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W
hen Kelley finally got home, there was another bright pink sticky note waiting for her on her bedroom door, scrawled in a flourishy manner with the words:

Don’t bother with any of your sleeping nonsense tonight.

Come to the River. Help is waiting. . . .

T.

“Help?” Kelley muttered, staring at the note and rubbing at her eyes, which felt gritty from exhaustion.

Tyff must have gotten home before her and gone back out again.

The River was, at that moment, the last place she wanted to go. After leaving Sonny’s penthouse, Kelley had spent the next few hours wandering the streets of New York. “Playing in the rain.”

She’d walked for what seemed like miles, traveling south all the way past Grand Central Terminal. When she got to Park Avenue, Kelley paused and stood for a long time, looking down through the curtaining rain toward its intersection with East Fortieth Street. The streetscape seemed . . .
wrong
to her somehow. As if the office towers didn’t belong there.

She peered intently through the downpour, and it was a bit like looking through a Faerie glamour. She could almost see the ghosts of the buildings that had gone before: the brick and brownstone structures, so much more elegant than the steel and glass monoliths that had sprung up in their places. For some reason, looking down that street filled Kelley with sadness.

Eventually she’d turned north again and walked toward home, letting the rain wash over her. So many thoughts and questions tumbled about in her head like puzzle pieces in a box shaken by a child who just wanted to hear them rattle.

Finally, standing on the sidewalk outside of her apartment building, Kelley had spotted one of her mother’s Cailleach hovering, cloaked in a dark smudge of cloud drifting far below the rest of the stormy ceiling. It seemed as if the Storm Hag was waiting there for her to appear. Loath as she was to interact with her mother’s minions, Kelley conceded to herself that they might be able to answer some of her questions. It was worth a try.

She shouted at the sky, attempting to catch the creature’s attention. Waved her arms and jumped up and down. Threw rocks.

Nothing.

When a cop half a block down the street turned in her direction, Kelley gave up and ducked inside her building before she got arrested.
He
might have seen her leaping around like a lunatic, but it was quite apparent that to the Fae she was invisible. Whatever the leprechaun had done to her, whatever curse he’d cast on her charm, it had rendered her utterly nonexistent to her own kind. Even the random sparks of Faerie energy that used to escape from under the talisman’s cloak were contained, it seemed. Kelley was as good as human.

In the mood she was in, Kelley seriously considered blowing off the pink-sticky-note imperative. The River was too full of flashing lights and loud sounds and people. She wasn’t sure she could handle crowds just then. The encounter with Chloe weighed on her mind, as did the now-unavoidable recognition of her utterly mortal state. For someone who had once vigorously protested against her Faerie heritage, suddenly the thought of living out her days as Girl Average didn’t appeal to her quite so much anymore.

She looked at the sticky note.

Help is waiting. . . .

Kelley sighed. All right. She might as well go. Maybe in the intervening hours Tyff had found some of the answers Kelley needed. She doubted it, but she was starting to realize that she was willing to give almost anything a try.

Titania wrapped Kelley in a warm embrace the moment she arrived at the River, and bestowed a kiss on her cheek. Kelley was somewhat astonished at the way Titania managed to do those kinds of things and not make the recipient of the affectionate gestures feel awkward or clumsy.

The night’s festivities were in full swing, and the place was packed to capacity. Wending her way through the fashionably dressed crowd of Fae and humans, the queen drew Kelley along one of the moodily lit halls and out into the flower-filled courtyard terrace that was the centerpiece of the River. The terrace was located at the heart of the structure and was open to the sky except for the shade canopy of a cultivated vine trellis. On the surrounding walls, ivy grew thick and high-climbing, reaching almost to the very top floors of the boutique hotel, as if it would swallow the building whole.

“I have wished for this day, Kelley,” Titania said, linking her arm in Kelley’s. “Ever since word reached me that Auberon had brought a daughter home to his house, I have wanted to meet you. I wept on the day that you were stolen.”

“Oh . . .” Kelley didn’t quite know what to say.

“You think that I would have been angry.” Titania interpreted her silence.

“I guess. I mean you guys were sort of a couple at the time, weren’t you?”

Titania laughed. “Were, and then weren’t, and then were again. We are much like the changing seasons, we Fair Folk. I may have had my differences with Auberon, but I have never not loved him, my dear.” She handed Kelley a fluted glass from a silver tray on a stand. “I so look forward to getting to know his daughter and his heir.”

The silvery liquid in the glass was full of brilliant bubbles, sparkling like diamond dust. Kelley took it, although she wasn’t about to actually drink any of the stuff. Notwithstanding the fact that she wasn’t of legal drinking age, she was also—after her encounter with Gwynn ap Nudd’s Faerie hospitality—wary of offered food or drink.

“My lady-in-waiting speaks very highly of you,” the queen said, as she picked up her own glass and drew Kelley toward a raised platform topped with a cushioned couch made of some exotic, carved wood.

“That’s really kind of you to say.” Kelley wondered exactly what kind of equivocal language Tyff had couched her “praise” in. As close as they had become, Kelley was still aware that she frequently tried her Faerie roomie’s patience. “Uh . . . where
is
Tyff, do you know? I’m supposed to meet her here.”

The Summer Queen glanced around as if expecting that Tyff should already be in attendance. “I sent for her, and I
did
see her arrive earlier,” she said with only a faint hint of annoyance. “Ah, well. She should be along presently, I should imagine. Won’t you sit with me while we wait?” Titania sank down gracefully and patted the cushions next to her. “I understand that you had a rather nasty run-in in the park the other night. A potent Fae with a grudge?”

“Oh. Yeah.” Kelley’s fingers automatically went to the clover charm at her throat as she sat hesitantly on the edge of the couch.

“Tyffanwy told me all about it. A binding curse—you poor thing. You must feel like a dragonfly trapped in a jar!”

More like a butterfly that’s had its wings ripped off,
Kelley thought.

Titania shook her head sorrowfully. “You have my sympathies, of course. And, if I may be so bold as to offer, my help if you want it. I know it is old magick—powerful magick—that binds you, but perhaps I could be of some use.”

This must be what Tyff meant by her note,
Kelley thought excitedly. Maybe the queen could remove the spell that held the charm fast about her throat. Give her back her wings . . .

“My own abilities are . . . not inconsequential. If you’d like, I could attempt to remove the binding curse myself,” Titania said in her musical voice. “If I succeed, you’d be free to use your magicks again.”

Kelley remembered what Tyff had told her about Faerie magick. She recalled with perfect clarity the sensation of that sugar-sweet venom sting of her own Faerie magick, once more coursing through her veins.

“Or not,” Titania said, noting the frown on Kelley’s face, “as you see fit. But it would be your decision, not a consequence of another’s whims. What say you?”

I say “what’s the catch?”
Kelley thought, and was immediately ashamed of herself. But, like the wine, the very idea of Faerie-based random acts of kindness set off all kinds of warning bells for Kelley. Of course, Titania wasn’t Mabh. She had been nothing but sweet and gracious, and Tyff had never had anything but glowing praise for the Summer Queen. Kelley trusted Tyff.

Where
was
Tyff, anyway?

“What say you, Princess?” Titania asked again, smiling at her.

In truth, Kelley was starting-to get a little desperate. She kept thinking of the last time she had seen Sonny—beset with the horde of trolls thundering over the cliff. Fennrys had said that Sonny could take care of himself, and of course Kelley had a great degree of firsthand knowledge that such was the case. She remembered the first time she had seen him in a fight, the night he had saved her life from the Black Shuck. She shouldn’t be so worried. But all she wanted was to find him again and put things right. And
that
wasn’t going to happen anytime soon unless she could find a way to get herself back to the Otherworld. It was pretty obvious that Aaneel and the Janus weren’t going to be any help to her. Maybe she should listen to Titania. Trust her. Let her help.

All those thoughts tumbled through Kelley’s mind in the space of time it took for her to say, “That’s very generous. Why would you want to help me, lady, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Because I have always believed in freedom for the Fair Folk to do as they please. That would include
you,
my dear.” Titania laid a gentle arm across Kelley’s shoulders, enveloping her in the sweet, subtle perfume of a forest meadow in sunshine.

Kelley felt her doubts melting. “I . . . all right.”

“My lovely young actress!” The Faerie queen smiled. “Do you know, I have always wondered how
I
would fare onstage,” she said, switching topics with a mercurial swiftness. Her golden eyes sparkled with merriment, and she stood, gathering her filmy robes about her.

A shaft of moonlight pierced the leafy canopy high overhead, illuminating Titania as if she stood in a spotlight.

“Out of this wood do not desire to go!” Titania’s voice sang out. “Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.”

The patrons of the River fell instantly quiet. The music drifted to silence and all the partygoers stood mesmerized.

Kelley swallowed an uncomfortable feeling in her throat as she realized that the Shakespearean lines the queen had chosen to recite came from the single page sent by Sonny as a pledge to return to her. The one on her bedside table.

Coincidence?
Kelley wondered silently.

Sonny had once told her that he didn’t believe in such a thing.

“I am a spirit of no common rate,” the queen continued, her tones soaring across the courtyard, where mortal and Fae alike had turned to watch the impromptu performance. Her gaze caught and held Kelley like the dragonfly in a jar she’d compared her to earlier. “The summer still doth tend upon my state; and I do love thee: therefore, go with me.” Titania gestured with a commanding wave of her hand to the lovely waitresses who stood grouped together with their trays.

They were all Fae, Kelley noticed. The gauzy black silk of their matching tunics fluttered about their bronzed limbs.

“I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee, and they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep.” The Summer Queen laughed and the Summer Girls giggled back. “And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep.”

The queen turned back to her, and Kelley shuddered involuntarily as Titania’s eyes fastened on the charm around Kelley’s throat and she said, in a voice that suddenly thrummed with unimaginable power, “And I will purge thy mortal grossness so . . . that thou shalt like an airy spirit go!” The queen’s hands danced through the air, and Kelley felt the green-amber pendant grow blazing hot for an instant.

Try it now, my dear,
Titania’s voice whispered in her mind. Her golden eyes seemed to Kelley as if they filled the room with a wash of light.
Loose the chain. . . .

Moving as if in a dream, Kelley slid her hands up under her hair, around to the back of her neck. Her fingertips fumbled with the clasp and a shiver of panic—irrational, unreasoning, but overpowering—rolled over her. It stopped her from undoing the catch.

Even though she knew, in that moment, that she could.

Slowly she withdrew her hands, and the chain settled coolly around her neck, the clover charm nestling back into the hollow at the base of her throat. Silently she shook her head.

Titania frowned—a brief thundercloud shadow crossing her lovely face—then whirled away from Kelley.

“Peaseblossom! Cobweb! Moth! and Mustardseed!” she cried, summoning her attendants with what Kelley knew was the very last line on that particular page of script.

“A round of drinks for everyone on the house, girls!” Titania said, smiling brightly as she dropped out of the role of grand actress and back into the part of the gracious hostess.

The Faerie girls rushed forward with trays filled with champagne flutes, and the patrons of the River applauded madly, although whether for the performance or the free drinks, Kelley wasn’t sure. Titania turned back around, her questioning gaze fastened on the green-amber pendant.

“No luck,” Kelley said, her voice a dry rasp.

“Are you sure?” The queen’s eyes searched Kelley’s face. “The clasp remains bound?”

Kelley drew upon every last ounce of her theatrical skills and lied through her teeth with apologetic conviction. “Locked up tight,” she said, and gave the chain a sharp tug. Not
too
sharp. “I guess I’ll just have to find some other way, your highness. Thanks for trying.”

“Of course, my dear girl,” Titania murmured, confusion and something else that Kelley could not quite identify swimming in her gaze. But only for an instant. “A pity. Now you will have to excuse me. I must see to my other guests, but it would please me greatly if you would stay and enjoy the festivities. At least until Tyffanwy reappears. She would be most upset to have missed you.”

“Sure.” Kelley nodded, forcing a smile onto her own lips. Titania’s “request” hadn’t sounded as though it came with the option of a refusal. She wondered if she was slipping into some kind of pathological paranoia. It was not in Kelley’s nature to be suspicious, but she couldn’t bring herself to trust Titania. Not yet. She needed time to think. She needed more information. She needed her roommate’s sage, sarcastic advice.