Wondrous Strange

  “Also hope, faith, love…and luck. It is powerful in any case, but that particular charm is exceptionally potent. The little green finks do good work, I’ll give them that.”

  “You stole it from a leprechaun?”

  “Yes. And, contrary to popular opinion, I make a lousy thief. He figured out it was me pretty quickly and was waiting for me when I got back.”

  “That was a heavy price to pay.”

  “You have no idea.” Bob’s face scrunched up in misery. His eyes glowed with a sullen green fire. “I hate honey. Can’t stand the stuff.”

  “Why did you do it then?”

  The most notorious boucca to ever make mischief in the mortal realm stared up at the vaulted ceiling. His voice when he spoke was barely audible.

  “I let myself become fond. Of a mortal.”

  “Who?” Sonny asked. Something deep within him whispered that he already knew the answer.

  “Your mother, Sonny.”

  “My…”

  Sonny felt as though all of the air in the theater had been sucked out. His chest hurt.

  “The sweet and lovely Emmaline Flannery…” Bob sighed. “I made the mistake of passing by her village a second time, not long after Auberon had sent me to fetch you in the first place—”

  “You mean steal me.”

  “Steal you. Yes.”

  Sonny’s earlier conversation with Kelley came rushing back to him.

  “I didn’t think much of it at the time,” Bob said. “You were just another piddling human bairn to be cradle-took. Not like I hadn’t done it a dozen times before. More…” The ancient Fae’s timeless features grew contemplative. His pale eyes filled with memory. “But this time…well. After I made the mistake of going back, I couldn’t get the sound of your mother’s cries out of my ears. Hmph—much like the honey now, I suppose.”

  Neither of them laughed at the joke.

  Bob sighed. “It tore at me. I couldn’t close my own eyes for fear of seeing hers…pretty blue eyes, red with weeping.” The boucca shook his head, memory and regret chasing themselves across his face.

  Sonny looked away. His hands, he suddenly noticed, were curled into tight fists.

  “Well, time—or what passes for time, at least, in the Faerie realm—moves on,” Bob continued. “You were already toddling about when Auberon went out into the forest one day and brought a wee tiny princess home to Court the next. An heir. But it was not the joyous occasion it might have been, if it had been, say, Titania’s babe as well.”

  “Kelley. Whose is she? Who is her mother?”

  “Never knew.” Bob lifted a shoulder. “Never asked—not the kind of thing you would ask the good king Auberon. Not and still keep your noggin on top of your shoulders.”

  “He never said who her mother was?”

  “Could have been a lowly wood nymph for all we knew. Auberon’s dalliances were legendary back then, what with him and Titania always quarreling.”

  “Why didn’t he keep the baby hidden, then, I wonder?” Sonny asked.

  “Well, that’s the thing about Faerie royalty, boyo,” Bob replied. “They don’t tend to stay inconspicuous for very long. And this tiny thing glowed like a new star. She wouldn’t have stayed hidden—even if Auberon had tried.”

  Sonny knew that was the truth from experience. The sight of Kelley, revealed in her glory in the alley, was imprinted on his mind like the afterimage of a flash photograph. “So what happened? How did she wind up hidden in this realm?”

  “Because the lord of the Unseelie, in his immeasurable wisdom”—Bob’s voice was heavy with sarcasm—“set me to nursemaid the wee thing. Punishment for some sort of passing wickedness on my part, no doubt. Auberon was not noted for a long supply of affection—paternal or otherwise. And he seemed quite content to spend what little he did have on you.”

  “Why?” Sonny had always wondered. He’d just never asked the question out loud before. “Why me?”

  The boucca shrugged. “Who knows? Whimsy? The novelty of raising a son who was not an heir? And you were an amusing pet: fearless, stubborn. He doted on you. All while his own daughter lay shut away in the nursery—wailing in the cradle, night after night, alone.”

  “You felt sorry for her.”

  “Bah! I tell you, I’d already gone pudding-soft by then!” Bob’s face twisted into an expression of disgust. “It drove me near mad. Cries of the babe mewling in my ears, cries of your mother still howling in my mind…The two things just seemed to add up and make a sudden sense.”

  “And so you helped my mother steal the heir to the Unseelie kingdom right out from under the Faerie king’s nose.” Sonny knew that he was staring at the boucca with his jaw hanging open, but by that point he couldn’t help it. “By all the gods, that was brave madness!”

  “I would have tried for you, but as I say, Auberon barely let you out of his sight. So instead, I stole a charm from a leprechaun, grabbed your mum, and snuck her straight into the palace nursery. Big, cold room full of sharp, pretty things and not even a wee baby rattle in sight. Emmaline takes one look at yon sad little princess and her heart starts to mend right there. I put the clover charm around the baby’s neck to veil her brightness, and that was that. Away we ran!”

  Sonny could only gape; the sheer audacity of the thing overwhelmed him.

  “Easier than I thought it would be.” Bob grinned sourly. “At least, at first. In, out, off we went…until Auberon got wind of it. There he was shutting the Gates one by one—clang! clang! clang!—as we run. I tumbled out the Beltane Gate, right back in Ireland where we’d started, and over my shoulder I saw Emmaline and the babe caught in between the worlds and just able to leap through the one crack left in the Samhain Gate.”

  “A hundred years later in time and an ocean away from her home,” Sonny said quietly, understanding.

  “Aye, and that was what mucked up Auberon’s spell. Like sticking your foot in a closing door, it jarred the Gate off its hinges a bit, I suppose. There I was, unable to do a damned thing about it, stuck in the past and fending off a hopping-mad leprechaun.” Bob waved a hand in the air. “Unsuccessfully. That about sums it up.”

  “And Auberon never tried to find her or his daughter.”

  “Oh, he threw all manner of tantrums, I hear. Issued decrees. Heads rolled. Blah-blah-blah. Put on quite a show of paternal grief, considering he’d never paid the poor wee thing an ounce of attention when she’d been under his own roof. It wasn’t about the girl, you see—it was all about his own wounded pride. And, sadly, it also gave him a convenient excuse to tighten his grip on the rule of the Fair Folk.”

  Sonny could hardly argue that point.

  Bob sighed. “Well. That’s the last time I get sentimental.”

  “And yet, I noticed that you are still keeping an eye out for the well-being of a certain princess.”

  “Rule of the Faerie kingdoms is passed only through the direct bloodline; you know that.” Bob cast a shrewd glance at Sonny. “Who knows—our girly might just knock the Unseelie throne out from under her dad’s chilly bum one day. And I’d cheerfully take the job of right-hand sprite to the new Unseelie queen if it’s offered.”

  Sonny’s mind was reeling with the implications of Bob’s tale.

  “I love this scene,” the boucca murmured, leaning over the pew to watch the stage, his eyes glinting with amusement. “I remember the first time I ever saw them do this…. Old Willie himself played Bottom. The man’s timing was flawless.”

  Below them, onstage, the Mechanicals were enacting the play within the play. It was a tragicomic story about two lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe, kept apart by their cruel, disapproving parents and forced to whisper their devotion to each other through a crack in the wall that separated their houses. The scene was supposed to be funny, and yet Sonny found himself oddly affected by the lovers’ plight.

  The “play” ended with a prolonged, purposefully hilarious death scene from Bottom, who flopped around on the stage like a landed fish,
a wobbly rubber prop sword protruding out from under one arm. Then all of the actors froze in place.

  For a brief moment, Sonny thought the tableau was just part of the performance, then he heard Bob whisper beside him.

  “Oh…shit.”

  The temperature suddenly plummeted to freezing. The theater echoed with rolling booms like a glacier breaking apart. The double loading doors at the back of the stage flung wide, and a cold, baleful light poured over the threshold. Puck made a sign in the air with the fingers of one hand and clutched the back of Sonny’s neck with the other. Sonny knew that Bob had cast a powerful veil—powerful enough to shield them from the awareness of the Unseelie king.

  “What are you doing?” he whispered. “I’m a Janus—there’s no reason for me to hide from my king.”

  “Oh, really?” Bob whispered back. “Somehow I get the feeling that your king would not approve of the company you keep. I stole his daughter, remember? Nor, I think, would he appreciate the fact that you’ve yet to tell him of your discovery.”

  “I was going to!”

  “When?”

  “After Kelley’s had a chance to get used to the idea,” Sonny said, although he wasn’t entirely sure he believed his own assertions. Why hadn’t he told Auberon straightaway?

  “Well, never mind that now,” Bob said, peering through the balcony rails. “I think she’s about to receive a little fatherly face time, whether she’s used to the idea or not.”

  Down on the stage, all of the actors, the crew, and the director stood frozen like statues in a garden. Auberon stalked among them like a predator, searching their faces. He cast a glance up toward the balconies.

  Bob’s spell held. The king turned and kept walking, heading toward the dressing rooms and Kelley.

  XXV

  K elley didn’t mind that she still had to help out backstage, even though she was now playing a lead. She was good with her hands and she hummed as she plugged in the glue gun and went to work peeling back the faux fur on the left ear of Bottom’s ass head. It kept drooping in front of her face in their scenes together.

  The wave of arctic air hit her like a physical assault.

  “Hello, Kelley.” The voice was sonorous with a faint crackling hiss. “I am Auberon, King of the Unseelie Court of the Realm of Faerie. I am also your father.”

  Kelley felt a surge of fear tighten her stomach and willed her hands not to shake. She’d been half expecting this. She looked up from her work.

  “My father was a doctor.”

  The Faerie king chuckled. “A healer of the sick. How noble. You do not get sick. You have no need of such creatures. And I am your father. None other.”

  “My father was a doctor,” she said again. Her hand went white-knuckled on the glue gun as she squeezed out a bead of melted adhesive along the base of the ear. “When I was four years old, he taught me how to properly bandage my knee when I skinned it. My mother showed me later how to take the dressing off without it hurting. What have you ever done for me? They were my parents and they loved me. How dare you tell me that they weren’t!”

  Auberon took a step inside the room, over her threshold, and Kelley felt the clover charm at her throat spark and grow warm.

  She glared balefully at the king. “Now that I’m, what, almost an adult? You suddenly appear in a puff of smoke and you want to assert some sort of parental claim on me? The Deadbeat Dad from Faerie Land? Whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know you. I don’t need to. You might have been responsible for my creation, but you certainly had nothing to do with what I’ve become. I plan on keeping it that way.”

  To her surprise, Auberon smiled. “I think that’s an excellent idea,” he said. “And I’d like to help you with that—if you don’t mind.”

  Kelley put the glue gun down and stared at the Faerie king. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Yes, you would,” he said, a not quite subtle note of warning in his voice. “If you weren’t my daughter.”

  Kelley blinked and dropped her gaze back down to the furry head in her lap. The hollow eyes seemed to stare back at her, full of caution.

  “Kelley,” the king said, softening his tone, “you know that you are in a great deal of danger because of the simple fact that you are my daughter, do you not?”

  “In danger from whom, exactly?”

  Auberon spread his hands before him. “There are those who would use you—hurt you—because of what you are. When you were stolen from me, I mourned. I…raged. But eventually, I came to see the theft as a blessing in disguise. I have always tried to govern my folk with a just hand, but the Courts of the realm are fractious and fraught with danger. As long as you remain hidden in the mortal world, you are safe.”

  “You found me.”

  “I found you quite by accident. And only because Sonny Flannery found you first. But you are right. There are others who might prove as clever. And that puts you in grave danger, my child. You must remain hidden. For your own sake, if not mine.”

  “And what if I decide to take my chances?” Kelley asked. “Embrace my heritage—whatever that is?”

  “Then you will most likely perish,” the Faerie king said quietly. “I offer you a bargain. I can see to it that you keep your life—the life that you have made for yourself. I can make you as good as mortal. If you let me.”

  Kelley’s tone was sharp. “You want to keep me from my birthright?” Almost everything she had learned about the Fair Folk over the last few days had served to scare the hell out of her—the Otherworld sounded like a place full of treachery and danger. But although she was loath to admit it, even among her fears there was a tiny part of her that remembered how truly awesome it had been to ride with the Faerie in Herne’s hunting party. To be clothed in silk and jewels, galloping through the skies with godlike beings so beautiful they seemed made of starlight, laughing…Kelley closed her eyes and banished the seductive thoughts. No. She was pretty sure that she didn’t ever want to become a princess of Faerie, but she wasn’t about to let Auberon know that. “You want to make me ‘normal’? How is that a good deal for me in any way? And in exchange for what? There is nothing you have that I want. Nothing.”

  “Not even a certain member of my Janus Guard?”

  “You leave Sonny out of this! He’s not yours to give.”

  “Perhaps not…” Auberon sank gracefully into a crouch in front of her chair and looked up at her. “But tell me this. How does he look at you now?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Now that he knows? Knows what you are.”

  Kelley swallowed to ease a sudden constricting of her throat.

  “Oh, my dear girl,” Auberon murmured, the chill in his voice suddenly thawing. She could imagine that she heard actual concern in his words. “I raised Sonny. I’ve watched him ever since he was a child. I know what he thinks of me and of my people. He respects us—and, indeed, there is a small, secret part of him that would sacrifice almost anything for the chance to become one of us. But he is not capable of loving us.”

  “Sonny’s not afraid of you.”

  “No. He isn’t,” the king agreed. “In fact, he has spent most of his life learning to kill my kind. Our kind. He’s very good at it.”

  “Well that’s a marvelous legacy you’ve left him, isn’t it?” Kelley refused to look away. She stared straight into his eyes, the fierceness of her emotions making her hands shake. “Way to raise up the kid you stole.”

  Auberon stood, rich garments falling in regal folds all around him. “I do not wish to quarrel with you, Kelley. I merely tell you this to save you further hurt. It is not within Sonny Flannery to love a Faerie queen. He cannot rise above his upbringing; and if you remain as you are, he will begin to resent that which you are. It is inevitable. If you retain your birthright, my dear girl, you will lose him. Maybe not at first and not all at once, but you will. But I can make it so that you need never see that coldness creep into his gaze.”

  “Get out.”


  “Consider my words.” Auberon turned to go, but hesitated. “You have your mother’s eyes, you know….”

  “Get out,” Kelley said again through clenched teeth, closing her eyes as she turned away from him. When she opened them again, she was alone in her dressing room—shaking, a sticky mess of hot glue pooling on the counter in front of her.

  “Kelley?” Sonny appeared at the door of her dressing room. “Are you all right? He didn’t…hurt you, did he?”

  Sonny…

  She had seen how he’d reacted to her in the alleyway. In those brief moments when she’d felt…strange. She remembered the look in his eyes and she could not, in her imagination, convert that expression into one that could convey love. What if Auberon was right?

  “Kelley?”

  She thought suddenly about the rest of the cast and crew. If Auberon had been in the theater…“Is everyone okay?” She started for the door.

  “They’re fine. Bob is out there right now making sure.”

  “He’s one of them, isn’t he?” She felt for the charm around her neck, remembering Bob’s words to her yesterday. “Bob…”

  “He used to be called Robin. Among other things.”

  “Oh, God…,” Kelley whispered.

  “He’s sort of the reason you’re in this world in the first place. Actually…we both are, it seems.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “I didn’t either, until he told me just now. Emma—your aunt—once went by another name. Emmaline Flannery.”

  “Flannery? But…” Kelley understood then. “It was you. Em took me because Auberon took you.”

  “Like I said”—Sonny smiled gently—“the Fates have an odd sense of humor.”

  “You look like her,” she said. “Now that I know. I can see her in you. All that stubborn Irish crazy…”

  There was a sheen to Sonny’s gray eyes. “I’d like to meet her.”

  “You will.”

  Sonny cast a glance in the direction of the high window. “It’s getting late.”