Wondrous Strange

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Don’t lie to me, Sonny. You and your buddies seem to think I’m going to have my hands full just lasting the night. Let alone the next three.”

  “Two of which have probably already passed while we danced here.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. See? You’re not doing so bad with surviving so far.”

  “Okay, then basically the real danger is actually waiting for me back in New York at the theater.”

  Sonny looked at her quizzically.

  “Missing dress rehearsal? If I do somehow manage to get back, I’ll be lucky if Quentin doesn’t flay me alive.”

  Sonny laughed. “You will get back. I promise you. So you’d better practice your lines.” He pulled her down to sit on a grassy patch beside him and reached for her script, flipping through it for a moment as if looking for something. He stopped on a particular page. “Here, for example.” He pointed to the lines. “This scene. I’ll read it with you. Now don’t argue.” He held up a hand. “I’ll play the ass—just this once. Indulge me, Kelley. Please? I’m feeling theatrical.”

  She plucked the script from his hand and scanned the page to see what scene he’d chosen. She giggled when she read her first line and handed back the script so he could read opposite her. “Oh, boy! No ego there, Sonny…”

  “Shh.” He gestured dramatically. “I need to concentrate. Begin.”

  Kelley opened her mouth wide in an exaggerated yawn and stretched. “What angel wakes me from my flow’ry bed?” She waited for Sonny’s response, curious to see how he’d handle Bottom’s silly song about a cuckoo.

  Sonny’s face fell a bit and he muttered, “I didn’t know I’d have to sing.…All right, we’ll just skip my lines. Jump to your next speech.”

  Kelley stifled a laugh at the seriousness of his expression, and continued with her next line. “I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again. Mine ear is much enamoured of thy note; so is mine eye enthrallèd to thy shape.”

  Okay, that part’s true. It’s a very nice shape.

  “And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me on the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.”

  Sonny frowned and held up a hand. “I don’t think you got that last line quite right. Say it again.”

  “I totally said it right!”

  He ignored her protestation and said, “Go from ‘thy fair virtue’s force.’”

  “Sonny—”

  “Unh.” Up went the hand again. It was like he was channeling the Mighty Q, for crying out loud! “‘Thy fair…’”

  “Okay, okay!” Kelley rolled her eyes and went back to the line. “And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me on the first view to say, to swear, I love thee. Better?”

  “Better…Intonation’s just a shade off on the last three words. Try those again.”

  “What—‘I love thee’?”

  “Hm.” He gestured again with one hand for her to continue.

  She drew herself up and took in a breath, concentrating on her inflection so that she could indulge him in his game. Then she leaned forward and, in her best, most sincerely love-struck voice, breathed, “I love thee.”

  Sonny’s face was just inches from hers. His storm-gray eyes flashed, and the dark silk of his hair drifted across his cheek as he leaned in his head. “Perfect.”

  So was the kiss.

  Perfect.

  At the press of Sonny’s lips against hers, Kelley felt the world around her—all the worlds around her—melt. The sweetness of his breath filled her, and she could feel his heart beating loud as thunder against her own, hammering in her chest.

  “I love thee,” Sonny murmured, all pretense gone.

  With those words, tears spilled down her face.

  “Oh, my heart,” he said, and gathered her into his arms, and Kelley wondered why she was weeping. It could have been with fear, or sorrow—fear of losing him, sorrow at what he had already risked for her…or maybe she just wept from pure, incandescent joy. She felt all of those things in that moment.

  He held her close for an eternity that seemed like an eye-blink when they heard the approach of footsteps in the leafy forest passageway behind them. Sonny loosened his embrace but did not let her go, gazing down at her.

  Behind them, Herne quietly cleared his throat. “Janus? I do not wish to disturb, but my doorman watches the skies of the mortal realm and informs me that there are Cailleach hovering over the park. Storm Hags. The time approaches for your departure, if you are to keep your appointment with the Darkling Queen’s representatives.”

  “Thank you, my lord.” With a reluctance Kelley could feel, he gently disentangled his limbs from hers and stood. He slung his bag over his shoulder and held Kelley’s script out to her. She shook her head.

  “Keep it,” she said, and folded his hands back over the rumpled pages. “Keep it for me. For luck.”

  “Only if you promise not to forget that one line,” he said as he stepped close again.

  Kelley glowed up at him. “Not on your life.”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can. I promise.” Sonny’s eyes shone with a whole book of unsaid things—promises of more than just his return. “Wait for me.”

  XXXII

  T yffanwy had gone so far as to tie a little red bow in Lucky’s forelock. He looked like a Pekingese dog fresh from the groomer.

  “I figured I might as well give him the full salon treatment.” She snuffled a bit, and Sonny noticed that her lovely eyes were red-rimmed.

  “Thank you for this, Tyff,” he said. “I know you know how important it is.”

  “Yeah, well. You tell Mabh she’d better take care of him”—the Faerie sniffed fiercely—“or there’ll be hell to pay! I have a few favors of my own that I can call in, should I find myself so inclined.”

  “I will,” he said—and made a mental note to stay on Tyffanwy’s good side. “C’mon, Lucky. Let’s get you home and end this.”

  When Sonny pulled a slim rope out of his satchel and tied a loose loop around Lucky’s neck, he seemed to understand. The kelpie lifted his delicate hooves out of the tub, one by one, and stepped lightly out onto the bathroom floor. Sonny eyed the window skeptically. It seemed far too small for the kelpie to make his way through, but Lucky trooped obediently over to it and nudged the pane. Sonny edged past and lifted open the casement, and the faerie horse ducked his red-maned head and, impossibly, squeezed through, out onto the fire-escape landing.

  Sonny followed, noting how the kelpie made his way with some haste down the iron stairs. From the street, Sonny waved to thank Tyff then, concentrating sharply for a moment, he drew upon his power and cast a concealing veil over Lucky, rendering the kelpie invisible so that he could lead him through the streets of Manhattan, toward Central Park. Where he would hand the creature off to Mabh’s Storm Hags.

  He glanced nervously at the skies as he walked. In another few moments the sun would be down and it would be officially Samhain night. Scattered groups of costumed children and the odd bunch of party-going adults passed him on the street; there were more than a few carved pumpkins grinning at him from windows and stoops.

  Mabh was cutting this awfully close, Sonny thought. Probably just to make him twitchy and satisfy her own perverse sense of humor. But none of that mattered now. Kelley was safe, soon Lucky would be back in the Borderlands, and he would be done with the threat of the Wild Hunt.

  As he passed through the park, Sonny noted with dismay that there were a lot of humans in costumes wandering the pathways. He could see Belvedere Castle in the distance, lit up in garish shades of orange and purple. Some foolish millionaire had obviously decided to throw a great big Halloween bash in the park that year.

  He followed his Janus senses to find the place in the park where Mabh’s minions would be waiting. In truth, as he walked shadowy trails leading the placid, invisible kelpie, he felt a wash of guilt. The poor creature probably didn’t even know the fate that awaited it. A
nd if it did, it went to it with far more nobility than Sonny would have thought possible from a beast. He reaffirmed to himself his vow to Kelley that he would demand protection for Lucky.

  In his mind, Sonny could sense three Storm Hags hovering near. He came out into a little round clearing by Turtle Pond, dominated by an enormous statue of a historic Polish king mounted on a warhorse. High in the air he saw the Hags circling like wispy gray vultures. He lifted the veil from the kelpie, and Lucky shimmered into view by his side. Sonny opened his mouth to call down the Hags, but suddenly his Janus senses jangled an alarm. A rift was opening nearby.

  Very nearby. Right in front of him…

  He took a step back and dropped into a fighting stance.

  Wham!

  It was not a small rift. The tearing sent out a shock wave that hammered Sonny to his knees. Beside him, Lucky whinnied in panic and half reared, pawing at the air with his front hooves. Sonny sensed that the entire Janus Guard had been alerted to the breach, and he knew that those who were able would come running.

  The sky rippled. Looking up, Sonny saw the Queen of Air and Darkness herself, lounging on the statue high above the ground as if it were a throne. Mabh was silhouetted against the sky, framed by the two massive swords held crossed in the air by the statue of the king. Just for fun, Mabh had conjured up a pair of glowing-eyed jack-o’-lanterns and jammed them onto the tips of the statue’s swords. They flared like torches, illuminating Mabh’s makeshift court with a lurid glow.

  “I hope this meeting was convenient for you, Sir Guard,” she said in a languorous voice. “I was concluding a bit of business with a lady of my court, and we went a little over time.”

  By the flaring light of the pumpkin torches, Sonny saw a ghastly sight. From the long, taloned fingers of Mabh’s fist, Chloe the Siren dangled like a limp rag doll, hanging by the knotted mass of her blond hair. Blood seeped from her mouth and the scores of small wounds that marred her sleek limbs. She moaned senselessly in pain.

  “My lady Mabh.” Sonny struggled to keep his voice steady. “I was…unaware that you traveled the ways to the mortal world.”

  “Ooh, diplomacy,” Mabh cooed. “How lovely. If you refer to the chains that Auberon and that witch Titania bound about me to restrict me to my realm, they are still there.” She swung one foot carelessly, and Sonny saw a snaking silver chain attached to a fiery manacle that circled her ankle. The chain disappeared back into the boiling rift in the sky behind the queen, and there were fresh, angry red welts scoring her pale skin where the shackle bit into her flesh. “I’m still tethered, little Janus. But mark my words, not for long.”

  “My time is short, lady. I expected to meet only with your…emissaries.”

  “My hags.” She cast a glance at the sky, but the Storm Hags were nowhere to be seen. “Oh, they’re about. Victimizing a partygoer or two, I should imagine. Never mind. Have you completed the task appointed you?”

  Sonny glanced back at Lucky and said, “Obviously. First, the terms of your boon.”

  Mabh rolled her eyes.

  “You will take care of it.” Sonny ignored her disdain, his voice firm. “Once returned to you, it will not suffer at your hands.”

  Mabh’s eyes narrowed. “You dare call my red-haired beauty ‘it’?”

  “Insofar as your ‘red-haired beauty’ has incredibly destructive latent capabilities, I’d rather not elevate its status with a proper pronoun.” It was best not to let Mabh know that the kelpie had made himself actual friends—such knowledge could be used against them all. Sonny kept his inflections carefully neutral, although, under his breath, he murmured, “Sorry, Lucky—no offense.”

  “What say you, Mabh?”

  “You are disrespectful,” Mabh said. She tut-tutted, a grin playing about her lips.

  Sonny shrugged. “Give it to get it, lady.”

  The Darkling Queen laughed—a cheery, tinkling sound. “I like you! You’re an angry little thing. And here I thought Auberon would raise you up all soft. Well then. The boon is granted. Now fulfill your part of the bargain. Give me my precious girl.”

  Sonny slipped the rope from Lucky’s neck and nudged him forward with a slap on the rump. “It’s a boy, actually—if you’d bothered to check.”

  Mabh looked back and forth from the nervous kelpie to Sonny. Then she turned a furious glare on him. “Your jest lacks a necessary component, my little changeling friend. Humor. Now where is my daughter?”

  “Your…”

  Sonny’s guts went cold. He replayed the scene with the Storm Hag in his apartment over again in his mind: “This realm hides something that belongs to Mabh. You know this?” the hag had said. “She wants it back. It should never have been sent here. It was a mistake. Find it. Return it. And the queen will grant you a boon.”

  He had made the most basic error in judgment that one could make when dealing with Faerie. He had jumped to conclusions. Sonny had assumed that the Hag had referred to the wayward kelpie and had not bothered to clarify that point.

  With sudden, crystalline clarity, Sonny realized that he had been wrong from the very beginning. It had not been Mabh who had sought to unleash the Wild Hunt after all.

  Auberon.

  For the sake of securing his own position on the Unseelie throne, Sonny thought, the Faerie king would sacrifice his own daughter. His daughter…and Mabh’s. And he would have had Sonny help him do it, and put the blame on Mabh for awakening the Wild Hunt at the same time. Sick misery filled Sonny, only to be replaced by cold fury.

  Mabh’s eyes narrowed, and she watched him—watched him with green, glittering eyes that, were they not so filled with cruel malice, Sonny would have recognized immediately. Kelley had those very same eyes.

  Mabh leaned forward slightly. “My Hag did convey the bargain to you, did she not?”

  “Cryptically,” Sonny muttered, teeth and fists clenched. “And with exceedingly poor grammar—”

  “But you agreed. Then and now.”

  “No.”

  “And instead of my daughter”—the Darkling Queen smiled dangerously—“you brought me…. a pony.”

  “I—”

  “If you had any questions, Janus, the time to ask them is now long past.” Her eyes flashed red for an instant.

  “I assumed—”

  “Ah, well. You know what they say about the dangers of ‘assuming.’”

  “My lady, the fault is mine. There must be something—”

  “The bargain was for the girl.”

  “No.”

  “Where is she?” Mabh hissed. “The bargain is broken. You broke it. You must tell me.”

  “N-n…no…” Sonny fell to his knees and felt his head jerk backward as though someone had yanked on his hair. His eyes flew wide, as much as he tried to keep them squeezed shut.

  “Oh,” Mabh purred as she gazed into his mind from high up on her perch. “Oh, this is marvelous…. All because of you, little Janus, my imprisonment is at an end! You know the rules. Your broken oath gives me the power to take what was not given to me as promised—and to do that, I’ll need freedom.” She grinned wickedly as the manacle and delicate chain around her ankle shimmered and dimmed to an insubstantial wisp of silvery flame and the passageway in the sky behind her closed. “Thanks to your charming ineptitude, I can once more come and go as I please. I can enter Herne’s precious Tavern. All so that I may take what was not freely given to me. And I can wreak a little havoc while I’m there!”

  She laughed merrily.

  To Sonny, it was the sound of the world ending.

  “This worked out rather better even than I’d hoped. Thanks for your pains, fleshling. I will not forget.” Mabh raised her hand, slicing through the sky to open another rift in front of her like a wound in the air.

  In the moment before she stepped through, several of the Janus Guard came bursting out of the trees about ten yards behind Sonny.

  “Chloe!” Maddox shouted. “Mabh, you bitch! Let her go!”

  Chloe
groaned, and the Darkling Queen seemed to suddenly remember that she held the Siren dangling by her hair—twenty feet above the earth.

  She let her go.

  Maddox was almost fast enough to catch her. Sonny winced as Chloe’s head bounced off the ground. As Maddox got an arm around her and half lifted her, the Siren clutched at his sleeve, and Sonny heard her pained murmur: “I didn’t want to tell him…but he threatened to take away my music.”

  “Tell who, Chloe?” Maddox asked gently. “What?”

  “Auberon. About the girl.” The Siren’s lovely voice was reduced to a thready whisper. “Mabh was so angry when she found out that I told him. She thinks Auberon wants to do the girl harm….”

  “Shh…”

  “Tell Sonny…I’m sorry….” Chloe’s hand fell limply to the ground.

  With a snarl, Sonny launched himself in the direction of the statue. Mabh wanted a fight? She was about to get one. He could feel the rest of the Guard surging forward behind him. But Mabh stroked the horse statue beneath her and it suddenly snorted and reared, tossing its enormous bronze head. The ground heaved as though an earthquake struck, throwing the Janus Guard about like toys; there was a sound of shrieking metal. High above them, the figure of the long-dead king uncrossed its swords. The horse’s huge, heavy hooves tore free of the statue’s base, and the Janus Guard picked themselves up to join in battle against the bronze, red-eyed effigy.

  “Happy Halloween, children!” Mabh vanished from sight, her voice howling back at them. “I’m off to go collect my daughter and do some trick-or-treating!”

  The rift spiraled and collapsed in on itself, and a storm of flaming pumpkins rained down from the sky.

  XXXIII

  “W ill you walk with me, lady?” Herne bowed his head to Kelley as they left the Isle of Avalon behind and returned to the Tavern proper.

  She smiled up at him and slipped her hand around his muscle-corded forearm. They strolled through the Tavern’s garden, past a gathering of what looked like living topiaries—one of them a horse prancing around the terrace, leafy mane and tail rustling as it kicked up its heels. It reminded her of Lucky, and Kelley felt a stab of anxiety. She was worried about him. And about Sonny, who had gone to deliver him to a fearsome being about whom she’d heard only unpleasant things so far. It was strange, because the man walking beside her had once loved the Darkling Queen. She’d seen it in the vision Sonny had given her.