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Where are you, Tyff?

“Thanks again,” Kelley said.

The queen inclined her head graciously and, after a last lingering glance at Kelley, turned and was soon swallowed up by a crowd of fawning admirers—mortal and Faerie alike. Kelley seriously contemplated making a break for it, but she could feel eyes on her as she moved about the lushly landscaped terrace. Whenever she turned around, she could not see who it was that watched.

Kelley tried not to look like she was pacing impatiently—which she was—until a familiar figure suddenly caught her eye. It was the enormous guy who manned the front desk. Kelley concentrated, looked right at him, and saw through the clumsy glamour—something Tyff had taught her how to do, even when wearing her charm—one of the few bits of Fae knowledge she
had
been willing to impart. As plain as day, Kelley saw the hulking shape of the ogre beneath the glamour. An ogre, Tyff had mentioned, who owed her a favor.

Maybe, Kelley thought, she could call in that favor by proxy. At the very least, maybe Mr. Ogre had seen Tyff earlier and knew where she was. It was worth a shot.

The ogre, Harvicc, led the way.

They found Tyff on another of the hotel’s several private terraces. This one was on the thirteenth floor, and Tyff was there just where Harvicc said he’d left her. She was curled up in a gently swaying hammock, tucked in among garden furniture, and surrounded by potted fig trees and planters. She looked sound asleep, except for the fact that her head lolled senselessly on her neck when Kelley shook her. There was a deep, ugly bruise on the side of the Faerie’s exquisite face.

“Did you do that?” Kelley asked, horrified.

Harvicc nodded miserably.

“Why?”

“Miss Tyff asked me to.” The way the enormous creature mumbled around her name, it sounded almost as though he were calling her Mischief. If Kelley understood correctly—she had actually
requested
this smack-down. Maybe it was some kind of arcane Fae dating ritual, Kelley mused, although she doubted it. Why would Tyff have left her the note to come meet her, and then fling herself into unconsciousness?

“When, exactly, did you—er—knock her out, Harvicc?” she asked.

“Um . . . um . . .” The ogre twiddled his meaty fingers together. Despite his muscled bulk and fearsome appearance, he looked very much like a little boy called before the principal. “Soon after she ’rived . . . coupler hourzes ago.”

“I still don’t understand why, though.”

“She told me she had a secret she wanted to keep and that closed eyeses was the only way to do such.” Harvicc shrugged. “So she asked me to hardly hit her.”

Kelley caught the gist of what he was saying; she’d told him to hit her hard. What secret? And again, why would Tyff leave a note for Kelley to come and meet her, and then demand that the ogre forcibly indispose her? It didn’t make sense—any of it.

Unless, of course, the note hadn’t been written by Tyff.

Kelley had never really paid much attention to her roommate’s handwriting, but now that she thought back on it—and on the note that Tyff had presented her with in the rain earlier that afternoon when they’d gone to see Maddox and Chloe—she didn’t think the two scripts really matched.

Scripts . . .

The note had been left on the door to her bedroom. Where her script page lay. And the note, Kelley remembered suddenly, had been signed only “T.”

Tyffanwy. Or . . . Titania?

Kelley went suddenly cold, head to toe.

“Harvicc.” She put a tentative hand on the ogre’s arm. “Harv, do you think you could help me? You know—like you helped Tyff?”

The ogre nodded vigorously—and, in a fit of misguided helpfulness, immediately curled his hand into a monstrous, chubby fist and swung for Kelley’s head.

“No!” She yelped and ducked under the thundering punch. “That wasn’t quite what I meant!”

“Urm . . . sorry.”

“No. It’s okay.” Kelley straightened up cautiously. “What I meant was—do you think you can get Tyff and me out of here without anybody finding out?”

The service elevator went all the way to the sub-basement, bypassing the main floor, where Titania held court. According to the ogre—who held Tyff as if she weighed about the same as a bag of kittens and filled every available square inch of the tiny elevator cab not occupied by Kelley—there was an old catacomb that ran from the service level to a private underground parking garage.

The cavernous space of the garage was dimly lit with overhead fluorescent lights that flickered and gave a greenish cast to the scattered pools of oil and water. The dankness and stench—motor oil and rotting vegetation—were almost overpowering. Kelley put her sleeve over her face and followed hard on Harvicc’s surprisingly swift heels as he trotted among the hulking concrete pillars, head down and shoulders hunched so he wouldn’t scrape the low ceiling. The garage was virtually empty except for one corner near the exit ramp, where a row of stalls was filled, one after the other, with an astonishing collection of vintage and collector’s edition automobiles.
Cars
was too crass a word for these machines, Kelley thought. Some were shrouded in protective tarps, but a good number of them were uncovered and stood gleaming in the intermittent light as though they’d just that second been polished. Kelley’s untutored eye could identify the make of the hunter-green Jaguar convertible, and the silvery-mauve Bentley, but most of the others looked either too old or too exotic for her to be able to recognize. They seemed parked according to vintage. Near the far end of the collection was a wine-red number that looked like it wasn’t much younger than a Model T! On the other side of that, Kelley noticed a canvas-covered shape that stood much higher than the rest of the vehicles.

Harvicc was urging her to hurry with anxious, grunting little noises, but Kelley slowed to a stop. There was something familiar about that shape.

She walked toward it. The garage was silent except for the dripping of water and a scurrying sound that was probably a rat. Kelley reached out and grabbed the canvas drop cloth with a trembling hand. She threw it back, revealing the spoked wheels and shiny black footboards of a horse-drawn carriage.

“We Fair Folk,” said a voice in the darkness, “we’ve always liked to travel in style.”

Kelley went numb as a shadowed figure, wiping his hands on a polishing cloth, came out from the behind the carriage. The silver buckles on his high black boots jingled with every step he took.

“Nasty greenie!” Harvicc rumbled from somewhere over Kelley’s shoulder.

She glanced back to see that the ogre had unceremoniously dumped Tyff into the open backseat of the Jag convertible and was thundering toward the leprechaun like a charging bull elephant. The ground beneath Kelley’s feet shook, and she saw a look of apprehension on the leprechaun’s sharp face.

The tattooed Faerie recovered his composure in a flash, cracking his knuckles and opening his arms wide at the ogre’s approach.

Kelley reached up under her hair to undo the clasp of her necklace. But then she faltered—she wasn’t so sure she should let Hooligan-boy know that his binding curse was broken; and she
really
wasn’t sure that she could do anything remotely useful with her power that wouldn’t bring the structure crumbling down on top of them.

In her brief second of indecision, Harvicc swept past her, a hurricane with fists. “Run!” he roared over his shoulder at Kelley.

Kelley hesitated a moment longer. She couldn’t abandon Tyff like that.

“GO!” the ogre bellowed. “I will protect!”

She turned and beat feet up the ramp as fast as she could.

Kelley hailed a taxi by way of almost getting run over by it. The startled driver’s brakes were still screeching as she threw herself into the cab’s backseat and slammed the door shut, giving the cabbie breathless instructions on where to take her. Kelley kept her head down and the doors locked. She didn’t look out the window at the faces of the passersby when the cab stopped at traffic lights. And she began to breathe easier only when they turned down a familiar, tree-lined street at the edge of Hell’s Kitchen.

She didn’t know where else to go. She didn’t want to go back to the apartment she shared with Tyff. If Titania had been in her room, then Kelley knew she wasn’t safe there. Even if Titania herself meant no harm—something which seemed less likely with the reappearance of the leprechaun so close to the River—Kelley didn’t trust a place where the Fae knew where to find her.

She couldn’t go to Sonny’s place. Not with Chloe still there.

She didn’t trust the Janus Guard anymore—not beyond Maddox, anyway—so the park was out.

That left the Avalon Grande. It was, in her mind, the only safe place she knew.

And, thanks to the scheduling conflict that meant Quentin was back in England for his imperious mother’s birthday, the theater was dark—there were no rehearsals scheduled for that week.

Kelley’s fingers were still trembling as she dug around in her shoulder bag for the key to the stage door. Inside, the familiar, slightly musty smell of the backstage hallway filled her with a sense of relief as she shut the door and threw the deadbolt lock. She was safe here. This theater felt more like home to Kelley than any place ever had.

With only the meager illumination cast by the ghost light—a bare sixty-watt bulb on a pole stand that was left plugged in and placed in the middle of the darkened stage—Kelley found her way up the stairs and onto her Juliet balcony. She reached up under her hair, slipped the catch of her necklace, and let the charm fall away from her throat. After all that time when she was unable to remove the charm, it felt to Kelley as though she stood utterly naked in the middle of the stage.

It was awesome.

She leaped up lightly to perch on the balustrade and then stepped into space.

Soft purple light flooded the darkness and Kelley spiraled up into the fly tower. She felt whole. Free. Faerie. She had her wings back. And now there was only one thing she needed in all the worlds: all she had to do was find Sonny. She concentrated, thought of forming a rift to the Otherworld in her mind, and lifted her hands in front of her. The darkened air crackled and sparked.

And a voice from far below her said, “Kelley?”

Startled, Kelley lost her focus.

Her wings sputtered, faded. She plummeted toward the stage . . .

And he caught her in his arms.

“Sonny?” She looked up into his face, certain she
must
be dreaming.

“Firecracker,” he whispered, his silver-gray eyes sparkling.

His voice in the dimness was music. His arms around her were the feeling of coming home as he tightened his embrace. And his kiss . . .

His kiss was joy.

A
re you rehearsing without me?” Sonny said finally, once Kelley had been forced to either come up for air or pass out (and Sonny was gratified to see that it seemed like a really tough decision). “Do I need to steal another script away from you?”

Kelley just grinned up at him as she fastened the charm once more around her neck.

Sonny ran his fingertips over Kelley’s cheek and through her hair. She was so beautiful to him, and when he had seen her hovering in the air, surrounded by the darklight glow of her wings, he had felt his heart swell in his chest. Now she was in his arms and she was somehow
his
. Sonny marveled at that fact—even wondered for a moment whether he was actually deluding himself. He hugged her tightly, and the way she melted into his embrace almost made his knees weak.

“Bob told me there’s kissing in this play.” He frowned fiercely down at her. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”

Kelley’s mouth curled in a slow smile. “I know how I feel about this. . . .”

She reached up and brought Sonny’s face down to hers again. This time, it didn’t seem as though she really cared whether she ever took time out to breathe again. Neither did Sonny. Hours could have passed and it still wouldn’t have been enough time to spend locked in that embrace.

It was particularly galling that Bob’s polite cough interrupted Sonny’s bliss mere moments later. Startled, Kelley glanced over her shoulder.

“Hello, Princess. Fancy meeting you here.”

“Bob! What—what are
you
doing back?” Kelley stammered, a warm blush staining her cheeks as she composed herself. She looked back and forth between Sonny and the ancient Fae. “Both of you, I mean?”

Sonny reached down and tucked a lock of Kelley’s fiery hair behind one ear. He was going to have to tell her that they weren’t the only ones in the theater. That not only had one of her fellow actors recently had the horizons of his world view
impossibly
expanded—but that her parents were sitting in the theater greenroom, sipping coffee.

“It’s funny.” Bob stepped in before Sonny had to say anything. “I was going to ask you the same thing. Apparently a ‘dark’ theater just doesn’t mean the same thing as it used to.”

Kelley stiffened, as if suddenly remembering something, and glanced reflexively over her shoulder in the direction of the stage door. “Right! I almost forgot. . . .” she glanced back at Sonny again. “Our buddy with the bad-ass boots has reappeared.”

Bob gaped at her.

“But it’s okay,” she assured him. “I ditched him in a garage in midtown and hopped a cab. He didn’t follow me. The way that cabbie drove, I’d be surprised if anyone c—”

The thunderous pounding on the stage door instantly belied Kelley’s unfinished assertion. Bob cursed in a language so old, even Sonny didn’t know it. Kelley nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound, and her sudden grip on Sonny’s bicep was punishing. He gently pried her fingers loose and put his arm around her.

“What do we do?” he asked the boucca, pleased that his voice remained steady. Ever since the fight back in the cottage, Sonny had known that he would have to face the leprechaun again—or his brother—and he had
not
been looking forward to it.

Without bothering to answer, Bob turned on his heel and headed briskly in the direction of the back hallway.

“Bob!” Kelley called. “Stop!”

The boucca halted awkwardly, one foot frozen in midair. “Oh, look!” he exclaimed, obviously struggling to move forward. “Can we just—for the sake of my sanity—please refer to me as Puck for the next little while, in order to avoid me unintentionally doing things—things I’ll probably regret.”

“Sorry—Puck—I forgot,” Kelley apologized. “Carry on.”

Bob’s foot jerked forward and he regained control of himself. “Yes, well. It’ll also decrease the unfortunate likelihood of our mortal enemies getting hold of my real name and using me against you. Which, depending on the circumstances, I might or might
not
regret!”

“
Mortal
enemies?” Kelley wondered aloud as they ran after him into the hall.

“By that, I meant ‘enthusiastically pursuing our demise’ mortal, not ‘human’ mortal,” the boucca clarified in a whisper as he tiptoed to the door and made certain it was locked tight.

“I
know
that,” Kelley muttered. “I was just—”

Sonny shushed her, and together they watched as Bob placed the tips of his long, knobby fingers lightly against the door.

“Oh dear.” The pale greenish tinge of the boucca’s skin went even paler and greener. He looked suddenly queasy—as if he was about to be sick. “It’s our bully boyo, all right. How marvelously, unintentionally unkind of you to lead him straight to me.” He jerked his hand away just in time before the door shuddered again under the hammer-blows of furious fists. It made for a terrible racket, but the old, solid oak door didn’t budge. Bob backed toward Sonny and Kelley, murmuring, “This place doesn’t have any secret entrances or open windows that I never discovered in my tenure here, does it?”

Kelley shook her head.

“Well then. Perhaps we’ve got a brief respite.”

“Can’t he just bust a window to get in?” Kelley asked.

“He could. But entering a building—especially one that used to be consecrated as a place of worship—means that he would leave almost all of his power outside.”

Kelley glanced at Sonny, confused.

“Certain Faerie have certain rules about stuff like that,” he explained.

“You mean—like vampires needing to be invited in over thresholds?” she asked.

“Vampires. Pff.” Bob rolled his eyes. “What a lot of nonsense!”

He turned and they followed as the boucca ran in the direction of the greenroom.

They had settled the king on an ancient overstuffed couch in the greenroom, where they hoped he would be more comfortable. And, indeed, Auberon’s raspy breathing had eased somewhat. He still looked like hell, though, Sonny thought. Jack was sitting in a threadbare easy chair, conversing with the Faerie monarch in low, mellow tones as if he were simply discussing a scene with another actor.

At Sonny’s side, Kelley went stiff at the sight of her father.

“What’s
he
doing here?” she demanded.

“I’m sorry to have had to intrude upon your life once more, my daughter,” Auberon murmured. “As it was, I was in no condition to protest when Mabh brought us here to this place.”

“Mabh’s here,
too
?” Kelley turned an incredulous gaze on Sonny.

Auberon sat quietly on the couch, with neither the strength nor the desire to defend himself. Jack stayed quiet, too. Obviously, as much affection as he had for Kelley, this was not ground that he would tread upon lightly.

Kelley seemed to suddenly notice the actor. “Hi, Jack,” she said, very quietly.

“Kiddo,” he said, a worried frown creasing his brow.

“I thought I told you that you wouldn’t believe any of this stuff.”

“I probably wouldn’t have.” He shrugged. “But then I saw some things that altered my perspective.”

“Yeah . . .” Kelley uttered a strangled little laugh. “They’ll do that.”

Like rumbles of distant thunder, the sounds of fists hammering—now at the front doors of the theater—shattered the awkward silence. All eyes turned toward Bob.

“We’re safe for the moment,” the boucca said, looking far too worried himself to offer the others much comfort.

“What’s out there?” Jack asked.

“Don’t ask,” Kelley said.

“A leprechaun,” Sonny answered.

“Leprechaun?”
Jack almost laughed. No doubt the very word conjured up a little cartoon fellow in a green hat and short pants in the actor’s mind. “You’re joking. He’s joking, right?”

“He’s really not.” Kelley sighed and blew the hair out of her eyes.

“I wish!” Bob agreed fervently. “It’s too damned bad we don’t have any drink stronger than coffee in this place. A single glass of liquid cheer would keep that rotten sod out indefinitely.”

“What?” Kelley asked. “Why?”

The boucca was almost pacing with anxiety, his hands wringing over and over each other in a tumbling blur. “It was a curse laid on the Wee Green Men by their old dad, way back in the mists of time, when he caught them polishing off a cask of his finest whiskey. As a result, leprechauns are prevented from entering any house where a drink had been poured until every last drop is drunk.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Jack said.

“Beg pardon?” Bob froze in mid-fidget.

“Sometimes it takes a little bit more than just plain coffee to get me through one of the Mighty Q’s rehearsals, you know,” the old actor said, fishing around in an inner pocket of his jacket. He produced a narrow silver flask and, pulling a glass tumbler down off the greenroom shelf, poured a generous measure. “It’s eighteen-year-old whiskey.”

Bob’s eyes went saucer wide.

“Irish whiskey.”

The boucca’s jaw dropped. Auberon smiled.

“Does that make it better or worse?” Jack asked.

“It makes it
perfect
!” Bob cackled gleefully and smacked Jack heartily on the back. “Irish—
ha!
He wouldn’t dare tempt that fate now. You old devil, Jack! I hereby dub thee an honorary boucca for this wondrously arse-saving bit of sorcery.”

Jack placed the glass down on the table, and they all shuddered as they heard a pained, keening howl coming from outside. There was a rumble of thunder and then silence.

“So that’ll keep him out?”

“Until the last drop evaporates. Unless he’s got unleprechaunish friends, we’re safe as houses. All we’ve got to do is wait until the little green fink gets bored and toddles off.”

“That’s great,” Kelley said, her gaze on the Faerie king who had closed his eyes, his fine-boned hands hanging limply. “I . . .” The words caught in her throat. “I have to . . .” She turned brusquely on her heel. Brushing past Sonny, she fled down the hall toward the stage, one hand swiping at her eyes.

Sonny watched her go. He stayed standing in the doorway, unable to make himself follow. He could only listen to Kelley’s retreating footsteps. He felt like a leaf floating on the surface of a river, caught between two opposing currents that would not let it drift one way or the other. Beneath the collar of his shirt, his neck felt bare and raw with cold where his missing Janus medallion used to rest. He hadn’t even been able to bring himself to tell the king that he had lost it.

Auberon lifted his head and looked at the young changeling he’d raised from babyhood in his icy halls in the Otherworld. “Go to her,” the king said quietly. “When all is said and done, my young Janus, you owe her far more loyalty than you do me. That’s probably something she should know.”