A rose.
The rose from her hair.
Janet bent and picked it up with trembling fingers. The red petals glowed in the sun, unwilted, unwithered, unfaded, as fresh as the moment when Ross had plucked the rose from the hedge to put it behind her ear.
What had he told her? The sidhe don’t age. I can’t either, as long as I’m with them.
Janet stood in the warmth of the sun, the rose quivering in her hand, and shivered with fear and possibility.
Chapter Five
THE moon was a glowing sickle against the velvet sky, like the eye of a napping cat.
Janet heard the music before she saw the lights. Hope fluttered beneath her rib cage like the tiny heartbeat of an unborn child.
The ancient ones, Ross had called them. The people of the hills, whose world intersects with ours at times and places when we’re most vulnerable.
Well, she was plenty vulnerable now.
She stumbled down the dark lane, awkward with anticipation, trembling with fear. Because if one part of his story were true, then couldn’t it all be true? Fourteen years ago my college boyfriend walked out on me and never came back because he fell under the spell of—of—
The fairy queen.
Janet shivered.
Three months had passed since she’d danced with Ross in the fairy circle and made love with him under the stars. For three months, the rose remained beside her bed in a crystal bud vase, as fresh and bright as it had bloomed the night Ross stripped it of its thorns and tucked it into her hair. Its wild, sweet fragrance filled her empty apartment, teasing her to hope. Tempting her to believe.
In magic.
In Ross.
In love.
The memories of that night pervaded her heart the way the rose’s perfume permeated her apartment. For the past three months, Janet had haunted the farm on her days off, a pathetic ghost searching for . . . Well, she wasn’t sure anymore what she hoped to find. Closure?
Or a second chance?
In the shadows under the trees, outside the circle of the fire, she stopped. They were there. They all were there, the sidhe, dancing to the music of the pipes and drums. They glittered, they flowed in the figures of the dance, too beautiful to be borne and too numerous to count. She caught her breath, watching them. How could she have mistaken them for anything but what they were? For their grace was not mortal, and their silence wasn’t anything human.
She wondered suddenly how Ross had endured it, fourteen years without the sound of a human voice.
The music sobbed and sang. But tonight her feet did not twitch, her breathing did not quicken to the rhythm of the fair folk’s dance. Straining her eyes against the fire’s glare, she searched the motley, whirling crowd for one tall, dark head.
She did not see him. Anywhere. Disappointment made her sag.
But he had to be here. He’d danced with her. And that first time . . . Janet bit her lip, remembering. The first time, she’d met Ross in the woods. He hadn’t been dancing at all.
She edged through the trees, scuttling beyond the reach of the light like a cockroach. Compared to the scintillating dancers, she felt dark and small and plain. They whirled by, bright with gems and flowers, rich with velvet and fur.
What would happen if she were seen? What would they do to her if she were caught?
Better not to find out.
Janet slunk deeper into the shadows, testing her footing with each step, intending to circle the farm buildings and make her way through the woods to the stone wall above the road. A light, an honest yellow glow like lamplight, slid beneath the closed barn doors. Janet’s heart tripped faster. Holding her breath, she tiptoed to the barn and eased one door open, her palms flat against the weathered wood.
He was there. Ross, his lean back bent over an engine the way she’d seen him hundreds of times, except now he was in silk and leather instead of jeans and an old T-shirt, and the car was a doozy, long and sleek, gleaming with paint and chrome. It looked wickedly expensive and at least fifty years old. Janet had doubts, big doubts, about her ability to compete against the fairy queen. She didn’t stand a chance against this car.
She cleared her throat anyway.
Ross must have heard her, because he turned. His eyes widened. Whatever else he felt at that moment, Janet’s biggest doubts disappeared. Because his face made it clear he was very glad to see her. He took a step toward her.
And with as little hesitation as a bird returning to its nest, Janet flew across the barn and into his arms.
He kissed her, her hair, her cheek, her throat, and finally, at last, her mouth. He smelled like engine grease and leather, like wood smoke and Ross. Janet clung to him and cried with worry and relief, so the honey of his kisses mixed with the salt of her tears.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his arms hard around her. He needed a shave. And then, sharply, “What are you doing here?”
After his “boy am I glad to see you” kiss, the edge to his tone cut her to the quick.
She stuck out her chin to hide her hurt. “Looking for you, obviously.”
“Why now? Why tonight?”
Oh, dear. She wasn’t ready to admit her belief or confess her hope. Not yet. Not without some encouragement from him.
“Well . . . You said you were taken at the equinox gathering of the sidhe. Tonight’s the fall equinox. I looked it up,” she explained, when he continued to stare at her blankly. “On the Internet.”
“Smart girl.”
She shrugged. “It was that or come back every hundred years, like in Brigadoon.”
His laugh made her bold.
“What are you doing?” she asked, as if she had a right to know.
He narrowed his eyes. He didn’t like questions, she remembered. Well, tough. If she could stand the answers, he could deal with a few questions.
He jerked his chin at the car behind them. “Working,” he said.
“Not dancing?” With effort, she made her tone light.
“No,” he replied shortly.
There was more to this reticence than male stubbornness, she saw. This was a wall, put up between his private self and hurt. His moss green eyes were dark with pain and pride and frustration.
She put her hand on his muscled forearm. “Show me,” she invited quietly.
She felt the tension in his arm. But he guided her beside the long car, its hood gleaming with maroon paint and topped by a wicked, winged creature in chrome.
“The ’36 Auburn Speedster,” he said, “with a straight-eight supercharged Lycoming engine. Over three hundred horsepower—the fastest production car at Bonneville the year it was produced.”
Janet nodded.
As Ross got into his subject, his voice warmed. The muscles in his arm relaxed. “It’s got a great design. The blower system runs off a timing chain that forces more oxygen into the carburetor. Other manufacturers just made the engines bigger trying to get the same kind of power. If you look here at the pipes coming out of the side . . .”
She looked. She listened, impressed by his knowledge and his passion. He was talking now about adjusting the air/fuel mixture setting, of checking the ignition timing, but it wasn’t his subject that captivated her. It was Ross himself: the intensity in his lean body, the focus in his eyes, the enthusiasm in his voice. She could have listened to him for hours.
Once upon a time, she remembered, she had.
“Did you do all the work yourself?” she asked.
“Yeah.” His mouth twisted. “I had the time.”
“It looks wonderful,” she said sincerely. “Like a million bucks.”
Ross shrugged. “It’s probably worth a tenth that. More or less, depending on the buyer.”
Janet peered inside to admire the leather upholstery. “Will you sell it?”
He crossed his arms and leaned against the hood. “How?”
“Well, you . . .” Janet straightened, feeling her cheeks flush. Caught up in his enthusiasm, swept back in time, she had
forgotten where they were. What he was.
“If—if you leave here,” she said. “You could sell it then.”
“I can never leave,” Ross said flatly.
The pain was back, lurking in his eyes. It deflated her spirits. It touched her heart.
“Sure you can,” she said in the voice she would have used to encourage a dispirited six-year-old to read. “If you want to.”
“If I want—”
He broke off. Grabbed her, whirled her around, and pressed her against the car. Her pulse spiked. Excitement ran under her skin.
“I’ll show you what I want,” he said thickly, and crushed his mouth to hers.
His kiss was deep, dark, and desperate. He kissed her as if his life depended on it, held her as if he would never let her go. Janet clung to him, too dazed, too delighted by the need that pumped through him to push him away. He wanted her. He wanted this. His body was hard against hers. Her nails raked over his shirt as he kissed her again, violent, raw. Arousing.
She gave him what he asked for and more. She was willing to give him everything, there on the straw of the barn, but he dragged his mouth from hers. Gripping her wrists, he put her away from him. His breathing was uneven, his eyes turbulent.
“I can never leave,” he repeated heavily. “And you have to go.”
She blinked, bewildered and near tears. “Why?”
A new voice curdled the tension in the barn. A female voice, cold as a silver knife and rich as cream.
“Because it is dangerous for you here,” the voice said.
Janet jerked.
Ross stiffened and turned, putting her behind him. “Leave her alone,” he said to whomever had followed her through the wide barn doors. “She’s nothing to you.”
Janet craned to see past his shoulder. His arm was hard against her cheek.
A lady stood on the dusty straw, the yellow lamplight pooling around her like water. Her stiff, dark skirts gleamed. Jewels glittered from her neck and in her hair. But the brightness that clung to her did not come from the lamp or her clothes, but from the lady herself. Her skin glowed. Her eyes burned. In the shadow of her robe, Puck crouched like Ignorance haunting the Ghost of Christmas Present.
The lady—Lilith, Janet thought with sudden, awful certainty—turned her magnificent head to Ross. “And to you? What is she to you, manling?”
He met her gaze steadily. “Nothing.”
And despite Janet’s belief that he was only protecting her, despite the kisses they had shared, she cringed inside.
She drew a shaky breath. Right. Like cringing was going to get her anywhere with these two.
She sidled from behind Ross’s back. “I have the right to be here,” she said bravely.
Lilith regarded her with coal black eyes, and Janet almost stepped behind Ross again.
“You have no rights here,” the fairy queen said. “And your hold on him cannot compete with mine.”
That was for sure.
Janet stuck out her chin. “At least I’m not trying to hold him against his will.”
“You lie,” the queen said. “The child in your womb binds him.”
Janet felt as if Lilith had just hit her on the side of the head with a magic two-by-four. “My what?” she croaked.
“You’re pregnant?” Ross demanded.
“I . . .” She saw stars. She had to sit down. She groped her way to a bale of hay and sat, trying to breathe, trying to think back over the past three months. “I guess I could be.”
It was as good an explanation as stress or early menopause.
“Am I the father?”
Hurt shimmered through her that he felt the need to ask. She was very aware of the queen standing by the door, watching them both with an enigmatic expression.
Ross knelt in front of her, taking both her hands in his, willing her to look at him. “Janet, it’s important. I have to know. Am I the father?”
“Yes.” She blinked rapidly. “But I’d never make you do anything you don’t want to—”
He dropped her hands. “That’s crap. I have a responsibility, same as you.”
“You have a choice, the same as I do.”
His eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
“I just meant . . .” Janet floundered. What did she mean? What did she want?
“Would you choose that one over this?” Lilith’s voice flowed through the quiet, lamp-lit barn like poison, smooth and insidious. “Are you so eager for age and pain and the chance to spawn?”
Ross shrugged. “It’s like they say. Getting old sucks, but it beats the alternative.”
Janet couldn’t follow their conversation. She was still stuck on all that “child in your womb” stuff. Pregnant. She pressed her hand to her stomach.
“Do you really believe you are worthy of her?” Lilith continued. “Of either of them?”
“This isn’t about what I deserve.”
“Then consider what the woman deserves. Would you condemn her to your fate?”
Ross shivered like a horse tormented by flies. “No.”
Lilith’s smile was a terrible thing to see. “No,” she agreed softly.
She turned and swept from the barn, her skirts brushing the floor. The shadows rustled in her wake.
Janet’s heart threatened to pound its way out of her chest. She looked to her lover for help, for guidance, for an explanation. “Ross?”
But he did not—would not—meet her gaze. His lean, dark face was tortured as he spoke to Puck.
“Don’t talk to her,” he ordered. “Don’t tell her.”
He was leaving. He was leaving her. Again.
The bastard.
“Ross!” Janet cried.
His fists clenched. His shoulders hunched. And without another word, he walked out on her to follow the fairy queen.
Puck whistled and rubbed his hands together. “Well, now, that was a show.”
Janet could barely speak past the bitter grief in her throat. “Be careful, you’ll get in trouble. You’re not supposed to talk to me, remember?”
The little man cocked his head. “That wasn’t for my sake, poppet. Or for his. No, his care was for you. He would not want me to tell you how you could win his freedom.”
Ross was already free of her. Of their child. Of all responsibility. He must be so happy.
But his face, as he left her, had been miserable.
I have a responsibility, same as you.
“What did you say?” Janet asked Puck.
“I said, you could free him.” The sidhe eyed her slyly. “If you dared.”
Her breathing hitched. “How?”
“On Samhain the court will ride by Miles Cross,” Puck said. “Look among the riders nearest the town, for those once were mortal. As we pass the churchyard, watch for your love by the queen’s side. For if you pull him down and hold him, hold fast, it may be he will live to be the father of your child. But you must hold on, whatever happens.”
“I won’t hold Ross against his will,” Janet said stubbornly.
“You must.”
Pride and anger, sorrow and hope churned inside her and burst out in one great, “Why? Give me one good reason why I should fight for a man who doesn’t want me.”
Puck rubbed the side of his nose. “It’s every seven years on Halloween we pay our tithe to hell.” He smiled, exposing pointed teeth. “And this year, I fear young Ross is to be our sacrifice.”
Chapter Six
HALLOWEEN ought to be safe and fun.
There was nothing fun about standing in a churchyard after midnight, waiting for the queen of the fairies to ride by with her court.
It didn’t feel safe, either.
Janet shivered, despite her long skirt and a sweater decorated with happy pumpkins and friendly ghosts. The lights of the town, spread below her, seemed very far away. The squat brick church tower with its spindly white steeple loomed to her left. The hills rose at her back. Between the church and the hills lurked the graveyard,
its shadows stark in the light of the waxing moon.
She hugged her elbows and watched the road. She was going to be fine. Everything was going to be fine. The brisk young obstetrician who was taking over from old Dr. Abercorn had assured Janet that at four months pregnant, she could engage in most normal activities without any risk to herself or her unborn child.
Pull him down and hold him, Puck had told her. Hold fast. . . . You must hold on, whatever happens.
Janet drew a deep breath. She’d been waiting for hours.
What if she was too late? Or in the wrong place? What if Ross was sacrificed to hell because she’d picked the wrong churchyard to keep vigil?
On Samhain the court will ride by Miles Cross.
Her heartbeat rang in her ears. She trembled with cold and fear. But that ringing, that faint ringing, wasn’t all in her head. It sounded like . . . bells. Sleigh bells? Bridle bells, Janet decided. And that growling vibration, that wild undernote to the night, sounded like an engine. Engines. Not coming from the town, either, not rumbling on the road, but behind her, a muted roar like off-road vehicles racing.
She turned and watched them come.
The riding of the sidhe was like a hometown parade gone terribly wrong, an azalea festival mixed horribly with a Mad Max motorcycle rally, filmed in flickering black-and-white and projected against the dim backdrop of the hills. Janet pressed one hand protectively to her stomach as she watched. Beauty queens on horses pranced beside road warriors on Harleys. Men as stately as the hills, women with the grace of trees, loped or swayed forward with a rushing sound like the woods in high wind.
There were other things, too, unrecognizable in the shadows, things that made her glad she could not see. Things with horns and claws and wings and multiple legs, riding or being ridden. Dread dried her mouth. Some carried torches with red flames and black smoke. Some shone with their own silver light, some with the phosphorescence of things long underground. She saw the gleam of spears and skulls, the glitter of gems and chrome, and her breath coagulated in her chest. Her knees refused to move.
Look among the riders nearest the town, for those once were mortal.
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