On The Prowl

Chapter 1

I saw him across the crowded room. He was standing behind a couple of werewolves and a large troll. One of the Weres was knocking snow off his boots while the other attempted to hand his overcoat to the troll, who was serving as greeter. Since in troll terms that involved stomping on potential troublemakers before they got in the door, then throwing them out on their asses, he wasn't getting very far. The Weres finally figured that out and walked away grumbling.

The other new arrival kept his floor-length cloak on. Of course, he probably had more than one reason for that. The hood was up, so I couldn't see his face, but from underneath the cape spilled a faint nimbus of gold. There aren't too many creatures who cast light shadows, and of those, only one would have any reason to be visiting Brooklyn's seediest occult auction house.

He wasn't here to shop. He was here for me.

I whirled and started for the door to the employees-only area, but a large body in a too-small tux blocked my way. "Claire."

"Matt." I tried to move around him, but he managed to entirely fill the doorway. If he ever stopped those compulsive gym visits, he'd have to start edging in sideways.

"Where do you think you're going?" The soprano voice out of the gorilla-size chest was always a surprise.

"To the bathroom. My contacts are killing me."

Matt fished my glasses off the top of my head and settled them on my nose. "Suffering builds character."

"I have enough character, thanks." I glanced back over my shoulder. "Matt, please! I need to – "

"Start earning your paycheck, I agree." His small brown eyes flickered here and there nervously as if he knew trouble was about to break out, but wasn't sure of the direction. Considering what was up for sale tonight, he was probably right. "I'd feel better having you closer than the back rooms. We got a lot of volatile stuff here."

I wondered if he meant the customers or the merchandise. Either way, I couldn't appeal to a higher power. Despite the overuse of steroids and the bad crew cut, Matt wasn't a bouncer in a dive on the wrong side of town. He was old man Gerald's darling only son and, since his dad was away on a buying trip, my boss.

"Anything goes nuts and my ass is grass. Dad'll have me cleaning the stockroom for the next decade, and who's gonna pay you under the table then?"

I had a good comeback about just how little he paid me, but it died on my lips. The sight of the gray cloak weaving its way across the room occupied all my attention. There was nothing menacing about it, unless you knew what was underneath.

Except for the fact that it was coming straight at me.

I let Matt maneuver me to the front of the main salon, since his bulk insured that we'd move faster through the crush of bodies than I could have alone. We stopped in front of a semicircle of marble plinths that held the evening's wares. None of tonight's items had been available for preview, which explained the pre-auction crowd. Some were of dubious origin and I don't think Gerald had wanted anyone to examine them too closely before the sale. But others were simply too dangerous to have on display without a major safety precaution. Unfortunately for my plans to cut and run, that happened to be me.

Matt positioned me at center stage, up a short flight of steps from the throng of customers. There had been quite a few people on the platform, despite the attempts of the two trolls stationed at each end to keep it clear. The trolls didn't look happy. They were under orders not to break anyone in two or crack any heads open, which kind of limited their persuasive abilities. But, as usual, my appearance cleared the place faster than a gas leak.

"That's better." Matt surveyed the empty platform with satisfaction.

"You could put up the wards," I pointed out desperately. The plinths were usually surrounded by magical shields, only they don't work so well with me around.

"I don't trust the wards, especially not tonight," Matt said irritably. "What's the matter with you?" His tiny eyes scanned the salon, but there were too many people – and assorted other things – in the way for him to notice my particular problem. And I wasn't planning to tell him. He only paid me a fraction of what I was worth, but a fraction is better than nothing. And until I sorted out some personal issues, this was the only income I had. Freaking Matt out would be extremely bad for my dwindling bank account. And maybe I was wrong. Maybe a Lord of the Light Fey was suddenly interested in acquiring a moldy old talisman of dubious provenance, for which he'd be expected to pay a premium price.

Yeah, right.

"Nothing."

"Okay, then." Matt did one more scan of the room. "I need to keep an eye on the Weres. You think you can manage to stand here and stay out of trouble?"

"Well... I can stand here." I didn't have much choice considering that the Fey was between me and the exits.

Matt rolled his eyes and moved off to crowd the two werewolves. I thought that was less than smart. It was another week until the full moon, but they were already vibrating with repressed energy and spoiling for a fight. But it was his call, and I had my own problems: while I'd been distracted, the Fey had disappeared.

I thought for a second that I spotted him trying to meld with the shadows in a corner, but a second glance told me that it was only one of the banshees that the house used as security alarms. I scanned the room again, but it was no use. The Fey was simply gone, and I didn't intend to wait around for him to show up. For once, Matt was going to have to make do without me.

I turned on my heel and pelted down the back stairs of the platform, intending to try for the fire exit, but something was in my way. I crashed into a broad, hard chest, and would have gone sprawling if someone hadn't caught my shoulder. My glasses fell to the tip of my nose and a hand pushed them back up. A very attractive hand, I noticed as sight returned, strong and sun-bronzed. It was attached to an equally beautiful arm, all slender muscles under a silken sleeve, and led to a very handsome face. A face with a slight smile curving its sensual lips and an amused glint in eyes the color of a glacier's heart – a pure, crystalline blue.

Oh, crap.

He stood at the bottom of the stairs, but I still had to look up to meet those eyes. That wouldn't have been true for many men – I'm almost six feet tall – and the step I was balancing on added another few inches. But then, he wasn't a man.

The Fey looked me over as he set me back on my feet. Despite my best efforts, his nearness made me shiver and a broader smile broke over his face. I adjusted a strap on my dress and tried not to let my panic show. Gerald & Company requires formal dress for important sales as a way of letting potential buyers know in advance not to expect any bargains, and I'd thought I looked pretty good. My usually frizzy red mane had been tamed by almost an hour with a curling iron and my moss green gown, while not exactly couture, had once been expensive. Now I was wishing I'd blackened my front teeth or, better yet, called in sick.

"Do you know," he told me, a thread of delight running through his voice, "I'm beginning to think this evening might not be as dull as I'd imagined."

I told myself to pull back, to get some maneuvering room, but my body wasn't listening. There was no slowly building passion, no steadily mounting desire as might have been true with a handsome man. Instead, the attraction was instantaneous and so overwhelming that it left me light-headed. I simply wanted him, so much that I had to fight not to throw myself back into his arms.

Of all the things I hate about the Fey, number one is the way they make my body react. I first encountered them when I was sixteen. Father had invited a delegation to visit the family estate, and I was expected to help entertain. Instead, I dropped things all through dinner, unable to keep my mind on what I was doing with my body suddenly going haywire. Their leader had been especially unnerving, with ancient silver eyes and hair as bright as water in sunlight. I'd been fascinated by the way it cascaded over his shoulders, a platinum waterfall that carved tiny prisms from the light whenever he moved. But my admiration had faded fast when he turned to Father and, without altering the polite, bland expression he'd worn all evening, asked if perhaps I was ill, to be so clumsy. Father had laughed off the insult, but I'd been mortified.

Of course, if I'd known why they were there, I'd have shown up for dinner cross-eyed and twitching.

The Fey slid one hand around my waist, drawing me against a body that felt like sun-warmed steel. He used his free hand to produce the evening's catalogue from under the cloak and flipped it open. He perused a page, then looked down at me again. "You aren't listed."

"What?"

"It's not surprising, considering the treaty," he continued. "When are we to have the pleasure of bidding on you?"

I could feel my cheeks flush, something that, with my complexion, was probably all too obvious. I closed my eyes and with a sudden movement, wrenched away. I smoothed my rumpled gown with slightly shaking hands and glared at him. "Bite me."

I caught a gleam in those odd eyes. "Right here?"

Of all the things I hate about the Fey, number two would definitely be their sense of humor.

Suddenly, anger started to override fear. I wasn't sixteen anymore, and Gerald & Company employed plenty of guards. Not that they'd bothered to furnish me with one – ordinarily, no magical creature wanted to get close enough to give me trouble – but there were more than enough posted around the room to deal with even a Fey. And considering how well the Dark and Light Fey got along, I thought the trolls might even thank me for the excuse.

I looked around for security, but they'd been distracted by the trouble Matt was having. I hadn't seen what started it, but one of the Weres had attacked the leader of the security team and seemed to be trying to gnaw through its knobby forearm. The troll looked at him in understandable bemusement – their skin is approximately the thickness of rawhide – then snapped his arm, throwing the Were across the room. He hit the far wall with an audible thump before slowly sliding to the floor, leaving a big red mark on the gold-embossed wallpaper.

One of the trolls who usually flanked the stage had moved to assist with the fight, and the other was too preoccupied to notice me. I dodged behind the old couple he was watching through narrow, beady eyes. They'd braved my presence to check out one of the items for sale – a small, gray rune stone sitting in solitary splendor on a black velvet cushion. It was the only thing on the plinth, so I assumed it had to be important, but the description in the catalogue had been unusually vague, just a photo and a date in the tenth century.

"I still say it's a fake," the woman sniffed.

"But what if it isn't?" The man looked at it longingly. "One of the Runes of Langgarn – "

The woman gave what could only be called a snort. "Gerald is bad enough, but I don't trust that son of his at all. I'm telling you, it's not real." She caught sight of me and the usual expression of distaste passed over her features before she could mask it. She nudged her companion. "Let's go."

He ignored her. He was staring at the rune almost as if hypnotized, and before I could stop him, he put out a hand as if to actually touch it. The banshee went off like a hundred police sirens, screeching an alarm that cut through every other sound like a knife. Red lights bathed the stage, and the man quickly found himself dangling from the hand of a very large troll.

"No touching!" the troll bellowed, giving him a little shake. It sent the man's head snapping back and forth hard enough to cause whiplash, but he never took his eyes off the stone. Not, that is, until the troll threw him over his shoulder and carted him off somewhere. The woman had already fled, leaving the platform clear again, except for me and the Fey.

It quickly became obvious that I was on my own. Except for me, Matt and the trolls, the only employees on duty that night were a cadre of vampires. They were on loan from Antonio, their master, a Philadelphia mob boss who was one of the business's shady backers. They were a cynical, vicious bunch who seemed to resent having to work for Gerald even more than I did. One was watching me now, a short, ugly brute with a smirk on his lopsided features. The only other time I'd seen him smile was when he "accidentally" smashed a troll into a brick wall with a five-ton forklift. I didn't bother to ask for his help.

Before I could come up with an alternative, a surprisingly calloused hand engulfed mine. The earlier shock of the Fey's touch was back, all the more powerful against my bare skin. The feeling was nothing like the electric tingle of being near a mage. The static surge when my power meets that of a strong magic user often hurts, especially if the mage in question is deliberately trying to test me. I didn't feel a challenge here, but he was definitely doing something.

Outwardly, it probably looked like he was merely standing there, holding my hand. But I could feel his power all around me, questing, searching, trying to discover my secrets. My anger returned big-time. He wanted to know my secret? I'd be happy to show him.

It felt very weird to deliberately call up my power. Normally, I spend my time tamping it down, trying not to drain every mage I meet. Even my work at Gerald's rarely requires an actual application of strength. Normally, the slight damping field I naturally exude is enough to calm down whatever trinket their scouts have dug up. But now I focused on the Fey's bright blue aura and pulled.

Nothing happened.

I tried again. Zilch. I stared at him in disbelief. I once had a mage tell me that I had no visible aura, just a black hole that radiated outward, trying to suck his magic away. He'd been drunk and none too happy with me at the time, so I'd never known if it was true, but magical creatures certainly acted like it. And that was when I wasn't trying.

"Interesting," the Fey murmured after a moment, drawing me closer. What felt like a metaphysical hand stroked down the length of my body, causing me to shudder. "I've never encountered anyone quite like you."

I could second that emotion. The Fey I'd met before hadn't been as susceptible to my abilities as mages, because their magic works differently from the human variety. But they had definitely felt something. So why didn't he?

"Let me go," I told him, suppressing another shiver. My body was trying to melt against him even as my brain was torn between panic and outrage. I don't think I sounded too convincing.

"Tell me what you are and I will. I like to know what I'm bidding on."

"I'm not part of the auction!"

I noticed that Matt had rounded up the Weres. The unconscious one had been tucked under a troll's huge arm, while the other was dangling from the creature's free hand by his collar. The Were's face was alarmingly red and his eyes were bulging, but they were a hardy breed. He'd get thrown out before he actually choked to death. Probably.

Matt gave me a thumbs-up signal from beside the door, and pointed at his watch. I nodded. It was almost showtime. "If you'll excuse me," I said stiffly, "I have a job to do."

"A job?" The Fey sounded like he didn't understand the term.

"Yes, a job. You know, work? For which I am paid?" After a pause, he released me and stepped back. The room was more than adequately heated, but I suddenly felt cold. I hit the button to start the night's events with a little more force than absolutely necessary.

The lights dimmed even further out on the floor, causing an upsurge in conversation, while those over the plinths glowed brighter. The Fey moved aside as the huge, dragon's-head podium rose out of the floor and into place. It was supposedly the real deal, killed, stuffed and mounted by Gerald's father – or so he claimed. Its fake glass eyes surveyed the room with their usual malevolence, its snout curled into an expression of disdain.

It didn't look like something that had been killed in the heat of battle to me. More likely, Gerald senior had caught it napping and lopped the head off before it was fully awake, assuming it wasn't a clever fake. Gerald's sold some genuinely valuable pieces, but caveat emptor was definitely the house motto. The general feeling was that anyone dumb enough to buy the magical equivalent of snake oil deserved what he got.

The Fey came around the side of the huge head. "You're part of the auction staff?" He sounded surprised. I suppose that was fair – Gerald wasn't in the habit of hiring people who couldn't take care of themselves, and I guess I looked fairly harmless.

Looks can be deceiving.

I waited until a crescendo of canned music and the automated voice-over announcing the imminent start of bidding ended. Then I pointed at the nearest plinth. "Do you know what that is?"

He surveyed the small, quivering box on top of the marble stand for a beat. "No."

"It's a djinn. A very old, very pissed off one. Gerald recently acquired it from the estate of the mage who trapped it. Only the spell he put on the container is deteriorating now that he's dead, and if it goes altogether before they can unload it, he's likely to take out half the block."

The box gave a leap as if it had heard me, and almost managed to jump off its plinth. I gingerly sat it back where it belonged, and it quieted down. For the moment.

"How does your presence prevent that?" the Fey asked, sounding bemused.

I stopped looking for the gavel, which Matt had mislaid somewhere as usual, to stare at him in surprise. "You don't know?"

"Why would I ask if I did?"

"I'm a projective null," I told him slowly. What possible reason could he have for faking ignorance? If he was here for me, he certainly knew what he was getting. And if he wasn't, why would he have come?

"You can block magic?" His expression suddenly became a lot more intense.

"For a certain radius. I'm here to make sure nothing blows up in a customer's face." I smiled at him sweetly. "At least, not before they can pay."

"How much of a radius?" His voice had lost its teasing tone, and was now all business.

I glared at him. I knew it. For all their magical strength, the Fey had never produced a null, a fact that seemed to rankle. They'd been looking for a way to add that particular gift to their magical arsenal for some time, but with so few nulls to choose from, and most of them too weak to do more than disrupt a ward now and then, their hunt had been frustrating. Until they found me.

Father's dinner guests had offered him a deal that he could have refused; instead, he jumped on it like a starving dog does a bone. It must have seemed perfect: a chance to get rid of an unwanted burden – and a constant reminder of his wife's preference for red hair – and get paid handsomely to boot. Too bad for him that I was tipped off. Great-Uncle Pip had always had a soft spot for the one person who didn't treat him like an idiot child. By the time the deal was finalized, he'd insured that I was nowhere to be found. And no one hides better than a null. The usual tracking spells are useless on us; we simply don't register, not even as a norm – and I can walk through most wards as if they aren't even there. The Fey did not take my disappearance well. The nobles who had intended to escort me into slavery in Faerie instead took back Father's head.

I pushed the memories away and pointed to a spot off the side of the stage. It was where the auction assistants usually stood to bring out new items for bidding. Since everything for sale tonight was already in place, no one was likely to be coming or going. "You can stand over there. We can talk after the sale." Assuming he could grab me before I managed to slip away in the mass exodus.

Matt lumbered up beside us. He was sweating despite the temperature, and his collar appeared to be eating into his thick neck. "Bidders aren't allowed on stage, sir," he told the Fey with fake bonhomie. "Perhaps you would like to take a place in front?"

"What I would like – " the Fey began, but I cut him off with a curse. For the second time that night, someone came through the main doors I really didn't want to see. In fact, I'd have preferred a whole room full of Fey to the sight of that narrow, smirking face.

Chapter 2

"What's wrong?" Mart's head whipped around. He scanned the plinths with anxious eyes, but I wasn't looking at them.

I gripped his arm. "It's Seb!" I pointed to where a tall, elegant figure in a dove gray suit had just entered, surrounded by no fewer than eight bodyguards.

"What?" Mart's eyes practically crossed, trying to take in the whole room at once.

I smacked his arm. "Sebastian! My cousin!"

I turned to run, but Mart's big paw descended on the back of my neck. "You can't leave. We're about to start."

"Didn't you hear me?" I asked furiously. "He isn't here to say hello!" Mart's hand didn't budge. "If I'm dead, I can't keep anything from going haywire," I pointed out.

"He's not here to kill you." Matt suddenly looked much calmer. A minute before, he'd been heading for a stroke; now his flushed face wore an expression of smug satisfaction that sent my own blood pressure skyrocketing.

"And you know this how?"

Matt shrugged. "I'm surprised you didn't notice. There's only twelve plinths, Claire."

It took a second to register, then the words hit home. Despite selling fakes whenever he could get his hands on one, Gerald was a superstitious old coot. He knew better than anyone that some of his merchandise was the real deal, and a witch had told him that selling them in lots of thirteen would be an added safety precaution. I hadn't noticed the omission tonight, but I should have. I'd been so worried about the sudden appearance of the Fey that I'd forgotten – they weren't the main reason I was in hiding.

"You're planning to sell me?" My voice went up an octave and Matt winced.

"I didn't have a choice," he said defensively. "Sebastian's boys tracked you down a couple days ago. I could have handed you over then, but I figured you might do better in an auction. So I told your cousin to show up tonight if he wanted you. Looks like he does."

Seb was staring at me, a little smile curving his thin lips. Match point, he mouthed.

Like hell.

"Matt! What do you think Seb will do with me if he wins?"

"He said something about the family business being tied up so one heir gets it all, and the rest are out of luck."

"And did he happen to mention what they do with the losers?" I almost screamed.

"I guess he forgot that part." It was pretty clear that Matt didn't give a damn. His own inheritance rested on keeping his father happy and showing a profit. What happened after the sale wasn't his problem, a fact he demonstrated by chaining me to the podium.

"I'll kill you," I promised as the manacle snapped shut around my wrist.

Matt laughed. "You're a null, Claire. You couldn't do a spell to save your life! Now settle down and don't make a fuss."

"You have no idea what kind of a fuss I'm about to make."

Matt didn't bother to reply. He started the bidding on the first item, keeping me for last. Practical. I'd be there to keep the peace until the other items were carried away by successful bidders. Then it would be my turn, unless I could figure a way out of this before then.

I looked around, trying to crush down my rising panic. For a minute, I thought the Fey had gone, then I spotted him propping up the wall just offstage. No help there. Matt must have called him in to give Seb some competition, and ran the price up.

After a fierce bidding war, the djinn was sold to a tiny old woman swathed in black silk and pearls the size of cherries. She placidly stowed him in her huge purse, showing no sign of worry about her acquisition. Either she was barking mad, or she was a powerful witch. Considering that she kept well away from me, I was betting on the latter.

Matt started the bidding on the next lot, a nail supposedly taken from the True Cross and said to give the possessor a leg up in battle. As it had been brought back from the Holy Land by a knight of the Second Crusade – which had been a miserable failure by any standards – I was a little dubious. It seemed the rest of the room agreed, because bidding was sluggish and the reserve wasn't met.

Matt quickly passed on to item number three, not wanting to lose momentum. I barely heard him describing the history behind the small fragment of parchment because Seb had moved to the bottom of the steps, his bodyguards having pushed a path through the crowd for him. He usually maintains the air of pompous gravity he thinks is appropriate for the head of one of America's foremost magical houses, but tonight his expression was gleeful.

"How old are you again, Claire?" he asked, taking out a calculator. "I ask because I have an offer from a couple of Harvesters. And age does make a difference, you know."

I glowered at him, but refused to be baited. Harvesting was what nulls of any strength spend their lives fearing, and I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing me lose it. But inwardly, I wasn't doing so good.

Around the year 900, a mage figured out how to siphon away our energy, and thereby our lives, to make bombs capable of bringing all magic in an area to a standstill. How far and how long the effect extends depends on the strength of the null being sacrificed – the younger and more powerful they are, the more energy they have to give. After the process was discovered, it became fashionable to hunt us, especially in the vampire community, although some mages did it, too. Null harvesting, as it's politely called, was outlawed shortly after the practice began, but the law had less to do with stopping the hunts than the meager quality of the nulls remaining by the Renaissance. Harvesters ran themselves out of business by being too good at their job, not that there weren't a few enterprising types still trying.

"Twenty-two, isn't it?" Seb's nimble fingers ran some calculations with the ease of a trained bean counter, which is what he'd been before father's late, unlamented demise.

"Rot in hell."

"It's too bad we didn't find you earlier. Late teens are optimal for top offers, but I'm sure we'll find someone to take you."

He wandered off as Matt gave up trying to convince anyone that the parchment contained part of one of Merlin's lost spells. The bidding started on item number four, a genuine, if somewhat tattered, grimoire from ancient Egypt. Matt was trying to sell the idea that the papyrus scroll had been part of the library of Alexandria, rescued by a daring priest before the Romans burnt it to the ground. He wasn't doing that great. He lacked his dad's genuine appreciation for the merchandise he handled and it showed.

All Matt cared about was making a buck, and his fake smiles and gushing descriptions were putting people off. But in this case, there was a flurry of bidding nonetheless. Anything from Egypt always went over well.

I was waiting for lot number six, a small birdcage covered by a white cloth. It was pretty much my only shot, now that the old lady had gone off with the djinn. Occasional scratches could be heard from inside, but nothing more distinct. That wasn't surprising since I'd personally seen a handler, with a heavy scarf wrapped around his head, fitting the small creature within with a specially made muzzle. They weren't worried about its bite; in this case, the bark really was far worse.

The cage was sitting on the stand closest to me and the chain on my manacle stretched far enough to reach it. What I couldn't figure out was how to get the latch open and the muzzle off before being pounced on by the trolls. The two guards were back in place at either side of the stage, and although they don't move very fast, they weren't more than six yards away. I'd never make it.

I'd barely had the thought when the front door burst open in a swirl of snow. The Weres were back, and they'd brought friends. In fact, it looked like their whole pack had decided to teach Matt a few much-needed manners. As soon as the trolls moved to intercept, I lunged for the cage.

My fingers had just brushed it when Matt caught me around the waist from behind. "Don't even think about it!" he roared over the sound of the Weres and trolls crashing into each other.

The cage wobbled slightly, then settled back into place with a final sounding thump. Matt started dragging me backward toward my podium. There was nothing I could do – my power only works on magical creatures and Matt, like his old man, was garden-variety human. He had no magic to steal.

As I started kicking him in his oversize calves, more to take out my frustration than in any hope of escape, the Fey appeared behind the plinth. I stared at him, and he dropped me a wink. I was still trying to absorb that when he flipped open the cage door, allowing the tiny brown bird inside to flutter out. Then a late-arriving troll crashed into him and they both went over the back of the stage.

Instead of flying away, the bird started flitting in circles around my head. Matt saw it and squeaked something rude before releasing me and snatching up a net from inside the podium. He took a swipe at the bird, but it dodged with an arrogant flip of its tiny wings. He tried again, but it moved at the last second in an almost calculated gesture. Unable to redirect his bulk in time, Matt went barreling down the steps to crash into a group of Sebastian's men, scattering them like bowling pins. I smashed my palm down on the release button on the podium, springing the manacle open, and slid my wrist free, but several of Seb's remaining thugs were there before I could so much as take a step.

"Leaving early, Claire? And you the main attraction." Sebastian mounted the steps slowly, his dignity back in place despite the pandemonium. I suppose he thought he was safe, surrounded by the rapidly re-forming posse, but for once his optimism was misplaced.

A nearby Were snatched up one of the gold, satin-striped chairs usually provided for bidders that had been shoved to the side tonight to accommodate the throng. He threw it at the head of a troll who was rhythmically smashing one of his pack member's faces into the side of the steps. He missed his target, but he didn't miss Seb.

One of the guards moved to help his felled boss and the other only had me by one arm. He didn't look too bright, but he made up for it in muscle. His suit bulged even more alarmingly than Mart's, to the point that I expected to see him burst out of it like the Hulk at any moment. He was a norm, brought along as cannon fodder in case of an emergency, to buy time for the mages in the group to hustle the boss out of danger. He obviously didn't view me as a threat, which in his case was pretty accurate. At least until the little bird fluttered down onto the dragon's nose and looked at me inquiringly.

It wasn't easy getting the muzzle off one-handed, but I managed it. "You're lazy and stupid, and nobody thinks you're tough," the gamelan told my guard. "And you look ridiculous in that suit."

The guard collapsed to his knees, holding his ears and shrieking. Gamelans don't merely speak the truth, they rip away all the happy little lies we tell ourselves to mask it, forcing us to acknowledge it deep in our very souls. They make us face the raw facts about our lives, and most of the time, they're not pretty.

Seb had gotten back to his feet, but he took one look at the feathered menace and stumbled back a step. It seemed he'd read the catalogue. Unfortunately for him, he was trapped by his own guards, who had formed a line to hold off the mad brawl the salon had become. "You have no talent for business, and three of your relatives are planning to kill you," the bird informed him, raising its high, thin voice to be heard over the noise. "Oh, and one of them is sleeping with your mistress."

Seb screamed and started clawing at his guards, desperate to get away before he heard any more. But the bird had lost interest in him. I eyed it with apprehension as it sized me up out of one bright black eye. "Your father never loved you, and he wasn't even your real father," it finally informed me.

I looked at it incredulously. "That was your best shot?" I'd figured that much out by the time I was six.

It gave an odd sort of bob with its whole body. "It's no fun when they already know their life sucks," it said to no one in particular, and flew off.

I looked around for an avenue of escape, but everything was chaos. The Weres appeared to be losing the battle, mainly because the customers, annoyed that the auction had been interrupted, had joined the trolls. Or, at least, most of them had. A few had decided to take advantage of the pandemonium to make off with some free merchandise. I saw a vampire, who had been the witch's chief competition for the djinn, make a dive for her. She glanced at him in annoyance and, with a word I couldn't hear, sent him flying across the room into a glass display case. The case broke, scattering shards everywhere and causing him to roar in rage. He didn't roar for long.

The case had held a group of charms and all the magic swirling around activated them. Individually, they wouldn't have been much of a problem for a vampire, but he obviously didn't know how to handle several dozen at once. His body was caught in wild tendrils of magic that wrapped around him like brightly colored ribbons, each with a different function. I couldn't see everything through the sparks and swirls, but a lot of the charms must have been baldness cures, because he ended up enmeshed in a cloud of long black strands that sprang from his own head. He tried to break free, ripping out handfuls of hair by the roots, but it grew back almost immediately. The witch doubled over in laughter.

I didn't wait to see what happened when he got loose, but punched the button to send the podium back underneath the stage. I insinuated myself into the small open area in the back, where the auctioneer's legs usually went, to ride it down. The service ramp used for unloading trucks with big items was adjacent to the lower level. If I was lucky, I could get out that way and circle around to my car while everyone was preoccupied with the fight.

It was a slow mechanism, but no one seemed to be paying me any attention. The only person nearby was the old mage who had seemed so enthralled by the rune. He had somehow fought his way back to the stage, and in the midst of the bedlam, had eyes only for the stone. He grabbed it, ignoring the banshee who immediately started up again, but he didn't take off with it as I'd expected. He started chanting something instead, holding the stone in front of him with a look of rapture on his face.

He was far too concentrated on whatever he was doing to see the Fey come up behind him. He tackled the mage around the ankles and the man hit the floor with a thud. The rune went flying, landing right in front of me. The Fey saw and his eyes widened. He leapt for it, shouting something, but I couldn't hear him. There was a flash, a weightless feeling, and the next thing I knew, I was sagging against a cold stone wall, struggling to lift my head.

My muscles ached and my tongue felt thick in my mouth. I tried to move and tottered, dizziness eating at the edges of my vision. What the hell?

A strong hand clapped over my mouth and I was abruptly pressed against the wall by a tall, muscular form. I couldn't see a damn thing – someone must have left the lights off downstairs – but the way my body reacted told me who it was. I started to protest, but a flash of light illuminated the area at the same moment, and I forgot what I'd been about to say.

The dragon's head stood in front of me, but behind it wasn't the familiar mess of Gerald's stockrooms. Instead, I saw a black sky, with menacing gray-green clouds that rumbled almost continually. Deadly silver streaks provided the only light, giving intermittent glimpses of a cobblestone street and a cluster of two-story wooden buildings.

Just as abruptly as I'd been slammed against the wall, I was dragged behind the podium. "Stay down," was hissed in my ear. I looked up as lightning flashed again to see the Fey from the auction house crouched beside me, looking grim.

"Where are we?" I demanded in an equally low tone.

"Faerie."

I took a minute to process that. "And exactly how did we get here?"

"The rune. The mage activated it and opened a portal just as I reached you."

Almost like it was adding an exclamation point to his sentence, something hit the front of the podium, causing the heavy wood backing to shudder. The Fey was looking at something over my shoulder and I followed his gaze. The street had been clear only seconds before, but now it was rilled with about a dozen Fey, all staring in shock at the huge dragon's head. I realized that it was sticking out of an alley, so the lack of a body wasn't apparent. And in the poor light, it probably looked real.

Several of the Fey yelled in a language I didn't know, and something slammed into the cobblestones beside my hand. I jerked back without seeing what it was, but the next lightning flash showed that they had bows in their hands and several more were drawing back to shoot. "Tell them we're friends before they kill us!" I said in a furious whisper.

"I would, except for one problem."

"What?"

"We're not friends."

"But, you're all Fey," I protested. I hadn't been able to make out a lot about our attackers, but I'd seen that much. Their bright silver hair lit up the night like beacons whenever the lightning flared.

"Yes, well, that's one way of looking at it," he muttered, beginning to root through the jumbled mess inside the podium. He was right behind the dragon's face, and arrows rattled against its surface continually, but none got through. Maybe Gerald's old man had been telling the truth about it after all. "Are there any weapons here?"

"Why? Can't you talk to them or something?"

A brief, strobelike flash reflected an exasperated pair of eyes under strands of tangled blond hair. "They're Svarestri." he informed me, like that meant anything. I just looked at him. "I'm not," he added unhelpfully.

I gave up trying to understand and he went back to pawing through the hollow head. "If the rune got us here, can't it get us back?" I asked, after a moment.

His head whipped around. "You have it?"

"No, don't you?"

"No. I couldn't get my hands on it in time. It must have remained on the other side." He held up something he'd discovered in Mart's trash heap. "I don't know human magic well. What is this?"

"An inhaler," I said, going by feel. "Matt has asthma."

"And that would be?"

"Completely unhelpful." I glanced back at the gaping black tunnel behind us. "What about retreat?" I'm not a fan of dark alleys, but it beat staying where we were.

"They've already sent some of their number to flank us," he informed me. I have no idea how he knew – maybe his eyes could see better than mine. Since I'd lost my glasses in the shuffle, that was a good bet. I pushed him out of the way and started my own search inside the podium.

I waded through a nasty pile of used tissues, a half dozen crumpled soft drink cans, piles of broken display containers, several scratched acrylic stands and a pair of old sneakers. No wonder Matt could never find the damn gavel! I had to go mostly on feel, as the lightning flashes were more confusing than helpful, and the dark interior of the podium was no brighter than the alley. But as far as I could tell the most lethal thing inside the dragon's head was the smell of Matt's tennis shoes.

"Nothing."

"You're sure?" It wasn't at all reassuring that the Fey sounded almost as desperate as I felt.

"Just how much do these guys hate you?" It looked like talking our way out of this was the only chance we had.

"Bad enough to kill me if they can – and anyone with me."

This just kept getting better and better. A quick look out at the street told me that the trend was continuing. Not getting any response from the dragon must have made the Fey suspicious. Either that, or they thought they'd killed it. Either way, they were slowly moving closer, arrows nocked and ready. Shit.

I didn't have time to worry about it for long, because someone grabbed me from behind. While I'd been concentrating on the street in front of us, a Fey had snuck up on us through the alley. Several of them, I realized, as two more jumped my companion. I didn't think – there wasn't time. I just focused on my attacker's aura and gave a jerk. And since I hadn't been able to affect the Fey at Gerald's, I put a lot more effort behind it than usual.

The Fey holding me screamed, a high-pitched, almost musical note, and collapsed. I landed in a heap on very hard stones, but hardly noticed. I was too busy trying to figure out what to do with the avalanche of power that had flooded into me from the fallen Fey. It was a crushing weight, strong enough to cause tiny sparks in the air, as if a swarm of lightning bugs had descended on me. I'd never known anything like it and I didn't know what to do with it, but keeping it wasn't an option.

I panicked and sent the whole thing into the pavement, where my hands rested. Instead of grounding it as I'd planned, the surge of power moved under the cobblestones, churning them up like a giant earthworm moving through dirt. A giant, electric earthworm headed straight for our attackers.

The Fey scattered, but the building across the street had nowhere to go. A second later, the power hit it dead-on. It shook violently before erupting in a burst of wood, glass and pretty painted shutters, one of which hurtled across the street and almost decapitated me. I didn't have time to freak out, because my companion had hauled me to my feet and we were sprinting down the street, away from the raining cloud of rubble. I heard yells behind us, but nobody followed. I didn't blame them.

Chapter 3

I quickly discovered that high heels and cobblestones are a bad mix, and that bare feet aren't much better. The street had obviously been laid by a sadist, because some stones stuck up almost an inch above the others. I was limping before we'd gone two blocks, and had stubbed my toe half a dozen times.

Then the storm broke, with slanting sheets of rain hitting down so hard as to almost blow us off our feet. We took cover under a building with a second story that protruded out past the first, but it didn't help much. In less than a minute, I was soaked, the chiffon dress clinging to me like Saran Wrap.

"Stay here!" the Fey yelled to be heard over the sound of the storm.

"What? No!" Before I could grab him, he was gone, the gray cloak blending perfectly into the darkened street. I stood staring out at the rain, thinking murderous thoughts and wondering what the hell I was supposed to do now. With no one to back up my story about how I got here, I wasn't likely to be believed, even assuming I could keep from getting shot long enough to get a hearing. But I didn't dare go anywhere; without my glasses, everything was a big, dark blur until I was right on top of it – including any guards who might be lurking around.

Before anger and fear could edge over into full-scale panic, the Fey was back. "I've found us a bolt-hole. We should be safe there until the storm blows over." He took off his cloak and wrapped me up like a mummy. "It's not far. Try to keep your eyes down. Dark emerald is not a common color among the Svarestri."

I had no idea what he was talking about, and at the moment I didn't care. I nodded.

"And, er, keep in mind that I didn't have a lot of choice about accommodations."

"Fine, let's just get out of here." Anything had to be better than standing exposed on a street corner, waiting to be attacked again.

The Fey led me through a warren of narrow lanes that were fast turning into little rivers, then made a sudden turn into a dark doorway. The room beyond, although lit only by a few lanterns and a crackling fire, seemed bright after the street. I had a brief impression of raucous laughter, trestle tables filled with people, and the smells of wine and roasted meat. Then a large woman in an apron bustled over to us.

She and the Fey started a conversation while I kept my eyes down, trying to melt into the cloak as much as possible. I hoped I looked calm outwardly, but inside I was panicking. How did I know he wasn't bargaining for his own life by turning me in? I hadn't expected us to walk into one of the houses of the people who had just tried to kill us!

It didn't help that I couldn't follow a word of the conversation, but finally, I heard the chink of coins as the Fey paid the woman for something. Then we were following her across the room and into another one, where the lights were even lower and the activities of some of the people made my eyebrows rise. By the time we reached a flight of wooden stairs, I had seen enough to realize why the Fey had found it necessary to apologize. Several sets of hands tugged at the cloak as I passed, but he whipped it away from them almost before I'd noticed. A question was shouted after us, but I didn't understand it and the Fey didn't respond, so I just kept going.

We found ourselves in a small room with a bed, a window closed against the weather, and a washbasin on a stand. The woman said something, then left, clicking the door shut behind her. I couldn't stand it anymore and collapsed onto the bed in a fit of half-hysterical giggles.

"I didn't know you guys had brothels," I wheezed, after a moment.

The Fey had placed the basin on the floor and was balancing over it, taking off one of his boots. What looked like half a gallon of dirty water flowed out of it. "We don't."

"Then what was going on back there?"

"We could go back and take a look, but we might get more offers to join in." He tossed the basin's contents out the window, letting in a chilly gust of wind and rain before snapping it shut again.

"I thought the Fey had, uh, problems in that area."

"What area?"

"Conception and, um..." He looked up from emptying the other boot, amusement filling his eyes, and I trailed off.

"Not for lack of trying," he assured me. He unwrapped a sodden piece of cloth attached to his leg that I realized after a moment was a knife sheath. "This isn't a brothel," he added. "It's a rendezvous point Our people often marry for fertility instead of attraction, but that tends to pall quickly. Sex isn't as enjoyable if it's being done only to conceive."

I just nodded, getting a clear look at him for the first time. The Light Fey are as legendary for their beauty as the Dark are for their gruesomeness, but it's a haughty perfection, sharp as pain. There is no softness about it, no sense that underneath the glacial exterior is anything less frozen. They have the awesomeness of primal forces, like an avalanche or a volcanic eruption. And they use their beauty like a weapon, just as effectively as their swords or enchantments.

Which is why it was a surprise to see one looking like a drowned rat.

Beads of moisture clung to his high arched brows and dark lashes and his hair lay plastered to his skull. His soggy blue tunic and leggings outlined a nice body, but for once I was too amused to care. He also didn't seem to be glowing anymore. He could have passed for a very tall, very wet human, except for the pair of gracefully curved ears that stuck up from the dripping mass on his head.

I grinned, and he arched an eyebrow. "You should see yourself," he told me. I was actually glad I couldn't.

"Gerald's is supposed to be neutral territory," I said, trying to figure out what about his face was bugging me. "How did you get a knife past the wards?"

"Mysterious Fey trickery. That and the fact that I didn't take in anything big. Which means that this," he held up the small item he'd wrestled from the sodden sheath, "is our only weapon."

"How do you know I'm not carrying one?"

He smiled, those blue eyes running over me. "That would be a good trick."

I looked down to find that the rain had made the damned evening dress all but transparent, and I hadn't been able to wear much underneath because of its almost nonexistent back. I closed the front of the cloak, and he made a slight moue of disappointment. "I talk too much," he commented.

"Too little." I finally figured out what was odd about him. His jawline was stronger than those of the other Fey I'd seen, but it was mainly his expressions that were off. He had some.

He leaned against the wall and looked at me quizzically. "Name a subject."

"You could start with why you were trying to buy me." Everyone knew the Fey used to kidnap witches to help with their population problem, but it had been illegal for centuries. I disapproved of slaving in principle, and even more when I was the target.

"We've suspected Gerald of stretching a point on any number of sales through the years," I was told, "but have never been able to catch him doing anything illegal. When I saw you there, I realized you could serve as the witness we needed." He looked at me reproachfully. "You would never have been a slave. The Blarestri don't do that sort of thing." He paused. "Well, not anymore."

"The Blar what?"

"Blarestri." He looked surprised that I didn't automatically know what that meant. "That is my... clan, I suppose you would call it."

"And I take it from our reception that we didn't land in your clan's territory?"

He grimaced. "No. We're somewhere in the Svarestri lands, but I'm not certain of the exact location. I'll try to find out tomorrow."

"And the Svarestri are what? Another clan?"

"There are three leading clans of what you call the Light Fey," he said slowly, as if he thought he was being teased. He moved to join me on the bed, ending up a little too close for comfort, but I couldn't very well object as there were no chairs in the room. I suppose the people who came there didn't do a lot of chatting. "Mine is one, the Svarestri are another. We, er, don't get along."

I'd figured that much out on my own. "Why do they hate you?"

"Too many reasons to list. But I'm sure they would be very interested to know how I was able to get into one of their towns – with a large stuffed dragon's head no less – without being seen." He picked up one of my bruised feet, regarding it with a frown. "You won't be doing any more running for some time. We're going to need a horse."

I refused to be distracted by his touch. "I still don't understand how we got here. I thought all portals into Faerie were well guarded."

"The official ones are," he agreed, beginning absentmindedly to stroke the length of my arch. I knew I should pull my foot away, but it felt incredibly good. "But, according to legend, the rune can transport its user from any point on Earth to any point in Faerie. Unlike someone using the official portals, which have set targets, with the rune the user has only to think of a destination and there he is."

The Fey's expression told me that there was more going on here than I understood. When he spoke about the rune, he looked almost euphoric. "So?"

"So whoever has the rune could place spies behind enemy lines, put assassins into an enemy leader's bedchamber, or even send an entire army into the heart of their rival's territory – all with no warning being given!"

"You're planning to invade?" I asked nervously.

"Not unless the Svarestri force our hand." His eyes narrowed to sapphire slits. "They once ruled all of Faerie, and have ambitions to do so again. The rune would serve as a significant deterrent."

I put two and two together. "That's why you were at Gerald's."

"One of our human contacts saw the listing and brought it to our attention. We thought it – what is the phrase? – a long shot, but worth investigating."

"Maybe the Svarestri thought the same, and the mage was their contact."

"Unlikely. They despise humans, even magical ones. And they know little about your world, which they frequent only rarely. If he was working for anyone, it would be the Alorestri. Of all our people, they have the most contact with humans."

"Alorestri?" All these Fey names were starting to get confusing, and the slow strokes he was making along my arch weren't helping.

"The Green Fey, as they are commonly known, because their livery is green and white," he explained. "The Svarestri, meaning the Black Fey, wear black and silver in battle. My people are commonly called the Blarestri, because our colors are blue and gold. Our real names, of course, are never used."

That, at least, I understood. Names carried power, and I'd heard rumors that the Fey never told anyone theirs for fear it would strengthen any spells used against them. But something was bugging me. "Then you were thinking about the Svarestri at the auction?"

"No. I assure you, I think about them as little as possible."

"I wasn't thinking about them, either," I told him quietly.

He just looked at me for a second, then his eyes widened. "It was the mage who opened the portal; his thoughts must have determined where we were sent."

I finished the thought for him. "And if he was working for the Alorestri, why was he thinking about the Svarestri when he activated the rune?"

He clenched his jaw. "I must get it back! We would use it as a deterrent, but I do not trust the Svarestri to do the same!"

"How do we get back, if the rune is on the other side of the portal?" Despite Sebastian's interest, I thought my chances would be better back home. Seb would prefer to take me alive, so he could sell me to his damned Harvesters. The Fey didn't seem to have that handicap. And I definitely didn't want to get stuck in the middle of one of their wars.

"That will depend on where we are. The Alorestri try to maintain good relations with everyone. Their lands ran alongside the border with the Dark Fey and they need troops from all of us if they are to hold it. If we can make it into their lands, I should be able to persuade them to let us use one of their portals."

"And if we aren't near the border?"

"Let's hope we are."

I nodded and tried to focus on something other than the interest in his eyes. He was clearly examining my face and seemed to like what he saw. I could only assume he had peculiar tastes, since my hair was frizzing into a big red ball as it dried, and my dress was torn and muddy. But he wasn't looking away even as he saw me recognize his interest for what it was. A particularly charming smile lit up not only his features, but also his eyes.

"I keep thinking of you as 'that beautiful redhead who landed me in so much trouble,' but it's a bit of a mouthful. What should I call you?"

I blinked in surprise, both at the unfairness of the accusation, and at the compliment. I also had no idea what to say. Normally, when dealing with humans the Fey use a false name or a title. Anything personal is reserved for those they hold a lot more intimate. I wasn't sure I wanted to be on that kind of footing with him, but he could hardly call me "hey you" for what might be a long trip. And I didn't feel like making something up and then trying to remember to answer to it.

"I'm Claire," I finally said, throwing caution to the wind.

He nodded thoughtfully. "And if I may ask,' what does that mean?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I never looked it up."

He arched a brow. "You bear a name," he said slowly, "and do not know what it means?"

"A lot of people do."

"Not in Faerie."

"So what's yours?"

"That is a very personal question among the Fey. It is better to ask what people call one. It's considered more polite, as it doesn't directly ask for a personal name."

"Okay, what do people call you?"

"Geisli when I was a child – it means sunbeam," he explained, "or sometimes Haddi, because they said I had too much hair. Asmundir is often used at court, because it is indicative of my function as protector of the people. Alarr means general, but I have never yet led an army in battle so it's somewhat misleading. I believe Father gave it to me to impress the Svarestri. And sometimes I'm referred to as Huitserkir, because my armor is white and gold – "

"What do you like to be called?" I asked, desperate to get away from the warm press of his fingers. The touch was light, but a lot more disturbing than it should have been. And he was right – he talked too much.

He looked puzzled. "Others give us our names."

"Then you don't care?"

"I didn't say that." He thought about it for a ridiculously long time. "Some of my shield brothers gifted me with the name Heidar," he finally said. "It means 'bright lord.' They say my hair is easy to see in battle."

"Okay. Heidar it is, then." I felt like I'd won some sort of major victory, just getting his name. Now maybe he'd let me go.

"I am glad to be known to you, Claire," he said, sounding formal all of a sudden. Then strong arms circled me and a warm mouth closed over mine.

Or maybe not.

The kiss started out tender and brain-meltingly sweet, but didn't stay that way. That was mainly my fault. My hands came up, one grabbing Heidar's shoulder, the other curling around the back of his neck, threading its way through his hair and pulling him close. My tongue darted desperately against his as I thoughtlessly drove the kiss deep. He responded after a moment's startled hesitation, clasping me gently, while running a hand down my bare back to cup one of my hips. His hands on my body felt shockingly, achingly good, and he tasted sweet – of spices and some indefinable sunny flavor. I couldn't get enough of the taste, the scent, the feel of him – it was like I was drunk on it.

When we broke apart for air, I found my tongue tracing the vein throbbing in his neck. I had somehow ended up on his lap, my thighs straddling his, and I could feel him firming against me. Someone made a soft exclamation of need and the sound broke through a little of my haze. I stared at him, wide-eyed and suddenly frightened. I felt vulnerable – I needed this too much and it worried what little part of my mind was still capable of thought.

He noticed my expression and frowned. "What is it?"

"I don't know," I whispered, from a throat half closed with panic. "I think something's wrong with me."

"You were injured?" Two large hands began running over me, looking for wounds I suppose, but I almost screamed from the sensation. I was oversensitized, raw with need to the point of pain wherever he touched me. It felt like my body was something apart from me, a hungry, predatory creature that was no longer completely under control. I was scaring myself, and I didn't know how to stop.

I scrambled away from him to the far side of the room, near the window. "Don't touch me!"

"I'm sorry." He looked perplexed, and I really couldn't blame him. "I thought – "

"Oh, shit!"

"Claire, I'm trying to apologize, if you'll give me a – "

"Svarestri!" I hissed, my problematic libido temporarily forgotten. "Outside."

He was beside me in an instant. A whole cadre of the silver-haired guards were filing through the main door of the tavern. Maybe it was coincidence, but I didn't think so. They didn't have the carefree, laughing manner of people on their way to a good time; they looked like they meant business.

"The roof," Heidar said, throwing open the window as soon as the last guard disappeared from view.

"What about it?" I demanded, hoping he didn't mean what I thought. But he was already outside, balancing on the rain-slick windowsill and looking up. The next second, he disappeared into the dark, just as someone knocked on the door.

I jumped and stared at it, then quickly scrambled out onto the sill. I couldn't see anything but heavy clouds overhead and, where they parted, a dark sky dusted with stars. And rain, a lot of it. It clouded my vision whenever I tried to catch any movement on the roof. "Heidar," I called nervously, as someone started throwing their weight against the door. I stood on the ledge, clinging to the wet planks on the side of the building, trying to figure out if being inside or outside scared me more. Then the decision was made for me when two arms reached down and plucked me off my feet.

For a moment, I dangled above the street, which suddenly looked a lot further down than two stories. A guard came back outside, pulling his collar up against the rain, and caught sight of me suspended there. We just stared at each other for an instant, before he let out a yell and grabbed for his weapon. Luckily, it was under his rain cape and before he could get it free, I was on a flat-topped roof running as fast as my sore feet could carry me.

The rooftops were very close together, almost touching in places, and the storm made us virtually invisible. At least, I assumed it did since I couldn't see a damned thing. I stumbled after Heidar, trying not to slip off a roof or into one of the gaps between buildings. He wasn't doing much better himself, with his boots back in the brothel and the rainwater making the rooftops dangerous, but at least no one was shooting at us.

I'd no sooner had the thought than I felt something whiz by my ear. Heidar spun us behind a tall chimney, whispered, "Don't move," and disappeared. After a second, I saw him silhouetted in a lightning flash as he jumped to another rooftop and took off. Several dark forms, one with a lit lantern in hand, ran after him, leaving me shivering and alone in the night.

I stayed in the shadow of the chimney, hoping Heidar was planning to backtrack and hadn't just decided that I was an unnecessary burden. I hated feeling this helpless, hated Faerie and, most of all, hated rain. I had started to dry out back in the warm little room, but the downpour had me soaked to the skin once again despite the cloak. Its sodden folds were heavy and clung to my limbs clammily. Then a gutter collapsed on the taller building next door, sending a cold stream to douse me. I sighed. I had reached the point where I literally couldn't get any wetter.

A warm hand suddenly gripped mine, and I turned toward it gratefully. "Let's get out of here."

The hand tightened, and a lantern was shoved in my face. It almost blinded me, but I got a glimpse of opaque, silver eyes, and that was enough. I didn't scream – I was too surprised. I reached for his power, but this one must have been older or stronger than the other Fey, because he fought me. We just stood there for several seconds, teetering on the edge of the building, wrestling metaphysically. It hurts when they resist, and by the time I found a way inside his shields, I was gasping in pain.

He didn't scream like the last one when I pulled on his power, but collapsed heavily against me, his weight almost knocking me off the building. I saw the glint of a blade in the lantern light and realized what he was trying to do: if he couldn't take me out one way, he'd use another. I gathered everything I had and pushed, no direction in mind, no thought, just a desire to get him away. The most I'd hoped for was that it would throw him out of arm's reach. Instead, he went flying off the roof as if shot from a cannon, far out across the city. For some reason, the lantern in his hand didn't go out, making him look weirdly like a comet streaking across the dark sky.

I stood there, staring incredulously after him, as yells came from rooftops on all sides. Heidar ran up the next moment, sounding breathless. His lips, looking strangely bloodless in the moonlight, were parted in shock. "What have you been doing?"

"Surviving! Where the hell were you?"

"Stealing a horse."

I stopped, mid-rant. "Good answer."

Little points of light from the guard's lanterns were starting to converge on our position. "Well, they know where we are now," Heidar said grimly. "Run!"

We ran.

Chapter 4

After half a dozen buildings, we dropped to the ground via an outdoor staircase Heidar had discovered. We spent long, tense minutes slipping through dark alleys, watching lanterns flicker in and out of the shadows above us. The Fey seemed to think we were still on the rooftops, at least for now.

Heidar had stuffed the horse behind a cart piled high with barrels. It blocked the only exit to a small alley, creating a makeshift pen. He moved the cart slightly to the side to let the horse out, while I stared at it dubiously. My feet were killing me, but a fact was a fact. "I don't ride, you know."

"What do you mean, you don't ride?"

"I mean, I don't ride. As in, never been on a horse in my life." The very large animal snorted loudly. It didn't seem to appreciate getting rained on any more than I did, or maybe it was me it didn't like. It rolled its eyes and whinnied unhappily every time I came near.

Heidar was looking at me like I'd told him I didn't know how to walk. "Everyone can ride."

"Can you drive a car?"

"No."

I shrugged. "Different worlds."

He grasped me around the waist and tossed me onto the horse's back. "Yes, but we're stuck in this one, at least for now. Hold on." He vaulted up in front of me and I clutched the soggy fabric of his tunic in a death grip. Then we were off.

The horse didn't come equipped with a saddle, and its back was wet and slippery. It took most of my concentration not to slide off one side or the other as we went pelting down a maze of tiny streets, splashing through puddles and constantly changing direction. The sound of hooves striking cobblestones echoed off the surrounding buildings, seeming to come back at us from every direction at once. I could hear shouts and see wildly swinging lanterns, both above us and flickering in and out of dark alleyways. As the minutes passed, more and more of them were on our level. The Fey had figured out that we were no longer on the rooftops, but couldn't quite catch up to Heidar's crazy horsemanship.

Those above us kept shouting to the ones in the street, giving them directions, I suppose, about which way we were headed. One somehow reached a wooden structure that formed a bridge over the street just before we did. When we passed underneath, he pushed a large barrel down almost on top of our heads. It missed, splintering into pieces on the cobblestones right beside us, but the gush of water it threw out hit me like a fist. The force of it knocked me sprawling, but Heidar somehow caught me before I hit the ground, grabbing the waistband of my soggy gown just before I slammed face-first into the hard road.

The wet chiffon stretched across my chest, leaving what felt like welts behind, but amazingly, it didn't rip. Heidar managed to control the rearing horse, which had been reigned in too abruptly for its liking, and maneuvered it back under the bridge for cover. He pulled me up in front of him as the guard overhead started shooting at us.

"Are you all right?" he asked, sounding almost as breathless as I was. I nodded in response, not having enough air left in my lungs to speak. "We have to risk it," he said simply.

I pushed wet hair out of my eyes and saw what he meant. The guard on the bridge had a bad angle, and none of his arrows were connecting, but his shouts had been answered from several points behind us. Half a dozen lanterns swung into the street as I watched, some of the fuzzy shapes running flat out for us, others dropping to their knees to nock arrows. Staying where we were definitely wasn't an option.

I spit out a mouthful of dirty water and nodded. Heidar got a better grip on me, maneuvered the horse to one side of the street, then dug his heels into the animal's flanks. We shot out from under the bridge, racing down the covered arcade to one side of the road. The arcade's roof kept the guard's arrows from hitting us, but enough baskets, covered carts and barrels blocked the way to serve as an obstacle course. I almost got beheaded by an empty clothesline, but Heidar pushed my face down into the horse's mane just in time. And, less than a block later, we left the town behind, bursting out into what looked like endless acres of pastureland.

I foolishly thought we were home free, but although the Fey didn't follow us, the storm certainly did. It actually seemed to be getting worse as we left town. The trees whipped wildly back and forth on either side of the road, and the horse began bucking every time a flash lit the sky. Heidar finally had to get down to lead it into the face of the driving wind, slowing our pace to a crawl.

After what felt like a couple of miles, we stopped in front of a black shape that rose suddenly out of the dark. "It's a barn," Heidar yelled. I thought that was a very optimistic assessment, but any shelter sounded good at the moment. He broke open the door and I dragged my sodden self inside. It was very cramped, made even more so by the horse that was trying to push in after me.

"Leave the animal outside!" I yelled.

Heidar stubbornly led it the rest of the way in, then closed the door behind us. "It would tell anyone who passes where we are."

I didn't think too many people were likely to be passing on a night like this, but said nothing. With the door shut, it was pitch-black, without even the brief lightning bursts to give a clue where anything was. I stood motionless, not wanting to bash my head, while he searched around and somehow made a fire.

The small, flickering flames highlighted the fact that we were definitely not in a barn. It would be a stretch to call it a toolshed, although that seemed to be its main purpose. A pile of gardening equipment was stacked near one wall, which was all of ten feet away. On the other was a drying rack for herbs, a small table, a chair and a bucket. That was it.

The storm was right overhead; sounding like a great battle was taking place outside. It made the structure creak and groan alarmingly, but it had to be sturdier than it looked, because it didn't spring a leak. I stopped contemplating the high-beamed ceiling when the horse nuzzled against me, trying to make up for almost tossing me in a puddle earlier. I wrinkled my nose at it, both because of the smell and the fact that it had grabbed the best position by the fire. I sat down at the table and resigned myself to a long night.

My thoughts were interrupted by a gigantic sneeze. "That doesn't sound good," Heidar commented. "Get out of those wet things and sit by the fire before you become ill."

"How am I supposed to 'sit by the fire' with that animal's backside in the way?"

The Fey sighed and pushed the horse into a corner of the little shed. It neighed in protest, but went. "Now, come to the heat and stop sulking," he told me.

I was about to make a sharp comment when an expression of pain crossed his face. It probably had something to do with the wicked-looking arrow point sticking out below his collarbone. It looked like the guard had been a better shot than I thought.

Old instincts took over. "Let me look at that." Heidar shied away, but I pursued him until his back hit the wall. "Don't be a baby. I'm not going to hurt you." I couldn't believe I was having to say that to someone who had a foot in height and about seventy pounds on me.

"What are you planning to do?"

"To help you, you stupid elf! I'm a nurse." I pulled on his good arm until he settled down at the tiny table.

"We are not called elves," he informed me. I used his knife to cut the tunic fabric away from the problem area, baring a long pale back to view. The dampness had kept the blood from drying around the wound, and the fabric came away easier than I'd expected for soaked cloth. It was the only good thing about the situation, though. "That is a human term. It's considered pejorative in Faerie."

"I'll keep that in mind. I'd hate to offend any Svarestri I meet." He smiled slightly, but the next minute his face drained of color when I snapped off the arrow point in a sudden movement. "Sorry."

He nodded, sweat blooming on his forehead. I tried to pull the shaft out of his back, to get the worst over with, but it wouldn't budge. It took me a minute to realize why. I stared at the ugly wound in disbelief. In the dim lantern-light, it looked black against his pale flesh, but it was about to look a whole lot worse. "This isn't good."

"I know. Do it quick."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you – I can't. I don't understand it, but... you've already started to heal. Around the arrow."

"Of course." He said it like every wound closes in less than an hour. "Pull it out before it gets any worse!"

I swallowed. This was not going to be fun. "You, uh, might want to hold onto something," I told him. Then I grasped hold of the feathered end of the shaft and gave a heave.

Heidar made a muffled grunt, and bit his bottom lip white, but overall he took it better than I did. To my relief, the arrow tore free easily, with minimal ripping. The blood that followed the shaft was also less than I'd thought it would be. So why did I suddenly have to sit down on the floor?

"You're a nurse?" He took the bloody shaft from my hand, sounding surprised. I suppose I wasn't acting much like a seasoned professional. Of course, I'd usually worked in the office side of the family business, and paperwork, however messed up, doesn't bleed.

"I'm a Lachesis," I said, blinking away a sudden rush of dizziness. He looked blank. "My family. It's House Lachesis," I clarified. Still blank. That was so bizarre that I actually forgot to be sick. "That means nothing to you?"

"The Disposer. In your mythology, she was one of the three Moirae, the Fates. She measured the spread of human life and determined its length." He looked slightly amused. "I hope you are not politely trying to tell me that my time is up."

"No." My vision cleared slightly. "The rumor is that an ancestor fled Venice after being involved in a poisoning affair that got a little too public. She settled in France, but that was the 1660s and a big poison scare was going on there, too. So she didn't think it smart to use her real name. Considering her profession, I guess Lachesis sort of made sense."

"I'm in the hands of an expert poisoner?" Heidar's smile began to fade around the edges.

"We've been known for centuries as the people to see if you're serious about magical healing."

"Or the reverse?"

He was more perceptive than a lot of our clients. I'd helped to draw up the contracts for curse removal, until I had an attack of conscience on seeing how many of them were for the same people, over and over again. Our cures would work, but in the process place another curse on the sufferer. Not for nothing was Lachesis known as miracle workers in the healing arts: half the curses we removed were our own.

"I'm retired," I said briefly, getting up to finish the job. "And I'm not likely to poison my only guide in this crazy place."

His tunic tore the rest of the way off with a little help from the knife, leaving me staring at a surprisingly well-muscled torso. All the Fey I'd previously encountered had looked like those tonight – tall, but with a slender, almost willowy build. It probably explained why they moved like gazelles, with a quick, springy grace and perfect balance. This one didn't move like that, and now I understood why. His arms, shoulders and chest were well-defined, and the hard muscles coiled beneath that smooth skin gave him more weight to carry.

He said something, but I didn't hear it. Streams of rainwater had found their way inside the V-neck of his tunic and ran down his chest, gathering in the dark hollow of his navel. Water droplets still gleamed here and there, and a damp strand of hair had curled in a sinuous curve across his chest.

Brilliant lapis eyes, their color darkened by the low light, met mine. I realized that my hand had been stroking his arm idly, over a sprinkling of sun freckles near his shoulder. More ran over his nose and across his cheekbones. They were light, almost unnoticeable, but I'd never seen a Fey with freckles before.

"I'll get something for the wound," I told him, tossing the remains of the tunic over the side of the table and moving as far away as I could get in the little room.

"I usually heal well enough on my own," he offered, but I ignored him. I needed something to do, and just because he healed fast didn't mean he couldn't get an infection.

I found lavender and pretty yellow calendula flowers on the drying rack, along with some other stuff I didn't recognize. The idea of having new, completely unknown herbs to experiment on was almost enough to distract me from the task at hand. The family had traded with the Fey for ingredients – I'd seen the records of payments made in the office – but I'd never been allowed to handle any of the materials myself. They went to the boys in the lab along with all the other esoteric goodies. I promised myself to do some serious gathering before I went home. Assuming I ever did.

I needed a clean cloth and something to use to make tea. The cloth was nowhere to be found, but the bucket was metal and didn't have any holes, so I figured it would do for a makeshift teapot. I pushed open the door and got slapped in the face by more rain. It was still pouring down, enough to quickly fill the bucket partway, but also to turn the area around the door into a muddy mess.

I gratefully turned back to the dryer part of the shed, only to stop dead. The Fey was getting undressed. He'd already spread the cape on the floor on the far side of the table and hung the shredded tunic on a nail I'd overlooked. Now his hand dropped to the lacings of his leggings. The dark blue fabric hugged his body tightly and only came away slowly, baring first creamy buttocks, then silky thighs and finally well-muscled calves to view. He sat back on the chair, his body on careless display, before noticing me.

"What's wrong?" He was regarding me quizzically, his head tilted slightly to the side. In the soft glow from the fire, his hair took on the sheen of antique gold, like ancient treasure. I swallowed, fighting the urge to touch those shining strands.

"Nothing."

I sat my bucket with the herbs inside over the fire and settled down on its far side – practically the only free space left. That put me next to the now steaming horse, but it beat the hell out of the alternative. I'd heard that the Fey had fewer problems with modesty than humans, but could really have done without a demonstration. I occupied myself trying to find something neutral to look at without turning my back on him completely.

I concentrated on the fire, watching the bits of wood and ash thrown up by the flames, but my eyes kept trying to wander to the well-muscled leg and part of one strong thigh visible just beyond it. They were highlighted with minute golden strands that tantalizingly caught the light. Beads of moisture were starting to dry all over his skin, leaving it warm and rosy. I felt a little dizzy.

"What did you put in there?" he asked, peering into the pot.

I swallowed. "Lavender for an antiseptic and calendula to stem blood flow and reduce scarring. It isn't optimal, but it's the best I can do with the stuff at hand." He nodded, but looked at the pot dubiously. I probably shouldn't have mentioned the poison thing.

"I answered your questions; I would appreciate you answering one of mine," he said after a pause. "Who was the mage you called Sebastian? What did he want with you?"

I watched steam start to rise from the pot and wondered how to reply to that. Summing up my past in a few words was a challenge. I decided on the Reader's Digest version.

"My father decided to sell me to the Light Fey. Only a great-uncle found out about it before the deal went through and helped me escape. When Father couldn't produce me as promised, the Fey decided he'd welshed on the deal, so..."

"I can guess."

"Sebastian has been looking for me ever since. And tonight he caught up with me. The family blames me for what happened to Father."

"And your cousin wants revenge."

"Something like that." Actually, the whole family had had a vote, and they'd preferred Seb's bribes to my assurances. Normally, the memory was enough to bring me to angry tears, but at the moment, I seemed unable to get worked up about it. Maybe because I was already worked up about something else.

I couldn't seem to stop staring at Heidar's hair. The top layer had started to dry and, unusual for the Fey, it had a slight ripple to it. The underside was still damp and golden tendrils curled intriguingly against his neck. I suddenly had an almost overwhelming urge to run my hands through that heavy mane, to slide them over that beautiful chest, to kiss him until he cried out and couldn't breathe... he was giving me that puzzled look again.

"Can you describe these Fey?"

I blinked. "What?"

"The ones who tried to buy you."

"Oh. They, uh, they looked like you. Well, sort of." I forced my mind onto the question. "More like the guards back in the village, actually. Same silver hair, same malicious expressions."

Heidar seemed surprised. "The Svarestri don't buy humans. The Alorestri have always been the biggest participants in the slave trade. They lose more warriors holding the border than we do, and need a higher birthrate to compensate. The Svarestri consider humans... unacceptable... as mates."

"Well, they were trying to buy me."

Heidar suddenly looked grim. "The Svarestri do not buy humans," he repeated. "If they were trying to buy you, the only explanation I can think of..."

"What?" I was starting to get worried.

"There is a good chance they were trying to insure that your power was not transmitted to a rival clan's bloodline."

"So?" Slavery was slavery as far as I could see. What difference did the motivation make?

"In their minds, the best way to make sure you did not marry an enemy would not be to marry you themselves." Heidar looked at me gently. "It would be to kill you."

I swallowed. "So, if I'm caught..."

Heidar leaned forward, his face intense. "If we're captured, don't tell them your name. Make something up, tell them I bought you from the Alorestri for a mistress, or that I caught you after you ran away from your master. Tell them anything, but not that you're a null."

"There's a good chance they already know." The attacks in the village hadn't exactly been subtle.

"In this village, yes. But possibly not in the next or in the one after that. I'll do what I can to get us to the border, but if we are captured – "

"I'll remember." Not that it would probably matter. So far, it looked like the Svarestri welcomed guests by shooting them full of holes. No matter who they were.

I stirred the tea, decided it was as good as it was going to get, and took it off the fire. The tunic was still wet, but I tore off long strips and held them close to the flames. I felt the Fey's eyes on me, but I didn't meet them. I was going to have to touch him to dress the wound – there was no alternative since he couldn't reach that high on his back by himself – and I wanted as little stimulus as possible before that.

When the cloth was dry, I gathered everything up and approached him nervously. The tunic strips were soaked in the tea, then wrapped around his shoulder and tied off. It wasn't the prettiest job of dressing a wound I've ever seen, but at least it was done. And with luck, that amazing metabolism would do the rest.

"There. Good as new."

I started to step back, but he caught my hand. "Thank you."

It was a light touch, but it instantly brought all the feelings I'd been trying to suppress roaring back. I stiffened and drew in a ragged breath, my skin suddenly fever hot. His grip tightened, concern coming into those clear blue eyes, and that made everything infinitely worse. It wasn't normal for me to feel this much this quickly, not for anyone. Yet I stood there, swaying slightly, almost able to taste the intoxicating flavor of his skin. I knew something was wrong, that there was more going on here than just attraction, but my need had become almost a tangible thing and I just didn't care.

Chapter 5

I closed my eyes, trying to shut down my reaction, and a vision of fair features and waist-length silver hair floated in front of me. He'd been the youngest of the delegation to Father, or so I'd thought. The seemingly teenaged face probably hid hundreds of years of experience, but I hadn't known enough about the Fey at the time to realize it. I could still recall every one of his mocking words when I'd tenuously responded to the heat in his eyes. I really didn't want to see that expression on Heidar's face.

"I'm sorry." I tried to move away, but strong fingers laced with mine.

"For what?"

"I know how you Fey think of us, of humans." I tugged backward, but Heidar held on.

"And how is that?"

I opened my eyes to glare at him. "We're disgusting to you," I said, echoing that long-ago, contemptuous voice. "Nauseating, untouchable."

Heidar's free hand deliberately skimmed down my side.

The play of light and shadow over the muscles in his arm was mesmerizing. "Who told you that?"

"One of the group who tried to buy me."

"Svarestri." The way he said it, the name sounded almost obscene. The glow of the fire bathed his face in flickering vermilion shadows, making him look dangerous. My body liked that; lately, it seemed to like everthing.

"I suppose. He said – "

"Forget what he said." Heidar pulled me onto his lap, those large hands encircling my waist as warm lips ghosted against my hair. "I've heard it all before. They despise anyone of thin blood, as they call it. It's caused them to miss out on wonders before this."

"I'm not a wonder."

A warm finger traced the line of my cheek. "Could have fooled me."

I leaned in to kiss him but he pulled back. "What's wrong?" I demanded. He'd just finished telling me how he didn't think like the Svarestri, and now he didn't want to touch me?

"Claire, have you ever been with one of us?"

I suddenly found it impossible to focus on what those perfect lips were saying – I was too busy thinking of things I would like to have them do. I dragged him into a desperate kiss, hands sliding everywhere, finally running my fingers through that beautiful hair. For a moment, he was right there with me, his passion matching my own, then he was grasping my shoulders, holding us apart.

"Claire, listen to me!" He was talking, saying my name, but he may as well have been speaking whatever language the Fey used, because I couldn't understand him. I felt horribly tangled up inside, and the pressure that had been building in my chest since I first caught sight of him threatened to smother me. I thought I was going to choke, to die; not from lack of air but from lack of him, something I seemed to heed almost as badly. Heidar remained where he was, conflict clear on his face as he searched mine. Then, finally, he gave a rueful smile. "I should never have said I like to live dangerously," he commented. I had no idea what he was talking about, but then he was kissing me and it didn't seem to matter.

Warm, agile fingertips brushed all of the sensitive spots along my ribs as his hands smoothed up my body, caressing my skin through the thin silk of my dress. A tongue ran hot and rough along my throat, reducing me to a delirious, aching, raw nerve. I shivered as he brushed aside the straps of my gown, and when his lips found a nipple the explosion of sensation caused me to jerk violently. He lost his balance and we tumbled off the chair, but I kept contact, riding him to the floor.

I started out on top, trapping his body beneath me, leaning forward to suck hard at his lips and tongue, claiming him with a passion that was almost rage. It should have scared me, to feel anything that strong, but I couldn't think and didn't care. For awhile, I almost forgot where I was, even who I was, as a dark tide swept me to a place beyond thought, where worry and apprehension melted into liquid pulsing need.

The hunger I felt was matched in Heidar's kiss, hot and bruising and violently satisfying. He met me with the same level of passion I gave, one hand sliding to my waist, pressing me against him, the other behind my neck to hold me in place while hard lips crushed mine. His tongue in my mouth was possessive and demanding, matching my almost anguished desire. Burning, braising kisses continued, tongues dueling, thighs intertwined, until I was breathless.

Somehow I ended up on my back, a strong, warm body pressing me down, being kissed with a desire that still matched my own, but was suddenly more tender. His hands glided down my sides, sliding the gown the rest of the way off my body. An alarm was blaring somewhere in my mind, but he had paused to kiss my throat and I couldn't concentrate with his breath on my skin.

His tongue found the edge of a nipple and he traced it lightly, delicately, the strokes barely there, yet sparking down every nerve. He pulled the tight little nub he'd created into his mouth and caught it between his teeth, sharp enough to make me gasp. It was almost a bite, almost pain, but stopped just short. He flicked it with his tongue, swept around the areola, and captured it again. Then he drew that tender flesh completely into his mouth and began to suck.

I felt like I was drowning. There was just too much stimulus – the pull of his lips on my body, the sounds he made deep in his throat, the decadent feeling of his hair falling over my bare skin. The contrast of those silken strands with the hardness suddenly pressing against me made my breath catch. I wanted to wrap all that softness around me while that firmness thrust into me. I wanted to see those intent eyes grow unfocused with pleasure. I wanted to make him scream.

His hands caressed down my sides, while his mouth explored me. I shivered as that tongue swept lower, teasing around my navel and then at the fragile silk barrier that was all that remained of my clothes. Then he paused, looking up at me along the length of my body. "There is something I need to be certain you understand."

His voice poured over me, the words indistinct and meaningless. My brain didn't seem to be working and my eyes kept closing in pleasure. And why bother with words? The raw sensuality in his voice and the glazed eyes behind his lashes spoke a lot clearer. I pulled him up to me, and when he was close enough, I kissed him long and slow. My thumb stroked his lower lip as we broke apart, while my other hand slid through soft curls to warm satin, loving the deep shudder that racked him as I stroked.

"You've convinced me," he gasped. I arched up, relishing the heaviness, and the sheer, wonderful solidity of him. I lost myself for a moment in the rushing bliss of skin on skin. I realized that my hands were digging into the hard muscles of Heidar's back as I tried to meld our bodies even closer, but he didn't seem to mind. He pulled down my remaining scrap of clothing, then he was burying himself in me, his rich-blue eyes closed in bliss.

The feeling was so perfect that I almost passed out, and when he began to move, pleasure blossomed in nerve endings I hadn't even known I had. I wrapped my legs around him, holding him with my entire body as we found a rhythm. The sensations that followed were mindless, exquisite joy. My nerves all seemed to melt and run together, my veins pulsing with heat, and for a moment, it was absolutely glorious.

And then the pain began.

Without warning, the seductive warmth of his touch changed to blazing heat. A scorching tide rolled up my body, sizzling along every nerve, an electric pulse that had nothing to do with pleasure. White-hot fire erupted behind my eyes, and I stiffened, shocked by pain as sudden and intense as the pleasure had been. Blistering, incandescent waves of agony flooded my mind until I knew nothing else, saw it as an almost living thing, possessing me, consuming me. My blood felt like fire in my veins, searing the living tissue around it into dying, charred cinders. I tried to scream, but couldn't.

Every nerve was flame, every breath agony, but worst of all, another presence was suddenly inside my mind, alien and familiar all at once. It was as if someone, or something, long imprisoned had been set free. And it was angry.

I stared at Heidar, but he had rolled off me to crouch a few feet away, looking wary. He said something, but I couldn't hear him over the rushing in my ears; it sounded like the violent windstorm outside was suddenly in my head. I reached out to him, and when I caught sight of my arm, I was finally able to scream.

It wasn't my arm anymore. In place of my pale, freckled skin was a thick crust of blue-gray scales glittering dully in the firelight, and over the top of that, a grayish membrane was unfurling, translucent except for a network of fine azure veins. It took my frozen brain a few seconds to realize that it was a wing, and that it was protruding from my shoulder.

I simply lay there, not able to process what I was seeing. "What's happening?" I finally managed to whisper, and my voice sounded all wrong, lower and gravelly, like I had a mouth full of rocks. I realized a moment later that the rocks were teeth, big ones, that were starting to grow from my suddenly elongated jaw. I yelped, and it took the form of a tortured scream of burning air that hit the Fey, lifting him off his feet and tossing him completely through one wall of the shed.

Rain blew in, dousing the fire and wetting my face, but suddenly I could see everything perfectly. The horse bucked and whinnied, its eyes showing white all around. I tried to yell at it to shut up, to let me think, but instead of words, a cloud of pure fire erupted all around me. It turned half of the shed into a burgeoning hell of midnight flame and ruby luminescence, and baked the poor creature alive.

A bitter taste flooded my mouth, as I scrambled to my feet. But I kept it closed, staring at the smoking remains in disbelief. Blood was pounding in my ears, my heart was beating far too quickly and I was fast reaching a whole new level of horror. I raised my eyes to meet Heidar's shining blue ones. He was peering over the remains of the wall, his tousled hair sticking out wildly in every direction.

"Well, that didn't go so badly," he said, his voice unsteady.

I stared at him, wanting to tell him to run, to get as far away as possible from whatever was happening to me. But I didn't dare open my mouth, and he slowly climbed into the room, past charred bricks and falling timbers.

He picked up the bucket carefully, letting me see every move as he made it as if I was a wild animal he didn't want to spook. He held the reflective surface in front of me, at eye level. For a moment, all I could see was the reflection of the flames, then I realized what else I was looking at.

My vision was surprisingly clear, but my mind was uncomprehending. The reflection showed me a short gray snout studded with gleaming teeth. Above it rose eyes with evil-looking, slitted pupils, but of a ridiculous pale lavender color. My eyes filled with tears, and so did those staring at me from the side of the bucket. The horrible realization hit home, and I batted the thing away with a hand that had sprouted inch-long talons.

The bucket ricocheted off the wall and landed back at Heidar's feet. He bent to pick it up, and a hiss, low and menacing, issued from between my tightly clenched teeth. Once was enough. I didn't need to see it again.

He let it go, but straightened with a frown on his face. "I think I would like some answers," he announced.

He would like some answers?

He moved forward and I tried to shuffle back, but something stopped me. I looked behind me to see huge, scale-covered haunches and a fat tail, wedged in between the remaining shed walls. Grayish-black wings, like a bat's if they were blown up about a hundred times in size, moved with me, and the sound of them scraping over the scales made me shudder.

"Claire." I whipped around at Heidar's voice and found him within a few feet of me. Had he somehow missed the charred body of the horse? It was slowly crumbling to dust under the driving pressure of the rain, but was still recognizable. Did he want to join it? "This is... a little unexpected," he said, putting out a hand to take hold of my clawed paw. He patted it gently. "But we'll get through it."

Get through it? I stared at him, completely at a loss. He was crazier than I was.

"I know it's likely difficult to concentrate right now," he said, then stopped. His face contorted, and he began making a low, strangled sound. After a minute, I realized that he was trying not to laugh. He finally swallowed it back down. "But you need to, ah, try to visualize your old form."

I glared at him, and my newly acquired tail began whipping back and forth. It hit the side of the shed with a crack, knocking most of it out and sending the door spinning away into the night. Without that support, the rest of the building gave way and, with a groan of splintering wood, caved in around us.

Several large roof beams hit the top of my head and bounced off. They hurt, but not badly, which probably explained why Heidar had burrowed beneath my front paws, using my new, huge belly as shelter. I roared in confusion, pain and sheer disbelief, and set a nearby tree on fire. Beyond it, I saw lights flicker on in what my improved vision told me was a farmhouse. Oh, shit.

The farmer must have been having a sleepover, because within seconds, four or five well-armed figures were running toward us, yelling something that didn't sound friendly. Heidar looked up at me, his eyes serious for once. "You have to fly us out of here."

Even if I'd been able to talk, I would probably have been speechless. After a minute, he nodded, swallowing hard. "Okay, plan B." He started pushing at me, and actually succeeded in making me waddle a few steps back. "The tree line," he panted, "run for it!"

I barely heard him. I'd just caught sight of my toes, which were peeking out from under the giant swell of my belly, their two-inch-long talons ripping up the ground as I moved. For some reason, that small detail suddenly overwhelmed me. I'd been treated like a monster all my life, but I'd never looked the part before, and it filled me with shame, deep and bitter and smothering, to the point that it was a straggle just to breathe.

My head started to pound, a vivid, furious pain behind the temples. I raised a hand to my face, but only succeeded in jabbing myself in the snout with a claw. I felt around more carefully after that, and discovered an arrow that had lodged itself between two of my scales that didn't overlap perfectly. I could feel sticky blood leaking down the side of what had once been my face, and it brought me back to my surroundings.

Two Fey were lying on the ground nearby, their long silver hair bright against the black soil. Heidar was battling another, and seemed to be holding his own, as the remainder were content to hide behind the smoldering remains of the shed, lobbing arrows at me. Heidar looked up after knocking out his opponent, a fierce triumph on his features. But in this form, my height was greater than his and I could see the village guards hotfooting it toward us down the road. There had to be fifty of them, and judging by the amount of weapons they carried, they hadn't come to let bygones be bygones. Heidar saw them a second later, after they rounded the bend leading up to the house, and his face lost its happy glow.

They showed none of the caution they'd used before, but ran right at us. "They're thinking of the podium in the alley. They don't think you're real!" Heidar whispered. "Let them get a little closer, then take them out."

I blinked at him in slow horror. He couldn't be serious. He'd seen the horse – did he actually expect me to do that to people? I opened my mouth to tell him off, but instead of words, the air erupted in another cloud of gold and ruby fire. Several arrows incinerated mid-air, and a nearby tree exploded in a hail of burning bark and wet leaves. I snapped my mouth shut, horrified, but none of the Fey had been close enough to get charred. They dove for cover in ditches beside the road, sinking beneath the flood that had almost filled them until only the tops of their heads showed.

"Fight or run," Heidar told me urgently. "There are no other choices!" I stood there, looking back and forth from him to the Fey. "This isn't New York," he said, his hands gripping me hard enough that I could feel it even through the scales. "Understand me, Claire. They will kill us if they can."

Almost as if to underscore his point, we were suddenly inundated with a whole swarm of arrows. It seemed wet ones could still fly. Too bad I couldn't. I might have wings, but I didn't know how to use them. I wasn't even sure which muscles to flex to unfurl them, but I had to try.

I managed to get one wing off my back, mostly by luck, but as soon as I tried to raise it, arrows rained down on me from two directions at once. The archers behind the shed had decided to combine their force with those in the ditches, and every single one of them was aiming for me. Pain tore at me as several projectiles ripped through the thin membrane of the wing. It didn't bleed much, but it also didn't look like it was going to fly full of holes.

Most of the other arrows were bouncing harmlessly off my scales, but a few here and there were finding chinks in my armor. Black blood spattered onto Heidar's face from a wound in my shoulder. He wiped it off with his hand and stared at it, his face furious. I wondered in a detached sort of way how long it would take before the blood loss killed me.

Then things managed to get even worse. An inhuman screech echoed across the forest like thunder. For a moment, I thought that's what it was, but all the Fey suddenly stopped firing and looked up. I did the same, but although the rain had finally slowed, I couldn't see anything but angry dark clouds with a sliver of moon behind them.

Then, out of a cloud bank burst a sight from a fairy tale, with glowing, torchlit eyes, leathery wings and scales that glittered like diamonds in the starlight. It swooped down over us and the next second, the road, the shed and the nearby trees erupted in a rush of sound and strange, crimson flame. The Fey scattered, some on fire, for the shelter of the forest. I stayed put with Heidar crouched beneath me, relieved to find that my scales didn't burn.

The person who seemed to be in charge of the guards regrouped them after a few moments, but before they could do more than release a few arrows, there was an ear-shattering boom and a flash of painfully bright light, and a fireball barreled right for them. It was beautiful, red and orange, with little tongues of green flame lapping at the edges. But the Fey didn't seem to appreciate the sight. There was a lot of screaming and running and what little cohesion they'd had broke apart. Then the dragon landed and went on a rampage, devouring the closest guards in a few gulps before beginning to pursue the ones that darted in and out and up the trees in a vain attempt to escape. A few got away, haring back down the road, running past the burning hole in the ground where the fireball had struck. But most remained, either seared alive or serving as dragon-food.

"Claire, listen to me," Heidar said in a furious whisper. "The Dark Fey have a very low birth rate – even worse than ours. Most of them can't interbreed with humans and that, plus losses against the Alorestri, have seriously reduced their numbers."

I looked at him blankly. Why the hell was he telling me this now! I could smell the burning flesh on the wind, and hear the sounds of carnage from within the trees. I felt sick.

"He probably won't kill you," Heidar continued, "as long as you show the proper respect. When he emerges, don't challenge him. Just stay perfectly still as he looks you over, wings folded, head down."

I vaguely wondered what else he thought I was going to do. My head was killing me from the arrow still sticking out of it, and my wings were useless. Not to mention that this body I'd somehow acquired looked nothing like the dragon's streamlined, lithe form. I doubted if those little wings could lift my bulk even if I figured out how they worked.

The scene wavered in front of me as the dragon emerged from the woods. He stepped on the body of a fallen Fey, grinding it into the mud. Then he just stood there, looking at me for a long moment. Despite the horrific things I'd seen him do, I couldn't help but be awed. He was a terrible, but strangely beautiful, sight. His golden scales had a reflective quality that mine lacked. Flames from the burning trees reflected off them, painting him dark orange and red in places. His wings, which he didn't seem to have any trouble controlling, were huge, black things that made mine look almost vestigial. As I watched, they folded neatly over his back.

He moved closer, not the clumsy waddle I'd been doing, but with almost snakelike fluidity. His large golden eyes looked me over, taking his time. His long snout nudged Heidar, who I was proud to see didn't go screaming after the other Fey, although he looked like he was thinking about it. Then the snout brushed against my tattered wing and a whimper slipped out between my lips. It was half pain, half knowledge that I was no more match for him than I had been for the guards. His talons were fully six inches long, and glittered like daggers at the end of his paws.

He paused, and reared back at my small cry. He said something, actually spoke, but it was in a language I didn't know. It had a liquid undercurrent that washed over me almost like a caress. Then his form wavered like it was melting. But there was no residue on the ground, nothing to show he'd been there except a tall man with dark red hair and a tender expression.

"You have your mother's eyes," he told me, right before I passed out.

Chapter 6

I woke up on a bed in a large room. It was mostly dark, except for the flickering shapes a few low-burning candles sent dancing along the walls. But the fact that everything was slightly out of focus told me that something very good had happened while I was out. A glance at the human-looking arm draped over my stomach confirmed it. I was back.

Somebody groaned nearby and I sat up. A very battered-looking Heidar was lying on a nearby chaise, while an old woman in a white apron finished winding a bandage around his waist. "Stop whining, elf," she told him, "your ribs will be sore for a day or two, but you'll live." She didn't sound happy about it, and the squeeze she gave his shoulder as she pulled down his nightshirt was on the wounded side. He drew in air with a hiss, but didn't retaliate. At the moment, I wasn't sure he could.

"What happened to you?" I asked.

The woman spun around. "Ah, you're awake." She bustled over, beaming.

"You fell on me," Heidar said accusingly.

I blinked at him. He was basically one large bruise, which, thanks to his accelerated healing abilities, had left him with bright orange and lavender splotches all over his body.

"Sorry."

"Don't you apologize to him! From what I hear, you saved his worthless elf hide." The older woman lifted my arm for a look. I got a look at her, too, and realized that I'd been a little hasty. Whatever she was, woman didn't seem to quite fit.

The head was all right, complete with kind blue eyes, wispy white hair pulled back into a neat chignon and a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. But the body under the apron didn't move like a human's, and the hand she reached out to me with was more like a claw. I looked down and saw three-toed bird feet peeking out from under the flounce on her skirt. I swallowed, and said nothing. Who was I to talk?

I glanced over at Heidar, who had managed to prop himself up on some pillows. "I thought 'elf' was pejorative."

He scowled. "It is."

"You'll be fine," she said kindly, patting my cheek. "Get some rest and don't let that one make you upset." She said the last glaring at Heidar, then turned and made a hopping sort of exit. A black feather blew out from beneath her skirts and floated slowly to the floor.

"Harpy," Heidar said, before I could ask. He moved around, trying to find some comfortable position, but finally gave up. "I think we need to talk." I looked at him warily. I wasn't sure I was ready to talk about what had happened yet. I wasn't sure I ever would be. "If I am stuck in enemy territory with someone, I would like to at least know who – or what – she is," he was saying. "You could start by explaining what you did to those guards."

"Which guards?" I had a vision of exploding trees and burning silver hair.

"The ones in the village, shortly after we arrived. I meant to ask you about it before but I... was distracted."

I relaxed slightly. Anything that didn't involve scales claws or fathers, I could handle. "I told you. I'm a projective null."

"Nulls block magic. That was not blocking it!"

"It's never happened that way before." I struggled for words that would make sense. "Usually, it just... goes somewhere inside me, like I absorb it somehow, and then it's gone. I've never been able to... redirect it... before."

He didn't look like he believed me. "You used it as a weapon."

I started to shrug, but stopped because it hurt. My whole right side felt sore, like I'd swum a marathon using only one arm. "It was considered one, a long time ago. Nulls used to serve as bodyguards to anybody worried about a magical assault. They brought down the wards guarding their enemies' lands, and some of the strongest stopped entire battles just by walking onto the field. But that was before the Harvesters almost wiped us out."

"To make null bombs."

"Yeah. In the eyes of most of the supernatural community, I'm not a person, I'm a weapon. And the sooner they drain me into one of their bombs the better."

"But your family protected you," Heidar said, more softly. He seemed to realize he'd hit a nerve.

"If you call trying to sell me to the Fey protection."

"I assumed they did so to keep you away from the Harvesters. If you were part of a powerful Fey family – "

I laughed, but it sounded bitter. "My welfare was not foremost in Father's mind."

I sat up and found that I could move with no trouble except for a little stiffness. Someone had put me in a white nightgown liberally trimmed with lace – not my style – but I didn't feel like complaining. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at poor, beat-up Heidar. Normally, I didn't like talking about my family history, but under the circumstances, I thought it might be relevant.

"My father was always too ambitious for his own good, especially in politics," I said, grimacing a little at the understatement. "When he discovered that Jonas Marsden, the mage who headed up the Great Council, was retiring, he decided he would have the top spot himself or die trying." It ended up the latter, but the prize glittered so brightly that it had blinded him to the risks.

The Council is the ruling body of the Silver Circle, which controls the actions of the entire western hemisphere's magical community. Whoever leads it wields more power than the U.S. president, the Secretary General of the U.N. and a few prime ministers thrown in for good measure – with the added bonus of fewer checks on his behavior. In return for me, the Fey promised to help Father's campaign with a little timely blackmail. It seemed that his chief opponent would have also sold his firstborn for power, if he hadn't already done so for a seat on the Council. I think the Fey found it amusing that one candidate would tarnish another's name by committing the same sin himself – it fit their sense of irony.

"Sebastian convinced Father that only the Fey could insure his victory. And he only had one thing they wanted."

"You."

"Seb thought it would get me out of the way," I explained, "and clear the road for him to inherit the business. But I doubt he had to talk very hard. I'm almost six feet tall. I tower over the rest of the family like, as Father was fond of saying, the stork forgot to leave the baby and instead took up residence itself. Even worse, I'm a redheaded, green-eyed stork in a family of mostly short, brown-eyed branets." It was a fact constantly brought up by my relatives – assuming they were my relatives.

"And your mother?"

"Also short, although she was blonde."

"No, I mean, did she ever mention anything about having an... unusual encounter?"

"She died shortly after I was born – by falling down a flight of stairs she'd climbed safely a hundred times before. So I don't know much about her. All the family ever said was that she craved hot sauce the whole time she was carrying me." A little tidbit that seemed truly ironic now. "But no one ever mentioned a liaison with anyone tall, dark, and scaly."

Heidar laughed. He looked immediately contrite, but I shrugged. "It's all right. Obviously, it happened."

He raised a brow, then winced as if it had hurt. "You aren't happy to find out about your second nature."

I stared at him. "Happy?"

He sighed and got up, moving stiffly over to the bed. "That's what I thought."

"What part of turning into a monster is supposed to be good news?" I asked, incredulously.

"You aren't a monster, Claire," he told me patiently. "You're simply one of the Two-Natured. There's quite a few of us around, what with all the inbreeding with humans that has taken place over the years. I'm half Light Fey, half human myself."

"Big deal!" I jumped up and a frown creased his forehead as he watched me stride back and forth beside the bed. "In your case, that means you get a great body and wonderful bone structure! The worst you have to put up with is glowing a little sometimes!"

His face brightened. "I have a great body?"

I whirled on him, furious. "And what do I have? That fat, scaly, horrible... thing... with wings!" I broke off because I was close to tears and I didn't want to cry. I just wanted this not to be real. "I killed that horse, and I don't even eat meat!" I collapsed into a heap, crying anyway, remembering how terrified that poor creature had looked right before I barbecued him. He should have been scared – I certainly was.

I felt strong arms go around me, but I refused to look up. I didn't want to see revulsion in Heidar's eyes. I wondered if, somehow, the Fey that had come to Father's had known. Had they seen something in me that gave it away, some small sign I hadn't known to look for? The young one who had called me disgusting – had he seen what I truly was when the layers were pulled away?

A violent shudder shook me and I realized that I was crying, really sobbing, like a small child. I was a mess of conflicting emotions, with fear being uppermost, and no matter how much I cried, it didn't seem to help. Heidar held me for a while, letting me get it out, but when I didn't stop he lifted my chin. I don't know what I looked like – probably nothing very appealing as my skin goes all blotchy when I cry – but he didn't seem to notice. His usually bright blue eyes were virtually black with some emotion, but there was no revulsion that I could see.

He took one of my hands in his. I stared at it, remembering that he'd used the same gesture on my dragon-form. The scales hadn't seemed to bother him. Suddenly, those sensual lips curved into a smile. "I thought you made a really cute dragon, myself."

I stared at him.

"You had these big pansy-colored eyes, and a little shock of purple fuzz, right here." He tickled my chin.

"You're crazy," I told him. At that moment, I really believed it.

"No, I've simply had a lot longer to learn to deal with being Two-Natured than you have." His face turned serious. "And it's not so bad. Yes, there are... challenges... but there are advantages, as well. Both of you gain some of the other's abilities, making you far stronger in either form than you would have been otherwise." He thought for a minute. "Which might explain why you're such a strong null. Your dragon twin lends you extra power."

"I'm a monster," I whispered, wondering how he'd somehow missed that.

"No, you're half Fey, like me."

"I'm not like you!" I yelled into his too composed face. What was he, retarded? "Dragons are... are... things, not people!"

"Now you sound like the Svarestri," Heidar said disapprovingly. "There really are no Light and Dark Fey, Claire. It's something we tell ourselves, but our blood is pretty much the same, when you come right down to it. The Svarestri used to rule Faerie, and they took their fall hard. They've never gotten over it, never learned to accept being on a par with the rest of us. So they refuse to believe that they are."

He settled back against the side of the bed, taking me with him. "They say the rest of the Light Elves have thin blood because we've married so many humans over the centuries. They say the Dark Fey are monsters, ancient experiments gone wrong that the gods never bothered to destroy. Only they are pure, only they are fit to rule. But it's all a bunch of nonsense."

"Is it?" I remembered what I'd looked like, felt like, in that other skin, and shuddered.

Heidar suddenly stood up, lifting me in his arms, and carried me over to a large bay window. I hadn't noticed it because it was draped in dark red velvet that, in the shadows, became almost invisible against the deep gray stone of the walls. He sat me on the bench in front of it and drew back the drapes. Early morning sunlight flooded over the balcony, giving the mellow wood of the floor a cheerful golden glow. "Look out there, and tell me you see monsters," he said softly.

Outside, a glorious sunrise was breaking over a wide patchwork of green fields. A river cut a meandering path across the scene, like a ribbon of fire as the sun hit it. Orange and cherry colored clouds framed the rising sun, bathing the dark castle walls below the window in a soft pink blush. We were high, I realized, maybe twenty stories above the ground, because the castle was built over a ravine. But I didn't have to look down to see what Heidar was talking about.

A golden face noticed me and flew over to hover just outside the glass. Huge wings beat the air in powerful strokes, holding him in place as we stared at each other. Sunlight glinted off his scales, making him look like he was wearing tight-fitting, golden armor, and behind him, four more dragons hovered close, trying to catch a view. One was green, one a fiery red and two more a softer gray-blue. Like I had been.

"They're very excited," Heidar whispered against my hair. "A child is a great joy among us, and none of them even knew you existed until last night. Your mother didn't live long enough to tell her lover, or perhaps she was afraid he would want to take you away from her if he knew."

I found myself completely unable to tear my eyes away from the scene outside the window. They looked so... free. Something about the way they rode the air – with a command, a presence, an ownership of it – tore at my heart. My dragon form had been fat and clumsy, with small wings that would never have allowed me to fly even if I'd known how. "I'll never do that," I said softly.

Heidar laughed, his blue eyes reflecting the color of the sky. "Your twin self is a newborn, Claire! How many babies know how to walk? Give it time."

"A baby?"

"It's why your father was able to find you," Heidar said, hugging me against him. The compulsion I'd felt to touch him seemed to have gone, but the pleasure remained. I was glad that something, at least, had stayed the same.

"When one of the Two-Natured reaches puberty, they usually come into their second self. If not, it tends to happen the first time they have intercourse with another Fey. The power unleashed is always considerable, and some families can feel it when a new child manifests. Your father was here, in the Dark Fey lands, when he felt your second nature being born. He left immediately to look for you."

"Good thing." The giant face didn't smile, I wasn't sure it could, but one great eye dropped me a wink. Then he flew away a short distance so the others could get a look. "Who are they?"

"An aunt, two cousins, and your half-brother."

"I have a brother?" It was too much to take in. The closest thing to a sibling I'd ever had was Seb. And for some reason, I'd never really counted him.

"That would be the red one. He was, er, a little perturbed with me, as you can see."

"What?" I turned to see Heidar rubbing the side of his jaw ruefully.

"He packs quite a punch."

"I thought you said I fell on you?"

"You did. Your brother just... helped connect the dots, so to speak."

I turned back to see a bright, fire-engine-red snout pressed against the glass. The eyes that met mine were a shocking, vivid green. He reared back when he saw my hand find Heidar's, and those magnificent eyes narrowed to slits. He looked like he was contemplating having Fey for dinner.

"Why is he upset with you?"

Heidar looked sheepish. "For good reason. I knew you were Two-Natured as soon as I met you, but I didn't realize until much later that you had never birthed your second self. And even when I did, I assumed – foolishly – that you were half Light Fey. Our twin's birth tends to be somewhat... less dramatic... so I wasn't too concerned. Even so, I shouldn't have risked it. As your brother pointed out, I nearly got both of us killed."

"It wasn't your fault." If he could be honest, so could I. "I practically threw myself at you."

"Of course you did." He said it so matter-of-factly, that it took a minute to register.

I withdrew my hand. "What?"

"It was the first time you'd been around another member of Faerie since coming of age – other than those Svarestri sticks in the mud. Of course you were drawn to me. Your twin needed me to manifest." He grinned. "Not to mention that my family has a reputation for being irresistible."

"So you're saying what? It was just hormones?"

"In your case, I don't know. But it was not my first time with another Fey. I could have controlled myself better. I should have." He flushed slightly. "It's simply been a very long time since anyone looked at me the way you did – anyone Fey," he added after a moment.

"I thought you said you were irresistible."

"I'm also half-human. Fey women who are full-bloods want full-blooded children, for the prestige and also because many estates cannot be passed to half-bloods. Those who are already partly human also want a full-blood so as not to weaken the line further." He gave me a slight, lopsided smile. "When it comes to anything permanent, I suppose I am resistible after all."

"It sounds like Fey women are as stupid as the Svarestri," I said, climbing into his lap. If it hurt him, he didn't let it show.

"You could do better," he told me seriously. His eyes had turned the purest dark sapphire, and were brimming with an expression I couldn't quite define. "I'll never inherit, Claire. My father is the Blarestri king, but the throne can only pass to someone with a majority of Fey blood. So our children could never hope to – "

"Aren't you getting a little ahead of things?" I snuggled into his lap and bent my head to his delicate, pointed ear.

Slowly, deliberately, I caressed its outline with my tongue. Within seconds, he was almost vibrating with need, and my own body was starting to feel the onset of another all-consuming tide of pleasure. God, I loved Fey men! "We haven't made a baby yet," I whispered.

Heidar's eyes widened as I began to move against him. "I don't believe that will be a problem."

I waved at the gamboling dragons outside, who were now obviously showing off for my benefit. It would have been a scene to take my breath away, under other circumstances. At the moment, it was just making me dizzy.

"Later," I said when I could trust my voice. "We need to talk about how we're going to get that damned rune back."

Heidar reached up to draw the curtains, and rolled me beneath him, all in one motion. "Much later."

Chapter 7

A week later, we were stuck in traffic hell going over the Brooklyn Bridge. We'd reentered Earth through a portal in Manhattan, necessitating a little trip to get back to the auction house. Only, it was rush hour, and we weren't getting anywhere. That would have been nerve-wracking enough on its own, but with a Light Fey and a dragon in the car, it was enough to make anyone testy.

The dragon was Tanet, my newly discovered brother. He'd refused to allow me to go back "into the world of men" without him. He seemed to view New York as a place filled with both wonders and horrors too great to describe, and believed that my willingness to travel there showed great fortitude.

At the moment, I kind of agreed with him. Damn it, we hadn't moved in five minutes! There simply had to be a wreck up ahead somewhere.

"I think we could get there faster by walking," Heidar grumbled, echoing my thoughts. Tanet didn't say anything, being occupied with his lunch. Despite the fact that he was in human form – a gangly, red-haired teenager – his meal consisted of a squirming sack of live rats. I was very carefully not looking at him in the mirror. He had offered me a terrified-looking specimen shortly after we got under way and my dragon twin had immediately started mewling hungrily. Apparently, it hadn't thought much of the salad I'd had for lunch. I'd tamped it down and smiled a refusal at him. My inner beast could damn well learn to eat tofu and like it.

While I glared at the unmoving line of traffic, a woman in the next lane caught sight of Heidar. She stared in open-mouthed astonishment until she rammed her car into the SUV in front of her. I realized that he wasn't wearing his usual all-encompassing cloak, maybe because it was about ninety degrees outside. The Fey timeline doesn't move at the same speed as the human, a fact I'd realized when we arrived back from a week in Faerie to discover that New York had progressed from a cold spring to a scorching summer.

Whether the rune could have lain undiscovered at Gerald's for so long was problematic. But it hadn't been listed for sale again, and no Svarestri army had suddenly appeared in anyone else's lands. So we were hopeful, assuming we could ever make it back to Gerald's in the first place.

"Can you do anything about that?" I demanded, as the woman, heedless of the angry cries of the other drivers, got out of her car and ran over to peer in the passenger window. Wonderful.

Heidar blinked at me as she began hammering on the glass. "Such as?"

"You could try to stop glowing!"

"You know I can't do anything about that."

"Then tell her to go back to her car and forget about us!" I scanned the area for police, but mercifully didn't see any. We had enough weapons in the car to outfit a small army, none of which were registered with the NYPD. I hoped Heidar could manage a strong enough suggestion to overcome her interest; if not, we were in trouble because I certainly couldn't. No magic means no magic, and that includes the mind control variety.

He rolled down his window, but that only made things worse. The driver of the SUV and a motorcycle messenger boy soon joined the woman, worshipping at the new shrine of Heidar. "Do something!" I hissed frantically.

"I'm Alma," the woman breamed, drinking him in with her eyes. "I work for Manhattan Models, and I have to tell you, my boss would offer you a contract before you finished walking through the door! Let me give you my card – "

"I'm Steve," the SUV guy said, thrusting a hand in the window and trying to muscle Alma out of the way. "I'm a freelance photographer, and buddy, could you and I make a mint! We gotta talk – "

He was cut off by a precisely aimed elbow to the ribs. Yeah, Alma was a native. "Back off, I saw him first!"

"It's a free country, lady," Steve gasped, and grabbed for the window ledge. That resulted in a tug of war that landed them in a scuffling fight outside our car. The motorcycle messenger quietly took their place. He didn't say anything, even to introduce himself, just stood there staring at Heidar with a look of wonder.

"I'm open to suggestions," Heidar informed me dryly.

"Do a glamour!" I whispered, having just sighted a red-and-blue light weaving its way toward us. It was pretty far back, but the cop was on a motorcycle, meaning he would be here soon even if the line didn't move. Come on, I thought desperately, how long had we been sitting here? I hit the horn. "Let's move, people!"

"Your power makes working any magic much more difficult," Heidar reminded me. "We don't know what we'll find at the auction house. I cannot afford the drain of a prolonged glamourie."

Tanet caught my eye in the mirror and grinned, his teeth as red as his hair. He rolled his eyes at Heidar and shook his head. Tanet could understand a little English, but so far he spoke about the same number of words of my language as I did of his – roughly five. But he got his point across.

"We aren't going to find anything if we're in jail!" I said. The delivery van in front of me lurched forward a few yards, and I followed on its bumper. Heidar's congregation jogged after us, their vehicles abandoned in their wake.

Alma, looking ruffled and with a tear in her blouse, reached us first. She shoved a card in Heidar's face. "My business number is on the front, but wait – let me give you my home number, too." She started searching frantically in her purse for a pen. "Call me anytime, I mean that!" I noticed her wedding ring and wondered how much her husband would appreciate getting a midnight message from a male client, but the thought didn't appear to faze Alma. Or maybe it simply hadn't occurred to her. She looked pretty bemused.

"The human authorities are the least of our worries," Heidar intoned darkly.

"Fine. Explain that to the cop who's two cars back," I told him, wondering if it was time to cut and run. I really could walk faster than traffic was moving.

Alma's hand brushed Heidar's as she scribbled down her number, and that slight touch seemed to seriously up the amplitude on her fascination. She started trying to crawl through the window, but Steve jerked her away. A couple of matronly ladies in a nearby Volvo began craning their necks to see what all the commotion was about and I got a sudden vision of us besieged by love-struck grandmas.

"Damn it, Heidar, help me!"

"What seems to be the trouble here?" One of New York's finest had pulled up beside us and was attempting to see inside the car. Tanet had just torn off another rat's head in the backseat and was crunching it contentedly. I let my head fall forward onto the steering wheel.

"We require assistance," Heidar told the policeman.

"Yes, sir! And what can I do to help?" I looked up to find the policeman staring at Heidar with the same look of slavish devotion everyone else seemed to be wearing.

"The vehicles do not move," Heidar explained, gesturing at the long line ahead of us.

"I'll see what can be done about your problem, sir!" The cop strode away like a man on a mission and remounted his motorcycle. I watched in complete bewilderment as he turned on his siren and started clearing a path through the crowd, ignoring the fact that Heidar continued to hold court with a growing number of admirers in the middle of the bridge.

"Do the damn glamourie," I whispered, as the two old ladies in the Volvo began blowing him kisses.

I'd barely finished speaking when the florist van ahead of us suddenly burst its seams, engulfed by large climbing vines that broke through the back doors and grew upward from the undercarriage. As if that wasn't enough, a flood of hothouse blooms exploded out of the back, slapping us with a rain of rose petals that made the car's automatic wipers switch on.

I turned them off, and shot Heidar a look.

"You have two magical natures now," he reminded me. "Your power is subsequently greater."

"So?"

"I, er, overcompensated."

We'd discovered that Heidar's dual nature was the reason my power hadn't originally had much effect on him. The human part of him had blocked it from reaching his Fey magic, but now that my Fey half was out and about, he was having some of the same problems that everyone else did. It was only one of a number of issues in our new relationship, most of which involved families who cordially loathed each other. I was still hoping for a fairy-tale ending, but was starting to suspect we'd have to work for it.

We inched around the destroyed van with the help of our new police escort, who also insured that we reached the auction house in record time. He sat on his motorcycle, scratching his head and looking around uncertainly. He was probably wondering what we were doing at a dilapidated warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront without so much as a nearby deli to explain its allure. I stayed in the car until Heidar worked his magic on the man's mind and he left happy. Then Tanet and I piled out onto the asphalt.

It was high noon, chosen because the trolls and vamps would be asleep. That didn't mean there wouldn't be security, of course, but after several years on the payroll, I knew Gerald's as well as anyone. Which probably explained why my palms were sweating.

"He uses booby traps in daytime," I told the rest of the team. "Bad ones."

Heidar translated for Tanet, who nodded before transforming into his alter ego and bounding over the chain-link fence. A few flaps of his powerful wings took him up to the second story, and a heave and a wiggle forced his considerable bulk through a window. Unfortunately, he didn't bother to open it first.

So much for the element of surprise.

"What's he doing?" I asked.

Heidar gave me a sardonic look while breaking open the lock on the front gate. "Why do you think your father sent him with us?"

I preceded him through the fence and up a cracked concrete sidewalk. "To help?"

"He wants the rune, Claire. I saw it on his face when you were telling him about how we met. Your brother is here to get it for him."

I sighed. It didn't surprise me. The week I'd spent with my new relatives had been both very strange and eerily familiar. Strange because the family seemed genuinely happy to have me around, a sensation I'd never had growing up. Familiar because, despite the otherworldly surroundings, the plotting and scheming had been exactly the same as I'd heard every day as a child. This time it was Fey politics instead of human, but it gave me an identical queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Politics had led Father to try to sell me to the Fey, made the family declare me a murderer, and caused the Svarestri to try to kill me on sight. I hated politics.

"What would happen if the Dark Fey got the rune?" I asked, after Heidar kicked in the front door. The sound of splintering wood made me wince, but it made no sense to try to sneak around when we could hear the crashes a 1,200-pound dragon made as it tore through the place.

"I don't know. The Dark King would persuade your father to give it up sooner or later, in exchange for more lands, a higher title..." He shrugged. "Whatever it took. What he would do with it afterward... I don't know," he repeated. He didn't look happy about the prospect.

Unlike Tanet, we headed directly to the lower levels, but all we encountered on the way down was peeling paint and dusty stairs. I didn't see any vamps, but that didn't mean much. If any were powerful enough to be awake, they'd be waiting for us below, well out of the sun.

At the bottom, the light switch didn't work, which meant that the loading area would have been completely dark except that Heidar was glowing like some otherworldly lantern. I'd asked him why he glowed in the human world and not in the Fey, but the answer was really long and complicated, and I'd fallen asleep in the middle of it. So it remained a mystery. But for once, I was grateful for it.

We made our way across the room easily, unimpeded by the usual jumble of pallets, boxes, and packing material that tended to be strewn around. I finally managed to find the button to operate the loading door, but as with the light switch, it didn't work. Heidar manually forced the thing up its tracks, letting in enough sunlight to illuminate the whole room. Not that there was much to see.

I'd never seen the place so clean. The only signs that anyone had ever run a business here were a stenciled logo on the wall for a 1950s-era beer company and a broken pallet. It looked like Gerald's was out of business.

Heidar walked over to where the podium had rested when not in use and managed to pull down the platform. There was nothing on top. The bolts that had once held the giant dragon's head sat empty and, like everything else around us, were covered in dust.

Heidar looked around, his face getting unhappier by the minute. "I don't like this, Claire. It feels too much like a – "

"Trap?"

Heidar spun around at the voice, but I just stiffened. I didn't need to look to know who'd spoken. Heidar tensed, remembering Seb's face from the last time we'd all been here together, but I knew there was nothing he could do. The posse was already fanning out around the room, half of them mages, half well-armed humans.

"I can't drain them all," I told him as Seb walked over. The mages would have trouble getting magic to work with me in the room, but then, they didn't really need it. The guns most of them were holding would work just fine.

"I know."

Seb stopped in front of us, a cautious few yards away. His suit was a light, summer-weight khaki that did nothing for his sallow complexion. It looked hot, or maybe he was more nervous than he was letting on.

I realized that I hadn't heard anything from upstairs in a while, and wondered where Tanet was. If he'd encountered Seb's people, we would certainly have heard the commotion. At least I hoped so. I eyed the mages, but since I didn't know more than a couple of them, I had no way to tell if their power had recently taken a drain. Like enough to kill a young dragon.

Seb's eyes were on Heidar with a speculative gleam. "Claire always did attract unusual friends." He glanced at me. "That roommate of yours came to see me shortly after you disappeared. She seemed to think I might be involved." He smiled. "Of course, I was able to claim quite honestly that I'd had nothing to do with it!"

"Not for lack of trying."

He shrugged. "You gave me little choice. Had you gone to Faerie years ago as planned, we would never have quarreled." He looked back at Heidar. "She can be stubborn."

I was about to demand if Seb thought "quarrel" really covered our relationship, when Heidar spoke. "I've noticed." I turned to look at him, but he didn't even glance at me. His eyes were on Seb, and he was smiling. "Do you have it?"

Sebastian nodded. "I thought one of you would be by eventually." He pulled a hand out of his pocket, something clutched in his fist. "I had this place warded, so I'd know when you showed up."

"Matthew told you I tried to persuade him to sell it ahead of the auction."

"And that he refused. A good businessman always holds out for the best price."

Heidar smiled gently. "And what is your price?"

"What do you think?" Seb shot a glance in my direction and opened his hand. My vision seemed to narrow to the point where all I could see was the small gray rune stone sitting in his sweaty palm. All I could hear was Heidar's voice, telling me how important it was, how whoever had it could make a bid to rule all Faerie. Politics, I thought numbly. Had that been what all this was about? Getting me to trust him enough to come back here with him, so he could make his deal?

"Let me see if I understand," Heidar was saying. "I give you Claire, and I walk out of here with the rune – just like that?"

"I've no wish to make an enemy of the Fey," Seb told him, probably truthfully. "The family would like to do more business in Faerie, not less. This could be the start of a lucrative arrangement between us." He glanced at me again. "I could demand more for the stone, but I'd prefer to make a goodwill gesture. Give me Claire, and we'll part friends."

Heidar looked upward suddenly, for no reason I could see. "You know," he said slowly, "I really don't think we will."

I'm still not entirely sure the order of what happened next. At almost the same time, Tanet dropped out of the sky into the middle of the circle of mages, Heidar stabbed Seb in the neck and the rune went flying. It hit the deck near Tanet's huge front paw, but he didn't notice. He was too busy eating one mage, while using another as a club with which to beat several more. The humans started firing at him, but the bullets had no more effect on dragon scales than the Fey arrows had done. I didn't wait for them to remember about me, but flung myself at the stone. I got my fingertips on it, but with too much force, flipping it across the concrete.

It landed almost on top of a mage's foot. He had been working with several others to try to get a net spell going, but at sight of the stone he stopped chanting and grabbed it, a look of disbelief spreading over his features. It looked like Seb hadn't bothered to tell anyone what he was planning to give away.

I reached for the man's magic and pulled with everything I had. I forgot that we weren't in Faerie anymore, forgot that that much force wasn't necessary against a human. He screamed and dropped to his knees, then collapsed and rolled down the loading ramp, the rune still clutched in his fist. I started for him, but hadn't made even a single step when a wave of magic slammed into me like a tidal wave, a raging torrent of it that threatened to bury me under its sheer volume.

I went down, gasping, unable to breathe, as it gushed inside, falling into that part of me that holds my null abilities. I lay there, waiting for it to stop, trying to swallow it as I always had, but there was too much. It kept coming until I thought I would die of it, until the world became nothing but wave after wave of sparkling power that I couldn't eat and couldn't control.

Someone grabbed my hand, but I couldn't see them, couldn't hear, couldn't breathe. I was being shaken, but I barely felt it. "Claire!" Finally, a voice, tinny and weak, cut through the glittering haze. "Claire! Can you hear me?"

I felt myself being drawn into warm arms, and knew without words whose they were. After a few more minutes, the haze lifted, and I could see again. All around us, light danced on the sides of the warehouse, ripples of it making endless kaleidoscopic patterns on the formerly blank walls. It looked like the reflection of water, only about twenty times as bright. I scrunched up my eyes, almost blinded, and behind me, someone started to laugh.

"I looked up your name," Heidar gasped out. "I was going to gift you with a new one, but I don't think I will now."

"What?" I turned to try to see him better, and the kaleidoscope shifted with me, splashing new, wildly shifting patterns everywhere. Tanet slunk over, still in dragon form, and put a paw over his eyes in protest. I finally realized that, for whatever crazy reason, the source of the light was me.

"It means 'shining one,'" Heidar said, tears of laughter rolling down his cheeks. "Who's glowing now?"

Conclusion

We finally figured it out. It seems that, when I tried to steal the mage's power, I accidentally also took the rune's. It was July 3, so I managed to get rid of it that evening by putting on an early fireworks display as far out in the woods as we could get. I almost died of heatstroke before then, muffled in ten layers of clothing, which still didn't do much to hide the searchlight the rune had turned me into. I'll never be able to complain about Heidar glowing again.

Nonetheless, I was glad to have the rune gone. No matter who had finally ended up with it, it would have been nothing but trouble. Heidar plans to tell his dad that it was a fake, which is what most Fey seem to have believed from the start. I don't know what Tanet will say. He left shortly after our little adventure, having had his opinion of the dangers of the human world strongly reinforced. I don't think I'll be getting a brotherly visit anytime soon.

Heidar and I talked it over and decided to stay in the human world for awhile. My motivation is pretty simple: from what I understand, my twin is far more likely to manifest in Faerie than here. And although Heidar keeps telling me that I will come to love my other half, I'd just as soon avoid another journey of self-discovery right now. At least until she loses some of her baby fat.

Heidar's reasons for staying are less straightforward. He says he doesn't want me back in Faerie until he can take some precautions against the Svarestri. They don't know as much about the human world as other Fey, so he thinks we'll have an advantage, should any show up here. But I think he's really trying to work up the nerve to tell his father that he's going to have a daughter-in-law who occasionally goes scaly.

I'm still eating tofu, even though my twin is heartily sick of it. At least that's what I've been blaming all these new cravings on. I haven't resorted to grocery shopping at the pet store yet, but steak is starting to sound really good. Rare steak, with pickles.

And maybe some hot sauce.