Snarling, I leaped across the driveway and slashed at the Thin Man, stabbing my blade toward his wizened chest. He darted backward shockingly fast and turned again, vanishing from sight.
Panting, I raised my sword and glanced around. I’d always been able to see the fey; that this sneaky bastard could get around my Sight made me nervous and a little angry.
“Ethan!” cried Annwyl somewhere behind me, “to your left!”
I spun, lashing out with my blade, just as a long arm appeared out of nothing, reaching for me. I felt fingers catch my duffel bag with a tearing sound and slashed the empty air beneath the arm, feeling the very tip of my blade strike something solid. A pale ribbon of blood coiled through the air like mist, followed by a thin wail.
I ran back to Annwyl, pulling her upright as a light came on in my parent’s bedroom. Biting down curses, I half carried the Summer faery over to my truck, wrenched the door open and pushed her into the cab. Slamming the door, I turned to see the Thin Man in the center of the road, silvery blood writhing into the air from a gash in his side. He was no longer smiling.
“You cannot hide from me, Ethan Chase,” he called as I hurried to the driver’s side of the truck. “No matter where you take the Summer girl, no matter how far you run, I will find you both.”
I ignored him as I tossed my bag onto the floor and leaped behind the wheel, slamming the door behind me. Annwyl was hunched on the seat with her eyes closed, leaning away from the door, but I couldn’t worry about her now. Jamming the key into the ignition, I cranked the truck to life as another light gleamed in the windows of my house—the kitchen this time. Throwing the truck into Reverse, I backed out of the driveway, hoping to hit Creepy Thin Man with a few tons of iron and steel as I did. Sadly, that didn’t happen, but nothing attacked us as I yanked the shaft into Drive, hit the gas pedal and sped off down the street.
* * *
“Well,” Annwyl said after a moment of letting our heartbeats return to normal, “that was...exciting.”
I glanced at her. She sat as far as she could get from the door of the cab, arms around her stomach, leaning forward. Her jaw was set, her moss-green eyes slightly glazed. She looked like she was experiencing the world’s worst hangover and was about to hurl all over the floor of my truck.
“Annwyl,” I said urgently. “Can you do this? Will you be all right?”
The Summer faery gave a tight, painful nod. “It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced the iron sickness,” she murmured, not looking up. “I’d forgotten...how unpleasant it is.” She sat up carefully, as if checking to see whether she was all there. “I’m all right,” she breathed, as though trying to convince herself. “I’m not gone yet.”
Two minutes later, my phone rang. I dug it out of my pocket, checking the number, and my stomach dropped.
“You’re in big trouble, young man” was Dad’s greeting when I answered. I winced.
“Yeah, I figured.”
“Care to tell me what was so important that you had to lie to me last night?”
I sneaked another glance at Annwyl. She gazed back apologetically, as if she knew who was on the line and what we were talking about. I thought of the Thin Man, skulking around the yard, and how Mom would react if I told her what had happened. “No,” I said, feeling Dad’s disapproval all the way from the house. “But I’ll explain everything when I get home.”
“Ethan!” Mom’s voice crackled in my ear; it sounded like she had been crying. “Come home, do you hear me? Come back right now.”
A lump caught in my throat. “I can’t,” I whispered. “I’m sorry. I’ll be back in a couple days, I promise.”
No answer, just a muffled sob, and then Dad took over again. “Call us as soon as you get to New Orleans,” he ordered, his voice stern and controlled, trying to mask his anger. “And every few hours after that, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You be careful out there, Ethan.” Almost a warning. I swallowed hard.
“I will.”
I pressed End Call and lowered the phone, wishing it didn’t have to be this way. I almost regretted telling them the truth, but no, it was better that they finally realize what I had to deal with. At least this way they would know what had happened to me...if I never came home.
The drive to New Orleans was mostly silent. Annwyl huddled in the passenger seat and gazed out the side window, her eyes glassy with discomfort and pain. I flipped on the radio and searched until I found a classical music station, trying to make the ride more bearable for her. Every so often, she would flicker and blur from the corner of my eye, making my skin crawl and my head snap over to make sure she was still there.
We took a break at a rest stop, and I followed her to a stand of trees, watching in concern as she pressed her forehead to the trunk, breathing hard.
“You gonna be okay?” I asked again, just to get her talking, to hear her voice. The farther we went, the more it felt like I was sitting next to a ghost, slowing dissolving in the sunlight.
Annwyl nodded. “Yes,” she whispered, looking back with a brave smile. “I can make it. I’ll be all right. How far is it to...to...” Her forehead creased. “Where are we going again?”
I ignored the stab of fear. “New Orleans,” I replied. “The goblin market.”
“That’s right.” Annwyl leaned a shoulder against the tree, where strands of bright green ivy were slowly creeping up toward the branches, rustling softly as they coiled around the trunk. I swallowed and hoped no one would look this way. “Keirran,” Annwyl mused, her quiet voice colored with longing. “Will he be there?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I hope so. We’re really just grasping at straws, and I still have to find where this month’s goblin market is being held.” Luckily, I had a pretty good idea of who to ask for that information. The local dryads of City Park were rumored to be some of the oldest faeries in New Orleans and knew almost all there was to know about the city’s secret life. I just hoped the price for that information wasn’t too high.
“The full moon is tonight,” I went on as Annwyl absently brushed a dead branch. It came to life again beneath her fingers. “Once we find out where the market is, we’ll head over and have a look around. Even if Keirran doesn’t show up, there has to be someone there who might know where he is and where he’ll be.”
Annwyl nodded again. “I hope so,” she whispered. “I don’t know how long I have left.”
The sense of foreboding grew. “Come on,” I said, starting back toward my truck. “I’ll tell you the whole story on the road. But we should get going.” And let’s hope that when we find Keirran, Annwyl will still know who he is and why she wants to see him.
* * *
It was still morning when we cruised past the New Orleans city limits and into the urban sprawl of one of the most heavily populated faery cities in the human world. New Orleans was a place of voodoo and magic, mystery and superstition, and it drew countless fey to its haunted corners and near-mythical streets. I’d never been to New Orleans before; it was in the top five of my Places to Avoid Due to Faeries list. Of course the irony that, not only was I here, I was here looking for the biggest goblin market in the country, a place where thousands of fey would converge to bargain and make deals, wasn’t lost on me.
The highway went right through City Park, and I had Annwyl read me the directions I’d copied from MapQuest, until we finally pulled into a near-empty lot at the edge of the lawn. It was quiet when I got out of the truck, the serene stillness of early morning, and almost no one else was out. As we entered the park, a woman and a frizzy terrier jogged past us down the sidewalk, and the dog took a moment to yap hysterically at Annwyl, much to the woman’s embarrassment. Apologizing to me and scolding the dog at the same time, she pulled it away around a bend, and then we were alone.
“I like it here,” Annwyl mused, gazing around the park in quiet awe. Since leaving the truck, she looked better, not quite as pale and insubstantial. “I can breathe more easily—my mind doesn’t feel like it’s in a fog. Magic is still strong here.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t feel the magic and glamour in the air, not like she could, but I could certainly See the evidence all around us. A piskie buzzed by my head like a mutant wasp, leaving high-pitched laughter in its wake. An undine, pale blue and piranha-toothed, glanced up from the edge of a pond before sliding noiselessly into the water. A huge black dog glided through a patch of mist between trees, looking like someone’s pet that had slipped its collar—until you saw its eyes glowing with blue fire and noticed that it walked on top of the grass instead of crushing the blades beneath its paws. It blinked solemnly and trotted into the mist again, leaving behind no evidence that it had been there at all.
I suddenly wished I hadn’t left my kali blades under the seat of my truck, hidden and locked away. Wandering around a public park with a pair of swords was risky and could get me into real trouble, but if we were jumped by a redcap motley or a hungry Nevernever beast, I would almost rather take the chance.
Thankfully, the park fey seemed indifferent to us as we made our way toward a cluster of massive oak trees in the center of the lawn. Huge and gnarled and draped in Spanish moss, the ancient trees were home to several dryads who inhabited the park. At one point, the park had also been home to the Elder Dryad, a very old tree spirit who had helped Meghan defeat the Iron King more than thirteen years ago. Over the years, I’d heard enough snippets of this very popular legend among the fey to piece together what had happened. When I was kidnapped by the Iron fey and taken into the Nevernever, Meghan had come here to ask for help in defeating the supposedly invincible Iron King. The Elder Dryad had given my sister something called a Witchwood arrow, a splinter of pure Summer magic that was like kryptonite to the Iron fey. But the Witchwood was also the heart of the Elder Dryad’s oak, and giving it to Meghan essentially killed the tree and the dryad it was attached to.
I sobered, thinking of Meghan as we stepped into the shade beneath the enormous boughs. She had risked so much for me, all those years ago. Left home, gone into the Nevernever, made bargains with faeries and endangered her life, all to rescue me. Why couldn’t she be here, right now, when I needed her most? Why was she keeping secrets when so much was at stake?
“Ethan?” Annwyl’s quiet voice broke me out of my dark thoughts. The Summer faery cocked her head at me, green eyes inquiring. “Are you all right? Has something upset you?”
Only the same person for the past thirteen years. “No.” I shrugged. “Why?”
“Your glamour aura changed just then,” Annwyl said solemnly. “It became very dark and...sad. Confused.” She blinked, and I suddenly felt exposed, like all my secrets had been dragged into the open. I’d forgotten that the fey could sense strong emotion. Fear, anger, grief—they could read it like a rain cloud over someone’s head. Some theorized that was what made humans so fascinating to the Good Neighbors, that the fey had no true emotions, so they experienced them through human contact. I didn’t know if that was true, but Annwyl didn’t need to know my family problems and, being fey, wouldn’t understand them if she did.