Wondrous Strange

“We will not, my lord.”

“That would be best,” Auberon said. “And what news, else?”

Sonny hesitated for an instant, but only for an instant. Auberon was his king. His very purpose as a Janus was to serve him. Why was he even thinking about dissembling? Bob the boucca’s words were a tiny echo in the back of his mind, and Sonny pushed them away.

He told Auberon about his encounters at the Gate. The king already knew about the boggart and the birds from Mabh, so Sonny told him, instead, of the swarm of piskies, mildly chagrined by his amusement at the tale-much like Maddox’s. Then, swallowing nervousness at the thought of his failure, Sonny told Auberon of the Lake and of the creature that he-and, indeed, all the Janus-had somehow missed entirely: the kelpie that had escaped through the Gate and disappeared into the night.

“Kelpie are dangerous, surely.” Auberon shrugged, unconcerned. “But not smart enough to evade my entire Janus Guard for long, I wouldn’t think.”

“I’m not sure that it was just any kelpie, my lord,” Sonny said. He stood and went back into the apartment to retrieve his messenger bag. He drew the three onyx gems from the inner pocket of the bag and, returning, placed them in Auberon’s upturned palm. A few coppery strands of horsehair were still tangled in the beads. “I found these talismans in the mud by the Lake. I don’t think I’ve ever seen their like before.”

“I have,” the king murmured.

Sonny wouldn’t have thought it possible for Auberon’s face to turn a paler shade than it already was, but it did. The tall brow remained smooth, the regal face impassive. But the air on Sonny’s balcony plummeted to glacial temperatures.

“The Hunt…”

Sonny had to strain to catch the words. “My lord?” he asked.

“These are charms of making.” The king’s eyes were midnight pools. “They can call the Roan Horse into being.”

Sonny’s blood froze in his veins. He knew, suddenly, what the glittering black jewels meant. “But…the Roan Horse leads the Wild Hunt.” His voice came out in a rasping whisper.

“Yes. It does.” Auberon’s hand clenched into a fist around the beads, then he dropped them to bounce along the flagstones at his feet.

He stood and stepped to the edge of the terrace, looking down on the park, and it seemed to Sonny that the Faerie king had forgotten that he was even there.

“Oh, Mabh,” Auberon whispered, his expression stricken. “Is this what your folly has brought us to now?”

There was a blur of motion, and Sonny threw a hand up in front of his face to shield it from the sudden ice- sharp wind. When he lowered it, the king was gone, his cry melting into the keening of a falcon.

XV

The Avalon was on fire, and there was nothing Kelley could do about it.

All of Manhattan was on fire.

Brighter than day, the night sky was orange with the light of the flames, leaping to singe the clouds. Terrible music thundered; pipes and drums and skirling voices clawed the air with triumphant, horrific noise. There was the sound of hooves. She looked down at the ground, far, far below, and saw that the streets of the city ran red with blood.

She could not stop it.

She didn’t want to.

A savage glee filled the space where her heart should have been, and Kelley opened her mouth wide to add her voice to the sounds of the war cries ringing through the air all around her.

“Hey, Winslow-get some sleep last night?”

Kelley looked up, jolted from the remembrance of her disturbing dreams. “Hey, Alec,” she sighed. Scenes of carnage had paraded through her head all night. “Yeah, I slept. A ton. Wish I hadn’t.”

Alec regarded her with a grin. “You are an odd, odd girl.”

Kelley smiled back. “That’s what I was thinking of writing for my bio in the show program. You know, that and only playing this part ’cause the real actress went snap…”

“Hey! Don’t kid yourself-I think you’re a smokin’ Titania. And just between you and me? Before she went snap? I shuddered at the thought of having to do the bower scene with Crazy Babs every night. With you it’ll be fun!” Alec leaned beside her against the wall. “Wanna go practice? It’ll only take a second to grab my ass…uh…head. My ass head.”

Kelley threw back her head and laughed, her mood brightened. It was becoming pretty obvious that, bad jokes notwithstanding, Alec would have cheerfully run off to a darkened corner of the theater to “rehearse” with her. She chose to ignore that and punched him lightly on the shoulder. “You know I’m still the only hired help around here, right?” She waved one hand in an airy gesture, intoning imperiously, “I, Titania, Queen of the Fairy Realm…had better go mop the stage before Mindi sets my wings on fire.”

With that, she made her escape, surprised to find that her heart was pounding a little too fast in her chest. He was cute…but it wasn’t the thought of rehearsing in dark corners with Alec Oakland that set her heart racing.

She ducked Alec after the end of rehearsal, too. Another day of having Lucky stuck in her tub had led Kelley to the conclusion that the only way she was going to get rid of him was if she could find out to whom he actually belonged. She had spent the morning on her computer, printing up fliers on hot-pink paper with a picture of Lucky (taken with her camera phone) and just enough information to hopefully get someone to call her without calling the police or a mental institution. After rehearsal, armed with the fliers, a stapler, and a roll of tape, she hit the park and headed toward the few scattered public bulletin boards so that she could post her notice. She started at the south end of the park and sneaked a look at her watch, wondering despite herself whether…

Cue actor-enter stage left.

Sure enough, she’d been in the park only about five minutes when an increasingly familiar reflection appeared over her shoulder in the glass-cased bulletin board.

Kelley didn’t even turn around.

“Don’t you have a home?” she asked, awash in studied nonchalance. She opened the glass and stapled a pink flier over a free-concert notice from last summer on the corkboard.

He answered her question with a question: “What are you doing here?”

“I’m posting information fliers,” she replied, waving the little sheaf of paper she held. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Kelley glanced back to where he stood behind her, brooding.

“Nice to see you again, too,” she said as she walked away.

He’d caught up to her before she’d taken five full steps. “That wasn’t what I meant,” he said, a note of frustration in his voice.

She couldn’t tell whether he was frustrated with her or with himself. She realized she felt almost exactly the same way. The crisp fallen leaves crunched under their feet as they walked side by side in what, under any other circumstances and with any other guy, would have felt like companionable silence.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” he said at last.

“What, exactly, are you sorry about?” Kelley didn’t slow down, and didn’t look at him.

“Uh…I’m sorry that I frightened you.” His voice was gruff, awkward, as though he was unused to having to apologize.

Kelley was determined not to make this easy. After all, he had frightened her-badly. Why was she even talking to him? “Apology not accepted.”

Beside her his steps faltered, and he fell a bit behind as he said, “Oh. All right. I…understand.”

“No, you don’t!” she called over her shoulder, and kept up her pace.

A moment later and he was back at her side, his long stride having made up the difference without effort. He walked silently beside her for another moment. “You’re right,” he said finally. “I really don’t.”