“I…am mortal, my lord,” Sonny said quietly.
“You are a Janus. I made you. Mortality has nothing to do with you.” Auberon threw back his head and swallowed the rest of his wine in one mouthful. “Unless, of course, you die.”
The Faerie king leaped up onto the balustrade. Spreading his cloak wide, he stepped into nothingness, the thin air blurring around him like smoke.
In his place, a charcoal-winged falcon soared off over the park, shrieking fury.
Less than half an hour later, Sonny was stalking the twisting paths of the Ramble in Central Park like a hunting cat, reaching out with his mind to touch all four corners of the Samhain Gate.
He often wondered what New Yorkers would think if they ever discovered the truth about their beloved Central Park: that the 843 acres of rolling, verdant sanctuary in the middle of the city was nothing more than a disguise, a carefully constructed facade cloaking a gateway between the mortal world and the Faerie Otherworld.
Only a century and a half earlier there had been four such Gates: Samhain, Beltane, Imbolc, and Lunasa, scattered throughout the Old World-passageways by which the Fair Folk could come and go, interacting with the mortal realm. But once the Faerie had begun to drift to the New World in the wake of large-scale human immigration from across the sea, the Courts of Faerie had decided to relocate one of the four Great Gates to this new land, where so many mortals-the kind who still believed in the Faerie-had settled.
As Central Park was being built at the end of the nineteenth century, the Samhain Gate had grown within its confines. Hidden from the populace of the city, it meshed seamlessly and unseen with the growing urban oasis, providing a perfect playground for those who crossed over, a place of nature and thus a natural habitat for the Fae, right in the middle of bustling human habitation.
The Samhain Gate had provided endless diversion for the dwellers of the Faerie Otherworld, but it wouldn’t last long.
A few decades after the park’s completion, around the turn of the twentieth century, Auberon had taken it upon himself to shut all four Gates. Angered by a mortal transgression, the king cast an enchantment that would seal them forever so that the Faerie realm and the world of mortals would remain separate.
But Auberon’s enchantment had been flawed.
A crack remained in one of the Gates.
The Gate that stood in the center of the teeming New World metropolis would open for one night every year, from sundown on October 31 to sunrise on the first of November. What was more, every nine years the Gate would swing wide for nine full nights, of which Samhain was the last.
And so Auberon had decided that if he could not keep the Gate shut, he would bring together the most promising of all the mortal changelings from across the Faerie realms. Gathering thirteen of them, Auberon trained them and gifted them with abilities that would enable them to guard the Gate on his behalf.
The irony was not lost on the newly made Janus Guards. But they were a fairly pragmatic lot and understood the realities of the situation: They could serve the Faerie king or they could die. So they served.
They served so well, in fact, that most of them could never return home-never go back to their lives in the Otherworld. Auberon’s Janus Guard had developed such a fearsome reputation that they found themselves unwelcome, reviled and shunned as murderers, called monsters by the same Faerie who’d treated them as pets and playthings in the times before. It was a lonely vocation.
Sonny pushed the thought away and focused on the Gate. As a Janus, Sonny could sense not only the park; he could sense every living soul
Scattered here and there about the perimeter of the park, he could sense other flames: blue and green, a few red ones. These were the Lost Fae, the ones who’d successfully evaded the Janus in years past and, once through the Gate, now lived in secret in the mortal realm. They did not concern him, and they would be gone soon enough- well before sundown, in order to avoid crossing paths with the Janus.
But there was something else.
Something-someone-
Concentrating, Sonny reached out with his mind to touch a presence…one distinctly unlike all the other candle flames in Sonny’s mind’s eye. This one did not burn with a steady glow.
It sparked erratically, like the lit fuse of a firecracker.
His Janus sensibilities alerted and his curiosity piqued, Sonny decided to investigate. The anomaly was moving, slowly. Drifting in a meandering fashion that Sonny recognized as following one of the paths of the part of the park known as the Shakespeare Garden. He looked at the sky. It was just over an hour before twilight and the opening of the Gate; but, intrigued by the prospect of a bit of preshow mystery, he took off at a run, following the spark.
When he reached the grove where his “firecracker” had come to a stop, Sonny slowed and approached warily. Drawing upon the magic that Auberon had gifted him, he called up a subtle veil to shield himself in case his quarry had the ability to sense him. He did not yet know what he was dealing with.
He crept close enough to catch a glimpse and still he wasn’t sure he knew. It was a girl. That much he could tell. Even from a distance, he could see that she was fairly young-seventeen, maybe. His age-his
He could also see that she was beautiful. Her hair had the sheen of antique, burnished copper, and her wide- set eyes were green. Intrigued, Sonny moved soundlessly through the dry leaves to crouch in the deep shadows of a yew tree. He watched through the branches of his hiding place as the girl moved restlessly, pacing to and fro in the little grassy square, one fingernail tapping on her front teeth.
Then she began to mutter to herself and gesture to the empty air.
The off-kilter mortals-the ones not quite right in the head-sometimes showed up differently on Sonny’s radar. That’s what must have happened with this girl, he thought. Still…he found himself surprisingly disappointed as he turned to leave.
The girl’s voice rang out suddenly. “Out of this wood do not desire to go!”
Startled, Sonny looked back to see her pointing in his direction. He froze, his breath stopped in his throat. There should have been
“Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no,” she said clearly, her voice compelling.
Looking at her, Sonny noticed that she shimmered. Hair; skin; those long, graceful hands-every inch of her seemed to sparkle.
“I am a spirit of no common rate,” the shining girl continued, the corners of her mouth turning up in a playful, gently superior smile.
“The summer still doth tend upon my state,” she said, and took a step toward him, her expression dreamy, eyes unfocused.
“And I do love thee.”
“Therefore go with me.”
Without realizing what he was doing, Sonny had begun to reach out a hand through the yew branches in response to the summoning. He drew his hand back sharply. What exactly had he stumbled upon here? He noticed suddenly the shirt she wore beneath her open jacket with its sparkling pony and rainbow…and the word
“I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee.” Her voice, honey-sweet, tempted him with its music, holding him captive in a moment of thrall. “And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep…and sing while thou on pressed
