Wondrous Strange

  “Jack, I’m not kidding.”

  “Neither am I.” Jack held her gaze, his face serious. “Kelley…you are seventeen. You are on your own in New York City. And you are chasing a dream that most reasonable people consider either unattainable or a damned-fool waste of time. Believe me, I know. All of which tells me that you are either fearless or just a little bit foolish. I suspect both. I also suspect that you are one of those precious few with enough natural talent to make a go of it.”

  Kelley scoffed in disbelief. “You saw what I just did in there, right?”

  “And heard, yes.” Jack chuckled. “You mangled just over fifty percent of your lines. I don’t care what Quentin says, for a first timer that’s not half bad. Well—it was half bad. But that’s the point. It was also half good.”

  “You…really think so?” Kelley asked, trying to gauge whether Jack was being sincere.

  “I really do.” Jack shrugged and drained his coffee. “You’ve got a voice. You’ve got a presence. More importantly, you have the heart and the passion and the sheer mule-headed stubbornness that could very well take you to places most of us scarcely dare to imagine.” He screwed the cup-lid back onto his thermos. “Now, call that destiny, call it purpose—whatever ‘it’ is, my dear girl, you have it in good supply.”

  Kelley was not entirely convinced, but she smiled, grateful for the kindness. “Has anyone ever told you that you’ve got a silver tongue, Jack?”

  “Many times. Unfortunately, never the reviewers.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No need for that, my dear.” Standing, Jack tipped an imaginary hat to her as he went back inside the theater.

  The second half of rehearsal also ended early, but this time it wasn’t Kelley’s fault—it would have been hard to screw up her lines when she’d been ordered to rehearse script in hand. Although it was humiliating for Kelley to still be “on book” so close to opening, the company whipped through the large ensemble scenes at a pace and with a level of competency that even Quentin could only manage a few halfhearted mutters over.

  After a couple of hours he released most of the cast, holding back the two girls playing Hermia and Helena so he could work on their monologues—because, he remarked pointedly and well within Kelley’s earshot, “they already know their lines.”

  Lucky them, Kelley thought, as she changed back into her street clothes. She gathered up her stuff and hotfooted it out of there before the Mighty Q could change his mind.

  Outside the day was glorious, the October sky deep blue and the air mild. The sun was shining brightly, and it reminded Kelley of fall days at home in the Catskills. She felt a wave of sudden homesickness.

  Why am I doing this? she wondered.

  In her six months in New York, Kelley had never once questioned her life choices: graduating high school early, dropping out of theater training to move to the city—leaving behind what few friends she’d had, not to mention her aunt, who’d raised her single-handedly since her parents’ death twelve years earlier. Kelley was all Emma had and they adored each other but, instead of continuing on with her studies at a nearby state university, visiting Emma on weekends, here she was. Living in the toughest city in America, chasing a selfish dream that—Let’s face it, she told herself morosely—apparently, she really wasn’t any good at. No matter what Jack said.

  She scuffed her feet as she wandered up Eighth Avenue, reluctant to make her way uptown to the fourth-floor walk-up that she now called home. Except that home was something else. It was sky and grass and the trees of the woods outside her old window, and peace.

  Kelley came to a stop at the corner of Fifty-fifth Street. Central Park was only a few blocks away. There would be trees and grass, and benches where she could sit quietly, looking over her lines away from the city crowds. Turning right to veer east, she broke into a jog.

  II

  S onny Flannery opened the French doors and stepped out onto the stone terrace of his penthouse apartment. With cat-footed lightness, he leaped up to perch on the smooth, wide granite of the railing. Heedless of the nineteen-story drop to the pavement far below, he crouched there like a gargoyle, elbows resting on knees and his long, slender hands hanging in front of him, watching as the afternoon shadows of New York’s countless high-rises began to grow long over Central Park.

  It was too early for him to be so keyed up—the Gate wouldn’t open for another several hours. Still…even the thought of what was to come made the adrenaline thrum through Sonny’s veins like siren song. He’d heard actual siren song once, and it had not been a pretty thing. Beguiling, yes. Pretty…no. Beneath the heartbreakingly lovely surface of the Sirens’ melodies, all Sonny had heard were discordant notes of hunger and rage. Need. Madness and nightmares. Compulsion.

  The same kind of compulsion that had driven him down into the park every night for almost a year in preparation for what was to come when the Samhain Gate opened and all that would stand between the Otherworld and the mortal realm were thirteen Janus Guards. Including Sonny Flannery, the newest member of that elite rank.

  This was his first year of service as a Janus and would be his first time guarding the Gate. He could hardly wait.

  The October breeze was brisk that high up but, even shirtless and barefoot, wearing only a pair of jeans, Sonny was unaffected by the chill. Still, when the temperature plummeted in the apartment at his back, he couldn’t help but notice.

  “My lord,” Sonny called, not turning to look. “Welcome.”

  “Sonny.” The greeting floated out to him.

  From his perch on the balustrade, Sonny turned to see Auberon, king of the Unseelie Court of Faerie, lounging against the door frame. A mane of charcoal-gray hair, shot through with silver, flowed down his back, and a mantle stitched from the furs of timber wolves fell from his shoulders in rich platinum layers.

  “Your door,” Auberon said. His voice was low and melodious, with hints of the slow crack and boom of a frozen lake breaking open on a midwinter night. “It was unlocked.”

  “I know. Most unwanted visitors never make it past the front-desk security in this place. Either that, or they’re not the kind who come up in the elevator, so I don’t usually bother.” Sonny knew perfectly well that Auberon had not come over the threshold. The Winter King, Lord of the Unseelie, had no need of such trivial things as doors. He was simply being polite—in his own inimitable way.

  The Faerie king’s pale lips twitched. “Unwanted visitors?”

  “Not you, lord. Of course.” Sonny grinned and jumped down onto the flagstones. His bare feet made no noise as he crossed the terrace.

  “Of course not.”

  “I only meant that I’ll have enough doors to worry about keeping locked soon enough.”

  “Aye. You will.” Auberon’s cold eyes glittered.

  “And, at any rate, this is your apartment.” Sonny waved a hand at the expanse of polished floors and sleek furnishings. “I only live here.”

  It was true. Auberon’s decrees had forbade the Faerie from having any interaction with the mortal realm, and his enchantments had made it virtually impossible to do so. But as king of Winter, the most powerful of the Four Courts of Faerie, Auberon could come and go as he wished. He’d done so through the years, and in the course of dealing with humans, Auberon had—among other things—amassed an impressive portfolio of priceless real estate, including Sonny’s corner penthouse apartment on Central Park West. Lavish couldn’t even begin to describe the young Janus’s accommodations to most people; New Yorkers would sell body parts to get their hands on a place like it. But Sonny had grown up in the unimaginable splendor of Auberon’s palaces.

  Sonny was a changeling—a human, stolen as a child from the mortal realm by godlike beings who did not often produce children of their own. Growing to adulthood over the course of a century or more rather than years (for time in the Otherworld moved differently than in the mortal realm), the changelings served as surrogate offspring for the Faerie, walking in the s
hining halls of bright palaces, resting and feasting in canopied bowers. Mortals made almost immortal, they lived in that timeless, dreaming place, doted on or ignored by their capricious masters, sometimes treasured, sometimes tormented. But always in the thrall of the Faerie.

  “I trust you find these accommodations adequate?” The king’s voice shook Sonny from his reverie.

  “It’s not home, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “It was not.”

  “Of course, lord.” Sonny ducked his head, remembering himself. And who it was he spoke to. “The apartment is fine. Thank you.”

  “How fortunate that your predecessor vacated in time for your tenure.”

  “He had his throat ripped out by a glaistig last year.”

  “Aye.” The king’s mouth quirked in a mirthless grin. “But the timing was fortuitous.”

  Sonny cast about for a change of subject. “May I offer you a refreshment?”

  “The occasion warrants that I do the offering.” As Auberon drifted farther into the room, a gathering chill rolled through the air in his wake. He held up a dark bottle sealed with a silver stopper, and Sonny’s mouth watered in instant, automatic response. Faerie wine. Mortal libations weren’t even a shadowy taste of the perfection that was contained in that bottle. The king seemed amused by the expression on Sonny’s face. “We must celebrate your first year as a Janus Guard.”

  “That’s very kind, lord. But I haven’t yet proven myself.”

  “If I had any doubts that you would, boy, I wouldn’t be here. Of course…neither would you.”

  Sonny wasn’t sure if the Faerie king meant that in a more or less ominous way. He watched as Auberon plucked two wine goblets from the hanging rack in the kitchen. With a deft twist of the silver bottle top, he poured out the sparkling liquid in generous measure.

  “I have no qualms.” Auberon shrugged elegantly, handing a glass to Sonny. “You are the finest Janus I have ever chosen. Better even than Maddox, or the Fennrys Wolf.”

  Sonny fought against the urge to defend his friend Maddox, knowing it would be unwise to disagree with the king’s praise.

  “Joy to you,” the king saluted. “And good hunting.”

  Sonny raised his own glass in return and took a sip, suppressing a groan of pleasure at the taste. The Faerie wine sparkled so brightly it seemed made of tiny stars.

  “Titania sends her regards.”

  The delight Sonny took in the wine evaporated, and he shivered involuntarily at the thought of the queen of the Seelie Court. Titania. All the elemental charm and beauty of a summer thunderstorm…and just as dangerous.

  “She wishes you luck.”

  I’ll wager she didn’t specify whether it was good luck or bad, Sonny thought. He was careful to keep the thought quiet, though. “Does that mean that you and the Summer Queen are on cordial terms, then, my lord?”

  “For the moment.”

  Of course, in the Otherworld—the Faerie realm—time had no meaning. And so that “moment” could last for years…or vanish in an instant. At least, thought Sonny, if Auberon and Titania were on civil terms, it meant there would be no interference from her for the duration of the coming Nine–Night, and that was a relief—Summer and Winter were so rarely in accord. Sonny wondered fleetingly about the other two—the so-called shadow courts—with their unpredictable monarchs: Queen Mabh, capricious ruler of the malevolent Autumn Court; and Gwyn ap Nudd, the strange and secretive Lord of the Spring. Alliances among the monarchs were treacherous, constantly shifting, and Sonny marveled at his lord’s ability to navigate those stormy seas.

  Auberon moved across the floor, beckoning with a gesture for Sonny to follow him out onto the balcony. For a long while they stood in silence, leaning on the balustrade. Far below, pastoral and at peace, lay the green expanse of Central Park.

  “Do not fail me, Sonny.”

  “My lord. I will not.”

  “This year of all years…I must not fail.”

  A weighty silence stretched out between them, and Sonny cast a sideways glance at Auberon. The pale, perfect skin around the Faerie king’s eyes seemed tight, his features drawn. “You seem…weary, my lord. Ill at ease…”

  Auberon turned away, murmuring to himself as though the young Janus had suddenly vanished and he stood alone. “My subjects tear at the chains across the Samhain Gate with teeth and claws. Batter at doors—doors that I have closed—with maul and sword. They would cleave each other limb from limb and die howling, if only to risk the chance to force their way through that infernal crack between the Faerie and mortal worlds. To escape from there to here. To this…sickly…tainted realm. How then should I seem?” the Unseelie king demanded. “When there are those who would flee my kingdom—all for the sake of cavorting with mortals.” He spat the word from his lips.

  “I…am mortal, my lord,” Sonny said quietly.

  “You are a Janus. I made you. Mortality has nothing to do with you.” Auberon threw back his head and swallowed the rest of his wine in one mouthful. “Unless, of course, you die.”

  The Faerie king leaped up onto the balustrade. Spreading his cloak wide, he stepped into nothingness, the thin air blurring around him like smoke.

  In his place, a charcoal-winged falcon soared off over the park, shrieking fury.

  Less than half an hour later, Sonny was stalking the twisting paths of the Ramble in Central Park like a hunting cat, reaching out with his mind to touch all four corners of the Samhain Gate.

  He often wondered what New Yorkers would think if they ever discovered the truth about their beloved Central Park: that the 843 acres of rolling, verdant sanctuary in the middle of the city was nothing more than a disguise, a carefully constructed façade cloaking a gateway between the mortal world and the Faerie Otherworld.

  Only a century and a half earlier there had been four such Gates: Samhain, Beltane, Imbolc, and Lúnasa, scattered throughout the Old World—passageways by which the Fair Folk could come and go, interacting with the mortal realm. But once the Faerie had begun to drift to the New World in the wake of large-scale human immigration from across the sea, the Courts of Faerie had decided to relocate one of the four Great Gates to this new land, where so many mortals—the kind who still believed in the Faerie—had settled.

  As Central Park was being built at the end of the nineteenth century, the Samhain Gate had grown within its confines. Hidden from the populace of the city, it meshed seamlessly and unseen with the growing urban oasis, providing a perfect playground for those who crossed over, a place of nature and thus a natural habitat for the Fae, right in the middle of bustling human habitation.

  The Samhain Gate had provided endless diversion for the dwellers of the Faerie Otherworld, but it wouldn’t last long.

  A few decades after the park’s completion, around the turn of the twentieth century, Auberon had taken it upon himself to shut all four Gates. Angered by a mortal transgression, the king cast an enchantment that would seal them forever so that the Faerie realm and the world of mortals would remain separate.

  But Auberon’s enchantment had been flawed.

  A crack remained in one of the Gates.

  The Gate that stood in the center of the teeming New World metropolis would open for one night every year, from sundown on October 31 to sunrise on the first of November. What was more, every nine years the Gate would swing wide for nine full nights, of which Samhain was the last.

  And so Auberon had decided that if he could not keep the Gate shut, he would bring together the most promising of all the mortal changelings from across the Faerie realms. Gathering thirteen of them, Auberon trained them and gifted them with abilities that would enable them to guard the Gate on his behalf.

  The irony was not lost on the newly made Janus Guards. But they were a fairly pragmatic lot and understood the realities of the situation: They could serve the Faerie king or they could die. So they served.

  They served so well, in fact, that most of them could never return home??
?never go back to their lives in the Otherworld. Auberon’s Janus Guard had developed such a fearsome reputation that they found themselves unwelcome, reviled and shunned as murderers, called monsters by the same Faerie who’d treated them as pets and playthings in the times before. It was a lonely vocation.

  Sonny pushed the thought away and focused on the Gate. As a Janus, Sonny could sense not only the park; he could sense every living soul in the park. They flickered in his mind like candle flames: clear, pale yellow fire—if they were human. There were fewer of them than usual. Mortals, he’d been told, tended to instinctively avoid the park around the time when the Gate opened.

  Scattered here and there about the perimeter of the park, he could sense other flames: blue and green, a few red ones. These were the Lost Fae, the ones who’d successfully evaded the Janus in years past and, once through the Gate, now lived in secret in the mortal realm. They did not concern him, and they would be gone soon enough—well before sundown, in order to avoid crossing paths with the Janus.

  But there was something else.

  Something—someone—different had entered the park.

  Concentrating, Sonny reached out with his mind to touch a presence…one distinctly unlike all the other candle flames in Sonny’s mind’s eye. This one did not burn with a steady glow.

  It sparked erratically, like the lit fuse of a firecracker.

  His Janus sensibilities alerted and his curiosity piqued, Sonny decided to investigate. The anomaly was moving, slowly. Drifting in a meandering fashion that Sonny recognized as following one of the paths of the part of the park known as the Shakespeare Garden. He looked at the sky. It was just over an hour before twilight and the opening of the Gate; but, intrigued by the prospect of a bit of preshow mystery, he took off at a run, following the spark.

  When he reached the grove where his “firecracker” had come to a stop, Sonny slowed and approached warily. Drawing upon the magic that Auberon had gifted him, he called up a subtle veil to shield himself in case his quarry had the ability to sense him. He did not yet know what he was dealing with.