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T
yff caught Kelley’s eye halfway through the third song. Or maybe the fourth—Kelley had the feeling that she might have lost track of time. The shake of Tyff’s head combined with her self-satisfied grin told Kelley that her roommate approved of her dancing—even if she held reservations about her dance
partner
. Like most Lost Fae, Tyff had a thing against the Janus—particularly the Fennrys Wolf, with his reputation for the brutal approach he took to guarding the Gate.

Fair enough,
Kelley thought. But he could also
really
dance.

The band downshifted from an up-tempo set and started playing a slow cover version of an old seventies glam rock song: Roxy Music’s melancholy “Dance Away.” As the other couples began to drape themselves over each other, bodies melding into bodies, Kelley stiffened. When Fennrys said “Let’s get something to drink,” her relief left her almost light-headed. And
not
disappointed. Not at all . . .

She followed him through the crowd as they went into another room, this one filled floor to ceiling with books and carpeted in vibrant shades of purple. Slender young women and hipster boys played pool on two tables covered in mauve felt instead of the traditional green. One of the girls made a difficult combination bank shot as Kelley passed, earning faint applause from her companions.

At the long mahogany bar, a group of impossibly handsome young men stared with quiet watchfulness at Fennrys as he ordered two iced cappuccinos. The drinks arrived and the Janus smiled coldly at the watchers, raising one of the glass coffee mugs in a silent “cheers.”

The rest of the Lost Fae gave them a wide berth. But distance certainly didn’t preclude them from all staring at her.

Kelley sipped at her coffee, feeling like a particularly interesting fish in a glass bowl, until Fennrys finally sighed and said, “C’mon. This party’s getting lamer by the second. I’ll walk you home.”

“Fennrys, I’ll be fine.”

“Yes, you will. Because
I
”—he jerked a thumb at himself—“am in no way particularly eager to find out how young Irish would react to coming back from his little sojourn in the Otherworld only to discover that
you
had gone and gotten eaten by a nyxxie or had your head twisted off by a common mugger. He might be inclined to do the same to me.”

“I thought you didn’t like Sonny.”

“I’m indifferent about
Sonny
.”

Before she could figure out what that meant, the Fennrys Wolf had turned and was cutting a wide swath through the crowd, which backed away from him like a swiftly ebbing tide. Kelley put her coffee down and followed, not wanting to be left alone in the room full of stares and whispers.

Fennrys only grunted in halfhearted protest when Kelley insisted that they take a route that would again lead them through the park. He probably figured it wasn’t worth the time and energy it would take trying to convince her otherwise.

Cutting through the park was Kelley’s way of silently reinforcing the fact that she wasn’t about to alter her behavior, in spite of the bodyguard treatment. Fennrys’s presence was an impressive one, though, she had to admit. Even the ogre behind the desk at the River had only managed a fierce glower as Kelley got her coat from the check and scooted past him, unaccompanied by Tyff, who was still dancing.

The night wasn’t particularly chilly, but the humidity hung bunched under the trees and made it feel that way. The rising mist on the path eerily reflected the lamplight like witch fire, making the park feel graveyard spooky. Kelley was silently glad for the company of her Janus escort—not that she was going to say so out loud. She couldn’t help but think about that as they walked, though—about what it meant to be one of Auberon’s Janus Guard.

Kelley slung her shoulder bag across her body, freeing up her hands so that she could shove them into her pockets. “Fenn . . . ,” she said finally, her voice quiet in the night. “Does it ever bother you? What you do, I mean?”

“Killing Faerie?” he answered, not bothering to turn and look at her.

“You don’t kill all of them.”

He laughed—a rough, harsh sound, as though his voice was unaccustomed to it. “I don’t even kill
most
of them,” he said. “You get a bit of a rep as a battle-mad psycho killer, folk tend to do their best to stay out of your way.”

“Oh . . .”

“But I
have
killed.”

“Oh.” Kelley swallowed. “Does it bother you—that Auberon turned you into . . . that?”

“Listen. I was taken by the Fae from a world that was governed by violence and death. If I’d been left there, I would have grown up a warrior, and I would have taken a lot of life. A lot of
human
life. Why should I bemoan the fact of what I am, when it is only a shadow of the beast that I could have become?”

“It might have turned out differently for you, is all.”

“I was a Viking,” he said quietly. “And I was a prince. I would have led men to war with other men, and I probably would have been very good at it. Or I might have died messily. It was that kind of world.”

Kelley studied Fennrys’s profile as they walked. He’d always seemed so sharp and hard to her before—all angles and planes. But the lamplight and the moonlight softened his features, made his rough, shaggy blond hair seem less like a mane. It made him look young. Almost boyish.

“Sonny’s good at it, isn’t he?” she asked. “Killing, I mean.”

“He is and he isn’t.”

Kelley waited for clarification.

“Boy’s got technique. Strength, speed, agility. He’s a fine, precise instrument of war. But he doesn’t
like
it. He likes the fight—and the hunt, the chase, the contest—but I’ve seen him hesitate in the instant before the sword falls in his hand. Dangerous way to go about things.”

“I don’t think he hesitates much anymore, Fenn.” She hugged her elbows tight to her body as they walked, images from her recent nightmares flashing through her mind. “I think he may have . . . changed.”

“Sonny hasn’t gone and turned mean, if that’s what you’re thinking, Kelley,” Fennrys said. “I’d bet real money on that. He doesn’t have the capacity for cruelty.”

“And are you
looking
for a capacity for cruelty?” asked a voice in the darkness.

Fennrys shoved Kelley behind him so fast, it almost knocked the breath out of her.

“Because
I
might know a lad who’d fit that bill.”

Kelley’s heart thumped in her chest. She recognized that voice.

“Oh, goody, you brought company.” The creep who’d accosted her the last time she set foot in the park stepped out of the darkness, turning his cold, dangerous stare on Fennrys. “I’ve got a bone to pick with your kind, dog.”

The Janus’s lip curled in a snarl. The mugger’s long, thin hand suddenly snaked through the air in a convoluted gesture. Kelley leaped back as the ground beneath their feet suddenly turned to pudding and Fennrys sank almost knee-deep into the mire.

Faerie!
Kelley thought, cursing herself for not having realized it before. Her “common mugger” was Faerie. And he’d been hunting her. Her insides turned to ice as Kelley realized the terrible danger of their situation—and she’d brought them to it through sheer mule-headed stubbornness.

Fingers of green mud clutched at Fennrys’s legs, immobilizing him. He roared in rage, powerless to stop the Faerie creep as he sauntered forward, prancing lightly in his heavy boots, buckles jingling like cowboy spurs. The thick soles looked as if they could inflict an awful lot of damage, Kelley thought—and then wished she hadn’t.

The Faerie attacked with the savagery of a soccer hooligan in a street brawl. His fingers still dancing a tattoo on the air, he leaped and spun, lashing out with one of those booted feet in a whiplash kick. Fennrys’s head snapped back, the skin above his left eye split open to the bone and gushing blood. Another swift kick snapped Fennrys’s wrist. The Janus fell backward onto the oozy ground, stunned. Hooligan-boy grinned viciously, bouncing like a prizefighter on the balls of his feet.

“I’d have that set, if I were you,” he murmured through a sneer, nodding at how Fenn’s hand hung from his wrist at an odd angle. “Might heal all wrong. Might not heal at all if I kill you. Now . . . out of my way, dog.” He flicked his hand sideways, and the softened ground bucked like a rogue wave in the ocean, hurling Fennrys twenty feet away into a thicket.

Kelley decided to end things before they got really out of hand. She reached up under her hair to the catch on her necklace, and tugged.

And nothing happened.

Kelley tugged on the clasp of her silver chain again, frantically, and willed it to come loose. It had been so easy the other night—as if the charm had been eager to come loose, to let her power run free.

So why can’t I take the damned thing off now?

“Because I don’t want you to, thief.”

“What?” Her gaze flew to where Hooligan-boy’s fingers were twisting faster and faster through the air, tracing patterns as intricate as Celtic knots that Kelley could almost see hanging in the darkness like silver fire.

“Oh, I’ll take back what you stole, don’t you fret,” he said, his voice ruggedly musical. “But I can’t very well have you blasting away at me with your mum’s pretty purple power in the meantime, can I? Nah—you can just keep that little trinket fastened on tight.”

Kelley tugged so hard on the delicate chain that it should have snapped. It didn’t.

“See . . . this way”—the Faerie danced closer still, his tone disconcertingly conversational—“your power stays hidden and you stay helpless. Then, after I kill ya, I’ll just cut your pretty little head off.”

“You can
try,
” Kelley snapped.

Hooligan-boy laughed, flashing his long teeth. “D’you still have my knife handy, thief?” He drew his dancing fingertips in a line back and forth across his own neck. “The one I dropped the other night? It’s not the sharpest blade—I’ll probably have to hack a bit—but it’ll do the trick.”

Kelley swallowed thickly. The fear that she would not allow to show in her face was a tight knot in her stomach. The Faerie raised his hands higher into the air, fingers weaving intricate spells, and there was a sudden rustling behind Kelley—like the sound of millions of leaves shaken by wind, only she knew that the trees were just barely beginning to bud. She didn’t dare take her eyes off the menacing creature in front of her to look.

“Thief,” the Faerie spat at her again.

“You’re delusional,” Kelley said defiantly. “I’ve had this necklace since I was a baby. It’s mine.”

“
Dead
thief.”

From just over her shoulder, Kelley heard a ferocious groaning sound—like a log cabin settling after an earthquake, only a thousand times louder. Some instinct told Kelley to get the hell out of the way, and she did—leaping to one side just in time to avoid the massive tree limb that slammed like a giant fist into the ground where she’d been standing.

“I underestimated you last time, missy,” the Faerie said. “But I came better prepared this time.” His eyes burned with a poison-green light, and the tattoos on his wrists and the sides of his neck writhed like strangling vines. He crouched and put the palms of his hands flat on the ground. The tattoos slithered off his arms and sank into the earth.

“Never just attack someone
in
a park,” he said, “when you can attack them
with
a park.”

Tree roots slammed upward out of the ground like impaling spikes all around her. Kelley dove out of the way to avoid getting skewered, gasping as the roots whipped around her ankles and thighs, stinging and bruising her.

She ran for all she was worth.

If she could just get to the edge of the park, flag down a cop, yell for help—something—

But the park wasn’t going to let her out. Everywhere she turned, tree branches whipped through the air, catching at her hair and clothes. The ground rippled angrily, and grasses grew long, tangling her feet, tripping her as she ran. Kelley threw her arm in front of her face and charged on blindly until her lungs screamed and her brain didn’t even know which way was east or west.

In a confetti shower of new blossoms, Kelley burst through a wall of flowering branches—a stand of ornamental trees on the fringes of Cherry Hill—and she paused for an instant, glancing back, certain that she’d outrun her pursuer. But suddenly, from behind her, rough-barked, many-fingered hands grasped at her torso and arms, wrapping around her face and silencing her angry cry.

Overhead the sky rumbled with thunder, and lightning stabbed down into the park. Her mother’s Storm Hags!
Nearby, but not near enough,
Kelley thought in desperation. Another lightning bolt forked down, farther away now. Although they’d been shadowing her for months, it seemed as if the Hags couldn’t get a lock on her position.

No backup this time.

The thought rang in Kelley’s head like an alarm. If she didn’t do something soon, she was going to die. She was helpless in the grip of the Faerie’s charmed tree, and he was going to cut her throat. “D’you still have my knife handy, thief?” he’d asked her, and the question suddenly rolled like thunder through her head.

She did. She
did
still have it!

You bet I do.

Kelley twisted her arm beneath the imprisoning branches and managed to get her fingers inside the zippered side pocket of her bag that still hung from its strap across her body. Fishing madly, her knuckles brushed the ridged wood of the knife’s carved hilt. She fumbled at it with slippery fingertips.

It was too late.

Kelley saw Hooligan-boy’s grin appearing out of the darkness, gleaming at her like the Cheshire Cat from across the paved circle of the Cherry Hill turnaround. He sauntered forward a few steps, dancing his swaggering little jig as he came on. He was toying with her. The knife was in her hand, but the tree held her immobile. Then it began to squeeze.

There was nothing she could do. Her sight was going dim as the branches choked the breath from her body. Kelley opened her mouth wide, gulping at the air she couldn’t draw into her lungs. She was suffocating.