her. Her skin was the same as the moonlight veil he'd crossed to enter Faerie, as if she herself had been formed of that cold light. Yet, as he watched, her skin shifted too. It became as dark as the depths of the universe. She was shadow and light, flame and coolness, white and black. She was both sides of the moon, all things, perfection.

The High Queen. Sorcha. It could be none other. She sat in her empty ballroom, pondering a game board, surrounded by nature and art.

He reached up to grip his charm and ran his thumb over it as if it were a worry stone. Even wearing it, he felt pulled to revere her. The temptation to drop to his knees and offer her his soul was the same sort of insistence a body felt to draw breath. It was automatic and near impossible to resist.

"A lamb?" The High Queen's gaze pa.s.sed over him with the attentiveness of a hummingbird, pausing and darting away. She returned her eyes to the board in front of her. The game looked to be something akin to chess but several times larger and with six sets of gemstone pieces.

"All of his wet parts are still inside." Bananach reached over and stroked Seth's head. "Do you remember when they brought us sacrifices?"

Sorcha picked up a translucent green figure with a sickle-looking weapon in its hand. "You shouldn't have brought him here. You shouldn't even be here."

Bananach tilted her head in that disturbing birdlike gesture. Her voice was singsongy as she asked, "Shall I keep him then? Shall I carry him back through the veil, take him from the field of play? Shall I leave him on the right regent's threshold; tell them I brought him to the door from inside your demesne? Shall I, sister mine, take the lamb?"

Seth paused as something unreadable flickered in Sorcha's eyes. He'd only just arrived here, so he couldn't imagine where Bananach could leave him or what she could say that would cause trouble. The only regents who know me are Ash, Don, or Niall, and I could explain-the thought stopped as clarity hit: she wouldn't be leaving him alive at anyone's door. If Sorcha didn't allow him to stay, he was about to die.

He looked around, as if a weapon would suddenly be lying in reach. There wasn't anything. Sentences from the lore he'd read rushed to mind in a jumble. Hawthorn and Rue, thistle and rose... He knew there were herbs and plants that offered protection. He kept a number of them in his train and often with him. He began rummaging in his pockets. Words...vows... What could he offer not to die? Bananach had promised to deliver him safely to Sorcha, but nothing beyond that.

Sorcha held the figure aloft before setting it in a square adjacent to the one it had been in when she lifted it. "Fine. He can stay."

The raven-faery pressed one taloned hand over his chest, her fingers curling in ever so slightly, as if she'd pierce him with her fingertips. "Be a good boy now. Make me proud. Make our dreams come true."

Then she turned and left.

For a few heartbeats, Seth stood and waited for Sorcha to speak. He'd heard enough about her-not in direct revelations but pa.s.sing comments that painted her as impeccably proper and uptight-that he thought he should wait for her to speak.

She didn't utter a word.

Boomer shifted, sliding down Seth's arm and lower until the boa was resting at Seth's feet.

Still the High Queen sat silently.

Now what?

Waiting her out was unlikely. He glanced at the doorway through which Bananach had just left and then back at the High Queen. She wasn't looking at her puzzle board now; she gazed into the distance, as if she saw things in the empty air.

Perhaps she does.

After several still moments, he figured he'd try to speak. "So, you're Sorcha, right?"

The look she gave him was not cruel, but it wasn't inviting at all. "Yes, and you are?"

"Seth."

"The new queen's mortal consort." She lifted another game piece absently. "Of course you are. Not many mortals would know my name, but your queen is-"

"She's not my queen," he interrupted. Somehow that particular clarification felt important just then. "She's my girlfriend. I'm not anyone's subject."

"I see." She lowered the violet carving and straightened the voluminous skirts she wore. "Well then, Seth who is not a subject, what brings you to my presence?"

"I want to be a faery." He looked at her without flinching.

Sorcha moved the game board away. A flicker of what might be interest flashed over her face. "That's a bold request...and not one to answer without contemplation."

She could fix everything. She has the power to do it.

An elaborate tapestry was pushed aside, and another beautiful, seemingly emotionless faery appeared from behind it. He could've been one of her game pieces: perfectly still and inhuman. As Seth looked at him, he realized that this was the same faery who'd watched Niall fight with Bananach in the Crow's Nest.

"Devlin," she murmured. "I believe my new mortal needs a resting s.p.a.ce for the time, and a reminder of the dangers of impertinence. Would you tend to that while I ponder things?"

"It is my honor." The faery bowed slightly, and then he calmly reached out and gripped Seth's neck.

Devlin lifted Seth by the throat and squeezed, applying pressure to his windpipe.

Seth couldn't breathe. He struggled, kicking out at Devlin, but everything went dark and he fell into unconsciousness.

Chapter 21.

"You all right?" Carla asked Aislinn softly as they waited for Rianne to come out of the restroom. She took a while to apply the makeup her mother forbade her to wear to school. "Sick?"

"No."

"Do you want to talk? You look...off." The words were hesitant, but they were still there. Carla had become mothering with both Aislinn and Rianne.

"Seth and I-" Aislinn started, but a sob threatened at the thought of finishing that sentence. She stopped the words before the tears at the end of that admission could fall. Saying it aloud in this world made it too real. "He's not...here. We had a sort of fight."

Carla hugged her. "It'll be okay. He loves you. He's been waiting around for you forever."

"I don't know." Aislinn tried not to look at the faeries who stood invisibly in the hall. "He took off or something."

"Seth?"

Aislinn nodded. It was all she could do. A part of her wished she could talk to Carla, to Rianne, to someone, but the person she talked to was missing-and telling Carla all about it would mean skirting the truth or admitting truths that Aislinn couldn't quite handle. Mortals really didn't belong in the world of faeries.

"He's gone." She looked at Carla and at the faeries behind her and whispered, "And it hurts."

Her friend made comforting noises, and her faeries stroked their hands over her hair and face. Once that would have terrified her, but now their touches comforted her. The faeries were hers. They were her reason now, her focus and her responsibility. I need them. And they needed her; they weren't going to ever leave her. Her court needed her. That truth was a comfort as she went through the motions of the school day yet again.

Faeries weren't often in the school. The metal and plethora of religious symbols made them uncomfortable. Yet, throughout the day, her faeries surrounded her. Siobhan sat beside her in an empty desk during study hall. Eliza sang a lullaby during lunch. The soft cadence of her words was matched by affectionate brushes of faery hands as her guard and other a.s.sorted faeries came by without any reason but to show her they cared. This is my family. Her court was more than a collection of strangers or strange creatures. Their love didn't make all the pain go away, but it helped. They helped. That sense of being cosseted in her court's embrace was a salve on her injured heart-and it was all that helped.

After school, Aislinn didn't race to see Keenan, but her steps as she went up the stairs to the loft were hurried. Being there, surrounded by her king and court, made her feel a sense of security she lacked outside the building.

She still went to school, and she still spent some nights at home with Grams, but in the eighteen days since Seth had vanished, her attempts to reenter her old life had stopped. She didn't see or call her friends. She didn't go anywhere alone. She was safest with Keenan. Together, they were stronger. Together in their loft, they were safer.

After the first couple days, he'd learned not to ask any awkward questions about how she was doing or how she felt or-worst of all-if Seth had called yet. Instead he gave her tasks to keep her distracted. Between schoolwork and court business and the new self-defense training, she'd been exhausted enough that she slept at least a few hours every night.

Sometimes, Keenan mentioned in pa.s.sing that he'd not had any progress on finding Seth. But we will, he promised. It was only slow because they'd been cautious in their inquiries. Letting Seth's absence become public could endanger him, he'd explained. If he's left us, he's vulnerable. It made things slower than she wanted, but endangering him-is he already in danger? - wasn't an option she liked at all. Whether he left her by choice or not didn't matter. She still loved him.

All they'd learned so far was that he'd gone to the Crow's Nest and spent hours with Damali, a dreadlocked singer he'd once sort-of dated. The guards hadn't seen him leave; a tussle with several Ly Ergs who'd captured one of the younger Summer Girls had called their attention away. When they returned to the Crow's Nest, Seth had slipped out, but Skelley had spoken to him afterward. He was safe in his home, Skelley repeated. I don't know how he left. He's never done so before. Seth left stealthily; he took Boomer; he sounded excited. The evidence didn't add up. Did he go willingly? The only reason to believe he hadn't was that it seemed out of character.

Does it though?

Seth didn't do relationships. He'd never been in one before her; he was increasingly tense about her bond with Keenan; and he'd sounded fine when he called. He didn't sound quite right, but telling someone good-bye over voice mail was weird. Maybe he went to see his family. She'd spent hours thinking it through, ordering faeries sent to various locations, having them check ticket receipts at the bus and train station. None of it made her feel any better-or brought answers.

Seeing Keenan was all that eased the ball of tension she felt. Today though, when she walked through the door of the loft, he greeted her with a sentence she wasn't sure she wanted to hear: "Niall would like to speak with you."

"Niall?" She felt both fear and hope at the thought of talking to him. She'd tried to contact him the day after Seth had first vanished, but he'd refused to see her.

Keenan's usually transparent emotions were tamped down so tightly that she couldn't get any sense of what he was feeling. "After you meet with him, we can go over Tavish's notes and have dinner."

She was unable to breathe around the tightness in her chest. "Niall is here?"

The look on Keenan's face was a brief blur of fury. "In our study. Waiting for you alone."

Aislinn didn't correct him as she once would've; the study was hers too now. This was her home. It had to be. Immortal only if I'm not murdered. She'd not thought about the finite and infinite until she'd become a faery, but since the change, the idea of reducing forever to just another heartbeat terrified her. The recent threats from Bananach, Donia, and Niall made the possibility of ending seem too real. There were those who could take everything away-and one of them was waiting on the other side of the door.

Knowing Keenan stood a moment away helped, but the trepidation she felt at seeing Niall was still awful. In the first rush of changing, she'd still felt terror, self-doubt, worries-all the stuff she'd hid over the years when she saw the faeries but had to keep her Sight secret. Fear for her safety had faded. It was back now, stronger than it had ever been before.

"Do you want me to come in?" Keenan's offer was without inflection.

"If he said 'no'...if he has information and didn't tell me because..." She gave him a pleading look. "I need answers."

Keenan nodded. "I am here if you need me."

"I know." Aislinn opened the door to go see the Dark King.

Niall sat on the sofa looking as comfortable as he had when he'd lived there. It was familiar enough to ease the tension Aislinn felt-but his expression of contempt wasn't.

"Where is he?"

"What?" Aislinn felt her knees go weak.

"Where. Is. Seth." Niall glared at her. "He's not been home; he's not answering my calls. No one at the Crow's Nest has seen him."

"He's..." All the calm she'd been struggling to feel slipped away.