“Maybe you could spend the evening trying to figure out a way to get Mr. Ed out of the tub,” Tyff suggested as she opened the door and stepped into the hall. “But if you do go out, watch your back, okay?”
“I will. I promise. Have fun tonight.”
The door closed behind Tyff, and Kelley went into the kitchen. She picked up the box of Lucky Charms and shook it. It was half empty. At the sound of the cereal rattling, she heard an answering whinny. She headed toward the bathroom, poking her head around the door. The horse flicked his ears in her direction. He snorted, and a large, iridescent bubble appeared, inflating from his left nostril to the size of a small balloon before popping loudly. Kelley laughed out loud at the surprised expression on the animal’s face, and he answered her back with a whinny that sounded distinctly like a bashful chuckle.
“Come on, horse.”
Kelley felt stupid.
For one thing, the horse seemed as if he might be smarter than she was. He refused to fall for her trick of moving the handful of cereal farther and farther away in an attempt to get him out of the tub. He just stretched out his neck until she was out of reach and then tilted his head, looking at her with big sad eyes, until she relented and sat on the edge of the tub, feeding him marshmallow moons, horseshoes, and clovers.
For another thing, she couldn’t just keep calling the horse “horse.” It felt…well, rude somehow.
Kelley poured out another handful of Lucky Charms, holding them up to the velvety-soft muzzle. The animal’s eyes seemed to brighten with enthusiasm, and he nuzzled around in her palm. It tickled and Kelley laughed. A name occurred to her.
“Lucky,” she murmured.
The horse lifted his head as though responding and gazed at her, munching placidly on the sugary treat. Well, it kind of fit. He was lucky that she’d been in the park that night, and he was lucky that Mrs. Madsen in the apartment next door hadn’t heard all the commotion and called the cops. He was lucky that the landlord hadn’t paid a visit. And he was extremely lucky in that Tyff, for some unfathomable reason, hadn’t killed either of them yet. Lucky.
Kelley scratched behind his left ear, and Lucky whickered softly with pleasure. Kelley got the impression that if he were a cat instead of a horse, he would’ve started to purr.
XIV
Sonny dropped painfully to one knee to avoid having his head bitten off.
The boggart he was fighting had burst forth from a rift in Strawberry Fields. It was covered in venomous thorns and had a prominent set of gnashy teeth. Hissing at him, the boggart hurtled off into the dark. Sonny swore and broke into a sprint to chase it, trying hard to concentrate-and forget about that strange, infuriating girl.
The boggart snarled, bounding through a thicket, and Sonny cursed and followed. The clearing beyond was empty, but Sonny could smell it-like the stench of milkweed. The thing was hiding, but it was still close.
There was a rustling in the trees above his head. Sonny glanced up, only to realize too late that the boggart had led him straight into a trap.
A cloud of ravens swirled in the air overhead, and Sonny went cold with apprehension. These were no ordinary ravens. They were creatures of Mabh, the Autumn Queen of the shadowy Faerie Borderlands. Huge birds with oily black feathers, they had red eyes and claws like scythes, and a terrible hunger for human flesh.
The boggart must have been one of Mabh’s minions as well, Sonny thought as he frantically pulled out the bundled branches from his satchel. At his incantation, they transformed once again into the silver-bladed sword.
On the other side of the clearing, the boggart emerged, lifting its gnarled hands into the air as though signaling troops. The ravens attacked.
Sonny’s sword flashed through the air as he whacked two of the murderous birds out of the sky. He cut through several, but others followed, and he thrust sharply, impaling them on the end of the blade. He ducked away from another attack, narrowly missing losing an eye.
Kelley’s face appeared before him in his mind. This time Sonny didn’t try to fight it. Thinking of her smile, he redoubled his efforts. The ravens came at him again, and his sword whirled, a shining arc in the darkness.
The light from the rising sun was pouring through his windows when Sonny stepped through the door into his apartment. Out on the balcony, the elegant figure of the Unseelie king sat on a lounge chair. Sonny wearily threw his jacket and satchel on the settee and went onto the terrace.
“Mabh is mightily annoyed with you, young man,” Auberon said, his words colored with a chilly merriment. “She is very fond of her pets.”
“Next time tell her to keep them home. Or, if she really wants to test me, to send bigger birds.” Sonny stretched his tired back. In truth, the murderous ravens had taken a great deal of skill to handle, but Sonny was pleased with the outcome. Not a single one had gotten past him.
When she had roamed the mortal world freely, Queen Mabh had been the stuff of nightmares. Her transgressions against mortals had grown so terrible that Auberon and Titania had been forced to join together and imprison Mabh within the confines of the Borderlands, her own darkling realm. But Mabh had still relished the pleasure of sending her minions through the Gates to wreak chaos-which she would track with her scrying glass, as though watching horror films.
The thought of Mabh’s creatures being loosed upon the world again made Sonny take his duties as a Janus very seriously. He might not want to live in this world, but he did not wish it harm. Especially not when it had such creatures in it as his Firecracker…
Sonny felt Auberon staring at him. He had a disjointed sensation that the king had asked him a question and he hadn’t even heard it.
“My lord?” Distracted, Sonny looked up. Into the eyes of his king.
“Tell me of the girl,” Auberon said.
Sonny had not meant to think of her. He had certainly not planned to mention her to Auberon. But his mind, it seemed, was a problem in that respect. And he had made the dangerous mistake of exchanging glances with the Unseelie lord.
“I can see her. In your eyes.” Auberon’s dark gaze held Sonny like a fly trapped in amber. He could not look away, even as he felt Auberon’s mind stabbing into his own. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do not lie to me, lad.” The king’s voice remained easy, but Sonny knew that, Janus or no, he was in a great deal of peril in that moment.
“It is no lie. She is…an actress. Just a girl from the park, really.” Sonny expected that at any moment Auberon would shred through his formidable mental defenses as if they were paper and learn everything he knew about her. Even though that wasn’t much, Sonny unaccountably did not want the Faerie king to take any sudden great interest in finding out about his Firecracker.
“Hmm,” Auberon murmured.
Sonny felt the pressure inside his skull lessen. He raised himself up off his knees-he hadn’t been aware that he had fallen to them-and shook the tension from his shoulders.
“I cannot gather her from your mind,” the Faerie king mused, sounding intrigued. “And yet, you hold her image there.”
“She is pretty.” Sonny shrugged with what he hoped was an appropriately casual air. “For a mortal.”
After a long, weighty moment, the king’s lips twitched in the ghost of a smile. “Not so pretty, I hope, as to make you forget yourself, Sonny Flannery. Or your duties.”
Sonny bowed his head slightly in deference. “Of course not, my lord.”
“Good. Because I have an unsettling sense that Mabh’s harbingers are simply that-heralds of things to come. There is a great deal of unrest in the Faerie realms, Sonny. And the closing of the Gates, while I deemed it necessary, has become a thing of contention and a rallying point around which my enemies gather. If my Janus Guard falters, it will go hard.”
