Sonny dropped painfully to one knee to avoid having his head bitten off.
The boggart he was fighting had burst forth from a rift in Strawberry Fields. It was covered in venomous thorns and had a prominent set of gnashy teeth. Hissing at him, the boggart hurtled off into the dark. Sonny swore and broke into a sprint to chase it, trying hard to concentrate-and forget about that strange, infuriating girl.
The boggart snarled, bounding through a thicket, and Sonny cursed and followed. The clearing beyond was empty, but Sonny could smell it-like the stench of milkweed. The thing was hiding, but it was still close.
There was a rustling in the trees above his head. Sonny glanced up, only to realize too late that the boggart had led him straight into a trap.
A cloud of ravens swirled in the air overhead, and Sonny went cold with apprehension. These were no ordinary ravens. They were creatures of Mabh, the Autumn Queen of the shadowy Faerie Borderlands. Huge birds with oily black feathers, they had red eyes and claws like scythes, and a terrible hunger for human flesh.
The boggart must have been one of Mabh’s minions as well, Sonny thought as he frantically pulled out the bundled branches from his satchel. At his incantation, they transformed once again into the silver-bladed sword.
On the other side of the clearing, the boggart emerged, lifting its gnarled hands into the air as though signaling troops. The ravens attacked.
Sonny’s sword flashed through the air as he whacked two of the murderous birds out of the sky. He cut through several, but others followed, and he thrust sharply, impaling them on the end of the blade. He ducked away from another attack, narrowly missing losing an eye.
Kelley’s face appeared before him in his mind. This time Sonny didn’t try to fight it. Thinking of her smile, he redoubled his efforts. The ravens came at him again, and his sword whirled, a shining arc in the darkness.
The light from the rising sun was pouring through his windows when Sonny stepped through the door into his apartment. Out on the balcony, the elegant figure of the Unseelie king sat on a lounge chair. Sonny wearily threw his jacket and satchel on the settee and went onto the terrace.
“Mabh is mightily annoyed with you, young man,” Auberon said, his words colored with a chilly merriment. “She is very fond of her pets.”
“Next time tell her to keep them home. Or, if she really wants to test me, to send bigger birds.” Sonny stretched his tired back. In truth, the murderous ravens had taken a great deal of skill to handle, but Sonny was pleased with the outcome. Not a single one had gotten past him.
When she had roamed the mortal world freely, Queen Mabh had been the stuff of nightmares. Her transgressions against mortals had grown so terrible that Auberon and Titania had been forced to join together and imprison Mabh within the confines of the Borderlands, her own darkling realm. But Mabh had still relished the pleasure of sending her minions through the Gates to wreak chaos-which she would track with her scrying glass, as though watching horror films.
The thought of Mabh’s creatures being loosed upon the world again made Sonny take his duties as a Janus very seriously. He might not want to live in this world, but he did not wish it harm. Especially not when it had such creatures in it as his Firecracker…
Sonny felt Auberon staring at him. He had a disjointed sensation that the king had asked him a question and he hadn’t even heard it.
“My lord?” Distracted, Sonny looked up. Into the eyes of his king.
“Tell me of the girl,” Auberon said.
Sonny had not meant to think of her. He had certainly not planned to mention her to Auberon. But his mind, it seemed, was a problem in that respect. And he had made the dangerous mistake of exchanging glances with the Unseelie lord.
“I can see her. In your eyes.” Auberon’s dark gaze held Sonny like a fly trapped in amber. He could not look away, even as he felt Auberon’s mind stabbing into his own. “Who is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do not lie to me, lad.” The king’s voice remained easy, but Sonny knew that, Janus or no, he was in a great deal of peril in that moment.
“It is no lie. She is…an actress. Just a girl from the park, really.” Sonny expected that at any moment Auberon would shred through his formidable mental defenses as if they were paper and learn everything he knew about her. Even though that wasn’t much, Sonny unaccountably did not want the Faerie king to take any sudden great interest in finding out about his Firecracker.
“Hmm,” Auberon murmured.
Sonny felt the pressure inside his skull lessen. He raised himself up off his knees-he hadn’t been aware that he had fallen to them-and shook the tension from his shoulders.
“I cannot gather her from your mind,” the Faerie king mused, sounding intrigued. “And yet, you hold her image there.”
“She is pretty.” Sonny shrugged with what he hoped was an appropriately casual air. “For a mortal.”
After a long, weighty moment, the king’s lips twitched in the ghost of a smile. “Not so pretty, I hope, as to make you forget yourself, Sonny Flannery. Or your duties.”
Sonny bowed his head slightly in deference. “Of course not, my lord.”
“Good. Because I have an unsettling sense that Mabh’s harbingers are simply that-heralds of things to come. There is a great deal of unrest in the Faerie realms, Sonny. And the closing of the Gates, while I deemed it necessary, has become a thing of contention and a rallying point around which my enemies gather. If my Janus Guard falters, it will go hard.”
“We will not, my lord.”
“That would be best,” Auberon said. “And what news, else?”
Sonny hesitated for an instant, but only for an instant. Auberon was his king. His very purpose as a Janus was to serve him. Why was he even thinking about dissembling? Bob the boucca’s words were a tiny echo in the back of his mind, and Sonny pushed them away.
He told Auberon about his encounters at the Gate. The king already knew about the boggart and the birds from Mabh, so Sonny told him, instead, of the swarm of piskies, mildly chagrined by his amusement at the tale-much like Maddox’s. Then, swallowing nervousness at the thought of his failure, Sonny told Auberon of the Lake and of the creature that he-and, indeed, all the Janus-had somehow missed entirely: the kelpie that had escaped through the Gate and disappeared into the night.
“Kelpie are dangerous, surely.” Auberon shrugged, unconcerned. “But not smart enough to evade my entire Janus Guard for long, I wouldn’t think.”
“I’m not sure that it was just any kelpie, my lord,” Sonny said. He stood and went back into the apartment to retrieve his messenger bag. He drew the three onyx gems from the inner pocket of the bag and, returning, placed them in Auberon’s upturned palm. A few coppery strands of horsehair were still tangled in the beads. “I found these talismans in the mud by the Lake. I don’t think I’ve ever seen their like before.”
“I have,” the king murmured.
Sonny wouldn’t have thought it possible for Auberon’s face to turn a paler shade than it already was, but it did. The tall brow remained smooth, the regal face impassive. But the air on Sonny’s balcony plummeted to glacial temperatures.
“The Hunt…”
Sonny had to strain to catch the words. “My lord?” he asked.
“These are charms of making.” The king’s eyes were midnight pools. “They can call the Roan Horse into being.”
Sonny’s blood froze in his veins. He knew, suddenly, what the glittering black jewels meant. “But…the Roan Horse leads the Wild Hunt.” His voice came out in a rasping whisper.
“Yes. It does.” Auberon’s hand clenched into a fist around the beads, then he dropped them to bounce along the flagstones at his feet.
He stood and stepped to the edge of the terrace, looking down on the park, and it seemed to Sonny that the Faerie king had forgotten that he was even there.
“Oh, Mabh,” Auberon whispered, his expression stricken. “Is this what your folly has brought us to now?”
There was a blur of motion, and Sonny threw a hand up in front of his face to shield it from the sudden ice-sharp wind. When he lowered it, the king was gone, his cry melting into the keening of a falcon.