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“Ethan. ” Kenzie touched my elbow. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I muttered, turning away from the direction of my house. I couldn’t think of home, not yet. “Sorry, I’m fine. Tell your gremlin to show us the trod. ”
Razor buzzed indignantly but hopped off Kenzie’s shoulder and scampered to the old playground slide. Leaping to the railing, he jabbered and pointed frantically to the space beneath the steps. “Trod here!” he squeaked, looking at Kenzie for approval. “Trod to scary lady’s house here! Razor did good?”
As Kenzie assured him that he did fine, I shook my head, still amazed that a trod to the infamous Exile Queen had been this close. But we couldn’t waste any time. Todd, Annwyl and now Keirran were out there, with the lady, and every second was costly.
Taking Kenzie’s hand, we ducked beneath the slide and into the Between once more.
The trod didn’t dump us into Leanansidhe’s basement this time. Rather, as we left the cold whiteness between worlds, we appeared in a closet that led to an empty bedroom. I felt a moment of dizziness as we stepped through the frame, and wondered if all this frequent trod jumping was hazardous to our health.
The room we entered was simple: a rumpled bed, a nightstand, a desk in the corner. All in shades of white or gray. The only thing of color in the room was a vase of wildflowers on the corner of the desk, Annwyl’s handiwork, probably. Razor buzzed sadly as we came in, and his ears wilted.
“Master’s room,” he sniffled. Kenzie reached up and patted his head.
Voices and music drifted down the hallway as I opened the door. Not singing; just soft notes played at random, barely muffling a conversation. As we ventured down the corridor, the voices and notes grew stronger, until we came to a pair of double doors leading to a red-carpeted music room. An enormous piano sat in the center of the room, surrounded by various instruments on the walls and floor, many vibrating softly. A harp sat in a corner, the strings humming, though there was no one to play it. A lute plinked a quiet tune on the far wall, and a tambourine answered it, jingling softly. For a moment, it made me think that the instruments were talking to each other, as if they were sentient and alive, which was more than a little disturbing.
Then Leanansidhe glanced up from a sofa, and Grimalkin turned to stare at us with big golden eyes.
“Ethan, darling, there you are!” The Exile Queen rose in a fluttering of fabric and blue smoke, beckoning us into the room with her cigarette flute. “You’ve arrived just in time, pet. Grimalkin and I were just talking about you. ” She blinked as Kenzie and I stepped through the door, then looked down the empty hallway. “Um, where is the prince, darlings?”
“They have him,” I said, and Leanansidhe’s lips thinned dangerously. “They met us outside Guro’s house and wanted Keirran to come back with them to see the lady. ”
“And you didn’t stop him, pet?”
“I couldn’t. The glamour-eaters kidnapped Annwyl and threatened to kill her if Keirran didn’t do what they said. ”
“I see. ” Leanansidhe sighed, and a smoke hound went loping away over our heads. “I knew taking in that girl was a mistake. Well, this puts a rather large damper on our plans, doesn’t it, darling? How do you intend to fix this little mess? I suggest you get started soon, before the Iron Queen hears that her darling son has gone missing. That wouldn’t bode well for either of us, would it, dove?”
“I’ll find him,” I said, clenching my fist around a sword hilt. “We know where they are now. ”
“Oh?” The Exile Queen raised an eyebrow. “Do share, darling. ”
“The glamour-eaters said something about the Between. ” I watched as Leanansidhe’s other eyebrow arched in surprise. “Maybe you aren’t the only one who knows how to build a lair in the space between Faery and the mortal realm. If you can do it, others should be able to as well, right?”
“Technically, yes, darling. ” Leanansidhe’s voice was stiff; obviously she didn’t like the idea that she wasn’t the only one to think of it. “But the Between is a very thin plane of existence, a curtain overlapping both realms you might say. For anything to survive here, it must have an anchor in the real world. Otherwise, a person could wander the Between forever. ”
“There’s a cave in Central Park,” Kenzie broke in, stepping up beside me. “It’s a small cave, and it’s been sealed off for years, but I bet that isn’t a problem for faeries, right? If it exists in the real world, it could be an entrance to the Between. ”
“Well done, pet. That could very well be your entrance. ” The Exile Queen gave Kenzie an approving smile. “Of course, space isn’t a problem here, as you might have noticed. That ‘small cave’ in the real world could be a huge cavern in the Between, or a tunnel system that runs for miles. ”
A huge hidden world, right under Central Park. Talk about eerie. “That’s where we’re going, then,” I said. “Keirran, Annwyl and Todd must be down there somewhere. ” I turned to the girl. “Kenzie, let’s go. The longer we stand around here, the harder it will be to find them. ”
On the piano bench, Grimalkin yawned and sat up. “Before you go rushing off into the unknown,” he mused, regarding us lazily, “perhaps you would like to know what you are up against. ”
“I know what we’re up against, cat. ”
“Oh? The intelligent strategist always learns as much as he can about his opposition. ” Grimalkin sniffed and examined a paw, giving it a lick. “But of course, if you wish to go charging off without a plan, send my regards to the Iron prince when you are inevitably discovered. ”
“Grimalkin and I have been discussing where these glamour-eaters could have come from,” Leanansidhe said as I glared at the cat. He scratched behind an ear and ignored me. “They are not Iron fey, for they still have our deathly allergies to iron and technology. So it stands to reason that, at one point, they were just like us. Yet I have not been able to recognize a one of them, have you, darling?”
“No,” I said. “I’ve never seen them before. ”
“Precisely. ” Grimalkin stood, and leaped from the bench to the sofa, regarding us coolly. He blinked once, then sat down, curling his tail around his feet as he got comfortable. After a moment, he spoke, his voice low and solemn.
“Do you know what happens to fey whom no one remembers anymore, human?”
Fey whom no one remembers anymore? I shook my head. “No. Should I?”
“They disappear,” Grimalkin continued, ignoring my question. “One would say, they ‘fade’ from existence, much as the exiles do when banished to the mortal realm. Not just individual fey, however. Entire races can disappear and vanish into oblivion, because no one tells their stories, no one remembers their names, or what they looked like. There are rumors of a place, in the darkest reaches of the Nevernever, where these fey go to die, gradually slipping from existence, until they are simply not there anymore. Faded. Unremembered. Forgotten. ”
A chill slithered up my back. “We are forgotten,” the creepy faery had hissed to me, so long ago it seemed. “No one remembers our names, that we ever existed. ”
“Okay, great. We know what they are,” I said. “That doesn’t really explain why they’re sucking the glamour from normal fey and half-breeds. ”
Grimalkin yawned.
“Of course it does, human,” he stated, as if it were obvious. “Because they have none of their own. Glamour—the dreams and imagination of mortals—is what keeps us alive. Even half-breeds have a bit of magic inside them. But these creatures have been forgotten for so long, the only way for them to exist in the real world is to steal it from others. But it is only temporary. To truly exist, to live without fear, they need to be remembered again. Otherwise they are in danger of fading away once more. ”
“But…” Kenzie frowned, while Razor mumbled a halfhearted “bad kitty” from her shoulder, “how can they be remembered, when no one knows what they are?”
“That,
” Grimalkin said, as I tried to wrap my brain around all of this, “is a very good question. ”
“It doesn’t matter. ” I shook myself and turned to Leanansidhe, who raised an eyebrow and puffed her cigarette flute. “I’m going back for Keirran, Todd and the others, no matter what these things are. We need the trod to Central Park right now. ” Her eyes narrowed at my demanding tone, but I didn’t back down. “We have to hurry. Keirran might not have a lot of time. ”
Grimalkin slid from the sofa, sauntering past us with his tail in the air. “This way, humans,” he mused, ignoring Razor, who hissed and spat at him from Kenzie’s shoulder. “I will take you to Central Park. Again. ”
“Are you coming with us this time?” Kenzie asked, and the cat snorted.
“I am not a tour guide, human,” he said, peering over his shoulder. “I shall be returning to the Nevernever shortly, and the trod you wish to use happens to be on my way. I will not be tromping about Central Park with a legion of creatures bent on sucking away glamour. You will have to do your floundering without me. ”
“Yeah, that just breaks my heart,” I returned.
Grimalkin pretended not to hear. With a flick of his tail, he turned and trotted out of the room with his head held high. Leanansidhe gave me an amused look.
“Bit of advice, darling,” she said as we started to leave. “Unless you want to find yourselves in a dragon’s lair or on the wrong end of a witch’s bargain, it’s never a good idea to annoy the cat. ”
“Right,” I muttered. “I’ll try to remember that when we’re not fighting for our lives. ”
“Bad kitty,” Razor agreed, as we hurried to catch up with Grimalkin.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Big Dark
One more time, we stepped through the trod into Central Park, feeling the familiar tingle as we passed through the barrier. It was night now, and the streetlamps glimmered along the paths, though it wasn’t very dark. The lights from the surrounding city lit up the sky, glowing with an artificial haze and making it impossible to see the stars.