She sighed. “Midnight in Alphabet City. My, doesn’t that sound like just where I want to be tomorrow?”
Mac eyed her over the rim of his glass. “You can still back out. I’m happy to take care of this on my own, you know.”
“Yeah, you might have mentioned that. Once or twice. But you can forget it. I’m going. End of story.”
He shrugged, but to Danice the gesture looked far from casual. “Fine. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She glared.
“Oh, and one more thing.” He slid out of the booth and held out a hand to help her rise. “See if you can find something in your closet that costs less than a month’s salary on minimum wage and that can stand up to a few bumps and bruises.”
“Should we be expecting to be bumped and bruised?” she asked, following him up the stairs. “I thought you were the one who told me it wasn’t like we were going to be slogging our way through the Bolivian rain forest?”
“We won’t be, but Faerie is an interesting place, and getting there is an interesting journey. You never know what might go wrong.”
Why, oh why, did those have to sound so much like famous last words?
Fourteen
Just because Mac was half Fae and had, in fact, been born in Faerie didn’t mean he viewed going back as a walk in the park. It felt a hell of a lot more like a trip through a former war zone—it wouldn’t be pretty, and chances were a few landmines lurked out of sight, just waiting to blow him and his world sky-high.
Boy, he could hardly wait.
He had offered to meet Danice at her apartment and to escort her to the rendezvous point, but she had brushed the gesture aside and assured him she was perfectly capable of getting herself to Alphabet City all on her own.
“I’m a big girl now, Daddy,” she’d teased him, “and you don’t need to walk me to school anymore.”
He had no doubts about Danice’s size or her sense of direction, only about the chances of her running into a mugger who hadn’t gotten aboard the gentrification train that continued to sweep across the Lower East Side.
At ten minutes before twelve, Mac planted himself on the corner of East 6th Street and Avenue C and leaned against a lamppost, his gaze scanning his surroundings for any sign of Danice or Quigley. All he saw were a couple of homeless people staggering toward Tompkins Square Park looking for a place to sleep and a few kids heading for the bars in the East Village. Everything looked normal, if fairly quiet for a Tuesday night. No one and nothing looked out of place, which might have explained why he didn’t really notice Danice walking toward him down 6th until she had nearly stopped in front of him.
She didn’t look like he’d been expecting.
Mac knew he’d ordered her to dress in simple, practical clothing, but the sight of her in anything other than her chic Urban Attorney Armor still caught him off guard. Obviously, Danice had taken him at his word.
She wore a pair of slim, straight-legged jeans so dark they looked almost black until she stepped into the glow of the street lamp, and a battered, black leather jacket so worn that it didn’t reflect even a glimmer of light. A long-sleeved black T-shirt and scuffed, lace-up hiking boots completed the ensemble. She’d even changed her hair, confining the dark strands into two French braids that ended in stubby pigtails just brushing the base of her neck. She looked about twenty years old, as if she’d just wandered down from the student housing NYU had erected a couple of blocks away.
Mac felt like a pervert for wanting to drag her into the shadows and educate her in a way no university could possibly have intended.
“You know, it’s nights like these when I almost miss the old Alphabet City,” she mused, her voice husky and her mouth curved wryly. “I almost didn’t even bother to carry my pepper spray. When I was a teenager, I wouldn’t have come down here without an armed guard. And if I’d tried, my parents would have killed me.”
Mac faked a cough and hoped it would disguise the way his jaw had been hanging open while he stared at her. He also used the opportunity to surreptitiously check his chin for drool. All clear.
“Any sign of Quigley?” Danice asked.
“Not yet.” He tore his eyes from her animated face to glance at his watch. “But it’s still a couple of minutes before twelve. And he does have that difficulty with telling time.”
She chuckled and eyed the backpack he had slung over one shoulder. “Was I supposed to bring my camping gear? I thought this was going to be more of an in-and-out mission.”
“It’s Quigley’s root beer, and a key to the PO box where I arranged to have his CDs delivered.”
Danice nodded and shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket. Silence descended. Followed closely by awkwardness, with a tinge of discomfort. Mac forced himself to look everywhere but at Danice, afraid that if he gave in to the urge, he’d never stop staring; and while most women appreciated being admired, very few enjoyed having an obsessive stalker.
Quigley’s unsubtle “Psssst!” couldn’t have come at a better time, but it still took several seconds of peering into the shadows surrounding them before Mac spotted the small demon. The imp crouched behind the painted iron fence that enclosed the stairs to the basement level of the house on the end of 6th Street. Concealed as he was by the darkness, it was the glow of his eyes that finally caught Mac’s attention.
Nudging Danice’s elbow, Mac jerked his chin toward the creature’s hiding place and moved across the sidewalk toward him. “What’s with the cloak-and-dagger routine, Quig? Was I supposed to memorize a secret password?”
“Shh!” the imp hissed. “Keep your voice down! And for the stars’ sakes, don’t use my name. I don’t want anyone overhearing. You never know who might be listening. Especially these days.”
Danice shot Mac an inquiring look, but he shook his head. “You didn’t used to be so paranoid,” he told the imp. “What exactly is going on here?”
Quigley waved them forward and ushered them down an abbreviated flight of stairs to what Mac had assumed was the door to a basement apartment. On closer inspection, all he could see was a window covered in burglar bars and the kind of miniature door that had been used for coal deliveries, back in the day when furnaces still ran on the stuff.
“I told you,” the imp whispered. “A lot more folks been whispering the word Faerie these days, and the way I see it, when folks are talking, other folks are listening. That’s all I’m saying. You got my stuff?”
Mac handed over the backpack and heard Quigley’s satisfied grunt as he registered the weight.
“Good dealing. Since I trust you, I’m not going to check the bottles, but if you’re trying to stiff me, I won’t be happy with you, Callahan.”
“Don’t worry. It’s all there,” Mac said, keeping his voice low in deference to the imp’s obvious paranoia. If the creature didn’t let up on craning his head around to check to see if anyone was observing them, he was going to end up replacing that dog collar with a cervical collar.
Danice looked down at Quigley and raised an eyebrow. “So now that you’ve been paid, how about you tell us how we’re going to get into Faerie, little man?”
“Through the Faerie gate,” the creature sniffed, scowling at her as if she were truly stupid. “The only way to get into Faerie is through a gate.” He looked at Mac. “Doesn’t she know anything?”
Before Mac could answer, Danice piped up. “No, I don’t. But that’s mostly because some people never tell me anything.”
Mac ignored her pointed stare. “Just lead us to the gate, Quigley. We’re ready to go and all we’re doing now is burning moonlight.”
Sighing, the imp set the backpack on the ground and shrugged into the shoulder straps. When he settled it into place, it rode approximately four inches off the ground.
“Don’t need to lead anywhere,” he grunted. “The gate’s right there.”
“Right where?”
Quigley stabbed an impatient figure at the coal door. “Right there.”
Danice looked at the small blue door, which stood about twenty inches high by two feet wide, and shook her head. “Are you telling me you expect us to squeeze through that tiny little thing? Quigley, you’re out of your mind. You could barely fit through there, let alone Mac and me.”
The imp shrugged. “That’s the gate. I didn’t design it, I just know how to use it, and it’s the only one around that I know still works. I heard there used to be one up in Inwood Park somewhere, but it ain’t been used in five or six centuries. You two are welcome to try it out, but I’m not taking you through that one. It’s this one or nothing.”
Danice threw up her hands. “Well, since you put it that way.”
Mac just swore. He eyed the narrow opening, mentally comparing measurements between his frame and the door frame. It would be a tight squeeze, if it was even possible. Damn Quigley. Mac should have known it had been too easy to persuade the imp to guide them through the gate, but the miniature demon just couldn’t resist the idea of a practical joke. Literally. Imps were inveterate pranksters. Luckily, very few of their pranks ended in death and/or dismemberment.
“Very few,” of course, existed a fair distance down the measuring line from “none.”
He swore again. “I’m going to have to go through first,” he told Danice. “I’m about eighty-five percent sure I can make it through there, but if I can’t, I definitely don’t want you waiting around in Faerie without me. And I sure as hell don’t trust Quigley to take care of you. To tell the truth, I don’t trust him to wait for either of us if he goes through first, especially since he already has his hands on the root beer. I’ll go first, and if I make it through, you can follow me while Quigley keeps watch outside. Just in case his paranoia actually means something.”
Danice nodded. “Sounds good.”
“Did you catch that, Quigley?”
“Sure, sure. I’ll wait out here while you two go through the gate. That makes sense. I can make sure no one tries to stop you. Or us. I mean, us.”
Mac watched the imp through narrowed lids. He did not like the expression flickering in the little monster’s coal-bright eyes. “Slight revision,” he told Danice, stripping the backpack off Quigley despite the imp’s squeaks of protest. “I go through, you pass me the backpack, then you, then Quigley. Just to be sure all three of us actually make it across.”
The imp glared at him and muttered something in his native tongue that Mac thought loosely translated into a slur on his parentage and a suggestion for rather improbable ways of keeping himself occupied.
Danice just grinned. “I can handle that.”
“Good. Then let’s get this show started.”
He handed the backpack to Danice and rolled his shoulders to work out the kinks. The next minute or two were not going to be very comfortable for him, so best to just get it over with.
The coal door boasted a sturdy industrial padlock, but it posed no problem to Quigley’s larcenous streak. Still grumbling about the unfair aspersions cast on his character by suspicious changelings, he popped the lock in fewer than five seconds, then stood back to make room for Mac.
The toughest part of the maneuver would be his shoulders, Mac decided. If he was going to get stuck, it would be there, where his frame was the broadest, so it made sense to go in headfirst. That way, if he couldn’t make it, he should still be able to get enough leverage with his legs to pull himself back out. If he went in feet-first, he could get stuck around the chest, and that would really, really suck.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Danice glancing between his shoulders and the door. She looked pretty doubtful. “Do you really think you can make it through there?”
“Not straight on,” he admitted, crouching down on the cold bricks of the landing to prop the door open against the wall above it. It hung on a top hinge, so hopefully it would stay in place while he slid through. “Thankfully, I’m a pretty flexible guy. So, here goes.”
Blowing out a breath, he sank onto his belly and extended his left arm while pressing his right arm tight against his side and slightly under his body. He needed to angle his shoulders and collarbones so that only one side went through at a time. Otherwise, as he’d told Danice, he’d never get through head-on.
It really was a tight fit, and he faced a couple of seconds of doubt when he had his head and his left shoulder in the tiny space as to whether he’d still be stuck in exactly that spot when the sun rose. The back of his shirt caught on the edge of a nail protruding from the wooden frame, and he felt it gouge a shallow trench between his shoulder blades. He hissed but wriggled forward.
It didn’t help that he felt as if he were trying to squeeze himself into the center of a black hole. From the outside, with the door flipped up, he’d peered into the gate and seen nothing but the inky darkness of a coal room, but now that he’d managed to get his head (or the proverbial foot) through the door, he didn’t even see that much. The magic that powered this gate had erased all traces of any surroundings and created a portal through nothingness between ithir—the mortal human plane—and Faerie. Presumably, once they made it through and took their first few steps, they would see Faerie unfolding around them. Otherwise he was going to have to have a long, hard talk with Quigley. One involving teeth and flying fists.
Also, knowing Quigley, probably fists and flying teeth. When cornered, imps showed a disconcerting tendency to bite.
“How is it going? Are you stuck?”
Mac could hear Danice’s voice calling to him, but it sounded remote, as if he’d already traveled a great distance. Which, in a metaphysical sense, he was guessing he had. Still, he slid forward a few more inches to demonstrate that he wasn’t quite stuck and managed to wedge himself in to just past his nipples. He could feel the frame of the small space compressing his rib cage, but this was the worst stage, and so far no permanent injuries. That offered a cause for celebration.
With the widest part of his torso firmly wedged in place, Mac exhaled the last bit of air trapped in his lungs and used his legs to shove himself forward to the waist. With that accomplished, he groped around him for something to hold on to and realized that he seemed to have slid from one hard surface onto another. He braced his palms on the ground and pulled the rest of his body through the narrow opening, twisting as he did until he could sit and draw in a deep breath.
“I’m clear!” he shouted back through the door, hoping the others would be able to hear him. Even if they didn’t, though, once they saw him disappear, he figured they’d get the message.
He didn’t so much see the backpack appear as he heard it scraping against the window frame and the ground as Danice shoved it through the gate. Instinctively, he pushed himself to his knees with one hand and reached for the backpack with the other. That part posed no problem, but when he attempted to stand up straight, he got about two-thirds of the way there before the back of his head made firm and resounding contact with the ceiling.
“Shit,” he said, reaching up to rub the emerging lump.
“Are you okay?” he heard, accompanied by the sound of cloth dragging over ground. “Lord, it’s dark in here. Is it midnight in Faerie, too?”
Mac couldn’t tell if his eyes were adjusting to the lack of light in the gate or if some sort of magical energy allowed Danice to light up like a beacon for him, but he could see the frown on her face as she dragged herself through the opening and started to push to her feet.
“Careful,” he said, extending a hand from his awkwardly stooped frame. “That gate should have a sign above it: low clearance.”
Danice felt above her for the ceiling and realized that even she would have to crouch a bit to keep from hitting her head. “Maybe we can place that little tidbit in the suggestion box.”
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” Quigley hissed, scrambling through the door and then striding up to them with no problem, “but I wish you’d keep yo
ur voices down. I already told you, you never know who might be listening.” He reached out an imperious hand and glared at Mac. “Now I’d like my payment back, if you please.”
“I don’t please.” Mac’s hand tightened on the backpack’s top handle. “We’re not out of the gate yet, my friend. As soon as I can see we’re actually in Faerie, you’ll get your root beer. But not a minute before.”
The imp muttered something that once again Mac barely understood and he knew Danice couldn’t possibly interpret, for which he gave thanks. The demon had a creative mind and a filthy mouth.
“Fine,” the creature snapped, waving them forward. “Follow me. But keep quiet!”
As Mac had suspected, it didn’t take long before the inky blackness of the gate began to ease and he could start to make out the shapes of trees and plants all around them. Glancing up, he saw the brilliant twinkling of the stars, and within a few more steps he could see they’d emerged into the middle of a Faerie forest, silver-frosted by the light of the moon and stars.
Beside him, he heard Danice draw an awestruck breath. “Wow. I guess maybe it is midnight in Faerie.”
“More like one or two in the morning,” the imp hissed, turning to glare at his companions. “Now shut up and hand over the goods.”
Mac shook his head. “We still have to get to the court, and I have no desire to wander around the whole of Faerie looking for it, especially not starting in the middle of the night.”
He knew the instant the imp smiled that something was about to go wrong. Very, very wrong.
“You don’t have to find King Dionnu’s court,” the imp giggled. “I think it’s about to find you!”
With a loud cackle, the tiny demon launched himself forward, hands snagging the backpack, teeth sinking deep into the back of Mac’s hand.
Mac heard Danice shout and himself hiss as his grip on the backpack loosened, but the pain of the bite wasn’t what made him curse. The cause of that was the drumming of hoofbeats in the distance. The distance that he could tell was already closing rapidly.
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