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The image that Chloe had shown Kelley—of Sonny lying bleeding on a sidewalk from bullet holes—suddenly swam up before her eyes. Her insides went cold.

“Only
I
was there that day, close by, and I found him before anyone else did,” Herne continued. “So, instead of someone being able to siphon off his magicks as he lay dying, the Old Man bequeathed his power to me.”

“You’re lying,” Kelley scoffed, desperately unwilling to believe Herne’s story. “The Greenman isn’t dead. I saw him in your tavern.”

“What you saw was a simulacrum. A sliver of his essence that I planted and tended and cultivated into a semblance of my old friend. Because I missed him.” A ghost of a smile lifted the corner of Herne’s lips. “But that creature, while a comfort to me, is no more possessed of the majesty and the might of the original than a painting is of its subject.”

“Who killed him?” Kelley’s voice was a raw whisper.

“That we do not know. The thrall’s mind was gone—all he could do was babble nonsense. The New York police concluded he was insane and locked him away behind iron bars where no Faerie would dare go to seek the truth.”

“What happened then?”

“After Andrew bestowed his Faerie magick upon me, in the depths of my mourning, I returned to the Samhain Gate. I used it to travel home across the sea, to where the Beltane Gate still stood open in Ireland, in the heart of that same forest where I had hidden away for so long after the days of the Wild Hunt ended. That was where Emmaline Flannery found me. Where she brought me back to myself with her kindness and beauty and the love of her wild heart . . .” Herne’s eyes went cloudy with memory. “When she bore me a son, I realized that I had unwittingly passed the Greenman’s power to him.” He shook his head sharply, as if to dispel the remembrance. “I was a fool. I feared for the boy. And for his mother. So I left her and I veiled the power inside of him, hiding it even from himself. And then I asked Auberon to . . . to steal my Emmaline’s child away.”

Kelley thought of Emma. Of the silent grief that she had carried for so long.

“I did not want Sonny’s fate to be the same as that of my old friend. Let us hope that no one else discovers his secret.”

“Chloe knows,” Kelley murmured.
And Tyff.
Tyff had stayed behind after Kelley had left Sonny’s apartment. What if she’d figured it out? What if
that
was the secret Harvicc had talked about—the reason Tyff had asked the ogre to knock her out at the River? So that she could keep Sonny’s secret safe from the soul-searching gaze of another Faerie?

“The Siren’s mind is broken.” Herne frowned. “This is what I have heard. She may possess that secret, but she can’t communicate it through her madness. Let us hope she stays that way.”

“Wow.” Kelley glared at the mirror. “That’s pretty cold.”

“She ravaged Sonny’s mind. I should think you, of all people, would approve her fate.”

“You think wrong,” Kelley said sharply, knowing even as she uttered the words that they were a lie. It was getting so very easy to lie.

“We must find a way to keep my son safe from those who would seek to use his power for ill,” Herne murmured, almost as if speaking to himself. “And we must keep him safe from himself. The Greenman’s power is so pure. So potent. So easily corruptible.”

Like my mother’s,
Kelley thought. And somewhere deep inside she felt that power whisper to her, twisty and tempting. She told it in no uncertain terms to shut up.

“One need only encounter the offspring of the Greenman to know just how easily that power can rot its user from the inside.”

“Leprechauns,” Kelley said.

“Aye. And their vile sisters, the glaistigs.” Herne’s lip twisted with disgust.

“Yeah. I know all about those guys. In fact, there’s one outside the theater right now.”

“What?” Herne eyes snapped up to her face, filled with surprise and alarm.

“A leprechaun.” Kelley crossed her arms, perversely pleased that, for once,
she
knew something that someone else didn’t. It was a short-lived sensation. One that evaporated in an instant, when a thunderous sound from down the hallway heralded the fact that someone had just blown the backstage loading doors clear off their moorings.

Y
ou look like a kid in a candy store, son.” Jack smiled and twirled the big brass key on the end of his finger that had opened the treasure trove known as the prop storage room.

Sonny stood blinking, an astonished grin on his face, in front of racks and racks of swords. He’d gone in search of the actor to ask whether there was anything in the theater they could use as weapons if the need arose. He hadn’t expected Jack to lead him to a room full of
actual
weapons.

“May I?” he asked, pointing at the Claymore hanging on the wall.

Jack nodded and Sonny took the sword down from its hanger, hefting the four feet of blade with an ease that made Jack nod appreciatively. “I used that one in the last production of Shakespeare’s ‘the Scottish play’ that we did. Nice balance but a little hard on the shoulders in a prolonged fight.” He reached past Sonny. “I like
this
baby, personally.”

He plucked a sleek cutlass from the rack of shining steel and flourished it in a blurry-fast, side-to-side swiping move that made the elegantly curved blade sing as it cut the air.

Sonny felt the grin on his face split into a full-fledged, appreciative smile. Jack was one of the good ones, he decided.

“I used this one in a touring production of
Peter Pan
. I played Captain Hook. Six months, six shows a week, I got to know her pretty well.” Jack pulled a sword belt down off a wooden wall peg and strapped it to his waist, sliding the blade home into the scabbard as if he were an old pirate. Then he reached for a long metal rasp hanging on the wall, saying, “With this, and a little elbow grease, I can even give her a bit of a cutting edge.”

Sonny reached into the satchel at his side. “I think you might appreciate this.”

He drew forth the bundle of three stout branches and handed it to Jack, who took the curious object in both hands and raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Oak for strength, ash for suppleness.” Sonny pointed. “And thorn. For sharpness.” Then he took the bundle from Jack’s hand and whispered to it. The air writhed and twisted, and the branches transformed into the gleaming silver blade that was as lethal as it was beautiful.

“Odds bodkins,” Jack said after a long silence. “If that isn’t something else.”

Sonny glanced up at the high, barred window in the little room. The sky was still dark, but his Janus sensibilities told him that morning was not far off—an hour, maybe two. If their foe outside was going to try anything, it would have to be soon. Before the sun rose and the power of the leprechaun’s Faerie magick faded in the light of day. He turned back and cast an eye over the abundance of broadswords.

“What are those made of?” he asked.

“Those?” Jack shook his head. “They’re not combat ready, if that’s what you’re asking. We just use those in productions where we have to have a bunch of guys standing around in the background looking menacing. They’re cheapies—just for show. The iron content in the blades is much too high to give them any strength.”

“Perfect,” Sonny said. Putting away his enchanted blade, he began stacking the prop swords in Jack’s arms like cordwood. He grabbed the leftover ones himself and, pulling the door shut, said, “Follow me.”

“Gah!” Bob grimaced and flinched away from the pair as they walked into the greenroom bearing the armloads of swords. “Get those away from here!”

“Puck, help the king up,” Sonny said curtly. “We’re taking him to the balcony.”

In fact Auberon didn’t need the boucca’s help. The Winter King managed the entire flight of stairs under his own power, stopping only briefly to lean on the banister. His eyes had regained some of their sparkle, and the angry florid tones had faded from his cheeks—his color was almost back to its normal, healthy (for him) pallor. Sonny was pleased to see it—perhaps getting him away from the Otherworld had done him some good. It also made Sonny wonder fleetingly exactly what in the Otherworld had contributed to his lord’s unease. Something to think about when he had more time.

When he reached the pews in the balcony, Sonny saw that Kelley was no longer there. She must have gone down to the dressing rooms. He would go and find her after he finished his task here. “Puck, I want you to set up a veil to hide the king.”

“You really do smell trouble, don’t you?”

“From everything you’ve told me, I’d hazard a guess and say that our leprechaun friend isn’t going to quit without some kind of fight. If he can’t find a way into the theater himself, he’ll find someone who can.” Sonny laid his swords on a pew a ways away from the king and gestured for Jack to do likewise. “And it’ll be soon—there isn’t much time until morning. We have to be prepared. Our first priority is to keep Auberon safe and his presence a secret—that’ll primarily be your job. Our second is to protect Kelley—that will be mine. I can’t do the one unless you do the other. Cast a veil over the king. Cast it well. Keep them—whoever ‘they’ may be—from discovering that Auberon is even here. No sense in giving the Wee Green Clan more than one target, especially if they’re really looking for a fight. And in the meantime, we will ring you both round with iron. That should help keep you both safe if something does manage to breach your veiling spell.”

As he spoke, Sonny moved about the balcony, placing the swords on the floor under Auberon’s pew in a ring, touching pommel to point. Jack saw what he was doing and helped out, handing him the blades one by one until there was a large, roughly circular, iron enclosure marked out with the Unseelie king and the boucca at the heart of it.

Bob shuddered. “This is going to give me such a rash,” he said, then closed his eyes and started to weave his veil.

Auberon, who had been quiet for some time, regarded Sonny with approval and perhaps even gratitude in his expression. But then, in the moment before he vanished from sight behind Bob’s veil, the Unseelie king’s gaze snapped toward the stage, and he said, in a voice like the calm before the storm, “They are coming.”

The loading doors exploded off their hinges.

Sonny and Jack raced down the steps toward the stage deck, running down the aisles between the audience seating, drawing weapons as they went. Pale predawn light flooded in through the wide-open doors at the very back of the stage, casting the half-built set into shadow and silhouetting several figures standing framed in the threshold against a backdrop of sullen ash-gray sky.

The leprechaun brothers leaned indolently against a cement pylon in the loading zone outside. A drunkard and a hooligan; the Wee Green Men. If only it didn’t
sound
so comical when the reality was anything but. And they’d brought company. Surrounding the brothers was a pack of feral-looking girls who crouched and perched on and around the garbage containers in the alley, every one of them dressed in a flowing green gown that left little to the imagination except their legs.

Green Maidens,
Sonny thought,
glaistigs
—and he knew that the long skirts served to hide legs that belonged on goats, not girls. Sonny’s predecessor in the Janus Guard had lost his life to one of those things.

“What about the whiskey?” Jack said as they ran. “Won’t it keep them out?”

“The Green Maidens don’t drink anything but blood.” Bob’s disembodied voice floated after them. “The whiskey magick won’t affect them.”

“Wonderful,” the old actor muttered, a tremor of fear in his voice. “I should’ve poured a Bloody Mary.”

Sonny leaped up onto the apron of the stage, Jack right behind him.

The glaistig crouching in the very front had her arms raised, and Sonny noticed that she wobbled a bit as she tried to stand, as if suddenly light-headed. She had been the one, then, to call up enough raw force to blow the doors. She saw him staring and opened her lips in a grisly parody of a smile, and Sonny saw that her teeth, long and jagged, were a bilious shade of bright green. She hissed and ran her tongue over the razor-sharp points. Then she darted into the wings.

When she reappeared, it was with the tumbler full of whiskey in her hand. She took it outside the theater into the alley, where she handed it to the leprechaun brother that had attacked Sonny in his cottage. He smiled and downed the entire glass in one long swig, groaning with pleasure and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. Then he tossed aside the glass to shatter on the pavement and, together, the sons of the Greenman sauntered toward the loading doors and on into the theater.

Beside Sonny, Gentleman Jack swallowed noisily and adjusted the grip on his sword. Sonny noted with approval that the actor’s stance did not waver and his feet did not shift through any kind of dance that would have marked him as a nervous amateur. That was good. Jack would have to call on all his acting skills to keep the fiends that faced them from pegging him as easy prey.

Sonny wished fervently that they had greater numbers. With Auberon safe he didn’t have to worry about him. But at the same time, taking Bob out of the ranks to ensure the king’s safety reduced their available fighting resources substantially.

Sonny heard Mabh’s frustrated hiss and glanced to his right to see the Queen of Air and Darkness stalking out of the wings and onto the stage. Kelley followed close behind her mother—almost running into her when Mabh halted abruptly, put her hands up, and stepped back.

“I cannot fight this battle,” she said.

Sonny almost did a double take. “I beg your pardon, lady, but you have to. We need you.”

“I cannot.” Mabh’s teeth were clenched in frustration. “Vile they may be, but the glaistig are my folk. The Green Maidens belong to Autumn.”

“You’re lying!” Kelley exclaimed, pointing at the lead glaistig. “I saw
that
one in Gwynn’s palace.”

“Faerie don’t lie. Jenii Greenteeth was sent as an emissary to the Court of Spring. She serves Gwynn, but she is of the Autumn Court.” Mabh sneered at the goat girl, who raised a hand and waggled her long, taloned fingers in mock greeting. “I tell you I cannot raise a hand against her—or her sisters—unless they choose to fight me first! And they are not that stupid.”

“What about the leprechauns, ma’am?” Jack asked, his wary eye following the movement of their adversaries as they moved languidly to close them in a circle. They weren’t in any hurry, arrogant and assured of their superior numbers.

Mabh smiled suddenly, as if she’d only noticed the two brothers once Jack had pointed them out. “Oh,” she said. “You’re quite right, Mr. Savage. Those naughty little boys are Solitary Fae. They belong to no Court.” She raised her voice so that the leprechauns couldn’t help but hear her threat. “And come they within my reach, I will set them ablaze like piles of leaves raked in fall!”

The brothers looked at each other and, in the blink of an eye, vanished—running off to hide in the shadows of the wings on either side of the stage.

Sonny turned a baleful eye on the queen. “Nice. Might I counsel against broadcasting any further stratagems you might come up with? Just to avoid giving the enemy the advantage of a heads-up?”

“Sorry.”

Then there was no time for talk. The Maidens, unencumbered by the threat of Mabh, sprang suddenly into action.

The glaistigs moved with whiplash speed. Everywhere Sonny looked, it seemed as though there was yet another one skittering down the stairs from the upper platforms of the set or darting out from the wings—but they moved so fast, he could hardly count their numbers. They were blurs of motion: tornadoes of pale frenzied hair, slashing talons, and the whirling green fabric of their long, tattered gowns.

Sonny’s sword whirred through the air, singing like a swarm of bees as he slashed and parried, frantically defending against the attack of the green girls with their long nails and flashing hooves. To his right, Jack fought with a kind of brilliant, adrenaline-fueled desperation, fending off the vicious Fae with his sword and his voice—his sonorous, actor-trained tones rang out, shouting threats and imprecations to good effect. But the older man’s shirt was becoming soaked in sweat, and Sonny knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep it up for as long as they would need to. Jack would soon tire. And Sonny couldn’t fend off the glaistigs alone.

The Autumn Queen seemed to be an effective deterrent against any approach from the leprechaun brothers, at least. With a thought, Mabh had transformed her gown into a shimmering suit of finely wrought chain mail. She shone with power—the very image of a battle goddess—and the gleaming nimbus of her unfurled wings cast the entire stage in lurid illumination the color of blood and violets. Her face was a mask of fearsome glee as she cast roiling columns of dark, crackling energy at any leprechaun that came within fifty feet of her.

On the other side of her terrifying mother, Kelley had torn the clover charm from her throat and cast about with her own share of power. Her face was flushed and her eyes and fingertips flashed with dark lightning. Sonny barely recognized her. When one of the glaistigs came too close, she whirled with terrifying speed and sent the creature flying thirty feet through the air with a ball of pure, raw magick.

Distracted by the sight of Kelley fighting, Sonny allowed one of the glaistigs past his guard, and the shout of pain from his throat sounded loud in his own ears as she darted in low and raked her clawlike nails across the muscle of his right thigh. Sonny stumbled and almost went down on one knee. The pain clarified things, focused him on the task. He used the momentum of his stumble and followed in the wake of the goat girl’s attack. Three steps and a downward, hacking slash of his blade—the glaistig screeched terribly and collapsed. Sonny whipped his sword back up and drove the point of the blade down between the creature’s shoulder blades. There was an explosion of glowing, greenish blood, and the horrible Faerie twitched and lay still.

With a triumphant snarl, Sonny yanked his sword free, but even as he turned back to the others, he knew that they were outnumbered. The glaistigs almost appeared as if they were multiplying. Like weeds in a garden—kill one, it seemed as though two sprang up in her place.

They were going to lose.