Wondrous Strange

“Well done, Daughter,” he said. “I was not certain that you would find the strength necessary to defeat the Hunt.”

Sonny put out a protective arm, but Kelley stepped in front of him and walked proudly over to meet her father halfway. She held out a hand for the war horn that the Faerie king still held.

“Of course.” Auberon’s lips twitched, and he handed it to her.

Grasping the long bronze horn in both hands, Kelley snapped it in two over her knee and threw the broken pieces to the ground. Then, wordlessly, she turned her back on her father and returned to where Sonny waited.

In the distance, they could still hear sirens.

Sonny opened his arms. Kelley walked into his embrace and looked up at him. Her gaze was still a little wild, and Sonny couldn’t help but shiver at what he saw there now.

“Are you afraid of me?” she asked quietly.

“No,” he said without hesitation. “Afraid for you, maybe.”

Mabh’s power was a fearsome thing to have to master, but Kelley didn’t need to hear that just then. Tears rimmed her eyes, shining and unshed, and Sonny held her in his arms and kissed her. “My Firecracker…my heart.”

“If you are quite finished here, my Janus, I require your presence in the realm.”

He didn’t need to turn to see that Auberon still stood behind them.

Kelley made a strangled sound of denial.

“You can require whatever you like,” Sonny said coldly. “But I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Mabh has been driven back to the Faerie lands but she won’t stay hidden there long,” Auberon said impatiently. “She will return to threaten not only my realm, but this one as well, unless she is contained again. You will help me accomplish that.”

“No.” Sonny gripped Kelley tightly. “I do not work for those who have betrayed my trust.”

“Is that what you think I have done?” Auberon’s voice was polite. Inquisitive.

“I know it.” It hurt Sonny deeply to say such a thing. “You were as a father to me…”

“And you were as a dutiful son. So you will be again,” Auberon said, and his eyes went absolutely black. There was a sharp pain in Sonny’s chest, right beneath his iron medallion, and he clutched at it, unable to breathe.

“Stop it!” Kelley screamed. “No! You can’t take him with you!”

“Of course I can,” Auberon said flatly.

“We had a deal!”

“Which in no way included Sonny remaining in this realm if you were successful in restoring him unto himself.” The king lifted a shoulder in eloquent disdain. “He is a member of my Court. He must obey.”

Sonny fell to his knees.

“Besides. I need him to undo his mistake.” The lord of the Unseelie stepped toward him, holding Sonny’s gaze with his own. “Is that not right, Sonny? It was, after all, your error that set Mabh free. So is it your obligation to help me mend that situation.”

“No,” Kelley said furiously.

“And it was your request of me, Daughter, that I see to it Mabh stays away from this place. You didn’t specify how.”

A neat trap, Sonny thought. Faerie tricks.

“No!” Kelley screamed at her father, but Sonny knew in his heart that Auberon was right. Mabh was free again because of him. And there was something else that Auberon hadn’t said: Kelley remained in danger because of it. It was up to Sonny to put things right.

The fiery pain in his chest ceased abruptly as he made his decision.

“Kelley.” He climbed to his feet and grabbed her by the shoulders to make her look at him. “Kelley…” He shook her a little, and the tears dashed down her cheeks. “I won’t be gone forever. But he’s right. I need to do this thing.”

“But-”

“Shh…” He pulled her in tight to his chest and whispered into her hair. “Just like Pyramus and Thisbe in your play-I will find the hole in the wall. I will find a way back through.”

“You know that story ends horribly, right?” she said, choking on a sob.

“Ah, my heart. What did Shakespeare know?” Sonny hugged her tighter. “He probably would have rewritten that bit if he’d thought about it. I will come back to you. I promise.”

As Auberon stepped toward them, Sonny felt Kelley stiffen with cold rage. She pushed away from him and turned to her father, her green eyes flashing dangerously.

“Do I even need to tell you how unhappy I will be if anything bad happens to him?”

“No, Daughter,” Auberon said softly. “You do not.” The king gestured with one hand like a blade, and a crackling gateway opened into the Otherworld. “Come, Sonny. It is time to go.”

Kelley met Sonny in one last embrace, and they kissed each other as if, in that moment, they were the only two people in all the worlds. Then he turned and stepped through the rift. Auberon lingered for another moment, looking back at Kelley, and Sonny heard him say, “You really do have your mother’s eyes.”

OPENING NIGHT

November 1

It was just over an hour to curtain, and Kelley should have been nervous. Instead she was numb.

Opening night. Magic time. The peak of her childhood dreams reached…

And none of it mattered.

Sonny wasn’t there to see it. She sat in front of her makeup mirror, listlessly toying with a mascara wand, staring at the mess of powder she’d spilled earlier and hadn’t bothered to clean up.

Outside her dressing room she could hear the bustle of the other actors-the boys tromping by, the whisper of crinolines as the dancers flitted past. She heard the almost constant murmuring of cast and crew still gossiping, exchanging theories over what had really happened in Central Park on Halloween-gangs, mass hallucinations, aliens. Speculation had been wild and endless.

At least all of the excitement had served to draw some of the fire away from Kelley’s disappearance. Even so, it had taken forty-five minutes of solid apology and Quentin’s grudging admittance of the fact that he really had no other options before he agreed to let her back onstage.

But now? Kelley couldn’t care less. Even the sound of the quartet of musicians warming up in the wings did nothing to stir excitement in her.

She looked up at the sound of a knock on her door, which swung open. The glamour Bob had cast over himself nicely covered up the bruises he’d received at Auberon’s hands, trying to keep her safe.

She smiled wanly at the boucca as he held out a hand, her four-leaf-clover necklace dangling from one long finger.

“Figured you might want this back.”

Kelley held up her hair and turned so that he could slip the chain around her neck and fasten the catch.

“Can you make it so that this never comes off, Bob?” she asked quietly. “So that my power stays hidden forever?”

Behind her, she felt him hesitate. “I could… Are you sure that’s what you want?”

Kelley stared at her reflection in the mirror and thought she saw her mother staring out from her own eyes. She imagined the surging, tantalizing energy singing through her veins silenced; the strength and power gone, and with it, the whispering malice that accompanied it. The simmering lust to do harm. The callous disregard for consequences…

“Power is power, Kelley. It’s what you do with it that matters,” Bob said. “I should know. And, if you want my advice, I’d keep all the power I have for the moment, if I were you. You just might need it…”