GET LOW: WASTED BEAUTY
Book One
BY JACOB CLIFTON

You think you know who I am.

That girl without any talents, who doesn’t exist between camera flashes, getting out of cars and into clubs. Never seen when the sun is out. Taxis at four and sleeping until noon and nobody knows where. You think, that girl is famous for being famous. That girl takes more pictures of herself than the press.

I’ll tell you a secret: I take exactly as many as they do, no more and no less.

I don’t do it myself but I have people who collect everything anyone says about me and put it all together. The best parts are the meanest ones, because they last the longest. Like a lightbulb, just after you’ve cut it off: Is that the filament cooling off, or just your eyes adjusting?

Growing up it was beaten into me that you have very little you can truly call your own, in this world. You have what other people can get you, and what other people take. None of it lasts very long and none of it means much. We pay our debts, good and bad, very quickly. But if nothing is yours, then the whole world can be. This life.

You think you know who I am? Good.



If it is short, it will at least be loud. 

Chapter One: This Possible Marilyn

I come home to a mess. LA lies in ruins. The reservoir is drying up, they say, and strange weather. Some kind of creature spotted in the canyons. They’ll forget about it, like they always do, but it never hurts to keep your ears open.

The joke here is that I never even left the city, just checked into a hotel we know about, one you can’t find on any street. But that means when I return tonight, they’ll think they’ve missed me. They’ll wonder what they did without me. My Q will rise by a third, by sunrise, and I can sleep again. And I will need it. Seeing people you know is always tiring, because people are tiring.

this is how it’s going to go, I write across a photo of Warhol’s Marilyn that will self-destruct the second Troy sees it on his phone.

welcome home bitch, he interrupts, across a photo of what I think is his bare left foot.

Troy is kind of my friend, in that we care for each other and have room in our hearts for each other’s failings. The gayest thing he is into is: Witchcraft. I mean, I guess, second gayest.

rude. meet @  blue heaven, door is “wicked” in a sentence, again across a Marilyn, blue this time. Those scribbled lips.

He sends a photo of his mouth, close up. He needs to shave. amn I have to do magic

ready for anything, I smear across my own pursed lips, kissing up at him. once its out there it’s going to get weird.

His middle finger, leather cuff around the wrist, silver ring I got him hexed in the language of the Winter Court. too bad got rekt p hungover bb

couple hours drinks, then we’re alone. I felt something coming, across a lovely cityscape, Los Angeles at sunset, the lights just coming up. Not yet blazing. 

witch up.

*

Troy’s got curly brown hair like Narnia, and he hates wearing a shirt. Probably those are the two most annoying things about him, but it isn’t like I keep a running list. He’s my friend.

Tonight he’s wearing tuxedo shortpants, satin ribbon up the sides, which wouldn’t make the list even if I had one. I try not to judge other people’s choices when it comes to clothes, because that means judging who they think they are, and that is a thing that should stay between them and themselves. He looks stupid but he is not himself stupid, and he’s hot enough—in a regular kind of way—that it can’t reflect poorly on me.

Troy has beaten me to the Blue Heaven place somehow, I guess because he is a boy, and therefore pretty nasty, and therefore it doesn’t take him much time to get ready. Presentable. I have only been to his house a few times, because it is in the Valley, and I do not go to the Valley, as a rule. I would buy him a condo in Silver Lake, but he says it would wreck his witchcraft to have anything nice. Which would be even less convenient for me.

This Blue Heaven is in kind of a crummy part of town, transitioning to be a hot part of town as fast as they can buy it up, but that means barely anybody sees me going in. Which is good in the short term, because once it gets popular—which me going there would help do—we can’t use it for stuff like this. Goldilocks fame: Just enough to keep my tag hopping, not enough to get people out of the house to gawk.

“This place is wicked busy already,” I say to the doorman, which sounds dumb coming out of my mouth, but I am not that creative a person if we’re going to be honest with each other. The guy, who is some sort of demon by the shine to his eye, steps to the left, rather than the right, when he lifts the rope. 

In the regular club you would be able to see with the naked eye, there are lots of people. Not a very special crowd. The same-but-different mirror club I’m heading into isn’t as busy, but it’s mostly VIP of one kind or another. Some young folks gathered around the heat of old nasty men like moths, waiting to get burned up. Some ladies that just got aged out of the game, still making peace with their lot. Some monsters looking for blood, or youth, or whatever they need. 

Troy is talking to a vampire that looks exactly like every guy he ever talks to, which is to say a Viking with mean eyes, and twists his hands at me without taking his eyes off the guy’s face, nodding like he is saying something interesting, which he cannot be. Long blond braids and a stiff leather vest and just signifiers of masculinity out to here, which is all Troy all the time. 

My feeling is, What is the point of a Viking guy if they don’t even smell like it? Vampires all smell the same, like a Campari and soda.

“Gross,” I say, after Troy joins me with our drinks.

“Not gross. Folk singer.” Troy smiles: “How would you like to hear his demo, because here it is, because I told him I would give it to you.”

“Are you going home with him? You know he’s a...”

“—I do, Estella, and that’s why I’m not. Who doesn’t like attention?”

We ran for a bit with this young guy, Greg who looked about twelve, with these intense eyebrows. And one day we were running a scam like this, having drinks out where people could see us, and we met a very suave vampire, wearing some kind of military uniform with a glossy black side-part, who apparently thought “twelve” was a good way to look. We didn’t see Greg for six weeks, and the next time we did, he looked very hungry and very tired, and he wouldn’t stop talking. And then we didn’t see Greg any more after that.

“I thought that you were seeing somebody,” I say, banking on it based on the fact that Troy is always seeing somebody, or thinks he is, and therefore he will fill in the blanks. But he clams up.

Troy is a funny one in this way: He only talks about things that don’t matter. I have noticed that he doesn’t talk about stuff that’s important. Not like he is dumb or shallow, because he isn’t; just that if he doesn’t talk about himself, you know he’s got something big going on. Real things darting, under the surface like fish. I like that about him. But it does also mean that sometimes we run into huge sinkholes of backstory drama that I never knew were there until it’s too late.

“I think... I am going to turn my dry spell into being on purpose,” he says, stirring his drink and kind of grinning up at me. Over his shoulder the Viking is staring at us with something like hunger. Or I guess thirst.

“Good. Focus your energy on our tricks and plans and schemes,” I say, and he chuckles.

“So what’s the action tonight? You said drinks, and then...” I can tell he charged up on the way over; there’s a white haze around him I can see now that I’m looking.

“I felt something coming into town when I was pretending to come back into town. Something big. Something bad.”

Troy shivers, smiling.

“None of the big boys, sorry. No, this is something new. A threat to my empire.”

“A girl? From the sticks, probably. On a bus. Out to make her dreams come true. The old story, or maybe that’s just a metaphor, but either way they’ll eat her alive. Or make her a queen...”

I wait for him to say more; he’s a good oracle when he doesn’t know he’s doing it. But he just blinks at me and shakes his head.

“That’s why Marilyn, then. You think it’s something about...”

I nod, sharply, looking around the place. Troy has a tendency toward saying the proper names and nouns for things which is unacceptable for two reasons: The first is that people hear you when you do that, and they get interested, and the second is that he doesn’t respect words the way my people do. He throws them around. Not a habit he seems able to break. As yet.

What he is talking about, then, is the White Goddess. What his babble and my own caprice have revealed is a White Goddess incursion. You get these chicks about twice a year that come into town, prettiest girls in school and everybody tells them they ought to be in pictures or sing songs or whatever pretty girls do when they’re famous, and some of them get ground into sausage and some of them navigate the adoration without too many late nights or favors or return, until they get worn out. And but some of them go supernova, which I don’t want happening right now.

“Yeah. So we find her and we sound her out, okay. And then we decide.”

“Fairy godmother Estella.”

“No. We decide whether or not to speed up the cycle on her. Fifteen minutes, Troy, can be a lifetime. Or we scare the hell out of her and toss her on the next bus out of town.”

Or we kill her. But then Troy would hate me, so hopefully we won’t have to do that.

*

It’s called the Walk of Fame and if you do it wrong, you will burn up like celluloid. Crumpling into nothing with a flash like the sun. Unsympathetic magic.

If anybody knew this they would do it when they first get to town, but of course you have to play the game for ages before anybody ever tells you about it. Which is good, or there would be a lot more dumb idiots in the gutters of Hollywood on any given morning.

What you do is, you stand on the person’s star at midnight and, with a certain amount of ritual, you bring them into your body. Like you are just a horse, and they are now the rider of it. After that it’s just about negotiating between the you that you used to be, and the you that they want you to be; riding the random coincidences that start bursting up around you like fireworks and hoping you stay moderately aware of what’s happening. That some part of you will be left when it ends.

Troy sighs once we’re on the Boulevard but instead of complaining about tourists, which is a thing he likes to do, he goes another way entirely.

“I hate it here. I hate this whole thing. One time I saw two Madonnas fighting in the street like two blocks from here. They were throwing lightning bolts. One of them was fingerless gloves and the other one was a wedding dress, which was a guy one. And the guy Madonna called the girl Madonna a bitch. It was so classless.”

“That sounds awesome. And anyway, you called me a bitch about two hours ago.”

“Prove it. You can’t.”

“Who won?”

“I don’t know. I decided I didn’t like this stuff and I left.”

I don’t know what else there is in the world, but what separates humans from the rest of whoever is that they belong here. They make magic up as they go along. They don’t have rules about what and how to think or how to behave, they just do whatever. They’re the only ones with will to use. Angels and fae and the rest, what we are is what we do. Humans aren’t like that, which seems exhausting to have to make up your mind all the time about everything, but it also seems like a dangerous kind of fun.

Like, I know a little magic, not half as much as Troy but enough, and we teach each other tricks. The infinite and malleable and varied forms of human creation and destruction, somebody who is full-blooded Fae would lose their minds trying to think about it. Me, I find it comforting: There’s not an ending to that. There’s nothing but more, more, things combining with other things and making new things. I don’t have a lot of love for humanity but that one thing, I love so much that I think it evens out.

Which is why it stresses me out when Troy turns off to things like that. Oh, you don’t like the Walk of Fame? Would you take a tool out of your toolbox and throw it in the garbage? Why not just not use it?

“You are a control freak, is why. You don’t want anybody driving your car.”

“Neither metaphorically nor literally do I like that. True. But also, it’s just so predictable.”

By the time somebody’s image is burned into the consciousness enough to be worthwhile for this kind of magic, they’ve had a lot of the edges rubbed off. They have become perfect forms of themselves, rising up out of the collective garbage to shine as just one thing. 

Marilyn’s the goddess of every sexy white lady, with a baby voice and giant boobs and a haunted house. Madonna’s a shapeshifter that eats everything around her. Charlie Chaplin pretends so hard that things, horses and great winds and automobiles, come into being, into filling formerly negative spaces. James Dean is a black hole of sex that never stops being the unattainable perfect thing. And so on, you know what I’m saying. 

So Troy is right, in that if or when this girl ends up on Marilyn’s star we all know what happens next. She starts drawing the moon, and all of dumb boy emotions and horniness, into a vortex around her, and eventually she burns out or gets ripped apart by them. She starts as not a problem and ends up not a problem, but it’s the middle part that is the problem, because it’s the middle part that threatens to eclipse me.

It is not a great system. And we will bring it down. But not yet. If it all comes down too fast, the world will end. And not in the good way.

*

From a safe distance, Troy watches Marilyn Monroe’s star very carefully as he builds his spell. I’m on support, hiding us from the people on the street and keeping him powered up, which is why it takes two of us. If you were walking by... 

Well, if you were walking by at this time of night probably you’d be a junkie or a homeless person, both of whom are more likely to notice this kind of thing anyway. But if you were just you, what you’d see is a gorgeous blonde chick in head-to-toe labels leaning on a wall while a hippie kid that looks like a jeans model chills out on the sidewalk. You would not see the sweat on their brows, or their measured tandem breaths. Marilyn’s star is near Ghirardelli, and up above that is the Disney Store, all of which is gross, and perfect.

That’s what you would see if you were just walking by. But here inside my glamour, it’s a different story: The white circle around him, like a bubble halfway through the concrete, sparking all through itself like something alive and maybe a little worried. The shapes his hands make, one by one, as he drills down into his trance and calls on sacred names. The skirling shapes overhead, pointing us downtown, to this new girl, this Possible Marilyn. Almost close enough in the sparks to see the name on her plane ticket, as she lays her things out on the hotel dresser.

This is a funny girl. Her name starts with S, I think? Yes. S for Selena. Selena Kirke. They call me S, for Estelle, but to me they sound different. Your own name sounds different to you than anybody else’s, even if they have the same name. Even if it’s just one of the twenty-six letters that most people know about.

Selena Kirke saved up for a year, her last year of high school, before she kissed her vanity mirror and signed goodbye in lipstick, promising to call when she’d figured it all out. She saved up enough for one night in a nice hotel and then a week in a crummy one, so tonight she’s bathing in a fantasy of candles and bath bombs; getting everything she can out of the expensive towels and, later, soft sheets. 

This is not a girl who takes her own photographs very often, although she secretly loves looking at them. She sees things in her face, tiny feelings and hopes, that she can’t feel from the inside. Only by considering her own image and thinking first, that she is pretty, and then that she is not pretty. They’re both interesting, both ways of looking. But mostly she notices that she is smarter than she thinks people see, in the crook of a brow or the quirk of a side-eye smile. She sees an offhand glance sometimes that makes her feel sad. Not sad within herself, but sad for the girl in the picture, who can seem sad. Who can be anything, from the outside in.

This is the first time I really get scared of her. She’s more than halfway there, and nobody has even taught her anything yet. She’s just born to it. I hope I don’t have to kill her, I think again. I hope Troy didn’t hear me, here behind our veil. It feels almost like shame.

*

About this girl further I can say that it's her first night in a new city, but more importantly it’s also her first night without a boyfriend in a very long time. Some people are just like this, and don’t even know it about themselves: They have another one lined up ready to take the old one’s place before they even realize they’re dissatisfied. For them it is a strange song in a foreign language to hear people talk about how hard it is to find someone. Like a person who is used to traveling hears a person who can never find the money, or the time.

Which is not to say that she's fickle or mean or selfish at all, she’s actually a very considerate woman. She’s just romantic: She falls in love very easily and without much warning. She feels bad for most men because they seem lost, and even worse for the ones that pretend to be that way; she feels like she’s doing them a favor sometimes. Not all the time, but enough that when she’s done with them, sometimes they feel like they got tricked. Like she pulled out their hearts during some warm, slow kiss a long time ago, and they didn’t notice until she’d already walked offstage with it in her hands.

You can’t apologize for something like that, not in advance and not after the fact. But if I have learned anything in this life it’s that people apologize for a lot more than they should.

*

 “I like her,” Troy says, once we’ve pinpointed her hotel and name. “I like this girl. We should help her.”

“That’s one option among many, my friend. Not ruling anything out.”

“So,” he says, hoping it is something weird and scary, “What’s next?”

“What’s next is, we pay a visit to the Winter Court.”

Troy drops everything: Our little glamour, his little scry. Like glass shattering and tinkling away. Everything goes dark around us, just like it really always was. We’re just street trash for a moment, which is fun. I wish I smoked cigarettes, I would smoke a cigarette, here, where the tourists come. Scrub at it on the sidewalk with the toe of my shoe until it was dead and cold.

“I am scared of that,” Troy says brightly, “But also it is very exciting. Tell me what to do.”

“Turn your socks inside out. That’ll keep the paparazzi away. When we get there, you’re going to get major security—you can’t let that intimidate you.”

He shivers, wriggling in his little vest.

“Look, Troy. They aren’t going to like you. You need to be okay with that. This is not act one in a movie about you becoming a fairy VIP. They are going to be hideous.”

“I can handle it.”

“Okay. Don’t eat anything anybody gives you. Don’t say thank you, or apologize for anything. Better not to talk at all. If somebody does speak to you, remember that we can’t lie but we don’t really tell the truth, either, so be looking at the other side of what they say. Like the back of a mirror.”

“You lie. Constantly.”

“I’m only half. But that is not the half that is walking in there, okay? So don’t be scared if I suddenly start acting very cold or mean. That’s part of the deal too.”

“Yeah, that would be very weird if you did that.”

I can tell he’s getting nervous.

“I’m sorry about this, but you do have to come. You’re part of it now. It’s you and me, and her, and the ticking time bomb that is my future marriage to the God of the Underworld.”

Troy calls it “being famous,” the nights we go out and spin our webs of glamour. He’s not wrong. It’s just that he prefers that part, and to me it’s the least interesting. If there were any way I could get through the next two years alive without it, I’d just stay home. Nobody believes that when I say it, so I stopped saying it, but I think it all the time, and it is true.

The problem is: If you’re not famous, who are you? What are you? Some people feel like they would die. 

Some of us will. 





Chapter Two: Snow & Roses


Hard as diamond, clear as glass.

If you want to be invisible, or sneak around a place, you just pretend you’re blue smoke: That’s a glamour anyone can learn. But we don’t want to be invisible at Court, any more than we do out here in the world. We need everybody to know and remember that I am their Princess, and that until I’m dead I am more important than they are.

It’s an hour from Hollywood to Pomona, if you take the 10 and the wind is at your back. The Winter Court doesn’t sleep, particularly at night, but some of the old timers are still allergic to iron so it’s in a place that streets can’t go, and that means it’s always very quiet outside when you arrive. There’s a park off Mission with a gazebo in it, that’s always lit up. Knock three times and a door opens in a spot you haven’t noticed, and you’re home.

Hard as diamond, clear as glass.

Troy says the words with almost enough will, but they’re not in the bones of him yet. We should have practiced this one. It’s complicated. Especially once you’re inside the gates and everything gets weird. We have dragged each other to some pretty weird places over the years, so I know he thinks he’s ready, but I know he is not ready and I also know I’m not ready. I grew up here, and I’m still never ready.

I haven’t been home in about three years, preferring to communicate via terse and oblique emails that I write like a teenager, so they have to pore over them and try to learn my meaning. This gives the younger members of the Court a chance to show off, which will help them politically, but it also keeps them from thinking they have anything of me. I can’t say I hate the Court, but I can certainly act like it.

Hard as diamond, clear as glass.

“You’ve been working on your makeup for a while now. Is that because you want to look perfect or because you’re stalling?”

It is a fair question, but I won’t answer it. We don’t lie.

“Just keep saying the charm until I am ready to go,” I say around my lipstick grimace, staring into every pore and inch of my face. Pale skin, pale hair, red lips, dark eyes: I was born a Winter. Color me beautiful.

Finally we leave the car, blanketed in shadow, and make our way across the floodlit grass to the gazebo. He looks around nervously, as though anyone can see us now: We’re halfway through the gates already.

“Hard as diamond, Troy.”

“Hard as diamond, clear as glass.”

He rolls his eyes, but you get used to it. Magic is fairly embarrassing a lot of the time. We don’t live in that world, we don’t talk like that as a rule, so it’s just something you have to get over. 

Troy told me once about how in high school, he always hated one girl who overpronounced everything in Spanish class—but that she always got the best grades. And at some point he realized that he was just jealous of her for not caring how dumb she sounded, and that it was kind of racist to even think that way in the first place. But he never could manage to follow her example, even after he decided she was right. 

I thought at the time it was fairly insightful of him, to compare that to doing magic, because you have to fully commit yourself to whatever you’re doing. Even if you don’t believe something is real, you have to fake it beyond that—find a way to get to where you do believe it’s real. Because if you can do that, then it will be. But he still does get embarrassed and wriggly, and a lot of times he can’t concentrate at all. Too worried about the dorkiness of magic to get it right. He’s the same way with boys, with dating. Maybe we all are. Outside ourselves, watching, saying Pull back, pull back, even though part of us knows it would go better if we didn’t.

Just inside the tiny gazebo it is a great mansion. When I lived here it was a palace, a Versailles: All these little courtyards and fountains. Great bare trees of silver with filigreed silver and gold leaves, like in the stories. Pick a leaf, or a fruit, maybe you get eternal life or maybe you just get blisters. The sad hounds pack themselves into piles of shadow, unfurling like dark wings at our approach. 

There is no way to pinpoint where the light comes from in Winter. It’s just there, like cold gloomy bright days, when the whole sky is exactly the same grey color all across itself, and the cold Winter light, flat, disdaining everything equally: That’s still the same. Even in this strange new configuration, ballrooms and parlors and speakeasies and libraries, opening up infinitely onto each other, you still get that spooky storm light everywhere. That stillness.

We creep through room after room, ducking through strange doorways and between great panes of silver and glass. Picture frames looking out onto snowy gardens, cobwebbed corners and odd angles. A few steps down, carpeted or cobblestoned, around a corner that becomes a lamppost or a wardrobe or a leering faun. No smells but snow, and roses, and occasionally bitter coals. Eventually we will reach a room without an exit, there to wait.

First it will be the Guard, probably four in old-timey military garb from some era or another. One visit, they all had cropped ponytails that just brushed their collars at the neck. Another time they were practically naked, and it was so stupid. They’ll act like we have to prove who we are, and there will be that whole song and dance. Troy will be scared, but also turned on by them, because he is turned on by everything. But I know he’ll keep his mouth shut.

And then just when it feels like we’re going to end up in jail, the Queen or King will come sweeping in with a retinue, telling the Guard not to bother us, clearly it’s the Princess home for a visit, and she’s brought a hairy little beauty with her. Who is your friend? they’ll ask, pronouncing the word as though for the first time, because she’s never brought a friend with her, and the implication will be that this is the first time she’s ever had a friend.

Which would be, along with being the worst part of the next five minutes, completely accurate. Troy’s the only person I would ever bring home, because in all of my life I haven’t really liked anybody else enough to remember their name. You have to be careful with names, you can’t use them too much or in anger, so it’s best to forget them when you can. They’ll call me Princess, never Estelle. I should have reminded him of that part too, back in the car. 

I’m not Estelle anymore, I should have said.

*

A great black wolf, tall as Troy at the shoulder, tears around the corner, great paws scrabbling for purchase, and when Troy jumps I clasp his arm, two taps to his inner elbow: Our sign to stay as still as the dead. In the Winter room you can hear him hold his breath, to comply.

The beast stands a foot from us, front legs splayed out just slightly, playful. His ears are back and his tail is a blade in the air. Troy looks at the floor. Clear as glass; not quite so hard as diamond now.

“Pookha, be still. Puck, be good. Hob-Goblin, be true. Your Princess has need of you. One boon and three questions.”

The creature’s growl is deep as any bassline; you can barely hear it it’s so low. Spindly chairs rattle, all down the long heavy table. The sound tips up at the end, questioning; not quite a whine, but friendlier than before.

“Be a boy. Be my only friend, and speak us plain.”

With regret, the Puck becomes a boy. A black hat cocked back upon his head, black rope at his throat. His eyes are older than anyone’s you’re likely to meet, but his smile is cocksure.

“There is your boon, Princess. And your questions three?”

“Where are my esteemed parents. Where is the sweating Guard. Why are we unattended.”

He bows deeply, throwing a wink Troy’s way. Troy doesn’t even notice the attention. You might say that Troy is wigging out right now.

“Your questions three have but one answer, I regret. Summer is here. Sumer Is Icumen In, Sing Cuckoo.”

“Ah. So you’re here to stall us.”

The Summer Court, my parents’ opposing political party in the Fae, traditionally arranges the Teind, which is what our people call my particular doom. The last time I saw them, the Lord and Summer Lady I mean, I was about eleven and still feeling raw about that, since someone had just recently explained it to me. So I let them have it, right there in front of the throne, which was exactly the kind of scandal those people go nuts over, and nobody has any desire to forget it.

Were I there again—even in my current tenuous situation, with the Teind beating down on me and some dumb girl here from who knows where—I’d still do it. Screw those guys.

Troy doesn’t know the whole story, because he would make a fuss if he did, but the facts are these: Thousands of years ago, when men started crowding my people out, building their cities and forging cold iron, we found ourselves in a dire real estate situation. The Courts were on good terms back then with Hell, and arranged a contract in perpetuity: Every seven years, one of us would become theirs. In exchange, we lease unlimited space just off the regular world to live in. 

I think Troy knows that part, knows that when I say we’re going to Court part of that is that we’re going to Hell. Or rather, what used to be Hell but is currently a tacky mansion with too-low ceilings and infinite ugly creepy rooms. There’s nothing really hellish about the Lands, now that they’re ours, but you can’t ever quite forget what they used to be. When I say it’s hell I just mean it like anyone who didn’t especially enjoy their childhood means it.

Which is where I come into the story. At some point my name was written in a certain book, saying that when I turn 21 I will be that person, the one that goes to Hell and never comes back, and the hope is that I will be very cool about this and not cause more of a scene than I already have. 

The particular Prince they want me to marry is nice enough. I like him. I think he’s half-demon like I am just half-fairy, so he’s not the worst person. I pretend to think he is, because political marriages are disgusting, but they say that’s just because I’ve assimilated and I think that Los Angeles is the real world. Which is a joke, obviously, but I know what they mean. And either way, I’m going to live in his house eventually, so we might as well play nice.

What neither Court knows is that this is never, ever happening; that I will bring the whole thing down and destroy every Kingdom—all the people in them, if I have to—before this happens. 

And in the meantime, I am dreadfully famous in real life for no reason, because being famous is the best way to keep them off my back. It has happened in the past that when a Teind seemed like a flight risk, they would kidnap him or her ahead of time, lock ‘em in a dungeon or send them to Hell early or just kill them and pick somebody else. I have heard of Summer doing this; never my family, but I can certainly imagine them doing it too. 

So the plan the Puck and I made was to stay public as long as possible, so I could figure out how to work angles in the Minor Courts, side deals with Hell and maybe the other guys, whatever I have to do, to end this dumb tradition altogether. The fact is that Fae is too big to fail, Hell is too weak to really do anything that harsh, and in my opinion all this pissing and moaning about our debt to Hell is really just a good way to keep support on the side of some very old regents and courtiers that I would not mind seeing dead. 

But just because it’s an ugly, corrupt, stupid system doesn’t mean I won’t end up dead if I don’t play it smart, and that means we can’t have any Marilyns or Jimmies Dean taking my place on the scene until I figure it out. It would be very sad, and bad, to kill this Selena Kirke girl, for example, and not only because Troy likes her, but not as bad as letting my time run out before I have saved all of us. Or at least the ones that will let me.

And that’s why Troy can’t know everything, because he is already incapable of knowing how much danger he is in, and knowing would just make it worse. So he has a vague idea, I think, that being famous is our way of sticking it to my parents and the larger political landscape, and that’s about it. 

And the parts he doesn’t know, well, even if they make me seem like a bitch sometimes, he doesn’t seem to mind. I know I don’t.

*

Within an hour of waiting, which is pretty much exactly like being in jail except they’re so good at making it seem like it’s something else, Troy has charmed the pants off the Puck. They are very, very much alike, which I guess explains why he and I got so close so fast when we met. Luckily Troy is only one man—whereas the Puck is lots of different ones, most of them pretty shitty people, some of them animals, or monsters—which makes Troy a lot easier to be friends with.

I am pleasantly surprised to see how well Troy plays the game. I thought there would be a lot of false starts and damage control. In fact one of the things we trained on was a certain cough that means you need to keep talking. You can’t end a sentence in a way that breaks a law, so if you accidentally were to thank somebody or apologize for something, or refuse a gift, or accept food, etc., etc., you could just act like you were on your way somewhere else and just took the scenic route. None of that for Troy. I didn’t know he liked games like this.

Of course once the Puck starts heading into riddle territory I realize he is getting bored, finally catching up to me, and put a halt to it. Don’t play riddles with anybody, ever. That goes south faster than anything I can think of. And I know if I told Troy that, he would be constantly scheming to get in there and try it. Maybe we can play riddles sometime, if we ever leave the Winter Court. I just never thought about what he would enjoy, here. Too busy thinking about how much I hate it.

“Pookha, be good. Puck, be still. Hob-Goblin, be true. Your Princess has a request.”

The Puck’s back goes straight, eyes ahead, without even a hint of resentment. That’s another thing you don’t ever get in the real world: People just doing what you tell them. It’s always got to be some trick—or deal, or some dumb sex thing—to make them think it’s their idea. It’s more important to feel like you’re doing what you want than it is what you’re doing.

“Puck, it’s been an hour. No telling how long time’s passed out there, and I just got back from fake vacation, and...”

“—My Princess will be happy to learn that the Summer Court has made its egress. The rooms are being emptied as we speak, and a Guard will come soon to escort you through the castle.”

He pops one shoulder up, looking back over it at Troy, nonchalant.

“I will bring you wine if you wish.”

Troy’s eyebrows go up, excitedly, and then knit. Not here. He nods at me, almost imperceptibly.

“You are a good and loyal wolf, my friend. But a tricky one, too.”

The Puck smiles at us both and withdraws. Heavy paws in the hallway, loping around corners. We are alone. Troy breathes, mouth open wide, eyes goggling at me.

“I know. You did well with him, you know that.”

Troy nods, still unable to speak.

“But you also know that was just the salad. He’s nothing. He loves me, and now I think he loves you, but even if he hated us both he’d still be easier than what happens next.”

“The King and Queen of Fairyland?”

“Yeah, Troy. That. And they are no picnic.”

“I am starting to get hungry.”

“You never know. When we’re done here you might have aged twenty years. We won’t know until we get out. It’s possible we’ll be younger, even. I didn’t tell you that part.”

“What I would like,” Troy says carefully, “Is to stay exactly as old as I am right now.”

“We’re a good age. Hold onto that thought as we’re leaving, it might work. But in the meantime...”

He nods, exhilarated.

“Hard as diamond...”

But before he can complete the charm, it all starts up. I snatch his jacket off a chair just before it vanishes, so he won’t get cold in a second, and everything begins to revolve. Like a thousand mirrors, spinning. Voices dopplering into high-pitched near-screams, as the Winter Court evokes itself. The still air rushes, light gone slate-dim, and the temperature drops like a struck bell. What was an informal dining room for twenty, low pressed-tin tile and a wall of dusty books, becomes a great marble dancehall, with glints off the air like sparks, like firelight on spinning brass. 

They want us afraid. They want us wrong-footed, embarrassed, a hand in the cookie jar, if they’re coming like this instead of summoning us to them. It must be serious.

And by the Puck’s face—now old as a miser and tall as an inquisitor; in his long black surplice and cornered hat—I can tell it’s worse than that.






Chapter Three: The Math


“This is your Champion?”

Troy’s a shapeshifter: We all are, here. He becomes larger, a foot taller, twice as broad, crossing his arms, and stares up at the Queen. My royal mother. He gives her that cock-eyed grin, which slowly fades under her regard. Eventually, his eyes drop. The whole thing takes five seconds. Been there.

“My Champion. Indeed, Majesty. I present to you Troy, the... Wild Boy of Chino.”

I can tell he wants to look at me for that one, but I would simply shrug anyway. I don’t know. I don’t like to prepare too much for my parents. I actually kind of like them, as people—they’re weird and old and easily frustrated, which makes them better than the rest of the Court, who are simply boring. But the King and Queen of Winter, I never know if they’re indulging me or actually confused, which is more fun than it sounds.

“We welcome you, Troy, and bid you well.”

Troy half-bows, gets tripped up halfway down and can’t remember what he’s supposed to do, and then awkwardly stands, bent at the waist. There is the hint of a curtsey, maybe. Whatever it is, it sends the Court whispering.

The thing these days, apparently, is masks. It’s too dumb to even go into, and if you did, it would be the same story as always: A reference to a reference to a reference. They wore white-china masks back in some century, which was a fashion based in some other century where they did the same. I don’t even think the Puck understands when I complain about this, not entirely, but I think it’s repulsive.

Do you know where Mad Cow Disease comes from? Bovine spongiform encephalitis? They feed cows the ground-up bones of other cows. Imagine that I had a pet duck and you learned I only fed it duck eggs: You wouldn’t want to be friends anymore. You would find it strange and upsetting that I thought this was an okay way to treat a duck. 

That’s how I feel about the Winter Court. Summerside’s jerks and dorks but at least they look for new things: Winter’s just a fool squatting in a very cold, dark cave, eating things it shouldn’t be eating because they are the only things around to eat. And why wouldn’t I die and go to Hell and have all kinds of miserable dead adventures to preserve that? Keep that going?

“It is a night for visitors, Princess.”

“And were they good guests, Majesties? Did they behave themselves?”

Behind their masks, the Court does titter and sway. It’s hard to turn it off, even when the last thing I want is for them to enjoy my company. The King nods, slowly, like a glacier splitting; like a great cracking iceberg hurling itself into the sea does my father slowly nod.

“It is good that you visit, Princess. Wild Boy.”

What he means is, Summer is doing something new and insane, so it’s convenient we’ve dropped by.

The King is beautiful. Today, he’s a beautiful expressionist painting of a very old man, oil all in greys and blues, with the kindest eyes. The last time I saw him he was a swain-haired movie buccaneer, all swagger and a wooly black forelock. The time before that, he was a woman. A giantess with enormous bosoms, who kept kneading an unbaked loaf the entire time we spoke, the Queen looking on with something almost like a smile. It was a distracting shape, that one, but I loved it too.

When it went into the fire, the pudgy loaf was shaped like a little girl, like me when I was young; when it came out it had blossomed, into curves and crisp edges. The Court did not cut, but ripped it into pieces, dipped into hot butter and bit down, looking me in the eye if they could. There was enough for everyone that night, somehow, from a single loaf of bread. That night I went hungry, by choice. I dreamed of a green liqueur that was somehow bottled springtime, the sun’s light loomed through leaves, a cordial that once drunk could set aflame anything you cared to touch. I think that was the last time I slept here.

“And what does occasion this visit?” the Queen asks, looking down at Troy through golden spectacles perched on a wonderful roman nose, like an eagle’s beak. 

Troy smiles shyly up at her, lost for a moment in wonder.

“I... Am curious also, um. That. About that. Your Majesties.”

One half-step forward, to draw their attention from Troy as he blushes. It would be exactly like them to fall in love with him and leave me out, doting on him as a hundred years go by in the world outside. Until they grew bored, and left him on the side of the road somewhere, an aged man with a beard to his knees and a rheumy eye, telling madmen’s tales.

The Queen does not address me, not with her voice and not with her eyes. I wonder if she’s telling me something. It often seems that showing me kindness causes her pain, as though she’s dropped the ball somehow. But other times, it feels more that there are secrets she’ll share one day soon, when the danger is finally passed, and that brings me hope even though that day will never come. I like to pretend she’s urging me on, rooting for me like the Puck to burn it all down.

Today the Queen wears a white feathered circlet around her face, as though her face itself were the mask; the feathers and seed pearls spring out around her face like petals in full flower. I wish I could say she isn’t pulling it off. Her normally dark eyes are a tawny port today. Perhaps she went gold for Summer.

“Mistress, I brought Troy here with me as a mortal gift, nothing more. A chance to look upon the Court and its richness. I bring myself, to look upon the parents I hold so dear. But I bring, too, a third thing. A question. In the city there is a girl...”

The King leans back in his throne, slowly; their seats are massive and rough-hewn stone. It can’t be comfortable. Imagine being so in love with your own presentation that even in a realm that changes with your whim you’d still rather carve stone with a thought, instead of sitting on pillows, or a cloud. 

I would sit astride a lion, and it would keep me warm. I would grow a bower of petals and willow from the Earth, to hold Troy safely above the crowd and this cold, shining floor.

“First, Princess, our news. Perhaps it will answer your question. Perhaps it will engender more. For Summer has brought tidings that cannot wait, least of all for thee.”

In my nightmares, this is when the soldiers come rushing in, force my arms down to my sides; barbs and thorny vines to keep me still, as they take me away to the new life. It is a good thing to know your doom, but not entirely comfortable either.

“I wait upon you, my Lord. My Lady.”

The Queen looks at me, finally, with more than a little suspicion. Usually by this point I’ve insulted at least a few of her relatives. Finally she nods. That quick, birdlike nod that in any form means she’s going tactical. The Court thins, a gradual disappearance you can’t catch happening, and suddenly we are alone. Troy makes two and a half complete spins, looking for our vanished company, before he settles down to listen.

“Princess, it is no secret what the world holds for you. And too, the Court looks fondly upon what you have accomplished, in your subtlety. You bring glamour to their lives, you stoke the fires of their curiosity and their magic.”

I wouldn’t really claim any of that, but I know what she means. There’s been a building presence in the air for a while that’s amenable to our kind—call it pagan, call it wiccan, whatever you like, as long as the kids are into it—which gives the Courts power in turn. I am not afraid to play the Stevie Nicks card when asked, coyly suggesting various spells or powers or what have you. It’s better to let the air out of those tires gently. But she clearly isn’t finished. She looks at the King sternly, and he seems almost abashed.

“You have been given to understand, growing up as a foster of the Winter Court, that you are imbued with the Blood?”

I wait for her to continue, now that she has stopped making sense. If she were Troy, I’d give that cough, the one that means Keep talking, as if you never stopped.

“I mean to say, you... Were born half-fae. And yet your parents...”

Are of course regular old fairies, from the dawn of time. The math doesn’t work out. It seems insane to me that I wouldn’t have ever noticed that.

“I’m a bastard?”

Troy’s jaw drops. He can’t tell whether to laugh or run out of the room, not that he can do either now.

“You and the Puck were placed under a geas some time ago to forget the manner and nature of your birth, as a precaution. You know that Summer traditionally arranges the... Well, you know of the arrangement. And so our daughter—the King and I—was never... You must understand, Princess. This was a long time ago. We simply didn’t know how fond we would become of you.”

I actually put my hands in the air, at this point, as though I am holding up a platter of something. Arms wide in the universal gesture of “what?” Winterside’s clearer when they talk than anybody else; we don’t specifically enjoy word games or fooling around in that way. Not like Spring, or the Puck: When he called me “Cuckoo” earlier, my hairs stood up. I wasn’t paying attention.

But like or not the law is the law, and sometimes simply choosing the correct words can feel more manipulative than outright lies would be. I see her picking her way across a minefield in the grass between us, tenderly avoiding every mistake.

“Princess. Estelle. Daughter. You are many things to us, to the Court. But you’ve never been our blood. That was another.”

It isn’t as if memories come rushing back or anything. I suppose it’s just the frustration and minor pain of watching her struggle to spit it out. Whatever it is, it happens all at once, with a sound like the booming black ocean: Did I always know this, and just couldn’t handle it? We could have had this conversation a million times or more, and I wouldn’t know. But right now, I know what she is saying.

“Majesties, if I may?”

She breathes, relieved. You could almost imagine her tearing up, if Queens could weep.

“You’re talking about a fetch, right? You took the real Princess and stashed her somewhere, on Earth or maybe some other Kingdom, and you... Kidnapped me. I’m a changeling. I’m not even half-fae. Is that what you’re saying?”

The Queen nods. Her body won’t allow her to say anything to that. She would apologize, or tread too far from the truth to avoid it; either way she would burn. I can almost feel my mother’s body relax when I give her the nod that says it’s okay.

“You stole a mortal child and raised her in this chilly monster factory so you could sell her to Hell when she...”

“—Princess. You’re breaking her heart.”

The King shakes his head, desperately. He hates it when we do this, he loves her so much. He loves us both so much. Or at least, he seemed to. I always imagined that he did, somewhere behind the inhuman still and coldness of our people. Theirs, I mean. Their people.

“My Lord. That’s no longer a place I wish to dwell.”

And they know it is no lie, because that’s not something we can do.

At the last Teind, when I was fourteen, the guy was so brave and the room was so quiet. I keep wishing Troy would do something, say something. Vomit. I keep wishing he would break this spell. 

Every damned time. I am and will always be the same little thing they stole so long ago. I am five, clutching at her skirts, and ten, slamming great knobbly doors, and fifteen, just learning how to be a woman from the vapid ladies that attend me. And always, eventually, this same deadlock: The Queen looking past my shoulder, empty, and the King begging, in his royal way, for me to give in. To save us all, by kneeling. Giving in. It would be so simple.

I reach out with my mind, just a tiny gentle touch, to see how Troy is doing. Perhaps I could never read his mind, after all. Maybe I just know him, because he is my friend. But I know what he is thinking now: I need to be hard as diamond, and clear as glass.

He’s right.

“It is a new world, Majesties, on which we now look out. I have the information. I have my fate. I ask what more you will of me.”

The Queen breaks into a sobbing laughter. Sheets of ice, cracking in a gale. Once it was my music.

“Princess, we require neither your acceptance nor your grief, but your wise counsel. The Summer Court...”

The King sits straight up, fifty years younger in an instant.

“—They’ve found her. They’ve brought her here, and declared war on the Winter Court.”

Certainly the look on my face, at that, is not wise or particularly glamorous. I cut eyes toward the Puck, and he breaks into a jig. That old black grasshopper, all stick-arms and bone-legs, cutting a caper like he is a boy again. 

“It’s time, Estelle. Your time is come.”

“You’re going to take this place down to the foundations,” Troy says off-handedly, as though he’s reminding himself to buy milk later. 

“You’ll bring Hell here to Winter, and put a Bastard Queen upon the throne before your bloody work is done. And all the skies afire.”

The King and Queen of Winter jump in their great stone seats, as though they’ve forgotten he existed. It’s possible they had. Not a mistake they’ll make again, now they’ve seen his gift for prophecy. Now that he’s scared them shitless.

Troy looks at me, smaller now than before, back in his body, terrified. It’s not a fake smile I give him, nor fake confidence. I dip my friend a nod, that Wild Boy, in a single birdlike movement I’ve seen somewhere before.

“Then we’d better get started. But first, I’d like to meet my sister.”

*

She’s awful. I mean, you can see the resemblance—Troy sits this part out, on the sidelines with the Puck, as the Royals watch nervously—and there’s a twinkle in her eye that’s compelling. But her skin is terrible and she’s chubby and her hair is gross in some way I can’t put my finger on. She’s like a Before picture of me, After. It makes me just ridiculously angry.

This girl—Gertrude, by the way, her name is Gertrude—this girl is a full-blooded fairy princess. She could literally wave her hand and be prettier than me. But no, because the aristocracy is too thin-blooded and selfish to stop what is essentially a slave ring, things have gone another way: She’s plain, because she’s allowed to be, and I work my ass off to look hot. Because I spent my entire stupid life thinking looking like the women of the Court—who put on and take off glamours so often and so regularly that they don’t even know what they actually look like, who haven’t seen themselves in the mirror in literally thousands of years—was my job.

Which is how I looked at it. My beautiful mother and her beautiful ladies in waiting, and all the six-pack dudes in the Guard, and even my father looking like Rembrandt made him up: All of them knew a secret that I didn’t know, and if I tried hard enough they would love me, and like some magic spell out of a fairytale I could be beautiful. If I wanted it bad enough. If I denied myself enough things and scrubbed myself with the right stuff and rubbed the right stuff all over me, I would be okay.

And that is exactly what goddamn happened. And the whole time, they could have looked like French bulldogs on sticks and nobody would have known otherwise. Which is fine, because I learned to cast glamours eventually and I have a routine of mostly healthy habits at this point in my adult life. And I can’t even blame them for any of that, because they are idiots. I don’t know if I’ve pointed that out.

And meanwhile, you’ve got this girl, this Gertrude, who is just living it up in Peoria or wherever the hell, with no reason—or means—to excel, at all. And one day the ludicrous Summerisle crew shows up at her door and says “Guess what, you look like crap but at least you are a fairy princess.”

And to her, to this sad thing, this changeling, that is her life suddenly becoming wonderful. For her this is a movie about getting rewarded for somehow being better than everybody else.

I mean, she seems shy of our parents. And absolutely terrified of me, which is nice in one way but just makes me angrier in another. And she stands there submitting to me sniffing all around her body and examining her skin like some kind of deranged rush chair. And the only person she’ll actually smile at without looking like she’s about to barf is Troy, which shows she has taste in people. 

But none of those things are enough. Because I have spent twenty years trying to impress these goons, trying to force them to love me, and it turns out that was never really going to happen. I mean, they love me, I get that about them, but I was never going to fit. And this girl is the reason why. And so whatever our next move is, now that we’re going to war for this chick—now that we’re going to war to protect my right to die for her—I will be damned if it is a fun experience for any of us.

...Which would have been a nice little rant if I’d said it quietly to myself, later, or silently in my head, while it was happening. But that’s not exactly what went down, as it turns out. I would say about 60-70% of all that made it out of my mouth before I shut it. None of the really mean stuff about ol’ Gertie, which is a relief. But the rest of it, the fact that I now had another person to save, that made it out, into the cold air.

And I’ll tell you this: That feeling that somewhere behind my mother’s eyes she was cheering me on? I have never felt that so strongly in my entire life. Which you would think would calm me down. At least a little.




Chapter Four: Two Sisters


“So, Princess. You see the problem.”

Of course I do. They’re always asking me what the Summer Court is thinking, always in this sly sideways way, like when I trick Troy into doing oracles, which now makes total sense: They know I can think outside the box, and they can’t. They can only think Winter Court thoughts, they can only play fairy games. 

I grew up thinking they were being sarcastic, or at least patronizing, but now I realize I’ve been their little think tank since I could talk. It’s honestly the first thing that’s made me happy since I came home from my fake vacation.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you probably don’t want to fight a war on two fronts.”

The Queen looks at her worrying hands, fighting each other.

“Winter can barely conceive of one war, daughter.”

“Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? You can’t ‘conceive’ of anything at all. You wanted my advice, here’s my advice: I can be your War Chief, and win. But I won’t do it just to go gladly off to the Cinder Kingdoms at the end of it. So you need to choose your battles. If we take down Hell now, if we can conquer them, then Summer will have no claim.”

The King cocks his head.

“But... They’ve declared war on us, dear one. They are coming for us. The Summerisle is not so indolent as to let an entire war go by without comment, before making their assault.”

“First of all, don’t tell me what Summer is going to do. We could sit them down with Netflix and a bowl of popcorn and they’d binge until they starved.”

“Winter understands very little of what you say, Princess.”

“I know. Sorry. Real world talk. I’m just saying that Summer would wait, if we distracted them. Let me worry about that part.”

Gertrude sits on the steps at the foot of the dais, wrapped in one of mother’s furs, looking altogether too comfortable.

“How about this. Gertrude, what do you think about marriage?”

She brightens up immediately, although whether it’s the question or just the fact that I’ve deigned to address her, who knows.

“I always thought I’d get married. Some nice boy, not too quick. Somebody soft.”

“Sounds about right. But how about a Prince, instead?”

The Queen claps her hands at me, angrily, unable to put words to it without breaking a law.

“A Prince in Hell, you mean?”

To her credit, Gertrude gives this some thought.

“I don’t know about that. I would have to meet the man.”

Troy laughs, over on the side. I toss him a smile. Troy’s seen pictures of the Prince, including some of the more embarrassing ones sent late at night, after his earthly revels.

“He’s not slow, or soft, Your Highness. But he is beautiful. And very much the romantic.”

As long as I can remember, the Prince has been around. First in stories told by my nursemaid, about my glorious future as the Queen of Cinders. Later, in courtly cotillions, Summer and Winter, Hell and the other guys, even Spring and Autumn sometimes. Stiff waltzes with the future Lordling in his little tux, everybody pretending it was the cutest thing and not a horrific bargain that would benefit them all someday.

One stormy spring, on a long visit to their country home in the Hamptons, we’d even kissed. He tasted like smoke. That was the last really cordial meeting between our two families, before the political situation shifted and Hell began to curry favor with Summer again, leaving us to our snows and sledges. But it was a good visit. They had the most delicious little butter cookies. 

I was so young. I remember that made me feel guilty, since we never got to have treats when it was Winter hosting. Nobody should eat fairy food, but the effects on demons in particular can be unpredictable, catastrophic. So when he would visit, back when that was a thing our families did, it was always music and cold water, the whole visit. I would have loved to give him cookies, gifts of any kind, but I thought I had to follow the rules back then. A little bit older, I felt like the poor relations, unable to spare even a biscuit, but I see now that wasn’t it either: Unlike me, he wasn’t always starving. He wouldn’t have given it a second thought.

“We’ll put that on the back burner for now, but I’m glad to see you’re not a ninny about it. Hell can be intimidating. Nobody would blame you for being worried.”

Blotchy, splotchy, plain old Gertrude looks me dead in the eye then, a natural fae coldness splitting across her face for a second, like chill lightning:

 “I’m pleased as punch simply just to be here, Princess. Nothing’s off the table.”

For a second, I could just love her. I really could.

*

I can tell the Queen’s getting antsy: It’s time for our nightly revels, of course. I step back from the Princess, just enough to signal that our war meeting is over, and my mother nods her head. The Court folds back into our space, masks held up, and almost seamlessly the music starts.

It’s a simple thing, here, to cast our appropriate glamour, and so Troy and I are suddenly wearing Court gear: A ballgown for me, a formal uniform for him in matching white and gold. Gertrude stands awkwardly for a moment in the center of the ballroom, surrounded by the ocean of courtiers and unnoticed by our parents: Get used to that.

In her sweatshirt and jeans Gertrude could just be any silly girl. Just wandered dumbly into the wrong place. But I can tell Troy doesn’t like how nervous and bummed she is, so I lay one on her as well: A dress of a piece with ours, so we stand out as a trio of young Royals. The response is a quiet thrill, as we make our way to her. It’s her debut.

I left her hair looking gross, because that’s fair, but the rest of it: We could be twins. To the Court, we must be. And when we dance, they will clap whether we’re good or not. It’s exactly the kind of novelty they love: The kind that’s just the same as what came before.

Which is exactly what I’m going to do, I think, nodding to myself: Selena Kirke, today is the best day of your life.

*

“Majesties, my Champion and I cannot stay long. It’s nearly the thirteenth hour, we must away.”

One of the things I like best about my mother is that she doesn’t fool around; she never pretends to be sad when she isn’t. Of course, that makes it worse when she actually is sad, but that rarely happens. She’s got it made, pretty much.

“You came with a question, Princess. You should leave with an answer.”

But I answered it myself, already: The solution to the Marilyn Problem has, thanks to this Gertrude, taken a new tack. I don’t need you anymore, is a thing I could say.

“I think I have it, Majesty.”

She nods. We feel separately at the edges of a new, scary thing: If I’m not fae then I can lie. I could have been lying all along. Maybe one day I will. She hates taking things into account.

“I’ll make my goodbyes to my sister then. Your trust in me is not misplaced, whatever form the future takes.”

What I mean is, Thanks. Thanks for not kicking me out the door, or off to Hell, the second Summer showed up with Gertrude. But that gratitude wouldn’t be welcome.

Gertrude is swaying with some young fairy punk guy, somebody I barely recognize from growing up, when we approach. She smiles up at him innocently, and then we are dancing. Two sisters, twins, in the Courts of Winter.

*

“This is a lovely dress,” she says, looking down at herself as we move. Troy stands at the edge of the dancefloor, surrounded by masks, thinking about Rip van Winkle again. What she means is, Thanks.

Wherever she’s from, that can’t have been easy. Never lying, never showing gratitude. I bet people thought she was pretty awful, out there in the real world. Well, good. That’ll toughen you up. And if it doesn’t, you were never going to be tough in the first place.

“I am glad you like it. And I’m glad you’re here.”

We spin.

“I find that hard to believe, Princess.”

“Call me S. Call me sister. The Court wants us to love each other.”

“I’ll call you friend. For now.”

I wonder what she’s thinking. I’ve noticed half the time we do sneaky stuff because we feel like we’re supposed to, or it’s the grownup thing to do. We assume other people are like us on our worst day rather than our best. I shouldn’t assume she’s suspicious. But I shouldn’t assume she’s stupid, either. She’s fae, whether she knows what that means or not, and that makes her dangerous.

She brightens, suddenly.

“I thought you... When they came to get me and explained the situation, I thought you might want to know. About them, about your parents. I brought a few pictures. But if that’s strange...”

“It isn’t strange. It’s a power move and it makes me nervous on several levels, but it’s kind.”

“The Puck says you are a loyal person. That you’d save the Winter Court no matter what.”

“The Puck talks too much. Don’t trust him.”

“I like him when he’s a little boy best.”

“Don’t trust anyone, Gertrude. Not until you have your feet under you.”

“He said you were never happy here. I wonder if all this is why.”

“Or maybe I wasn’t happy here because it’s terrible here. Or maybe you’re right, and I knew somehow that I didn’t belong here. Or maybe he’s wrong, and I loved it as much as I hated it. And maybe you’ll be happy here regardless. I can’t imagine you have much to go back to.”

She looks at Troy, standing in his dress whites, and wilts a little.

“Not as much as you do.”

I make it a policy never to laugh, at Court. It wouldn’t be a good idea to suggest that I’m ever enjoying myself, considering how this story is supposed to end. If they think I’m okay with my doom, then they will be free to ignore it too. And wouldn’t fight, when I need them to. But the idea that Troy and I are a couple is a bit much, even for me.

Gertrude chimes in, with my laughter: Two sisters, having a private moment. The Court stares, desperate to be a part of our family. She isn’t a total idiot.

“Troy is a wild card, that’s true. But don’t discount the Prince until you meet him.”

“I can’t believe you’re trying to talk me into this again. Can’t you give me one night?”

“I understand that your dreams are all coming true right now, and there’s a way in which that doesn’t entirely make me sick. I’m just saying, the Puck isn’t wrong. I do want to save everybody. I would hope you want that too.”

“War Chief,” she whispers past my ear, so close I can feel her breath.

“We’ll talk about it again soon, of course. Once you’re settled. Right now, just know that you needn’t make any decisions, or put up with anything you don’t want to. I doubt very much that you were treated like a Princess, out there. You might be embarrassed, or afraid, to ask for things. That’s deadly. Even if it feels disgusting, for right now you must act the part. Learn by doing. That is the most important thing I can tell you.”

“It sounds like you want me to act like a bitch.”

“No, I want you to act like me. Which could be the same thing, I don’t know. I’ve been called worse. But these people will not give you an inch, Gertrude. You need to hit the ground running. There are worst things than being the Teind.”

Troy joins us then, a triplet whirl. To them, the ancient Court, we are barely sentient. We’re just kids. We can dance in circles, like children. Some of them will follow suit, mindlessly aping whatever they see. And what they won’t see is the glamour he’s spinning up around us; a silence.

“Look at our father, Princess. Look at the King. The crown is heavy on his head. And why? Because he doesn’t want to be a King. He wants to be a soldier, okay? He wants to be a regular man. And because he can’t reconcile who he is, inside, with the role they make him play, it’s incredibly hard on him. He has more love to give than anyone in the world, and I can tell he already loves you. But I can also tell you, that’s not enough. Don’t be like him. Be like her.”

“She is terrifying.”

Troy blows razzberries at that; he thinks she’s marvelous. He isn’t a woman, so he’s allowed to think she’s just what she appears to be. But we know better.

“She’s good, though. I don’t know what your parents—our parents, our other parents—are like. But you turned out okay. You can trust them to be cool. Just don’t trust them to act in your interests. Winter love is off or on, there’s no middle ground. If they’re looking at you, they will love you, they’d die for you. But the sad truth about our parents is that when they’re not looking at us, we don’t exist. Okay?”

She nods, coldly. I’m talking about her, too, of course. Their real daughter.

“Gertrude, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m just jealous, or angry. But I want you to at least pretend I know what I’m talking about until you know better. I could make you swear, to keep you safe.”

“But you won’t do that. Part of you hopes I’ll mess up.”

“Most of me, babe. You’re not listening. But you also know I’m telling the truth.”

I can tell we’re done. Before she even steps back into the dance, before she even knows our conversation is over and the silence is broken, I can tell we won’t be friends.

*

The Puck catches us on the way out, his hand on the small of Troy’s back like they’ve known each other forever.

“Chilly exit, Princess.”

“Be true, Hob-Goblin. She’s been talking to you, she said.”

“Somebody must advocate. Who better to teach the laws of the land than the Puck who hates them most?”

“It’s how you raised me. Okay. Go easy on her, though. She gets her feelings hurt easily.”

I know he doesn’t know what I am talking about, but he’ll try.

“...Princess, you would go to war with Hell.”

“Better Hell than Summer. All four Courts could be free.”

“Titania and Oberon fought over a child once...”

“And thorough this distemperature we see the seasons alter. I’m familiar with the story. They ruined the weather. A clash between Courts has consequences. I know what the Courts are, Puck. I know what they can do. But if I do this right, it won’t matter. Hell should never have had purchase on our people. Don’t threaten me with a good time just because somebody signed a bad contract thousands of years ago, okay? Squatter’s rights.”

“Better Hell than Summer, then.”

“Well-met by moonlight, old friend.”

He reaches up to kiss my cheek, a crown of brambles on his head. Troy’s kiss is altogether more personal.

*

We’re all the way out of the gazebo in Pomona and back on the highway before it starts.

“So.”

“So?”

I keep my eyes on the rearview, just in case one of the Courts is following us.

“So everything. I know you’re not going to answer any of my questions, so I want to invite you to just tell me whatever you feel like telling me but as quickly as possible.”

“First of all, you’re not allowed to hook up with the Puck.”

“I kind of feel like I am, though.”

“You’d be safer with that vampire. The Viking.”

“Well, let’s table that one for later. Do proceed, Princess.”

“Don’t. It’s too weird. It makes me a little bit sad. Like maybe I hate my parents, but they’re my parents.”

“You don’t like her? I like her.”

“I do like her, Troy. I just don’t like her enough to give a damn about her. She’s a variable.”

“She didn’t even look that much like you. I mean, you could tell.”

“Didn’t matter to the Court. Didn’t matter to the Royals. Doesn’t matter to me. Or you.”

“That’s true. I am actually not very interested in the Winter Court, as it turns out. I thought I was, but now that we have been there I am not that into it.”

“Same.”

We drive for a while, under the moon.

“When we were walking out, after the Puck kissed me, you had that look.”

He calls it “that look” but what he means is that I was smiling, in a particularly crazy way. I always thought this was because of my half-fairy blood, but I guess I just do it. I guess the Look belongs to me. That’s not really comforting.

“Well I mean, that’s a lot of variables. When we set out this afternoon we had a Marilyn incursion to deal with, and I thought that would be kind of fun. But now?”

“Are we really going to start a war with Hell? And if so, will this interrupt the sexting from the Demon Prince? Because I will miss that.”

“I think now we... see where we’re at. See what our resources are.”

He ticks them off on his fingers. Troy loves this part.

“Us. Princess Gertrude. Demon Prince. Heaven could help probably. The Puck and your parents, kind of. Summer Court and the minor league, if we do it right. Who else?”

“Mosquito Queen. The Ladies of the Canyon. The whole LA machine, obviously. Selena Kirke.”

“Wasn’t that why we were there in the first place? For help getting her off the board?”

“Yeah, but now we’re going to make friends with her instead. The way the Court was acting about me and Gertrude, dancing together—that has real potential in the real world. Selena Kirke is going to get the welcome of a lifetime.”

“You were going to kill her, weren’t you? If it didn’t work out.”

“Selena? I won’t lie to you.”

I don’t. We drive.




Chapter Five: Winter Style


“It’s weird to be back here. It used to be the most magical place I had ever been and now it’s just sort of gross.”

Back at Blue Heaven, with a different code word in the afterhours. I can tell he misses our fairy outfits. I do too. When you’re in it, it feels like armor. But it straightens your back, too. The best behavior you’ll ever be on is in formalwear. You’re alert.

“Used to be, as in a few hours ago?”

“You know what I mean. I like doing this part. Being famous. I didn’t know why you always acted like it was such a scary world out there. Now I do. I like that part too.”

“You’re good at it. I saw you at the Ball, they fell all over you.”

Troy blushes.

“The masks made it a lot easier. When you can’t see their faces.”

“And what about the prophecy? I couldn’t tell if the Queen wanted to slap you or adopt you.”

“What prophecy?”

I point across the room, changing the subject: His vampire is back, with some boy that you’d think was Troy’s double, if you weren’t paying attention. Soda cans all look the same.

“Your boyfriend looks busy.”

“Gross. Kind of a musclehead, isn’t he.”

“Just when I think you’re going to zig, Troy, you zag. I like that about you.”

“I like it also but I will be honest, it’s kind of exhausting.”

“So. Should we look up Miss Selena Kirke before she checks out of her hotel, or wait until the depression of being in LA has truly set in? I think the latter. I think she should have a night or two in a fleabag before she makes her cool new friends.”

“Us?”

“Yeah, Troy. I am talking about us.”

“I think if we’re going to help her, if we going to take care of her, we should just start. Other people’s unhappiness is not as useful as you tend to think.”

“Well, either way not tonight. She needs to want us, which means we have to be extremely attractive, and tonight I am feeling... just very angry. And sort of out of control.”

“It is not hugely attractive Estelle, and I am saying this as your friend.”

“I know. That’s why we’re in this stupid place where nobody matters.”

A couple of angels are drinking beer at a table far across the room. Angels creep me out. I know I can be a little scary when I get the Look, but angels are like that all the time. Vibrating, just so intense. Like the thing they do, whatever it is, is the only thing worth doing. You can’t talk to them, because they only want to talk about their thing. You can’t disagree with them, because they won’t even hear you say it. You can’t ask them anything because they only have one answer for everything. Demons are usually lying, but at least they act normal.

“Okay. So we will be friends with Selena, which will be nice because she’s nice. And we will turn her into, what, God, and that will be fun because it’s an adventure. I do not want to be involved with the Mosquito Queen...”

“She likes you, Troy. She likes you a hell of a lot more than me.”

“I know. It just feels like a deal I’m making, and that bothers me more than it does you. I don’t like deals. You’re going to say we should split up, and I should go to the press, and you’ll go to Laurel Canyon.”

“That is what I’m going to say, yes.”

“Remember when her guy was so young and funny. It was so sad when he died. She was creepy, but at least the Drone felt bad about it. All that spying. You could tell.”

“Every part of the machine is necessary to the machine, or it would be rendered off. Frankly I like the new Drone better. He’s so sleazy you never forget what you’re doing.”

“That’s true. Hey, she’s thinking about killing herself.”

It takes me a second, in the low murmur, to even catch the last thing. Running back through the conversation to figure out what he’s talking about. More Troy talk.

“You really want us to find Selena Kirke tonight, huh?”

“How did you know I was thinking about her?”

“Well, maybe you’re right.”

“I thought it would be funny if we were still wearing our fairy, um, garb. And just showed up at her hotel room in it. Kind of sparkling.”

Not really my style. Funny to think about. And I don’t want to talk about the paparazzi any more than he does, tonight. The Mosquito Queen and her thousand drones, her nightcrawlers. What Troy doesn’t know is that before the Marilyn stuff started, our plan—mine and the Mosquito Queen’s—was to get into a pretty serious car accident. I went away for my pretend vacation to think about it, whether it was really time for that.

It comes down to the crunch, really: On the one hand, going to rehab would eat six months of my future, of which there’s not a lot left. On the other hand, now’s the only real time that I could do it, so it just depends on what it would do for my profile. All her research suggested that it would be explosive, when I came back looking humble and healed, reintegrating into society: Everyone watching, wondering when I was going to screw up again.

They have a focus group just about me, I’ve seen the tapes once and it was pretty gross. And this last time, said the Drone, this last time somebody actually brought it up: How they’d like to see me crash, hard. It would make them feel good if I paid for all this drinking and drugs. And then it would make them feel good again, when the wakeup call saved me.

“What do you think it was like, for Gertrude? Did they do it like that? All sparkling?”

Troy looks down, deep down into his glass. He goes away. His voice is different like this. Like a ghost of Troy: Deeper, but thinner too.

“She was sitting at a counter in a diner thinking about getting a job there so she could finally go to college. Your parents aren’t doing so good and she was thinking maybe that was just going to be her life. First your dad would die and then your mom would slowly go away. And then she smelled something, like jasmine or honeysuckle, I couldn’t catch this part, and suddenly they were there on either side of her, looking like American military. One of them had stubble. The other one had her hair in a bun. There was a third one by the door. You couldn’t see his gun but you knew it was there. And they said her name and they said it was time to leave.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“Tell me what?”

One of these days, I’m going to find a way to introduce the prophecy version of Troy to the regular version, and then he won’t stare at me like this, mouth open, whenever I try to dig deeper. He won’t go away and come back. He will just be halfway both, all the time. Like me.

“Right. How did she say goodbye, to the parents?”

“Summer said they would debt a lien against Winter, or something like those words. They couldn’t give her fairy gold because it would just turn to leaves, red and orange, like on the last day of Summer when you can feel the sun go out of the world, feel it go quiet. And so instead they set up a scholarship at a mortal bank that was really just a shell to pay out a stipend to her parents, so they would be okay.”

“That’s not really Winter style but I can see Summer...”

“—They weren’t nice about it. They said it was hush money, that her parents wouldn’t worry about her or where she went, if they had money. They said mortals are just like that. Which I don’t think is very fair.”

“Depending on the parents, you mean. They didn’t notice their daughter had been replaced by a fairy changeling. There’s a precedent.”

I don’t know if I even really mean any of that. Mostly I just think about Gertrude’s life and how good it would feel to take it. Not kill her, but I mean: Take her life. Take it away from her. Turn the clock backwards twenty years and let her grow up in the Courts, like she was supposed to.

“I think her parents are nice. I think they would love to meet you. Love you. You act like that doesn’t interest you but you’re secretly plotting a way to...”

“I think we’re straying from the topic. You are being really psychic right now.”

“Okay that explains it.”

But before I can ask what he means, I clock the door, and there he is: My Demon Prince, walking in with some random girl, like he’s always getting spotted with. 

Only this one happens to be Selena Kirke.






Chapter Six: Day One


When you have visited Faerie for any length of time, the first thing you always do is check your phone. The tower will update you, eventually, but if you fall between satellite passes there’s sometimes a gap. So when Troy gapes at the door, Selena Kirke walking in with the Fallen Prince, it’s a valid question:

“How long were we gone?”

We didn’t meet ourselves coming back, so we haven’t skipped back in time, which can be a real hassle. We’re no older than when we visited Winter, so we haven’t gone forward too far. But clearly pieces have been moving. Strange things afoot in Blue Heaven.

I was a nervous kid. I couldn’t leave things alone: Pulling hangnails with my teeth until my fingers bled. I couldn’t leave things alone. I don’t know if I grew out of it or I just got busy, but now it’s more like I don’t even care what day it is. With my birthday and wedding hurtling directly toward my face like a meteor on fire, I used to count the days and hours. Now I just want to be left alone.

So far tonight we’ve run into a friendly vampire, done some seriously invasive magic on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located the source of a potentially disastrous mythological incursion, traveled to another dimension, met my crummy sister Princess Gertrude for the first time, proposed declaring war on Hell, and had a run-in with a certain Merry Wanderer of the Night. Ever for us this is a busy one. When my demonic bridegroom showed up with my newest nemesis on his arm, the last thing I want to know is what day it was. Horrible day. Day One. Still on goddamn Day One back and now this.

Gabriel pretends he doesn’t see us, at first, which is exactly the kind of thing that usually irritates me to no end, but this time is a little bit of a gift.

“Prom King from Hell,” Troy mutters.

“Literally. Remember that.”

Gabriel is less surfer and more Young Republican than he wants to be: Tall, blonde, calibrated smile. Last time I saw him the fashion in men’s bodies was whippet-thin, and he looked like a pale vicar. Now he’s broad across the chest, all pocket square and flat-front, jacket cut high enough that you can see his the shape of his ass, implied. 

My fiancé is, in some ways, the worst person I have ever met. Mostly I like this about him. He’s wickedly funny, and smarmy in a way he can’t help. He has this way of scanning the crowd for the most powerful person—the hottest woman, the tallest man—and somehow bringing them to his side. I have never learned this trick; I would imagine he learned this in Hell. Not a great place to grow up. Less lonely than Winter, probably. More cosmopolitan. 

But when we were young he would get so quiet, right before it was time to go back. The cycle was predictable, as the Fallen always are once you know the pattern: For Gabriel it was first the silence, not sullen so much as exposed, then the anger, over something small, some fight he wanted to have. Then the fear would grow, and he’d start bargaining, trying to make deals. One more hour, ten more minutes, five more. Then his tiny back at the door, refusing to say goodbye.

I didn’t notice at the time. I suppose he forgave me for that. I never really thought about his home at all; barely thought of him before he arrived and forgot him minutes after he left. But every season or so there he would be, my future husband, giant sky-blue eyes staring. Slowly remembering how to smile at me whenever they let him out to visit, Little Prince from a volcano planet.

I spent most of my teenage years in Laurel Canyon after a childhood in the Court, but he only moved out a couple of years ago. I think even now he’s home half his days. Only peeks out to press flesh, like me, or to promote his new jeans or body spray or whatever it is. Whatever the various shell corporations that form his family’s legacy have decided he will sell. He likes that part. 

The Prom King thing, though, that makes me think: We look awful together, like vicious twins. Like the meanest kids in school. 

And what that makes me think of is how much Gertrude would like it if I said, “Princess, you’re a Winter now. Dye your hair back to its natural black-brown and let those eyebrows pop.” She wouldn’t even be looking for the knife if I said it like that; she might forget glamours altogether, if I did.

If she’s up for it and I can get everything in place, if I send her to Hell with my Prince, will I be okay with that? Back home at Court I thought to myself first, of course I would, but secondly: That I should try that idea out again when I had him in the room, demonic pheromones or whatever kicking in. 

And the answer now is: I would. Gabriel deserves a wife like Gertrude, someone harder than she seems, someone with that fae coldness, always holding herself out of his reach. He would love that. He’d be a snack for her. Most guys our age aren’t really ready to settle down—especially the ones that think they are—but of all his romantic ideas about things, he holds fastest to the ones about himself. He asked me to marry him before we were ten years old, and has never stopped. 

What he means is, Give him just enough of myself that he knows he’s won, and then all bets are off. And that’s not just Hell talking, that’s pretty much how guys are. Which is why Gertrude is the best solution, because she’s fae: There’s not really anything to get, so he’d never win. He’d love her eternally, through the rest of their immortal lives, and she’d help make him a King in Hell, or the President, and maybe they would be happy enough they wouldn’t cause too much damage.

All of which is to say: I do not want Gabriel talking to Selena Kirke for political reasons, which is very different from my sudden urge to destroy her for touching him. They are two separate things.

*

“We lost a day,” comes the update from Troy. “Not so bad.”

Bad enough that Selena Kirke is in play, but not so bad that we’ve lost the game. Her skin is the color of my mother’s, back home: Deeply dark, with blue jeweled undertones. A cool beauty. They look lovely together, they do. It needs to stop.

“Troy, what will we do right now? Right this second, what do you recommend?”

He looks up and to the side.

“If you talk to her now you’ll look territorial. We need him distracted, so it’s not about him. She might not even know who you are.”

I snort at that impossibility.

“You know what I mean. The fiancée.”

I do. But I also think if she knew the whole story she wouldn’t have come in here on his arm, which means there’s another way to play it: What if we pretend we don’t know him?

“I hate pretending, Estelle. He’ll act weird and you’ll act weird and the whole thing will come off weird. She won’t like us if we do that. We’ll be the hostile environment that mistreated her new friend Gabriel. She’s already nervous, don’t make it worse with extra layers of crap.”

Fair enough. Still, it puts us back at square one. Maybe we should just slip out. The Prince will text in a few hours with a question mark—or a thumbs up, depending on what he wants to happen—and the game will be back on. If he wants me to be jealous, that will be why we left. If he wants me to be a good friend and clear out while he’s on a date with the new girl, that’s excruciating but at least it’s useful information.

“I like him better on the phone,” Troy’s saying. “I wish he lived in another city so he would just send you pics and pathetic emails and leave it at that. In person I have to remember I don’t like him.”

The question becomes whether I could handle just leaving it. Historically the answer is no. I look into my next few hours down that path, and all I see is wallowing, and iterating schemes based on no information, over and over, until I feel too crazy to sleep. That seems like a bad plan in multiple ways, especially if we’re going to visit our friends tomorrow. Better to just use the opportunity.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to act normal. But first you need to imagine for me what her last 24 hours have been like, okay? Do you need a drink?”

Troy thinks for a moment, then shakes his head. He’s tired enough a trance will be easy.

“We saw her right before bed, in the good hotel. She slept deeper than she expected to and woke up at dawn, which is what she likes to do. A friend called a few hours later and said she had an interview in Anaheim.”

“As what, a princess?”

“You know it. But before she could get a car together, she had a meet-cute with a guy.”

“They’ve spent the whole day together?”

“No, that wasn’t it. This was another guy. One of those impersonators. Jimmy Dean.”

So really, the worst possible case. Those dorks are tight, at least the ones that know about Hollywood magic. I mean, they’re all ill-adjusted and strange, but the magical ones, the successful ones that don’t burn up immediately, those watch out for one another. They all know the kind of monsters it attracts, and they all know it comes with an expiration date.

“That’s not even connect-the-dots. She’s actually in the Walk of Fame orbit now.”

“Yeah, she knows about that part. Doesn’t believe it—which is why she didn’t get to know the guy better, she thought he was probably on drugs—but they stayed friendly. He said he’d call her about gigs.”

Which moves the timeline up considerably. While I’d prefer she never became the Marilyn at all, I would at least like her on my side before she does. Or else her ensuing destruction won’t have an upside at all, which I can’t abide. She should at least leave something behind.

“Then that’s when she met Gabriel. He spotted her through the window of some fast-food joint she shouldn’t have spent money on, and that was it. Before she knew it they were walking off down the street together toward his car, and he introduced her to some people and then some other people, everywhere he had to go today she went with him. She hated all of them, but she liked him. And then they had dinner, and now they’re here.”

A protégée, then. Gabriel, gross. Not his usual style at all. But it occurs to me that Selena’s arrival echoed all the way back to Winter, which is why the Queen changed her look. And certainly it set off alarms for Troy and myself before we even knew what was happening. Gabriel would have known before any of us, probably: He’s only half-Fallen but they go ravenous with even just a hint of new power. No coincidences or synchronicities for Gabriel: He would have stepped out his door, smelled her, and headed straight in for the kill. LA is his turf as much as mine.

Troy shakes his head.

“It’s about protecting her. He doesn’t want her to take the Walk, not with the war looming.”

Which is the worst news of all. If he knows war is coming he knows all of it: The way my parents switched me out for a fairy changeling when I was a baby, and how in the very year of the Teind the Summer Court has uncovered the plot, threatening to retaliate. He probably heard it from them. He somehow always does.

I’ve known him since we were so small, and the Fallen are just like the Rising, predictable by nature. But about this, I couldn’t begin to imagine. I would hazard a guess that if he finds out my secret plan—to avoid marrying him by declaring war on all of Hell—that would make him angry. Or maybe it would tickle him, I have no way to know. It’s been too long since we were honest with our lies.

Gabriel was a mischievous boy, in his ineffective way, so I can see him going the way of the Puck: Wanting to break down the old ways just to prove it can be done. Just to remind everybody that we’re living by agreements, not by real laws. If that’s his feeling, he wouldn’t even mind giving me up, because he’d appreciate what we’re trying to do.

Or, if they’ve somehow gotten to him—if his father actually demonstrated some kind of affection or admiration for him, say—then he might kill me right here. I’ve seen that in him, too. He used to start trouble with the townies, when we were teens and could sneak out into the world, that left them bleeding and worse. I never knew if he was showing off or just full of teenage craziness and looking to explode, or horny, or driven to empire or something I can’t be expected to understand. 

Sometimes it felt like that was the real him, and our relationship somehow made him behave himself, like I was special. Like I was a reason to be kind. Any of those are disgusting, to be honest, but that’s the worse. I can’t stand the idea of being anybody’s excuse for anything. If anything, that’s as much a reason we drifted as anything political. His dad would just hit him with that disgusted look, no love or compassion in it even for a kid, nothing human, and then for a while that’s how he would be, too. Just like daddy.

But even then he was also so sweet, and so sad. He moved so slowly, as a child, thinking all the time. Touching everything, like he was trying to figure out what was real. Even in the real world, where it is. And one of the few things he knew for certain was me. Demons have hearts, and they can be broken. Half the time I think they act this way so nobody will find that out.





Chapter Seven: Look at This, Look at That


“Estelle Harlowe, I’d like to present Miss Selena Kirke. Selena, this is S.”

Troy goggles at them both, and over to me. They moved very, very quickly. Troy stands to shake their hands, respectfully, and aims a knee at my back so I’ll stand too. Like they’re the national anthem.

“I am very pleased to meet you, Selena Kirke. Gabriel always brings such fabulous people around.”

Her smile is open, if sad. I can tell she’s still homesick. But her eyes are deep. Lots going on in there. I wonder if she’ll have the sexy baby voice. All this will be a lot harder to take seriously if she does.

“I’ve barely been in town a whole day and I’ve met so many people. I think Gabriel must know just about everybody in this city. It’s a little exhausting.”

A lifetime of training doesn’t just fall apart the second you learn you were a hostile adoption.

“Well, I’d hate to add to it! It’s already such a late night. Gabriel, you really should take better care...”

She blushes, actually nervous.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant it was nice to be welcomed. Everybody else looks at you like they want a piece. Like they’re deciding where to bite. But you just say, Hello. It’s nice.”

“I don’t mind telling you,” I try to be magnanimous, “We’re a little out of it too. Maybe we can all just sit here together and zone out. Drink a little more.”

Gabriel smiles, surprised, and makes the introductions. Troy is starry-eyed as usual, loving the guy more than I ever could and hating him more too. And of course he’s been hopping anxious to meet Selena since we first spied on her. Altogether he’s the happiest I’ve seen him in weeks, just sitting down in this half-crowded place with an incipient Marilyn Monroe and born Prince of Hell. He does love this crap.

So for now that will have to be enough for me, too. Happy Wild Boy, happy tired girl me. Let Troy drive, if he’s so up all of a sudden. It’s not like he did much at Court.

*

Most of Gabriel’s girls, they act like they know you from the get-go. Like you have a little secret together. It’s warfare; they’re even worse with boys like Troy. Presumptuous. Tripping over their feet trying to impress you. But not this Selena, no: When he introduced us I couldn’t tell if she knew me from the world, or whether he’d warned her about me, but either way she’s interested and friendly, if guarded. Exactly as curious as she appears to be. It’s infuriating.

I have never gotten the hang of laughing. It always sounds like I’m practicing for when something funny actually happens. But this girl, her laugh is nearly as ready as her smile. She’s confident. Almost like she doesn’t want anything from me, which is really hard to fight with.

“—So I thought, if I’m going to focus on my career, not all this,” Troy waves vaguely at the crowd, taking in all their magical strangeness she doesn’t seem to notice, “I should just forget about guys altogether. I mean, you never know, but it can’t be everything.”

Selena opens her mouth, then shuts it again, avoiding Gabriel’s gaze. We know from spying on her what she wants to say: That she just got out of something, that she’s never been without a boyfriend before, that her California adventure requires solitude, but she can’t say that in front of him. Not until she knows his agenda better. Say that around the wrong guy—and Gabriel is exactly the wrong kind of guy, not that she knows for sure—and he’ll shut down faster than a bank vault. 

So we sit for a moment, listening to those words hang in the air, and just like always I can’t be sure if Troy even meant to make that happen, or was interested to see how she’d respond, or if he really was just talking about himself. Eventually Gabriel excuses himself to get another round, and the three of us, ever so slightly, relax. She breathes out, stretching her arms before her on the little round table, and catching my eye with a low voice.

“Thanks again. This is a good way to end day one.”

“One of very many, I’m sure. Gabriel’s a good friend to have.”

She nods. She can tell he’s okay. No more dangerous than anybody else, no matter how he comes off. Which can be a little all-American psychotic, if you catch him on an upswing, and a little suicidal on the other end of it. Mother told me this is because of the half-demon thing, but that rumor’s never been confirmed. His mom would be dead if it were. As it is, she’s barely real.

“So he told me you recently had some news? A long-lost sister, or...”

Troy bumps a water glass almost hard enough to tip it over, and I give him a tiny wink. It’s okay. She should know, moving forward, that I have more balls in the air than just the two of them. 

“I didn’t know he’d heard! Yes, it’s very exciting. She’s... A lot. Or not. Which is also a lot. Maybe she’s just normal. I don’t really have anything to compare it to.”

I wonder what would happen if I started pointing out the details around the room, about the people. The angels drinking beer with their hard stares, and the vampires licking their lips. 

There’s a point in the night when every bar starts feeling like this—about an hour from last call, when everybody starts feeling crazy and empty and electric—but in these kind of places, it starts like that and it never stops. It’s how I showed Troy, just saying “Look at that, look at this,” until he could see it without being pointed to it. 

“That’s got to be strange. For you both.”

“She’s dealing well. Watching anyone else interact with your parents is weird.”

Selena nods, understanding.

“My mother is a nurse and some of the girls she works with are my age. I think about them sitting around at work, talking about stuff. Me, of course, that’s weird. But also like, sex. It freaks me out to think about that too much, but I do it a lot.”

Troy’s calm, for the first time since they showed up. He doesn’t talk about his family. For a long time I thought there was a story there, some kind of gay tragedy, but eventually he told me they were nice, just not his kind of people. Everyone must feel like a changeling sometimes.

Gabriel’s coming back by now, so she changes the subject again.

“You two have known each other a long time, Gabriel said? You must know tons of secrets.”

Gabriel smiles brightly, twinkling more than he probably intends, and dramatically shushes her. Gabriel, when he thinks he is being adorable, is much less adorable than he thinks. 

“Estelle has a million secrets, but I won’t tell a one. Me, I’m an open book. Right, Troy?”

Troy smiles glumly, looks away. Sometimes I think Gabriel must enjoy his enmity as much as I do. Most of the time I think he doesn’t really notice either way. If Troy looked at me even one time the way he looks at Gabriel always, I think I might cry real tears. But Gabriel just barks a laugh and slugs him on the arm and acts like they have spent tons of time together. I guess that’s what men do. Or what men think men do.

“Our families go way back. Used to be closer, but...”

Gabriel sobers, darkens. He seems more stressed out by the politics than I thought he’d be.

“Screw ‘em. That’s what I say. Can’t count on them, can’t get rid of them. Better just to depend on each other. The people you actually want in your life.”

True enough. I give Troy what I think of as a warm smile.

“Now, about this sister. I found—Selena, I don’t know if I told you, but Estelle has a mystery sister—I found out relatively little about her. Sorority, all-star in track. Not really Estelle’s scene. Or is she? Did you meet her yet?”

He knows damn well I have, but fine.

“I think she should dye her hair back. She looks too much like me now.”

“And your parents?”

“Second shot at greatness, I can only assume. Hope that works out for them.”

His lips, like a Cupid’s bow, straighten into a thin line.

“No one could replace you, Estelle. You know that.”

It is with a measured nastiness that I take a sip of my drink, gazing at him over the lip.

“Don’t count her out just yet, Gabriel. You haven’t met her yet. You’ll love her. Right, Troy?”

Troy disapproves of me fooling around with people’s emotions—even boys, even this particular boy—but he’s a good enough friend to back me up. If I want to offer Gabriel this dummy Gertrude for an easy truce, who is he to disagree? Better her than me, or Selena Kirke if it comes to that.

“A welcome addition to any household,” Troy finally creaks.

Gabriel fixes his eyes on Troy more solidly than I can ever remember him doing, and then smiles very carefully, and nods. Selena looks at her nails and thinks about leaving before the vibe gets weirder, but at least I’m not the one making it weird. For once.

If Gabriel were capable of conceptualizing himself as a terrible thing, or Hell as a bad place, or demons as naturally untrustworthy, a lot of other things would come crashing down: I’d stop looking like a coy mistress, playing the game, and I’d start looking like a real bitch. Likewise, the both of us selling him on Gertrude—and vice versa, one hopes—would look a lot nastier than he is capable of understanding. 

But that truth wouldn’t be solidly true either: My sister is a true daughter of the Blood. The first words out of her mouth were that she’d have to meet him to decide. A regular girl wouldn’t say that. “A demonic marriage in the underworld for all eternity? I’ll have to check that out but it sounds like a good deal so far.” A real Princess, on the other hand, automatically would. And a teind has to, if it comes up: If you’re going to Hell anyway, you might as well go in a Queen.

It’s probably pretty crazy to think about, marriage. You probably think of yourself as too young, in some part of yourself, no matter how old you get. I’ve never thought about it much. What would be the point? I like sex all right, but what’s the point of screwing up somebody else’s head, or life, by dying on them just when life is getting good?

*

The second time he leaves, Gabriel is gone for even longer. It’s a relief. He has a tightness in his eyes that relaxes with her, but not with us. I can tell he’s starting to hurt from Troy’s disinterest, which is the first shit snowflake in a shit blizzard of boy feelings. Which is fine, if you don’t have to stick around and clean it up.

“So I just want you to know, I’m not interested.”

“In what?”

You have to actually say it. I was raised in a faerie Court, I know in my bones how much room we can leave between our words, for sliding around in. If we’re going to be friends, and we are, then you need to understand the way we do business. And that means you have to say it.

“I’m not interested in Gabriel that way. And it seems like you two have a lot of business...”

“—History. But not ancient history. Baggage but not luggage.”

I might be a little tipsy, at this point.

“Anyway, I don’t want him either. But if he thinks for a second we’re not both madly in love with him, he’ll get his feelings hurt, and that is a bad scene. So thank you for saying that. It’s nice to know who the good guys are.”

Selena smiles, leaning back suddenly to look closer at me. For a moment I think I’ve said something strange, but she shakes her head at that too.

“You’re an honest person, Estelle Harlowe.”

Troy fake-stifles a fake cough, but I’ll let it slide this time.

“When it counts. I’d hate to start on the wrong foot. And dishonesty is always the wrong foot. Imagine us, friends ten years from now, and it started with a lie. Wouldn’t that be like we were never friends at all?”

“Agreed. Which is why I also should say—he’s on his way back, so—the Autumn Court stands with you, if you protect me.”

Troy’s jaw drops. But me, I’m just seething she wasted all that time on Gabriel when we could have been talking tactics. Now he’ll turn the conversation back to himself, to me and Selena and Gertrude and whoever else could be his Queen. It’s where he lives.

“So. I just got beers this round. It’s getting way too late, and I know we’ve all got stuff tomorrow.”

Troy and I sit eagerly forward, anxious to finish this up and discuss elsewhere. And Gabriel’s just indicated, in his Fallen way, that he can play this game all night if we want: He has nothing to do tomorrow.

“Troy’s going to TMZ for some dirty deeds and I’m heading up the Canyon. Selena, what’s on your docket? Do you have somewhere to stay?”

She smiles, uncertain.

“I... What? Yes, I’m in a long-stay starting tomorrow. I gave myself a month to figure it out.”

“Well, give me your phone. We can hook back up this week and see where we’re at.”

Selena hands the phone over, honestly surprised—even after dropping that bomb, which makes me wonder if she even knows what it means—and I tap my number in quickly.

“There. Now you can get me any time. And I mean it. Call me the second you need anything. Or just to hang out. Most nights it’s me and Troy, just looking for company.”

“Thank you, Estelle... Thank goodness I met you, rather. You’re a welcome wagon that speaks highly of your city.”

So she knows the faerie rules, if not the subtleties. What a strange girl. Why didn’t we pick up any of this last night when we were in her head?

Gabriel is noncommittal as we say our goodbyes, but I can tell he’s offended by the way we gulped our beers in such a hurry. He hugs Troy goodbye, lingering a little bit, and kisses my cheek without really saying much of anything. Those eyes look hurt, though. I wonder what he thought would happen.

“Call me tomorrow,” I say, squeezing Selena Kirke’s hand just a little too firmly. 

“I mean that.”

*

“Move fast. We’ve got an hour at most before he drops her off and comes after us, and we badly need to download before then.”

Troy doesn’t even protest, just picks up the pace and gets to the car before I do.

“Did she really say Autumn?”

“Yeah. And he really said he knew everything.”

“But we haven’t talked to the Minors. Winter wouldn’t. Summer would want them to go the other way. Who talked?”

“We’re going to have to get used to the idea that we might never find out.”

“But,” he worries, “We will find out, right?”

“Right, but we can’t think about it yet. Somebody who likes us, or at least likes her, more than they’re afraid of Hell. Somebody with enough clout to make that promise. Somebody with access to Selena to give us the message. And under Gabriel’s nose. Not a lot of people in the Courts with that power. But maybe a freelancer. Hell, maybe Rising.”

“Protecting pagan Goddesses? Saving them from Hell? Not likely. They can barely tell the difference between us and the Hollywood types. They hate us all equally.”

Troy hates that the angels won’t talk to him just because he’s a witch. He feels it’s because he’s gay, which I’m not about to talk him out of. It’s important, I think, to be very clear on why people hate you. There are lots of possible reasons. Either they’re all valid, or none of them are. 

But it’s not a stretch to imagine why he assumes the worst of Heaven. Humans aren’t the best ambassadors for that side, a lot of the time. 





Chapter Eight: Rattlesnake Love


Back home I realize I don’t particularly want to look at the Warhols anymore, so I strip the glamours down to the studs. Just concrete, unvarnished, unpainted loft, nothing but walls and floor and a puffy velvet divan large enough for us to rest on, while we talk. 

I prefer it empty, something about the chilly modern starkness appeals to me in a way that would horrify my parents. I have recognized that other people tend to think it looks pretty dysfunctional—Troy actually once called it “serial killer chic,” and he is like a puppy that will sleep anywhere, even on the floor, or in a taxi—so I just try for whatever’s right above minimalist. Throw down a rug or two, hope for the best. Whatever people do, according to other people.

Sometimes we like to put our feet up, soles to soles, while we talk. Tonight, though, it’s head-to-head, talking up toward the exposed ceiling. Hoping to fall asleep there before anything else happens. I can hear him with my ears, and feel him in my skull. If I pushed back just a fraction of an inch I could feel his head against mine. He would jump, but that would be okay too. 

If it were anybody else I would drag him into bed, huddle under a million comforters like when we were kids, but he hates being treated like a doll, so we do this. It’s fairly comforting. He’s there, but I can’t see him. We are alone, together.

If Gertrude and I had somehow grown up together, even though that’s impossible. If I’d met Selena Kirke, a lifetime ago. If stupid Gabriel would just let me be his friend. God, even growing up. If the Puck weren’t a sociopath shapeshifter, if he just stayed a sweet boy all the time. If I’d had like one friend growing up, instead of just playmates and other royal kids brought in out of some weird sense of duty: Maybe then pillow forts would be something I’d be past by now. As it is, I’m just grateful to Troy for sleeping over at all. Especially tonight.

I’m drowsing, almost, when Troy speaks: “I spy a... May Queen,” he mutters, and for a second I guess he’s just feeling musical but I realize he’s talking about us. One of us.

“Troy, do you know what a May Queen is?”

“I always thought it was a flower or something.”

“Queen of the May is a ceremonial title. It’s what Summer calls...”

“The one they kill every year?”

There are two Queens in Summer. The one that rules for centuries, and the one that rules for a day. And on that day the May Queen is waited upon by a hundred ladies, draped in jewels and fed on the gods’ own sweets. Her whim is law. The whole of Summer bends to her will. 

For one day, she is the most beautiful thing any of them have ever seen. She is the most beautiful thing they will ever see. Until the next one.

And on that day, the Summer Queen is just a subject of the realm like any other. She goes around having sex with donkey-headed men or whatever, while her husband beds this year’s replacement. And before she returns all the rest of the Court has come together and ripped the May Queen apart. Bled her into the soil, to bring another year of sun. Cleaned up the whole mess, so the real Queen doesn’t ever have to think about it. 

“That’s a thing?”

I could almost laugh. Have you not been paying attention? Faeries are the worst. But I don’t tell him the rest of it, which I have seen in action: It’s supposed to be the ultimate honor. You’re supposed to be happy about it. Grateful. I would imagine a lot of them are. I would imagine they feel really special that whole day. Right up until it starts to hurt.

I am not hugely happy about being the Teind, but I’ve never had to think about a future party where I get raped by a King and then torn to bits by raving elves in fancy costumes. Winter is sick in a lot of ways, but at least we don’t trick the girls into fighting over something like that. I am a legitimate Princess, so my marriage has to be political. And my doom, well, that just means nobody gets condemned to Hell in my place. Two birds. No pain.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, there are lots of ways to use young girls. We’ve shown a great deal of creativity, over the centuries, in coming up with them. Lots of really bad things we can do to them, and say it’s just the way things are. That traditions exist for a reason. 

I guess it’s because girls are a renewable resource. The ones that live long enough, you can always use them to make more.

*

Who, then, is the May Queen this year? Anybody that matters at all? Probably just some dumb Summer tween whose family gets a duchy out of it, or whatever they are doing nowadays. Is this a relevant oracle, or just noise?

Sitting up now, knees to knees, Troy doesn’t know. What he does know, and honestly I could have put together, is that it’s happening today: 

We lost a day, the thirtieth, meaning it’s the middle of the night heading into the first day of summer. May Day.

“That poor girl,” I say, and he nods sadly. I can tell he’s already painting pictures in his head, and that’s not where I want him concentrating tonight.

“Troy, I mean, they love it. They’ve got those poor girls so turned around they think it’s a great deal. And maybe it is. I try not to judge.”

“That is a lie.”

“I try, I said.” 

And anyhow, isn’t that my plan? To stop all of this? If I can unite the Courts against Hell, then everything is up for debate. I can be the machine the Puck built, the bomb he wants me to be, and bring it all down.

“How old are they, Estelle? Are they like us?”

“No, the May Queen is much younger. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s barbaric, I don’t disagree. But it’s also not something we can take care of right now. At least it’ll keep Summer occupied for a while. The cleanup alone takes a while. And they’ll be tired from dancing.”

He shrinks back from touching me, which hurts my feelings. Not that I blame him, exactly. I’m being pretty awful. But if you stacked up all the things you have to ignore just to function, it would reach the Moon. He’s allowed to be upset about this because it isn’t his world. It’s novel.

“Before when I said I wasn’t very interested in the Fae anymore. That wasn’t exactly true. I don’t want to hear about this stuff.”

“You asked.”

“No. I mean we have to win.”

I think about saying something sweet, because Troy has touched me a little bit. I even think about pulling him in for a big hug, even though I hate every aspect of that idea even as I’m having it. He needs something, though. He’s not even angry, just... Older. He got a little older tonight after all.

But before I can respond, calm Troy’s ruffled bristling, tell him stories about the good things the Fae can do, and be, before I can even say without quite saying it how grateful I am for him, for his passion and his kindness and all the ways I depend on him, there’s a knock at the door.

“He’s alone. She’s in bed, thinking about us. So he’s here alone. I should go.”

I knit my brows at Troy, pinning him to the couch, and head to the door. The last thing I need is a lovelorn Demon Prince in my house, looking like he does, in the middle of the night, with no other distractions and a lot of pent-up anxiety. If he’s going to barge into my war council like this, he damned well better join it.

Plus, knowing Gabriel, the hapless goof he pretends to be even though it makes me grit my teeth, he’d probably just duck his head and say something like Sorry I missed the little guy, which would send me over the edge. Just right over it.

He has this way of reminding me, subtly, as though he’s not conscious of doing it, that there’s a line I can cross. That if I ever just went off on him—out of frustration, or claustrophobia, or any of the other feelings he seems designed to provoke—things would become very simple, very quickly. Which is to say very dangerous. Not sexy dangerous, bad dangerous. 

Our agreement is based on trust, he’s saying, and part of that trust is that I won’t ever make him feel too bad about himself. On my side, I trust that he won’t kill me. It’s not fair, but it’s how it works. Guys get to have some funny ideas about what’s romantic. Rattlesnake love.

*

“You two still awake?”

I let him in without a word, heading back to the couch so he’ll know what he’s walking into. Troy’s nestled down, legs kicked up over one leg, face in his phone. He aims a finger-fluttering wave in our direction without looking up, and Gabriel holds up a hand in response that he knows is going nowhere. If Troy would just high-five him like one time, I think.

“Can I offer you something? Water?”

Cold water, like when we were kids and you  couldn’t eat or drink anything in my house. Remember those times, I’m saying. Remember we were satisfied. Before all of this bull.

“I brought tequila,” he says, placing a paper-wrapped bottle in the exact middle of a kitchen island I’ve imagined into being. Out come the shot glasses, and as soon as he can catch Troy’s eye we’re drinking. It’s been a long night. I don’t mind if it gets longer.

“You were really nice to Selena tonight.”

“I’m nice.”

He laughs. That quirk in his mouth when it goes sideways.

“You were. She’s something. It’s interesting. When I saw you guys in that place I wasn’t...”

“—That place is over.”

“It just opened!”

“Not for long. Is this a social call?”

Gabriel sips. Never shoots. He likes the burn.

“I have been hearing things. You too, Troy. I heard they loved you at Court.”

“Heard Summer’s going to war over your marriage, that’s what I heard.”

Troy only shoots, never sips. He delivers his line, and then waits to see what you’ll do. It’s the only time I’ve noticed him look at Gabriel all night.

“Well, I guess that’s why I’m here. Pieces are moving. I wanted to make sure you two were safe.”

Insofar as I have never been safe, I want to say, we’re safe. But that’s a rabbit hole, and I don’t need Troy staring at me from his bar stool to tell me so. I’ve been dealing with Gabriel a long time.

“We’re not going to do anything stupid, if that’s what you mean. She’s nice,” Troy says brightly. “You really would like her.”

“And you’ll leave Selena out of it?”

He’s all about this girl tonight.

“What does she have to do with anything?”

Gabriel puts his glass down carefully, crossing arms over his wide chest.

“Nothing. She’s got power but it’s nothing to do with us. I’m more worried about collateral damage.”

“Summer gets its feelings hurt constantly. It should be on their crest. They’ll get over it. Besides, it’s May Day. They’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

“Girls,” Troy barks. “They’ve got girls to fry.”

Gabriel nods.

“The King of Cinders is offended by that as much as you are, Troy. Hell got past that kind of crap a long time ago.”

It’s true. They’ve really diversified since the Burning Times. Hell’s action in the world reminds me of nothing so much as a rose bush that digs its roots so far into everything, so carefully and slowly and delicately the whole thing could fall apart, held together by brambles. Like scaffolding falling away to reveal a castle made of thorns. 

“I don’t want to talk about Hell. Hell has California. What I want is to protect Winter until Summer passes on. May Day gives us cover, if we’re going to move.”

“Hell won’t ally with Summer. And not with you, not after this changeling thing. That pissed them off at least as much as it did the Summer Court, and they don’t even have a dog in the fight. If I wasn’t there to advocate they might have...”

“—So I have you to thank that Hell hasn’t come knocking? And exactly how long is that supposed to last?”

“When’s your birthday, Estelle?”

He has the smile of a kidnapper.

“Not tonight, Gabriel. Besides, what about Selena?”

“Useful. Maybe a friend. Not you.”

Because nobody is. Because somebody told him, a very long time ago, that I was his. That he was a Prince who got to grow up knowing exactly who his Princess would be. Sometimes I wonder if he would like me, much less love me, without that constant pressure. I used to think he was gay, even. He might be. But he’s got these ideas about how things are going to go. And even though the ideas are about me, I don’t really factor into them. Best not talk about it.

“What are we going to do about her, then? The last thing we want is her taking the Walk.”

“I agree. At least until this all blows over. It’s why I picked her up in the first place, to see how far she’s gotten.”

Farther than he thinks, if her little message from the Autumn Court is any indication, but he’s talking about a different magic entirely. The Hollywood Regency.

“And? Are we about to find another Marilyn in our midst? Last time she brought down a Presidency. The whole country changed for her. And Hell profited madly, I’d point out.”

Troy nods, thrilled.

“Black Marilyn Monroe is a very exciting possibility. It makes me pleased for America.”

Gabriel cocks his head. He honestly hadn’t thought about that.

“That does complicate things. But I think between the three of us we can delay her. At least until the Teind. And then we’ll see where we’re at.”

He says this with finality, like it’s his call. Like any of this has to do with him.

“And after the Teind, what about your celebrity? Are we going to marry our brands, too? Can I be a model for your perfumes?”

“You joke, but I’ve seen the mockups. They’ve got a whole campaign plotted out. You’ll have to stop working with the Drones and doing your own PR, of course. Our guys are better anyway.”

That’s no lie. Hell’s marketing department only steals from the best. But the last thing I want is him getting onto the trainwreck of our upcoming nuptials. He tends to focus on that anyway, but especially in his cups. Stupid to go there just to make a point. The plan now should just be to get him drunk enough he stops making sense, lay a kiss on him at the door, and send him home.

“I wanted to get your opinion on that, actually.”

He brightens immediately. Men like to be asked for things, they don’t really care what. They love telling you what to do, how to fix it. Even Troy is a little too eager sometimes.

“So the secret is out with Gertrude, right? And Summer’s using it to start trouble, with us and between Winter and Hell. My question is, what’s the problem with throwing our support behind Gertrude? She’s the one getting left out of the conversation here. And let me tell you from personal experience, that sucks.”

Gabriel makes a show of considering the information I’ve given him, as though I have given him any information. If he were still wearing the beard I bet he’d stroke it.

“I want you to watch out for her, Gabriel. She’s my sister. She’s like Selena, she just got here. She doesn’t know anything. She needs help, and I can’t give it.”

He looks past my shoulder, imagining her. I can tell he’s intrigued. Just like you, he’s thinking, but innocent.

For a second it makes me sad. But just for a second. If I could give him an Estelle dolly to play with he would never leave the house. And this one comes like a Trojan Horse, with a full-blooded faerie bitch inside. He won’t see that coming. He’ll expect me, indulging his ego and his million moods and all of it because I’m fond of him. He won’t be expecting that monster until the trap’s closed around him; and by that time he will have forgotten me.

He would protest that so loudly, with hot terrified tears in his eyes, if you said it. That’s why you don’t say it. Ever. But the truth is that he would only miss me when he remembered to. And the rest of the time, she’d make sure his hands were full.

You can’t force love, nor can you hurry it. We need to back off them both, if it’s going to work. Set them up for some kind of clichéd romance and leave our hands clean, or else they’d just deny me out of pique and the whole thing would go nowhere. That’s something I know about, too. If I didn’t have the Winter Court up my ass about Gabriel all the time he probably would have consumed me long ago. It’s only the irritation I feel about the Gabriel Thing that keeps me out of his arms. Arranged marriages must work out sometimes, I guess, but in my case it has just made me a very angry person.




Chapter Nine: The Plan We Won’t Be Following


“What could have made her peaceful, with a mind,” Gabriel quotes at me, “That nobleness made simple as a fire...”

Troy’s staring at me too. I must have gotten the Look again, just now. 

“I’m neither. None of the above. Right now I’m War Chief to an embattled Court that your people abandoned a decade ago. That’s all I am now. Razorblade. The rest is negotiable.”

I can tell I’m turning him on, which was not the intention. Not entirely.

“—And that’s it for tonight, then.”

If I turn him away three times he’ll have to go, faster than a vampire in church, but I don’t mean it yet. I just want him to start thinking about something else.

“Are you really going to watch out for Selena? You’re not going to use her as some kind of a pawn in your...”

I don’t even have to act insulted this time.

“Gabriel, I told her I would. That promise was to her, not to you. It’s not about you. She trusts me. That should be enough for you. More than enough.”

“I didn’t mean to piss you off. I just meant, I don’t know. You’ve got ideas about what a win-win is, and they don’t always...”

Make him happy, he means. My plans—my honor, my faerie etiquette, my survival—doesn’t always benefit him, and that makes it incomprehensible. I think the world must be a confusing place for him sometimes, looking at it that way.

“I choose my words very carefully, that’s true. But a big reason for that is that I can’t lie. I would never want to say that I lied to you. Is that so bad?”

Bad call. Bad to bring up the fact that I’m not the real Princess anymore. It means my words mean less because I mean less. Have less value to bring them. But if that makes Gertrude more attractive, so be it. I’m not going to cry over losing the esteem of a boy, even a very sweet one that I love, out of simple pride. I lost that a long time ago.

“You sound like Hell already. Queen of Cinders, one day.”

“Well, until that day I wish you would not question me.”

If he thinks too hard, or too long, about the implications of Gertrude’s birth, he’ll realize what my mother did, back home: I can lie, and always could. It’s easy enough to snap back into the shape he wants me to be, if that’s what it takes.

“Not my loyalty, and not my love.”

He nods, smiling hugely to show how impressed he is by my intensity. Honor isn’t a demonic quality, but it is a male one, and he wants to congratulate me on showing it.

“So what do you suggest, then? How do I calm things down, between Winter and everybody else?”

“Are you asking me as a friend, or as your princely spy in Hell?”

“I’m asking you as an MBA with marketing experience.”

*

The plan—which we won’t be following, but is nice to store away for later—is pretty simple. We’d start by showing off Gertrude in the Realms, telling the story like a makeover: 

First we show her off in the Realms looking the crummy way she does now, which is to me just a normal pretty girl, but to the Fae she’ll look like a rescued POW. Set the whispers flying that Summer did nothing so much as rescue her from the mundane world and bring her home again. Give garters and medals to the Summer cops that brought her in. Make it a Summer story, the greatest Kingdom in Fae and its true protectors.

Then, make some meaningless political moves as Winter: Just do some creative accounting, move some overseas support around, take troops from one safe area and drop them into another. Show military strength, which isn’t usually a Winter priority. Exchange some kids or courtiers with the Minor Courts, as a reaching-out. Leave Summer and Hell for phase three...

In which the newly crowned Princess’s return is touted as a revitalization, a fertilization, a call to order and rational change. The other Courts eat that stuff up; it’s only Winter that glories in stasis. That will make us look more like them and less like ourselves, and set Gertrude up as an ambassador to every far-flung corner: The newer, brighter, warmer Winter. Her earthly beginnings stop being embarrassing and start being a sign of humility, the last sign that Winter’s storied arrogance and insularity have given way.

Gabriel knows more than anyone that it’s hogwash, but he also knows it would work. This is the best part of Gabriel: He gets it. He knows how people work, even bizarre people, and how to herd them from place to place. It’s a Hellish thing, but it’s also specific to him: There’s an empathy in his manipulation, an ability to step outside of himself, that his pureblood brethren will never understand. They would lie and say they got it, and fake it well enough you’d never know, but they wouldn’t truly be with you, even if they were lying in your face. He’s the best of them, which is saying almost nothing at all.

Hell’s plan would go something like: Find the Archduke Ferdinand of the situation, and kill him. That’s their style: Pinch-points, scapegoats, assassinations. Tipping points. They’d never think to use Winter’s pride against them: The way mother loves the aristocracy but thirsts for ways to show noblesse oblige. The way father wants to apologize for his existence. The way they both must hunger to make this up to Gertrude, their daughter. For everyone to see them do it.

Because phase four of this plan, which Gabriel is leaving out for his usual manipulative reasons, would be to follow all that up with a high-profile marriage, connecting our two houses for the first time in an earthly decade. By giving all the power to Summer in the Gertrude situation, they’d be angled for a perfect alliance and nobody could say anything: That is the thing Hell will never understand about Winter. They’d never see it coming.

But that means the keystone of this story is our wedding, and means Gertrude gets the whole Winter Court to herself: Two sisters, ruling two Kingdoms, one burning and one cold. Not one of us could resist the romance of that, as we watch it blooming into life.

Once you know the keystone doesn’t exist, the whole edifice falls apart and you’re left with weeds. But Gabriel doesn’t need to know that. He’ll find out soon enough.

“Before you go, I do have one more request.”

“Anything, Princess.”

I nod, trying not to be grossed out.

“You’ve had news of Summerisle, or been there at Court, enough to have the backstory on Gertrude’s kidnapping from the real world. Do you know anything about May Day? This year’s model?”

Gabriel stands, fast as a shot, towering over us. Ready to run.

Troy turns a shining face up to him, ever so admiring. He seems tiny, suddenly.

“Any information at all, Gabriel? Can you help?”

Gabriel is still, for a moment, Troy’s hand on his arm. He thinks, deeply. Shakes his head.

“Nobody you know.”

And as though that’s sufficient, he’s gone. Without even a kiss goodbye.

*

“Well. That didn’t go very well.”

I can’t agree with Troy, but I know what he means. After all this time ignoring Gabriel, the one time he gives the guy the time of day and it’s useless. He’ll have to be twice as mean for a while just to build up steam for the next one.

“It wasn’t a lie, exactly. It’s somebody we don’t know.”

“But that’s a dumb tautology, though. We don’t really know anybody at Court anyway. We don’t know any Summer girls.”

He’s right. That was intentional. Gabriel follows faerie politics more closely than the Fae themselves, he’s always been an operator that way. His family’s always used him like a weapon, or a translator device on a spaceship: Taking the crazy talk of the faeries and turning into the crazy talk of Hell. Half the time at those dinners, even as a child, he’d be the one explaining situations to my parents. Which, of course, they loved. 

Winter has always prized precocity: Cold intellect, forced like winter roses before its time. A Winter specialty. The only kind of growth they can understand, like white grasses coming up through concrete; like a piping-hot loaf of yeasty bread, baked into the form of a girl, edges ever so slightly burnt. 

Sometimes when his parents would begin to speak, mine would shake their heads, confused as if by their accents, and turn to the beautiful little blond boy in his little suit, so he’d repeat what they’d just said. They never noticed—how could they?—how limited they were, too; how Hell needed Gabriel to explain them even more. To turn their secretive, twisting, hidden truth into the lies Hell understands. Only he, and me, and the Puck could ever see it. We thought it was funny, then. Now I just think it’s pretty sad.

Not least of all because of what it’s made of him. Made of us both.

“We need to call Gertrude,” Troy says, unwisely. “She’ll have been presented at Court at least once before they brought her home, right? They would have shown her off. And from what you said, those girls would have been going nuts this week.”

It’s true. The May Queen isn’t chosen publicly until May Day begins. It would have been like bridesmaids scrabbling for a bouquet when she was there. Elizabeth Bennett’s ugly stepsisters, or however that story goes. Pushing each other madly out of the spotlight, laughing together with girls they’ve known their entire lives, all the time with knives behind their gowns.

For some of them it would be their debut, just like the Winter Princess: The survivors would be next up for presentation, girls without a prior arrangement. Without families of record. Snatching, jealous mothers tired of working their asses off at Court with no increase in their station. Looking at these pretty, small girls like it’s their last chance before they’re turned into glue. If they don’t get chewed up by the machine tomorrow, they’ll still need to be fed into it eventually. If not Day One, Day Two.

“That would be the right thing to do. If we wanted to find out the name of this girl. But then what? Once we sleuth out which minor duchy has decided its eldest daughter is worth ripping apart for fun, then what? A frontal assault on the Summer Court, maybe. A daring midnight caper to drag this girl from her bejeweled chamber or her flowery bower and tell her how stupid she is for signing up for this? That her whole life wanting to be Queen was idiotic suicide?”

Troy holds up his hands, calling for truce, but I’m not nearly done. We are too close to my reality to be talking about some other girl’s hypothetical life. It isn’t fair for him to drag my eyes off the ball, to say, “This girl is screwed, too.” It’s insensitive. And not just to me.

The next Teind is out there somewhere, just fourteen years old. That girl or boy is just as screwed as the rest of us now. They won’t be a Princess, fake or otherwise; they won’t get a crown for it. They’ll go to Hell for real. It will be just like dying, for them. Right now they’re practically a kid, with no idea what’s coming. They won’t sit at table pretending to get the joke, hardening behind their mask. It will just be, one day, “You have been sold.” And off they’ll go, to untold nastiness, because the Courts are too afraid they’ll be foreclosed.

“And then assuming she doesn’t blast us with everything she’s got, or call for the guards straight away, assuming we get her right at that split-second she’s staring into the mirror trying to imagine what being dead will be like, assuming we could scare her into leaving her entire life behind, then what? What after that? We piss off Summer even more by stealing one of their children, and they suddenly remember we’re at war, and my whole plan goes down.”

I can tell Troy’s not buying it. He thinks I’m talking about myself. He still thinks I’m the one sacrificing her. You would think the pagan in him, the Wild Boy, would be able to see the forest for the trees. But I guess it’s only human to care about the person, once you can imagine them being tortured to death. So let’s talk about that, instead. Let’s talk about where that tenderness leads.

“Or say we spirit her away to the hard world—this aristocratic, thin-blooded girl whose satin-slippered feet have literally never even touched the ground before, this girl who’s been rewarded since birth for being as empty-headed as she can possibly manage—then what? Teach her computers? She can’t drive, cars are made of iron and they’d burn her skin where she touched it. She can’t eat most human food, she’s allergic to practically everything. But assuming we got around that, which my people can barely do, what then? Set her up with a nice hovel in east LA, so she can use her glamours to excel in the sex industry? Stared at, touched by mortal men. Whom she’s been raised to believe are worse than animals, and might as well be if you’re her. Tell me, what else do you plan on doing to this poor girl? How far down do you want to drag her exactly?”

He’s disappointed, I can tell. In me, but in the world too.





Chapter Ten: Maps of the Moon


The room is quiet for a while. Troy’s a humming fly on the wall, watching us stare each other down, shivering. I can tell he feels stupid, which is exactly how I wanted him to feel. It’s a complicated thing, to stand on decorum when you’re at war: Another level entirely, if you insist on treating everyone like they’re the only tree in a forest that’s already burning. I know he hates it, I know it feels like I’m physically attacking when I question this in him, but it’s the only way to keep him safe. He needs to know what the hard way looks like.

“I’m not dropping this. So you know. But unless I can figure out a way to do it, I won’t distract you further.”

It’s fine for him to care. I like that he cares. I just don’t need to hear it. I don’t need another body on my back. If I start thinking about burning down Faerie just to save myself, it seems doable. If I think about it like engineering peace between five armies and taking on a powerful, evil corporation that has been around longer than any of us—since about five minutes after Creation, to hear Gabriel’s parents tell it—it seems impossible. I need the limitless enthusiasm of self-interest, not the savior complex he needs me to roll around in all the time.

“I’m all ears. If you can possibly think of a way to move this timeline up even faster than Gertrude already has, be my guest. Until then, just focus with me. Gabriel: What’s his agenda?”

Troy shakes his head. He’s too wound up to do his trick. Sometimes drinking or drugs help, but most of the time they just throw him off. He doesn’t like doing magic when he’s messed up.

“Just watching him I would say he doesn’t have one. He was afraid you were going to go after Selena, because he thinks you’re insanely jealous of her, because of course he does. He thinks you’re hiding it well, but the second you can burn her you will. I don’t know that he’s entirely wrong. But I also know you have plans for her.”

It’s not Hell I’m worried about with her, or Hollywood. What I want to know is Autumn’s plan for her, and not even Gabriel seems to know about that. Autumn is slippery as goddamn. If Hell is Silicon Valley, Autumn is Wall Street. Always having neat ideas. All of their guys out in the world dress like male models, identically tasteful, all in black and charcoal. You can spot an Autumn by his messenger bag, we say: It’s the one without a logo. Tasteful lines and a minimalist, startup aesthetic.

The girl ones are even worse, I can’t go into them. They talk about food a lot, the ones that live here in the real world. They talk and talk about how much they love it, they talk about sugar like it’s sex, but they never gain any weight. It’s a weird racket. 

Their apartments are like catalog showrooms, decorated by aliens, soft textures they’ll never really feel; they never read books, but they’ve always read the newspaper. They go to whatever hot new places, like the rest of us, but it’s not for survival: It’s because they think they’re going to find something there they can’t get anywhere else. They only date each other, and they all look like siblings. You can’t even hate them, there’s not enough there to hate. You just stay out of their way and try to follow their advice.

If I were still feeling antagonistic toward Selena, this would put me over the ledge, because it’s a strong indication that she’s set to blow. They only like what’s viral, and she is going to be very viral soon. Gabriel’s confirmed that much, at least. But if they’re claiming her for protection... It’s a blank spot. I have never been able to figure one of them out. I’ve slept with a few, but to be honest it was precisely because I could tell we’d never really understand each other. 

“So Autumn Court stands with us, if we protect Selena Kirke. Do you think they meant against Hell, or against Summer? And do you think they care what’s going on with Spring? And do you think they meant protect like not involve her, or like take an active role in her future?”

“I think they meant it would be a good thing to do. A sign of respect. Just to do what they ask.”

He’s right. That’s totally an Autumn move. By telling us she has value, all they’re saying is that she has value. There’s no more to the message than that. I should not put my stuff on them. Well, then that’s case closed: The best way to protect her right now is to delay her apotheosis into a Sex Goddess, and Gabriel agrees, so that’s what we’re going to do. She’ll keep drawing monsters like flies, but it’s LA: That was going to happen anyway.

*

“...So what’s it like in Hell?”

I’m grateful for the change the subject, to be perfectly honest, even if it’s one I usually don’t enjoy. Maybe he knows this, too.

“That’s a sensible question. Not exactly on topic, but more in line with where your head needs to be at.”

“And how is it?”

“It’s lovely. A little warm. They have beaches, I remember. And great houses, tall as the sky. The colors are off, like you’d think: More black, reds and oranges, burning things on fire. Lakes of it. It has an aesthetic I don’t much admire. You never see the damned, whatever those are. You only see servants, blinked in and out of existence by a passing thought. But you can hear them. It’s organized in choruses. I think it’s because the Fallen remember how they used to sing.”

“Estelle, that’s really awful. I don’t think you would do well in that environment.”

“The sky is like a steel roof. Like you can actually hear things echoing off of it. And there’s no sun or moon, so the light never changes. It’s always red and warm. Not dry. Your eyes itch, all the time. And every single thing anyone says is a lie. Not like at home, not like in Winter—I mean they love it. They don’t just do it because they have to, they do it because it gets them off.”

Not that I really went there much. It was usually neutral territory, or Winter. The Fae don’t historically take jaunts into Hell. Most people don’t, period. They have a way of finding reasons to confine you when you try to leave. It’s not like there are embassies. There wouldn’t be a lot of options, even for royalty, if they decided to hang onto you. 

If you’re stuck in Faerie and you can’t get out, depending on where the moon is and all that stuff you can make it to Earth. The real world. But it’s not like that once you’re in Hell, because Fae is already in Hell. There’s nowhere to go. So you smile gratefully with your lips over your teeth and you don’t say anything, and they know you’re grateful for the invitation but you’re not going to respond, and that’s the end of it.

“I don’t want you to go live there. Even though we like Gabriel now.”

“We do?”

“I like his plan. I think he cares about people. Like maybe he doesn’t even know it.”

“He talks about it enough.”

“Yeah, but that usually means they don’t. They’re telling you a story about themselves they want you to believe, so then they can believe it too. They can count on you to help them believe it. And when Gabriel is being romantic he’s pretty gross, but pretty sexy. It’s when he doesn’t know he’s thinking about other people that you can tell. He’s secretly nice.”

“Well, his dad did his best to burn that part out of him. But I know what you mean. When he was a boy he was like that all the time, not just accidentally.”

“Is that why you care about him so much?”

“No, I care about him because I care about him. But it makes it easier sometimes to remember him that way. Growing up at Court it was like, I sometimes used to imagine looking some Lord or Lady in the face and saying the meanest or the craziest thing in the world, and I knew they wouldn’t do anything. You could be at a great feast and throw the boar or the turkey through the air, or scream, or skip silver platters across the table like stones on a lake, and the party would just go on like nothing happened. Like you were invisible; screaming behind glass. Gabriel was the only person I’d ever met who actually reacted to things. I always thought of him like the Moon, constantly getting nailed by a million asteroids. A walking map of collisions.”

“He’s not soft anymore.”

“No. But that doesn’t give me an excuse to care less about him. It just makes it harder.”

Troy looks at me sadly, more tired than I’ve seen him all through tonight’s adventures, and I can tell what he’s thinking: That’s me, too. That’s what I put him through.

“Troy, I want to say something and it’s very difficult so I need you to look somewhere else besides my face.”

“Okay, but I don’t want to. It looks like you’re about to cry, and I feel like that would be an interesting thing to see.”

“You’re ruining it.”

He nods and obeys.

“Troy, I love you madly. Okay? If it weren’t for you I would absolutely fall apart. I like you because you are talented, and you do what you’re told without screwing around, which is a very rare quality and a useful one. But you care about the right things. You care about things I can’t care about. And even if I tell you that’s dumb, or lecture you about why it doesn’t matter, I want you to keep doing that, okay? I want you to stay wild no matter what. No matter what being in my gravity does to you, you have to stay open.”

I wait for him to look, but he never does. He weighs and thinks and nods slowly to himself, but he doesn’t answer and he doesn’t look.

“That was probably hard for you to say. So I won’t thank you but I will say I think it was brave. And you better listen to me too. You think that I like you because you’re magic and the most wonderful things happen all around you. And that’s true, I like that. But I also like how you’re never scared and you always think everything is stupid, because that makes me feel a lot safer. I don’t think it’s good for you, but it helps me out for sure. So you need to think about this for a second, which is maybe you wouldn’t need me to be soft for you if you could be open on your own. You wouldn’t think I was so wild if you weren’t always trying to protect yourself and be a razorblade, like you said. I love you just like how you are, but I would also love you if you were different. That’s what that word means, Estelle. I don’t know if you know this, but the way you were raised is insanely fucked up. You absolutely cannot be somebody, or do something, just because you think that’s how I see you, or I’ll go away if you don’t. I won’t be another person in your life that does that to you.”

For a second I feel like we could do it. We could be any shape we wanted, anything at all.

Just for a second, though.




Chapter Eleven: The Facetime Continuum


There is a kind of girl that I am friendly with, although we are not especially friends, who is angry to the point of being just entirely over it. It is the vogue among these girls, sometimes, to go out of the house looking like hell, with a fresh glamour over yourself.

So everybody who is in the game can see you—mascara raccoon, smelling like a badger, looking like a thief, hair all nasty—but anybody who hasn’t got the sight just sees you looking perfect, like you wake up perfect and go to bed perfect and never use the bathroom. I admire this: In theory.

There is never a point at which I would have done this. I work too hard for my body to use it for politics in that way. And most of what I do anyway is a message to the people who can see us the way we really are: I am a mask, under which I look exactly the same as my mask. Which is another way of doing the same thing, I suppose. It just seems a little less like a tantrum.

Or, if I am being particularly honest, it’s because I like having power over those girls. You can feel very powerful and secure in yourself, going out secretly gross, all the way until you come up against a woman who is exactly what she appears to be. Then, it’s going to make you feel bad. You will think she is a grownup, and you are just a kid, playing pretend. And when that happens it makes me feel good. Which is to say, it makes me feel safe.

However, when I wake up—Troy’s already gone to the Mosquito Queen, I’m gearing up for a visit to the Ladies—I think about it. Not as a statement, but simply because I am hung over. Just this once, I can try the easiest possible solution. A shortcut to bravery.

This is the conversation I have with myself every morning, of course, but today I almost mean it. And so, like every morning, I wait until the fear has passed, staring up through my eyelids at the ceiling. And like every morning, when it does, I apply myself to the work at hand. No sense being silly.

*

If I drive myself, I’ll have time to think. Depending on how things go with Troy and cell reception, I can even scheme. 101 to Mulholland—which is how you have to come in if you want to see the Ladies: From the East—is a half-hour. They don’t really keep time in the Canyon, certainly not where I’m going. It is almost always late afternoon, from what I can tell. And then, abruptly, night.

If I don’t drive myself, I can double down: Do a meeting on the way. As Princess I have a liaison with Autumn, official channels, a royal concierge, that might help clarify this Selena Kirke situation. I can’t think clearly enough, yet, to know what I would say. Every question seems like another quicksand trap, if I don’t want to show my hand.

The Autumn Court having pledged themselves to my war effort, if I protect this Selena, means a few things. It means they are not moving on their official stance: Putting themselves forward as a more centrist Winter, a web of bull that keeps them on safely friendly terms with the Summer Court from which they can’t be extricated. 

Autumn is afraid to move.

They pantomime change—killer apps and new economies, social justice—but all they are really ever doing is moving money or power from one hand to another. It’s all they know how to do. Winter would be their stalking horse, something to hide behind while they take bites out of Summer. Which conflicts with my plans, firstly because who cares about the Summer Court and secondly because it means they don’t know the real enemy. 

I got my hopes up Autumn would want to harry Hell with me, with Selena Kirke as their envoy, but in the light of the morning that seems stupid and silly. Of course they are taking Summer’s posturing seriously. Which in turn means they don’t really see me, just what I represent. What I need to do is get Autumn pissed off about the whole thing. Angled right they would make war on Heaven itself, just for setting the whole stupid thing up this way in the first place. That’s how they’d see it. And that’s a little ambitious, even for me.

Eventually I will have to talk to Selena, figure out what she knows. But before I do that, I need to know everything she could possibly know, so she won’t catch me off guard. She’s already wary of helpful patronage, if her take on Gabriel is to be believed. Not that it necessarily is, he’s pretty effective when he wants to be, but she has a healthy skepticism of getting information for free. Which makes it tricky. To make someone love you, they need to think you’re absolute.

My thoughts are everywhere. I am not being a detective right now. I can’t be on the phone without coffee at least, not with ideas and fears fluttering all around the place like doves. I will drive myself. Selena can keep herself safe, for at least the afternoon, and when Troy comes back from the Drones we can take her to dinner, feel her out. The Ladies are like a year of yoga. I always come back wired and hopeful. She’ll like that.

I wonder what she is doing right now, Selena Kirke. I wonder if her flophouse is decorated nicely, in a comfy dumb bed and breakfast way, or if it’s just sad. I wonder if she’s thinking about going over to Anaheim, or hitting the impersonation game, or if she’s somehow a bigger player in the Autumn Court than we know about. I wonder if she’s listening to music, and if so, what she is listening to. Whether on its oracular shuffle it tells her the future a song at a time, like it does me.

If Troy were here we could spy on her together, but it’s creepy to do it alone, so I have to just imagine. While I am putting on makeup and thinking about her, looking into the mirror, looking back at herself.

She wasn’t wearing a glamour, last night at Blue Heaven. She was barely wearing makeup. And Gabriel looked at her like that anyway. Everybody did.

*

There is one game I hate above all games, I don’t know if there’s a name for it yet but I call it the Facetime Continuum. What it is, is, the person—reporter, producer, biographer, whatever—stares at you trying to see what you look like. And your job is to flip through as many faces as possible as they’re looking at you, until they spontaneously generate an entirely personal idea of who and what you are. Kind of like playing riddles back home. Shapeshifting.

Once they have this idea of you there’s very little you can do to change it, so you might as well just accept it. Use it like a little voodoo dolly you can animate with very little effort: They will always think what the dolly’s doing is real, because the way they see you is more important than who you are.

But to get a person to that place—where they could have entire conversations, practically, with this version of you that doesn’t exist outside of them—you have to do this game, and that’s the part I hate. It is so exhausting coming up with things to be. It feels like lying, which I don’t think I would enjoy even if I hadn’t grown up in the Winter Court where it was an impossibility. You really put the work in.

Like if it’s a woman you have to act scared of her at first, smaller or larger or just less defined, and then the second she feels strong, you wither her, just a wrinkle at one corner of your eye or a slight roll of it, and then before she reacts to that even you have to ask her for something—for her opinion, or for her to mirror back whatever you just said like it’s her idea, or her backup on some basic opinion that everybody shares but still feels special for holding—and then you have her. 

Or with an old guy, you have to act like you’re flirting, but behind that you are repulsed by him, but behind that—in a place only he can see, only he has the insight to see this part, not even you are aware of this fact—you really do want him to have sex with you. It’s his job to get you all the way back from C to B to A, because if he does that, he’s just helping you. Helping you see the larger picture, which just happens to be exactly what he wants.

Have you ever noticed that when men tell you to be rational, or objective, what they mean is agree with them? Most people have noticed this. What most people haven’t figured out is, you might as well do it. Screw ‘em. That’s a hard one to swallow, but honestly I prefer it to this game. Agreeing with a stupid man is more honest than the Olympic gymnastics you have to do to win an argument and anyway, you’re never going to. Let them glory in being right, who cares.

Troy would hit the roof if I said this, at least to another girl, because he thinks I’m a bad feminist. Which may well be true, but as a freelance misandrist I’m tricky as hell.

*

The question, then, is what to do when presented again with Selena Kirke. What can she possibly help me with? The thing I need help with is making her my new BFF, which requires that she already love me; I need her famous, which is also a snake eating its own tail. Maybe I just don’t know enough about her.

Maybe I can rush her with the idea that she’s the Autumn Court’s envoy, treat her like valued war counsel, but on the off chance that it’s true I’ll just look like an idiot. So the question comes back around to how she is connected with them, with faerie. Which is a very rare thing for a witch to be. Which means if I draw too much focus to it, she’ll seem strong. She’ll have something I actually need, not something I am pretending to need. Then I’m screwed.

Gabriel’s already got the “fresh face in town” angle covered; I can’t act like a jealous big sister after his big show of discovering her in a coffee shop. Not that I could sell that act, not in a million years. It would make Troy laugh but that’s about it.

I could cut to the Tithe stuff, she’d probably like that. The hit we got off her that first night, on Highland, brought with it a very Marilyn sense of melancholy and tragic romance. She’d probably be very open to the idea that only she can save me from Hell. And of course, it has the advantage of being practically true. Now that she’s presented herself as a problem, the only way to win is get her on my side. I just wonder if it would work.

Gabriel presented us as a pair, no matter what I said, which would make it hard to cast him as the villain in our little story. The Courts, if she’s in with them she wouldn’t ally against the royals; I’d look crazy or worse. What’s left? Who do you need me to be?

Well, there’s Gertrude. Help me, save me from my evil twin, the new princess stealing my life away and sending me to Hell... 

That has potential, even though Selena doesn’t seem to have a problem with women. That would be ideal, if I could show her a star flaming out that way, point her at Gertrude like my champion. Even just the idea of pretending to be scared of that girl is as bad as agreeing with some dumb old man, it feels even more like kneeling, but I suppose that could work. If I had to, I could play that.

The Ladies can tell me what’s going on with the Spring Court, too. There’s that. If I can paint Autumn as the monsters and Spring as the heroes, she’ll be disgusted by herself. That would be useful in the short term—although if the point is to keep her from becoming a new sex bomb before her time, that wouldn’t help. If she shows signs of that, they’ll sweep her up into the sky immediately. Boys love a guilty girl.

Troy would just say, Be her friend, and then you will be her friend. 

But that would cut me off at the knees, because there’s no way to point out how he loves me precisely because I need him. I make him feel strong and wild and he likes playing bodyguard. Selena Kirke isn’t a bodyguard type, anyway. If I wanted, honestly, to be her friend, what would that look like? It’s nearly true already.

I have wasted an hour putting on makeup, more than half of that time just staring into space to be technical about it, and that’s no good. If somebody were watching—and they may well could be, act as if they are, always—they’d think I was losing confidence. It would seem like I’m sweating it. So I need that coffee, and I need to hit the road. And on cue, as I shake off my reverie, just as I think of him: Troy.




Chapter Twelve: Goldilocks Girlfriend


drones weird af, Troy tells me, across a picture of their lobby: Those recovered-wood panels making a play for Silver Lake authenticity, probably hand-aged by some intern specifically to look like a crappy shed. I hate them so much, those dudes. It’s crap like that.

The Drones greet you with water you should never drink; biscuits you should never eat. They are constantly partnering with new poisons, new outlets, new forms of revenue, and they load you up with the swag, on your way in and your way out, like that nightmare teddy bear troll lady in Labyrinth. Drowning in t-shirts and samples of fragrances. 

You can hear the low-frequency buzzing, all through the place: They keep them in a huge open warehouse space, a Temple Grandin maze; I think it’s so they’ll never notice themselves dying off, replaced by younger meaner versions of themselves. Buzz buzz.

aprprently im reflecting 2 much halo. Lay off public w/u for 1week. wildboy ur grounded. F that

They mentioned this last time, too. This idea that he serves a demo I can’t reach, gays that are not into the diva thing. Radical faeries and whatever; a rare but growing niche influencer. They keep wanting him to grow out his beard; they won’t listen when I tell them that I’ve seen it, and it’s awful when he does that. I like him how I have him, thank you very much.

I thought of making him get a boyfriend last winter, some safe bland Hollywood boy with enough money to come out of the closet. They could walk dogs and have Ken bumps where their genitals would be. Cuffing season. Taller than him, broader; light where he is dark.

We’d go back to satellites of each other, stealing away from our respective men for little date nights. I’d never been seen alone with the two of them—we’re not there yet, and never will be; I am not that girl—but it would redefine our roles with each other. Our great romance, maturing. It would work pretty great, I’ve thought, but I pictured it closer to my birthday so they could make a big show of coming to that. Hollywood royalty. 

I haven’t yet summoned the bravery to float this idea with Troy, the boyfriend experience, because he would run screaming off the edge of the earth. But maybe if the Mosquito Queen asks him the right way, he’ll be open to discussing it. I do think it would make him happy, if terrified. Both of which I would enjoy.

*

They lead you back through the maze and all of their eyes turn up to you at once, but they don’t see you, not really. Just track your movements through the maze, plugged in with those identical boiler-room headsets they’re talking into. And at the other end of the warehouse, there is a door the same silvery shade as the messed-up wood paneling everywhere else: Pressboard, with artfully random artificial knots. And through that door is a staircase, which is when it gets weird. 

Green fluorescent light all the way down, rebar for your rail, into the farm of servers and their whining heat and the canned air smell of the frigid A/C over that. And there in the middle she sits, nestled: Round dimpled body, legs nobody has ever seen and a variable number of arms, sticking out like toothpicks in a potato. Her hair is a rumbled nest, dirty blonde fading to yellowed gray, that always looks like a hastily donned wig no matter what time you see her, day or night. Mosquito Queen.

You can’t play any game with her, because she never looks at you. Just spits out information. Some of it is for you, some of it is conversations she’s having with her sisters, all over the world. You get the rhythm of it eventually, although it can take several visits, several hours, to get clear on what she’s saying to you, and what she’s just saying. And then eventually, you move past that until everything she says, addressed to you or addressed to ghosts, is imbued with meaning.

One soldier stands by, always, at your shoulder where you sit, trying to translate. They never get it, never even get half of what she’s spitting out, what connects to what, but they try so hard and they are so scared, all the time, that you end up feeling absurdly grateful to them. Even in their mediocrity. Those are the ones that burn out the fastest, so I always try to remember them first. Holiday gifts, of fruits they will abandon to the flies or subscriptions to news services they will never sample, of small gadgets and comforting items for the vacations they’ll never really take.

It is easy to be kind to them, because they asked for this. If they were singled out by fate, like yours truly, I would despise them. But somewhere up there in the hive there’s a file cabinet full of printed-out paper and on one of those sheets of paper there’s a name, signed in blood. The catastrophes that just happen to us always seem more shameful, somehow, than the ones we asked for.

There’s a part of Troy I don’t really understand, but can appreciate in theory as a shapeless fact, that can handle this particular part of the job better than I can. He whines up a storm about it, and I know he hates being treated like my assistant, but in the end it doesn’t kill him to go there. Not like it does me. Sitting down in that nasty cave, watching a mosquito sucking blood, he doesn’t enjoy it at all. But he can shake it off when he’s done. 

Did u ever know that ur my hero, I send him back, off an extreme closeup of my winged eye. He responds with a beautiful snarl, middle finger pointing up.

Havent even left for canyon, back in 4 hours, I say, pointing the camera toward the highway.

Maybe it’s because to him, this is a curtain parting: When he’s done there, he can walk back out into the real world. To him they are two separate things. Maybe that’s what it is. 

I shall be jealous, if so.

*

The Ladies of the Canyon demand their tribute, and there’s nothing in the house that they would appreciate. Not even Gabriel’s dumb tequila, if there were any left. They want sweet things, cakes and lemons, honey and agave sugar. They want for nothing, it’s all for show, but they eat it all up anyway. Sweet girl, dirty girl, they’ll say.

Berries, cherries, plums, mandarins. Some of that sweet Roquefort they like. Cherry wine and vinho verde. Sarsaparilla, that was an unlikely hit last time. Last time, before my false holiday, when they told me to go to ground. It seems like months, not weeks. I have missed them.

There was a time when Hell was changing the guard, flowing toward the Summer Court and away from our cold climes, that it got pretty dicey. Gabriel and I didn’t know the whole story until years later, but I spent part of what would have been my high school years—Gertrude making dance squad, meanwhile, or whatever she was doing—in Laurel Canyon full-time. 

The Ladies are technically, vaguely allied with Spring, making them basically whatever is more Swiss than Switzerland in our ongoing courtly drama. Supposedly they’re related to the Queen Mum, but nobody knows for sure. In any case, they don’t have any enemies, and nobody knows what would happen if they did. So what they say, goes. And what they said was, “Until Hell has stopped messing around and declared itself formally to Summer, send the Winter girl to us.” So they did. No asking questions.

I didn’t speak to my parents more than twice that entire time, other than coming home for the holidays, and barely then. I was only just beginning to think about the Teind and what it meant—what it really meant, beyond the stories they told me every day; how many different kinds of angry it could make you—and then on top of that, they couldn’t wait to get rid of me. I decided to treat it like practice, for the future. 

One of the few things that brought me comfort, once I was allowed to come back home, was imagining my future in Hell without them: Weeping, gnashing of teeth; Demeter traveling the earth, ruining crops and wailing. And then me, on my throne of cinders, ignoring it all. Cry me a river. Cry me up a whole salty river of tears, and drown in it, for I have forgotten you now.

I spent a lot of those years pretending it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and the Ladies didn’t bother to hide how irritating this was for them. They like to be thanked, they like to be plied, and I was not raised to do those things. Well, if at all. I certainly wouldn’t have thanked them at the time, even if I was able. But after a Winter childhood, that warmth was like a birthday present with any number of terrible things inside: I didn’t really believe that they liked me, much less loved me, until my time in the Canyon was almost over. When I finally opened it, it was almost too late to do anything with.

All the magic I’ve taught Troy, the stuff he didn’t arrive already knowing, that was from them. In Winter you don’t learn a lot about how to protect yourself because that’s what the Guard is for. But when we turn our socks inside out, or lose the drones crossing running water, even the circles we draw when we’re doing big magic, all of that came from them. Faeries don’t have to learn magic, they are magic. The rest of us just kind of make it up as we go along.

If I start making list of stuff to bring them, I’ll think of more stuff to bring them. That’s the great thing about lists. But before I can even start the note, my phone buzzes, and I answer without even thinking to look who’s calling, which is the kind of muddled thinking that demonstrates why I need a list today.

*

“Estelle Harlowe?”

“So far.”

“Um... Hello, Estelle? This is... Is this you?”

She sounds confused. Good.

“Selena Kirke, right? I recognized your voice.”

Just warm enough that she’ll keep talking; just cold enough that she knows she’s interrupting something. Goldilocks friendship.

“I hope that it’s okay that I’m calling you. It’s not too early, is it?”

Frankly, it would be. But she likes to rise at the dawn, I remember that about her.

“I like to get up with the sun. I’ve been doing very useful tasks all morning.”

“So you’re busy.”

That wounded-bird tone, is that real? Am I imagining it? Is she doing it on purpose?

“No, just effective. What can I do for you?”

“I wondered if you would have some time to talk today. I mean, you offered to help and I’m not asking for help, exactly, I just... We never finished our conversation.”

The Autumn Court thing, then. Like a trail of breadcrumbs she left, and now she’s following up.

“That’s true, Selena. And we really should. I’m heading out of town right now and I am afraid it’s something I can’t take you with, or...”

She sucks air, scared for a second. Technically it’s true, insofar as the Ladies don’t really live in the contiguous United States, but she won’t get that implication.

“—Oh no, I mean it’s a day trip. Not even that. Hour away. I’m not really going anywhere. Sorry. I just can’t postpone it, while I have this chance. Can I call you back later this afternoon?”

She’s silent. I can hear street noise, and have a horrible thought on my way to the window... And yeah, there she is. Right there on the street, just in case I blow her off. Power move.

“I mean, yeah. Yeah, we can talk later, I’m just... I mean, I don’t have anything going on.”

“Selena Kirke, are you downstairs from my apartment right now?”

She laughs, and then sighs.

“I’m a creep. I’m being a creep, I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean to...”

“I don’t care. Come on up. My trip can wait.”

I notice she doesn’t ask which apartment I’m in, which would be the smart call if you don’t want to look creepy, but maybe that just means I’ve thrown her off more than I thought. 

Or she’s in actual trouble, which would really chap my hide.

Down on the street, Kirke’s not moving. She’s wearing all-white today, a simple shift and junky trainers like she’s playing the ugly girl game, but still looks like a million bucks. In her hands she’s got a reusable grocery bag, loaded down, so maybe she’s bringing tribute. She should not have spent that money, not until we get her sorted out. She certainly shouldn’t be giving me things.

Why isn’t she moving? She isn’t on the phone, as far as I can tell. Just lingering, loitering. I’m glad there’s no precedent for warning the Ladies of my arrival. I’d be stressing out right now if they knew I was coming. Or maybe they do know I’m coming, in their sweetly spooky way, in which case they would also know about how this chick is wasting my time right now, so I don’t have to stress about that either.

Finally Selena Kirke’s arm comes out from her side, commandingly, and a kid appears out of the shadows, out of nowhere, and comes running to her side. No way does Selena Kirke have a kid, but that would be a less troubling discovery than this. 

The girl looks, from way up here, about twelve years old. But by the lightness of her satin-slippered step, and the way her hair moves around her face—like she’s got a personal wind machine, like she’s underwater—I know she’s older than she looks, if not by much. They squint up at my window, discussing who knows what, and I nearly drop to the floor to hide.

troy please come, I beg, across one lacquered toe. now please

like u just told me to go home!!! he shouts, across a worried face. But before I can even put together a rational response, there he is: 

o i spy a mayqueen, scrawled upon just a random shot of his apartment’s concrete floor.

Small-town girl, future Marilyn Monroe, black White Goddess, minutes-to-impact ingénue, sorceress-in-training, frenemy: There are lots of words I could use for Selena Kirke, as we are getting to know each other this week. But I would not have immediately thought Life ruiner. Train wrecker. Ass ache.

I certainly wouldn’t have thought kidnapper, until I looked down my castle wall onto the sidewalk and saw her standing there, holding tightly to the teenage wrist of what appears to be the abducted Queen of Summer.






Chapter Thirteen: What Makes You Useful


“Oh my God.”

“I know.”

Selena’s languid body has contracted into a comma, a full-body shrug. They stand at the doorway, wavering; the little red-haired Summer girl seems very excited by all of this. I want to slap her.

The only salt in the house was in the bathroom, for my neti pot, but now that’s gone: Laid along the window frames in a way I’ve never actually had to do, while I laid out what spells I could, to keep us invisible. Any time, Troy. No hurry.

“...Oh my God.”

I stare back at them, forgetting to invite them in, leaving them out in the hallway like an idiot.

“I know,” Selena says more firmly, nodding her head. Finally I bring them in, slamming the door behind us so loudly we all three jump a little. The little girl stares around my apartment for a while, then turns to me with her hand out, palm down.

“Princess...”

Somehow hearing the arrogant tone of a Summer voice snaps me back, and I clap my hands in her little face.

“No. You don’t talk to me. I don’t want to know who you are, okay?”

Selena’s a little appalled, which is not the effect I wanted to create.

“She’s just a girl, Estelle. Come on.”

“No, she’s a lot more than that. Right now she’s a hostage. You have screwed things up so wildly I can’t believe it, so you sit still and listen up. I can’t lie about what I don’t know. I don’t need to know who this girl is, or who her family is, or any of her details. I don’t want to know you, kid. You don’t want me to.”

The May Queen nods, taking it in.

“I am glad you’re safe.”

That calms them down, a little bit, but I can tell the girl is still miffed. Troy will be overjoyed that somebody was stupid enough to save this girl before they killed her. As am I.

“But that doesn’t mean you’re not a prisoner of war, okay? I won’t offer you anything to make you feel at home, but I want you to know that you are safe. There are laws for this. They won’t come here to parlay, and now they don’t even know where you are.”

The girl shrugs, elaborately disinterested, on what is clearly the best day of her life. It’s exasperating.

“We did all the things you’re supposed to do,” Selena pipes up. “They didn’t follow me here.”

Which is a relief, especially the “we” that indicates she isn’t acting entirely on her own, but still not good enough.

“We’re going to be very quiet now. We’re going to stand here in this room not talking or doing anything at all, until Troy arrives.”

“And he’ll help?” Selena perks up at that.

“No, I just can’t lock the building down until he gets here. And we are going to want him here. So I don’t murder you, for starters.”

It doesn’t really lend itself to further conversation.

*

Once Troy has arrived, thrilled beyond measure to drop to one knee and look a damn Faerie Queene in the eye, and we run through the whole anonymity procedure again before he can grill her to death, he helps me lock it down. One of the shapes he traces over the door is new.

“It’s a wolf thing. Sigil. I made it up, it’s strong.”

Not worth discussing, but interesting. I could never get the hang of making things up on the fly like that. I think in another life I would have been a librarian, or a theologian: I like how things fit together. I’m not an artist except in that way. It’s one of the reasons the PR people get so cranky with me: I don’t like making things and I don’t like saying I made things other people made, so there’s not many places to take my brand. Gluing seashells to crap on Pinterest is not how I want to go down.

“Okay, before we start on the Q&A, let’s get some things straight. Selena Kirke, I don’t know what your game is and I will be finding that out shortly, but let me tell you that this is not what I wanted to see today. You have walked into an infinity of spiderwebs. I cannot stress how badly you have thrown off my game. That’s going to have consequences.”

Selena starts to get pissed, then, and I hold up my hands.

“I’m not threatening you. I am saying there are a lot of moving parts and the consequences will be far-reaching. But I’m not interested in yelling at you about it, or scaring this girl more than you already have. I am interested in fixing this as quietly and efficiently as possible. I would appreciate your help in that.”

Selena nods then, curtly. She joins Troy on the couch, while the Summer girl wanders around, messing with my stuff. She won’t meet my gaze, after I told her to be invisible, but she gets around it slyly enough.

“In an ideal world, this girl would be dying horrifically in about twelve hours, after what I’m sure was a very pampered day. That’s what being a May Queen is.”

The girl opens her mouth to contradict me; shuts it again.

“The consequences for interrupting that are as follows: Summer, which in all likelihood would have forgotten it declared war on my family less than 36 hours ago, is going to be riled. Possibly moreso than we have ever encountered. I’m not sure how much history you know, but this is a tradition going back unbroken for literally thousands of years. There is no telling how much of the deeper magics undergirding that Realm are tied up in this gross little ritual. Parts of their world could well be falling apart as we speak.”

Troy nods, happily.

“Which is a good thing. But what it doesn’t do is incapacitate them. A military at full strength is one thing, but an army with a grudge focusing them is quite another. Right now, Winter is the enemy. And I know we did not do this. So whoever did, they are now my enemy. Selena Kirke, tell me this wasn’t Autumn that did this.”

She grimaces, beautifully, and looks at the ceiling.

“You told me Autumn was with me. You said if I protected you, they’d support me.”

“That’s all I know. I told you everything I knew. And then they showed up at my house with this kid, and told me to find you.”

Troy pats her hand, cocking his head.

“How did you get mixed up with these people? It’s not even your kind of magic.”

Sharp shake of the head to that, and he winces. She doesn’t need to know that part yet. She can still just be a girl. Just let her be a girl, for a second more.

“I’ve got this... auntie, or godmother or something, it’s not clear, back home. She’s always been pretty witchy. I never really asked her to train me, but she let me in on some things. Stuff people don’t usually know, about... all this. You.”

It’s always the batty ones that flee to the real world. Your bibbity-bobbities. They find these kids and horn in on them like grandma vampires, setting them up in these impossible dreams so they can help them out, trying to rekindle some kind of magic out of the mundane. They’re sweet. For a long time I thought that’s all the Ladies were. It never ends well, for those fairy godchildren, but the godmothers eventually move on. 

We don’t remember mortals very long, after. Your heart would break if you could.

The ones I would kill as soon as look at are their nasty cousins, the other kind of crazy: Those old women that live off morality traps, begging assholes for bread or coins and then cursing them to high heaven when they don’t help out. Black dogs and poltergeists. Women wailing, or seducing, until you follow them out and drown. 

They get off thinking they’re moral watchdogs or vengeful spirits of justice, but if you watch long enough you start to see how they only pick the exact people who would never help them. They only pick on the wounded, the afraid, whether that’s some mean businessman or goth teen clove-smoker: Only people that will tell them to screw off, so they can punish them and pretend they’ve done something holy.

“You had a fairy godmother,” Troy whispers. Selena rolls her eyes, smiling.

“Anyway, she told me it was time to head west, so I headed west. She said she had family here that would help me, guide me. That was Autumn. They found me the first night, told me some tricks to stay safe, and said not to worry about finding work.”

And then what, you just coincidentally...

“So when your Gabriel found me, I was ready. I knew something like that was coming, and it would lead me to you. And when I found you, I was supposed to give you the message. I went home last night and waited for the next thing to happen. None of it’s been particularly magical, if you don’t count that weird club we were at last night, so I wasn’t that alert. I fell asleep early. And then this morning...”

Selena waves toward the girl and the girl waves back with a cupped hand, scooping out noblesse oblige.

“Selena, this is important. Did they tell you to bring her to me? Or did you do it on your own?”

“Once she told me about the May Queen and I took about six showers, I thought I probably shouldn’t bring this to Gabriel’s door, and you’re the only other person I trust.”

“Don’t trust anybody. Not me, certainly not Gabriel...”

“—I mean, ‘trust’ like you would know what to do. Or at least keep us safe. I was pretty annoyed they dropped her in my lap until she told me what they had planned. Now I’m glad.”

So is Troy. And so am I, but in a way that is vastly outweighed by how pissed I am.

“So they probably knew you’d come to me. But they didn’t tell you to come to me. What they told you was they stand... What did they say exactly? What was the message?”

“The Autumn Court stands with you, if you protect me.”

“Word for word.”

“Word for word. They wouldn’t even tell me your name, I guess in case it didn’t turn out.”

“If only.”

Everybody relaxes, I guess because I’ve finally relaxed. Thinking cap time.

When I settle into my chair for a think, Selena digs into her big bag for snacks, and the girl’s eyes get hungry. She must be starving. I remember that.

“None for you, majesty. I am sorry.”

The girl nods and turns away, circumambulating my apartment once again. There’s coffee, though, which is much more important than whatever is going on with her.

*

“Okay, facts on the ground. Autumn took pains to let me know that they’re with me, in secret. Now, that either means with Winter, against Summer, or me personally against Summer, or me personally against Hell.”

Selena snorts, shaking her head. What?

“I’m the War Chief, for reasons I don’t have time to go into. For now you just need to know that I’ve declared war on Hell. People may or may not know that. What everybody does know is that Summer is mad, crazy mad, because of this trick my family pulled like, decades ago. They are soldiered up. And that’s something Autumn would want in on, either way.”

Or maybe they really did mean Winter, and just knew that I was in town, and none of this has to do with me. Fae word games. Selena certainly doesn’t need to know that.

“Then they did this, which is commit a pretty hardcore act of war, implicating Winter. That’s fact number two. Those are the things we know.”

Troy clears his throat, but I already know what he’s going to say, because it’s exactly what the Puck would say: 

“You’ve been going in circles on this all day, I think. How about it doesn’t matter? Let’s just do whatever you were going to do. Stop building spiderwebs based on no information.”

“Fair enough. We’re building an army. You’re invited, both of you. And you can’t say no. Neither of you can go home. Do you understand? We are in the war already.”

The May Queen finally slams her fist against the wall, auburn hair in an angry wave.

“Can’t go home? I dare you to say that like it’s a bad thing. I’ve been listening to you boss us all around for an hour. And you think I’m a dumb fairy girl who doesn’t know anything about anything. You think I was excited to die? You think I was looking forward to that? Don’t be so patronizing. These people are your friends, and you won’t stop yelling at them. I don’t even have friends back home. They were so mean to me when I was named Queen, it was disgusting.”

“Fine. Fine, you’re an independent little thing. This is very exciting for you. What are you going to do about it? Because Summer is coming, kid. And you’re still a pawn in their games.”

She pulls her face back, like a shocked turtle. Definitely one of those girls who’d wear a glamour instead of makeup: That secret kind of angry. 

“You think it’s still like when you were a kid and you didn’t know what the real world was, so when you got sold out it came as a shock to you. You have no idea who I am. You’re too old.”

This time I really do think about slapping her. Troy half-rises, which makes me think I have the crazy look again.

“First of all I am twenty, which is not old anywhere. And second of all, you’re right. In Winter we’re raised to think that nobody in Summer ever knows what’s going on. It’s what makes us better: Even if we’re sad, we still know the truth.”

“That is a dumb way to look at things, Estelle Harlowe.”

“I already told you I was glad you didn’t die. Give me a break. I’m trying to save you.”

“You’re trying to use me just like them, just like they’re using you. Right now you’re thinking about who you can trade me to, or where you can stick me, or...”

Troy finally does stand.

“—You’re not wrong. She’s trying to figure out what makes you useful. But what we’re all doing is trying to save you. Don’t lose sight of that. You may not be a dumb Summer girl but you still don’t know what the game is like, okay? I don’t even know it. Selena doesn’t know it. The only person in this room who has enough information to save you is Estelle, and you should be grateful. Even if you can’t say it out loud, and even if she’s being a bitch about it—which, by the way, she is—you should understand that you are alive now, not dead, because of stuff that’s already in motion. That we are going to stop.”

The girl whirls around on him, fists clenched so tight a wind shoves their hair around.

“And you, what are you? You show up acting like you are the genius of magic but you are just as scared as we are, and nothing has even happened yet. What’s it going to be like when things start for real? Are you still going to take a break to lecture me about how I’m a little kid too?”

Troy holds his hands very wide apart, palms open.

“What do you want, then. What’s your part? Besides acting exactly like every other teenager that has ever lived.”

“I want to be Queen of Summer. For real. I want to see the dead bodies of the Court. Everybody who tried to kill me today, I want to personally see them die. And then I want to rule over what’s left.”

“Attagirl,” Troy hiccups. She could not have won him over better if she’d been planning it from the start. But then his quick, surprised laugh dies, fast as it came.

“...We need to move.”

Summer comes, a-trooping.





Chapter Fourteen: Overview Effect


You park at the bottom end of a downward-angled cul-de-sac ,but that’s not where the house is. That’s through a fragrant garden that only looks like a park, where the road butts up against the wilderness. Tall grasses and wildflowers and thorny underbrush, looking like it’s built to keep people out. But if you just keep walking, one more step—don’t think about the bugs, or whatever else lives in the world—there will be the smell of honeysuckle, briefly, and then a clear spot.

There you find what seems like the remnants of a very old stone wall, only a couple of feet high. It isn’t what it looks like: It’s a door. The gap isn’t where a fence was broken, tumbled down, it’s a door that isn’t there and never was. You must pass through this gap, without touching either side and never looking back. You won’t feel or see a change—if you do, walk backwards quietly as possible, because you have wandered into territory best left unexplored—but the going will be easier now, heading east into the constant golden hour. 7:15, this time of year.

The path is vague, but marked out clearly enough. Many feet, belonging to many kinds of creatures, use it regularly. Maybe everybody does at some point, whether we remember it or not. The light is warm, never hot, upon your neck. The path is sometimes sand as fine as water, other times rockier, but it doesn’t rise or fall too much. You will pass groves of white birch, telling skinny silver secrets, leaves spinning; deep and complex willows bent over the ponds that feed them, like mothers to a fussing child. Joshuas staring out across red dunes, waiting for the wind. Perfectly manicured, gated gardens; some for color and some for scent. Some just for the bees.

When we reach the hollies I know we’re close: Those are mine. That’s my tree. They planted a circle of them just for me, that I could go sit in under the moon and think my thoughts. I did not know what gratitude was but I did know that when I came out of my little grove, all I wanted to do was show those Ladies kindness in turn. 

Grapevine for Selena. And next there will be Rowan, for Troy. I know how they think. And then we’ll be in.

*

The bungalow sits, settled, squatting, humble; its roof is always covered with rushes. Screen door swinging lightly on its hinges, with no spring, as they come and go. Agnes feeds the deer every morning and Agatha brings the cats in, every night. There will be stew simmering quietly to itself on the potbelly, fresh butter on the windowsill, next to bread only just cooling. All the windows will be open, breezes chasing back to front as the Ladies spin, knit, read their books, paint their still lifes. There is a warm waxy smell; perhaps they’re into candles again.

The little May Queen will be able to eat, I think. You can eat here.

There’s always a record playing, somewhere in the house, but it fades into the warm sun and the insects and the calmly dancing windchimes so quietly it doesn’t really penetrate. They like folk music, old sixties stuff. Songs for dreaming women, songs about soft men. More than one about my people, our wars and our victories and our cruelty. Old songs, true songs.

In the house, once you move into the body of it, the thick of it, the strangely expansive embrace of it, you will find a distinct smell of teahouse roses and dust, like a slightly haunted dollhouse. That’s Agnes. When she hugs you—and God knows she will—you will want to stay there forever, like an infant.

Moving up into the attic it’s cordite, or that stuff Troy calls dragon’s blood. The first burnt sharpness of dry herbs thrown into flames. Something underneath, like animals. That’s the smell of Agatha, and you’d better be on your best behavior. She doesn’t hug, but she does adjust your hair, your clothes, touching you all over in tiny nips and tucks, while she tells you things you don’t want to hear.

There is a third scent I’ve caught, this sister of theirs I never seem to meet: A smell like a new radio, or the inside of a VCR. She’s always somewhere, they say. It’s all they ever say.

Agnes bustles out of the screen, banging it against the wall in her hurry to wrap me in her arms. I’m old enough I don’t have to pretend anymore; I fall into it happily.

“Sweet girl,” they say. “Dirty girl.”

The May Queen falls on their spread like a woman possessed: All her favorites, laid out on a sideboard, ready to go as usual. Selena and Troy nibble, once I’ve given them the go-ahead, and mostly then what we do is watch that little girl eat.

They tell us we’re more than welcome, and the May Queen can stay as long as necessary. I can tell Agatha’s impatient to get her hooks in. As for the rest of us, we’re welcome until nightfall.

“The boy can’t be here when our brother arrives,” Agatha says in a voice neither mortal can hear. 

I narrow my eyes, ready to come to his defense, and she just grins that witch’s grin at me.

“What makes you think it has anything to do with you? He has his own story.”

*

The Ladies won’t tell us anything useful about the war, or the future. They just cast secretive smiles back and forth, sidelong, that they know we’ll see. A very annoying habit, but a comforting one too. I’ve seen them weep. They’re not weeping now.

“You need to fall in love,” Agnes says to me, out of nowhere.

“You need to take yourself apart,” Agatha clarifies.

Without Troy or Selena coming to my rescue, and the May Queen still wolfing it down, I must speak on my behalf.

“I’m busy, dears. I don’t know if you’ve noticed...”

“—You’ll die busy,” Agatha spits.

“Get slower,” her sister nods.

I consider it tabled, and move back to the war council they keep insisting this is not.

“You’re neutral in the Courts, and I understand that...”

“—Not neutral,” Agatha grins, around the darning needle between her lips. “Passionately disinterested.”

As her sister bites off a thread, Agnes wrestles a loaf onto the butcher’s block and begins pounding it with her great fists.

“You know they have a name for the way astronauts feel once they’ve seen the Earth from space? I don’t remember the word, but it’s beautiful. I’m glad they made one.”

“As disinterested as you are, however, I would like some clarification on... Whatever else you can tell me. How have you been, even. Tell me how you are.”

Their eyes meet and they raise eyebrows in tandem.

“The reservoirs are still dry, you’ll need to worry about that soon. Monsters in the canyons, but that can slide. We predict a dry summer, altogether. Especially now.”

Agnes lowers her eyelashes at the May Queen, who shrugs. She’s begun arranging the food, tiny cakes and fruit slices, into a tower. The Ladies, for their part, seemed just as delighted by the stuff in Selena’s bag as they’ve ever been with what I’ve brought, which makes me think I shouldn’t spend so much time worrying about it.

“The truth is, Estelle, you’ve wound yourself up like a kitten in yarn. I know that’s how you like it, and we love you for it, but in this case...”

“—Eventually you will have to cut the knot. There are parts of this you can’t escape. Your hands won’t stay clean, dear.”

I shrug, smiling beatifically.

“I’ll break some eggs. It’s past that now. My birthday’s barely four months off.”

“You’re going to lose nearly a week of that,” Troy starts, and both Ladies glare daggers at him.

“None of that here, boy.”

He is intensely apologetic, and Agnes gathers him into her arms.

“It is a lovely thing! You should do more of it, scrying. Oracles. But not here, never here. You’ll hurt yourself. Coming for a cup of water in the middle of a deluge, you’ll be carried off.”

“And it’s rude,” Agnes says, stamping one little foot as she rocks.

“My problem is that I don’t know what threads to pull, or even what the threads are. Of course I want to burn it all down, you know that. But I’ve seen a way we can all win. I want us all to win.”

The May Queen clears her throat.

“Right. And a bloody trail of dead, we get it.”

The Ladies laugh at her, not unkindly, and she gives me the first smile yet.

“If we have to leave at nightfall, where will we go?”

“Well,” Agnes murmurs, “You can’t go home. And even without the Queen here you can’t really head into the Realms, not with Summer on alert and that damned Princess...”

“—Agnes.”

I’m intrigued, leaning forward, but Agatha cuts me off before I can even speak. When Agatha says the conversation is over, the conversation is over.

“You should stay with that man of yours,” Agatha suggests, so lightly she must be playing a trick. She never says anything like it’s a suggestion. Agnes nods happily, fiercely, so moved she finally places Troy back on the couch, with care.

“You should! He adores you, all three of you. And as Summer’s ally...”

“No. Not negotiable.”

The Ladies deflate. Their fondness for the Demon Prince is as mysterious as it is horrible.

“It needn’t be like that, dear. Go to him as a peer, not your... What have you. Selena, would you feel comfortable calling him up? Troy?”

Troy, although he has softened on the Gabriel issue, doesn’t seem too excited by this idea. Maybe it’s just because he wants to be in it, and Gabriel’s would be as safe as a grave. But Selena’s willing to listen.

“Since I got to this town I’ve been passed around from person to person. First Auntie’s people, and then Gabriel told me you’d put me in an apartment if I wasn’t careful. And now we’re here, wherever that is. I came here to make something of myself. I don’t mind saying this all makes me feel like the Queen over there. I just want to stop running. And to do that, we need a place. Maybe keeping us on the move is the plan.”

“Or maybe this whole thing is one big scam, to get us there and scared, and the second we walk into Gabriel’s house it’ll lock tight around us, like a battleship, and we’ll get to spend the next four months together. You can be my maid of honor!”

“I am not doing that,” Troy offers. “I’m not going to his house.”

“So we’re narrowing it down, good. Everybody’s thinking. What else is there?”

“Spring?” offers Agnes, and the May Queen makes a very rude noise with her mouth.

“You won’t be with us, what do you care?”

She shakes her head.

“It’s just lame. How are you going to start a war when you’re hanging out with them? You wouldn’t study for the SAT at a pothead’s house.”

She isn’t wrong. It would be one thing to get alone with Selena and Troy and start making our moves, but not in the middle of elf Burning Man. As much as Troy would love it more than anywhere on Earth, we can’t go there either.

“What we seem to be deciding is that there’s nowhere for us to go, to do the things that we don’t even know what they are.”

“You do know what you need to do. You’re building an army, you said. For a war that was coming. But now it seems like the war is here. However they got the Queen out of there...”

“—Good point. May Queen, how did they extract you? How did you even get out?”

“Walked.”

“Their security rivals Hell’s, come on.”

“I am the Queen of Summer, Estelle. Until I die, I’m still the Queen. They can’t put her back on the throne until then. That’s one of the rules.”

Agatha cackles.

“Wondered when you’d figure that one out, girl. Good work.”

I get jealous, immediately. I’m not a Court expert, I don’t know all their weird bylaws, that would be rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic I’m preparing to sink.

“So they just let you walk out of there?”

“Autumn came to pay tribute, and one of them whispered in my ear that I could just walk out if I wanted, and I did, so I did. They got me out of Summer and put me in a car, and that’s how it went down.”

“How did you not get followed?”

“Oh, they tailed me the whole time. I was going to mention that but then you were such a dick when we showed up, I thought you should wear yourself out. Until you warded us when he showed up, they knew exactly where we were. It’s the last place they’ll be. They’ll stay there forever, waiting for us to come back.”

She smiles sweetly, twisting the knife, with what I would imagine is a fairly accurate impression of me: 

“None of you can go home. Do you understand? We are in the war already.”




Chapter Fifteen: Good Places



I was much too old for it, the last time I curled up in Agnes’s lap and just fell asleep. Sweaty, cobwebbed hair against my cheek, I woke up and they had arrived to take me home, to Winter. I may have cried. There’s certainly no record of it if I did.

I can’t remember wanting to do that, in my entire life, until now. Obviously at some point when I was a teenager I started doing it, but I don’t remember that either. I just know that right now I would pay a million American bucks for a nap somewhere I’m safe.

Selena and Troy are concerned, I can tell. I must not be acting like myself. But whatever adrenaline has been driving me the last week, month, year, lifetime has worn itself the hell out. I wonder if there’s a way I can stay here with the May Queen and just play at being their daughter again, for a little while. Would Selena and Troy resent me so very much, if I sent them out into the world on their own? It’s possible they would survive, they’re smart and Troy’s a good witch.

But when I see them sharing a quiet moment, I realize this is essentially the conversation they’re having with their eyes, and that’s enough of that. If people can’t depend on you, you’re nothing. 

There are a lot of stupid things about being a Princess, it’s almost entirely bullshit, but one thing they drill into you is this: You belong to your people. You rule them, sure, but you are there to serve them. Without your people, you’re just a random girl who doesn’t particularly deserve what she’s got. And nobody wants to be that.

Not to mention the fact that I’ve got Gertrude back home, the May Queen here in my special place with the Ladies that not even Troy has ever been to before, and Selena palling around with Gabriel and on the verge of becoming the new It Girl. I will be damned if Selena and Troy start having secret friendships based on the foundation of me melting down, regardless of whether I deserve to melt down right now. Which I completely think I would, even though—I swear to myself—I won’t be.

“Okay, I promise I’m back this time. Here’s what we’re going to do. We need to make our first strike as soon as possible, so the rest of the Realms will know who they’re following and why. It’s unfortunate that we have taken the Queen of Summer hostage, but it’s not a dealbreaker. We could just as easily spread a rumor that it was an insurance policy against my wedding.”

“That Hell’s responsible?”

“Occam suggests it. Autumn kidnapping her is the least likely thing that could’ve happened. So we either let it fall to Winter, which doesn’t do anything for us, or we call Autumn out publicly, which for all we know is what they want...”

“Or you take it away from them. Once they know the war is started, they have to pick a side.”

Barring the obvious, returning this girl to Summer as a repayment for their “rescue” of Gertrude, which would be the sensible thing to do and firm up relations between the Courts into the bargain, but have the unfortunate side effect of killing this girl, whatever her name is, in a particularly nasty way. And we can’t give that up advantage: As long as she’s alive, Summer is weaker than it would be. In ways written so deeply into their Realm nobody even remembers what they are.

“What is your name, anyway?”

“Oh, now you want to know it?”

“Fine, not really. But I want you to know that what we’re not going to do is the sensible thing.”

Nobody in the room is exactly charmed that I’ve said this out loud, but I can tell at least Troy knows it means I’m back.

“Once we start those rumors, though, things are going to change with Hell, and quickly. Gabriel can overlook a lot of stuff, and has, but I’m afraid framing his parents for kidnapping royalty would push it even for him.”

Troy almost starts into a prophecy, but quickly hums it away when he thinks of the Ladies’ warning. It’s the first time I have ever seen him notice himself doing it: The don’t think of an elephant approach.

I’m not overjoyed thinking about what this will do to the Demon Prince. He hates his family but hates when other people hate his family, like anybody else. Right now they look great: It’s Winter that sent Gertrude out into the world, and stole little old me. Right now it’s all internecine faerie shit that put the May Queen in Autumn’s hands. But it won’t take much to connect those dots, and then before you know it Hell is exactly where we want them: At the mercy of the Kingdoms they’ve been exploiting since the day of their creation. Watching them unite.

“However. If we can lure Gabriel out into a neutral location, on the coast somewhere, maybe we can get him to play along. I think he’d jump at the chance to formally denounce his parents, especially if he thought it would... improve things.”

Troy and Selena are quiet; they have no interest in discussing Gabriel with me today. I must have the Look again. Just once I would like the hostage to be a guy. Just one time, the kidnapped Princess should be a Prince. Even when the Teind has been a man it’s been a rubberstamp, pro forma deal, the guy gets paid off or ends up more powerful on the other side. Only when it’s girls do we have to pay attention to every single detail, make sure everything’s by the book.

 “Selena, do you think that’s something he would talk to you about? You have plausible deniability, you don’t even have to offer any information.”

“I like him, Estelle. I don’t get off on not-liking him. I can’t just lie to his face.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. You can. As long as you remember everything he’s saying is a lie, it becomes incredibly simple.”

If I floated the idea of kidnapping the Demon Prince, even just for my own enjoyment, they would stare at me like it’s unthinkable. The whole stupid system is set up that way. The world would crumble if we did that. Which, ordinarily, would be a good enough reason to do it. But the amount of security and bureaucracy involved in something like that would be huge. His family would bring the thunder if he got sold off to the highest bidder. They would not arrange it.

Girl gets kidnapped to the underworld, no big deal. Just don’t eat the pomegranates. But Zeus steals a boy and they throw a parade. Treat it like a job interview. I could not buy the publicity Gabriel gets just for being a rich hot guy who can actually put together a sentence.

“What about my family?”

Everybody stares at the Queen.

“What’s going on with them during all of this? They’re nothing special today. Do you think they’ll...”

They certainly will.

“The first thing they’ll do is come at you through them. You have parents? Brothers or sisters?”

“One of each.”

“Okay, you need to issue a... I don’t remember the word for it but you need to order they be sent out of Summer, somewhere else. Winter can host them, we’re known to do that a lot for diplomatic, um, whatever it is. Escrow. We can protect them, if you order it. I’ll call my parents right now.”

*

A conversation which, by the way, goes excellently. Between the King of Winter begging me to talk to my sister—his real daughter—and the Queen pretending she’s not even listening to what I’m saying, I eventually get the most traction with the dreaded Gertrude herself.

“So you want this girl’s family brought here? You want us to kidnap yet more of these people?”

“Nobody’s been kidnapped. The Queen walked out of her own volition, the first one in thousands of years smart enough to do that. And now the politics are coming apart. Render the family out of there in accords with the whatever, and they won’t have leverage...”

“To what? To what end, Estelle.”

“You’re a Princess, Gertrude. Serve your people. Your War Chieftain is telling you this is how to do that. Peaceful extradition. Protective custody.”

“Fine. And our parents won’t care?”

“Generally, no. But specifically, no. They’ve already handed this over to me. That makes you my strongest ally.”

“I thought ol’ Sloppy Seconds made me your strongest ally.”

“That is a horrible way to talk about your future husband. Bye.”

I can still hear her laughing when I hang up. It’s nice to be getting along.

*

Selena approaches when I get back from the hollies, having plucked some branches on the advice of the Ladies while I was chatting with the family, and I can tell from the trepidation on her face that they’ve come up with a plan I won’t like.

“You keep talking about places to hide, but Troy was telling me you usually go the other way with it. Staying public so they can’t come at you. And I mean, if there were a big party or something, like a movie premiere or a show, that would be a neutral location...”

She thinks this is a new plan because she doesn’t know Troy well enough to know that it’s his only plan.

“You want me to take you on a date with Gabriel. A war council out in the open.”

“It wouldn’t be a date, it would just be like, four friends. I can be the new girl, you can show me around. It looks legitimate.”

“Make some introductions...”

Selena smiles.

“You know it’s a good plan. I don’t care if it helps my career. Not one bit do I care about that. That is just a lucky coincidence that makes it an even better plan.”

“Fine, you’ve convinced me. When we’re out of the Canyons call Gabriel and tell him to set something up.”

“Ask him, you mean?”

“I love that you think there’s a difference,” I mumble, and press a bough of holly into her hands.

“What do I do with this?”

“It’s magic. It protects you from getting struck by lightning or something. I don’t know, the Ladies said to carry some so we’re carrying some. That’s more Troy’s department, maybe he knows if there’s more to it.”

Boys like to be consulted, I almost say. But then it occurs to me: I’ve been helping fix Selena Kirke’s mess all day, and it made me like her more than a week’s worth of dinner dates and pedicures. So maybe I am a player, but maybe also I’m being played. Maybe it’s not just boys. 

They tell you that women are naturally nurturing, like robot Giving Trees that don’t even know they’re doing it. But then they tell you that men get off on giving you things, helping you out, answering every single question even if you didn’t ask: This makes them feel powerful, magnanimous, stronger than you are, more able. Because if they weren’t better than you, why would you have to ask? That’s why it’s best to ask for help with things you don’t need help with, ask questions you already know the answer to: Just in case they screw it up, you won’t have lost time but it still makes them like you.

But then how come when women do it—give—that’s gross? I don’t feel particularly nurturing toward Selena Kirke, I feel like a man: She couldn’t handle her mess so she brought it to somebody that could. Somebody she trusted, she said, to fix it. That was me. And I fell for it. 

And I will continue to fall for it, because there’s nothing gross about it: It makes me feel good, like a Princess caring for her people. Like a friend, too. Just like how Troy takes care of me—talk about nurturing, when he’s not lecturing me about literally anything that crosses his mind—but if a girl acted like that, I would be totally grossed out. 

So if it’s the same feeling either way, and the same result, and the same reason, then the only thing that makes it gross, the only difference, is that I’m a woman. That makes me feel like the May Queen. Ripped off, and pissed off.

*

I can tell the Ladies are getting antsy, they want us out of there, so I nod and start gathering everybody’s things. The May Queen looks very small, leaning against the kitchen doorframe. While everyone is saying their goodbyes, I sneak past her, pulling her along behind me.

“You did a very brave thing today. It won’t be forgotten. I say for the third time, I am glad you are safe.”

I can see her wiggling under it, itching to say things we can’t say, and just touch her cheek.

“I will put you on that throne, whatever your name is. You don’t need to say anything about it. You didn’t ask for any of this.”

“I don’t really mean that part. About being Queen and killing everybody. I just thought it sounded good.”

“It did sound good. But we’re going to do it, okay? So just sit tight. And don’t be afraid of Agatha. Or the other ones that are coming. They pledged to protect you and I can’t think of anything more powerful than that.”

“You are a good War Chief,” the girl says, blushing. What she means is, Thank you.

The Ladies tell Selena secrets, rubbing herbs and symbols into her skin. I can tell it makes her uncomfortable, but whether that’s being touched or the things they’re telling her, who knows. Probably both. They are very comforting in foster-care mode, not so comforting when they’re giving you the full goddess treatment.

To my surprise, they give Troy just as intricate a goodbye. I can tell he never wants to leave, and I certainly identify with that. But I can also tell he’s troubled by what they have to say, and in a way that tells me I won’t be hearing about it any time soon. It’s his story, I think, and then I’m jealous again.

We’re going to leave this girl here, just like I was left here. And they are going to take care of her, keep her safe, sand off some of her rougher angrier edges, just like they did with me. And there was somebody before me, and there will probably be somebody after her. 

The Ladies love so absolutely that it doesn’t take anything away from their love for you, when they love somebody else. I know that. But it still sucks to watch.

*

“So that’s the Ladies,” I say as we’re pulling out of the cul-de-sac and back toward Mulholland.

“They’re pretty special,” Selena says. Troy’s gaze is still a little darkened.

“Troy,” I say, checking him out in the rearview, “Did they say anything? We sure had to leave quickly.”

He just shakes his head.

“I would like to go back,” Selena sighs. “Already. I didn’t love the Autumn Court and I straight hated that werewolf witch club last night. But this part was good. There are good places here.”

“Very few,” I agree. 

But that’s not the whole story. The whole story is, you can’t just stay in the good places. You have to go where it’s scary. You have to do it so much, so often, force yourself into the shadows and the werewolf clubs, until you have that astronaut thing. Overview Effect. Until you’re far enough away—so high, and so cold—that it all looks the same.

I’m still working on it.






Chapter Sixteen: Battle Service


On the way to Laurel Canyon we’d bundled the May Queen in some fairly expensive duvets, so she wouldn’t get burned by the car’s steel. On the way back without her, Troy sits on them, puffed up high. 

He’s already on edge, so I can’t tell if it’s because of the Ladies, or because he’s pissed off sitting in the backseat—always a sore spot, for old Troy—or because every time he catches my eye in the rearview he knows I’m seconds from cracking jokes about the princess and the pea. It is not my fault that Troy is shorter than Selena Kirke, but I bet he’s trying to think of a way it could be.

I’m not hugely excited to be leaving my bedclothes in the car while we go to this Hollywood thing with the Demon Prince. It looks like I live in my car, which is not only a calling card for burglars but also a real paparazzi win: Estelle Harlowe, Hollywood wild child, cannot get her shit together. Abandoned car found parked at a demented angle outside the Chateau with a king’s ransom of Dian Austin gothic couture piled up in back. After a long night hitting the pipe, the struggle continues.

On the other hand, technically, I do now live in my car. We all do. Thanks to Selena Kirke and the machinations of the Autumn Court, we cannot go home again. My apartment, Troy’s, even Selena’s sad little bedsit are now off-limits. The war has begun and there will be no rest. So perhaps, if the party ever ends, we will find ourselves bundling up in them in the Hills until morning. 

Troy can make a fire, and Selena can tell us ghost stories about her fairy godmother and we can have ourselves a really nice time off the grid. This would be my version of Hell—it makes the idea of going home with my future hellish bridegroom seem almost like a sensible notion—but Troy would love it. And Selena seems like the glamping type, I suppose. What better way to begin my career as War Chieftain than by making the ultimate sacrifice for my little army?

But then you think about mascara, and urinary tract infections—standing around this dumb bottle service gala for hours in ever-nastier peep-toes—and it quickly becomes clear this is not a sacrifice I’m prepared to make, even in theory. 

So we will keep the blankets, or give them away to the most fashionable street folks we can find, like Troy wants to do, or maybe I can magic up a way to fit it all in the trunk. But I will not be going camping. Not to save my own life, certainly not to save my kingdom. Even a War Chief has her limits. We’ll go on partying until the world burns, if we must, dancing like the little mermaid in her little knifeblade shoes.

These are the thoughts you think when you don’t want to think.

*

Crossing the street to the red carpet—Princesses can use the valet, War Chiefs never should—our attention is caught by some strange individuals heading into a hotel down the way. Some sort of comic-book convention, by the looks of it, which means Troy will be of little to no use tonight. He puffs one curly lock out of his eyes and brightens dramatically.

“Costume guys,” he gulps, and Selena cocks her head. We’re all in costume, too.

“Captain America? Captain America with a beard,” I tease, and he nods intensely.

“Hal Jordans. Supermans.”

Selena rolls one shoulder, expressively curious, and Troy waves his hands around.

“Hal Jordan is a witch. He’s a superhero that does magic with just willpower. His only weakness is fear.”

“...And the color yellow, and sometimes wood,” I mumble, having heard this speech before.

Selena nods, open to it. “So you’re like this Hal Jordan? That’s a funny name for a superhero.”

Troy rolls his eyes and starts into another shouting session, but he sees she’s kidding with him. It’s hard enough to tear his eyes away from the costumes as we near the gala, but once I actually do spot a bearded Captain America, it’s all over. We have lost Troy entirely. And Troy has lost his shirt. Which I just spent $240 dollars on around the corner. An auspicious beginning, altogether.

“Troy, if you focus and forget the comic book boys for just one second I promise to do something very special for you later. I don’t know what it is, but I will make it count. Please locate your clothing so that we can go inside. It’s Gabriel, you like Gabriel. Now.”

“He’d make a great Captain America. Like if you were doing some kind of Aryan dystopia thing. Like if the Nazis won.”

“That is no doubt true. But right now he’s more along the lines of... Every superhero. Okay? We have to act as if, we have to live like, he is the only thing that can save us. First of all because he will love that, and second of all because it’s true. We need to sound him out for the escalation.”

The plan, blessed by the Ladies, is to frame Hell—which right now, functionally, is Gabriel’s parents, not to mention the source of his income, not to mention that of several members of Congress—for the kidnappings of various Princesses and Queens and randoms. It is going to involve a lot of shifting resources around and shell games, and for that we’re going to need his social capital. And if he chooses to put us up in a hotel for the night, with all the security that implies, that would be fine too. As long as he doesn’t try to take us home with him.

“He’s going to. He’s already got a room on hold but he thinks it’s just for you. You two. Lovers,” Troy hisses, as though willing me to find this as amusing as he does. “Honeymoon Suite. I’m not joking. It sounds like a joke but it is very real.”

How horrifying. I wonder again what Selena said to him on the phone that got him so excited about tonight.

“Don’t let them take anything when we walk in. They say they’ll keep it safe but they won’t, you won’t get it back. It’s contraband. So just hang onto your stuff. We need to look icy. Unapproachable. Let me make the moves, I know these people. I know how to get them to come to us. No need to be available to this. Especially you, Selena. You’re new. They think they can smell desperation, and that leads them to see it where it is not. They will think you’re hungry to talk to them even when you’re not, and that’s going to reflect poorly on you.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

I can tell she’s offended, but it’s in a regal way that is really attractive. Of course.

“Yeah, just like that. Keep it in mind. Stiff upper lip. These people are piranhas, they want to eat the whole buffalo. It’s our job to feed them breadcrumbs instead. Like ducks.”

Selena wants to crack on my mixed metaphors, but she’s too nervous. I’m starting to get her now, the face behind the face. The way she gets colder the more scared she becomes. It’s a bad habit. They are trained to look for that.

“Don’t talk to actors. Nobody below the line. Some directors. All producers. Okay? Those are the rules for tonight. Anybody who isn’t happy can see your potential, because it shines brighter than them. Or they think it does. So you have to stick to people who are so bright to themselves that it blinds them, which means money in a crowd like this. Only talk to the rich, the self-important, the deluded, or the arrogant. Avoid the earnest, the hopeful, the passionate. No artists. None. Not in this environment. Do you hear me.”

She nods, disappointed.

“Troy, do you hear me.”

“They always ignore me anyway. They wouldn’t be able to put my talent into words. Half the time they think I’m a stylist. Which would be fine, except I’m not, and except they think that only because I am gay. Like, sorry I can only do amazing magic spells, I can’t get you free cosmetics. Sorry I have no worth. Anybody who is friendly to me at these things, I hate them.”

“Good, that’s us. Hard as diamond, clear as... Anything. Be nothing, say nothing, but always be talking. Don’t spend more than half a glass of champagne on any one person. Don’t get pushed into the throng if there’s a performance, don’t even look at the band if there’s a band. That implies you can’t see them any time you want, which needs to be never.”

Selena’s lips draw a line of dissatisfaction; she hates lying as much as I do. Troy nods easily, but I know it’s just appeasement. He loves the hell out of this stuff.

“Other people’s bodies will orient toward or away from you depending on the star power of the distraction. If you see that happening, follow the line to where they are looking: Not with their eyes, but with their whole bodies. That’s the person they would rather be talking to. It’s your job to make sure they don’t. Revolve around and cut it off, whatever you do. Mirror back their...”

“—This is awful,” Selena breathes. “This world is awful.”

“War is hell, sweetheart. The worst part is the beginning, followed by everything after that.”

But I’m glad to hear it. Not only is she right, but it’s how she’s going to survive. Time to head in.

Troy hangs back the usual three to five steps, once we hit the cameras, so he doesn’t mess up the shot. They’ll have a secondary fusillade infantry in place to get shots of him and the other plus-ones, in case one of them starts to matter. I give him a wink and head up, remembering when I’m halfway out to come back and retrieve Selena, reaching back toward him as we go.

*

Gabriel meets us at the door, of course, with arms ready to softly guide our lower backs in case they get confused about where the party is. We’re wearing subtly matching gowns in white, low-cut and flowing, with some braids and knots worked in doing double duty: First, subtly introducing the more earthy magical vibe we’ll be selling when we team up in earnest, and second, a quick little protection spell Troy wove in. If you looked close you’d see holly in our hair. 

Troy follows up quickly behind, to a gleaming predatory smile from the Demon Prince, tuxedo shirt undone at the collar, subtle epaulets giving him width and a slightly military look. He prefers the softer witchier stuff when we go out, poet’s shirts and leather cuffs and whatever he thinks is “sexy druid,” but I’ve never been able to pin down exactly what he means by that. It all looks like the Ren Faire to me.

“Selena, I am so glad Estelle brought you guys with. There are some people I’m dying for you to meet.”

She nods, uncertain, but I can see her still relax around the Prince. He has that effect on everybody, even me. Even Troy, who pretends to rankle: He thinks he’s in charge, so somehow he is. A useful trick I picked up from him.

“Take it easy on her. And no sleazes, okay. If you can find anybody else.”

“These are my friends, Estelle. Our friends.” His voice isn’t even slightly wounded; he knows I’m right.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Gabriel.”

I can tell Troy’s still thinking about the comic-book boys, and decide to distract him with some ill-fated banter.

“Did you know there’s a comic book convention next door?”

Gabriel shakes his head, confused, like he doesn’t know what those words mean. Of course, the Demon Prince does not. But when we were young he was more into that stuff than Troy ever could be. Sandbox romance never forgets.

“Troy’s thinking about sneaking away to check it out. I was thinking I might join him.”

Selena’s eyes go a little wide, at that, but Gabriel and I quickly force a laugh.

“Can you imagine?”

I cannot. But Troy sure can, kicking at the floor, waiting glumly for passed appetizers. 

It’s been hours since we gorged ourselves in the Canyon, and I can tell a quick snack would brighten us all up. Eating is tricky in public. You can’t enjoy it, but you also can’t look like you hate it. Too much one way and they’ll start zooming in your body until you don’t even have a head anymore, dissecting your parts; too much the other way and it’s eating disorder central. 

Which is a conversational virus, a memetic force of the highest order, like plastic surgery, or being in a cult, or being a bitch. No matter how untrue it is, you will always have that idea—the specter of your disordered eating—following you, because it’s more fun to talk about, because everybody is weird about food so they want you to be weird about food. Sometimes with fake concern, sometimes with fake diagnosis, sometimes even—the supermodel that loves hot dogs, the starlet that loves cheeseburgers and beer—with fake applause, but no matter what it’s not really about you anymore.

And that sucks, but I get off easy: For Selena, it’s going to be about the kinds of food, too. Authentic, exotic, healthy, unhealthy, watch a black girl eat sushi for the first time in history. However much of my body they think they own, that will go double for her. That times infinity, for her.

So maybe leave it alone for now, considering I have no idea how to even imagine talking to her about that part, or sneak some food away where there aren’t any cameras, like in the good old days. Assuming that plan itself doesn’t default to us sneaking away for cocaine, or cigarettes, or whatever is most humiliating to talk about today. 

It Pair Selena ‘n Estelle just can’t get through a party without sneaking away for a quick vape. But is Hollywood’s newest trend really a healthy choice? Let’s throw up a bunch of pictures of them, completely unrelated to the topic, as we delve further.

And meanwhile, Troy is apparently storing sliders in his cheeks for winter, I mean just really going for it, with no idea any of this is going on or ever goes on. Or always goes on. It’s weird to be pretty and gay and a witch—and I’m not going to say it’s more weird to be a girl—but I think we can agree that they are both weird. 

Sometimes I pretend he’s eating on my behalf, the way he chucks it down his throat. It’s a lot easier when I’m not, in fact, actually starving.







Chapter Seventeen: Cheating Out


The first thing you have to know about music in LA is that none of it matters. You will get some good bands, good musicians, but it’s not really about the music: It’s about the scene. A million little tremors going off all the time, with a million agents and PR reps behind them, thinking that this is the thing that’s going to make their career. Inevitably some of them will, but it’s a lucky thing when that turns out to be connected to talent in any way: Most of the time it’s about finding the right producer. The rest they can fix in post.

So what you have is an entire city of people who think they really love music, but in fact they really love the experience of sharing it. And there is no shame in that. It’s the same as the foodies: Being into being into things is just as satisfying for most people. Especially if they don’t know that’s what they’re doing. 

But when you have one of those days where the same thing gets mentioned three times, a band you have never heard of, or some new ingredient that’s suddenly in every cocktail, that’s when you should pay attention. Chances are it’s just fine, this thing that is being visited upon you by the universe. You can like or not like it, nobody’s going to judge you. But never forget that you’re being visited by ghosts of the past and present and future when that happens: 

Every new die-without-it ingredient or cooking method eventually becomes passé, every band eventually shows up in a mobile phone commercial, every hot novelist eventually shows their ass, every revolutionary designer eventually gets a jewelry collection, every child actor grows up ugly, and everybody forgets. Always. 

On the other hand, if that’s true for everybody then there’s nothing wrong with it. Older people will tell you we’ve lost something, that’s nonsense. There are always more things, never less.

That’s where Hell and Autumn are alike: They don’t choose to like the things they like, they like the new things to like. If you really need to know what to bet on, what to leverage, ask a demon or an Autumn faerie. They have no stake—beyond what’s coming, what’s selling, what’s dying—so they can be honest about whatever the thing is you’re going to like. And if you can skate on the edge of that feeling, just at the surface of the bubble, you can earn a fortune really quickly.

In order to prove this point to Selena, whose life in many ways depends on believing it without question, I have Gabriel run off a list of the ten hottest things she hasn’t really heard of yet. That will pay off over the next week, and then she’ll know several things she didn’t know before: That Gabriel’s information can be trusted, that my advice can be trusted, and most of all that Selena herself can be trusted. Because she is the next hot thing, and that is going to ruin her if she’s not ready.

*

There will never be a point where I am entirely clear on why we are here, what this event is for. I doubt many people here actually do. Not because we don’t care—not that we do—but because it’s work. You might be able to remember everything you wore to work last week, but would you remember every single conversation? Every last email down to the punctuation marks? No. The only real difference is that I can drink. 

Not get drunk, not get hammered—we’re not there yet, although the option is available and more appealing every single day—but get a light buzz on. No pills, no thanks. But those little meetings with people, those half-glass champagne conversations, you can float on that like a lazy river. It’s meditative, not having to think about anything except the person in front of you and what they want.

One youngish producer guy that I like, he’s far gone enough that he tells me three times he thanks God every day that his emails got hacked, because he has no secrets. The first time I thought it was kind of cool, a cool thing to hear someone say. The second time, I got a little worried for him, because clearly he is trying to maintain. The third time, I got scared because clearly he does have secrets, and they are apparently very bad ones. That ended on a strange note. 

The next person is a fashion-line figurehead more interested in Selena than in me, which is vile but also amusing, since I know now Selena could eat the girl alive. This young lady was on a reality show for a year, but too likeable and inoffensive to stick around, so now she spends half the day learning to talk about the design inspirations for her things she didn’t actually design. It’s actually clothes—and they’re actually cute—so I’m not as mean as I would be if it were purses, which for some reason just puts me over the edge every time, but Selena keeps it pretty close to the vest. 

Gabriel watches like a hawk, from a few tables away, because he thinks there’s a way we can get this girl to partner with him on some kind of fashion crap. Her brand will be good for about another month, but if they can get together it’ll extend their half-lives longer than even he thinks. This alone is enough reason to keep her off the subject, and I can tell Selena is evading questions about her relationship with Gabriel just lightly enough that she won’t have to play goalie on that. 

On the other hand, we do need to butter him up, and closing a deal like this would do that. I offer the introduction, the chick stares at me like I just appeared out of thin air, and Selena puts her arm around me, holding me close as sisters. Reflected halo. I wish I knew why this girl didn’t like me, but not to a huge degree. Mostly I wish I was with Troy, but I don’t want to leave Selena alone with anybody, and three’s a crowd for our purposes.

Troy’s triangulated out from me and Gabriel, to keep an eye on all four of us, while a movie director with a very bad reputation feels his bicep. There’s nothing wrong with Troy’s bicep—in fact he’s bulked up enough I would have thought this particular guy would be turned off—but it’s still exceedingly obvious, and I can’t imagine Troy’s having a good time. 

Standing with them is a bodyguard type—physically, although he seems too talkative to actually be working—with something weird going on. Something about the angle of his bearing is a flashing neon sign, but it’s not until he cheats out—beardy superhero, right on cue, which explains Troy’s steadfastness in the face of his obvious heebie-jeebies—that I realize what it is: We have an angel in our midst.

Which is strange not only because angels hate parties, in addition to anything else that is fun, but because this one is hosted—I’m fairly certain—by one of Gabriel’s family’s holding companies. This is a Hell party, the best and worst kind. And one cool thing about a Hell party is: No angels. I hope—then dial it back to wonder if—there will be an incident. The last thing we need is more politics right now.

Troy catches my eye to make sure I know he’s on it, then indicates Gabriel with a shifty gaze that never seems to quite stray from the fascinating frozen face of the creepy director. Gabriel has no idea. But as the fashion chick drones on and on at him, I can feel him bristling: He knows something is up, but not what it is. Which means right now Selena needs to turn it all the way on, so I can excuse myself without being abrupt, and Troy and I can sneak away and scheme.

But Selena is not doing that. She is bored and hazy and more than a little irritated by this girl’s weird fascination with her, and keeps motioning toward Gabriel with her hands, fitfully, as if by simply ushering the girl’s attention toward him she can reroute the conversation away from herself.

You can tell a dumb dog from a smart one by pointing at something, anything: A smart dog looks where you’re pointing, a dumb one looks at your finger. This girl—and I really do like her, I’m not just saying it to be mean, she’s sweet and really into animals and whatever—but this girl, she is a finger-looker. And until Selena figures that out, we will all be standing here. Turning slowly to stone, the three of us, as she talks about... Not a damn thing, as far as I can tell.

“Gabriel here was just telling me you’re set to really come alive this season. Are you going to Milan, or...?”

She stares at me blankly; it starts to feel like she literally hates me. Which is ridiculous, we’ve had like two conversations and both of them I pretended to care about, which is a great track record. But maybe it’s the me-and-Selena thing, or the me-and-Gabriel thing, that’s setting her off. She might not even know; she might actually think she’s being cool. But she is not being cool, and it’s pissing me off. How hard is it to just act normal?

Troy was right, about the look they give you at these things, like, waiting for you to justify your existence with some fact that makes you useful to them. And that’s stupid and they’re stupid, but it’s also a great power move because you’re in the position of having to guess what that thing is, based on information they are not providing. The play is, keep talking.

“I keep asking him to bring me with him but you know how they are, guys are. They don’t want anybody to think they have a girlfriend so they can’t take anybody along. I’ll just be here at home, all alone. Maybe I’ll do Paris instead, maybe. Paris in springtime. Even just Bryant Park would be better than getting left behind...”

Gabriel and Selena stare, horrified, but the girl is eating it up. She gives me almost a nod of permission, before turning to Gabriel and finally engaging about their brand marriage. I wait for Selena to look back at me, nod my head decisively like a Winter Woman, and back away from the whole situation. Selena wavers, gives me a shy smile, and completes the trio. And I’m out.

*

“Don’t talk to angels, Troy. Are you an idiot? That’s worse than the vampire guy.”

He nods, eyes a little googly, and lets out a deep breath.

“I didn’t get it. I thought for a second that maybe I would like to be an actor, and then I thought probably it was just that awful director man making me think that. So there was no reason to stick around. But then the other one walked up. And I thought it would not hurt to let the director man keep acting like I mattered, if it kept the other one going. I didn’t see his eyes at first. Then I did, and now we’re here. You seem faded.”

Troy produces from somewhere on his person a crumpled napkin containing a greasy dumpling and what looks like a couple of licorice jellybeans. To him this would be breakfast. But I’m grateful for it. Whenever anybody talks about low blood sugar they are saying two things: One is, I’m just kidding! But the other one is, I am absolutely not kidding, and I am about to start screaming, and we both know it.

“Why is there an angel at this party? If Gabriel can’t even control that, how are we supposed to...”

I nod. It does put him at a worrisome disadvantage. On the other hand...

“No. I see the Look. We’re not roping this guy into our stuff too. Making war on Hell is one thing but you bring Heaven into it and that’s... There’s whole books about that, such as the Bible. It is called the Apocalypse and it never seems to go very well for anybody.”

Fun to think about, though.

“Fine. But we aren’t leaving the party. We have nowhere to go. So either we avoid that guy, or you are on point for a very special mission. What was his vibe?”

“Crossfitty. Like super intense and also very excited about something he wanted to talk about.”

His thing. They’ve all got one. There are probably ten in the metro area, and they all know each other, and they all like to bareknuckle fight each other, and it is the weirdest thing. They’re not even jerks, they’re just... Pointless. TVs on no channel. Or just one channel, whatever it is.

“Well, try not to find out what it is. If he starts getting that look in his eyes change the subject.”

“I kind of like it when they talk about their things. They get super focused, like, horny.”

“What if he is the Angel of golf? Or the Angel of, I don’t know, any sport. Or taxes. You don’t know. And by the time you find out, you’re screwed.”

But I know what Troy means. They drill down awfully quick when it’s that time of the night. It reads as passion, but not any useful kind. You can’t even get points for asking about it or pretending to also care about it, because you will never care about it as much as they do and they were already going to talk your ear off about it. There are not a lot of ways to manipulate angels, which is another reason I don’t like them. Or trust them. I don’t trust anybody you can’t screw with. You always need a backdoor in case it gets weird.

“Troy, you don’t have to entertain him. It’s a big room. I just thought it would be fun. You have so many skills that never come into play.”

He grins a secret grin.

“Like what?”

“Like being interesting. Charming. Making people think they like you, so then they like you.”

“That’s called being a person. And it’s not a skill, Estelle. Or a trick.”

Troy’s theories usually amount to how life is much easier than most people think. He says it a million different ways but it all comes down to this namaste surfer nonsense, in the end. Even magic, he talks about it like it’s not even really doing anything. If I were to try life his way I would take to my bed and never get out, not for anything. See how far that gets us.







Chapter Eighteen: Wildboy Turns Up


By the time I make it back from the restroom foyer, buzz ailing and near to death, the fashionista is gone. In fact the party is at about half where it was when we arrived, which seems like a little bit of a victory. We’re still nowhere near the home stretch, but that They Shoot Horses vibe always means it’s about to get a little weird. I’m sure a lot of the people at this party feel like they have to stay or die, but few of them really would.

Now comes the clumping, the empty tables as people draw near to their equals: Pairing off, making plans, sneakily passing drugs when they think nobody’s looking. There’s a hooded eye, a hush. Not closing time, but midnight, if this were a bar. The time you stop being polite and fun and start turning inward, to focus on what you want tonight to become. I don’t like it. It feels like secrets and shadows. But it’s a very useful time.

A few fellows have attached themselves to Troy and the angel, thinking the way Troy looks means there will be a good afterparty somewhere that he can lead them. The creep director is not among them, though, which should have been their first clue he can’t help with what they need. Still, he is animated and funny enough to balance out the giant clod, so they all think they’re having a good time. His eyes look the tiniest bit hysterical, but he’s holding on.

Gabriel and Selena are holding court up near the stage, a mixed crew of actors and producers, congratulating them on being alive, basically. They’re safe, so I head toward Troy to see how useful this angel might be, but one of the dudes with them shoots me finger guns so I turn on my heel and head back toward the lights.

“Here she is. Estelle, I was just telling these guys about our trip today. To the Canyon.”

Oh, were you now? Do go on.

“She’s just been a great friend. Like we haven’t even known each other that long—Gabriel here introduced us—but we’ve already done so much. She’s really made California feel like home.”

Selena pulls me in again, to her side, and once again the whole crowd breathes out with it, like we’re two peas in a pod. I’m the Briar Rose to her Snow White. I do not hate it, not at all. I’d much rather be the other sister, on this side of the mirror: Having no narrative arc means never getting hurt, or falling down, or any of the things that happen to princesses in stories. They can look at her, the deep lovely stillness of her, and while they’re looking at that I can do whatever I want.

Except the Demon Prince. I don’t like him watching it. Thinking he made it happen. Because the truth is, it was a race to find her, and although technically Troy and I found her first, doing our spells on the Boulevard what seems like weeks ago, it was Gabriel that snapped her up. Which ticks me off. Like: What if we did get married, would I still be this competitive with him? Is it just my paranoia and exhaustion that makes me want her to hate him—just hate him, in ways and to depths I never can, or would—or is our history such a thorny knot I just have to accept that I am, in some ways, pretty nasty when it comes to him? Anything to keep him from thinking he has a part of us, whatever we turn out to be.

Sometimes I would wish that none of my friends knew each other. That I could keep everybody secret, forever. Not that I had a lot of friends, ever, but I’ve had the thought enough times that I recognize it as mine. Some things are okay. Selena and Troy can do whatever they want together, I wouldn’t really mind. Gertrude, I do kind of like the idea of having her to myself, or I would if I thought there was a chance we’d ever really care about each other. Troy and the Puck, though, that makes me really queasy. But Selena and Gabriel is by far the worst. I would rather they dated than be friends, and I don’t even know what to say or think about that, except that perhaps I am awful in some new way science has not yet discovered.

“Gabriel just knew we’d get along, didn’t you?”

His apple cheeks, burning. Just the monstrous friendliness of him. And the way the other men all look at him with that sense of wonder, like, where does he get these women and how does he know how they’ll fit together: How does he know women so well he can camera-test their chemistry like that, what’s the secret. Well, buckos, the secret is that I found her first. Women have entire lives separate from you, when you aren’t watching, that you would never even think to imagine.

I almost start laughing—this is when I know I’m getting punchy, tired—thinking about other origin stories: Gabriel walks in on us, mid-pillow fight, Sandra Dee pajamas all askew, feathers drifting down in a pepto-pink giggle den. Gabriel approaches her at a bar with me on his arm, talking sexy nonsense in a French accent while I sneak her wallet from her purse. Gabriel tied up on the floor of the bank we’re robbing, staring up from a modified cobra pose as Selena grits through her ski mask, “Don’t you look at my face, you puke.”

The crowd keeps thinning, spinning out into the larger galaxy, red-shifting: Those clumps drifting into other clumps, rooster-crowing drunks and bloated beauties on their way out the hard way. Unlit cigars, chomping madly. Troy’s nowhere to be seen, and I can’t see the angel either. Wouldn’t that be something.

*

Selena peers into my eyes, a little worried, and I realize she’s asked me the same question twice. One more time and I’ll have to answer truly, I think. Then I remember: I’m not even fae, I can go on lying forever. It never feels as good as I want it to, when I remember that.

“He wants to get the car. He says he got a suite just in case, but we’re all good to go if we want to head back. There’s an afterparty, it’s not like we’d be alone. He said it’s on the roof.”

“Yeah, no. He’s in the penthouse, that’s not... Escape from the roof is a one-way trip at thirty two feet per second per second. That’s demon talk. I told you.”

“Great, so I’ll just get the hotel key and we can get you in a bed. You look kind of nuts.”

Maybe I am drunk. Maybe I’m more than that, maybe somebody gave me something. I don’t leave my drinks unattended, ever. I had those jellybeans, I had the dumpling... No, I’m good. Shake it off.

“We’re partying until they turn the lights off. This is the war, this is what it looks like. I’m tired but mostly I’m tired because I don’t want to be here. It’s my body tricking you, not actual tiredness. Like depression. All I did today was wake up hung over and drive to the Canyon. There’s no reason for me to like, swoon.”

“Okay, but do you really want to be around all these people if you’re not up to snuff?”

She’s so young. We’re the same age.

“Selena, you are looking very closely at me so you know I’ve been coming apart all day. What do you think they see? A screwed up girl who probably snorted a bunch of whatever in the bathroom earlier. This works for us, not against us. Listen, when the party is at around ten percent, which should be happening in the next hour, you can do the caring friend act. That will play really well...”

“—I’m not acting like a...”

“Honey I know. But I will be. I will acting like an overtired toddler, and you can’t take offense. Just wait until I seem really unmanageable, and then manage me. Okay? You need to prop up your... You need to look like you’re on it. Functional. Okay? You’re the one that goes to bed at nine, I’m the mess that falls asleep on the ride home.”

Selena nods at this, checking it against whatever internal list she’s working on. As long as we’re semi-alone, though, might as well get the update.

“How many people did you meet tonight?”

She grins, excitedly.

“I know you said they’re just sharks but it’s still nice to be asked. They are very friendly. I felt...”

She wants to say pretty, but she knows how that sounds.

“Like you belong,” I offer grimly.

Same difference.

*

Troy is located and the three of us huddle up. He shakes his head minimally, indicating that the angel was a dead end. I must admit, I’m curious. This is another situation to which Troy is naturally suited, like the Drone Queen, in a way I don’t ever want to be. Of course Troy can pretend to be politely fascinated by any guy, no matter how boring. Or how scary. That’s how you survive.

We are down to the dregs, though. Too-talented screenwriters who maybe haven’t paid rent yet this month and don’t know how that’s going to work out exactly; these gamblers, invited to the whale table for once, knowing their whole real life is just a single conversation away, waiting to begin. Comedy guys making asses of themselves, trying to impress each other so hard they don’t notice the women standing right there; eyes open to every single fault and still standing there anyway, because they can take it, because they have to. Producers who honestly think somebody is going home with them, still, if they can just lower their expectations faster than the clock is ticking down. Mid-list directors eyeing each other like hawks, trying to decide on the sweet spot between contrary and gauche, between obscure and obsolete. 

All the demons are gone, nobody magic is here at all as far as I can tell. Just the usual. Just the usual Hollywood magic.

...Which is exactly what they need. It doesn’t hit me until one of the comedy guys does his third aggressively sexual thing to one of his buddies, which is a whole other bag of kittens. You get these guys, usually not improv guys but friendlier and more social than serious standups, that is so weird about whether or not he might be gay that it becomes its own kind of queerness. Like to them, to all of us I guess, humor is found in what’s scary or shameful. And so this kind of boy is very lucky to be in a situation where he can constantly be touching the edges of that idea. They’re usually not even gay but it results in a lot of gay behavior, sometimes even sex with guys. And at this point in the night, they’re the ones to watch: Grabbing at each other’s junk, pantomiming buggery, pulling one buddy’s head toward his crotch. Lovely stuff.

“Do you want to see something very crazy?”

Selena nods, immediately, gleefully, more into it than I could have imagined, and we’re off. A short signal to Troy, a whisper-yelled “Wildboy!” and he’s off to the DJ to request something very special. He would lie to your face that he knew the band, whatever band it is, but what’s important is that he authentically loves them. The DJ can always get it for him, whatever it is. And then the lights dip just a little low, and Troy is dancing, and then those boys come out into this thing he’s making, dancing with him as a joke at first. It becomes something else. And then there are more, and more, until the whole place has gone entirely crazy. 

The women on the edges don’t join in, at least not at first; that part’s coming. First, it’s this very specific boy energy, even the older dudes get into it, this sort of muscular ritual guy thing that might as well just be a black box I will never understand and Troy couldn’t explain if he tried. He’s off his head anyway. He sends a bolt out the door and down the street to the hotel, and after a wierded-out smile in my direction, Gabriel lets them in: The superheroes. 

By the time the rest of us have joined in, there’s a thick knot in the middle of the floor, just bodies. A last burst of whatever-it-is, centered on tiny little sexy Troy, who is by now well past caring about any of them. Supermans and Catwomans and a whole host of X-Men and X-Women and all of it whirling, singing along, as the DJ gets more and more into it, throwing harder and harder beats into the mix, and the lights steadily dropping until it’s just shy of candlelight. You could barely tell them apart, the writers and the nerds and the comedy folks and the rest of them. Selena slips her hand into mine, chuckling.

“You... Were not kidding. What is this?”

“I don’t even know! We don’t have a name for it. He just sort of goes wild and then everybody goes wild and then it gets to be a little too much. And then a lot too much. But they keep going. You were wondering about how long the party would go for? It won’t end. The sun will come up first. And if I know Gabriel, he’s already called the house party back for this. They’ll be here soon. The nasty stuff at the bottom of the glass.”

“I take back what I said about all this. I love what is happening right now. I don’t want to be out there on that dancefloor for anything, but standing here... I feel like a crazy tiger. Next time can we just come at the end? This part is brilliant!”

“Nope. You have to be there the whole time to spot your shot. We’ve tried that. It’s the price of doing business. Half the time you can’t even get it there, people get too weird or there’s strange weather or the moon is waning or a million things. You never know until it’s time, and then you know.”

She considers me, with a chin-stroking intellectual air.

“I want to do this. The magic part, I want to do that. Be a witch.”

“How come, Selena Kirke? What appeals to you about it?”

“Most of the time I feel like a ghost. Or like the ocean, getting pulled around by a moon. But this, I could do this. Easily. He told me it’s like getting struck by lightning only it doesn’t hurt. You connect the sky to the earth, through your body, like a wire. Like light through a prism. How does that not sound like a good idea?”

She’s right. He’s given me the spiel before and I can’t say magic feels exactly that way to me. But when Selena Kirke says it, I can glimpse more of what they’re talking about.

“What did the Ladies say to you, Selena Kirke?”

She blushes, just a little. I’m pleased, almost proud in an obscure way, by how much she loves them. How she knows to love them like that, when it took me years to stop resenting them.

“I’ve been trying to remember that all night. But it felt like this. Exactly like this.”





Chapter Nineteen: Rubberband Boy


“Good old Troy.”

Because he is Gabriel, he would have no idea that this is the ideal time for him to make inroads in that department: When Troy is dancing, when he’s wild, he can’t hate anybody. But because he is Gabriel, this is exactly the time he’ll shut it down, duck his head and watch from afar, like Troy is some beautiful thing he would break if he got too close. 

It makes me want to touch his hair.

“He’s got really good taste in music, doesn’t he? I always say that. Don’t I?”

Selena is off in a corner, thinking her witchy thoughts and watching them dance their bacchanal. At spots all around the room, the quieter or less bespelled join her, in shared solitude.

“Next thing you’re going to ask me is whether he’s allowed to work for you. And the answer is still going to be no.”

He’s crestfallen, but barely, like a dog coming to terms with the fact that you’re done throwing fetch. Stay still enough, something else will come along and they’ll forget their heart is broken.

“He’s just very good at spotting things.”

I nod. “The Ladies seem to have designs on him. No idea what they are.”

Gabriel smacks one fist into the other hand, hot-diggety: “My girls! Ags and Aggie. How are they doing?”

He has seen them maybe twice since we were teenagers, but he always glad-hands them in that momma’s boy way he has; the virginal flirt. They love it to death, love him to death, but to me it rings a little false. I can’t believe in an Agatha that would give the boy an inch, but she’s never given him even the slightest hint of a hard time. Maybe they just feel sorry for him.

“They’re well. Not too interested in politics, nothing new there. But they definitely see something in him. Selena too.”

“Is about their brother? The Hunter?”

I whirl fast as anything, fast enough that he steps back. “What do you know about their brother?”

Up and to the side: A classic Gabriel tell. “Like nothing. I just figured since Troy’s all...”

The way he stares into the maddened crowd, I can tell he’s about to change course. I think to myself, what a great opportunity to practice not being in people’s business that doesn’t concern me. Which is an odd way to look at Troy, who is utterly my business and my favorite person I have ever met, but the Ladies don’t admonish for the fun of it. They told me not to worry about it, so I won’t. I can worry about worrying, but it’s his deal. He’ll tell me when and what he wants to tell me. Assuming he remembers, much less understood, any part of what they said.

“Selena wants to be a witch. That’s the new hot gossip, between you and I.”

Gabriel thinks hard about that. Maybe a little too hard. There’s just so much I can’t ask, without telling him more than I’m getting back.

“Solves your White Goddess problem, doesn’t it? If she’s into it, she won’t go looking for...”

I shake my head. “Not that simple. I’m not so sure it’s a choice. But it might help her survive, so I’m all in favor.”

Fate is a whirlpool, drawing you down. If it doesn’t get you this time around, or the next one, it’ll just keep turning. I don’t like to think of it this way—Troy would have kittens if I said it aloud—but so far it tracks with what I know of the world. And what Gabriel knows, too: If he starts thinking we ever can just slip those bonds, he’ll want to lock me down. Things will get ugly, very fast.

“I, uh, I wanted your advice, actually.”

Not a sentence Gabriel would say lightly; not easy for him to say now. I think about lying to him, whatever he says next.

“I saw you checking out my friend Michael earlier. He was talking to Troy, and that gross...”

“—I know who you mean. Your... Friend? Is that really the word?”

Gabriel shrugs, ashamed.

“I knew you would say that. And yes, the King of Cinders would kill him if he knew we were even talking, much less close. I know what he is.”

Which is, technically, no different from the King himself. Fallen or Rising, they all come from the same place originally.

“I’ve never seen you in the mood to cause trouble, Gabriel. What is this.”

Gabriel jams his hands into his pockets, lips a perfect rosebud. He knits his thick eyebrows.

“I just like him, Estelle. I don’t know. We get along. I know you get me and like, what it was like growing up there. But he just doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t care about anything! But he likes me. I don’t have many friends. Besides you I don’t think I’ve really had any. I just never knew that, until Michael. He thinks I’m cool. I mean lots of people think I’m cool. Like basically everybody. Even you think I’m pretty cool. But not many people like me.”

“Selena likes you,” I pipe up stupidly, too used to playing nursemaid, and bite it back too late.

“She does? That’s really good. I like her too. That makes me happy. If you can get Troy to like me then we would all be... On TV shows they have those groups of people, you know, that stick together. They’re like a family, or something, even though they...”

“—You’re still talking about friends. And yeah, we’re your friends, Gabriel. Even Troy, yes.”

He nods, shoulders still up.

“You want us to be... Like a television show. You and Selena, and us, and this Michael.”

“For starters. But then more. Like so many that it doesn’t matter anymore. I can tell my dad to go screw and just have each other.”

Well. Except for me, Estelle Harlowe, the Teind of the Fae. I would be in Hell, watching all of this go down, like it really was a TV show. But it’s so sweet I can’t even point out how selfish he’s being.

*

“Would you really do that, Gabriel? If you could?”

I immediately regret doubling back to that. The story of Gabriel and his father is one of those awful clichés that got to be that way because it’s so common, and I hate that for him. When I think about the war on Hell, my first thought—like the May Queen, come to think of it, with her tween dreams of bloody retribution—is taking out the King, first and foremost, by my own hand. There’s not really a nice way to say “I’m looking forward to killing your dad” that sounds comforting, so I haven’t ever brought it up, but it’s there.

“I want a lot of things. I like it here, in the real world. When I think about Dad and how they just... I mean they never go out. Into things. Mom sees her sisters in Palm Beach, but Dad’s got nobody. Just her, and me, and we don’t even like him. And I think about us, one day, becoming that. And how you’ll have all these great people...”

“Two. I will have two friends. Who are also your friends.”

“I don’t know. It just makes me sad and nervous. What if my dad is just an asshole because his dad was an asshole? You know what I mean? Like, what if that is the only reason? How do you come out of that alive?”

You don’t. You die. Or you capitulate. Or you promise yourself that you won’t change, and some part of you watches that become more and more of a lie, until you’re so disappointed and broken down that you end up even worse than you’d imagined. 

Or very occasionally you walk out, if you’re the May Queen, safe in the knowledge that some random band of strangers is going to hand you over to some other random band of strangers, and so on. 

Or you burn the whole thing down.

But it’s not time for that yet. I can’t be sure of him, yet, until I know exactly what he knows: Why Summer brought Gertrude home, who kidnapped Summer’s Queen and why. Whether he knows our war on Summer is just a political subterfuge while we plan an attack on his homeland. And there will come a time when I will tell him all of this. 

For all I know, it’ll be after we’re married: A funny story to tell our kids, the time Mom tried to bring anarchy and fire reigning down on every Kingdom, tried to harry Hell itself. If I fail.

But it would bring him such comfort, Gabriel and his new angelic bro, to tell him now. I know it would. His eyes would light and he would call his boy up and he’d swing me around and cheer and try to be War Chief without even noticing himself doing it. Thinking he’s helping, by telling me exactly what I should do even though I have not asked.

I know those things are true. They might not even be lies. But they’d also be half the story. Because his bank account, and his terrible fear and love of his father, and his memories of home: It all would come raging back soon enough, like a flood. He’s a rubber band, that boy. Always snaps back, hard.

And then either way, whether I succeed or fail, he’d always know I was planning this behind his back, lying to his face about it, kidnapping Summer girls and hiding whole Summer families, prepping Gertrude to marry him. Hoping against hope that Selena will catch hating him from Troy, like a virus. He’ll eventually know all these things, and they won’t feel like his idea. I’ll have a husband who hates me, for the rest of eternity: A very long time.

The War on Hell needs to be Gabriel’s idea. Which means Michael might just be my new best friend, too.

“All right, tell me about him then. What is the story on this Michael.”

Gabriel goes starry-eyed, like a kid. Like how boys get about Tom Waits or certain football players. Tyler Durden boy crush, we used to call it.

“He’s great! I mean he doesn’t say yes to everything I say, but that’s okay. He always always has a good reason. And then I agree with him. It’s crazy.”

No, what’s crazy is that you notice it happening, instead of just deciding you thought of it first, like for example whenever I’m the one convincing you.

“Do you mean like he argues? You argue with angels now?”

Gabriel shakes his head, as though the very idea is unthinkable.

“No, that would suck. No, it’s like I will say something, some idea I had or how I think things should be. And then he’s quiet—I mean, he’s always quiet, but more quiet—and after a while he says something back to me. Not like I’m wrong, exactly, but more like he’s saying the thing that I said, but better. Like how I can be more right.”

If I giggle, he will die, so I do not giggle. He is being exactly the Gabriel I like best.

But then too, I am really getting into the sound of this. Whether by design or luck, this Michael seems to have Gabriel figured out, and doesn’t mind working the angles. Maybe I could be friends with an angel, who knows. A week ago I was a Fairy Princess and now I live in my car. Life comes at you fast.

*

When the house party arrives, it’s with Michael leading the pack. Apparently Gabriel trusts him to babysit, which puts a new spin on just how into each other’s lives they have their hooks. How is he getting away with this? How is the King not noticing this new twist?

“Gabriel, does your mother know?”

He nods, but asks anyway what I mean. I suppose just to make sure.

“Does your mother know about your new playmate. Does she support you making friends out of enemies.”

“Yeah, actually. She runs interference a lot of the time but this one she sniffed out immediately. I think she really likes it. Dad would have all of us only talk to Hell people, only be around Hell people. He’d keep us there forever if he could. He didn’t even like going to meet with Winter that much. He likes your mom I guess. But mostly he just wants to be home.”

And Gabriel’s mother... She’s a bit of a cypher, just sort of a sad image of a woman. Not weak, but not entirely present. I don’t really know the circumstances of their meeting. When a Princess of the Fae is getting married off to demons, that’s news. But a mortal woman marrying royalty, there can’t be a downside to that. You have to just pretend she’s very lucky. Obviously there are reasons she would agree to that, whatever they are, but to inquire about them would be to judge. 

You have to give people the grace to make their own decisions; it’s not about saying yes or no to them, because it’s not your place, but in your own heart and mind you have to just let it go. If you don’t, you are a monster or quickly on your way to becoming one. It looks harsh sometimes but it’s better to be harsh and say “I don’t care” than it is to look at a grown woman making a choice you would never make and assume you know better. And it’s better to just look at her from far away instead of trying to get close, because that concern would betray you.

So if the Queen of Cinders thinks it’s a good idea for her son to make friends with the Risen, who am I to disagree? She’s not trying to start a war, she’s just trying to take care of her kid. A kid who needs, I am here to tell you, a lot of taking care of.

“I think it’s great, Gabriel. I’m sorry it’s a secret, but I think it’s a very cool thing. We should all try harder to do things that scare us.”

Gabriel nods. It scared him; it still scares him.

“I mean, he doesn’t really have parents exactly, so they can’t come after me. It’s a one-way deal. I just want to keep him safe. All of us.”

I know what he means, of course. I feel it down to my bones, like thorny roots. It is a good reason to get out of bed. It is the only worthwhile thing a person can ever think. 

Which is why I never expected to hear him say anything remotely like it.






Chapter Twenty: Last Looks


“That darn angel’s back,” Troy says breathlessly, still on fire with the wilderness. “Do you want me to hit on him? That’s usually what it takes to...”

I laugh. “Noooo. He’s a special guest. Him and Gabriel are a little bit in it. Lots to tell.”

Troy nods. “He’s like the Selena. Gabriel’s Selena.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that, Troy.”

He nods again, smiling easily. “I know. Never mind. But okay, the afterparty guys are mingling.”

The beats have gotten no softer but some of them are slow dancing now. A Superboy in his cropped black jacket sways with his arms around a Green Lantern. Or rather, the remains of a once-bodypainted Green Lantern, now basically just a skinny dude in green briefs, streaked in peeling latex and runny dripping paint. He kept the mask on, though.

“Listen, I have an idea. I was talking to one of those Supermans and he said that usually he is really socially... Like he has an official diagnosis. But when he dresses up in a costume, he said it changes him. People like Superman, he said.”

“You want to what, invoke them? Give them superpowers?”

“Not really. I mean, yes. But just a little bit. They won’t remember this anyways.”

Troy gestures toward another couple, a Superman and a Wonder Woman, and they rise. Not to the rafters, but just around head level. Nobody seems to notice. Things are pretty intense, physically, still. Troy is giving me what I think is probably pretty similar to the Look right now.

“I think that’s a good idea that probably has some downsides we haven’t figured out yet. But you’re right, it’s nearly dawn.”

Gabriel approaches, looking a little tense.

“I don’t know what you guys have planned next but it sounded like you were under surveillance when Selena asked for the invite last night. So I wanted to tell you that when the sun comes up, that’s when the wards go down. If you want to stay under my security we need to come up with another plan.”

Huh. I didn’t know he’d figured that part out. Kind of sucks, actually, to know he’d been consciously protecting us this whole time.

“Those Summer refugees will be in Winter by now. We can head back there, I think.”

Gabriel is sad, because he can’t really come with us, but mostly because he likes helping.

“Maybe I can talk to Michael, we can figure something out. Angels know ways we don’t...”

“—It’s fine, Gabriel. I mean, your hospitality has been quite welcome. You are a good friend.”

What I mean is, Thanks.

“If Summer’s out in the open like this it’s not safe for us to keep running. It’ll put civilians in danger,” Troy opines, unaware of how funny it is to hear him talk like this. Gabriel agrees, though.

“I can get a car around back if you need a ride to Pomona. Or somebody can retrieve yours, I know where you parked.”

I won’t say yes, but I don’t say no. Selena approaches, aware of something going down.

“Can we just leave them like this? Will it wind down on its own?”

Troy will have to ground the energy, which is going to take a minute. No point in doing that sooner than necessary: The last thing we need is a bunch of spaced out revelers still hyped up before the wards come down. When Hell’s spells break at dawn, the whole local space will go back to just regular mundanity, and they’ll think the headaches are a sign to go sleep it off. Leave too much room for them to wander, and they’ll end up getting curious.

“Let’s just watch until the end, okay? Do you want to meet Gabriel’s bestie?”

Troy pipes up happily: “He’s very nice, actually. I was sad if we couldn’t be friends.”

Gabriel motions his new friend over, even bigger up close, with those eyes they have. Sad, but resigned. Remote, but focused. Like an eagle’s eyes.

“Michael. You’re the witches. And the Princess,” he says, bowing. Heaven can be pretty weird about Faerie but mostly we are shows on two different stations. He kisses our hands—even Troy’s, even though he already knows Troy—which makes a good impression on Selena. Gabriel is beaming.

“Your friends are dressed like secular saints. It looks good. They look good.”

“I mean we just met them. They were at a convention down the road.”

“Yes. They look good.”

Okay then.

Michael doesn’t have a lot to say after that, but I can see what Gabriel means. Just standing there, not even touching, like an animal that trusts you. It’s comforting. Not just because he’s gigantic. There’s something... Rooted about him. Like a great oak; home wherever he is. 

It must be inordinately calming to know you’re the only person that was ever invited to the party. Demons are embarrassing relations and faeries are squatters and humans are a huge mess, but angels know exactly what they are. They don’t ever have to fight their way back home, because they were created for the world and the world was created for them. It’s obnoxious, yes, but it’s also not anything I ever thought of as having an upside. 

When Troy talks about knowing your place in the wild, about feeling not apart from nature, it’s always as an experience. A thing you go into, and come out of again. A yearning for enlightenment and then later, a memory of the echo of what it was like when you were at peace. Maybe angels seem so judgmental because they never have to leave that. We must be like ants to them, even the Fae: Like mayflies—or May Queens—that only live for a day.

I imagine Gabriel, like, playing Xbox, with Michael just sitting there being Michael: How happy that would make him. All the functions of a perfect girlfriend for someone like Gabriel, minus all of the muss and fuss. The degree to which that would make Gabriel is happy is enough to make me happy just thinking about it. It makes me think yes, I would take a Michael everywhere with me too, if I wasn’t worried about grossing him out all the time. 

And shame is a thing of which Gabriel is, literally, incapable. So he only gets the good parts.

*

Troy’s phone is basically a sex-and-photograph delivery device: He has his little apps and his little social things, and that’s what it does. We don’t text or make calls, I don’t know what he does with other people. What I do know is that most of his phone’s bells and beeps are about times: Planets and weather systems and the phases of the moon and what the sun is up to. So he’ll know, probably with the flick of a single icon, exactly when the sun is rising. I think about dancing, for a moment, before I realize it’s already on.

Troy wades back into the bodies, their hands on him making sparks as he moves; something in the DJ comes to realize that it’s all winding down, and he abruptly bursts into tears. Best set of his life, I bet, but not to worry: The fact he was at this party at all means he’s on the way up, meteorically, and most likely we’ll be seeing him again. Maybe we could space it out, give him a reputation for just this kind of orgy. He’d be pretty grateful to us, and probably never realize why. That’s a good connection to have. Lots of free stuff, when you’re friends with a DJ.

Too there is a look on Troy’s face close to crying; putting it all away again, back inside himself. Back into the normal, regular, boring world of parties and faerie nonsense and Drone Queens. Better than most, more exciting than most, but nothing compared to this: He is in love with everyone in this room, in this hotel, in this city. Not sweet love, peaceful love, grandmother love, either: Full-on, sex-and-everything love. Meet-cute to third-date to birthdays and anniversaries adoration. Make love a different way every night for the rest of your lives passion. 

He is a God right now, of love; out of his mind with it. And he’s got to say goodbye. Waving a handkerchief to the train as his man marches to war. 

He will spend today broken, and I know that because it happens every time. I got pretty paranoid about it, on the first hangover day after we tried this trick, like he didn’t like me anymore. But it’s not fair to judge your friendship on somebody else’s relationship, and certainly not their relationship to infinity. He’d be happier recovering with me close by, like a Michael, than on his own. It stopped hurting when I realized it wasn’t about me, which I tend to find is usually the case. Overview effect applies.

The Milky Way galaxy is a common shape, that swirl, and it goes so fast you can’t comprehend it, but also so slow you can’t understand it, too. Frames of reference and relativity and all that. But if you were to reverse the flow of it, it would be like this: Still spinning, but less and less, until it seems almost ready to go in the other direction altogether. But if it did, that would still hold its shape. The centripetal force would keep gravity in motion. 

If it really stopped, like this party is about to, all the stars in it would continue on their individual vectors, curves gone straight and out, like an explosion. And that’s the goal here: Keep everybody moving on their way, until they’re out the door, not talking to each other, not reminiscing about what just happened. Just go home, wipe off your makeup, take off your costume whatever it is. Be bodies finally at rest.

That’s my last thought before the gunfire starts.

*

As the wards drop, Summer appears: A line of bodies with guns, like a cordon keeping the party from exiting as they move forward, herding them all. That naked Green Lantern throws his body across Kitty Pryde and his Superboy, but it does nothing. The bullets rip right through. 

That’s the only image I register before Michael hurls me into Selena and we both go down, onto our knees; at the tail end of the same movement he easily flips a buffet table before us, like a demo barrier, before he throws himself into the fight. Summer goes down at his hands, two and three of them crushed with a blow. I’d heard about this and I’ve seen the angels go at each other but the reality is horrific.

Troy screams from behind the bandstand just as our little table falls to kindling, and we crawl to him, shoes forgotten, bullets whistling overhead. I hear Gabriel call out into the cordite and smoke, as his guards rush in. The stage is only about two feet high but on the far end of the ballroom from the exits, where there’s so much blood you can smell that, too. Awkwardly, on our stomachs, we go into a series of spells; Selena clasps our hands without knowing what we’ll need from her, pulling the holly from her hair in case we’ll need that too. Fast thinking; I do the same.

Troy bundles our few twigs together in his fist, snapping his left fingers to set them alight, and for a moment it’s bright as a flare, shooting sparks up into the air. If there weren’t a two-way firefight going on, with a pissed-off angel in the middle of it, I would hiss at him to stop drawing attention, but the room is so full of smoke and screams at this point we must not be that noticeable.

Once the holly is burning, and he’s added some rowan from who knows where, it gets quieter. The world is a bubble we are inside, for a moment; the horror is muffled. Troy’s chanting too intensely to discuss what’s going on, but I can hear enough from his spell to know he’s drawing the rest of the power from the dancefloor: If they’d jumped in later, or the sun rose earlier, all that energy would be back in the earth where it belongs. It’ll keep. 

They’ve been on us now for about 24 hours. That alone tells me we did this right; from the trip to the Ladies to this all-nighter party, we did exactly what we were supposed to have done, or we’d be dead now. Dead like all those kids out there, dressed in their rags and capes. They were bringing the war to us and we had no idea how far things had already gone.

Even in our white bubble, I can’t hear what Selena is screaming in my ear. I realize I must have been deafened by something, one explosion or another, and I’m nearly grateful. That old drowsiness is back, and part of me wonders how long I’ve been in shock. I shake my head, looking in her eyes, so she’ll stop shouting, and then follow her gaze to my arm, which is covered in blood. Our white gowns are soaked with it, now.

She said she didn’t really know any magic, before. But I guess she’s a quick learner, because she lets go of my hand, says some words I don’t recognize, and when she puts her hand over the bullet hole, it’s bathed in a golden light you wouldn’t need the sight to see. The pain I wasn’t feeling rushes back, tenfold, as she heals me, and all I can think is that I wish I could pass out. Just let this part happen without me, until the battle is done.

Let me be just another body at rest.




Chapter Twenty-One: Let’s Go Crazy


The angel is queasy.

Michael has my fiancé in a fireman’s carry when we board the elevator. I practically had to pick Selena up when we made our move, she was so wiped out by whatever hex she’s put on me. I still can’t really hear very well, but enough that I can hear Troy mumbling charms as he brings up the back.

There will be gremlins and brownies soon, cleaning up Summer’s mess. Not literal ones, as I explain numb-tongued to Selena’s woozy questions: Elite units to clean up the bodies and scrub surveillance. The press will be arriving soon, and we’ll have some decisions to make. But on the elevator, everything is simple. It is a tiny room with nothing inside.

“I told you I’m not going to his house,” Troy hisses while the Demon Prince comes around.

“It’s not his house, Troy. It’s not anywhere.”

Selena leans against the wall, asleep on her feet.

“Selena, come sit in the middle of the floor, here.”

She comes without protest, cross-legged, about to pass out again, so I sit down next to her so that she can lean. The walls will get hot, in a second. 

To accomplish a soffit it’s best to use an elevator: The level above every penthouse that is outside of time. One supposes it’s a meditative tool, but it’s the only way Gabriel knows how to do it. You hold your finger just barely touching the area where the button would be, if the floor existed, and hope the door doesn’t open until you’re there.

“Michael, have you been to...”

The angel nods, sweating it. None too excited. But he sets the Prince upon his little feet, holding him up by the shoulders and looking into those blue eyes.

“Gabriel, it’s time to wake up now. You can rest in a moment. I will carry you. But for now you must do this.”

“I don’t know...” Gabriel mutters, scared under the waves.

Michael slaps him twice, plenty hard. His great hands are still spattered in Summer blood. 

“You do.”

Gabriel nods, resting his cheek against the angel’s chest. “I do. Okay.”

Troy stands behind Selena and myself, and we lean against his legs like flotsam on a beach. He won’t be able to do magic where we’re going, but at least it won’t hurt him like it does Michael.

Gabriel holds his hand over the bank of buttons in the hotel elevator, trying to get his eyes uncrossed, and we take the moment in silence. Troy’s phone beeps, and without even thinking about it he pops a vial of herbs out from under his shirt, where fetishes and charms clink lightly.

“Take your medicine, Estelle,” he says, holding it out: My daily regimen, to keep me safe from steel. Another thing I don’t have to worry about anymore.

“You know iron can’t hurt me. It never could. We wasted so much time...”

But he’s insistent. I guess it’s just good for me. He knows all that stuff. I choke it down. He taps some down his own throat, as well.

“Selena, are you with us?” She moans, sleepy and sweet. “Gabriel is opening up a soffit for us to recuperate. When we come back out into the real world no time will have passed, so we’ll still be in danger. But at least two of you are in shock, so we’re taking a detour.”

Troy wrinkles his nose again, but a look from Michael keeps him quiet.

“It isn’t Hell exactly. Think of it like a little pocket, or another dimension. Gabriel’s the one opening it, so he’s the only one that can get us out again. So be nice to him.”

Michael didn’t even blink. He must really trust the Prince. I wonder what that’s like.

“The good news is it’s not a fae place, so you don’t have to worry about any rules. You can eat and drink there, but it won’t count. This is strictly about getting our feet back under us and figuring out what just happened, based on zero information.”

“It was Summer, I saw their suits. But how did they get past security?”

Michael looks worried. He thinks it’s about him: Hell let Summer through to get to him, to get him away from Gabriel. Or to horrify him, maybe. Hell likes it when we show our lesser parts. But the fact that he thinks war, the thing that makes him unique, is a fault...

“Michael, you were a champion. I saw you take them out.”

He shakes his shaggy head, holding onto Gabriel as he tries to focus, but Troy clucks at him kindly.

“It was beautiful.”

Michael runs one hand through his hair, more stressed than I could have imagined possible; it smears blood up one side of his face, but he doesn’t need to know that. His eyes are not particularly wild, but he’s still coming down. Every second in the soffit will be torture for him, and Gabriel won’t see it. I sort of wish there was a way to make that clear to Gabriel, but their relationship is their business.

“Are you okay?” Selena asks, finally cogent, and I shake my head at her with what I hope is a comforting remoteness. “Because you’ve been smiling in a really insane way since it started.”

*

What Gabriel would do, if he could do anything, is be an actor. Growing up he loved to play pretend; as a man he likes any opportunity to drop the responsibility of being himself and turn into someone else. But the charisma that fills every moment, in person or in the work of a talented photographer, does not come across in moving images. Can’t be captured. Troy says this is because he has no soul to steal.

Michael grunts, shifting his weight, to put Gabriel between himself and the forward wall as he brings the soffit into being.

“You doing okay, Troy? We’re leaving the world.”

He rolls his eyes, nodding. Faerie at least maintains a link to the natural world, even if he can’t do spells there. But this is... Outer space. Biodome. Whatever it is like to be Troy—whatever he smells like a dog reads the wind, which is how he describes it—I don’t know, not really. But as my hearing is just now returning, I try to imagine it that way.

Troy says there’s no difference between things and people, between nature and gadgets. He has a lot of ideas about magic but that’s a major one: That we spend so much time dividing things up into what is nature and what is not nature that we just end up shoving ourselves further back away from it. Nature versus fallen man, he says. Nature versus mobile phones. Magic versus mundane.

Troy says of the imaginary witches from our Ren Faire ideas about history that if they had known about satellites or iPhones or Ferraris, those would be a part of his religion too. But they worked with what they had, and they never existed anyway. So when he leaves the world, it’s not just trees and hillocks and deer he’s leaving behind, it’s also celebrities and public transit and pigeons and rats and caffeine.

I think that sounds desperately unpoetic and he says this is why I’m part of the problem. That we have to divide the world into divine and profane because the only other option is recognizing our own divinity, as a part of the world. And most of us are way too into the idea of our own specialness to let that happen. We’d rather be fallen, damned, than admit we’re only as special as everyone else.

I guess that’s what it is about the Ladies: I know they love me as much as they love anybody, but there’s still a part of me that wants to be jealous of that. On the other hand, Troy loves having power, being such a good witch: Doesn’t that make him a hypocrite? He says the first rule is Shut your mouth and the second rule is Stop trying. A lot of people don’t get him because he actually follows his rules, so they think he’s being a jerk. I wonder if this is how he’ll train Selena, too. I wonder what she will be able to teach him in return.

Mostly I think that being raised the way that I was has given me certain ideas about the world, ideas that Gabriel and I share and can’t really be expressed in words, but they do make Troy’s gritty city magic seem really tacky, classless. 

Like if anybody can do it, what is the point? How could that ever save you?

*

We are not so far from the world that we can’t hear the gunfire, still dying down. When we made our crawling, herky-jerky way to the back of the banquet hall, they were still tussling at the forward entrance. 

I clocked about twenty security, including the ones in the ballroom itself, all armed with some pretty scary hell tech. That, plus the plainclothes outside, puts the total closer to thirty. All of them created out of ash and cinders for one purpose: To keep what happened from happening. All of them returning to dust when the night was over.

Between the carpet outside and our ballroom was a foyer of about twenty yards. That’s a lot of space to cover, with Hell’s army holding you back. Even for a Summerland deathsquad, that’s a lot of ground. 

I was still deaf but finally feeling the bullet in my arm, as Selena did her hedge magic to draw it out, thinking those thoughts: Who let this happen, who let this happen to us—to me—in territory supposedly so safe Gabriel could bring his pet angel into the mix. 

When actually there should have been alarms going off the second our tail parked, half a lot back from us: Hell and Summer are diplomatically friendly, but that isn’t real friendly, any more than Continental breakfast is real breakfast. There are only about fifty people in LA extant from the Realms at any time, period: That’s a pretty pinpoint area to secure, and we don’t screw it up. It’s such a colossal misstep it doesn’t even seem possible a single mole could have accomplished it.

When Michael appeared over us, with Gabriel in his arms, looking heartbroken and buzzed, first I saw his boots and I thought, “This is not how it ends. I cannot be murdered, by my own people, in a pointless merch mixer hosted by Hell. Not with some nameless DJ spinning.”

By the time I got all the way up to his head, and realized who was standing there, I was still angry—but I wasn’t afraid anymore.

If Gabriel realizes his people let this happen I can’t say what he will do. He is a sweetheart but it’s been an underlying theme in our lives together that I am unable to imagine what he would do, if he were ever disappointed. Half the dance is just making sure he doesn’t realize that’s what happening. 

The world is only as big as his comfort zone, to the Demon Prince. I think it would wreck him personally, way deep down, to know there are people out in the world who don’t particularly care about his well-being. I think he would go into shock, or get post-traumatic, if he found that out. Half the time we do the shuffle so he won’t have to find out he’s not the center of the universe, because then the universe would have no center at all.

Maybe it’s time for that to end. Maybe this little apocalypse is happening right on schedule, if in fact I’m right and this was not a screwup. Maybe the kindest thing would be to let his world end. Or at least the most useful. As long as I’m out of the killzone, I don’t really care which way that one falls. I love him, just not as much as I love existing.

Nearing the penthouse now. You can’t even feel the vibration of the engine or the chains or however elevators work. We’re that far from the world, at least. Safe in a soffit, where anything could happen. Anything at all. 

To make a boy hate his father, after a lifetime of love: That is a challenge. If it weren’t Gabriel, it wouldn’t be sad at all. It would be funny. 





Chapter Twenty-Two: Two Doors


The trick is to stay quiet and still enough for Gabriel to concentrate, but not so quiet or so still that he feels observed. The Puck told me once that the Demon Prince was pee-shy, when we were kids, and that’s always stuck with me. He loves to be looked at, can’t live without it; but he also hates to be looked at, because it pins him down. One of the things we’ve always had in common. One of the majors probably. It’s why he loves Gabriel so much, they can be friends without talking. I was never able to give him that. 

I need to get inside his head, not just because I care about him and he’s weird, but as a matter of survival. When he turns on me, whenever that is, I’ll need to see it coming: I’ve known that practically my whole life. You can know his location or his velocity but never both. So I talk about myself, to gauge his response. The difference between the angel and myself is that Michael was never in any danger, so he can leave it well enough alone.

Gabriel starts fading, the temperature drops and the walls get firmer, so Michael hauls off and slaps him again. I can tell it upsets Selena and Troy, but that just pisses me off more: It means I couldn’t count on them to do the same, if it counted. If I needed to pull it together, to keep them safe, they wouldn’t do what they needed to do.

The Ladies and the Drone Queen agree on less than they should, I think. A lot of the ideas we have for publicity fall under what the Ladies call “blood magic,” and they say I’m better than that. Crashing my car, drunk. Even just flashing no undies at a premiere, they call it that: Black magic. So I stopped telling them my plans. Which they, and Troy, would say proves them right. I think it’s easy to say from the cheap seats.

On the other hand when I think about Selena Kirke doing something like that, walking over a grate with no Marilyn panties on, it makes me want to kill like every man on Earth. Maybe it’s like that.

She’s the first one to react, even before Troy. Guess her witchy nerves are still on fire from downstairs. But when we get there, it’s not the angel and it’s not my fiancé that shows it; she flails a little bit, like a sleep-jerk, and then looks up from my shoulder, tremendously worried all of a sudden.

“Estelle, where the f are we?”

When we reach the soffit, the super-penthouse, it’s familiar, old as old. If the walls could talk they’d say it’s always the same here: Sunken livingroom, round bed. Gabriel has just enough left in him to complain there’s only bottled water in the minifridge before he face-plants directly into the furs, and it’s up to the rest of us to continue freaking out in his absence.

“I think... We will not be going until he is done with us,” Troy shivers, and Michael cocks his head, like he’s listening to something the rest of us can’t hear.
 
*

“First rule of business, no parents. No dads, especially. Lookin’ at you, Michael.”

The angel grins, hair still wet from his shower. While the soffit didn’t come with extra clothes for him, there was an extra-large bathrobe; he seems comfortable lounging while his clothes dry and Gabriel sleeps. It has been decided that we will leave him alone as long as he needs to rest, so our council takes place in hushed voices.

“When we leave here we go back to the world as it was, okay? Don’t get too comfortable. We are here to plan and get ourselves together. But we are not safe.”

Selena waves a hand from her club chair dismissively. “Got it. Just say who were those guys. And why.” Troy’s eyes widen for a moment in sarcastic agreement.

“Well. They were Summer Court. So the War has truly begun. There were not many high-level targets there: Me, Gabriel and Michael here. Probably you. Possibly Troy. Hell will retaliate, or Hell was in on it. One of the two. Autumn is definitely going to have to pick a side. When we leave here, we’ll go to Winter. Michael, you can take care of him?”

The angel nods, flexing his fists. Whatever shame he felt for pounding those guys out there, he’s over it. Another thing to like about his kind, they don’t dwell. I wonder if he even remembers them individually, or if it was just like some kind of berserker blood fest. I can’t help thinking it would have been better for us if he’d gotten hurt. If one of them had to get hurt, it should have been Michael. Give Gabriel something to fight for.

“The important thing is that we assess the likelihood that Hell is involved. Gabriel will need...”

“—Just say it, Estelle. You want it to be like that so you’re going to make sure it’s like that.”

Michael looks at Troy, still not clear on what we’re discussing. It occurs to me that he might not be capable of understanding, because he is kind of an alien.

“Hell’s not a great place, Troy. Summer’s not that great either, or have you forgotten the May Queen?”

“We saved her. She’s in Winter now, with her family.”

“If Summer’s committing to this, it goes beyond Winter. They’re cutting off their nose to spite their face.”

“But even if it’s true, even if Hell was willing to give you and Gabriel up for some reason, how does that help?” Selena’s focused, now. “Your War is on Hell, not Summer. If the Courts fight, you said it would be bad news.”

“Apocalyptically so. But we’re dealing with facts on the...”

“No. You want to bring it all down because you’re pissed at your parents, that’s different from the facts on the ground. You’re subject to mission creep, Estelle. We all are. Stick to the brief.”

She’s right. Summer is repulsive, and Hell has my soul. I do want to bring it all down. But that’s not the solution.

“So we break Summer’s alliance with Hell. Isolate them from outside support, get the other Courts to turn a blind eye. Turn on Summer. Just for a little while, just up until Midsummer when nobody can beat them.”

Troy stares at the wall. “How are we going to get between Summer and Hell?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying. It doesn’t matter if Hell wanted Gabriel to get hurt, which I sincerely doubt they did. But if Gabriel is pissed, they’ll have to react. They’ll move to protect him, and me, and that means you too. Sorry, Michael.”

He shrugs, neutral. “When you are all dead and forgotten, I will be as I am now.”

Well then. 

His shoulders, when they move, are like mountains. I can see Troy adjust his body every time Michael speaks, orienting on him, hips like a tuning fork. I doubt he even knows he’s doing it; he would be disgusted if you mentioned it, so I will be sure to do so: The line from that dumb Viking vampire to this all-American psycho is not a short one, but it is complex. Not what I would choose for him. 

Gabriel would... Either be very into it, or very weird about it. Either way it would get intense. So it would be best to stay on topic and get out of here the second we can.

“So we’re agreed: We call Hell’s bluff. Get Gabriel incensed...”

“—Or just talk to him like a person...”

“—Or just talk to him as though he is a person, and get him on the phone with daddy and mommy, and see if he can’t drive that wedge. I will use my fiancée powers if necessary. But it means removing to Winter, and that’s going to be tough on you guys.”

Troy wants to protest, but he knows I’m right; Selena just wants to see fairyland, and I can’t blame her. That, for sure, will not last.

*

There was a massacre downstairs. Is. Currently, still, happening. I could be dead. I could call my sister from the elevator, get Gertrude down here, see what happens. It would be enough for Hell to call a new Teind, if I did that, just to avoid the embarrassment of having helped assassinate their future queen. I could drive away into the sunset with a new name and a new face. But it would mean leaving Troy and Selena behind, which doesn’t feel good to think about; it would also mean murdering my sister, which is another kind of bummer.

Or we could trade them Michael, which Gabriel wouldn’t really mind at all. He thinks he’s in love with me and he probably is, but that’s only as long as I’m in front of his face. He would be sad when he remembered to be. That might trigger the actual Apocalypse, though. I don’t know how all that works.

Or we could give them the May Queen, marry her off to Gabriel and cement that alliance for all time. It would give the Courts a grace period extending to Gabriel’s coronation, if that ever even happens, and though that’s a blink of the eye to the Fae, it’s long enough in the real world that I would call it a solution. But that’s just more Summerland bull, anyway. We saved her once, and though I did promise to put her on the Throne, I don’t think sending her to Hell would satisfy.

When we take the elevator down again, there will be the front door—drones, press if I call them, guards, cars—and there will be the back door: Gabriel’s car, a safehouse, more running, more strange showers and danger and everybody wiped out all the time. Maybe it’s time to take a page out of the May Queen’s book and just walk. Just show our faces to the world: 

You can’t kill us, so don’t even try. When you are all dead and forgotten, we will be as we are now.

*

Troy follows me into the bathroom, which is both unusual and obnoxious.

“Today’s not the day to break the Teind. I know what you’re thinking but that doesn’t happen yet. Nobody’s safe yet so you can’t. I think we should just walk to the car, once the gremlins...”

“You’re right.”

He’s brought up short. “Am I.”

“I can’t trade them Michael, I can’t give them the May. I can’t even sell them horrible Gertrude. I’m subject to mission creep. I can’t trust myself right now, I could do any awful thing and tell myself I was being a hero. So we have to play it straight: I’m still affianced, the Demon Prince stays in good standing, Selena’s just a girl, you’re my lieutenant.”

If we’re going to call out Summer and Hell for collusion, we can do that in Winter most easily anyway. It’s only my aversion to the place that kept it off the table.

“And the cleanup crew?”

“We’ll beat them to the door. Text the Drone Queen right now, okay? And that way it will send the second we leave the soffit. They can be there in... what, one minute, probably? Ninety seconds? It’ll take that long to get back out through security, probably. Longer, if we can get Gabriel to bother the concierge on the way out.”

“If,” Troy laughs at me, relieved. “There is no if of that.” He lingers, tapping the rim of the tub, very wiggly. I think perhaps I have caught being psychic from him, as sure as I am of what comes next.

“Hey, Estelle,” he says in as offhand a way as he can muster. “Do you think they, um.” Troy smiles at the floor, at nothing.

“The Demon Prince and his bodyguard? When exactly would I have ascertained that, Troy?”

“I don’t know. You know him...”

“What I know is that Gabriel and sex can’t even be in the same zip code. If I ask him, that puts the target on me. I’m giving him the go-ahead to ask some questions of his own. If I asked Michael, I feel like... I would go crazy, or the world would explode or something. How about this, how about you man up and ask ‘em yourself?”

“I do not think that I will do that.”

I have to laugh. What goes on in there?

“I didn’t think so either. Look, we’re going to Winter. Maybe the Puck will kiss you again.”

He brightens. “Maybe.” But he’s still smiling that weird little smile as we head back out.

“Troy?”

He nods. Comes back to us.

“She’s going to have to take the Walk, Estelle. Things are moving too fast now.”

“Okay. Let me be the one to tell her, though. And not till we’re out of Faerie again.”

“She’s going to be mad at you, okay? So you have to tell her everything, every single part. Otherwise it’s going to break her.”

“Troy, I’m fairly certain it’s going to do that anyway. But if we’re going to survive this we all have to be at our tip-top. That means Gabriel and Michael in full battle mode, it means you charging up with everything you’ve got. It means me ordering deaths, probably before sunset today; it means the May is our hostage again, not our friend.” 

And it means Selena Kirke becomes a Goddess, as scary as that will be for her. I don’t care if it breaks us all.






Chapter Twenty-Three: Knight Vision


Once Gabriel is up and about, it’s up to him to heal himself; Troy can’t do magic here, can’t even come up with the stuff he usually says. Gabriel makes a muchness of walking on his own, as he dresses for whatever comes next, which I can tell has Michael at a loss. What do boys do, when they’re alone? 

When the elevator opens, Gabriel hangs back with me. They stand facing us at the doors, waiting; Michael drops one heavy paw on Troy’s shoulder, comforting. Any port in a storm, I guess. He just needs somebody to protect. I wonder if that’s his thing. Troy pats his hand awkwardly, lightly, without taking his eyes off my face. Too focused on the next few minutes to really process it at all.

“It was Hell, wasn’t it?” His eyes looks bruised, his voice still rough from screaming.

I should not be surprised that he’s figured this out, I realize. I can play the fae game very well. But faeries never lie, exactly. You get used to treating their words as malleable, formless as their bodies. Things don’t mean as much. But Hell, the game that Gabriel can play, is a different animal that I’m not used to: They lie, all the time, right to each other’s faces. It’s why he’s so much better at Los Angeles than I am. He just skates through stuff that takes me half a day to understand. 

“We don’t know that, Gabriel. Don’t jump to conclusions.”

“You trust your Guard, back in Winter. Even if you don’t like them, you know you can trust them. You always say you don’t feel safe, but it’s not the same thing. This was Hell. Summer held the guns but it was Hell that let them in.”

“Do you want to yell at your parents? I would like to watch that go down, if I might.”

He smiles weakly, shaking his head. “You’re right that we don’t make a move yet. Not on them. But I figured something else out, too. Your War, it’s not on Summer. That would wreck the world. You want to take on Hell.”

I stand very still. It is bad enough if he feels betrayed by his people; I know that feeling intimately but for him this is a new idea, a very sad thing. But not as sad as the thought that I can’t wait to get away from him. At the end of this road, the only inescapable conclusion is that I am willing to end the world as long as I don’t have to marry him. Right? 

“Well, I’m in.”

“You what?”

“We’re a team. Listen, I don’t mind if Hell messes with me or tries to hurt me. That is just to make me stronger. But this doesn’t go anywhere. If I get hurt that doesn’t help Hell, if you or Michael get hurt I’m not into that. So this isn’t about making me better. It is useless.”

“Your narcissism is refreshing. I mean that sincerely.”

He’s going to think I’m namecalling...

“You are being mean.”

There it is. In all our decades together I have never figured out a way to say it that doesn’t offend him, but I honestly do love this about him: He really thinks the world is that small, that it’s about teaching him neat lessons. That he matters so crucially to the continued existence of the universe that something like this—which would be a normal day in Summer for a regular person; which is increasingly the way my own life behaves—is specifically offensive because he’s not the protagonist in it. Believing randomness itself is a personal attack, an affront: Now that is power.

“Yeah, fine. I mean it, though. That’s a good way to look at things. How would you like to visit Winter with me? You can bring Michael, if you... I mean, can you? Can they come to the Realms?”

The Demon Prince wonders. “I kind of feel like he can do anything. He won’t go to Hell, I wouldn’t ask him but I know he wouldn’t do that. Maybe it’s his call, I don’t know. We can just go and if he feels like it, he can come with us.”

“Do you need to talk to the hotel people before we go? Once the brownies are done it’ll probably be like the party ended at midnight. Michael and the house party leaving, that’s probably the last thing that officially happened.”

“Yeah,” Gabriel says, running a hand through his hair distractedly. “Yeah, they treated us really well. Good folks.”

Over his shoulder, I can see Michael doing what I sincerely hope is meditation and not angel crap. The wrong prayer from the wrong guy at the wrong time, and the soffit will close up around us like a black hole, and then who will destroy history? Princess Gertrude? The psycho tween cowgirl they call May Queen? My poor parents, sitting there behind a thousand faces, waiting for Summer and Hell to come swallow them up? 

I picture them suddenly, in a strangely vivid image: My beloved King and Queen, sitting all alone in the throne room, falling to ruin all around them. Smiling at each other like old folks, in their weeds and rags. Singing songs they learned when they were little, because they don’t know what else to do. Because they never did.

*

The day desk barely knows what he’s talking about, but they know he’s famous and they know he’s hot in person, so that’s good enough. He glad-hands them with me on his arm, while the others hang back at the elevator. Troy’s eyes are bright, being back in the world; Selena seems a little feverish as well. Michael stands between and behind them, hands still resting on their shoulders, looking as nervous as I’ve seen him as he watches Gabriel do his bullshit. He wants to move.

Troy gives me the thumbs up when his phone alerts him to the drones’ arrival, and I pull Gabriel a little closer, a little tighter, so he’ll wrap it up. The Summerlands contingent eyes us angrily, even as they’re rushing the ballroom, throwing glamours in every direction. Dazed first-shifters, hospitality crews and minor managers, even some early-riser businessmen, wander the lobby in their wake with stars for eyes.

The last time I was in this hotel for anything major, it was years ago. Closer to the beginning of my tenure in LA than the middle, counting back from now. Way before Troy. I was scarier then, less angry probably, but still mostly fae. 

A girl was mean to me in the lobby; she’s married to a musician now and a social-media superstar, but back then she had her original face and body and was just regular amounts of pretty, so it was gross to get attitude from her. I was on my way up, and she was a bitch very intentionally standing in my way.

By midmorning the next day I had a lock on her: There was a sex tape about to drop, nothing too nasty but still poised to take the news cycle by storm. I was just getting cozy with the drones back then, so I had to trade some pretty exclusive stuff for an early release. Watching it was not very enjoyable, but the spell I used it for worked like gangbusters: Before the week was over, she was in the papers for a hit and run a few years previous that seriously injured a child. 

A little extra mojo and the story became that she’d killed the kid, and no matter how much money they threw at it, to set the record straight, that is the story that persists to this day.

This is how I learned that magic is unpredictable: I was trying to get her thrown in jail for being linked to a pyramid scheme—this was back when financial scandals were happening every week, it was a weird time in the planetary sense—but found out too late that this particular shakedown was out of a holding company I didn’t know was Hell-adjacent, and couldn’t be hexed. So I had to make do with a dead kid. 

The important thing is that she was really nice to me the next time I saw her. Not because she knew I’d done magic on her—that is something a crazy person would believe, and she’s not that crazy—but because she had been humbled. 

Hollywood never gives you more than you can carry. And if it turns out that it has, well, you were never meant to come and play in the first place. When people say if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere, it’s always with some not very well-hidden smugness: I have made it in New York, and therefore I am vastly superior to everyone else who is alive. It’s a question that answers itself, because nobody is going to make that point without also saying something about themselves: To repeat it not having made it in New York is too sad a thing to even accomplish.

LA is a different animal entirely, and my one true love, precisely because everybody knows they’re just barely hanging on, all the time: If you can make it here, give it five minutes.

*

The drones all call my name, at the end of their nightcrawler shifts this fine morning and looking tired and hollow. Sucked-on mints. They always get that ballet dancer look, skinny and malnourished with the weird layer of fat over it. You can’t survive on blood alone. The story that developed before the brownies could lock it down was something about a riot, no pictures survived but there were a few random posts kicking around that intimated violence. 

Of course the five of us look fresh as daisies, coming out into the harsh morning light, so that seems wrong once the cameras are in our faces. We’re either the only survivors, or the story is a lie. Selena mirrors Troy’s silent smile, backing up against Michael, who turns his face from the cameras in a way that you wouldn’t really notice even if you were trying to get a look at him.

“Things got a little crazy last night!” I grin, secretively, and they push forward. A human pyramid; a gaggle of puppies, I like to think. A single body, a rat king. “But it’s nothing like what you’re hearing.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.” Looking right into the biggest lens I can find: The one trailing back to the live-feed van, the spiral tower on its roof. “You know we just like to have fun. There’s nothing to see here.”

“So nobody got hurt?” one of them looks darker; a silver in the dark of his eyes that says Fallen.

“You can feel free to check it out inside, if you don’t mind getting bounced by security. But I’m here to tell you, it’s fine. Everybody’s okay. Just got a little heated, that’s all.”

They’re disappointed, all for the same reason; some of them extra, for another. What else can I tell them, they beg, just so they won’t have wasted the morning getting up here. What else can I tell them, so the Drone Queen won’t beat them bloody for falling for Troy’s trick. What else can I tell them, they ask, that they can sell.

“I’ve got a project coming up. Something you’ve never seen before.” Without turning, I indicate the crew: Dopey stalwart Gabriel, and big old Michael, lovely Selena and Troy mugging just a little for the cameras. “I think it’s going to take the roof off. I’ve been wanting to collaborate with Gabriel for a long time, you know that. We just wanted the right project. And we have it now.”

Used to be, back when I was a Faerie Princess, that I would just sort of riff. Open my mouth and see what came out. I couldn’t lie, but I could talk nonsense. More than most of the time, it worked out pretty well. Maybe that’s my way of doing what Troy does: Just firing words into the crowd and seeing what sticks.

But because I don’t make anything and I don’t do anything, it’s a blank space they don’t know how to fill. Am I talking about a game or an app or a song or some more of Gabriel’s dumb jeans or what? What will my very first creation be?

Destruction, obviously. Disruption is what Gabriel would call it, regrettably and not for much longer, but it’s really just fashion, just glamour, the same old game as ever: Tearing down what used to be, calling it old and fat and stupid so it will get out of the way. Go live in a book somewhere while we take over the world.

“There’s a war on, kids. But we’re not fighting against anything,” I say, adding voice to my voice that only certain viewers will recognize, “We’re fighting for something. You’ll see.” 

That word irrelevant, it’s a magic spell. A hex that can take away your purpose and shrivel you to dust. Applied in the right place, to the right ego, it will break kingdoms. And when I finally say it, it will. I know it suddenly.

I know what I must do, now. Clear as if I were Troy, plugging into the world beneath the face of the world. This is just the seeds, the breadcrumbs, the grit in the oyster. They’ll do most of the work here, in the real world. I just have to put a face on their dissatisfaction, their disappointment; their own stuff.

“Listen. The only enemy is history.”

This is my art.




Chapter Twenty-Four: The Knowledge


“Your shit is blowing up,” Troy says once we’re at the car, phone on vibrate. “Are we still going to Winter?”

“Get us to Pomona,” I sigh, tossing Michael the keys. “We have to now, Troy. They will not be getting it any time soon. We have to explain ourselves to them in a way they’ll understand.”

“You’re not making that crazy face anymore,” Selena points out, climbing into the backseat next to me. “I want to help but you stopped making sense back there.”

I give her a normal smile and stare at my hands, quiet. Troy doesn’t know what to do about that either. Gabriel just slaps Michael on the knee, up in front, and begs for snacks.

“We do need to stop and eat. Like carb load.” Selena casts me a sidelong look. “Selena, we can’t eat there. I know you think I’m like obsessed with food or have a disorder or something but this is... It’s about survival, not control. Okay?”

“I just haven’t ever met anybody that talks about food as much as you do.”

“Wrong. Guys talk about food all the time. You only notice when we do it, and I’m only doing it now because Faerie is really unpleasant—a relative term; I should say even more unpleasant—once your blood sugar drops. We can’t sneak anything in, which means we have to eat now. Even if you’re not hungry.”

“I am hungry,” moans the Demon Prince from the front seat, not kidding in the slightest. Selena nods: Point taken. Michael’s too worried about followup squads to stop the car until at least Monterey Park, so we’ll have time to work up an appetite.

“The cabbies in London call it the Knowledge,” Michael says, not taking his eyes off me in the mirror. It’s unnerving. “Do you know what that is? The city is part of their body, their blood. You have the Knowledge, Estelle. You’re not so different from us.”

But whether he means angels, or himself and Gabriel, or even himself and the witches, I don’t know and I absolutely do not care. I liked him better when he was telling us all how we were going to die.

*

“Gabriel, say your theory you were saying before. About Hell and all that.” Troy gives me a look, past Selena’s head: Be careful.

“Oh, I was just saying that we should declare war on Hell, instead of Summer. You guys can rally the Courts and I will take over back home. I was planning on doing that anyway.”

This part of the plan is news to me.

“Gabriel, what?”

“I will be King in Hell, and you will be the Queen of Cinders. A little ahead of schedule. Just like we talked about back at the Chateau, right?”

I’m glad he can’t see my face; Michael sneaks a look, though, which I do not like.

“Let’s stick to the facts on the ground. We can worry about the spoils later. Right now we need to be thinking about damage control, about reprisals, about who in your father’s camp could have...”

“No, that was an all-night operation. They waited until the wards were set to fade, and that means it was people on the payroll. Not just a mole. If they were just coming after us, they would have either followed you in, or waited until everybody was gone during that dance party, or waiting to grab whichever one of us was the target until it was done. There wasn’t a reason to kill all of those people, which means killing them was the reason. And that means it was Hell.”

Before, perhaps, we’d assumed a working shorthand that was altogether less clear than what Gabriel is saying now. He’s not wrong, but it does mean he’s thinking faster and jumping more steps than I’m necessarily comfortable with.

“So when you said it was Summer’s guns but Hell’s hands...”

“You thought I was just being a narcissist but I wasn’t. You always think that. But I am telling you this time it was them. There’s stuff at home lately, really bad spy stuff. Courtly intrigues, and... Mostly my mom keeps me out of it but it’s been scary for a while now. You understand that my father may already be dead.”

I did not. I hadn’t. That madman, with his beard and his smoldering eyes; the way his heart leapt into his chest whenever his boy got pissy enough to say something. Hoping every time for it to erupt into real rage, finally make him the kind of man the King of Cinders would understand.

“Gabriel, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about...”

“No, because you always think that faerie crap is all that matters. And it does, to you. But it’s not the only thing in the world.”

What I want to ask, but do not: What does this say about Michael? Are you just using him, too? Are we all your insurance policy? How far back does this go, and how far down?

“Then I offer you the full faith and protection of the Winter Court, Gabriel and Michael. Of the Fallen and the Risen. Full amnesty as a member of the royal family. And let Summer bash itself against our stones, we will not weaken.”

Michael nods, holding my gaze in the mirror. Gabriel leans back, relieved, and sighs. For a second I get nervous that he’s going to thank me, and then remember that I’m not really a faerie and I don’t have to stress about it anymore. But then under that, of course, I remember who we’re dealing with:

“I’ve been thinking about a cheeseburger since I woke up.”

Michael revs the engine, smiling to himself. “Then a cheeseburger you shall have.”

*

“When I was a kid, we lived almost at the end of a long caliche road. It was white under the moon, like something out of Anne Shirley. Both sides of the road were swampy, it was oil country. Mesquite and brackish sick water. It smelled like urine but not in a bad way. Just like it was nature. We had no neighbors. The farm stretched back, all the way back to the sky. Dust storms and dust collecting in every corner, when you had the windows open. About a half-mile down where the road ended was a shooting range. I don’t know what happened there, if they had animals or just shooting ranges or what it was exactly. It could have just been a store, past the gates. But the gates were tall, taller than a man.”

It’s already the most I’ve ever heard about Troy growing up, and I want to demonstrate my excitement, but I don’t want to interrupt. He eats like a bird, so he’s taking advantage of the rest of our mouths being busy—Michael in particular, chowing through his mountain of food, is something to behold—but it’s more than that. He is trying to calm us down; he is knitting us together. The story itself doesn’t matter. What matters is that all of us are listening; what matters is we can get lost for a second.

“Me, I didn’t like working the farm so I did the least they asked of me. I am not proud of that now. My mother’s stepfather was a hard man but he taught me a lot. Never spoke. He hated horses because they were stupid. He always said that to me, so I would stop having fantasies about horses, thinking they were better than animals; he wanted me to live in the world. I wasn’t having that. We were poor and sad and mentally ill in our family and I wanted to just get away. I used to walk down that white road under the moon, while everybody was asleep, quiet as quiet, just my crunchy feet and the swamp smelling. You could hear coyotes, I pretended they were wolves. Howling, all the time. Every morning, waiting for the school bus before the sun even came up.”

I don’t know where to look. Troy always seems so content with life that when he busts out one of these stories you feel ridiculous for ever having problems, which makes him feel bad, so he doesn’t tell them very often.

“I found an armadillo once. Those things are huge and they have... I don’t know if I was smelling leprosy, which they carry, but it was the most dead thing I have ever smelled. Just thinking about it now makes me want to barf. But I couldn’t stop looking. It wasn’t wormy yet. Just rotting, off in a corner of a pasture where the cows didn’t go.”

He looks at our hamburgers, apologetically, and waves his hands in front of his face: To scribble over that part of the story, and get to the important part. The only person drawing looks is Michael, and that’s only because he’s so big he couldn’t fit in the booth. One young man stared at Selena like he was dying in the desert for a while, but I don’t figure that’s worth dwelling on.

“Sorry. No more of that. Just that on the farm I learned how to read certain signs. First among the dead but then, better, the living. The way birds moved, and spoke: Letters and sounds. The way a dog would suddenly get nervous: What was he seeing that wasn’t there. The colors of kittens in a litter: Which were born to favor and which would not live through winter. I thought I was going crazy. My mom said people who saw meaning where there was no meaning were going crazy, so I tried not to see the things any more. I was pretty sure I was going to die, most of the time.”

Michael takes his hand, but under the table where nobody but me will see it. It’s a kind gesture; Troy barely notices. He looks down his straw, into his soda, and keeps talking.

“I did not like very much about life. I thought magic was a sad way of not living in it, because it was a hard life. Not as hard as most others but hard enough that I hated it. School was... I mean, there wasn’t a safe place. But I was getting better and better at magic, even though I pretended it was just pretend. I got to where I could make things happen. I wish that we had the internet but nobody in my family knew what that was, so I was alone.”

He takes out his phone with his free hand, scrolling through his inbox. I wonder what it would take for him to let go of Michael right now. Maybe they will just live this way from now on. That would make Gabriel act very weird, I think. It would be good.

“Now I don’t need dead things to know stuff. I just know it. But when I start feeling that old feeling of, maybe the world has something to say about this, maybe I should just start looking around, well. There was always roadkill somewhere, a bird or a... Now I do this.”

Troy holds up the phone, open to his spam folder. Without looking, or taking his hand from the angel’s, he clicks a message at random.

“If it’s ever for penis enlargement that would worry me, because that would mean it’s not working. But so far it never has been.”

He reads the message, breaking out in a smile.

“...your loving bride needs this Delphi falls culmination of the Scripture is in the fact of the Incarnation Wimbledon show your need with doves...”

“I don’t know. I just like it. I call it pseudoporcomancy. What I think it says is... Michael’s coming with us. Is that okay?”

The angel nods. Something behind the eyes, I don’t know what yet; something he wants to say, or not say. If Gabriel knew him better—or if I just knew how to ask, maybe—he could explain it. 

Terrified and overjoyed, all at once. Maybe that’s just what being an angel is like. But I don’t think so.




Chapter Twenty-Five: Bastard Queens


The Guard takes us into custody immediately, this time; no waiting around. Troy cranes his neck looking for the Puck, but no way will the Puck be treating with us this time. His thoughts on Gabriel could fill a book. A grimoire, strange language twining and shifting like sun through leaves. 

And Michael the angel, who even knows. The idea of the Risen even in the same room as the Puck makes my hair stand up a little bit. You never know, though. He might like him, the blunt weirdness of him. If it were politically meet I know my parents would, but they will have to treat him like garbage just for the optics. They’re probably discussing Gabriel right now, trying to decide whether he is here as their future son-in-law or a refugee from a cold war that just went hot.

When I was young I tried to track their etiquette for a long time: Make sense out of nonsense, something to live by. At some point I realized they were just making it up, fudging it the same way I was. They do what they think they’re supposed to do, and in the end it doesn’t matter because they are the King and Queen. Nobody’s going to call them out. It makes it quaint. Anything that makes them smaller, I love; anything that makes them smaller makes me love them more.

I am strangely relieved to see Gertrude, who makes it her business to see us as soon as we arrive. She’s taken to the role of Princess swimmingly, of course; it makes me want to gag, but she looks wonderful. With her hair that shining, near-black shade you can barely tell we were once twins. Color You Slightly Less Beautiful.

She air-kisses me and Troy, and makes a dramatic point of gazing deeply into Gabriel’s eyes, imperious hands gripping his delts like a future Queen. Selena and Michael don’t exist, for her to greet. But once we are all sitting—it’s a cozy enough parlor this time, behind a portcullis; a sort of Laura Ashley nightmare in a medieval prison cell—her smile is conspiratorial enough that it’s inclusive.

“Well, and things have heated up. The Queen and King are dancing in the dark; the latest from your Earth was long ago. Our news is blockade-shored, embargo’d well, so though I’m loathe to ask I must insist: The War that you declared when last we met, has it yet turned to blood and mire?”

I can count at least three bad habits so far, in that breathless little speech alone, but from her color I can tell she’s just putting on an act. These last days can’t have been easy for her, trying to learn a lifetime’s worth of nonsense in... How long has it been, here? Only three days, in the real world. Could be months. I won’t press. Yet.

“You need to be worried about Winter, sister. We can handle our own. Right now your job is to be a Princess. That means stronger ties with Spring and Winter. Summer’s on its way in, at the Solstice. You’re going to need allies, and you have to do that from here. Now, where is the May?”

Gertrude nods, curtly; she sees what I’m saying and agrees. Faeries when they relax into it, when they want nothing from you, are the easiest people on earth to deal with.

“The May’s detained, I fear it’s true. Your companions raised a hullabaloo. I tried to keep the whispers out of Court, but the claxon bells that clang, they’re loud as death. And so they’ve moved the May Queen and her kin, locked the Palace down to grit and stones. Our humble King and Queen are sat abed, with greater troops to guard them than yourselves. Myself, I only made my way to you through cunning artifice of tantrum. I fear I’m getting all too good at those.”

She drinks up my laughter like she was dying of thirst; it’s gratifying.

“But you, our lordly Prince and fairest guest. Surely you are shaken to the core, and with such inconvenience to spare. Our hospitality withal to numb the insult you’ve sustained...”

I just hate her. So gross. Troy catches my glare and clicks his tongue, softly.

“Your kindness speaks for itself, Princess. I am so very glad we’ve finally been able to meet. What a long journey you have had. All the way from... Where was it?”

She’s brought up short by that, not expecting a Prince of Hell to be so nasty out of the gate for whatever reason, but it gives me a healthy opening.

“The Princess is ours, Gabriel. Winter through and through. And a lovely example. What matters is that she is home now. We can all identify with that, in these times, and take comfort in her safe return.”

Everybody takes a breath, now that that’s over, and the gossip flows back in to fill the silence.

“Summer is unkind—and I, I suffered at their hand, myself—but a violence like this, I never thought our Realm would see. First me, and now the two of you. I confess, it greatly vexes me. What can be their plan?” 

If she knew anything, it’s clear, Gertrude would offer it now. But she seems as confused as any of us. More, perhaps.

“Selena, you spent time with Autumn. Can you think of anything?”

She shakes her head. “I’ve been going over and over it. Even when they didn’t think I was paying attention, they didn’t say anything. Just that it was going to go bad, very soon, no matter what they did. And they liked that.”

I nod. That’s exactly how Autumn would see it: Let other people do the work and then pick over the carcass for the best of what’s left.

“What I think,” Selena says, finally plugged all the way back in to what’s going on, “Is that we’re dealing with an outside party. You guys are so used to everybody screwing each other over that you think these things are just the price of doing business, but to me—somebody who has no idea what’s going on—it does seem related. Autumn being shady, Summer and Hell doing tricks that don’t make sense. I think we look for a trickster.”

Everyone seems to agree, but with no theories as to whom she might be identifying—and uninterested in adding more players to the mix—we set it aside. I don’t want to find a trickster, I want to be one. Flush him out in the process.

“Well, sister. I will say that the War continues apace. Hell made room for Summer, and that will not stand. Injury to myself, and to these worthies as well. We had to make a little space outside of time, just to breathe.”

Troy shivers. “It was terrible, Gertrude. Don’t do it, that’s my recommendation.”

She laughs, not unkindly. “I plan on never leaving home again.” She sounds a little tired, but satisfied. She’ll be a good Princess. Maybe even a Queen one day.

“Well. Thanks to you Summer is at our door, in the real world. Probably already marching in the Realms. Hell can’t be trusted, even more than usual. If they knew we had an angel with us, that would indicate a larger ambition than I’m prepared to really think about. But they were willing to hurt Gabriel, or offend him at the least—not to mention myself—and that won’t stand.”

Gertrude seems almost jealous to have never been the subject of a failed assassination. But that could be normal. I’ve never had a sister before.

“If the Summer girl’s family won’t play ball... Summer won’t respect us if we keep treating them as guests, and then it’s all over. We can play Hell all night long but Summer can still get to us. They showed us that today. That’s what they were showing us. It’s how Summer thinks. But she’s still their Queen, she still has power. She can summon any number of magistrate here. She can call the full government and assemble a cabinet here, if she wants. It’s happened before.”

Gabriel clears his throat, turned on in spite of himself; he pretends bewilderment, but I know him so much better than that. “And uh, then what, Estelle?”

Selena shakes her head at my wild grin, and firmly changes the subject. No more assassination talk, not today. Not until we’re out of the cell, at least. I’ll give her that long. But someone in Summer’s going to die, and I don’t care if that’s mission creep: They messed with us, they came at Troy, and I can’t let them think that’s okay. It’s not about pride, it’s about the slippery slope of weakness in war. Being in the Winter Court like this has lit a cold fire under me, as I stretch out into a girl I don’t have to be, back home in LA. 

You could get to like it. Part of you has to learn to.

*

“And when was it you learned of faerie ways?” Of course Gertrude wants to know all about Selena Kirke, flows to her like water. They’ve more in common on the surface, I suppose, than any other pair of us. How sad for Selena.

“I guess I always knew there was something going on. I had a fairy godmother growing up, if that’s not an offensive term. She taught me some things. I guess I didn’t know that at the time but that’s what she was doing.”

I’m proud, patting her arm on the oaken slab of the table, where it lies next to mine. “She is a damned good healer. I was so surprised. And of course, very pleased to have the help.”

What I mean is, Thanks. I don’t even think she notices I didn’t really say it, just grins a beautiful huge grin and won’t meet my eyes.

“But then I came out here, when she said. And Autumn picked me up straight away. I stayed in a hotel but I could feel stuff, coming. I don’t know if Estelle knew that first night, that I was onto you guys. I sure didn’t know you were having trouble like this, though. I just thought it was some kind of career thing. Like the Illuminati or Monarch, or Scientology. Somebody’s lie that was turning itself true.”

I can tell she wants to ask Gertrude about her own experiences, but if I have to listen to that sing-songy verse for even more than just one second I will probably murder everyone in this tiny room, so I nod to them both with a caring look and step away.

“I just hope everybody’s being nice to you. My friend had a sister that turned up out of nowhere, back home. And she was just terrible to her. I mean, the sister was not that great to be around, she’d had a tough life. But I didn’t think it was fair play. It’s your world, you have to be a good host. So I hope everybody’s doing that. I know that Estelle’s been great with me...”

Yeah, it would be impossible to get further away from that conversation. But I try.

*

Michael steps aside with me, as Selena and Gertrude get the measure of each other; his bulk belies a step like a cat. Those soldiers probably never saw it coming. And unlike Hell’s security, they had families waiting back home. I wonder if he can even think about that, or if it slides right off. That’s something... Not to be jealous of, if true. Worth considering as a lifestyle.

“The Knowledge, I said. Do you know of which I spoke?”

I’m not sure, but I don’t know what he’s asking either. I shake my head, shrugging; he leans down to look into my eyes. His are dark, you can barely tell where the iris starts. And what seemed to be blonde is, when he’s standing next to pale Gabriel, a good deal more coppery than you’d think. Set him beside Troy’s old Viking buddy and he’d look pretty tan, too. Six hours ago I would have said all three of them were basically just the same person in different sizes.

I know I can get away with a lot as long as my hair’s straight and I’ve got a matte lip. Boys don’t look as closely as they think they do. I guess I just never thought about guys doing the same thing. 

Like Troy, the tragedy of his life is that he can’t grow a beard, because he says people like beards right now. His kind of people, woodsy sort of people. But I’ve seen him overlook some pretty significant things if the guy has some mysterious quotient of factors. He even said a drone was cute once, basically built on this model that Michael is built on, but more like a human in size. So the question becomes, do “people” like beards or does Troy like them? Or do Troy and the people he likes, do they all like the same thing? 

If I was going to be with a girl I don’t think I would want her to look like me. Especially not now, with Gertrude ruining everything. Somebody who looks like me has never been a less appealing prospect. Selena maybe. She’s very pretty. I can imagine overlooking some things there, like if she had a really big zit I wouldn’t notice that. She could do some pretty terrible hair things to herself and she would still be perfect looking.

So maybe it’s not a guy thing at all, maybe it’s just a people thing. Maybe we’re all just animals looking for movement on the tundra, and we don’t look super close until we have to.

“What you said, before. Our enemy is history. That’s the thing they’re going to hear, the worst nightmare. All of them at once. That was the city talking to you, I think. Like the wild one’s telephone.”

Well, I don’t like that one bit. Seems like “the city” or “the Knowledge” or what have you, seems like it would give you the courtesy of a notification. Troy opens his mouth and insane things come falling out of it, pretty much at a constant rate. But it never feels like somebody else is driving. Maybe I just need practice, though. Troy would love that, telling me how to be psychic like him. Wouldn’t he love that? We should do that, all three of us together.

“You think I...”

“I think you do not listen because you think I am foolish. Or no, simple. I think you believe though that I love him. Yes?”

Of course. I mean I wish a guy would look at me the way he looks at Gabriel. That plus sex would be the whole deal. I would settle down for that, probably. For a while. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to question it, until he says this: Angels do what they do. What this angel does is love the crap out of Gabriel, whatever form that gives his angel thing. It makes me like him, a whole lot. More people should watch out for that kid, he’s a mess.

But then, I wouldn’t think Michael could think outside the box enough to know to clarify it, either. Generally angels treat you like you walked into a conversation halfway through, because they’re so into whatever they’re into that they assume you are too. Maybe he’s just starting at the beginning, so I will follow wherever this is going.

“To keep you both safe, that is my charge now. So you must listen. Even if you think I am simple. You are not wrong, I am simple. But the Knowledge, that is for you only. Adam and Eve ate of the Tree but that was not their sin. He loved them for that. I should not tell secrets like this, but it is important. Listen.”

He’s getting agitated. I run my hands down his arms, as I’ve seen Gabriel do. It straightens his back, like a soldier. He holds them tightly to his sides, like he knows he was about to flail out. Is this about the assassination talk? Is he trying to say he’s down for that? I don’t like it. I mean, it’s useful and I won’t turn him down. But he has to say it.

“We did not eat. We cannot sin. Do you understand?”

I really don’t. I’m getting just as frustrated as he is; I think about calling Gabriel in to referee, but if Michael didn’t see fit to include him there would be little profit in it. Is he saying that angels don’t know what they’re doing most of the time? Is that all? Because welcome to the club.

“What would a sin be, Michael?”

He shakes his head violently, like a shaggy beast. “No. Listen. We cannot sin, because we do not know. There are things that I can do that are not sins. Because I do not sin.”

“I mean, but I don’t believe in that concept. So.”

“Believe or not. But I am a tool, a sword, a key. You cannot use me if you think I will break. You need not be simple, it is not in your nature. But I am. So use it.”

“Gotcha.” 

I do not, in fact, gotcha. It gives me a thrill to coast the edge of a lie, here in my childhood home. I can feel the Look steal over me as I imagine going on a lying spree, running up and down the hallways saying demonstrably untrue things. Those bells would ring then, wouldn’t they. Ring up a storm.

“Michael, I will remember what you have said. If you wish to protect us, you are more than welcome. As I said, you should consider Winter home as long as I am Princess. As long as I rule, you and he are safe.”

Michael looks around our cozy little cell, and wiggles his eyebrows at me ironically, suddenly familiar: Safe indeed. Safe as the grave.

*

When we return to the table, when Michael appears at Gabriel’s side, there’s not a thought for me, or our little meeting: Michael enters Gabriel’s field of vision, sitting there with Troy playing checkers, and Gabriel smiles. Bounces right back.

I think, half-heartedly, about getting jealous: For all his protestations, he’s never really treated me any differently than that. When I was young I thought it was demonic, as in genetic. Something as inborn as his hair color or those eyes; just another limitation. I did a lot of thinking that way when I was kid, trying to figure out what was people’s boundaries and what was tricks. Once you know a person’s limitations, you never have to ask for more than they can give.

As I grew older, I filed it under “emotional ADHD,” and let it slide. Enough that he’d give me ammo when we were married and hated each other; that he’d cheat on me without even meaning to, like some kind of ancient horny Greek god. It gave me power just thinking about it, when I had none: The misery we could inflict on each other. How right I would be, about everything. How vindicated. It’s not real power but it tastes like it. Fairy gold.

But watching him light up here, I can’t even be angry about it. If that is who he is, that’s who he is. He is a tool, a sword, a key. Why do I care how he feels? I should care how he works. And how he works is, he’s happy right now, when it’s just the five of us. (Plus Gertrude.) And that’s something I’ve never really seen before. 

The Demon Prince was born sated, he does not go into scary places; he asks for things and then he has them. It works out perfectly well for him. It’s a comforting thing to rest your back against: At least Gabriel has no problems as far as we can tell, and that’s something nice to think about. But in all that time, I think, I have never seen him happy. 

Maybe it’s being angry at his dad, or thinking his parents might be dead; maybe that represents a kind of freedom. Maybe it’s just being part of something. Maybe it’s that I myself did not know what happy meant, until I told my parents to screw and moved to LA and met Troy and started getting famous as my main hobby. Maybe that was just being part of something, too. Maybe the five of us (plus Gertrude) can make that thing Gabriel was talking about like he invented it. Family.

Because out of all of us he’s the only one who truly knows what I meant, about history. Maybe more than I did, when the Knowledge spoke. He didn’t know until today, but now he does. That weight on his shoulders finally means something; he can feel it. Now when he bounces back, like he always does, it will be with that added weight. Whether his parents have fallen to a coup or not, whether this all ends tomorrow, he has aged just enough today to understand what history means: It means me getting hurt, and Michael mourning over the bodies of the men he’s killed, keening like a beast.

It makes me love him more, it makes me hate him more. It makes me wish we were closer, so close like when we were kids, in a bed meant for just one kid, like two parts sometimes of the same thing. It makes me wish he were so far away I never had to see him again, too.

Because what I know, and Michael cannot fathom, is this, and I have always known it: I could talk for a million years about the Teind and Summer and Hell and he would ignore me with a sympathetic smile, only listening for his own name, like a dog, or like a cat, for reasons to take offense. 

But shoot him a couple times, with the guns of Summer: Watch how fast he gets it then.






Chapter Twenty-Six: Weird Sisters


Troy sleeps, nestled against my shoulder. He kicks like a puppy, sometimes, when he is awfully tired. I have noticed this before but it has never happened against my person; it’s a lot less violent than it looks. More like shivering. What goes on in there? What does he dream about?

Once when I asked him about his dreams, he said apologetically that they were a very private conversation, but deigned to explain that they only rarely included television characters. When I dream, it’s always a party. Sometimes everybody I know is there, sometimes nobody I know, sometimes fictional characters. Or they’re people I know, but in other shapes. When I dream of Troy he is a great stag, or a wolf. It has been so long since I’ve dreamed.

Gabriel’s mother keeps a house in the hills northwest of Palm Springs, up Chino Canyon. He says only that it is a garden of poisonous things, but in a way that always made me think he was talking about her sisters, who she keeps there. Not all of us can marry Kings.

Hour to Banning and then into the hills about another hour, always turning right, until you couldn’t see the car from the air. Roads that don’t exist. We only lost about thirteen hours to Winter this time, so we’ll be there by four. Teatime, Gabriel says.

Michael and Gabriel are having conversations in the front seat that I can’t properly hear over the engine, which makes me feel insane. Selena, on the other side of Troy, is alert but afraid of disturbing him, and won’t speak. I am left alone with my thoughts, the most hated state.

Heading into Chino Canyon it’s getting misty, which is appropriate. I don’t remember much about Gabriel’s mother, not from lack of trying to get to know her when I was too young to know better. There’s just not much there to grab. Maybe her sisters will be more interesting.

When I ask about his mother, Gabriel changes the subject. Not subtly, but maybe not in a way he notices either. Maybe that’s what it is like inside his mind, too. 

I remember a pale woman, lovely but guarded; long brown hair headed for a stylish silver, usually back in a low pony. Pinkish cheeks, not quite a Winter but could pass. My mother would always turn up the red in her own hair when we visited, blushing like a warrior Queen. She didn’t like Gabriel’s mom, but I never found out why. If it was just the bloodline, she would have known better than to say that to me; not only because it’s gross but because she’d be insulting my future children.

Hell takes its wives from the real world and the Realms about equally. Usually there’s magic in the blood, of some kind or another. They take that stuff, breeding, very seriously. But like with anything else in Hell, it’s true in name only, the surface: A legitimized bastard, or a changeling like me, isn’t a problem on paper, which is where they live. 

The mother comes from a line of Eastern plutocrats, if I remember correctly, that jumped in on the Gold Rush at the right time and in the right way to take over southern California pretty handily, which is how she was placed in the King’s sights. Cotillions and mixers, between Hell and industrialists, were the thing here twenty years ago; it was all country clubs and tennis doubles back then, when they met. Aping the aristocracy as usual, my mother would say, and not too kindly. Perhaps pitching my marriage as a redemption for Gabriel’s line was one of the ways she atoned for what they were doing, or maybe she was just being blunt as usual.

I remember her giving him a lot of instructions. Not ever really browbeating him, but withholding when he misbehaved. Now I think she was just putting herself between him and his father; trying to get him on point so the King would have less to be disgusted with. As irritating as Gabriel is with service people, his arrogant chumminess, that’s how charming he is with women of a certain age. He knows what they need, it was his cribside gift.

*

Before Troy fell asleep, when we were just getting back on the road, Selena got her second wind. The trip to Faerie had, of course, cheered her immensely. She even liked getting locked up, she said, as though it were a trip to a theme park. As though countless people had not suffered in that cell over the centuries, wasting away. Dying even, if they were mortal. But she caught that in my eyes, too.

“I have no doubt that most visitors don’t have the experience I just had. But I was there with a Princess! And it helped getting to know you. I had a pretty good idea of what it was like, but... I mean, did your parents even think about coming out to see us?”

I shrugged.

“Faerie stuff. If somebody told them I was in the castle, they’d just think it was like any other day I was in the castle. They like knowing where their stuff is. I mean, to us it was less than six hours but in the real world, it took twelve to get out. Same thing for them—for most of us, for Gertrude more and more—that would have just felt like minutes. It was a drop-by. If we went back a year from now, they might think it was the same visit.”

“I get it. I think if you weren’t a fairy too that would be pretty horrible.”

I nodded. She wasn’t wrong. But then, I’m not one, not anymore.

But you can’t ask for more than somebody is going to give you, and that goes double, triple, for parents. Every pain I can think of from childhood, from anybody’s childhood I can think of, comes back to wanting more than your parents had to give you. Which should make it easy—should make it, frankly, a snap—to forgive them. But somehow it doesn’t work that way, either.

*

It has been a year, I think, since the last time I was in the mother’s orbit. She has always been kind, if that isn’t too strong a word. 

Her trouble with her own mother-in-law, from what I’ve heard whispered, was a cold war of its own. Perhaps she didn’t want to repeat that cycle; maybe she just wanted Gabriel to be happy, just like the rest of us. We could have made peace for his sake, if it weren’t for his father. A word from Gabriel, I often thought, and she’d step up, but he was so goony-eyed in love with his father it never occurred to him.

I have never seen Gabriel ask his parents for anything; it’s hard to imagine what that would even look like, but it’s certainly not how they do things. It would go too far toward acknowledging one another’s independent existence.

His dad is a gifted communicator, of course, but there’s an undertone of paranoia to everything he does that sets the tone for his court. He would call it just being smart, or defending what’s yours, but I know Gabriel and his mother both think he’s a little insane about it. Today’s not the day to question the King’s dedication to security. You’re only paranoid if you’re wrong.

If Gabriel’s father is dead, I don’t want to think about it. The Queen will know, in her mysterious garden house. I picture, not incorrectly as soon becomes clear, a vine-strangled whitewash; simple square lines like an Italian villa, dark tiled roof, staircases everywhere, flagstone courtyards and gaslamps, impossibly tended hedge mazes, and secret gardens in decay. That’s where I would live, if I were her. When I could escape.

Most of the year, they say, the weird sisters have the run of the place. The King of Cinders’ paranoia extends to his wife’s vacations, of course, and that’s not out of place either. The sisters number three, each a pretty powerful sorceress in her own right, living on the good will of their eldest sibling the Queen, who has no magic of her own. 

When you cross that lake for the first time, that’s the thing that burns. I can’t imagine it. Maybe that’s why Troy is so adamant about not going onto Gabriel’s property; maybe some echo of that fear is something he’s intuited. In the good years our family could cross the boundary untouched, but being married is different. You bring nothing in with you.

We were at one of his mother’s places in the East once, when the news was that his father would actually be visiting. He didn’t, of course, begging off until a more neutral territory could be acquired, but of course I didn’t notice that. I just wanted to hurt him for letting Gabriel down. 

And, I suppose, for disregarding his wife’s hospitality. So much of Court life, Winter life, was about preparing for guests and entertaining guests and complaining about guests. The idea of standing anybody up was almost incomprehensible, but especially that quiet woman.

I don’t think I would ever have come to understand Hell if it weren’t for that: If I hadn’t come up against the cold stones of that wall so often as a child. Even as Gabriel ignored me, treasured for moments at a time, it never really sunk in until I saw his father doing just the same. 

I felt for him the sadness he inspired in me, which I couldn’t have named, and wouldn’t really understand given the relative warmth with my own parents, who would never strand me anywhere. I mean, I guess they were all right with leaving their daughter places, but I didn’t know it at the time.

If you were mine, I would say, brushing his flaxen hair, I would never leave you anywhere. And I meant it: He would make for a wonderful son, as good as a playmate. The very idea of finding other things interesting enough to abandon him, that was what stuck out. The first days after a visit was heartbreak, as I’d wake up excited to explore the house, or the grounds, or quarters or wherever we were that time with him, and then remember he was gone. Back off east, or to Hell. 

Gabriel never brushed my hair in return, and of course he never promised he wouldn’t leave me behind: I didn’t need either of those, and they would have rankled. But it occurs to me I may have set a certain precedent, back then.

*

“Princess, you do us a great honor,” says one of the aunts, in a chocolate knitted cowlneck that makes her body shapeless, even where she’s belted it. Her crown of braids makes me think this is the middle one, the strangest one. She looks so much like Gabriel’s mother, as I remember her, that I start to get nervous. Gertrude is enough twin for anybody.

She ushers us inside warmly enough, taking an appreciative look at Selena in particular as she goes, but doesn’t seem too bothered by the presence of Michael. Just because her sister is married to a Demon doesn’t mean she’s a sympathizer, I think; I’ve noticed most witches are cool with angels in the abstract. She’s the widow, I think; the last one to join their little Chino Canyon coven they’ve got going. She had a life outside of their family, for a brief time; I doubt they ever let her forget it.

Flatter of affect is the second-eldest daughter, closest in age to Gabriel’s own mother: They’ve never liked each other, out of sheer jealousy I think, and it is clear by their identical squint as they greet that it’s not changing any time soon. She was her sister’s baby before he was, and she’s never forgiven him for being born. Also, obscurely, there is talk that she hoped once to have the King for herself.

This aunt wears a lot of layers, vertical in an imposing way; her tunic and long vest and whatever else is hanging down would, on a rounder or softer woman, give her the appearance of an art teacher. This sister, though, she’s 100% mean choir teacher. The only person she doesn’t seem to find absolutely embarrassing is Troy, for whatever reason, maybe some commonality of magic they can see in each other that would be meaningless to the rest of us.

We retire to a sunken room, half outdoors, where the two remaining sisters are chatting and laughing, thick as thieves. Gabriel’s mother is lit from within, in a way I have never seen; I wonder briefly if she’s a widow now, too, but that strikes me as unkind even for me, so I amend it internally: I hope that she is safe.

The baby of the family looks the most like Gabriel: My mother always said his fairness came from the mother’s side, but I didn’t believe it until now. She looks a great deal like him, cupid lips in perhaps a crueler or just a more mischievous bow, and ruddy cheeks already fading to laugh lines. She’s the one I like most, I decide, based on very little information. And so, of course, she’s the one who gives me a look near-disgust as we approach.

“It reminds me of that part in that song,” Troy says quietly as we head through the house. “You don’t even notice the guitar humming in the background until it slices down and the guy starts screaming. ‘Possum Kingdom,’ do you remember that song? From the Nineties. It reminds me of that. Everything is already scary and then you notice it was happening right behind you, all the time, and that makes it scarier than ever. Like a person painted to be wallpaper, and then they’re coming at you.”

They’re stair-stepped, these sisters. It must get confusing. The house arrays itself around us, no two floors quite level. It twists around, a little bit, like he’s saying. Something always in the corner of your eye, uncanny, and then it’s just nothing at all.

*

We five and the four sisters pass some small amount of time on their little patio, looking out over the pool. It’s a good deal less grandiose, this house, than I would have expected from a family like theirs. Not that I wanted it to be gauche, I just didn’t expect cozy. 

Past the pool there’s the requisite labyrinth, but the stone beasts and people peeking up from its folds are not marble, not modern art, not topiary: None of the things a demon family would expect as a matter of course. Lichen covers a faun’s stone here, elsewhere moss creeps over a child’s eye. Distinct lack of cherubs and the like, but you can’t blame them for that either. 

The magazines on her wicker furniture seem well-thumbed, a good sign. It can become a game, with a family like this: Wondering what is for show, what books are only spines, how often that bowl of fruit is replenished, how many times the hobby-horse was ridden before it propped itself jauntily against the mantel. But this house feels, and smells, and looks, lived-in. 

Do the aunts ever leave, or just work their hurly-burly from here? Is their sister home for good? She doesn’t seem widowed, though, and you can’t divorce a demon. Is there a way to ask what is going on with her? If I sit still and pretty long enough, will Troy find a way?

“Little wolf,” says the mean one, after the smallest of small talk has worn itself out, “Take me on a walk in the gardens. I am old, and may need aid.”

Troy looks to me, a little scared to be singled out, but we both know he’s safe. Sheltered in the house of our enemies, while our friends hammer at the wall between the worlds, to come and kill us. I haven’t felt this safe in days. Another point in the Kind of Cinders’ favor.

He stands, then, while the rest of us look on with interest, and he stoops over to retrieve his shoes from near where I am sitting, to whisper. 

“You have to Bechdel her, okay? It can’t be about Gabriel. And don’t even bother about her husband. It has to be about you and her. She’s slippery.”

I nod, without catching his eye, and Selena scoots just the tiniest bit closer to me on the couch. Soon enough, though, the one with the braids has taken her away, too, into the house to show her something I didn’t catch. Crafts or something—infused vinegars?—some batty thing that lit Selena up.

The angel and the Demon Prince have also, at some point, gone missing. The youngest aunt goes in search of them, without much prelude or pretext at all, and so I find myself suddenly alone with a Queen of Hell. Or as I like to think of her, my future ex-mother-in-law.



Chapter Twenty-Seven: In the Garden of Poisonous Things


Selena and Gabriel’s aunt kicked around the kitchen for a while, trying to figure out if they liked each other or if they were compatriots, unwilling soldiers in a war that really doesn’t need to involve either of them.

The kitchen was bright enough, but muffled and a little warm. The surfaces were covered, she told me later, with jars of every shape and size. Some of them with liquids, some with nasty burrs or long grasses; some empty but for strange residues. Like one of those rooms in an Anthroplogie, she told me later, but a corrupt one. Not an abandoned one, I noticed. Corrupt.

“I grew up learning magic, but I didn’t know that’s what it was. I sort of filed it away...”

The aunt put a large mortar before her, and they crushed lavender. The aunt put her whole body into it, bruising them fiercely. Selena tried to follow suit.

“That seems shortsighted,” the aunt said, grunting. Her braids were coming undone. “A born witch like you?”

It was sleepy and sweet in the brassy kitchen, windows screened but open. Outside, the chimes hung still as anything. A pair of glass doors opened on one side to a ravine, dry and mossy; it too was screened, which is how she noticed there were no bugs, as she said later: That was when she noticed there were no insects, no sound and no movement, and started to get creeped out.

“Our family isn’t... We don’t know about stuff like that. This was my auntie, my godmother, that taught me.”

The aunt nodded, finally unknotting her braids and letting them swing as she worked.

“We’re not always born to the right families.”

“I did okay, I think. I like my family.”

“That’s rare, isn’t it? I love my sisters, but I often wonder.”

The aunt stripped off her sweater, revealing a simple tailored t-shirt, and put her back into it with another mixing bowl, some stuff Selena didn’t get a clear look at.

“Does your sister visit often?” Selena hoped this came off lightly, although she was clearly prodding for information. The aunt nodded.

“We don’t often notice the passage of time. It’s nice when she comes, it marks the days as well as seasons. I don’t think she’ll be here much longer. Too hot.”

It seemed breezy enough out by the pool; Selena wondered if she were talking about the climate, but didn’t know how to proceed. She felt like an ambassador, she said, from a country she didn’t understand, on an emergency trip to a kingdom she understood even less. An errant word, in a charged environment, could shift worlds. She kept it quiet.

“Where did you all learn your magic?” she asked to fill the silence, and the aunt dropped her mixing bowl where she held it, tightly, in the crook of her elbow. Flour and something like black salt covered the tiled floor.

“We go way back with Hell,” said the aunt from the floor, kneeling on a towel as she swept the shards and ruined flour up, one hand warning Selena to stay where she was. “Mostly their wizards, once our mother was worn out. They know a lot of ugly things. They taught us them all.”

“Does that... Come in handy?” Selena looked around the place, at all the jars, dark places where things hung to dry, imagination swiftly outpacing her ability to keep it together. 

So many times, when we’re dealing with the uncanny, we start to imagine things—it’s like being on drugs, a little bit—anything can happen, and suddenly anything is exactly what you’re imagining. Leeks and bulbs become hanging skinless rabbits, waiting for the broil, or even worse things. A smile turns hungry. The teakettle becomes a warning.

And then boom, you’re just a girl in a kitchen with a normal dotty woman scrubbing a floor, and you feel guilty for being afraid of her, for even that second. But it’s no less unsettling, because now you know the shadows can turn on you at any time: You, by mistake or future knowing, have made this place unsafe. You cannot turn down your fear, your anxiety borrowed from the future; it calls itself into being. The angles of the place are not right.

“When we need them, we have them. We don’t often need them. Your friend is in danger,” the old woman muttered from the floor, hissing and sticking a finger in her mouth. “Damned thing.”

She stood, finally, tipping the pan into a chrome wastecan, and looked kindly at Selena.

“My sisters won’t tell you this, and I should not. But you need to leave. You are no safer here than outside the Canyon. It’s about that man of Gabriel’s. He’s far too useful to have come here.”

Selena grew bold. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s happening. Where is her husband? What’s going on back home? What have we walked into?”

The woman clucked her tongue, grown terribly old in a moment as the glamour faded. “Haven’t you heard? It’s War. And this time we aim to win.”

Selena stood her ground, every impulse urging her to flee. “And who is we?”

“She didn’t want to marry the King, but he wouldn’t have anyone else. We pushed her, my sisters and I. Threatened and cajoled. No temptation was seductive enough, the man is too much a boor to see what she really wanted. And she resisted everything, until her son was born. That boy out there. This is how alliances are made, and kept. If you think I would do that to my own sister without cause, I don’t know what to tell you.”

“She wouldn’t hurt Michael. Gabriel would never forgive her.”

The old woman smiled. “You overestimate his loyalty. And hers. What they’re doing is wrong, and for something like Michael I think it’s unforgiveable. I don’t do this for the boy, he’ll only love that one until the next one comes along. But I would not see that thing harmed. I think it’s cheating, and needless cruelty.”

Selena said she looked around the place again for spell stuff, like some kind of witch MacGyver, which is impressive in terms of initiative but also sort of ambitious, even if she recognized the junk around the place, which she did not. But she said she was thrown enough that she imagined tying some bleached twigs together with some raffia as some kind of wand, before she realized this was just a decorative DIY project she had seen on Pinterest or possibly in an actual Anthropologie, so she decided to just take the woman at her word.

“Now, you’re a tall girl. Fetch me down that mixing bowl and we’ll start over. My sister and yours still parlay. We have plenty of time before you need to go. And when you do, it can’t be quickly. Don’t let on.”

*

“Now, when exactly was the last time I saw you? One of his events, I bet.”

I nod. “It was a benefit, I think. Not related to your family. He was there to raise money, I think. We took so, so many pictures. Exhausting.”

“He loves to be looked at,” she sighed wrily. “We all do, I guess. Well, you’re looking lovely. All that nastiness. And a trip home to boot?”

Interesting. I nod. “We’re trying to take it one step at a... Right now is not the time to let ‘em see you sweat.”

By which I mean to imply that I know she’s doing a number on me. But since I can’t tell what it is, or where she’s coming from, I don’t have a lot else to add. The witches will be safe, among their kind, and nobody will hurt Michael if Gabriel’s around. I should worry about me: We didn’t end up here alone, the two of us, by accident.

“What did you hear about the party? Here in the world, I mean.”

“Caught your little performance afterward,” she grins. “That was intriguing.”

I smile brightly. “Internecine squabbling among a few Faerie families doesn’t deserve much more than nonsense, I should think. I mean, you know how they are. Any reason to take offense.  I won’t have it! Especially with the wedding coming up.”

Her face is perfectly composed at this, where normally it would evoke something approaching joy. I give myself a moment, picking idly at a magazine as though overwhelmed by our impending nuptials, and wait for her to show another card.

“Well. I hope the wedding isn’t causing undue stress. I can tell you: The groom’s family makes most of the arrangements. They can be a little pushy. My mom actually found it refreshing, she didn’t go in for that sort of thing. All the balls and dresses and stuff, it wasn’t really her style.”

It was always sad to me that Gabriel didn’t know his human grandmother. Sometimes in a family like that it’s the grandparents that have nothing to lose, so they can devote themselves full-time to spoiling the kid. Not that he needed help in that department, but I thought they might at least have lavished him with love. I’m curious.

“What was she like?”

The Queen’s features darken, just a little bit, and I start to worry.

“She was a vibrant woman. She had a lot of opinions. Not really about politics. Or I mean, marriage. She was... There was not a lot of downtime. She was like a thunderstorm. A lot of drama, occasional bits of quiet. She was an artist, very interested in the placement of objects. And of daughters.”

The rumor was that Gabriel’s mother presented, at some point in the proceedings, some kind of flight risk. It’s hard to imagine, not because she seems particularly broken so much as dispassionate. But maybe she just blamed her mom. I went through that, I know how it goes.

“She would have loved Gabriel, then.”

“I’m certain she would have. They would have made quite a team,” she smiles. “Always up to something. She was great with small children. Maybe that’s why she kept having them.”

“How often to you make it out here? It’s so lovely.”

She looks around, not bothering to put on the modesty of the house-proud, but not particularly satisfied either. Its strange geometry and hers.

“It’s pretty witchy. I don’t go in for that kind of thing much. But it feels like home, which is nice. I spent a lot of time here after Gabriel was born, so it reminds me of him more than anything. I can’t imagine what they get up to, most of the year. Those three.”

She smiles indulgently, about her mixed bag of sisters, and then claps her hands to change the pace.

“Well! I don’t know how much you know about what’s going on back home, Estelle, but let me tell you it’s gotten pretty scary. The quiet times are worse, in a lot of ways. You start to imagine all kinds of horrors. I know Gabriel’s worried about his father, but those two...”

A conspiratorial look, arching itself way backwards into the past. I didn’t know it was going to be that kind of party. I make it a policy to express no clear opinions on Gabriel, in general, but specifically with family. Even the highest compliment can be turned into a weapon, if you’re determined enough.

“His father likes to pretend he wears the pants, but if it got really hot I would pull him out, no question. I don’t like to be around all that violence, but that’s not the same thing as being afraid. I have the best spies in the Kingdoms, do people know that? Is that something they say about me?”

“No. Which I guess is strong evidence.”

“Well. Either I’m telling the truth or I’m deluded, that’s all it proves. But listen, I came in there just a girl, like you. They treated me like a movie star, which is to say they worshiped and despised me in equal amounts. This American bitch, okay, coming in to marry the most eligible of Hell’s Princes. I rode in armored cars for the first five years of marriage, until Gabriel. Then I just wanted out.”

It’s the most she’s ever said, in more ways than one.

“Did it ever get better? Did you ever come to enjoy it?”

She looks me up and down, sad for a moment.

“Oh, you sweet girl, that doesn’t matter. But in order: No. And Yes.”

*

Out in the gardens, Troy was wowing the mean aunt with his knowledge of the local flora, which was sparsely represented enough that he didn’t exhaust himself: Brittlebush and barrel cactus were all he recognized. 

“Brittlebush, California frankincense. It’s the cowboy’s toothbrush,” he has explained to me on the few times I’ve forgotten myself and demanded to know what he was burning. 

He knew enough to know that this wasn’t a failure on his part: These plants were from all over, not native to the ecosphere, probably illegal, and mostly fatal.

“You make a spell with nasty stuff you know what you get?” he asked the aunt, hopping from rock to rock along a low wall. “Nasty spells.”

“Sometimes nasty spells are called for, little wolf.”

Troy shrugged, crouching at a thorny bush. “I don’t really think that’s true.”

He plucked a handkerchief from his little sporran and, with a glance for permission, plucked a branch with a single thorn. “But you’re not just gardening here, are you? You’re breeding.”

“Grafting, yes.”

“They’ve been talking to me since we got here, loud as anything. Nasty stuff. Dark grumbles. Says this one here, one prick of this thorn could put a man into a sleep like death.”

“Not like, little wolf. That bramble would stop your heart.”

“See? Nasty. Who needs something like that around? And not just around, but growing. Living. Right outside your house. I think you should get out more, Auntie. That’s what I think, I think you’re getting weird. I think you girls should take a vacation sometime.”

“Not anytime soon, though. Isn’t that right?”

He shook the thorn into one of his little vials, and sighed.

“No time soon, yeah. It’s going to get very bad. You should make this place less like Hell, nobody lives here that needs that. You should plant some things that remind you of home. When you were just a girl and you felt safe. Smell of frangipani, vetivert.”

They walked on, to a pond with a grungy old birdfeeder fountain in the middle, ringed around with black volcanic stone. Along the edges were something like morning glory, and big-belled flowers like datura.

Troy’s head didn’t clear the hedges of the maze, he said, so he couldn’t see back to the house where we were. It made him anxious, he said, which was what made him act up.

“What about the water? Is the water poison, too?”

By the time the old witch turned around, morning glory twined around her fingers as she plucked it, he was completely naked.

“What is this, little wolf? That is for the moon, not the sun.”

“Coven business. Jumping over fires and whatnot. That’s fine, I guess. If you’re old. Me, I like to do whatever I feel like doing.” He flexed for her, with an open grin.

“Not even then. Put your clothes back on, child. This is unheard of.”

Troy vaulted into the pond, then. It was deeper than it looked; he found himself standing with lilypads up to his waist. “Tastefully,” as he described it later.

“Well, now I have done it. I’m all wet, Auntie. Put down your poison flowers and come on. Splash around with me a little while. What’s the point of living all alone out here, if you can’t do what you want?”

“I am doing what I want. Staying dry, not acting like a fool.”

He splashed the pond water toward—he specified—but not really anywhere near her, shaking water from his curls.

“I’m not acting like a fool, I’m acting like it’s a hot day and you live in a deadly vicious wasteland and you deserve better than that. Getting drier and drier. How old are you ladies, anyway?”

She shook her head angrily, but stepped neither toward nor away from him. “You’ll have no dessert when we get back to the house. I shall slap any hand that tries to give you something sweet.”

“Sister,” Troy said, lunging back out of the pond and shrugging back into his clothes, as if it never happened, “I would like to see you try.”





Chapter Twenty-Eight: Something Nasty


“And how are your parents, dear? Ever since the tide turned to Summer we don’t see them. Do you ever think about those times we spent, those long holidays? I know they were Gabriel’s happiest times. Mine too, I think.”

Mine too, but she doesn’t need to know that.

“Well, you’ve heard about my sister. They don’t do well with embarrassment, so there’s that. But at least they have something new to play with.”

Gabriel’s mother laughs. “They are natural doters, aren’t they. Your father especially. I always thought we’d be great friends. It never happened. But we’ll have time now, won’t we?”

It’s hard to keep up with her, the way she moves. Is she in support of the marriage, or not? Is she threatening my family, or not? Is she offended by Gertrude’s existence, or not? She certainly should be.

“They always ask about you, you and Gabriel. Sometimes I feel like a courier going home. Like I’m really just there to bring the news of our old friends from abroad.”

This is not, technically, a lie. As the political situation at home becomes more desperate, and Hell’s intrigues more opaque, their questions have gotten a lot less subtle.

“Your mother has a very strong mind, I’ve always thought so. Still waters, like my husband. Your father, on the other hand, he reminds me of Gabriel. Is that a strange thing to say?”

If we were normal, it might be. If there were something to unpack. As it is, I’m just happy she noticed. The Winter King’s dreaminess is much more benign than her son’s, and a lot less self-involved. My father is many ways the best thing Gabriel could ever hope to be.

“One thing about you all, the parents. Our royals. You like to pretend you’re a lot more traditional than you really are.”

She titters. Unmusical, and not all that charming either. “You’ve discovered our secret at last!”

“I just always think it was better in those days,” I say, pitching my voice high, and young. Princess voice. Wistful; looking for a mother to love me. “Before Summer took over and we didn’t see you anymore.”

She shakes her head, pasting on a frown. “Oh, but it wasn’t like that. Things change. It wasn’t a comment on... It’s business, Estelle. Hell and Summer are like this now, and we had to keep up. There are people who would go so much further, people right under my husband’s nose. Can you imagine being that close to treachery and unable to do anything about it? I would go mad. I can’t imagine the pressure.”

Guess what, lady, I think. But I can see where she’s leading.

“Well, after the wedding I guess that will all change. Any advice on how to deal with that?”

Midsummer is in two weeks; they’ll be at the height of their strength. My birthday is at the cross-quarter six weeks after that, when their power has half-waned. Troy randomly pointed out we’d lose some time, for whatever reason, so call it an even seven. Seven weeks for Summer to give us everything they’ve got, and I’m sitting here talking about them like fractious relatives.

“Most of our business will be concluded by then. I don’t see any reason things can’t go back to the way they were, when you two were little. For the most part.”

For the most part. So how many factions, then? How many groups and subgroups and political parties in Hell are still going on about Gertrude? Grateful for the reason to throw down, spin that straw into gold?

It’s only now that I realize I came here hoping she’d scream at me, call off the wedding. My grievous insult, for having been born mortal. My betrayal.

“Your Majesty, if I may be blunt?”

“As ever, dear.”

“I’m going to Hell either way. What’s keeping you from calling off the wedding?”

She sighs, squaring up the magazines like I’ve exhausted her by actually talking about what we’re talking about.

“I realize that to you, all this seems very pointed and personal, but from an outsider’s perspective it just seems like more of the same. Summer found the girl, they used her to score points, nothing changed outside your little Realms. It’s not terribly... Summer does not take the long view. Winter is different.”

“That’s the definition, I guess. We wait as long as we have to. But in this case, you don’t find it a little offensive that they’d ship her off like that, before...”

“—Before my son was even born, you mean? Who would take offense to that? It wasn’t him they were afraid of. It wasn’t me, or our family, or even Hell. It was the Teind. And why shouldn’t they be? Why would anyone let that happen to their child?”

I bite my lip, and she looks down, legitimately shaken. More than a little guilty.

“I hope you know I meant no offense. I just know how far I would go to protect Gabriel. But I didn’t know that until I met him, and held him in my arms. When I think about that day... It just makes sense, Estelle.”

She isn’t wrong. She’s saying these things like little barbs under my skin, looking for weakness, but she has no idea how much I’ve grown, nor how cold. I can’t let her off the hook, either way.

“I do not fault them for what they did. The choices they made. As you say, it was all very long ago. I just don’t entirely get how it helps your family to let that slide.”

“We set the tone, Estelle. If we—who could ruin your family, and Summerland into the bargain if we chose—accept the insult, the rest have to follow. It was the only option, and it spared the Realms two decades’ worth of bloodshed. You think last night was a terror? Last night was nothing. As a future Queen you need to get right with that.”

Oh, but I am. Watching those people get slaughtered was more than a minor skirmish, more than nothing—but that’s only because I was there. Because I saw it, and I smelled it. I nod; so grateful for her wise counsel, so curious as to what else she’ll say. So unaware of something nasty, squatting in a place that I can’t see yet. Too stupid to trace my finger around the blank space where it is, drawing it well enough to dodge.

“I would rather have you as my daughter than anyone I can think of, I hope that you know that. But listen: You were born at the Equinox, you were born to the Tithe. It was your parents who proposed the marriage, to keep you alive; it was my King who accepted, to preserve our alliance. We only have to keep Summer happy until then. This is a chess game.”

I wonder if she’s telling the truth. The way my parents got miffed when we lost contact with Gabriel’s family, that felt very real. But I wouldn’t put it past them to agree and then stash that agreement somewhere safe. Or even to remember it and follow through, complaining loudly all the while anyway; they’d see it as the price of nobility. I wonder just how terrified they were when they learned the jig was up, and Gertrude was coming home; terrified, and overjoyed.

“So your alliance with Winter remains intact? You don’t have anything further to share?”

Like, for example, why Hell let a Summer troop come after us both. It hangs in the air like Troy’s possum song, whatever he was talking about before: The elephant in the room. The ghostly child with its face in a corner, ready to twist and jump with no warning. Why won’t these people ever just say it? Gabriel was born this way but I sincerely doubt the sisters were.

“What happened at the Chateau was a tragedy. I wouldn’t be much of a person if I didn’t acknowledge that. But Estelle, it wasn’t our doing. It was not Hell. There have been, and will continue to be, reprisals. If things weren’t so complicated back home, we’d have made the executions public. You have to trust the system sometimes. I know it’s hard and it makes you want to pull your hair out, you get that from your mother and it will serve you well. But sometimes you have to at least imagine that there are people who know more than you do, who are doing their jobs.”

Juggling alliances, you mean. And heads. Hell is so gross.

“I find that very difficult. But I do trust you, Majesty. If you say we’re good, we’re good.”

“Then I suppose it’s time we rang the dinner bell, don’t you?”

Abruptly, she stands, our business concluded. Short on information, long on promises. I guess she was right; I guess she cottoned to Hell’s ways pretty quickly after all.

But I wonder: What did she get out of me, that she could shut it down so quickly? Did I play innocent enough? Did I show my cards? Did something about my performance tip her off? Was she laughing at me, behind those deep eyes, all along? 

I want very badly to believe her. I have to think somebody’s in my corner. In our corner. The corners of this place, corners within corners. The acoustics are so strange. A bell in the back of my head is warning me that she’s just taken more than she gave, and I don’t like that at all. That’s no way to treat our relationship.

*

Selena dusted her hands, now that their job was complete, and the last of dinner was in the oven, and the mad aunt was lighting a pipe by the screened-in doors at the ravine end of the room, looking out into the sunset. She clapped loudly enough that the aunt would turn, and so she did, smiling like something nearly blind, and lowered the shade just enough to she see Selena clearly.

“I’m glad we had time to talk. One thing you’ll learn is that while magic makes things move faster, it does not make them more enjoyable. I never liked to cook, when I was married. But now that I am here, in this house of dust, I like nothing better. The process, the labor, the... Aliveness of it. Not much changes here. The plants get uglier and the sisters get angrier. To take one thing and make another thing... Once that was magic, to me. Now it’s the only magic I love at all, and it’s not even witchcraft.”

Selena nodded, appreciative of her point, and in no real hurry to leave the kitchen. If the old witch thought they’d make it through dinner without murdering the angel, that was good enough for her. Elsewhere, she knew, Troy and I were having our own encounters, and she didn’t imagine those would be much fun either. She’d already made it clear what she thought about dealing with the mother of a boy like Gabriel; an eloquent shudder when his back was turned.

And too, though she preferred Troy’s company to that of the rest of us, as we all do, she had no desire to go walking in the gardens, as he had done. She said they were like a Fellini film, black-and-white even in color; too rich and dank, even so dry as they were. She said they looked to her like the way blood smells, and she knew Troy could handle it.

She’d made early overtures at getting back, into the house’s bowels: Its levels and rooms, staircases and tiled showers tucked against the wind, just out of sight from the road. She thought probably wherever Gabriel had taken Michael was a den, smelling of boys, and she thought that would feel comforting. To take her leave and sit on the arm of a couch and watch Gabriel show off for whoever was in the room. But the witch wouldn’t have it. Saw her coming a mile away and headed her off.

“My sisters cannot be disturbed before dinner. We all have our appointed tasks, this is mine. That makes it ours. You will see the rest of your friends soon enough. I can make you tea, if you like, and we can have a sit. Change the mood a bit?”

Selena was not interested in drinking anything this woman prepared, in her long stuffy kitchen of blood and mint and livers and vine; not a thing, from among the infinite dirty glass jars, was she interested in drinking. But she supposed to sit, and stir a cup, would be a comforting way to shake the old witch down. She didn’t suppose she’d ever be interested in using the sorts of magic this woman could teach her, but that didn’t mean she had nothing to learn.

*

Troy capered, his new game a sort of keepaway, with the object of pissing off his auntie by leading her around her own garden in a hinkypunk path: Always becoming but never quite being, circle but never quite closer. 

A trick I taught him, before we made pact with the drones. In the days before the nightcrawlers were our friends, and all we wanted to do was give them the full-on faerie treatment. Well, mostly; without Troy I’d done it until they were dehydrated and delirious.

It requires a light touch and you can’t think too hard while you do it, because your body and the natural world want things to make sense. But if you can get just the right mojo going, you can drift for hours and nothing will seem amiss. The mind is too adaptable; it will complete the dots, and make sense of whatever happens, even when it stops making sense.

But the old witch had a few tricks up her sleeve as well, of course, and he found himself more and more face-to-face with blackest brambles, and roses out of nothing; hedge where no hedges had been before, and things wilder still. It became a game, he said; soon he realized she was laughing too. It began to look more like a chase, as they shaped the world around them.

If I had looked out over the gardens, perhaps I would have seen the black storm cloud along the western edge of the labyrinth. They hooted, she became younger and younger as they ran, in a black widow’s weeds that clung to her, as the hot rain dashed itself against them. The poor angry, twisted plants reached up in silent worship as the rain came down; they’d never understand it was only pretending, and would never slake their thirst.

It was never made clear to me which one of them had called that up, although from what Troy said he was afraid of pulling too much magic into things with the reservation so close by: “Sad earth,” he called it. “Magic too sad too move.” 

I wondered if perhaps this was the reason the witches’ house turned in upon itself so harshly, in that sick unmoving light: If they’d planted their roots too close to the reservation without thinking, if they’d called upon that old, old pain because they were too selfish to recognize it. We build our houses on the bones of what came before, and that’s something most of us understand. What we haven’t gotten our heads around is how close we live to tragedies still occurring.

And so they ran in circles, the witches, boy and girl, through the garden of poisonous things. Younger and without cares, gone too wild in the rain to ever come home. And somewhere in that house, Michael watched Gabriel at play, and wondered if he’d ever be called home again. 

And I sat with the Queen of Hell, watching quiet expressions move across her face, testing them against my own. I realized I was closer than ever to becoming her, and had almost made up my mind to tell her that the wedding was off. It all could have happened forever; perhaps it did.

Until Selena rang the bell, and all the glamours dropped at once, like stones, throughout the grounds. Until we set our chins, and made our way through the labyrinth of the house, to dine with witches.




Chapter Twenty-Nine: At a Witch’s Table


Troy and the eldest aunt come in by the back way, sodden and cheery. They won’t tell us what they’ve been up to, but I can tell Gabriel’s mother approves. She did always enjoy a good romp, even at a remove; I guess it was a way to get her kicks in, when monarchy demands so much more. 

They aren’t friends, exactly; still wary of one another. But whatever charm Troy works upon these older people, he’s apparently done the full hurly-burly. Even when they’re dressed for dinner, gracefully picking at nuts as the aunties set out our repast, I can see her sneaking looks at him. 

There is a thing that witches do, sometimes—the Ladies of the Canyon more openly than most—where you can see them considering him, as if looking at something standing behind him, not yet fully formed. Not afraid, exactly, but not simply gazing either. More like a director looks at you, when he isn’t sure whether you’re an actress or a model: Trying to decide where you are going, and if it’s worth hitching a ride.

The youngest aunt, the one that looks like Gabriel, is nowhere to be found. The other three can be heard clucking in a way that suggests she may not appear at all. 

Bunched at the end of the table, opposite where Gabriel, his mother and myself will be seated, Selena and the middle one are studiously not looking at each other. But they are not cool, either. I think whatever they have spoken of was probably large, and not too pleasant. I hope that dinner will go well.

When the boys finally enter it is sullen, not at all the hungry hullaballoo I would expect from him. Or perhaps intensity, perhaps they talk between themselves more than I imagine. I picture them curled on the bed, like kittens, limbs every which way, snoring their way through the apocalypse. The careless and unguarded body of a man when he sleeps, where does that come from? Nothing of itself protecting itself, flung and kicking. There would be whole worlds up there, where nobody can see them. Eyes straight ahead, when they come down.

I wonder how much of Gabriel is just my ideas of him, filling in blank spots in a man I don’t know as well as I think. I wonder how much we always do that; for once, it doesn’t seem like a tool to use but a frightening oversight. He could be anyone, but with that face of the boy I used to know, I’d understandably make all kinds of assumptions. 

Michael looks tired, more tired than I’ve seen him. Angels don’t slouch nor do they rest, but the disinterest behind their eyes can shift. He seems inward-turning, quiet. I wonder if it’s the gardens, taking their toll. His body is attentive to Gabriel’s, and ours, as usual. Taking in the scene, orienting himself to spot the most danger. He’d face every door if he could, at once; in this place it seems more likely than most.

Finally the baby arrives, from some dark passageway down through the center of the house, trailing her fingers along the wood as she slides around the perimeter. She looks less tired, exactly: more determined than anything. I would have thought she was entertaining the boys, but it seems she was on another errand entirely.

The bell rings again, and Gabriel’s mother sits with a self-conscious downward gaze; smoothing her napkin and the tablecloth before her, as the dishes are uncovered with a clang. Gabriel is seated opposite me, at his mother’s right hand, and then Michael, warmly touching Troy again with a silent nod of greeting. He smiles sweetly, and asks Selena to pass the cheese before we’ve even tasted the salad.

*

In a witch’s house, never taste anything she has not tasted first. It’s the polite thing to do; it’s also the political thing to do, as a way of showing deference: Witches were hounded by this world as poisoners once, and it’s remembered and hard-coded into their etiquette in a lot of strange ways. The pain of history is long, and we’d do well to defy it every chance we get, my mother taught me: Always watch for how a people treat their food, because those are the traditions they have to enact most often.

Of course, even without the Winter Court finishing school training the others are more than a little reticent. I watch his mother, and the rest watch me, and once we’ve eaten they all dig in. The youngest sister turns a cruel gaze to me, and it begins. Not even the salad.

“I suppose you’ve discussed the plans for the wedding. I guess it can’t be rescheduled.”

“Why on Earth,” I grin, “Would we want to do that? It will be the party of the century.”

She nods. “Or at least for the next seven years.”

I can’t get a handle on how the sisters feel about Hell. They don’t need the money, which is how most alliances are formed, and they don’t peek outside at the brighter world, so it isn’t fame. They pushed her into the marriage, though, so those ties must go way back. I wonder if I’m a threat to them, in some hazily defined, ill-considered way.

“I hope our marriage will last longer than that. When you are my auntie, perhaps I can take you shopping on Rodeo Drive? I’d love to show you off.”

She mumbles something passable, bunching her napkin in her lap with a fist, and I realize I’m onto something.

“Plenty of eligible guys, circles we run in. Men equal to your station. Of course they’re not all we have to live for, is it? But they’re pleasant all the same.”

Her lip curls, in a quick movement of disdain I’ve seen cross her nephew’s mouth more than once, and then is gone again.

“Of course, I shouldn’t assume. You’ve probably got them lined all the way up to the...”

“—I don’t really have time for all that,” she coughs, darting a look at her sisters. “There’s so much work to be done lately.”

Gabriel’s mother raps her glass with a fork, offering us all some wine, and the youngest aunt resumes glaring at her hands. Troy helps himself to the bottle, passing left, and soon we’ve all got glasses. We turn our eyes expectantly toward Gabriel’s mother, preparing for a speech. She does not disappoint.

*

“While it is true that my son and my future daughter-in-law here have been friends almost their entire lives, I will always regret that I missed so much of your growing up, Estelle. Once you left Winter those rare times seemed to fade altogether. I look forward to having you available more often, so that we can grow as close as we once were.”

We were never that close, but it is certainly creepy enough to have an effect. Troy’s cheeks puff out for a moment, blowing astonished air.

“Majesty, how long until you return to your Kingdom?” he asks innocently, reminding her that traps are no place for a Queen.

“I’m afraid there’s no way to know. The politics of Hell are... A full-time job. I don’t expect you to understand. But it’s true I’ve been spending more time here than when Gabriel was young. I suppose once he went off to school I was too shellshocked to do much traveling, but I’ve tried hard to put myself out there. You’ll find, Estelle, that a lot of the job is hand-holding. Certain captains of industry, heads of state, prefer to deal with the wife in private. Either because they believe it gives them an advantage, or because they want to know who they’re really dealing with.”

It is true that a human woman, even the wife of a Demon King, is more approachable than any strange creature. But to underestimate, to take it that step further to harmlessness, seems like a mistake only a man would make.

“So you don’t consider that travel, then? Well, I don’t suppose I would either.”

She puts down her glass without offering the toast, and smiles a hard and glinting smile.

“You’ve been in the spotlight for no small amount of time, girl. Does it really sound like a vacation to you?”

“No, but I’m used to being included in my Kingdom’s policies and decisions. It’s how we treat our Princesses, and our Queens. I don’t know that I would be successful selling whatever I’m told to sell. Gabriel is brilliant at that, I could never get the hang of it.”

She sips from her wine glass now, staining her upper lip just the tiniest bit, and sets the glass down again before turning her attention to Selena.

“And what is your place in this Utopia our Estelle is building? A Queen does need her coterie, and I’ve noticed you and Troy make a pretty pair of witches.”

Selena nods, carefully. “I am only learning. But it’s true that we work well together, the three of us.” She grins shyly, nodding at Michael and Gabriel. “The five of us, rather. I suppose whatever our next project, we’ll have that to look forward to. I think it’s important to stick together.”

The Queen of Cinders smiles tightly, raising a fork to her mouth on which she’s speared just a slice of strawberry and a bit of spiny greens. “Friends are so important. But Queendom is a full-time hobby, I’m afraid you’ll learn.”

Selena shrugs, looking at the Queen directly over her glass’s rim. “Then I guess Estelle will need all the help she can get. I think you’ll find we’re more than equal to the challenge.”

“We played chase in the gardens,” Troy says, forcefully changing the subject, all but nudging the old auntie with a grin. “It was brilliant. Gabriel, have you seen the pond? Comes up to your waist. And there’s all kinds of herbs and things. A real testament to the botanical arts, I think.”

The eldest sister does not take the bait, although she doesn’t freeze him out either; it’s the middle sister who comes along for the ride.

“I keep thinking we should devote more space to plants that are actually edible. The climate here, nestled in the hills, has more range than people realize. Until lately that ravine was a babbling brook, and we’ve got plenty of shade. I love what we grow and I love what it can do, but I can’t help thinking a bigger garden than my little window boxes would add some excitement to our lives.”

“I could do with less of that,” the eldest sister confides down the table to the Queen, “Across the board.”

The Queen raises her glass to that, finally, and we quietly toast. Her hair is swept up on her crown, with dramatic chandelier earrings completing the look. With a little warpaint on she looks much more battle-ready than I remember ever seeing her. A night look, all smoky eye and brown-red lip. She looks weaponized; ready to threaten.

The other sisters are no less richly appointed, with hair pulled back into a chignon and a messy braid. The baby of the family has trapped her blonde curls in a sophisticated mechanism, almost a filigreed birdcage of a tiara. I wonder if that suggestion of a crown is meant to goad her sisters and whether it is working. 

She brought gloves to the table but, upon checking out the scene, declined to put them on. All through the meal they lay beside her plate like bodies of small birds, like gifts from a cat.

*

“What my sister is leaving out,” says Troy’s witch—we’re out of the salads and into the entrée now, lamb and filets for us and some sort of ancient grain risotto for Michael and two of the sisters—“Is that it isn’t just beside the point, it’s literally beyond it. Summer’s squabbles with Winter do nothing but strengthen our position with both. Reprisals will continue to be made, of course, but you have to take the long view.”

Michael clears his throat. “You say it is not the War, because to you, there is only one War.”

She nods, the old thing, happily. “And to you, my friend. It would not do to take our eyes off the prize.”

He puts his fork down lightly, finished with his meal I think. “It is not mine to judge and I will not speak for anyone but myself. But all the Courts and all the Realms still fall under our protection.”

“But not your jurisdiction, you see? They do not belong to you.”

“And you think that they belong to Hell. I would advise rereading the compacts undergirding the Realms, if that’s the spin your people have chosen. I would advise reading them carefully, if you can get your hands on them. The Fae belong to no one. Nobody belongs to anybody.”

She quirks an eyebrow, but lets it lie. It’s a variation on a conversation they’ve been having since literally the dawn of time, and probably so tangential to his purpose he wouldn’t have kept his focus very long either way.

What I still can’t quite get is why the sisters are so chill with Hell. It’s one thing to respect your husband’s family, especially if you’ve been close for generations: That, of course, I understand. But there’s a zealotry behind the bright rhetoric when they talk about it, as though they have a personal stake. 

What reward lies in store for them, if they can put down Hell’s eternal rebellion for good? To turn the neverending coup on its head, and set a true monarch over all the Fallen: That would be real power. It would cost a great many demon lives, but I doubt they care about that any more than I do. Which means we need to narrow down what these sisters are after. If it’s something I can give them, they would be the most useful allies imaginable.

“What I would like,” Troy says down the table to the Queen, “What I would like is a tour of this beautiful house. I saw the gardens, every inch and elevation of them, but the house itself doesn’t make any more sense to me than when we got here. Is that something we can...”

She nods. “Oh, soon enough. You’ll see it soon enough.” 

Selena shifts nervously, but Troy puts on his bravest and most Puckish face, nodding gratefully as though it weren’t a total threat. I can’t say anything would interest me less than a tour of this monstrosity, gorgeous architecture aside. 

I think, and I can see Gabriel thinking the same thing, that it’s high time we hightailed it. There’s nothing else to gain here, and she’s getting sloppy. Selena catches the glance, and already has her napkin out of her lap and onto the table when we finally hear it: Between the quiet space in conversation, and over the white noise of the house as it crouches upon us, and under the creaking of her old bones, and just past the muffled heat that settled on us as we entered.

Someone screaming, in agony. Someone we’d all been hearing, all along. 

The squad rises as one, except for Gabriel, who continues eating his meal with relish, as the rest of us gasp in horror. The Queen turns an icy scowl to her youngest sister, witches standing along with the rest of us. Clearly it was her job to keep the wards going until we were gone, so we’d never hear that terrible sound.

“Oh, dammit,” says the youngest aunt, fretting at a hangnail. 

“Just goddammit.”






Chapter Thirty: Bone Machine


“I know that voice,” Michael says, shaking. I can’t tell if he’s angry, or afraid, or something larger. Maybe some kind of angel feeling we don’t have a word for. “We sang once.”

The Queen inspects her fingernails, standing at the head of the table. Gabriel puts his fork down and looks up at her expectantly.

“This isn’t really why we came, Mother.”

“I’m afraid it wasn’t what I was planning either, but you know. Plans change. I wanted fish for the entrée.”

We can’t just haul off and kill them, of course; I’m as curious to find out what they’re hiding as I am angry at being lied to. But Selena and Troy seem to have more immediate plans: I can see them agreeing on something, silently, and their hands are moving through the air before I can even say anything. Not here, not in their place.

With one gesture from the strange middle auntie, with the braids in her hair, they both go flying: Troy into the banister leading up to the apartments, and Selena twisting painfully against the sofa we’d sat on earlier, when we arrived for tea. Selena groans, from the floor, and Troy raises a weak thumb in the air to tell me he’s okay. 

Gabriel looks up at with bruised eyes. “Stand down, Estelle. Please. Don’t get hurt.”

“How deep in are you with this? You’re torturing angels, now? That’s going to get you on the throne?”

He looks from me to Michael, pleading. “I didn’t know. I didn’t really know. I mean it’s a war.”

Michael shrugs, calmly. “It is that.”

“Torture, Michael? You’re okay with that? What the hell is your deal, anyway?”

The angel smiles at me, hands open. “Oh, it will not continue. Have no doubt about that.” He turns to the sisters, who’ve backed themselves into a Charlie’s Angels huddle, ready to take all of us on if they have to. They hiss, but not like animals. “But Gabriel’s family is under my protection. They have choices to make. Ladies?”

The sisters are disgusted. They sweep the room, hands twisted claws. I like it more when monsters look like monsters but these, they still just look like regular Palm Springs ladies. Doing nothing more than what they were bred for, to protect what is theirs. I am unbelievably sad for them, this unwelcome glance behind the mask: If this is what happens when their plans are threatened, I can’t imagine how terrifying simply living must be. 

The Queen rolls her eyes, annoyed beyond what’s reasonable. “Your magnanimity is noted, Risen. But I’m afraid it’s not required. None of you are leaving here until our business is concluded.”

Troy stands, leaning back weakly against the banister. “I think it already is, Majesty. We’ll walk out of here with your prisoner and then we will burn your house down, and all your nasty plants too. Your lovely garden is going to be a smoking hole really soon. You can come with us, if you’d like to survive, but part of me hopes you won’t. I am not proud of that, but I want to be completely honest.”

“Honest,” the Queen laughs again. “Like this one over here? The faerie Princess with the heart of gold. I don’t natter on and on about celebrities, but you mustn’t think that means I don’t pay attention. It is my world. As much as it is yours. And I know what you’re planning.”

“Then you know I won’t stop. You’re history. Gabriel, I’m sorry, but I have to call off our engagement. I can’t deal with your family.”

He looks up from the table, still holding so still; still with eyes hurt beyond telling. “You’ll die, then. When you go to Hell you’ll be like any other damned soul. There won’t be anything I can do.”

“Honey, there won’t be a Hell by the time I’m done with you.”

The Queen laughs, impressed despite herself. “You’d destroy the Realms, bring it all down, burning. Only you could be that selfish, Estelle. Ever since you were a little girl. I had no idea it ran so deep.”

“Shut up and take us to him. Whatever you’re doing, I want to see it before things continue.”

The sisters nod, silently agreeing among themselves, and the middle auntie opens a secret door under the staircase where Troy stands, clenching his fists. The angles hurt to look at, until we’re all headed down and can orient ourselves again.

*

It’s torchlit, their little dungeon. An angel stands, naked, chained to a wall. I did not know they could bleed. It looks like anybody else’s, smeared across his broad chest. His face is barely recognizable as a face, they’ve ripped and shredded him so much. I don’t even think he can see us. It is late in the day, for this one; he’ll be headed home soon.

The mechanism around him is complex, twisted out of hell tech and the usual witchy branches and vines; it is stained with blood and other things. It moves, shimmering in the dark, in unexpected ways. A thousand teeth as sharp as razors, twisting around his body like a hateful lover; bone gathered in unlikely geometries, like masks or bars or circuitry. 

It comes into focus, then: The way the thorns and teeth are variable in destination, the nervous and energetic lines of the body. I can see an arrangement of contact-leads up the back, where a spine should be, along the chakras. Arranged along swing-out arms, like an optometrist visit: One or two? Two or three? Three or one? One or two? 

They move like an orrery, twisting slowly in their own private orbits. They dance.

I will not be leaving this room until this man is dead, I vow. I will send him home and I will destroy this monstrosity, and only then will I worry about the witches, or the Prince. I will get myself, and my friends, out of danger just the second I’ve blown this thing to hell. Some things should not exist. A machine whose sole purpose is to produce pain? Fae wouldn’t do that. Hell might not even do that. Only humans are this inventive; only humans think pain could ever be its own end.

“We needed soldiers. Your little War will provide them. We always knew Fae made the best slaves; they’re controlled by words, hedged all around by story. In the heart of every fairy—perhaps even a brummagem Princess like yourself—is a spark of Hell, singing to go home. Your legacy is Hell’s terroir. That’s the system, and it works. Once you take away the sense of self, an elf will drop her glamours altogether, and loose the thread entirely.”

Troy spits on the floor at her feet, but the Queen ignores him, jutting her chin toward the thing trapped against the wall.

“They don’t understand bodies, physicality. Once they forget who they are, deeper than a boon or bane, deeper than any spell—once they are truly vacant—they can fight as well as angels. And that made me, and my sisters, think: What if we could get the real thing? An angel that Falls joins our army instantly, of course. But what about angels that never have the chance?”

The witches could be backing the wrong guy, or buying a line from Hell. There is no telling who put these ideas in their heads. I wonder again how the widow got that way; how far back this goes. I wonder, again, about their mother. What she must have done to make them like this; how she must have thought she was making them so strong they’d never get hurt.

“Mother, you have to let this thing go. It’s of no value. You all... You sit here on this estate telling each other stories, and the stories get more and more real. But they’re just stories. You’re just mad scientists sometimes. Like if you say something enough times it will become true. It’s why you all are afraid to leave. You’re scared of the real world, in case it’s different from how you remember it.”

The sisters disregard him, as they have done throughout his life. These arrogant little lectures about things he cannot possibly know. Circling the wagons, just like he is saying.

“Gabriel, how could you bring Michael here? I don’t understand. Why did you bring us here?”

He blushes, ashamed for the first time I can remember in our lives.

“I didn’t do it to do that. I thought, well, Mother always acts so nice about Estelle, she’ll keep us safe. From whatever keeps coming after us. And I thought you would like Michael if you met him. You’d see he’s not... They’re not all like that.”

“Would you have pulled this with your father home?”

“No ma’am. He isn’t reasonable.”

Her lip curls: You thought you’d do business with the wife, because she’s a pushover.

“I’ve got news for you, son. He’s very reasonable. He can afford to be. He would have taken this bug old lug under his arm and asked him for fighting techniques. A single angel is just an insect to him. He would have liked this guy. But instead you brought him here.”

“I wanted to come,” Michael says quietly. “I wanted to meet you.”

“Which is a discussion for another day. I’m not entirely pleased with this relationship, Gabriel, and if you’d brought this to my door when it started we might have talked about it. But I’m afraid it’s too late now. Secrets rot, Gabriel. Things we could have said in the bright light of day get sick overnight, when we stow them away. Not even your father could look at this angel now. He’s just the part of you we can’t trust anymore.”

“—Control. He’s the part you can’t...”

“Save it, dear one. Those kind of speeches may be new to you, but trust me when I say you didn’t invent them.”

Selena, nursing a hurt arm and unable to heal it even quietly, gasps: We’re in a soffit, she realizes, the witches opened up as we descended the stairs. No wonder it was so easy to keep his screams from reaching our ears. Perhaps, in fact, one of the witches opened it up for us, to force the moment to its climax. 

Seems like something they’d do: Not traitorous, exactly. Competitive. See who can get us going the fastest. I would say, if I had to choose, probably Selena’s auntie, the weird one. The kitchen witch. She seems the least invested, which means she has the most to lose: If she’s not here because she wants to be, she’s here in spite of hating it. But it also means there’s no way out. Not unless she can get the door open for us again, which wouldn’t exactly... 

“You can still walk away from this, Majesty. In fact, you’re going to.”

She snorts, but looks closer at me. “Meaning?”

“You haven’t kidnapped us yet. You haven’t trespassed on the compacts, yet. This is still fair play. That means you are worried about it. Concerned yourself with it. And that tells me you’re bound by our laws, whatever spin you put on it. Hurt us now and you move against the Winter Court.”

“I am already doing that. All day and all night, I’m doing that.”

“Within the bounds of war, certainly. Using Summer as your weapon. But break the law against a sovereign citizen, or harm the Teind, there’s no telling what that could do. These are some of the oldest magics that exist, you realize. They undergird everything else. The whole complex of Realms and Kingdoms, Hell’s door into the world. No telling what falls apart once you start pulling threads. And if you screwed that up for them, Hell would have you for good. Forever.”

“Just let us go, Mother. Let us take this poor thing, and go.” Gabriel is starting to get disappointed, finally; I can see him learning how to frown.

The middle witch, uncurling braids from her head to let them hang, pushes up her sleeves, ready to open the soffit and send us on our way. Her eldest sister, Queen of Cinders, drops her to the floor of the dungeon with a closed fist. “I’m afraid not. Gabriel, your behavior has been troubling me for a while. I don’t like to discuss it with your father, but I am certain he has noticed as well. If there were another suitable bride, or Teind, we could... Estelle, I am sorry to say I don’t consider you a good influence on my son.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, bitch.”

Unfazed. I’ll give her that. She looks from me, to him, and back to me. One or two? Two or three? One or three? Imagine this woman dancing with him, at my wedding. Smiling over his shoulder, finding the light and every camera lens, just so: How hard it is, letting my baby boy go! But he’s a man, I can’t deny it any longer. Just being selfish. Just being silly.

“And you, Michael. You seem lovely. But a liaison between the Choirs is never... Honey, what was the name of that...” she turns to her youngest sister, who pouts sadly, and shrugs. “Demons and angels. It’s a bad mix. Highly unpredictable. For both sides,” she says, propitiating hands toward Michael, as though he might take offense: “I’m looking out for you too, Michael. You just don’t know what could happen.”

“When you are dead and forgotten, I will be as I am now. Spare me no worry.”

Her grin is wry, and more than a little angry. “That’s not entirely true. You’ll see, one day. But in the meantime, I’m afraid it’s time for some tough love. You’ve got a Princess in open revolt, the Teind countervened, a marriage that is clearly off the table, a Hunter and a Goddess in bloom among your ranks, and now you consort with our enemies. Gabriel, I’m telling you it’s untenable. The Courts will clash and fray, I can’t do anything about that. But you can’t cost us any more troops. Not with the War on Heaven arriving over the horizon. She’ll bring the whole thing down around our ears, and you along with it.”

“I absolutely will do that, Majesty. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to say this to you.”

 “It is good that we should be honest with one another, Estelle. I do care so much for you. But it could never be as much as I love my son.”

The Queen removes a pistol from the folds of her gown and takes out the ailing angel with a single shot. His renewed scream becomes, in its last wordless moments, a grateful and lovely threnody to pain. It lifts my spirits, and Selena’s, but I can’t say what it does for Michael. I know he’ll see his friend again, which is more than most of us get.

“Summer will give us the pick of their litter for a Tithe, and thank us for the privilege. You are not as special as you might imagine, whatever they tell you.”

That part’s true enough. The Teind doesn’t need to enjoy the idea, all she has to do is die. If Winter’s smart, they’ll already have Gertrude on the table for a backup. That’s what I’d do.
 
“So we’re not leaving this place until one of two things happens. Gabriel, Hell needs soldiers. You’ve brought me two, a Risen warrior and a War Chieftain. Either will do.”

The Demon Prince looks, slowly, from me to Michael. And back again to me.



WASTED BEAUTY 
BY JACOB CLIFTON 
PART SEVEN: MOTHER WILDERNESS
  
  
  
Chapter Thirty-One: Your Diagnosis  
A vial or beaker the length of a man’s hand falls to the floor at Gabriel’s feet. The assumption is  that it will be a smoke bomb or some kind of grenade, and I’m already trying to figure out how  Troy expects to get us out of the soffit when I hear Gabriel sigh, eloquently, and realize it’s not a  weapon at all: It’s just Troy, going off. 
“I knew it. I knew you would pull precisely this shit at some point. It’s always like it breaks your  heart that I don’t want to be friends with you, and then you do this? How can you have both of  those things in you?” 
Gabriel sighs again, sheepish, and nods. “I didn’t want you to get hurt...” 
Troy throws more of the aunties’ stuff at him, voice towering—in these brief quarters, the whole  family crammed into a nowhere dungeon with a swiftly discorporating angel—and for the first  time I feel like I have visual, empirical proof that he gets larger in these times, too. Like a curly haired little He-Man. 
“You think your intentions mean anything to anybody besides you. Like what’s going on inside  you is as important as what goes on out here. To everybody else. You actually think splitting the  difference makes you a good guy, because you think we’re all scientists of you. Listen, your  mom just shot a guy in the head, okay. Your mom is standing there telling you to choose  between your girlfriend and your best friend...” 
“—I’m not his girlfriend,” I feel it’s necessary to interject, although it helps not really anyone. 
“Between your fiancé and your best friend, and you still think that’s about you? That makes you  feel powerful? Gabriel, it’s about emptying you out. It’s about making you hollow. You think,  some tiny little-boy part of you thinks, that maybe your mom will like you if you do this. But I’m  telling you there’s nothing there to care about you, one way or the other. They went hollow a  long time ago. This isn’t an initiation ceremony, it’s a funeral for your mother. Don’t let it be one  for you, too. For any of us.” 
The Queen of Cinders steps to her son, then, between him and Troy. Putting her face in his face  until it’s all he can see. 
“You see what happens when the chips are down? These people aren’t your friends.”
Gabriel flails, awkwardly, looking first to Michael and then, slowly, again to me, before his  mother’s gravity pulls him back. He nods coldly. 
“Troy, you’re being mean. I don’t see what you think you’ll get out of that.” 
“I don’t think I’ll get anything out of you. That’s the way you see things but that is not the only  way to see things. We’ve never asked you to hurt anybody. Did you ever wonder why? We don’t  believe in winners and losers. We want to save everybody, even your mother.” 
She scoffs, pointed in her movements. 
“They’ll say anything. They’ll do anything, to drag you down. Call it equality.” 
She’s winning. No way should Troy have gone at him that directly. Tell a boy he’s a bad guy, he  won’t hear anything else you have to say. That’s like rule one.  
* 
“Gabriel, I’ve known you since you were a little boy. If I really thought you were that terrible,  don’t you think you would know by now? This is just another spell. The only person you should  be worried about is yourself.” 
He nods. Speaking his language. I know he won’t look at me again, but I want to try at least.  Keep him thinking, before he hardens into stone with the rest of them. 
“She’s right, Mother. Proving my loyalty to you, or to Hell, doesn’t help me. This is a trick.” She shudders, and I realize her anger is just covering up her fear. Maybe that’s all it ever is. 
“Things are moving, my Prince. The forces allied against your father have been building for  centuries. You think this place is the real world because it is where you’re happy, but that’s not a  man. That’s not how a King thinks. You need to think about your people. Choose your people,  your family.” 
The angel makes a strange, strangled sound, and I realize he’s in crisis: Half of Michael wants to  take this mortal woman apart for what she’s doing, and the other half to protect her from her son.  
“My Queen,” I say, one hand on Michael’s arm, “Let us protect you. Let us keep you and your  sisters safe, in the coming war. You’ve already lost so much—don’t lose your son too.” 
Her eyes light with a terrible fire. “And in steps the War Chief. Always asking everyone else to  sacrifice. You think we don’t have people like you back home? The men are terrible because  they are men. But the women... Oh, you bitches know just where to touch, where to push.”
“To do what, Majesty? To ask for more of my people than I ask of myself? Have you ever been  satisfied with a deal you’ve made with Hell? Tour mother, her mother before her, all the girls  you grew up with. Has that once turned out well? You call it loyalty but it’s... Insanity, it’s a  gambling addiction. The Prince of Lies, your King of Cinders, the whole thing: What do they  take, and what do they give? Every single time? Do you think you’re so special you’re the one  that’s going to break the pattern?” 
“As though that isn’t what you’re doing? So arrogant. Yes, this amazing job you’ve done, taking  down Hell. Trapped in a soffit with the wives of Hell, putting your friends in danger. Putting  your little army where they can be hurt most. And you want to add us to that cause?” 
I shake my head. “That wouldn’t seem to do much good, would it? So go ahead and force it,  Majesty. It’s going to go one way or the other now. You’ve chosen. This is a blink of the eye of  Fae, and for Hell, and you know it. I’m not the arrogant one.” 
* 
The middle sister, the strange one with the braids, steps around her sister, putting her hands on  Gabriel’s shoulders. The sisters’ eyes meet, past his head. 
“Sister, hear them out. We can step back from this precipice.” 
“If it weren’t for me you’d be married to another one of those monsters Daddy picked out. You  just barely got away from the one we killed, you really want another round of that? Now that  you’re so old and ugly, you think it will be that easy?” 
The kitchen auntie smiles, grimly. “I know it would be better than watching you like this.  Backed into a corner. Just calm down, put the gun down, stop trying to torture everybody all the  time and talk to them.” 
Gabriel’s mother leans past him, then, like she’s whispering secrets in his ear, and hisses at her  sister. A wordless, animal sound. 
“Did you ever stop to think, little sister, that the only reason you can play sweetness and pretend  is because of the things that I have done? You’ll be fine. Don’t be a hypocrite, you’re just voting  with the crowd.” 
Braids shakes her head, sadly. “Not when I’m the one opened the door, sister. We’re here until I  say we are, and no longer. So you should probably do what I say, unless you want to stay down  here forever with your little machine.” 
That one actually penetrates. Gabriel doesn’t like that, at all.  
“Auntie, you’re being mean. We gave you this house to do your spells in, and grow your evil  weeds...”
Gabriel’s aunt rests her head against his shoulder, his broad back. “No, boy. That’s what the  King says, and I know you love him. We all do. But his view of history is mutable. We don’t  have that privilege.” 
The Queen nods, tiredly. “I never took a lover. I always thought I would, I’d get around to it, but  I never did. And this house got so hard, so dark. I wanted to run when you were little. I wanted to  take you and Estelle up in my arms where you slept, and run off into the night.” 
A tear escapes, gone before it’s hit her chin. 
“I remember what it was like to be afraid, Gabriel. Afraid as you are now...” 
He shoves his mother, hard, and she shakes her head as though waking from a dream. His aunt  steps back as his fists clench, afraid. These sisters have been afraid of men for a long time now.  I’m sorry he has realized it. Sorry he had to see his body that way, for the first time. 
“I’m not afraid. I’m angry. All of you people keep asking me for things, to be things and say  things and do things I don’t want to do. Sometimes I don’t want to! Sometimes I don’t even want  to. But you don’t care. Estelle and you and Troy and Dad, you’re balanced on my shoulders and  shoving me down, I can barely move...” 
Troy and Michael nod at each other, getting into position. From where they’re standing, as  energy begins to crackle up around Gabriel and his mother, as even his aunt steps back, they  can’t see the other sisters circling around toward us. I can only hope they know to assume. 
“I don’t want anything from you, Gabriel. I don’t even want to marry you. But I’m tired of  treating you like something to be considered. You’re not a tool, you’re still just a kid. Don’t let  us use you, if you don’t want to be used.” 
He casts a wounded glance my way; I hope against hope that he kept listening to the end. 
“Here’s what I want. I want us to forget you ever asked me to choose. That’s perverted, it’s the  worst thing, and we’re walking that back.” 
His mother nods. Not believably, but to show she’s listening. She barely seems to hate him, now.  He’s got her too afraid, and that is heartbreaking. I wonder what Troy sees, when he looks at  those clenched fists, the bunched muscle. I wonder how bad it got. How big Gabriel must  suddenly seem to him, angry like this. 
“And then I want to be King in Hell. If you hate Dad that much you’ve already given thought to  that. I can keep you safe. Estelle will pledge the same. You can walk out of here. We all will.  And we’ll never talk about your experiments again.” 
She shakes her head. “Gabriel, I’ve thought of every angle. I wish that we could. I would have  left so many times, but this world... Hell is everywhere. He is everywhere. You can’t see it  because you grew up in it. You’re too young.”
“Shut up!” Selena Kirke suddenly screams. Her feet are planted firmly in the corner of the  dungeon, in a circle of salt from a witch’s kitchen, and she brings her phone up to eye level,  where she’s been filming all this time. 
* 
“All of you just shut the hell up. Has it really escaped you that we literally stopped time to take  care of this kid’s feelings? Again? I am sick to death of making room for this shit. I get that  you’re a Prince and your goodwill is necessary for Estelle to survive whatever’s going on, but  guess what? I don’t have a part of that. I got pulled into this crap because you thought I was  going to be important. Do you have any idea how that feels? Shut up,” she says again, before I  can respond.  
I don’t like being told what to do, but at least she has their attention. Troy and Michael stand  very still. The sisters waver like mirages, shifting in age as their glamours glitch. Every part of  me wants to leap in, jump on somebody, break some bones, but I know I won’t. I know that my  part in this is to stand perfectly still. I can barely hear what they’re saying, over the sound of that  buzzing in my grin. That nasty old joy. 
“You all sound like crazy people. I know what you’re talking about is real but that doesn’t make  you less crazy. What is wrong with you all? You’re setting up toy soldiers for when you’re King,  when you’re Queen... You’ve got this whole family of crazy old women running in circles in this  
disgusting place, and for what? What might be. What could happen. Why don’t you ever talk  about what is happening?” 
Braids laughs. A creaking, creepy sound. But she’s smiling. I wonder how wild I look right now.  Troy looks like he’s about to cry, and Gabriel’s shoulders are beginning to shake. I’m afraid to  look at Michael, in case he’s happy. Or if he’s not, and sees me smiling, and thinks I’m  disgusting. 
“And that’s what? What is your diagnosis?” 
“Whatever you tried to do to him, it didn’t take. He’s the only demon here and he is still less vile  than any one of you old things. You’re torturing him to sell us out, because you know he’ll  break, but guess what? I don’t think he will. I think you finally pushed him too far, and this  standoff only ends when Gabriel says. Not one second before. So Gabriel, you get us the hell out  of here. You’re the one with the power. Stop worrying about what people think of you and start  thinking about what you’re going to do.” 
Troy coughs. “You seem really angry.” 
“I’m not angry, I’m bored! No way are these old ladies going to do anything. They’ve spent their  lives hiding in this nasty place because they’re too afraid to do anything. This dead place full of  old pain and nothing moving, not even the... What, you think torturing a couple of angels is  going to make Hell respect you more?”
Selena scoffs, gesturing toward the awful machine with one hand; thorns and vine constrict  around the rotting angel, clattering bones to the floor with a nasty screech.  
“You’re disgusting. That’s disgusting. But you’re not stuck. And I will be damned if I let you  keep us here one second longer. Auntie, get us out. I don’t care what happens to your sister. She  is a bad mother and a bad person. But the rest of us, we’re done.” 
What was an intricate nightmare, strange and sickening angles, becomes just a pile of trash. Troy  gasps, finally afraid.
  
  
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Part You Can’t See  
The witch with the braids considers Selena, as the youngest sister gapes at her broken machine. 
“The girl is right,” she mumbles, staring at her hands. “We can buy off Hell the way we’ve  always done. There’s no need to get involved in the war. Not if Hell’s going to lose.” 
“Which they will,” Selena says, her eyes on fire. A wind plays with her hair, in the silent  stillness. Even Gabriel seems shaken. Troy’s eyes are cartoon hearts. Michael shivers, in the  agony of the soffit. “Which they absolutely will.” 
Troy’s auntie, the one all in black after their run through the rain, isn’t having it. She shakes her  head at Selena, upper lip stiffer than I’ve ever seen. 
“We were bought and sold a long time ago, Kirke. I’m not trying to win a race, I’m trying to stay  ahead of the next guy. And so are you. You haven’t been in town for a week? I’ve been looking  for a way out for decades. How dare you come in here and tell me...” 
“Lady, I don’t care about your personal problems. We are done here, I’m not discussing it  anymore, and unless you’ve got a secret weapon somewhere in that creepy dress, you don’t have  an opinion. I may be young, I may even be wrong, but you have no idea what I can do.” 
The sister’s right wrist twists in the air, horribly, with a crack that becomes a scream. Her angry,  hurt eyes go wilder than I’ve ever seen; hair like snakes as she screams. 
“I am sorry about that, Auntie. And I will fix it when we’re out. But unless you can get past this  circle, and so far I’ve seen no indication that you can, then I’m in control here. You’re none of  mine. You’re not my mother, you three aren’t my aunts, and I barely know these people. Do you  really want to test my loyalty? Find out what happens if I knock you out? Will we all go up like a  spark, or feel it trapping around us, squishing us tighter and tighter like a black hole, or...” 
Granny Braids begins to move her hands, in a dance that worries me for a second before I realize  she’s reopening the soffit.  
*
Breath comes easier as time returns; and soon we all are standing in the living room, where those  well-thumbed magazines are still slipping off the table. 
“You won’t be forgiven for this,” Gabriel’s mother pants, like a slavering beast. “Hell will hound  you to the ends of the Earth. Even now, our troops are marching. You have no idea what you  have done. The insult...” 
Selena slaps her from across the room, sending her cheek red and spittle flying; with the other  hand lights the aunt’s shattered wrist with a brightness like the sun. She isn’t even looking  anymore. I think perhaps we have created another problem, but I can’t say I’m not thrilled. 
“Insult this, lady. We have declared war on your husband. That doesn’t need to involve you. But  you’ve lost your son to the light, and I’m willing to bet that’s a greater insult to Hell than  anything I could do to you.”  
The Queen laughs, putting on a brave face or else just gone around the bend. I can’t tell  anymore. She’s all I can really see, so there’s time to notice how beautiful she is. She’d wake up  in the mornings, on our visits and trips, and I’d be so amazed by her: My mother never takes her  glamours off, but Gabriel’s mother never put one on. Just makeup, like I do now. Just the mask.  But catch her in the sun, that first soft sun when the grass is wet, and she was as lovely as  anything, with her sad eyes and laugh lines. She’d have her hair pulled back and lips that natural  pink he got from her: Like just inside a seashell.  
Quiet, before her tea or coffee, staring at us like we were the most beautiful art she’d ever seen; and the two of us, staring right back the same way. 
The Puck didn’t like her, and I never understood why. She was the warmest of all four of them;  my father is like a moon reflecting light, coolly and in sweet detail, but she was like a winter sun,  through cold clouds: So soft. I thought it was just because he hated mortals, but now I know it  was because he could smell she was a liar. The Puck has no sympathy for traps we enter  willingly, which is why I take pains to never insult him that way. I could not survive the stress of  his disdain, if it came from that direction, so I never agree to anything I can’t get out of. That’s  how I know he can help me get out again. Walk into it willingly, like the Queen did so long ago,  and you’d become invisible to him. Hideously irrelevant. 
Out in the sick gardens, Troy tells me later, you could feel things dying. Things that never should  have lived, dying in waves, like a body shutting down. He couldn’t tell if it was Selena doing it,  or the witches somehow; by that time we’d be too afraid to really wonder. We thought later that  it might have been Gabriel; that the house itself was written on his body, when he was too young  to understand it—that they’d link the house’s safety to the safest person in their world, and then  draw him there to break his heart, makes a little too much painful sense. Personally, I think it  might have been Troy, putting things right, but I’d never bring that up. All that death. 
“If you had any power at all you’d be there now, not hiding away in this place. Weak as you are,  you’d go toward power. And that wasn’t toward your husband. Which means you’re screwed and 
you know it. And this sick, pathetic crap is your Hail Mary? That’s the limit of your  imagination? You are already gone, you old thing.” 
Gabriel puts his arms around his mother, tenderly, nodding his head. I can’t see his face, but I  know what it looks like: That mixture of love and grief and hatred. I’ve come too close to it,  when I drew blood neither of us were expecting; or when my apologies don’t come fast enough. I  imagine his face like that, but harder still. Without the begging alongside. The kind of decision  he spends every second of his life avoiding. 
“I love you, Mother. But I can’t have this. You have hurt me beyond the telling of it. These  people are my family now; that means they were yours too. You’ve known Estelle since we were  little. This man here, this angel, is practically your son.” 
Her lips twist, in disgust, but her son won’t let go. She pushes at him, warping in his arms, but he  refuses to relent. She finally makes a sound like fear, and I know we’ve got her. He’ll crush  those old bones to dust before he lets her go. It’s hideous. This is why, I think. This is why we  don’t disappoint you. Her eyes wide as her body goes slack. 
“There are laws older than Dad’s, and you know it. Estelle, get everybody out of here. I’ll join  you at the car.” 
As the sisters close in, and the Queen of Cinders twists in his grasp, the rest of us are slow to  move. Michael most of all. Whatever happens now, it is going to break his heart; he knows that  as purely and absolutely as anything he learned at his father’s knee. Not even his angel’s will  strong enough to fix them in place; to stop the world, and deal with Gabriel’s feelings one more  time. 
“Michael, get out. No fighting. Just go with them.” 
Whatever happens now, it won’t be his Gabriel anymore. It’s like something dying. For the first  time, I feel sick. 
The angel shuffles backwards toward the door, fascinated by the tableau. Memorizing him.  
It’s getting brighter than ever; Troy’s rising breath says something disastrous is about to happen.  I’ve never had to wonder what Gabriel was thinking before, but I’m happy now that I can’t,  quite, understand what he’s planning. Whatever he is about to become I will love it the way I  have loved every other form he’s ever taken: From far away and very carefully. Goldilocks  Friendzone, Troy and I called it with Selena: Not too hard and not too soft. But in real life, I just  call it how boys are.  
There is a part of every single person you will ever meet that you can’t see and neither can they.  Learn to live in its shadow, or risk being seen. 
*
That house has stood in some form or another for a hundred years or more. Once he told me,  whether about this property or another I can’t recall now, that was transported stone by stone  from Hell itself. A castle to stand against all time, every onslaught; terrified devils and  embarrassed demons, waiting for attack. I couldn’t imagine it then, and I can’t now. Hushed  voices telling lies and curses by candlelight; brief nasty lives, twisting like a hair around one  ugly lie or another, like the grit down the line in an oyster farm. Lies that grow, turning up  predictable, wicked pearls; singing those songs as the sky burns, and Hell falls. Stone by stone. 
It’s just a house; cozy at teatime, before the shadows lengthen and press in. Full of history and  broken promises and heartbreak. Bought and sold a million times, always betting on the next  time, doubling down in shame and fear. Corners only children have known, knees and skirts  they’ve hidden behind. The sweet heat of a mother’s bower; the dry herbal scent of a tired auntie  or two. Bathtimes and tight, sudden, giggling cuddles. So much bigger once, big enough to fill  the sky; getting smaller and more tired all the time, in age. Harsh where it should be soft; burnt  where the sun lingered too long. Cracks in a once-tight matte finish.  
Cozy enough for tea, before the shadows pressed in and the long night started. Just a house.  Fresh paint once, a new owner; all the secret corners and hidden doors you could ever want, to  travel and to worship. And the first year, no wear and tear at all. And ten years in, maybe it has  settled into itself: Maybe the foundation is stronger than before, as it finds the shape it wants to  be. But a hundred years or more, heart growing blacker and more afraid, and look at it now:  falling into itself. 
I hated her for her weakness, when I was a girl. And then as I grew older and watched him labor  under it, I hated her for her strength. I should have loved her more, for both. I need to call my  Mom. Perhaps I could have loved her enough there would never have been a War.  
We say so often about boys like Gabriel that they needed a better father; less often, that a King  like that might need a stronger son, to be a man. But perhaps all she ever needed was a daughter,  to remind her what the world can do. 
And the aunties, who never had a chance. Sold down the same river as the rest of us; three May  Queens of the Inland Empire: The eldest, who got hard, and the middle one who got weird, and  the youngest one angrier than the rest. All orbiting, drawn into her space, circling it even when  she was gone, because she was the one that won her King.  
I wonder how bad the dead husband was, that the widowed one could still be jealous of the  Queen after all this time. I wonder how they did him in, and if it would make me love them  more, or less. Something from the garden, I should imagine. 
Or maybe they lured him out there, into the maze, and he never left again. Maybe that middle  sister took a breath and braided her hair, some summer day out in the labyrinth, and she walked  up back to the house with one black thorn held high as a trophy, saying, Now we are free.  
And her sisters cheered her, and wondered what it was to be married. Garland her with roses and  morning glories, the opposite of a bride: Coming home again, to love and to heal, turning time 
around itself and heading back into the softness of a joy unharmed and unquestioned. Maybe  they reveled that night; maybe they were beautiful. For one night, I hope, they were free. 
* 
There is a part of me, a large part, that wants to see. Not just because it is destruction coming, to  glory in. The end of a world that never should have existed; the blinking-out of this little soffit  coiled in the desert, alongside the reservation and across the highway from an oasis. I want to see  this world brought down, to remind myself that beauty can’t save you. That it shouldn’t have to. 
But too because I have never seen Gabriel’s true face, and I have always wanted to. What his  delirious smile must be like, as he prepares to end the world. I think I would be proud. Perhaps I  could love him, after all, if I see that. Maybe there’s a window, back of the house, and I can  circle around. Perhaps there’s still a chance for me to love her, too. If I can just get a look at  them. 
Selena drags me out by my left hand, into the sun, as the pressure within continues to rise. The blast that follows, no one could survive. 
Michael drops to his knees, that horrible keening from the Chateau tripled and bellowing. His  jeans, ripped at one knee in the tussle, show a wound dropping blood into the dirt of their  driveway.  
I forget what kind of flowers will supposedly grow there now—it’s a tiny bit of lore I never  believed and didn’t retain—but I know they won’t be poison.
  
  
  
Chapter Thirty-Three: In the Wake  
Troy pulls at Michael where he kneels, hands locked across his chest, grunting through tears.  Flames spread out and down the hill, into the dry gardens already turning to ash. I can barely see.  The air is heavy like a rainstorm coming, but the sky is clear. Nothing will put this fire out. 
Selena Kirke breathes, disgusted and afraid; now it’s me dragging her toward the car. I think  she’s forgotten where we are, or what’s happening—I wonder how much that odd display of  power took out of her, and where it came from. She shouldn’t have been witching in a soffit, not  because it’s dangerous but because it’s impossible. She shouldn’t have been able to try. 
“Selena, get in the car. Get in the car, please.” 
Michael nearly falls over backward onto Troy, but drops forward again instead, onto his palms.  He’s finally stopped screaming. Troy rests, breathing hard, upon his shoulders. He could be  whispering to the angel, I can’t hear anything over the crackling flames. 
What was a house is not quite a hole: You can see the skeleton of what it was, curling back in  Fibonacci sequences at this angle. Nightmare geometry curving away smaller and smaller, into  nothing and nowhere. All black now, and white. You could imagine shapes in the flames, licking  around where Gabriel and his mother stood; they could be a boy, fighting through the smoke  toward us. But they are not. 
Nothing comes from nothing, that’s what the Puck says. Meaning that Hell eating itself is  nothing new, changes nothing. Infinity minus anything. But I wonder. Without Gabriel to save  me, when the Black Dogs come, what will happen? I wasn’t allowed to watch, six years ago  when the Tithe went up. I was put to bed with a kiss and a treat; two rarities. I think again of the  Summer girls, the once-and-never May Queens.  
Do I fade away into black smoke, like this here and now? Do they rip my body apart so they can  get at my soul? Do they even look like dogs, or is that a metaphor? Maybe it’ll be like Gertrude  and Summer, I’ll just be sitting somewhere wondering when it will happen, and then it will.  Sharp-suited gunmen suddenly on either side, calm, ready to spirit me away into death. No  longer royalty; no longer anything. A soldier, if they want. Anything they want. 
I knew in the back of my mind that putting him at risk was unacceptable; I knew in the back of  my mind the second those soldiers broke in at the Ball that he was in danger. I thought it was 
worth it, once I met Michael. Surely Michael wouldn’t let anything happen to him, any more  than I would. Surely we could keep him safe.  
What I didn’t allow myself to think about was what would happen if we didn’t. Because it was  better if the enemy was someone I cared about; someone who, worst case scenario, could help  me make the best of it. I wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of death. 
He’s only half-demon. I never asked what happens now. Maybe he’s like the angels, and he’ll  just come back a little different. Or a lot different. Maybe he’s confined to Hell now, and he can  finally make friends with his father; it’s possible there is nothing human left in him, now. Maybe  it was all burnt away. And if so, I guess, I’m proud of him. 
He didn’t die to save me from my fate, it’s true. He didn’t change much about the War, or give  Faerie the advantage; he didn’t give Michael anything to live for. All he did was put a monster  out of its misery, the only way they’d let him. Summer is still against us, and Autumn still  watching from the shadows; Heaven still abstains and Hell still lays their claim on me. If there is  a secret player, now would be the time to show his face. 
Or maybe that’s me.  
If I can talk to Troy correctly they’ll be on board, but I can’t be callous. I can’t immediately start  talking about the Grieving Girlfriend scenario, or what place Michael can possibly have in our  little army.  
We could go to the Drones but that would just tip Selena and Troy off to what I’m thinking now,  and they’d look at me differently. Back in the city it’s still Summer guards and demon spies. I  can’t drag them back to Winter this quickly, can I? We’ve barely been in the world a day since  the last time, and you don’t want to see a mortal who goes back and forth too much. They get  hollow and quiet and mean; they get like me. I won’t do that to Troy and Selena if I can help it. 
But if we don’t hide at all, they can’t come at us. We need to get super famous, super fast, for  long enough to get the War off our tail. If I can’t flush out the trickster we can at least keep him  at bay. That’s a start.  
I want a look at the footage Selena took, if she hasn’t destroyed it already. But I can’t let on yet  what I’m planning, which is... I need to see what she got. Michael’s in no shape to drive, and  climbs into the backseat with Troy on him like a sloth, so it’s up to Selena—if I can get her to  drive back toward Pomona, there’s nothing saying we have to get into Winter, right? I can stall  until then. 
Pulling back into Chico Canyon, toward the highway, I tell Selena to take the long way, and it’s  with an imperious voice, the voice of a Princess, that I ask how to unlock her phone. Just as  we’re twisting in the gravel, at the edge of the main road, and she grinds her teeth, learning my  car as she drives. She barely registers the question, just answers.
The footage is nothing, really. Shaky witches, shaky boy. It looks like just a kid with his aunts,  having a minor disagreement. Which is what it was like, if you weren’t there feeling it. Smelling  the shame of the dying angel in the corner. By the time Selena started up with serious magic,  she’d stopped recording, and didn’t begin again once we were out in the house again. 
I delete it. That can’t be the last thing of him. Of any of them. 
* 
Selena drives like a boy who wants to sleep with you.  
Downshifts into the curves, arms straight out at ten and two, riding low. Lollipop in her mouth  from Troy’s little kit bag and a furrow in her brow. He told me once that mermaids came from  manatees, but centaurs came from the first guy who ever really knew how to ride a horse. I didn’t  know what he meant—I thought it was some kind of Troy sex metaphor—but now I do. And I  suppose it was. 
“The first thing I’m going to do is cut my hair. All of it.” 
I’m confused as to what she’s talking about, but I don’t want to interrupt her. It’s been her habit  to stay quiet in the car, somebody’s always sleeping; now, over the hum of the engine and  whatever witchcraft she’s working on the throttle, I could almost go to sleep myself. 
“I didn’t know him like you did. He was complicated and you are... Well, you’re not  complicated. But your history with him was. Michael and Troy, they get what he is when they  look at him. But I knew him.” 
I nod. She probably liked him more than most of us, the angel excepted. That doesn’t mean she  didn’t see what he was. That doesn’t make it less of a eulogy, which is what she’s giving me  even if she is in shock and doesn’t know exactly what she’s saying. This is a wake, the only two  women in Gabriel’s life at the time of his death besides his mother, whom he has just blown up. 
“When I came into town, that first night, I knew something was going on. Weird little giggies at  the corner of my eye when I was looking in the mirror, thinking about before. Back home. And  when I saw you at your house I smelled you in there, and recognized you were the people spying  on me. I don’t mind. But it was there.” 
I’m stuck between apologizing and applauding. Selena Kirke rolls with the punches in a way I  could only dream of doing. 
“So he was my first friend here. Autumn Court made no illusions about what they wanted from  me, even if they wouldn’t say it. And you and Troy sniffing me like a dog’s bum. But Gabriel, I  don’t know if it’s just because he was so honest about his selfishness, or if I could tell he really  did think I... There is a very short line between being worth something and being worth using.”
I feel like I’m going to cry and I don’t really know why. Besides everything. Besides the whole  world ending, and our front-row seats, and all this blood between us. I remember when I met  Gertrude, the exact second I realized we’d never be friends, never really be sisters. It didn’t  bother me very much. But when I met Selena I guess I was afraid of feeling that. I don’t, yet. But  it’s on her tongue. 
“He was a good guy. I like guys that don’t have to tell you how smart they are. And Gabriel  didn’t have to tell you how anything he was. He just was. And he was only pushy when he was  being nice, which wasn’t really very often. You always kept saying how he was a liar and how  demons are liars, but I didn’t get that from him. I guess if he wanted stuff. I guess if he really  wanted something, he would have lied to get it. But he wasn’t there yet. He didn’t know if he  wanted anything.” 
I flick my eyes to the rearview, where Troy is curled up in Michael’s lap. The angel’s eyes are  closed. I hope he is finding comfort. I don’t know what makes angels sad, or happy, or even if  they can do those things. I don’t know anything about angels because they are boring and I can’t  remember things I don’t care about. But this man here, I am going to have to learn about him.  He’s mine, now, same as the rest. 
“That whole time we were in that... place... I just kept thinking that I was the one. You guys had  me so scared about people coming after me and things being done to me. And it wasn’t a Faerie  place, so it wasn’t about hurting you. And nobody ever wants to hurt Troy, even those nasty  things liked him. And Michael, I figure he can do anything, so we shouldn’t worry about him.  And that just left me. I barely know what the stakes are here, but I know that Faerie wants me  safe. And I guess I figured that meant Hell wouldn’t. But I don’t know what witches do. So  either we were finally going to be safe and we could rest, or I would end up...” 
He didn’t make a sound, the Demon Prince. His mom was yowling the whole time and the  wicked sisters never really stopped either, but Gabriel was just that quiet kind of sad that I  remember best from when he was a boy. Not expecting anything but always defending himself  against a No, just in case. He would look at my father like a man in the desert, dying of thirst,  and my father would love him back, so quietly; so afraid of upsetting the balance of power, by  reaching out. That was the face and the set of his body that I loved most, and that was the last  thing I saw. 
“When we get back to town, that’s it. Okay? I’m done with all of this running around and  trusting people and getting locked up in weird places and being yelled at for no reason. When we  go back I want to be like that little girl, the May Queen. I want to take these people out. I realize  that you have levels and loyalties and connections all over the place and that is fine, insofar as it  is useful, but I won’t hesitate if I get the chance. I have no loyalty other than to the people in this  car. They took him away from me, from us, for no reason whatsoever except that they are selfish  and scared and rich and stupid and so used to being used they didn’t even notice they could get  free. I cannot be like those women.” 
I’m a little insulted by that last part. I know what she means, and I agree, but there’s nothing as  bad as having something you’re proud of flung in your face like that. As if diplomacy, something 
at which I was raised literally my entire life to excel, is something to be ashamed of. As if getting  through twenty-odd years without telling a single lie, and getting exactly what I want, is some  kind of personality disorder. She can feel my vibe change, and casts me a sidelong look. 
“You can’t either. You keep thinking you can, but it’s not right. They are not your best-case  scenario, Estelle. I am scared to death you won’t figure that out in time, and get us all killed, but  you need to understand that. Gabriel is dead. The Demon Prince is dead. You’re not getting  married. And that means in three months you are toast.” 
I clear my throat, angrily, but there’s nothing really to say. I’m toast. I’ve spent the last seven  years prepping for this, full-scale destruction in the back of my mind, balancing sides until it  made me dizzy, acting like an idiot for the cameras when I needed a boost to stay on top, treating  Gabriel like absolute garbage which is what the situation called for, but now?  
It’s not that it was a waste. Nothing in this world is a waste and you don’t apologize for things  you can’t change, because that’s a lie: You can only promise to change your future self. And  that’s all she’s telling me to do. Evolve or be toast. 
“And I am going down with you, Estelle, I swear it. You don’t need to worry about me, I’m with  you. Like Troy, and I guess Michael back there. You have proven yourself to me. And whatever  I’m turning into, that scares me to death too. But you don’t. So you need to get right with  yourself by the time I get where we’re going. Wherever that is.” 
Which is an excellent unanswered question, and one Selena Kirke leaves hanging in the air for  miles. She downshifts into the curves, never grinding, riding low. But her brow is less furrowed  now, and her eyes are brightening.  
It feels a little less now like a funeral. Now it’s more like a wake.
  
  
  
Chapter Thirty-Four: River  
Troy tells me later, once we’ve reached Silver Lake, that the angel spent most of the ride crying,  but that you couldn’t tell from the outside because there were no actual tears. It was just a creepy  sound, he said, like a cat purring, but somehow desperate. I said that sounded awful and I never  wanted to think about it again, but sometimes I do. There is a hole in Michael, hours later, that  the wind just blows right through. I don’t think the three of us are enough to fill it. 
Troy’s house is safe. The little witch house, he calls it. Not that anyone would come after him, at  least not until very recently, but because activities like his, like ours, attract all kinds of things.  Energies and ghosts and memories and parasites, stuff I don’t know the words for but they’re  there, swarming around areas of power.  
The key, he always says, is to hide in the lee of something stronger, bigger than you ever expect  to be. It keeps the beasts away, and the bugs off you, and it can feed you too. I like to think when  he says this that he’s talking about me, but I know that’s a fairly crummy thing to think, so I  don’t say it out loud. But I like the idea. Like a holly tree, standing in a storm, calling the  lightning so nobody else gets hurt. Keeping him safe and dry. 
There’s a ley line that drifts through town, southeast from Bakersfield, and we had to spend like  two weeks finding a place near but not on it, with all kinds of persnickety feng shui-type details I  didn’t pay attention to, because I didn’t care, because I would not be going to Troy’s house, and  now here we are. And I am grateful for every fussy detail and every ley line and whatever else  Troy has set up around the place. 
Things tinkling in the lemon tree outside the window, strange knots in the curtains and little rugs  everywhere. Look behind the washing machine, you might see a giant quartz crystal or a yarn  thing, godseyes and dreamcatchers and stuff I don’t recognize. Lots of yarn in strange places,  here. Old toys and office equipment, blown fuses and tiny apothecary bottles full of mercury or  holy water, superhero figurines buried halfway in the soil. He has his own language to speak  with things. 
His house is homey, cozier than you might expect considering what a little wild thing he is, but  he cares about this stuff. He takes more time than most to recharge, and likes comfort when its  called for. He can sleep anywhere, sometimes he goes so long he smells like a puppy more than a  man, but when he wants a bubble bath he will go ahead and make that happen. You learn not to  hold his contradictions against him; to him, questioning them feels like you’re questioning him. 
So when Troy casually mentions that he’s been taking a pottery class, or that he has had a black  belt in Tae Kwon Do since high school, or produces some impossibly delicate desert from behind  his back, you can just enjoy it and not wonder what else it means. He’s a sweater with infinite threads and you don’t need to pull those: You just get more sweater. 
Like now, when we arrive. He settles Michael into his little futon, coming up with a pillow from  somewhere—he doesn’t like pillows, Troy, he says they interfere with your body’s natural sleeping chiropractic behaviors, which is one of the more bullshitty things I’ve ever heard him  say—and takes the angel’s clothes, and ours, for a wash. Infinite kimonos, the kid has, although I  have never seen him personally wear one; he likes satin, and prints, but not on his body.  
And then once the soft breathing of a naked hulking angel goes regular in the back, Troy troops  up to the front of the house, crouching behind the line of young jacarandas he planted in the  front, to distract from his magical activities, and slides a white half-domino mask over his face. 
“You look like Phantom of the Opera,” I mutter, not sure if we’re being totally serious or a little  joshing is appropriate, but he just crouches in the dirt with his back to us, like we’re not there.  Bare feet in too-short dungarees, and his tan tattooed back; Huck Finn playing marbles, or  whatever they played with back then. Rocks or bones or whatever. 
“That is fine because the Phantom had half a face and that’s what I’m trying to be right now.” “A phantom?” 
He shakes his head, smiling over his shoulder at us quietly. 
“Half a face.” 
* 
Once he’s got his clanky toolbox open and the pillar candles are out, I know we’re in for a long  one. Ceremonial magic takes forever, and while I can appreciate Selena’s interest in learning the  tricks of the trade I also know that watching something like that can only tell you too much. I  wait long enough for him to raise a circle—not the soft pink or white light of his usual spells, but  a blinding brightness—and then once his wards are set, I pull Selena away, back through the  house. 
On the wall over the sleeping angel a huge pair of antlers is mounted; I’ve only seen him wear  those three or four times, and mostly not for magic. Mostly he just likes having antlers  sometimes, as he would say. But past the bedroom and into the kitchen, that’s when the really  weird stuff starts appearing: Little mysterious symbols scrawled on the plaster between empty  picture frames, rows of laser-printed faces pinned between doorframes down the hall. Out into  the back garden, away from his work and the emotional loudness it’ll be making soon.
The backyard—a must, he said—is particularly retro: Small diner and picnic tables under a  chaotic-seeming grove of mismatched trees, soft carpet of Bermuda and St. Augustine, picture  frames hanging on and from the trees for unknown purpose. It’s a little bit of a wonderland, and  always just a little cooler than anywhere else. I haven’t been here in so long, I always forget how  much I love it. 
Neither of us seem to want to speak, so I point Selena toward the Graveyard of Appliances. She  makes a curious sound, running her hands over old steel and aluminum; some of them hang from  the tree above, clinking softly like ancient bells. 
“Before I got him this place part of how he made money was fixing things. These are the things  he couldn’t fix. He says one day they will make something else, but he hasn’t learned any good  metal skills yet.” 
Selena looks closer, as if to prize a spirit or a soul from them. Toasters and ancient cast irons. “My mom had one of these on the hearth. Did he... Is he an electrician?” 
She means, Or does he do magic on them. 
“Little of this, little of that. He likes how things work. He says everything is a metaphor for everything else. Electricity lights us all up the same way, circuits complete between people the  same way as inside one of these. He says a lot of things. Mostly I just think he likes working  without getting dirty. No axle grease or oil changes back here. Just acid washes and diatoms and  one day a beehive, he says.” 
Selena breathes that out. “He’s got a lot going on for somebody who doesn’t seem like he has a  lot going on.” 
I can feel myself nod, forcefully. It is so good to show him off. You couldn’t do it when he is  around, he’d get grouchy so fast—but then, he’s always around. I sometimes wish, when I’m  talking him up to Gabriel or whomever, that he would overhear it. Like in a kid’s show. 
“He knows everything. Absolutely everything. He only says like a tenth of what he knows. I  think he could be a doctor. CLEP out of doctor school, probably.” 
She smiles wryly. “That’s not a thing, I don’t think. But you’re probably right.” 
I can tell she doesn’t want to want in. Like a secret club of just the two of us. I used to really love  that feeling, like we had a secret language and nobody was allowed to know it. Gabriel  especially, it used to drive him bats. Until he met Michael, I guess, the only thing that ever really  drew him was other people’s relationships. 
I thought for the longest time it was vampiric: That he saw strong emotion between two people  and wanted to get in there, steal it for himself. Now, I think, he was just trying to figure out how  it could be. How anyone could possibly trust another person. Maybe that’s all he was ever doing, 
with all his ambition and trying to get people under his thumb or on his side: Maybe he was just  trying to study it close up, so he could fake it. Maybe he was on his way to becoming a real boy,  and I ruined it. 
Or maybe all this time he saw love the way I do, like a raging white-water river surging between  people, and he thought if he could just force his way into the middle of it, he could get clean.  Selena was right, driving back the long way: He never wanted anything. He wasn’t there yet.  And now he never will be. 
I’m on my knees before I even notice it; the river is upon me now and I’m drowning in the  rapids. This is grief, I think, and grief is physical. Your body doesn’t know the difference. The  Ladies of the Canyon would be so proud, to see me fall so hard, right on my ass in the rushing  tumbling horror of it.  
Sweet girl, they’d say. Dirty girl. The discipline is in continuing to sit. 
Selena pulls me into her arms, there on the Bermuda and St. Augustine grass, and listens to me  cry. She feels as rooted as a tree, old as the Redwoods. I am getting lighter all the time. 
* 
I learned early on that crying would do no good. My parents were not wired that way. They must  have thought better of their bargain, some days, as they watched me figure it out. That this  wasn’t the way; that tears were not the fastest way to my desire but the best way to be handed  over, to Faerie ladies and nursemaids who cared even less for my cries. Later, to the Puck, who  would laugh right in my face, his volume rising as mine did, until we were screaming in each  other’s faces.  
And then we would laugh, wild Fae laughter, the ill-advised laughter of the mad. He must have  thought I was the stupidest thing going, but he treated everyone that way, so I never noticed. I  thought I was the apple of his eye, the holly at the center of his grove. He must have done  something to make me feel that way, mustn’t he? It couldn’t have just been me wanting him to  love me, just telling myself stories of being loved.  
My first lessons were in seeing through Faerie lies, past the truths they spouted to the truths  behind. He ran me in circles, for hours or days, like the twelve dancing princesses. He must have  felt I was as special as he made me feel, or it never would have worked.  
I never would have been strong enough to leave, or later, to leave the Canyon. I never would  have been strong enough to make my tawdry life in the city. Certainly couldn’t have made it  back home, even for the weekend, without knowing he was there. My special friend. 
But make a list of the people who love you, and the people who hurt you, and cross off  everybody who appears on both lists. The people who love us, even the psychos, never give us  anything: They just shine what was already there. It’s the ones that hurt us who teach us  something.
Troy says the Evil Stepmother archetype is another form of the myth of Eden: That one day your  mother doesn’t give you herself utterly, and it feels like dying. That you begin life whole, like  Gabriel, wanting for nothing, and then one day they don’t come when you cry out, or you catch  your pinkie in a crib corner and nobody notices, or you hear a tone in your mother’s voice that  tells you, for certain, that there are limits to her love.  
That’s the Fall from Eden, that’s eating the Fruit that Michael was going on about, to hear from  Troy: That we base our ideas of Good and Evil on whether or not they make us feel more whole,  or less. And Troy says the same thing about the Evil Stepmother: She’s just your mother on the  first day she disappoints you. That it hits you like a bullet made of ice. 
I never had a mother like that, or if I did—Gertrude’s mother, I suppose, for a moment or a  day—I don’t remember it.  
But I do remember, very vaguely, a very sad day on which I noticed that the Puck cared about  things that weren’t me. I don’t remember any details, because I don’t remember things I don’t  care about. But I do remember feeling for one second like the world was ripping in two, like an  old lace shawl: On one side, I was safe, and on the other side was wilderness. 
I don’t suppose it was too long before I was grateful for that, too.
  
  
  
Chapter Thirty-Five: Half a Face  
When I am finished moping and she’s wiped my face, Selena half-lifts me into a fireman’s carry  and brings me back into the house. From the angle of the sunlight kissing the lemon tree through  the window, I would estimate Troy has about a half-hour left before he rejoins us on planet  Earth. 
“I’m going to make tea. And I’m not making it for you,” Selena specifies, “I’m making it for  whoever wants some. If you need something I expect you to ask for it, I’m not going to make  you feel worse by taking care of you.” 
I sit knock-kneed on a stool in the kitchen, nauseated and staring at the floor, and nod with  gratitude. It would feel vulgar and wonderful to thank her, after a lifetime in Winter, and so  that’s exactly what I do. 
“Thank you, Selena.” 
She stops short, her back to me, and I can see in her shoulders that she thinks about  acknowledging it. My stomach turns over, again, and she keeps moving. I like that she knows  what that meant to me. 
Which is nothing. I am no fairy, I’m just a Princess in exile and on the run from monsters and all  Hell. But it’s hard to give things up. Running around Faerie telling lies would be fun, but not  classy; there’s nothing tacky about gratitude. Just a feeling like a rollercoaster, and Selena’s  grieving back.  
I try to imagine her with short hair, wearing just a simple cotton shift maybe. Sitting in this  kitchen, the four of us, quietly sipping our tea, remembering those terrible times.  
Remembering what it was like when Gabriel died, and how we put ourselves and each other back  together, right here in this kitchen, and how we would never have to leave again. Ordering  delivery every single night. Growing together like a basket of willow trees, holding a pond in  their rooted hands, deep below the earth, until we don’t move at all. Troy with his mask and his  horns, and Michael’s hands so strong and clean, and Selena bright and silent as the Moon.  
And me, I would be just a little girl again, like the May Queen, like the Canyon. Just small and  wrapped up tight in softness.
By the time she has the tea ready, I’ve mostly snapped out of it. The white water of grief slips  away through the cracks in the floor and I begin to dry. I feel like the last hour or so, I might  have actually been insane, and when I widen my eyes at Selena she cracks up just enough to  show me she agrees.  
It was dicey. It has been dicey for a long time now.  
I miss my hard, wild smile. I didn’t even know what it was until it was almost gone. That Look,  Troy always called it. And Gabriel too: You have that Look again. And it always hurt my  feelings when they did, like when someone—even someone you love the very most—tells you  there’s something in your teeth. Certain things we cannot talk around, we must say them. A tiny  rip in the heart and it’s over, and you forget that nasty little part of you that was offended.  
But when I was alone, I would smile that smile up at the ceiling in the dark and imagine it  shining, like the Cheshire Cat. No Estelle, just my day-glo veneers, smiling up through the  ceiling and the roof and the sky and the heavens and all of space and time, saying, “I dare you to  take any of this from me.” I would lie on my back, and feel strong, with nobody around to tell  me otherwise and nobody around to prop me up. Just me and my smile and the night. I was such  an idiot. I thought that it could save us. 
And maybe that’s what did it, what killed him and nearly killed all of us and killed those poor  awful women, in their awful little palace: The absolute arrogance of my vendetta, my grotesque  need to save myself and call it saving the world. I led him, all of them, into disaster. Tiny stupid  little Estelle, with her La Perla and her bedclothes in the car and her parents that weren’t even  her parents. Cruel whispers and laughter of the Winter Court, that I’ve been ignoring as long as  I’ve been alive, come rushing back. 
How stupid the Realms must think I am now. How famously stupid, that girl that never belonged  here in the first place. 
* 
“What are you doing in there, my friend.”  
Selena hunkers down next to me, peering into my eyes, making sure not to touch. Her palm  hovers above my knee, like she’s trying to feel my aura.  
Gabriel and I would do that as children, just learning magic. He never took to it, and the Puck  hated him even when he was just small, but we did enjoy the practice of it. Pretending it wasn’t  real, pretending it was. Pretending to pretend, as if fate wasn’t a fist bigger than the sun,  preparing to drop on us both. On us all. 
“Me? I am going crazy in a new way, I think. This has been a journey of discovery, Selena. First  I found out I could get very sad. Angry just dropped right out. Then I found out I might have  been in love with him all along, which is terrible news because he was not a great guy. Then I 
watched you for a while in this kitchen. I imagined we were trees. And then just now I was  thinking that I’m more than likely a worthless piece of shit.” 
Selena laughs, then, and drops her forehead to my knee. 
“That’s a lot of ground to cover, sweetheart.” Her voice sounds tired, echoing hollow up at us. “I am not used to being this much of a handful.” 
She looks up at me, then, piercing and bright. 
“I’m not going to give you a pep talk. That’s for Troy to do, I’d just mess it up because we don’t  know each other well enough to know where the places are. But I will tell you that you’re not  alone, and... Have you ever had a friend who was a girl before?” 
I think, briefly. Not really. Not the way we would use the word, no. 
“I have. You very much have the vibe of a girl who doesn’t know girls. But you’re not proud of  it, the way true bitches are. You just seem skittish. So I will tell you some things you might not  know. Number one is that not even Troy is going to understand all of this. I won’t, either. But  there are places where we overlap. And number two is, you need to start doing yoga. Because  your body and your brain are on two different planets, and it makes you weak and crazy.” 
I take this under advisement. It sounds not entirely correct. 
“My fiancé just died but you think I can fix it with yoga. Okay. What kind? Like the hot kind or  the kind they teach kids, or...” 
“I don’t mean actual yoga. I mean that I just saw your body having a completely different  conversation than your head is having, and it dropped you on your knees. That’s partly shock and  grief but it’s also a sign. I’m a witch, you have to trust me on this.” 
“First of all you have been a witch—albeit an impressive one—for about five minutes. And  second of all, you can’t talk to me like that.” 
She’s taken aback, and almost leaps to her feet, but I shake my head. 
“Not like... I mean, you can’t talk to me like woo-woo stuff. I won’t hear you. You talk about  bodies and minds and getting right and doing yoga and I just switch off. It’s frustrating, because  I know you’re saying something important, but the way you say it sounds... I can’t hear it.” 
She nods, thinking. 
“Okay, how about: You spent twenty years as a Faerie Princess with no reason to think you had a  mortal body. You’ve done very well in that department, but you did it like a fairy, like a person 
who is just wearing a costume they can replace. How about, like, you just got born when you met  Gertrude. Which was what, a week ago?” 
“Yeah and she looked like shit.” 
“But before then, you had no body to love. Just a sack of turnips you were forced to carry  around, while everybody else was light as air. Are you telling me that ever made sense to you?” 
“No. I was hungry all the time. I thought it was because I was terrible in some way. I thought  that was why they sold me out, sold me to Hell. Because I was weak and greedy.” 
“And does that sound true to you now?” 
“Kind of. But you’re right, too. That was a sad thing to think. And it couldn’t be avoided.” 
“But now you know otherwise. And that’s why I think you should do yoga. So you can live  inside of your body, instead of outside of it. Because you didn’t know any better, but now you  do.” 
“You have given me a lot to think about, Miss Kirke. I have something also to tell you.” “You’re going to give me advice now too? So we’re even?” 
I can tell that thought disappoints her, and nothing could be further from the truth. 
“No, I’m going to lean even harder on you. Because what is going on, I have not been honest  about. I haven’t lied, exactly, but I haven’t told you everything there is to know about you.” 
Selena pulls up a stool, and I can see her considering herself in the shiny metal of Troy’s toaster,  thinking about the haircut she’s going to get. How different she will be then. 
“The Ladies said I was going to be like them. I thought they meant a witch, but that’s not it, is it?  I’m not going to be a human being.” 
She is forlorn, and so lovely my hand is on her face before I notice what it’s doing. 
“Yes. But not like you’re thinking. They aren’t going to take your body away. It’s not going to  be like, a yoga fix. It’s going to be the opposite. Do you know anything about the Walk of  Fame?” 
“It is a tourist attraction and I would like to see it?” 
“It is and you will. But I’m talking about something different.” 
*
When Troy finally rejoins us, Michael is just waking up. Selena has dried her tears, and Troy can  see just from looking at her that I’ve spilled the beans. I know he’ll put a happy face on it, and  try to get her to smile again before he tells us what he’s been up to in the yard. 
“So you’ll be God, that will be fun. And we’ll still be friends. Nothing really will change. You  just... Get bigger in the world. Your magic will be out of control. You will think ways that we  can’t think, so you’ll have to be considerate of that. All in all, not a bad deal.” 
Selena nods, bearing up. “Until I die. Until I burn out and die.” 
Troy sits cross-legged on the floor and smiles, dazzling. 
“Actually that’s part of what I just was working on. I don’t think you have to die. The Ladies  can...” 
I hold up a finger, then two. No sense in getting foolish. 
“—Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson...” 
“—Were both drug addicts. Because they were sad. They died of that, not supernatural causes. I  think we just have a lot of received wisdom in this area and no real control group. So I’m  working on that. But my main thing is, I got part of a spell to search for a soffit.” 
Michael steps forward, unsure what Troy means, wild hopes glaring and fizzling around him like  brief fireworks. 
“I was thinking that Gabriel is a smart guy and very much into self-preservation. So if there’s  any way...” 
Again, the finger. From the outside I can feel myself wanting to shut up and stop interrupting,  stop saying no to everything, but I can’t. I need real facts. “But he didn’t.” 
Troy cocks his head, scratching at his sternum, and blinks. 
“We know he didn’t, Troy. Because he would just come back out again into that... Time stops.” 
Troy nods. “That is true. But I feel like if there’s a way, we can find him. So okay, we shall not  say that it is likely. Barely even a possibility. But this is quite a spell, Estelle. Obtained at some  personal cost. And I will keep working on it. If that is just fine with you.” 
I regret busting the mood, and hang my head in a way I know will mollify him. And so it does. 
“And I guess that is about it, currently. I mean I had more to say, but those are the basic things.  Selena takes the Walk, post-haste, and I will keep thinking about Gabriel. And that way you  don’t have to.”
It’s kind, and strange, and somehow I think it will work for a little while. 
“We can, though. All of us. I won’t make him a martyr because he would hate that, and moreso  because he would love it. But whatever puts gas in the tank. I was going to raze Hell anyway.  Now we just have something to put on the posters.” 
Michael rumbles, less abject than when he went to sleep. “The posters?” 
“The... banners. Whatever you have with a War. We’re going to sell it that way. Even the drones  will get behind that, once they hear what those witches were up to. Even Summer won’t abide  the bone machine stuff. Hell just handed us a winning card, with cheekbones and great hair, and  a lookbook portfolio that goes back years. So we’ll play it. And if that grosses any of out, I  apologize in advance. But let’s be fair, it’s my fiancé that’s dead. So let’s use it while we still  feel bad.” 
Even Michael, glumly, can’t argue with that one. 
* 
“Gertrude, it’s Estelle. Please don’t talk to me in verse or I will hang up.” 
I can hear her softly laughing, maybe even a little relieved, and I know she’ll work with us. “You got it, little sister. What’s up this time? Who’d you get kidnapped now?” The silence goes on just long enough that I can hear her curse herself. 
“Oh, shit. Estelle, what happened?” 
I sketch out for the bare facts, filling in Faerie blanks she needs to know but wouldn’t, before  now. She’s a quick study, with a mind that moves like a koi pond. Long stretches where I think  I’ll have to get basic, and then before I can get annoyed she’s skipped ten steps ahead. It’s a little  invigorating. 
“So come to Pomona. We can have the May call her cabinet and get treaties underway  immediately. That’s Winter, Summer and Autumn in the bag. Spring will be a piece of cake, they  don’t care about anything. Hell’s already melting down. Who am I missing?” 
That’s everybody, I think. She’ll make a good Queen. I don’t like her exactly, and I’m glad I  didn’t sell her off to Gabriel, but she can see the forest when it counts. 
“I’m not coming there. I don’t want to attract any more attention than I already am. Give me  your next burner number, actually, and toss this phone.”
We trade info, and sign off. The others watch, impressed with her, and that is irritating. But not  as irritating as if she’d been a ninny. Assuming I don’t get dragged to Hell on my birthday, I  think, there’s a lot we could learn from each other. 
“Michael, how’s your intel? I know you know more than you’re saying. Do you have contacts on  the other side?” 
The angel holds his fists together in an unconscious gesture I’ve noticed a couple of times:  Knuckles touching, like a boxer pounding his gloves onto his hands. 
“I do not associate with the Fallen.” 
“Demonstrably untrue. But listen, do you know any eligible bachelors? Preferably with a grudge  against the King of Cinders?” 
Selena laughs, shaking her head. “Twenty is a little old to be making your debut, Estelle.” “I mean, screw it. I’ve been engaged since I was born. It’s time to meet the other fish.” Troy goggles up at me, shivering and grossed out and excited. 
“And then what?” 
“And then we grill ‘em up, Troy. I need somebody in public to walk me through this trying time,  and it might as well send a message. If not Hell, then Summer.” 
He wrinkles his nose, trying to be polite. I know what he’s thinking: No beard would be stupid  enough to throw in with a War Chieftain on the eve of her greatest defeat. Nobody can afford to  short-sell like that, on the LA exchange. Tinder suicide. But Selena nods, grimly: She sees. 
“Not to be rude? But you’re a toxic asset.” 
Sometimes it’s like he doesn’t get men at all. 



STAY HIGH: WASTED BEAUTY
Book Two
BY JACOB CLIFTON















WASTED BEAUTY
BY JACOB CLIFTON



ONCE

There was a Queen. She didn’t know her daughter yet, but she knew she loved her. 

She feared she loved her. For an evil fairy had pronounced a curse upon the girl, long ago: That she turned twenty-one, she would be taken away to Hell. As many have gone, every seven years, to maintain their lovely Kingdom. Not a fair arrangement but, they said, it was a necessary one.

The Queen went to her husband, the King, but he loved only his wife. He didn’t care about the girl to come. The Queen went to Hell, to parlay, but they said it was all written long ago. That her Kingdom depended upon it, and if she did not wish to see all her riches and her people swept up in a blazing tide, she would stop asking questions.

This Queen was not one to stop. Ever. For that is not what Queens do. And so she hatched a marvelous plan: Take the girl out into the world, on that warm Autumn night she was born, and place her in a stranger’s cradle. Bring the new girl home, and raise her as the Princess. She made treat with a King in Hell, that this girl should marry their son, a Prince, when it was time to go. She would enter Hell, this stranger’s child, a Queen. It was the best she could do: The softest landing, and the least painful death.

It was not a fair arrangement, but it was a necessary one.

When the Princess turned fourteen, word was brought to the castle that the Princess should go out into the world, to learn the ways of witches. And so she went. And she, a girl who was never safe inside her skin, was tamed. The witches taught her wildness, and the wildness saved her life.

Estelle Harlowe makes common pact with witches now, and angels, and goddesses. She has declared War on her own Kingdom, and all those who would sell girls as she was sold. And one day soon, that Kingdom will fall apart. She will put a Bastard Queen on every throne, and destroy all Hell to its foundations.

But first, she must survive dinner with her mother-in-law. With the Demon Prince and his angel friend lost in the house that Hell built, witches running through the gardens and laughing in the kitchen, a most terrible device has been discovered. The bride of Hell is nothing, compared to her wicked sisters.

And now the whole damned family is nothing at all.


Chapter Thirty-Six: Pearls

“So in the first half of the game you go around recruiting all of these people into your group. In a given circumstance you only can take two of them along, but they’re all back at HQ all the time.”

Gabriel liked those ones best. A bounded world that seems endless; the constant validation of your morality: You’ve done something a good person would do, achievement unlocked. You’ve done something only a bad-ass would do, achievement unlocked. He loved how, at any time, he could click out into a screen that would tell him exactly how he measured up. How am I driving?

“...Some point in one of these recruitment scenarios you have a choice between somebody who is kind of harsh or too stringent for your personal taste, or an alternate person who is more rebellious. Like, darker. And you keep playing the game for hours, doing missions and whatever, moving the story along...”

As my interlocutor, a fairly mid-grade Autumn magistrate, is clearly uninterested in doing. Autumn Fae are the only ones who regularly take to the real world, like I did when I left the Winter Court, but even still, just talking to a Faerie about video games—a thing that would normally send me into narcolepsy or, if it were Gabriel doing it, quiet hysterics—is fairly interesting.

What the world must be like, for a Faerie aristo that arrived in the US back around its inception, but still exclusively dines on chicken nuggets and french fries, like a toddler. It’s cute. Cute enough to hide the danger, nearly.

“The second act, you’re just doing another mission with each squadmate, to gain their loyalty. Maybe twelve of them, it’s modular. You up the ante on each of their storylines, while also contributing to the big overarching story: Demons are coming, or aliens. Whatever it is.”

Yeah. Tell me more about that. What a fun fantasy world.

“But so in this game, they aren’t always where you expect to find them. At some point during the loyalty phase of the game—which I mean, this could take ten or twelve hours to complete, especially if you’re doing other stuff at the same time—you end up looking all over for the ship, or your camp, to find them and ask whatever questions you need to ask to trigger act three.”

I blink as slowly as possible, one of the few behaviors I think of as a seductive that I’ve actually gotten positive feedback about, and take a sip from my drink: “So where are they?”

He looks around, as though about to release state secrets, and his eyes get dark.

“Dead. You just spent hours running around like nothing was wrong, mining planets for ores or picking magic flowers, and the whole time this... vampire you brought in, way back at the beginning, has been choosing her time to strike. Killing them one by one in their quarters. Really nasty scene when you figure it out. Some of them you might have f... dated, or they might have saved a whole country, or a world, in their story arcs. Now, those people are no longer available to you. Their stories either.”

I watch him very carefully, very still. Is this a warning? A jibe? A threat? Does he know what has been going on in my real life lately? An Autumn boy like this, burnished copper hair and just enough red in his cheeks to keep him from looking sallow, tall and skinny as all get out: Is he being very cruel, or very helpful, or very oblivious? 

The closer I look, the less I see. They do tend to think tech is everything; always their apps and design trends and things. Maybe he’s doing all of these things at once. Troy says I’m unkind about Autumn, that I call them scavengers when really they’re curators. I guess I can trust Troy’s take on art. I have none of my own. None but this.

“In the third act, you’re going up against these like, vast armies—you need everybody you can get, for when you start delegating and forming strike teams. And now you won’t have those guys. Because you brought the snake in, and weren’t paying attention to what they were up to.”

I put my hand on his chest, and his body lights up. Lean in close, to whisper.

“And let me guess. She’s very beautiful. You knew she was dangerous, or dark, but you didn’t care—you were the bad-ass, the renegade, and she had the cold anger.”

He nods, breathing heavier now. Pupils dilated. I think more than a little hard, which is why you always serve, but never drink, champagne at a dance mixer. 

“So what’s the message? You shouldn’t trust women? Or always go with the paladin? Did you save out before you chose her? Did you have to live with your choices, or did you...”

“Of course I did. I knew that was part of the game going in. So the second time I played it, I did it on purpose. I can’t figure out the mechanic, though. I tried to see if I could get her to kill a given squadmember by ignoring them the longest, checking in more frequently with others...”

“Sick.”

“I know. But I’d already played it once. I saved everybody that time. I could afford to get weird the second time because it wasn’t real anymore. And they were right: It was horrible and amazing. You break into the room of your first mate and she’s just sprawled across the bed, there’s a splash of...”

“—Enough. I mean, I get the picture. I know games. I didn’t know that about that one. It sounds intense. I wish I had more time.”

“I brought a console to Summer. So you like games?”

Gabriel would do the same—take his games into soffits, or home to Hell, play them for days. You always come back to boredom, though, which is the part I never understood. What is the point of playing games, if not spending your time lavishly? Proving you had time to waste by wasting it; moving time’s arrow forward in a way that was distracting enough you were no longer waiting. He said it was to achieve something, and I didn’t press, because I would have had to say it was the opposite of achievement, you aren’t even wasting time when you do that. 

Nothing comes from nothing, I would have said—knowing what he meant was the illusion of control. To light up those places in the brain that said he was good, and powerful, and strong, and helpful, that weren’t getting lit anywhere else in his life. It seemed to me then like the best reason to do it, and not the worst. I saw how it could refresh him, instead of running him down, and then resolved to learn more about them. I never did.

But if Gabriel wanted to be a hero, what did Michael want, when he spent all that time silently watching Gabriel play them? To watch Gabriel be a hero, same as the rest of us who loved him. I could watch Troy watch Gabriel play for hours, if he would have sat still for that: He liked it best when Gabriel would cheer himself on, or whisper encouraging things under his breath—the opposite of every boy Troy had ever watched play a video game, he said. Hardly any swearing at all. 

Gabriel was not one for cursing at fate, but he sure did like to give it little pep talks.

*

The May Queen’s called the Summer government, which means we’re on sacred ground, ambassadorial. That makes this little yacht trip much more than a speed-dating situation, it’s an informal Council of War, with all the party tricks and pageantry that to the Courts signifies a serious situation. 

We revel at sea, on a ship made of something resembling sharkskin, or folded gilded paper. More than a little ostentatious, for my tastes, but it’s important to impress people. 

Especially now. Nobody wants to join a rag-tag crew. You have to spend money to make money, as they say. The Drones call it “social proof.” 

So half the dignitaries here are ringers, not just from Winter but the other Courts too. My auditions for a new boyfriend are unannounced, as is Gabriel’s demise, but that’s just another gatekeeping policy: The ones in the know that came anyway, and the ones who are either so well-defended or so callous or out of the loop that they won’t care about the baggage that comes with the job.

My mother wears a gown that trails away into a bed of forced blue roses; her skin is still darker than mine, just lighter than Selena’s. There is a lot of meaning in our Three-Sisters semiotics that won’t really come together as an effect until the ball begins, but we’re dressed in matching black and silver bangles for when the time comes. We all weep for our lost brother, it says. Never mind that Gertrude met him for five seconds, Selena a little longer; never mind that I never really liked him. We all weep.

Fantastically, Michael offered to escort Troy, which solved several problems at once. A few careful whispers have transformed Michael’s angelic presence in Faerie from an obvious insult to de trop flouting the hierarchy, which the hierarchy loves more than anything. 

A real revolution is disgusting, terrifying, breaks minds and bodies; but a revolutionary spectacle is a special treat, like being invited onscreen by your favorite film stars. 

Which, it turns out, Troy has somehow become. His celebrity in the Realms could never eclipse mine, but he’s certainly doing better than Selena in the Faerie Q-rating department, for reasons none of us can explain. He is eating up the attention, in his silver circlet and black Hamlet doublet, but his angelic date is uncomfortable. 

Michael’s still wearing his stained jeans and a torn white button-down, a sort of visual aid for the storytelling we’ll do later about Palm Springs and what was lost there. The people who already knew the story will be the ones to groan and gasp the most: This is Faerie, where performances beget performances, mirrors mirroring mirror, in dread of ever catching yourself looking back.

And then there’s me, delighting suitors with half a face while the hand behind my back signals archaisms and gestures full of a lifetime’s meaning, so the Puck’s handlers can keep ‘em moving past. I’ve seen this done with plenty of Princesses, and not just in Winter, but I’ve never personally had to be part of the receiving line. Another cool spot I found, in Gabriel’s shade.

I’m not sure if there are twelve princes by some mandate or just fate, but it makes it easier. They blur together. You are allowed to read the comments on your social media, Gabriel always said, up until you start remembering names—then, it’s no longer helpful. I’ve never had a head for names, or Princes. But I do enjoy small talk. It’s the only good kind, in my experience.

*

The Puck comes close, in a break between the bodies, to ask if I’ve narrowed things down. A genre of television I’ve never liked very much puts a lot of emphasis on this part of the ritual, handing out prizes to those who’ve made it into the next round. I don’t understand a great deal about love but when I see things like this, I think possibly I am further along than I thought, compared to the mean. We’re at sea, there’s nowhere for the suitors to go, so I don’t see why I should have to commit to liking any of them in particular.

The Puck right this second looks like a supermodel, androgynous but feminine, with intense eyebrows that render the rest of her lush face into a simple, lovely blur. She isn’t wearing black, like the rest of us, because she doesn’t belong to us: The Puck is a living and integral part of each Court, partial to none in theory. How she gets around, between, nobody asks. 

Some think she’s part of the Realm itself, like the talking furniture in Beauty & the Beast; privately I think it’s more like HAL 9000, an intelligence giving voice to the machine.

The Puck wears a slight white shift, flowers twining her arms and through her hair, piled in a messy bun. I did a shoot once with Gabriel that was like that: Like we’d just woken up on a mossy forest floor, dewy and just-kissed. They put more crap in my hair to make it look unmessed-with than I’ve ever had in it, Faerie or no; as long as I’ve worn it at times, it’s never felt so heavy, like such a... mass. 

I felt like Troy’s friend the food stylist talks about, spraying down her hamburger buns with hairspray to make them look steaming fresh. Motor oil in the sour cream. 

The artifice, the sheer nastiness it takes to seem untainted.

*

I am standing on the prow of a boat that doesn’t exist, racing waves of a sea that won’t exist tomorrow or ever again, as sprites and naiads race us. The illusion of movement, the Puck says, is key: We must be heading into sunrise, dawn-treading, never arriving, never becoming. We must stress eternity and crisis at once: 

This is how things have always been done, but we can outrace it all. You guys, we’re all in this thing together.

I can’t help thinking we’ve gathered most of the heads of state: Summer’s here in force, pretending to be well-behaved for their tattered little May Queen, and most of the Autumn and even Spring royalty is high/middle-list. If I sank this bitch I wonder how many of them would die, how many free positions would open up. 

I had a fantasy about getting all the olds onboard, but they wouldn’t come; they didn’t even bother responding to the invite, in case of just such obvious trickery.

I would certainly sink a ship with the royals on it. With my parents on it, come to that. Queen Mum, wherever she’s hiding, for certain. But that’s not my War. My War is to love these people. If I can’t do that, I can’t expect them to love one another. And if we can’t find our way to that—preferably sometime in the next few hours—then we’ll never root out the darkness that keeps us fighting in the first place.

The Puck catches my eye, then, and shakes her head near-imperceptibly: If I start giving speeches, the ship could sink under its own weight. Or they’d wish it would. This is a campaign of sibilance, an accretion of ideas and seeds planted, slowly and with care and with the utmost goddamned humility. What was it Gabriel said about the angel, with that bro love shining in his eyes?

“He never tells me I’m wrong. He just agrees with me until I’m more right.”

Soon enough this Autumn twerp will drop his drink, if I find the right buttons to push; then I can curl my lip and send him on his way. He’ll stop pretending to find me fascinating, and be lost to me instead in my coldness. He won’t think there’s a difference, between pursuit and being caught, but I’ll know. Refuse to speak to him until the Ball, and then surprise him with a Top Three spot. By that point he won’t care about the caveats. 

But first he has to drop something, embarrass himself. What is he selling? What behavior does he think is seductive, what’s his tell? Something about the way he moves his tongue along his lip seems like a play for sensuality. Someone, somewhere, told him it was sexy, or he had nice lips, or something. And he liked it because it was so far above the waist. 

A boy like that feels dirty; needs to feel clean. Easy. I scoop a string of pearls from the foam and trace it across my clavicle slowly, eyes on nothing, mind turning inward, lost in sensation, as the Autumn boy gapes. Virgin territory, getting wet.

The Puck is by his side before the boy’s glass hits the floor.


Chapter Thirty-Seven: Through the Windows & Side Doors

So as not to give too much time to one Court or another, the Puck has planned a sequence of costume changes. Now she moves from a cold Winter beauty to a ruddy Spring deckhand, or stableboy: The planned ugliness of a long rat’s tail sprouting from a mohawk like a dancing horse’s mane, fuzz of adolescence dusting his lip. Scrawny arms, so much less taut and strong than when he was a woman; pale and exposed, sleeves ripped clean off, a very specific smell of tobacco and sweat.

If he were playing an American the effect would be disastrous, but his body language says French, so it’s disturbing instead. Maybe even a little sexy. The Puck has always liked those post-human fillips you get in San Francisco and points north, or in Ontario: So far from bodies that bodies can be anything. It’s as close to futurism as he’s capable of understanding; as close to Faerie as punk can allow. Me, I think it’s garbage, but he plays the part well. Certainly makes Troy fidgety, which is excellent.

Selena and Gertrude are near the refreshments, from which I can see the Princess politely abstaining: Whispering, giggling, staring. Two girls that happened into Faerie, working overtime to remember they belong. Part of me wants to shut it down immediately, but I know that’s just my brain talking. Selena can get the goods I can’t, so if that means forming a friendship with my twin, that’s something I will have to put up with. I can hide in the shadow of that, certainly: Gertrude should have a friend in our camp, should have a friend period. And Selena’s proven her skill at calming beasts.

The angel is having a better time of it than I had imagined, and when I nod questioningly at him he shakes his shaggy head, not yet in need of rescue. Faerie girls and boys are drawn to him, I would imagine because they’ve never seen anything true before. They can’t lie, of course, but that’s very different from what he is. 

To them, to me, Michael stands like one of our silver trees, planted in the center of this pleasure boat, barely rocking on the waves for now. He shines like the sun on the water.

It was the dickens trying to explain this plan on the way into Faerie, Troy and Selena grimly gobbling their pregame meals: Tricking people into alliances, treating the little May Queen like a respected ambassador, even the many faces of the Puck, were all just slightly past the limits of what Michael can understand. Eventually I told him some nonsense about a greater commonwealth and our lives beyond our limits and the peace of the Realms, and he took the rest on faith, but I can tell he is all caught up in what he is supposed to be doing.

To tell the truth, I am a little at a loss as to his use myself. I know he’s mine now, he belongs to me. He’s more lost than almost anyone I’ve ever met, but that’s not a quality I can use. I’m not so into my madness that I think a War on Hell should necessarily involve Heaven. But the more we talk about that, the more into it Michael gets. 

Maybe that’s his thing, maybe being a bodyguard is, to him, just another way of being a soldier. If so, he needs benching. That much sadness does not belong on a battlefield.

So we’re tender with him, monitor the reactions he generates: Wonderment, curiosity, fascination are fine. But he doesn’t register cruelty or sarcasm, especially not the highly weaponized sort of Fae in our late infancy, so that’s got to be sharply dealt with when it comes. 

Michael doesn’t really like talking about Heaven, or Hell, which is just as well. He’s here to be interesting and beautiful, an unofficial mascot for the size of the thing, which nobody can talk about aloud because it is too large. Whatever war is in him, sleeps, and when it’s time to wake I know just the spell to send him over the edge. Just the name to whisper.

*

Our Royal Mother, part of her I think is still reacting to things as though my marriage, our alliance, were still in play. I think some part of her had to decide, perhaps long ago, that Hell was a worthy and valuable ally. And so to hear a word against it now is to feel slandered, attacked, herself. That makes the party difficult, but not impossible, because I’ve presented her with so many treats and surprises: A witchboy, a dreaming Goddess, an angel, a sister. 

She looks down at us, Gertrude and Estelle, and sees her face looking back, doubled. It silences her.

My father, all he can think about is Gabriel. He looks for him in my face, and in Troy’s; he wants nothing more than to spirit Michael somewhere away, back into our ship of dreams, to hear about the end. Or what it was like to be allowed to love him. I have nothing to say to our Royal Father regarding this or any other matter. His eyes are wet as a dog’s, he needs too much and won’t ask for it. Two things I can’t look at without turning to stone, today.

How long has the party been raging? The sun always just at that purple and orange point on the horizon; the seafoam looks pale blue in comparison, depths deepest indigo. I wouldn’t notice if it went for weeks, so it’s good that Selena and Troy are here, getting hungrier. They’re the only ones here to notice time; I am just myself at eight, getting smaller. Going hollow.

We took a boat like this out once, not into dawn but into a storm, something my mother whistled up to give us a thrill. Kings on matching thrones, aft and high. The Puck up in the crow’s nest, calling down gulls. 

A sea bird lit near Gabriel’s elbow, and spoke to him in riddles. I didn’t hear enough to know what it was saying, but he didn’t like it. He said it smelled too much like fish, like the sea. Breathing its lunch into his ear, he said. So glutted on wonders and enchantments he’d never have noticed it was remarkable.

Between the pale refraction of our waves and the dark purple deeps, there would be a middle blue, a sad cornflower. Aquamarine, when he got stormy. 

Was it an albatross, or a pelican? If my paltry human memory can’t recall, it would be senseless to ask my parents. Not even the Puck would know. I am the sole person who might, of the seven who took that journey. And it’s a fact that I have lost. Misplaced, careless. 

*

Change of partners, again, as the dance continues. Six of us, twelve of them, all in constant movement. Nobody saying anything, everybody talking and laughing, touching lightly. Another Autumn boy, vulpine; he looks me and Selena up and down, as a pair, and I instinctively take her hand.

You could ask him if he were turned on by the idea—the two of us together, meaning the three of us, meaning him in control of it—and his answer would be a compulsory, hearty positivity. Whether or not he really feels that way, he will believe he does: It’s what boys are meant to feel. 

In Spring they recombine endlessly, joyous; in Summer they show off, doing it for everyone else. It’s only in Winter and Autumn that cruel artifice and cold reality get so hard to separate. He has given us the keys to his desire, wherever it comes from. Reason enough to use it against him.

Selena’s hand passes easily around my waist as we talk, but I’m struck with the unknown early on: This is an Autumn boy she knows. To the point of such familiarity I honestly can’t tell if she’s flirting, if she grew up with him in the real world, or what. I don’t care for it. It certainly doesn’t lend itself to my—admittedly horrific—plan to mix him up with girl/girl stuff, which is probably for the best. 

On the other hand, possibly they will drop some clues between them, about the Hallowed Lands’ interest in Selena specifically. I still don’t think we’ve gotten the full story about that, not least because the Puck refused to speculate when I asked him point-blank. And one thing I have learned about Selena is that even more than most of us, she doesn’t know what she doesn’t know.

“A perfect day,” I sigh. “Perhaps I should whistle up a storm.” The Autumn boy nods, eagerly.

Of the Courts, our mysterious Trickster would find Autumn the easiest to hide behind, or make his way in: They value that sort of thing. Pluck is their word for the urge to empire. They pretend transgression, building vast empires in their wake, circling always back to the accumulation of capital. Nothing is destroyed, everything recycled. They love nothing better than a hard-luck story, as long as the hero comes from their own ranks: They’d hide him, all the way to the top. 

“Knew a weather witch in the Keys,” Autumn says. “She had a jug she would uncork. Kept it in the first aid box.”

But if he’s among them, why set Summer upon us at all? 

“I wouldn’t mind that kind of thing. I guess it could get out of control pretty easily,” Selena says. “You have to keep the whole world in mind! That’s a lot of variables.” To him this seems to be poetry.

It’s too coincidental that Selena and Gertrude should show up the same day, we know that much: It’s not multiplying entities to say that the two events are linked. Autumn sends Selena to me, and tips off Summer to my sister’s existence: All this on the eve of Winter’s greatest political victory in centuries, my marriage to the Demon Prince. 

The arrival of someone with as much power behind her as she’s since demonstrated, that’s going to cause ripples. They had to know that: They had their operative in place, that fairy godmother, before she was born. Assuming Selena’s knowledge of her childhood is incomplete, which is the safe bet for any of us, that makes her a tool of the Court. 

Have they their own Regent in store? Is this about some complex and boring succession dispute in one Faerie line or another? An Autumn marriage to Gertrude, say, would position them well, and in our shadow. Effectively we’d have built a quorum of the ruling powers, since Spring could give a damn and Summer’s tantrums are easy to predict, and provoke. It would be about circling Summer, then: Hell and Winter and Autumn combined could kill the sun forever, the way Autumn would see it. Bodies for looting, land for colonization, markets to exploit.

“I’d like your advice,” I say, looking down at my breasts; up through tangled sea-kissed hair. Selena angles toward my body, putting the spotlight on me between the three of us.

“Let’s say you wanted to do a merger. A... What do you call it? Where they’re small, and...”

“—Hostile takeover?” As if this is obscure jargon; he’s a Man in the Know. So easy. I will my own hostility into silence, for the length hopefully of this conversation.

“That sounds right? Anyway, I was thinking. What if you were doing one of those, and then it turned out they had investors from way higher up. Like maybe even people related to your company, in some way. Some holding company, or... I mean, do you know what I’m talking about?”

Selena nods, encouragingly, as if trying to will the words off the tip of my tongue; looks to him too for help. The air in every room you will ever enter is made up of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon, and 100% men talking. But even stinking air is useful when you’re trying to breathe.

“You want to take down something big. And you need to do it publicly, legally. Well, you would usually go about leveraging shares, buying them up through the windows and side doors. You would probably want to make them look bad. Maybe find an upstart and fund them into improving on one of the enemy’s high-profile products; moving faster, leaner...”

Selena’s thumb presses into my arm, on the side he can’t see, and I follow her gaze: Troy and Michael are back to back, indulging the Princes and Princesses, who grow hungrier.

“...A lot of places that big can’t move very well even after they diversify. You’re looking for old structures, c-suites that got promoted past their level of innovation, corporate expenditures. Anybody that spends money visibly is not investing in their own longevity. If you’ve heard of them, they are a target...”

Perhaps it’s simply about marketing. The Realms have been in a low-level pissing contest about city magic for centuries now: Harness or ally with the Hollywood Regency, the impersonators and Gods of celebrity, and Autumn establishes a second power base, giving them significant real estate on both coasts... 

Proximity to major infernal holdings in both cases, too. They’d need a Greater Court to hang onto that, Winter or Summer, if they ever wanted to build something real with Hell. Seven years until the next Teind would be enough time, as fast as they move. But there’s something that doesn’t fit, and I can’t figure out what it is. He won’t help, I know that much. He’s given what he can.

“That’s really good advice. What’s your family name again?”

He blushes, proud to advance to the next round. 

Autumn likes decay, likes to take things apart and compost them into rot and life. They should absolutely be behind me, they should be first in my army. But instead, they tried to leverage all three of us ladies to get closer to Hell, the most ensconced and deep-rooted Kingdom in all Earth and the Realms. I’m not putting this together right. And Autumn yields the best salesmen and storytellers the Fae can offer, so it’s no use asking them. They believe their poses so strongly it’s a different sort of Faerie lie altogether: They’re zealots in the real world, corporate ethos messaging down fiber-optic veins. Their truth is mutable, endlessly adapting. 

If their interest in us is a sign of larger trending, that’s auspicious. Know your worth, especially when you’re being used. I wonder what Gertrude would go for at auction.

Without Selena to clutch and whisper at, what is she doing? Still over by the feast table, back in the middle of the boat. Up against where the speeches will soon take place. The Puck whispering in her ear, only a little taller than she is now. His eyes roll like a horse past thinking, as he speaks. It’s not tender, it’s pressured; he is sweating it. 

And if I spent twenty years hearing those words, how is it that I can’t imagine what he’s saying to her, now? The legitimate Princess. What plans has he, for her?

A Trickster that’s backing you is a Trickster you can trust. I suppose that’s the first mistake any of us ever make. What was Gabriel talking about, eating from the Tree and gaining the Knowledge—that’s what happens when you trust a Trickster. Bringing the snake in, even when you know what it is, because you think you’re so special it won’t bite you. 

Even now, as the Autumn boy lectures—and Selena hopefully takes notes, just in case he has any more corporate wisdom to share—I can’t imagine the Puck hurting me. Using me, yes. But never working against me. We want the same things.

Why, then, am I suddenly so afraid for Gertrude?


Chapter Thirty-Eight: Here in Hell

As the Puck belongs to all Courts simultaneously, so she knows the next boy, a Summer lad with curly sun-brightened hair and a Roman nose. She’s an old woman, now, hobbled in a kerchief; she’s making a joke with it, but Summerland really responds to those old images. If everything looked like Rackham and Dadd, smelled like spilt tea and dust, that would suit them just fine.

The Puck cracks off a finger at the knuckle, then another, pressing them into our hands: 

“Ladyfingers, sweeter than any biscuit on this craft. Put them under your pillows tonight, or in your mouth today. The Puck cares not.”

The Summer boy, with a wild smile, bites into it right there, getting crumbs in his mustache. He barely looks to me for approval, but he has it. There’s something wicked in his eye, something knowing. I don’t like boys with secrets. Troy, Michael, even Gabriel barely kept anything hidden. But this movement in Summer’s eyes, way back in the back, a twinkle like he knows the punchline and the riddle’s just started.

“What on Earth is your name?” I ask, despite myself. The first name I’ve asked for since we arrived, not only because it’s hard enough paying attention, or because once you’ve asked it’s your duty to remember, but because for the Fae it means a lot more than you might think.

“On Earth? Nothing at all, Princess,” he says, sweeping one arm wide in a low bow, just on the edge of mocking. I know it’s not true—while his clothing is very old in style, the lines and stitching tell me it’s one of our European designers; he has truck with the real world—but it’s still the most interesting and least useful thing any of them have said so far.

“All right, Summer. What’s your situation?”

He crooks an eyebrow at the Puck, as though I’ve offended his sensibilities, but she just shrugs.

“I am not entirely sure what her Highness is asking.”

“I have really lost my interest in bullshit lately, so I’m going to give you the straight truth and I hope you can keep up.”

He nods, eyes maybe a little less bright now. But tightly focused.

“My fiancé just died. I am a little insane with it. I have a rather large retinue that I consider my family—including that angel there, and the two witches: There, and there. I also have a sister that would probably be a better match for you, if you’re looking to marry well.”

Not up, I didn’t say marry up. Caught myself. Ten points to Ravenclaw.

“However, if you would like to spend the next five months or so on a vacation that involves almost constant danger, certain death, and a regimen of nasty-tasting herbs, I have a proposal.”

“I’ve been watching, Highness. Everyone has. Kidnappers, to be frank, is the going story Summerside. Is it true? Did you really spirit our little Queen away? Is she somewhere on the ship, I wonder.”

I take a sip; the Puck has hobbled away on her little knotty stick, of course, sprites and creatures capering around her as she goes. None of that shit for her, not when she could be tricking minor Princes into eternal servitude, simply by asking questions and demanding answers.

“She is not,” I allow. “And how is our dear Queen Regent? Home yet?”

He grins, angrily. This could be a very bad avenue. His voice is low, but warm. “They got my sister last May. Wherever the Queen of the Summerlands is, I hope there’s cold iron. Summer supports you more than you know, Princess.”

“I’d love to see that, buddy.”

“...The May’s called the government. Castle’s empty. They’re all in Winter, or here between the Realms. If you were going to move...”

I shake my head, brittle enough that he’ll take a moment. Take a breath. This kid.

“Okay, what is your name? Tell me true.”

He thinks to demur; cannot. “Roosevelt, Princess. A family name.”

Explains the roses worked into his gear, I suppose. Still. How does that work for PR? That doesn’t even reduce to anything good. Teddy? Frankie? Eleanor? Sorry my dead boyfriend can’t be here to break champagne on your internet app but let me introduce the new hottest guy in America, his name is Roosevelt but trust me.

“Hmm. And in the world? How does it translate in America?”

“Roosevelt, Arthur-Ailbe. Alvy, in the real world.”

“Alvy. I like that. Roses for Alvernon. Listen, what is your stake? If you’re angry at Summer I can’t use that. That’s not us.”

“Is it not? Did they not kill some of you? I thought...”

“They tried. It didn’t take. I don’t hold grudges. It’s War.”

He nods. “That’s honorable.”

“And are you?”

He gets a very Gabriel look in his eye, for a moment. Bruised, wounded. I can work with that.

*

Michael and Troy are holding court in the lounge aft, buckets of ice and silvery velvet banquettes that wouldn’t fly on the real sea; five or six Fae guests coming and going. Selena and Gertrude clink glasses, tossing their champagne over the edge when nobody’s looking. I sit with this Summer boy on one side and Selena on the other, and she rests her head on my shoulder briefly.

Michael is telling Troy, and thus the rest of us, a fairly alarming story about a heist he pulled—with companions he refuses to name, which probably means we’d know them—on a vampire’s house in some Eastern Bloc or Mediterranean region he also doesn’t name. 

Michael’s stories, I have noticed, leave a lot of blank spaces in them. First I thought it was that he couldn’t or didn’t care to remember the names, but in the wake of Palm Springs it’s clear that’s just a cover for discretion. So far this is my favorite thing about Michael.

“The Beast invited all manner of beings to this party, which began after sundown and would continue until morning’s light. Mortals mostly, both those in power and those in love with oblivion, until the Witching Hour. Then, a more motley assemblage. Those who did not want or feared being devoured made their egress, and the windows and chimneys were opened. Upstairs, downstairs, mirrors, paintings. Everything was a door to them.”

Selena and Gertrude shiver at one another, deliciously. I wish the Puck would come take her away; I wish a great sea creature might hoist one tentacle or claw over the side, and draw her down into the depths, bubbling screams to the top. 

I have decided that charitable thoughts toward my sister are necessary, if for no reason other than I don’t want them pointed back at me—as Selena said, the ways of girls are still a little confusing for me—but these little flirtations, this sweetness, makes it difficult. Selena’s working an asset, I repeat to myself.

“And so for my honored company, the question in planning our rout—for time was limited, the Beast growing in power; soil for miles around grown sour, wolves and beasts of the field losing their wildness, becoming dark—was how best to exploit this moment, this change in the venue. Should we strike too early, the innocent pay. Strike too late, and their unholy flames are stoked too high for even the valor of my mustered mates. And so for this and other operational reasons, we must make our way in during the time of nights’ greatest darkness.”

The Summer boy leans forward, elbow unthinkingly upon my knee, enraptured. His mouth hangs open: Tales of bravery? Suspense? The dramatic telling of the tale? 

Michael’s hard to stop looking at once you’ve started, and not because of his looks. I don’t much care for modern art but the way Gabriel used to talk about Rothko, in particular—the intensity of emotion that purity inspires—that’s how I think of Michael. One boring thing that contains everything else, and comes alive with it.

This look in Alvy Arthur Roosevelt’s eyes, I’ve only seen it when Gabriel is solving a problem, or playing one of his games. Vacant, and completely within himself, simultaneously. Alive. 

I’ve never slept with a Summer boy.

“It lies askance the Code to go to war disguised. Cowardice puts the Song into minor key, and so slowly you cannot always notice. If your enemy cannot see your face, that is not War: That is merely killing. And yet do we not make our entrance to steal, and not to fight at all? For in that darkling house there is a room, locked by blood, and in that room there is a lectern, and on that stand there is a text heavy as a boy, full of dread secrets. Heavy as you, Troy, and nearly as big.”

Anybody else, Troy would put his dukes up. But no, he’s delighted the story includes him, even just as a standard of measurement. The way Troy looks at Michael is not the way everybody else does; not the way Gabriel did, nor quite Alvy Arthur. I think it is because Michael looks back.

“And if I cannot go disguised, and I cannot go to war, I fear I must abstain. Eschew this first step in what will end a monarchy—and yet can I abide this, either? My compatriots are my Choir, like these here now,” he says, sweeping us all up in his great paw. “And so I must enter by the front door, and make obeisance. I must tell true, as all here in Fae; tell the beasts of night their song will end. I must abide the company of creatures I despise, with my every fiber in disgust, while the rogues and sneaks search the house. I must risk Falling. I do so quite gladly.”

He wouldn’t have told this story, were Gabriel with us. It treads too close to their bond, and would wrap Gabriel in storm. He couldn’t ask himself questions about himself, that boy, but he knew how to stop them getting asked. Perhaps this is what grieving looks like, to Michael: Telling stories he couldn’t tell before, because they came too close to wounds. Now those wounds are what he has to tell about. The time he walked into darkness with his eyes open.

“They are kindly. I cannot eat or drink, but they are polite hosts. I come to regard them with nothing like affinity, nor respect, but I do regard them. And upstairs there is a room, locked with blood, and feet of fleet shadows do open it. A creak, a sudden wind to cover it: My band is quick. The demon king tries first this and that to make me stay forever, to be his creature. Angels are the most sought-after pets, although we have never known freedom.”

I can’t tell if that’s sad, or just Michael’s version of a joke, but he follows up with perfect timing: “We are the only beings that can admit it.”

Summer’s Roosevelt chuckles at my side, and the Faeries titter. Gertrude doesn’t move. Perhaps she’s already learning the downside to being a Princess. I can’t help but feel wretched about that, though I knew it was coming. She’s no fool, but nobody deserves to lose their innocence. It just happens.

“And when the deed is done, and we take our leave, I shake my host’s hand—this great king of the night, attended by his monsters—and I tell him what we’ve done.”

Even Troy gasps. The faeries can scarcely imagine such an act: To them, this would be the true imposition, because their priorities are all effed up. 

But Summer leans back, near as proud as if he’d done the act himself, like Gabriel watching a football game. He crosses his arms and nods at me like a stoned Spring boy: Yeah. 

Only Troy is allowed to speak, because everything about Michael’s body is saying this story is for Troy alone, and so he does: “And?”

“It went poorly after this. Violent storms could not put the fire out. Many died, none of them soldiers, but no mortals were lost. Bats’ wings going up like flash paper. Some were blinded. I took an unholy lance through the thigh and must return home to heal. I was not sorry. My men disbanded and scattered, cursed with separate torments, while I was away. I brought their ashes to their lovers and destroyed the accursed book. They razed the ground for a bottled-water factory the following spring, and a school was built there. No taint remains.”

The crew is dubious about that, myself included.

“You here, speaking around War as though it is not inevitable. As though anything is of comparable value, at this time. You have fear in you, a kind of taint. But I will tell you this: No taint is necessary and no pain is eternal. I have never seen a mortal whose destruction was not intimately tied to this fallacy: That once you are damaged or embarrassed, you risk further damage or embarrassment by seeking absolution, or even help. By looking higher. But I am older than you all, and when you are dead and forgotten I will be as I am now. When your hands are dirty, wash them clean.”

...And he’s lost them. Faerie is a suburb of Hell, infinitely and eternally so. To tell them it could be something better just feels like an indictment, and they won’t thank him for it. He offered hope, then gave more of the old Heaven bullshit: You are disgusting, but you don’t have to be. 

It doesn’t matter that it’s true, we all know that too. But pointing it out is the dumbest possible move, which isn’t something Michael will ever comprehend: How easily and automatically that becomes, You don’t have to be, but you’re disgusting.

Troy makes to hustle him away, sensing the energy if not the reasons behind its sudden curdling, but it doesn’t really matter: The Faeries drift away like water off the deck, in drip and drab, until we are alone. All alone but for the Summer boy. 

Who is no Prince, and hates Faerie more than anyone ever has. More than I do, by a long stretch.

“Do you really believe that would work here, Michael? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

Alvy doesn’t bow, or mince words: He’s still got that gap-toothed little boy stare going on, even as Michael takes notice of him for the first time. As I take notice of him slowly changing, bending his features toward nothing quite so much as a mirror of dead Gabriel’s. I approve.

“Here in Hell? You should not ask those questions. You will not like the answers. Yes. But the question you must ask is whether Faerie will win its independence before that inevitability happens. Else everyone you love, and all you’ve ever known, will burn up in the flames.”

This time, Troy laughs nervously and steps between them. “That’s enough Q&A for today.”

Alvy Arthur Roosevelt turns to me, then, on fire with it: Whatever Michael’s got running in him 24/7. Maybe it’s a virus, or maybe he’s just telling the boy what he wants to hear, but either way I know a soldier when I see one. And this is one in the act of being born.

“You can call off your interviews, Majesty. I will pledge to your service, in this world and the other. Through constant danger and nasty tasting herbs, let me be your Champion.”

Selena and Gertrude are shocked; they haven’t been tracking this kid either. And I’ve still got four Princes to go before I can call off the search and take these shoes off.

“I’ve already got one of those,” I say, to Troy’s proud chuckle.

“...How about a boyfriend?”

And even if his transformation weren’t now complete — even if it weren’t now a darker-haired Gabriel standing before us — I know what my answer has to be.


Chapter Thirty-Nine: The Happiest Rat

For Michael, pride wounded and confused by his sudden loss of station aboard our goodly vessel, the Puck becomes a boy: Twigs in his hair, clothed in green spring leaves. Michael retires with him, to talk about whatever things. War, perhaps. Purity. Incomprehensible purpose.

Faerie is unchanging, compared to mortals—but compared to beings like them, or the Ladies of the Canyon, we’re only blinks of the eye too. If the Puck didn’t want Michael around, he couldn’t have gotten past the gates. In our homes and soil, in our bodies and our hearts and the life’s breath in our lungs, into all of that is written the accords of Hell, and of agreements older than that. And so I thought it might be painful for him in Faerie, and perhaps it is, but friendliness with the Puck would go a long way toward easing that. 

I admit that before our first journey here, I thrilled to the image of Michael walking into Faerie as into a doorway cobwebbed over, tearing magics asunder with each step, visage cold and determined, fording the world before him like waist-high white water as he went. But watching him now, tended by the tiny Puck—so like Troy in this latest guise; like Troy must have looked, happy little wild boy, before the world forced itself on him—Michael belongs here, as well here as anywhere.

The mortals, less so. Troy and Selena are flagging, and Gertrude is eyeing the buffet with a wiliness. To taste Faerie food without fearing it, that’s her birthright. She must have felt like she was eating for the first time, not the last. I don’t begrudge her those untold delights. But I am hungry. It’s a dull ache, but another door, into every starving memory of home. I wonder what that part was like for her, in the real world. Eat up, Gertrude.

Two Princes are dismissed immediately: One, a boy of Winter I scarcely remember from Court, has a cruelty to his face I could only dream of emulating. The other is a Summer boy, an aristocrat, whose first words to me are defamation toward Alvy, for being of a barely perceptibly lower class. I want to say You will be the first against the wall, just to scare him a bit and get the idea out there, but of course he won’t be. Of course everybody gets out alive, even the dicks. Pretending otherwise would just be another disguise. You can’t scare people into loving you.

The Puck distracts our angel with dances and trust falls, spinning a circle around just the two of them as charged as it is impenetrable. He rings him round with enchantments, like Michael himself did Troy before, with his story. When he didn’t even notice the trap he was laying for the Summer boy — who’s treading lightly on insult with his increasing resemblance to the Fallen Prince.

Who is caught. If any of this were real, if I could imagine the idea of being with anyone, I would pick endlessly at the roots and reasons of his ardor: Does he love my crew, as I do? Is he drawn to me, or to our cause? Is it only anger that drives him, or lust? In what proportions and weights do all of these things factor in?

But he is a boy, of requisite height and in no need of constant glamour, with that Roman twist to his features that will read as pleasantly and unthreateningly ethnic. Not necessary, nor possibly meet, to get too close. I just need to know what problems he will present, and I’m not entirely clear on how to get that information. Maybe a quick sign-in checklist would have saved time.

Happen to have any aunts who are evil sorceresses? Are you scheduled to become any Gods or Goddesses in the near future? Are you sleeping with any angels on the downlow? Are you prone to starting orgies? Find yourself embroiled in sudden deadly firefights, and if so, at a reasonable frequency? What’s your take on living in my car with four or five other people?

*

In a few minutes we will all pack into steerage, become a great ballroom, perched on the edge of Winter. No sailing into port on this voyage, unfortunately. We’ll wish up some fashions and hairdos and the whole stupid thing will go down. I won’t actually stand there like a debutante, but the receiving line will go through another version of itself, as I bid adieu to the climbers and the ones who don’t want to be here in the first place. They will be grateful, and friendly; I’ll make of them allies as they go, for freeing up their evenings.

At the end of the line will be Alvy A. Roosevelt, standing with his family’s white rose, a single stem. I won’t have to put a shoe on his foot or kiss him awake. He is no Prince. But I’ll take the rose, and all the Realms will put their hands on their hearts and grieve for me: So old, to have been widowed before I was even married. They’ll talk about his kindness to a half-fallen woman, how he can only love me for six months before I disappear. They will tut and cluck the circumstances, even as they benefit and reinforce them. 

Alvy and I will retire to the real world, to get the kids something to eat. Before we get into the car he’ll have to eat his nasty herbs: That will be his first taste of my world. The Drones will meet us back at my place, covering every angle with eyes, chasing away the enemy like in the old days. We will mount a campaign like nobody’s ever seen, cryptic messages and even greater amounts of pagan content; he’ll have to be spotted without us as much or more than as with, and the two of us without even my backup. It is going to be Hell; it is going to bring Hell down.

But for now, we can just enjoy the endless afternoon. He asks me about Gabriel, and I tell. He’s the first person who’s done that, so he’s the first that can hear. He’ll need to know the dangers, and the history. And if I get mean, or sad, or vanish every now and then, he’ll need to know why.

“He was a good kid. Angry by the end, but that just made him better. I’ve always been angry, and angry with him for not being angry. I think he knew they were torturing people, back in that house. I think he knew and didn’t know. I think the weight of not knowing things just blotted him out. By the end there were less things he knew than the things he was ignoring.”

Sometimes he would get this look in his eye, like a boy. Not boyish, boy-like. Not childlike, child-ish. It wasn’t attractive, because it meant he wanted to play pretend. He wanted us to be little kids, in our grown up bodies, and it felt gross. Sexual. I think he was just going to where he was safe, but to me it felt incredibly dangerous. Like he didn’t know how strong his body was, even if he felt small inside it; even though I loved him. 

I hated that he didn’t get that. I would have hated him more if he had, but at least he would have stopped that little-boy shit. He thought it was so charming. I’m sure his mom ate it up.

Alvy nods respectfully, unsure if now’s the time to start making promises. What he will and won’t be trying, what he sees when he looks at me. It is far too early for that, but when we return to the world, how much time will have passed? We’ll have to be exactly that familiar, and we won’t know until we land, and my phone can find a tower and tell us what day it is. We’ll have been together for days, weeks, months. Hours, maybe. Seconds. And have to be that way, from then on.

“Will you be homesick, when we go? I can’t jump them back and forth too much. Visits to the Realms have to count.”

“I have nothing to go back to. My parents... They’re more Fae than most. They’re like yours. Maybe it’s just because they’re old, or aristocrats. Maybe they’re sad because of my sister. I don’t know. I don’t really like them very much. They don’t talk about anything but they talk all the time.”

“Did you want to start a war? Have you been that mad this whole year? What did they think?”

“By the time we got home from the ceremony her room was gone, swallowed up by the house. They keep a rose under glass in the garden, to remember her, but it’s like... ancestor worship. Like some uncle that died in some war. She went instantly from being real to something beyond the veil. Maybe that’s their way of dealing, but I can’t do that. I go out into the garden at night, her place, and I tell her stories about how she was when she was just little. So she won’t forget.”

Alvy gets a little choked up, but I have nothing to say and no reference points to operate from.

“...I mean Summer’s like, everything is always changing. Nobody sticks around, nobody cares about anything. Even really bad things, you just let slide eventually, because there’s no time. No sense of time. I thought if we were going to plant something for her, it should be an oak. Something no storm could unroot or... I mean this rose is just, a wind could take it apart. I always expect it to be wilted or dried out. But it’s still there, like it was just plucked. Like it just happened. And I can’t understand how that would happen to your kid and you just...”

I take his hand, lying helplessly as it is, and he clutches it tightly. Raises knuckles to his cheek with my hand still in his, awkwardly, to scrub the tears away. The good kind of boyish.

“We’ll get ‘em, Tiger. I knew you were the right call.”

He’s shocked out of his grief, then. “Am I really? You’re not even going to test-drive the Spring kids?”

My snort is an eloquent response, but not a pretty one. 

“That’s good. I mean, I was coming with you either way. If you didn’t pick me it would have been Troy.”

“You’d have better luck with Troy,” I say, stalling for... Time, mostly. Power too. “Is that... Do we need to talk about that, while we’re on the subject? Is that a thing? Because that is disastrous for our purposes.”

“If you’re asking whether I understand what monogamy is, I’m not that kind of Summer and you need to be more polite. But if you’re asking if I can keep my hands to myself while we’re dating, the answer is I guess we’ll see.”

*

Although it’s true that whatever use the Spring boys have, Troy should be in charge of. Whatever secrets he has with the Ladies of the Canyon, that whole side of the world, Spring’s closer to than anyone in the Realms. I know intellectually I shouldn’t dismiss them—any more than the May Queen proved to be a dumb little girl—but a lifetime at Court makes that hard to remember. 

They’re negative examples of so much: Joy, lightness, play, fun. All the things that will ruin you. We don’t often talk about Spring so much as compare them to the ideal. A trend or fashion or opinion can never be Too Spring, or you’ll lose the battle before it’s begun. Even Autumn, who pretend they’re above everything, who have to know everything before anyone else, can’t find a way to respect Spring. But Troy can, and would, if it ever occurred to me to introduce them.

And they are doing business, Troy and the thatch-twigged Puck: Michael rests now against one rail, alone and apparently grateful for it, although I can see my father getting that lonely look in his eye again. I am no longer disgusted by the idea of speaking to my father, or giving him time with the angel; perhaps this Summer boy has done that for me at least. The party is a double-headed shape along the deck, with a third of the guests surrounding our Princess and Selena, and the remainder watching Troy and the Puck circle each other like sharks. 

No, like stags. Right before they lock horns, to get the velvet off. There’s almost a scent to it. Normally this vibe is up when a boy gets confused about whatever Troy’s doing to his head, of which Troy is almost always unconscious; but the Puck always knows what he’s about, and he has demonstrated an unceasing interest in the boy since day one. 

Across the crowd, I see, Gertrude is quite fascinated: A look I haven’t seen before on her face, but recognize from my own. She has grown used to the Puck’s regard, after all, and thinks he loves her only. A heartbreak I rather would have liked to see upfront, but have no use for now. Better she learn early in her rule than trip backwards on nothing when she finds he’s no longer there. The Puck pays tribute to no Court, and to all. If he is using her, it’s toward my purposes, and I can’t be distracted further. Hopefully she will survive it, whatever it is.

And so these two boys draw the Spring with the heat of their confrontation. This is useful to me, as Troy needs to associate with them no less than Selena’s still doing with Autumn. We are not chesspieces but we do have rules. Which reminds me...

“Alvy, do you play card games?”

“Magic. Went to Regionals a couple times.”

Check. Every single time. 

“What would you do about Spring, here on this ship, while we’ve got their attention?”

“Get that angel away from Troy, they’ll throw themselves at his feet. Especially after this little display.”

They’re sort of dancing, sort of chatting; energetic gestures. If you listen you could hear what they’re saying. Not riddles, yet. Nobody looks that scared. And Troy’s been warned about riddles. But I can tell by his high color that the Puck’s got him pretty hyped up, so who knows.

“And what about Summer? What do you propose we do with all these officials, once we’re back on solid ground?”

“You know what I’ll say, and I know you won’t do it, so do not ask. I shall say instead that you are royal and so you think only of the royals; but your people in my kingdom are the young and the angry and the misfits. The ones who think they have raised their head to the sky among the sheep, and seen a light meant for them alone. You are looking for smart members of the underclass. Let the May Queen bore the magistrates, accept the strength of those who wish you no harm.”

“Is that you? Are you more insightful than your peers? Lost among the sheep?”

“For a long time, I thought so. But I’ve grown up since then. I am no more or less trapped than any of them. I would say it was my sister that woke me, but that isn’t true either. We have all sacrificed and we’ve all been hurt. If anything, it was you, Majesty.”

Flattery? My lip curls, and he stammers.

“I mean only that when Gertrude came into the capital it was with streamers and banners flying. Her knuckles were white with fear as she rode past, in a carriage cruelly decorated for a false Princess. The whole thing was so sarcastic and mean; it was a relief for everybody. If they could have done, they would have thrown rotten fruit at her. She was more regal at the end of that journey at the end than the beginning. She learned Faerie quickly, on that short ride.”

It is the nicest thing I’ve ever heard. I wish I could get to know that version of my sister.

“But everywhere the whispers were about this, about you: The War beginning, the Earth-born daughter and her loyalties. The power you amassed in the real world, and where you would direct it. It was the story of your rebellion, they loved it because they thought it was funny, another diverting bit of gossip that would end with the Teind, lavish marriage ceremony, sale to Hell. That you were like a rat, pardon, with its tail in a trap. Circling and circling.”

“Am I not?”

“Your Highness, I do not care. Burn it down or don’t, I want to be there either way. On that day I knew I would pledge myself to you, and to your witches, and to your husband if need be. I would fight out of Summer and into the hard world, if need be. Because the May Queen cannot come home to her throne, nor my sister avenged, until your work is done. And if you cannot see the...”

“—No, I hear you. Okay. Okay, Ailbe Arthur Roosevelt. Are you ready to make me the happiest rat on Earth? And everywhere else? For a very limited time?”

“And the most destructive. Yes.”


Chapter Forty: The Gravity

Gertrude’s got stars in her eyes when I finally can get a moment with them. Selena has bewitched her and no mistake. Friends in high places.

“What have you two been whispering about all this time?” I hope my tone is jovial, but historically that’s not been something I can pull off, and today’s not the day either.

“Your Summer boy, for starters.” Selena’s a little too happy, a little too anxious. A little too excited about being on my side for this one. She must be thinking of Gabriel, too.

“He looks like your brother,” Gertrude says, a little sharper than I was expected. She only met Gabriel the once.

“Yours too, then,” I say coldly, sipping. Raise a half-toast to her, more drunkenly than I feel.

“Of course I mean merely that you seem like a little team, of course. For God’s sake, Estelle. You’ve been couched with him for an hour, discussing all of us, heads together. Like you’re doing homework.”

Lying. She is jealous. I am glad Selena’s here, to remind me that women are nothing to fear.

“How about maybe you can have him when I’m dead.”

That gets to her, and she nods in apology. “I want to help, Estelle. I really do. This place does things to you. Everybody’s got a scheme, and I...”

“She’s been very sweet,” Selena interjects, less in apology than as update. “Talking me through the uh, the Hollywood stuff.”

Gertrude perks right up, happy to be included. Apologetic, in a way Faerie’s already robbing her of. I should have gotten to know her better right away, before she went cold. I knew that and I did not do that, and now we’ll just be what we are. I could have helped her but all I did was scare her more. There is no reason for her to be kind, at all; soon she won’t be human at all, and I will never know this girl. This girl who was me.

“Back home I heard about something called Monarch. Like a modeling agency, or...”

I nod, slowly. No need to scare her with that, and she wouldn’t thank me for contradicting her, now she’s feeling so tender. But that’s not a thought anyone needs to think. Whatever we think of Hell, even Hell thinks of those people. I hope she hasn’t filled up Selena’s head with that nonsense.

“Right, yes. Of course. Hollywood Regency’s a little more old-school, but definitely in the same ballpark. I am not too familiar with either of them.”

“Oh,” Selena says, surprised. “I thought they were the same thing.”

“That’s good marketing, isn’t it?”

She can tell from my tone, and Gertrude cannot, that we need to shut it down, and nods in response.

“Either way you’ve really cheered me up, Gertrude. I’m glad we had a chance to talk. I thought after that downer ending to Michael’s story it was going to get all...”

She trails off, and we all nod. It definitely was dicey.

“Well, if you’d like to meet the Summer boy before we go in...”

Gertrude blows nonexistent bangs out of her eyes, and smiles. “I don’t guess we should, though? If the point is crossing lines, and you’re taking him away, that’s two of them you’ve kidnapped. Winter can’t be... I’m sorry. He seems nice. We talked a little earlier. But you can’t introduce us, not here.”

Good. This is good.

“Good thinking, sister.” I hope my voice shows no surprise, as she learns the ropes. She should think I’m behind her on that, at least. When I’m gone it’ll just be her and them, and whatever attention the Puck can spare. She needs encouragement, not advice. “That’s good stuff. I guess it would be best not to present him at Court at all. Should we just sneak away? I wanted to see the May before we left.”

Gertrude smiles, honestly and proudly. I haven’t ever had a little sister but I can tell that kind of love. It’s the way Troy and I smile about each other, secretly.

“She was so pissed last time you visited, that she didn’t get to see you. She’s fitting in well. She can’t be Queen at home exactly, but she’s on the dais. Little kid throne, little kid crown. Me on the other side. She’s started doing her hair like me. It’s really sweet.”

“I’m glad she has you looking out for her. It can’t be easy. Does she get the import of... I mean, does she understand the gravity of her situation?”

Gertrude darkens for a moment, but not in defense: It’s something, clearly, they’ve considered.

“She’s got the Guard around 24/7. They keep her insulated from most of Court, honestly. You can just see her little head sometimes, sticking up between their shoulders and pikes. But she isn’t miserable. Crushes abound. Your parents, I mean our parents, are pretty honest with her about not wanting or needing her input, so she’s mostly clamped down on ordering people’s heads off, which was a thing for a while...”

I cock my head. Selena laughs.

“...They didn’t do it!” Gertrude clutches at Selena’s shoulder, like they’re two girls on a yacht. Like we are just three girls, less afraid together than apart. 

For a second, it is true.

*

The May is brought into the library before we leave, our little crew; Gertrude takes her place at Court, so they won’t ask questions. Not that the questions wouldn’t have answers, just that it preserves visual continuity. The more the May grows to look like myself and my brunette sister, the better: 

Winter and Summer, visually linked. Like before, when you could imagine the portraits of the two Princesses, Queens of Hell and Winter, cold light and colder dark. This way Gertrude and the May will have that continuity, whatever my War takes away in return. When I’m gone and they have only each other, in all the Realms.

“And what news of my Kingdom?” 

The May Queen plays at imperiousness, a shine in her eyes that says this is the most exciting time she’s had in months or more. I could wrap my arms around her tightly, the way our mothers used to. There’s a steel back there that says she’s well aware of the import, the gravity; I feel like a jerk for doubting it. I have known my entire life that I would be sacrificed, one day; she very nearly was. That’s not something to disrespect. 

She was in the room where it would happen, banquet tables over a floor with a drain in it. And she walked the hell out.

“Majesty, if I may present your countryman, Summer’s Roosevelt Arthur Ailbe. Big fan of yours.”

He takes it all the way to the floor, as I hoped he would. He kisses her hand, a swain in full regalia. When he finally looks up into her eyes, his own are wet and he cannot quite speak.

“His sister was...” The May Queen cuts me off with a glance. She knows. She knew when he walked in.

“Lord Roosevelt, your family’s history is known to us.”

He looks up, wounded; his Queen smiles warmly.

“Your great-grandfather was a hero they still sing about. Your grandmother planted a silver tree at the edge of the world, and sailed back to tell the tale. You come from a line of champions. Their sacrifices—all of them—will not be forgotten in my Realm.”

Alvy makes to stand, to make some gesture of gratitude in spite of himself, but she rests her tiny hand upon his shoulder, keeping him down. With the other, she wiggles fingers where he cannot see them, and a sword is produced from the wall. I know without looking too closely that it’s appropriate, no curses or ugly history. A fine sword, in fact, from what I remember.

“I dub thee knight in our service, Roosevelt Arthur Ailbe. Knight of the White Rose, and the Blue. And on your rock we shall form a circle, and a bond, and a brotherhood of honor. First knight in our service, arise and kiss your Queen again.”

He looks different, when he stands. It must feel like coming home. All this time in Summer and he only just now understands what that means. His first step onto soil he’ll take everywhere now.

“To your service, I am forever sworn,” the Summer boy says, his voice already deeper with purpose. He looks at me, scrambling, once she puts the sword across his palms, and I nod: It’s his now. Whatever it was before, that story is over and done. It’s his now, and always was. And he is hers.

Even Michael sighs, tears in his eyes. Later he’ll explain it’s been too long since he saw somebody really make a promise, which will make me sad for reasons I won’t really ever nail down. 

“Knight of Wands,” Troy gulps. I can tell he doesn’t hear himself.

*

Out in Pomona, weeks gone by, the world ready—based on my phone blowing up—for news of Estelle Harlowe, we wait for Troy’s herbals to work their magic enough to get Alvy into the car.

“Listen,” Selena says, embarrassed. “I don’t want you to think I didn’t believe in you or like it was pretend, but... That was the real deal in there, wasn’t it? Like, how old are these people really?”

Mayflies are born ready to bear children. Humans take a little bit longer. Faeries take forever to grow up. If and when we ever do.

“Combined I would say those two are probably about four hundred. Let me put it this way, I’m the youngest person in Winter. I, or I guess Gertrude, was the last child born in twenty years. I was supposed to have a kid next, years from now. We just don’t... Those questions don’t make a ton of sense.”

“I didn’t really get it before.”

“But you trusted me anyway. Even when you thought we were just playing dress-up.”

“And when those guys came in with the guns I thought...”

“When the truth would only scare you, I’ve noticed, the truth just slides right off.”

“Yeah. Well, so, sorry. For something, I don’t know what. I just thought it was kids, you know. Like college students who are going to fix the world, or...”

“No. But we’ll change it. I’m glad you were there for that little ceremony. It was neat.”

She nods, a little breathless. “Do you think Michael’s going to recover any time soon?”

He stands, burly as anything, arms crossed on his chest. Jeans somehow mended.

“I think that was his wake-up. Alvy didn’t necessarily see himself that way until the May told him to. But Michael’s been that way forever. Pledged. Now he’s pledged to us. But I think he was too sad to think about it before. Listen, he probably isn’t going to be a barrel of laughs from here on out. They tend to drill down.”

She grins, nodding. “Good. I liked him like that best. When he was carrying Gabriel around like that, like nothing could stop him. Angels are not the most respectable people until you see what they’re made of. Now I want to be like that, just one thing all the time.”

“The Regency won’t be like that, exactly. Lot of compromises. Ton of people putting their shit on you, all the time. I’m famous for no reason and it’s exhausting, but it’s nothing compared to what you’re going to be dealing with.”

She nods, taking her measure. “I won’t say it’s because of what just happened back there. But if it were, it’s because of that little girl. Like, she’s literally making her Kingdom out of nothing. She’s the Queen because she says she is. She’s not even on the same continent and she’s still doing it.”

“Imagine how good it will feel when we take it back for her. For all of them.”

“I guess being everybody’s favorite thing isn’t so bad. By comparison. I never wanted to be famous. I won’t be your lieutenant, like Troy. I won’t guard you like those boys. But I like being backup. So if that’s the sacrifice I have to make, well, it’s probably best anyway that I learn to be looked at.”

“Will you still love me when you’re a Goddess?” I mean to say it teasingly, but with the boys climbing all over Alvy, we’re alone, and there are tears in my throat. Selena looks at me, no less shocked than I am by the feeling behind my words, and grabs me roughly.

“You have got to stop worrying about me. I can’t keep reassuring you about this. I realize you haven’t had friends before and I know your boyfriend died...”

“—Not my boyfriend...”

“—But I can’t have this discussion with you again. Okay? So cry it out. I’m not going anywhere. We barely know each other, Estelle. We barely know anything. So stop interrogating the stuff you already do know. It makes you look weak and I know you’ll hate me eventually if I see you being weak, so cut it out and just be here with me. Okay? Just chill out and be cool for like five minutes with the fact that you have nothing to worry about. You will not fall apart. It will make you stronger, not wear you out. Your people shall be my people, many waters, et cetera.”

“Okay, well. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I assume it’s because I have freaked you out.”

“Maybe a little, pumpkin.”




Chapter Forty-One: Don’t Move

When the phone rings beside me on Troy’s bed, the first thing I do is cover it with my body, like a grenade. Just flop over onto it, to shut it up. I haven’t slept in so long, really slept, and I know he’ll just be calling for reassurance, to ask about Alvy, to ask and ask, without asking, feel me out, try his rude arts. The blunt punctuation-free text message of boys everywhere, saying not what they want you to think but simply what they’re thinking: You up? You hungry? I’m horny. 

I can’t have that conversation today, not after the pleasure boat. I still feel like there are storms in my body that wanted out. “Too busy building your empire for you to talk about your feelings,” I would say, and regret it. Regret it all. 

“Literally moving Heaven and Earth to keep you happy, because you’ve never known sadness, and although I hate you the fact remains that you’re the only true thing I know. I see this sense you have, that you’re the protagonist of all time and space, and knowing I can’t have that means I’ll do anything I can to protect it. I won’t see you disappointed, which is what’s going to happen if you make me talk to you right now. And you know I hate talking on the phone, so frankly we’re stuck imagining your agenda here. Are you calling about Alvy? Are you wondering if I’ve slept with him yet? None of your business. Have you and Michael...”

Which thought wakes me up enough to remember that he’s dead. 

Dead and gone and mourned and still, my first reaction to him is cold annoyance. I’ll be irritated an hour, sad for two. And they can’t know about any of it, because they’d know it makes me feel like a traitor.

When I too am dead, shortly, what will that be like for them? Will Troy have that moment when his phone dings and he thinks, “What does that bitch want now?” Will Selena smile and pull her phone from her pocket, and stop before she checks the screen, as she remembers? Will Gertrude retreat entirely into Winter, swallowed up in Faerie like a closing soffit; the May Queen clucking her tongue at my failure, as she rises. What size hole am I going to leave?

*

One missed call from the Drone Queen, calling through a subordinate to discuss the auspices for Selena’s Walk. I already know them and I know they already know them, so I won’t return the call. Let Troy tell them when it’s already done, and they can come rushing. If they aren’t already drawn by it. Nightcrawlers sleazing toward the Moon.

Before I go out there, to where I hear them laughing, I think to try Troy’s thing, that spam joke thing. I need to start learning new kinds of magic. Divination is a good one to start with. I don’t need to know the future, I already know it. But it’s a good muscle to flex. You start to learn, Troy says, the difference between what you want and what your holier mind is telling you. They’re not always opposites, he says. 

There are only 320 messages in my Spam folder so it’s hard to look away when I click the one that looks right.

You can become the king of her wet dreams Hello dearest friend Your women will love you forever

Gross. Maybe it just takes practice. Not today, though.

*

In Troy’s living room, converted to a pillow fort for the comfort of our men, it’s quite a scene: They’re doing Pilates, or yoga or something, some kind of rolling-around exercise you do on the floor. Troy is a rubberband boy and basically helping Selena teach the class. He’s got her up all in neon lycra and scrunchies. It’s not the way I want to remember her hair, but otherwise she looks spectacular.

Michael is like a great stone table, like Aslan’s table, attempting to bend itself in half. It looks painful and there is a set to his features that says it might be. Alvy’s grin is wide and bright, enjoying himself even though he’s not taking it seriously. Selena is calmer than a sleeping mountain, breathing so slowly you can barely see her counting, as they move. She winks at me with a grin, indicating the spot they’ve left for me on the floor, but I shake my head in retreat. 

Selena said it would kick things loose, and I’m already too loose up here. I can’t cry in front of Alvy for at least a week—and that’s not merely pride: We’re the only human girls he’s ever really gotten to know, which means if he’s going to treat other human girls normally I want him to know what that means.

I would also like to know what that means. That takes practice, too.

There’s coffee in the kitchen, somehow; Troy and the angel only drink tea, and I hate to think someone made it for me. I wonder if I speak, or cry in my sleep. A memory drifts up, I push it back down: Something I overheard as I was drifting off? Troy and Michael playing some kind of game in the dark. I can’t. Maybe after coffee.

Out in the back garden there’s a shady spot with an ice-cream table; the chairs are wrought iron but not as cold as I’ve been conditioned to think they’ll be, nor as hot as the sunshine suggests. The clink of a mug against the table is an invitation to the greater sounds of town. Insects sweetly buzzing, leaves rubbing in a breeze with their dry talk. Cars, further away. The warmth is a blanket; it is all hypnotic and the last thing I need.

We’ll be best friends, that part is easy. Selena and Estelle, out on the town. Seen It All Girl and New It Girl. They’ll say I am a bad influence, some of them, and others will say Thank God she’s got a friend who knows the score. They’ll talk about her on a first-name basis, link us up together in fan fictions. Estelle dropped her towel, suddenly, smiling at her friend. New and confusing feelings flooded their nethers. SxS, maybe, or MoonQueen or Stelena, some word like that. Encapsulate, express parts of themselves it’s easier to look at through our eyes. 

They’ll defend her honor on Twitter and Tumblr, rename themselves SelenaXirke and MoonGoddessCeline, use her picture for their own. They’ll go to war for her before she’s even sung a note or snapped a single picture. She will belong to them, the most photographed barn in America, as Troy would say. The way he used to describe me.

And I’ll split that time with Alvy, too. A whole different demographic. Older men and women for that one. Bicurious besties is almost four-quadrant in appeal, but the Widow Princess story is universal for the certain kind of older person that tends to take things viral. They chart the moves of models and starlets like hedge funders, doubling down and diversifying and making up complex fan fictions of their own. 

“I heard she left Gabriel because he was screwing around too much, so now she’s with a safer version,” they will say, and when they learn he’s dead they’ll say I’m just rebounding, and never remember how sure they were just a moment ago.

But that won’t work for more than a week. I will go into the bubble of Alvy, as her moon rises over the world, and we’ll have ourselves a little catfight. I’m the washed-up slut and you’re the girl I tried to eat. We can even fight over Troy; he won’t be down for that personally but I don’t need him to cosign it. His natural reticence about that kind of drama will preserve his image, too; they’ll find him just hoping gracefully for a quick reconciliation, in real life and on paper. And the Drones will be there, tracking us, all along down the trail. Snatching at every breadcrumb, all the way back home to her.

A black dog prowls at the corner of the yard. Was the gate to the alley open when I sat down? He looks at me mournfully, taller than my waist; not quite growling. I wonder what he’d think about this plan. To bake up a goddess and then make her my frenemy. It’s going to be lonely.

At this point in the narrative I’ll go into full meltdown, the kind I haven’t indulged in several years. Crash a car, like we were talking about. Cops can find something on me; not meth or pills or anything really scary. Maybe cocaine. That would definitely move the story faster, even if it personally grosses me out. 

So we’ve got Selena and Troy on one side, and Alvy either indulging me or outright encouraging me, if he’ll agree to do that, and then who else is there? Michael, he’ll have to split the vote.

The angel is a wildcard. I can’t talk to him about it yet, but he keeps giving this certain blankness when Selena’s impending godhood comes up. I can’t imagine it’s not offensive to him, even if he doesn’t blink at all the witchcraft, or mention of the Ladies of the Canyon. It’s specifically her apotheosis that turns off his affect, and I have no idea what that means.

Maybe it’s just that she’ll be eating of the Tree. Historically, God and his agents don’t love that.

“Pookha, be still. Puck, be good. Hob-Goblin, be true. Your Princess has need of you...”

The shaggy black beast shakes his head and turns to go. Perhaps he’s just a dog. I wonder who he belongs to. Maybe I should get a dog. 

I wonder how that would play. If I wait until the official announcement of his death, and his mother’s, that could be a real image. Me and my big strong roly-poly puppy, the only one that understands me. Maybe Alvy could get it for me, on one anniversary or another. Our hairy little child, once Troy doesn’t love me anymore.

*

“Don’t move. Stop. Not until I say.” The angel’s thrumming laugh, like a cello falling apart under your hands. 

Selena was in Troy’s bed with me, and my phone, breathing slowly and softly; worry drifting away. I was utterly conscious of my right foot touching her leg, I remember that. Not wanting to take it away but afraid of nicking her with a nail or something if I moved. Disturbing her. 

Alvy and Troy were on the futon, because the angel’s too big to share with anybody. So Michael was in the living room, which is where their voices were coming from. Just lying on his back in the middle of the room, ready to hit the front door if anyone threatened us. Whatever angels do instead of dreaming.

Nearly asleep myself, I heard them talking, laughing, and then not talking much, and I imagined several scenarios, and before I knew it I was horny as hell. And I thought, If they’re in the living room, then Alvy is alone on the futon, but I can’t go find out without waking up Selena, and that would make everything gross. That’s the last thing I remember thinking before I fell asleep; I don’t remember what I dreamed but I hope it wasn’t about that.

You can believe almost anything, at that twilight point. Troy told me once when he was very young, before he believed in magic, the fanciest thing he had was a set of astronomy models he kept on a heavy desk he’d inherited from some unknown uncle. A globe of the Earth, a globe of the Moon, and a glass barometer. Within that last globe was a spinning mechanism of four metal diamonds, black on one side and white on the other, that spun in response to pressure changes inside the globe. Basic science fair stuff. They were cheap as hell, he realized later, but when he was seven they just seemed very new and shiny to him, smart-kid stuff like watching PBS, and he loved it. Learning the moon’s seas until he could name them by shape; making himself a map of collisions.

One night, he said—a full moon or close to it based on the ambient light, or perhaps he was entirely asleep, and dreaming of his bedroom, inside itself—he looked toward the window, and saw the globes, and thought to himself that he could, just tonight, just this magical once, make the thing spin on its own. And he did. He swore to it. Pretending and not pretending, and pretending not to pretend.

He said whether or not it really happened didn’t matter: That was when he learned the secret of magic.

So perhaps whatever I heard, if I heard it at all, was just that: I wanted Troy to get laid, and I wanted Michael to stop hurting. So in my head, I brought them together. Wrote my own little fan fiction, to bring myself comfort. Or maybe it’s just far enough off the beam of thinking about Gabriel that it’s a way to grieve him, just in the corner of my eye. Like the black dog, snuffling.

Or maybe they were awake, and together, doing something that was not sex. Or maybe it was, and I should have fallen asleep faster. Maybe I am the creep for being awake to it then, or for imagining it into something last night. For sure I am a creep thinking about it now, under the sun.

Whether or not it really happened doesn’t matter. More fun, and more useful, to imagine Michael with all of his clothes on, in there trying to do yoga.

*

Head cleared from more muzziness than usual, ready to talk shop, I head back inside from the garden. Great depth of breaths, to get the clean smell in me of Troy’s world; to remember what I’m fighting for. I guess where I come from, although that’s a strange thought. 

Sweet girl, they’d say. Dirty girl. Look at it, all around you; smell Her on the ground. See how She holds you.

I’m almost to that open gate when I decide to leave it. Let the black dog come and go, by night or day. I have seen him now. He knows it. Whatever he is, or whoever he is or represents, let them know: I looked him in the eye and I left that gate open. Tell your masters that. 

Say it loud.



Chapter Forty-Two: Collateral

“On Saturday, coming up out of this new moon we’ll have Venus stationing retrograde at zero degrees in Virgo which doesn’t mean anything to you except that she works her ass off in Virgo, so it’s good we’re topping off Selena before then. The Drones have been notified.”

Business Troy is a good flavor of Troy. He treats money like necromancy, like something radioactive, which makes him better at it than the rest of us. I guess it’s like he used to read the future in those dead bodies until they didn’t scare him anymore: It’s not like you automatically hunker down on the road and start licking the skins. You can be careful without being afraid, and vice versa. Today I’m neither:

“Alvy’s less magic than he was a week ago, heading toward the Equinox, but the Moon can compensate. After this it’s about two weeks of hard famous heading into the Full Moon, so we will—with Winter’s permission, and the May’s—march into Summer. We’re looking at full occupation by the time my birthday rolls around...”

Alvy is overjoyed to hear we’ll be declaring war on his homeland; Selena jerks her head like she’s just comprehending this part of the plan.

“Yeah. I’m War Chief. I’m committing troops to takeover of the Realms, with limited casualty. We’re beneficent dictators, but we’re still trooping. Summer isn’t just going to join up, they have to be conscripted. I’m sorry. It’s the rules.”

“And Autumn? Are you going to draft them too?”

“Once you’re in the Regency they won’t have a hold over you. They won’t even like you anymore. They don’t like history and you’re going to be making a lot of that. You have to forget them.”

“Not what I asked,” she coughs; troubled enough that I wonder if I am smiling my smile.

“Autumn will provide support for any assaults and then brownie the back end. They’re vultures, it’s what they will want. They’ll hold any ground we gain, with forward bases, but they won’t be on the front lines. That’ll be Winter, and then eventually Summer once it’s annexed. Spring can take the refugees and operate as a field center, they’re off the board. Not even Hell will march on Spring unless it’s their last option, and the whole point is to cut them off from those as quickly as possible. What else. Puck won’t be around again until we have all four Courts, so if you’ve business with him I don’t know about, or in the Canyon, now’s the time.”

“What does that mean, limited casualty.”

“Troy, stop. You guys wanted me back in my head and under control, this is me in control.”

“It’s possible to be in control without being yucky.”

“It is not even yucky yet. We need to talk about PR.”

Troy loves the part about Selena and me being famous besties, but I can tell he’s still jamming for a fight. Michael pulls him back, not into his lap but the wishbone of his legs, open on a kitchen chair. Bodies touching along as unbroken a line as he can manage.

“Troy. War is not about killing. The sacrifice is having to kill, not the being killed. You will be safe and this is the price. Let us worry about it.”

“I don’t know what you mean but I know I am being too much about it. War is whatever. It’s not necessary but neither is what is going on. So fine. But don’t talk to me like that. I’m little, and you are big. It pisses me off more than you think when you do that.”

“I speak to you as to any man,” the angel says quietly.

“I know that, Michael, so I am telling you that your natural arrogance bothers me specifically even though it is also comforting. Do not instruct me about war.”

“Thank you for being clear.”

“Yes,” Troy says, leaning back easily into the bulk of the angel; looking expectantly up at us as though they didn’t just do any of that.

Alvy is anxious to get back to the war talk, which brightens his eyes and his cheeks more than anything else. As Michael loses his sadness he gets more battle-ready, and hopefully that will help his reputation in the Realms. But I still don’t know about Alvy. Anger isn’t dedication, and he isn’t dedicated to me. Not yet.

The optics on him and the May, the child queen and her stalwart knight—that’s unbeatable. Even Winter will get behind that. Especially now that she’s an unofficial mascot at Court. But if he’s too angry, or if he burns out, or I drag him down too far with me, we’ll lose that. Angry soldier can be righteous or angry soldier can be dissolute, but not both. The enemy of your enemy is only your friend for so long.

Unless he loves you, of course. Or say, you fake it so well they’re in the bag before they notice. Then that anger becomes mine to use, and I won’t have to care how angry he is or how vengeful. So now two things are clear that were not clear before: 

One, I’m going to have to sleep with him. And two, we’re going to kill the Queen Regent. 

Soon, before he’s known to the world. It must be his hand that does it, and obviously the fewer of us know about it, the better. But he needs revenge, and I need to be the one to give it to him. And he needs someone to love, and I need to be more important than the May for that too. Because if he had to choose between us right now, no question would I be the one going down.

But I’ll be dead soon enough. It’s not stealing, it’s just borrowing. No collateral to speak of.

*

We bathe Selena in milk, once Michael’s cleaned up her hack job of a haircut, and then fresh rainwater. It’s just me and Troy, the boys aren’t into that. Alvy of course because he’s already trying to show his interest in me, and Michael for whatever reason he still won’t look at Selena.

What I find is that I’m relieved, now that I’ve experienced life away from Michael, and it’s not exactly a mystery why. I guess I made it about him and Gabriel because if it was just about Gabriel, I would fall apart again. 

I wish Michael would walk out the door and screw off to Heaven and never come back, and I also wish Michael would carry me around like a backpack or a kangaroo, and never let me go. Both true at once, and not so far off from the way I felt about Gabriel. And look how that turned out.

Selena and I were both a little disappointed when Troy notified us the moon rises in the morning right now. I don’t know what she was imagining, but I certainly wanted to go full witch on it. Bonfires and all. Do some actual group witchcraft, like a coven, with all the energy talk and whatever. 

That rarely appeals to me, but in this case I just want everything to feel as real as possible. I want to walk out of this house and into a night full of absolute possibility, a world where magic feels totally real as it’s happening. I want that to take as little effort as possible.

*

If it weren’t so breast-oriented it would seem like a wedding dress. White against those bare arms. Lavender oil, and sage. Nobody speaks. Not even the constant Troy music, for once. It’s just a silent morning. We rose with the sun, at around six, with two hours before moonrise.

I would like it if we were quiet the whole time. If we never spoke again, I would like that more.

Michael stands in that pose throughout, back against the back door with his fists together like the beginning of some strange martial art. He watches without seeming to think about much. The gate’s still open from yesterday morning, which is something Troy would know without even looking. He’s being more mystical than usual today. Maybe he wants the dog to come and go, too. Maybe he’s just happy to be leading the pack.

And lead it he is doing. All of us watching Selena, and her eyes only on him, as she tracks him do magic and figures out what it means. Learning faster than any of us can even figure out what is going on; you can tell by her eyes, it’s like someone counting cards. Meanwhile, the rest of us don’t even get what he’s doing or why. Which is fine with me. I like the atmosphere of magickal doings more than the doings; it helps a work if you can just relax into that. Not think with your brain so much.

Michael will drive; this brings him great comfort, however disconnected he is from what’s going on. I think he just wants something to look at that isn’t any of us. By 8:30 the foot traffic will have picked up, but we have a plan for that, since it’s all tourists: We’ll have a Marilyn wig on her, to match the dress, and make it look like a photo shoot. It’ll be her first. And when it’s done, and the Drones arrive, there she’ll be. Ready to roll.

*

Troy is the kind of person who doesn’t ever want to seem like a tourist. When he came to LA with his only belongings, his luggage was half Hollywood memorabilia. When we settled him, he hid those things so cleverly not even a burglar could find them, on the off chance that the burglar would think he was that kind of guy. Which he was. He hid that self, not so successfully, too. And he has changed, a lot. He’s older. He wears it on his face; not in wrinkles but in his eyes. He’s quieter than when we met, vastly more intentional. But I like the little glimpses.

Going through Troy’s photo collection for reference means not only exposed-nerve anxiety for him, but a rare encyclopedic treat for us. He knows, and this shouldn’t come as a surprise but it always does, seemingly everything about Hollywood there is to know. He can point to Sharon Tate’s favorite restaurant from anywhere in the city, as the crow flies; pick a house at random and tell you everything that was filmed there. His favorite is when they use the exterior of one house, and the interior of another. He likes it least when they rebuild the houses on soundstages.

Among the Marilyn pictures there’s one I really love, and if we weren’t operating out of his house I might ask to borrow it for my own poor little house: Marilyn and a brunette on the ground, with their hands in cement, grinning up at the camera as if to ask what the hell it wants.

“That’s Jane Russell. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She and Marilyn loved each other. That’s Graumann’s, obviously.”

“Troy, why don’t you have more happy pictures of Marilyn? I can barely find any where she’s smiling and on the internet that’s like, all there is.”

He just shrugs; it’s not something I need to be asking. Whatever she meant to him when he was sad, that’s not my business now. 

Troy’s voices. He has the spacy one, and the I’m-not-angry one that is scary as hell, and the dorm-room stoner one. He also has one that could be called without unkindness the robot one. That’s the one for mundane facts.

“Stock photos from 1923-1963 are usually public domain, which interests me anyway, but the reason is that for an event like this the photographers would come from all around. So any given thing, like this or the one with the grate, you could have a hundred different shots, a thousand angles. In 2008 they determined she was a resident of New York when she died, so they didn’t fall under the California law to keep her pictures with her heirs. You chose my very favorite one. Out of all the pictures taken that day, brought to newspapers all over the country and run and they didn’t renew the copyrights, that’s my favorite.”

Dirty hands, from the cement. Sweet smiles, like they haven’t got a care in the world. And looking up toward the mass of cameras so distinctly like they know a secret. And they can’t wait for you to find it too.

*

It’s called the Walk of Fame. Do it wrong, burn up like celluloid; cigarette burn on a film too old to be projected. Unsympathetic magic. I thought it had to happen at midnight, but that part was not true: Everything Troy reads in the birds and the stones says we must do it at moonrise. For Marilyn, the Moon; a Moon for Selena, rising.

“She won’t appear to you, or anything. It won’t feel like possession, apparently, either. It will be like um, do you remember the Ball?”

She nods, grimly. How could any of us forget? Supermans rising, light as air; the gunfire ripping into them as they danced.

“It doesn’t put anything in there you don’t already have going on. It just shines it up, so bright we can’t look at it anymore. But you can. And you must. Think of it like moving out of your bedroom and from now on you live in a different room of your house. So big that it’s bigger than the house. No more secrets in there, okay, but you get something better. You get the whole house. And that means a little bit will die, immediately. Burn right up. That’s the scary part and I can’t say it won’t hurt, but only because I don’t know. For sure it will feel like ecstasy. That’s what that word means.”

She nods, eyes closed like he’s teaching her the words of a song she’ll need to sing. Michael would probably say that’s exactly what it is, if we could get him out of the car. He rolled the windows up and locked the doors the second he parked, and won’t even look at us now.

“After that, after it’s done and the Drones come, we can back you up. It won’t even take that long. To us, you’ll just be a little spazzy for a second on that star. And then we will have to bounce, because the energy is going to be immense. Call a lot of scroungers and worse. People we don’t want to be around. Tonight, this place is going to be vampire central and a lot of people will be likely to die if they’re not smart. I am setting certain wards after you’re in, to try and offset that, but understand that we are doing the biggest magic any of us will ever see. That’s going to pull things from all over. All over the world, to come and get a look.”

Selena shudders, a little bit, at that. She never wanted to be looked at. She never wanted any of this. I have wondered if I could ever have been as brave as the May, and just walked out like that. They set the scheme around me so wisely and young that I never had the chance to discover it, like the Summer girls. There was no sudden, sharp shock. And I guess I am a rat, a little bit; circling though it hurts with every revolution.

But Selena? She stood in a sorceress’s kitchen looking for weapons while they made dinner. She looked the brides of Hell in the eye and called them old and ugly. She practically slapped me for crying in Pomona, and nearly kissed me in Troy’s backyard, just to heal my bones. She left the whole world behind and came here, to a people she doesn’t care about, to do a job she didn’t know about. She let first Gabriel and then me scoop her up, into strangeness and worse. 

She called him a crybaby, out in front of everybody, like it wouldn’t end the world. And it didn’t, even if it kind of ended him. And me. So I know she’s brave enough to walk. 

What’s too bright to look at is that she’s brave enough to stay.


Chapter Forty-Three: Picasso Moon

Alvy’s wearing braided-trim dress whites and Michael, in the car, is wearing an ivory suit he got who knows where. Giants R Us. Even Troy’s dressed up his look, with ancient trousers and suspenders, waxed mustache; apparently the boy does own shoes. Selena wears body-conscious white lace, with a crown of myrtle and laurel, and a train worked in a riot of living flowers. I’m in black widow’s weeds, asymmetrical netting dashing across a matte red lip, straps—after much discussion—with elbow-length gloves and stilettos sharp as death. She could be my bride.

There is a woman with a tiny dog, I’ll remember her best. Even after things go sideways and time stops meaning much of anything, that dog will still be there, staring at Troy like he’s its real owner. We thought it would be all tourists; didn’t stop to think about the people that run every shop and sell every curio; they’re the audience this morning. Perhaps it’s what they’ve been working for, waiting for.

Soon, the Courts will pay respect. The May and her family can’t leave Winter, of course, but Alvy wears the roses of her banner now. First and greatest citizen of the Summer-to-come. Winter is represented by myself; a retinue of guardsmen will assemble, plainclothes, far enough away to let us work. Spring will come gamboling up; Troy can fit right in, beguiling them. Autumn comes, with their tablets and tiny cameras, to record and share the event with each other, transforming and remixing the footage as though laboring toward the divine. The ninety-nine names of Selena Kirke. 

Will she sing? Act? Glamour takes so many forms these days. Perhaps she will stand here on this stretch of road forever, the barn that never stops being photographed. And soon when I am gone, all my fans can come here to leave their roses at her feet. And the cannier ones, letters and pictures. And the best of all will leave holly for me, in switches and sprays, tied with ribbon.

I suppose the Ladies are with us, in spirit. In the flesh soon enough. That third sister and the strange brother, who lives among the wood; I feel like they were invited. This little wedding of woman and god. I’d love to catch a glimpse of them; the pieces of the Ladies I never got to see.

When it starts, it has already started. 

It was always starting. We just didn’t know it yet; we would forget it soon.

*

A knight canters and slows, along a dusty road. A struggle in the vine, down in the ditch. It could be the future or the past; it could be a storybook romance. They’re all the same from here, from the angle that we’re watching.

Down deep between the thorns, in the bramble and the brush, a little fox with a star upon her head. She favors the left; perhaps she is injured or merely caught, but in any case he hears the trumpets and leans him down, one ungloved naked hand reaching out, hoping not to be bitten. Not caring if he does.

He gathers her to his bosom, sun-brightened steel warming her until her heart slows its beats. She is so small, and so brave, he thinks. Were she a lady he would pledge himself to her, dragons and ghouls and worse for her favor. For the scent of her handkerchief, and hot nights all alone.

*

These women are in love, light and dark. The colder one wants children and the rounder one does not, but it is her body that quickens with life. It becomes harder to love her body as it is, and as it will be; always that spark behind the skin now, singing. Breasts more beautiful and, hideously, more forbidden. And this woman knows it should not be this way; that the war is with her own body. But even so, she cannot touch. And her love, this young mother, feels left so alone, cold in the night air; she knows in her head that she has never been more loved nor more desired. But the skin cries out. And the spark still sings.

*

When his mother walks in on him, he thinks later, he should have held her eye, not coughed and squirmed and covered himself. He thinks, without words, that if he could have held on, like a spell, she would belong to him forever. He would be a man, impregnable. No woman would ever terrify him again, if he could have just kept going.

She would find these thoughts delirious, deranged. But he never looked so small, so much like the little boy she remembers. So innocent. She knows his shame will color the walls and the air for the next year, no matter how sweet and proud and fine she finds it. That he’d never understand she doesn’t judge him, or fear him, or feel disgust. Only guilt, for intruding on something so precious.

*

When he’s finished pounding the boy against the curb, when he takes a step back to breathe, he sees her standing there, in her young body. Seeing him for the first time not as a father but as a man, fit to kick and beat and punch. She wants to laugh, scorn it, shake her head at him and call him silly. She knows she can take care of herself; he shames her by assuming that she can’t. But now, for her, those fists will never unclench. Love means pain now, for her or someone else. She’ll be gone by winter, off to the city.

The bags of clothes he’ll gather for the church, from her closet and the floor, will be so much more modest than he remembered them being. And so much smaller.

*

Her sister is broader across the back, so the bra never quite fits. But it takes them up, and pushes them together. A little Kleenex in there, a nice fluffy sweater, then you’d really have something. More than a mouthful. And soon, the injections, to grow her own. When things get sad, or strange, which they often do, she sings My Fair Lady songs in her head. 

She’s Pygmalion, carving Galatea from her own flesh. Letting that girl out. And when she finally arrives, the professor can leave forever. Die away, like scaffolding to a building that stands as tall as any goddess. All you fools, she’ll say on that day, All you fools thought this was a body. And all that time it was a chrysalis. I tried to love it as best I could. This is just the story of my success.

*

For a long time she was disgusted by this one thing. Their relationship, their love, seems so iconic and stylish and egalitarian. He was raised by a woman, he took a Women’s Studies course; he would never take her to task on the issues, though she knows he feels more strongly about some things than she does. It is a safeguard and something she likes best when it doesn’t come up, because it lubricates the system: He knows, somehow, or can intuit, just how much reasoning and mathematics and probability and situational awareness goes into wearing a woman’s body, the kinds of safety men never know they have. And he knows the edges of her, the boundaries of that, and is quiet about helping her reserve them.

And yet. He was stoned, or drunk, or both, the first time it came up. She reacted with revulsion: Is this not everything we are better than? Do you really see me that way? Is there some moment in our lovemaking where you need to see me brought low? It stung, because she meant for it to sting; stung not by the words, but the tone, which neither of them recognized.

Is this because you see it in porn? Are we those people? Is it a thing where you imagine other men in the room, watching you do that? Why does there need to be a winner? And it didn’t come up again, and it wasn’t a huge deal, and it didn’t stand between them. It was just something strange. She tried very hard to ignore it, when making a list, because she wants to avoid making those kinds of lists; in these moments it’s a list written around the blank space of this one strange thing; this hate coiled at the base of his spine neither of them knew about.

And yet. She was tipsy, or overexhausted from the sun, when she confided a year later in her friend. And what her friend said was interesting: First a disclosure that he has felt also this desire, with certain kinds of men. He would never ask because it doesn’t fit into the sorts of relationships he tries to foster: He doesn’t want to introduce power into a situation where everybody can have all the power.

And yet. In turn, he’d asked a professional about it, once upon a time, during a parade of the demimonde and the explorers, and this is what she said: That men secretly fear they are desperately filthy. And this is about passing that along? the man asked, guilty, and she shook her head. 

“If someone you love loves you back, so completely they would let you do that, then it can’t be dirty. Your head can’t hate and un-hate at the same time; we just switch back and forth too fast to notice. So either you don’t love them, or you are not dirty.”

Not to bring you down to our level, her friend repeated, but to raise ourselves to yours.

And so the woman, after a few more weeks mulling this over, decided she would try talking about it again. She looked forward to him seizing up, briefly, with fear, so that she could gentle him again. Calm down his shame and fear and say, “I heard that men maybe want to come on their lovers’ faces because it makes them feel clean. And loved, and safe.”

And he didn’t answer. But he was harder than she’d ever seen him, faster than she knew was possible. And so, she thought, perhaps she was onto something.

*

Plucking more than one at a time ruins it. How could you possibly feel accomplishment, satisfaction in the pain, if you ripped them out all at once? Might as well buy one of those buzzing monster devices, like a taser with a coiled spring, like it’s the Fifties. It’s not about the way it looks at the end; it’s about how it feels when you’re doing it, and after. Way things are going, nobody’s ever going to see, and anyway, the freshman down the hall cuts herself. Kind of other people to have their own problems.

*

Her father’s an airline pilot; he goes away for long stretches. That used to bother her.

*

His mother owned a ribbed turtleneck, light beige. It clung to her breasts. And on this one day, though he knew by then that he liked boys, exclusively, they stood at the door of their little home, ready to leave for work and school, and his hand stretched out of its own volition, to touch. Greedy little boy, perhaps, somewhere inside. Something more complicated, maybe.

He was rocked a little bit throughout the day, thinking of his mother’s breasts. Not as objects, not as something he would want to touch or even see; just as an odd sign of something in his body and his mind that he didn’t know about, and would probably never understand. He congratulated himself on resisting the urge; his mother followed neither his gaze or his movement, in that moment. It was effectively over.

What he’d never see or notice is that she never wore that shirt again. Perhaps she got other signals during that day that she’d overstepped; she was never great at dressing her body, and certainly she’d had wilder experiments go south on her over the years. But perhaps not. Perhaps it just went into the closet and never came out again, and neither of them ever noticed or wondered why.

*

She isn’t entirely comfortable with it; for starters, you can’t see into his eyes very well, over her belly. And she feels silly telling it to the sky, without him there to nod and grin as they move. It is very rare, with this one—this is how she knows she loves him—that it feels like a television show. Not in the sense of standing outside your body, she healed that one a long time ago: Just sometimes you can think of yourself from the outside, and it looks so ridiculous. It’s the special ones you get lost in, and don’t have that.

With him, they are in it together. It is kind and strong and doesn’t require a lot of chatter, which is comforting. But he loves this; no idea why. Maybe he’s reciprocating, maybe it’s sensory; maybe when it started he was like that certain fingerbanging kind of boy in high school, wanting to see the mystery up close and figure it all out. She doesn’t care about the history, for once. 

Because while he’s down there and she feels like an asshole, it’s still a good reason to let go, live down there with him for a second, outside of her skull. She isn’t going anywhere. There are sounds and smells all over the house, there’s the air across her body, that she wouldn’t notice at any other time. 

And because when he comes back up, and his face is shining. Not like a sated boy, or a conquering beast: Like a man very much in love with her, and with her body. He has found joy, and brought it back with him.

*

There is not a person on this Earth without a mother. Without thousands of years of mother cooked into their DNA and their memories. They come in all shapes, some of them are women, some of them we marry, or abuse, or any of the other things that happen behind a door. 

When we tell a story about children and their parents we tend to cross-apply madly, as though it were math or elementary proofs. For every Oedipus, an Elektra; for every mother, a father. As if men are the only ones with mothers.

She is the fox and she is my lover, swelling with life. She is someone’s mother and everyone’s daughter. The Queen of Winter’s skin was never darker; my father’s never looked so soft and warm as he does now, looking out through Selena’s eyes. Young and old, sexy and remote. 

Where time gets slippy is when they start converging, rising toward the sun, stretching toward the moon. The zoetrope of her breast, sexual and nourishing and sexual and nourishing, resolves not to nothing but to everything. Shame is a powerful tool. Take that away: Every part is holy. You don’t even have to try; there’s not a place to go. You already live there. 

We drink us all from the same cup, and what leads toward life is always sweet. That’s how you know where the lines are. Indra’s Net is the circuitry of desire; as every death is the same death so every orgasm is the same orgasm, shared in a place beyond time as we remember what we are. Going back as many times as we must, until we are whole. I am Supermans and Lanterns Green; we worship this Wonder of a Woman, this Moon encircled by a Star. And—this is the secret—She worships me. Imagine a love so large it contains Her too. Imagine that, looking back at you; just as I must, now. I can’t remember it, but only imagine: Imagine her body, shining so brightly: Made absolutely for love. Daring you always to love more completely, more bravely; until you own the world and it owns you.

I look down at my own body, this haunted dollhouse, growing a dark pearl around a grain of grief: I am segmented, a diagram of a cow ready for slaughter. A woman made of crispy, steaming bread, ready to be pulled apart: This part sweet and that part dirty; this part for me and that part for them. This to be looked at, and that to be secret, unmentioned, avoided. This to be worshiped and that to be reviled. This hunger ignored, that one performed.

And then I look back at hers, resolving itself like infinite doors opening and closing: Everything, not nothing. Sweet and dirty, for me and for you, to be given and to be kept, secret and known. The moon’s full face and her darkness, all at once. Picasso moon.

“Sweet girl,” Selena says. “Dirty girl.”

And we begin to laugh, like lovers and like sisters, like mother and daughter, Demeter and Proserpine: They never lied, did they? The Ladies. Not once.

When it ends, it was already ending. And too, it continues to begin. It always will.



Chapter Forty-Four: War & the Pity of War

It has begun to rain, somehow; great gobbets and fists of it dropping. We’re none of us wearing the clothes we were at the beginning, but we’ve got enough of our wits left to let Troy do the finer points that will close it out. Or he was already, and we were all in a separate madness. For a while it’s like an ocean; a flashmob of the planets. It’s hard to keep straight who’s who when all you want, desperately, is to find more parts of them to love.

Troy, grown tall as he does in times like these, crowns her—or is it a cup?—wearing a crown of his own, flowers woven through the horns. Spring attends them. The courtiers of the Hallowed Lands, in service to her Autumn godmother, bring the carpet of flowers behind her to singing life. Alvy kneels to her, gathering the fox to his breast. She weeps, and laughs. She kisses me like a lover: Winter’s gift is eternal life. 

I worry again for Michael, somewhere in the other world; wonder if he can keep up. Perhaps he will take wing. I feel so safe it’s hard to imagine needing him ever again. But Troy would pout.

...No, he would die. It is a ten-point stag that rages in him, pawing at the ground, ready to be born. It is a wolf taller than the black dog that lurks at the corner of my vision, taking it all in. Softly whining. Ready to be free.

Within Troy’s head is a room and in that room he keeps locked a specific pain, that I can see only now: He loved Gabriel too. He didn’t know it either. He tested the limits of Gabriel’s love, his patience, his affable yearning desire; slapped the hand to watch it come back again, begging, over and over. His was the safest man’s body Troy ever touched, because it wanted nothing but to be loved. 

In that room is locked a guilt: The day of my marriage, the dragon we fought every second of our lives, he thought it was inevitable. It was coming. And on that day, Gabriel would be his brother. 

His body sees Michael, the great girth of him, and it sees Alvy, watching him dance, and it makes his body into a weapon or an art: This is how we stay alive.

But on the day we were wed, his body could rest. He thought Gabriel would be his dad, a little bit, which I won’t ever let him know I saw. But mostly, he wanted a brother. 

He would have been so kind, he thinks. Spent the rest of his life making it up to Gabriel, showering him with love and encouragement and apology, for ever and ever. Good cop. The very second that he could. And now, thanks to me, he never will. 

I gave up my chance at living, when I let Gabriel fall. But I took from Troy, too. He could have been so strong, with somewhere sweet to put it. Somewhere strong to stand.

*

Alvy is sworn to Summer, the Knight of the White Rose and the Blue. But now, too, he is sworn to this. He sees her as a woman in a lake, first her arm and then her body; face shining brighter than a sun. But she moves, upon the water. She sings across the forests, and down beneath it. Down into the darker places, the dungeons of his hate that rear up like dragons of revolution; the anger that dresses up in innocence and shuns every mirror. 

And behind them all, a Queen whipping her steeds: The last year’s May. Urging him on, on, on. 

His hands are guns, are knives, are swords. He has been learning from the angel. He was always infantry, they troop them young in the Summerlands. But he was never a soldier. He never wanted to kill, until now.

He sees her as a woman clothed in ravens and shadow, one-eyed, felling Kings and commoners. He sees her alone upon a battlefield, and her dancing is death. They fall and rise together, struggling, feet slipping on blood and dashing into flames. His god is war now; he’s none of Spring’s.

“My subject is War,” Selena whispers, cool against his hot cheek, “And the pity of War.”

My Alvy nods. He knows this one, though it strikes him like a vicious lie: “The Poetry is in the pity.”

But the time for poetry is later, is maybe, is never-was and shouldn’t-be. He sees her as a weapon, something nuclear for him to detonate, and blinds her thus to him. The little fox a gun, with a star upon its head. He forgot she was his sister, and his friend, and his mother. He forgot himself, in her presence, and betakes himself away, to the land of the forgotten. Where he stood is just a rolling field of roses, white and blue. And she weeps, where it is cold.

But the poetry is in the pity, and the pity is endless. It is alive, and it can sometimes look cruel, but it is graceful and it takes its time. Love in spite of the past is pity, love in spite of the future compassion. For Her, for Whom there is no time, it is simply love. 

The poetry was already telling itself before they met, and when he is dead and forgotten it will be as it is now. Rising like the sun, shining like the moon.

Under a knoll, in the blink of an eye, in a year and a day, she finds him. East of the sun and west of the moon, she finds him; she finds him in the heart of a rose and the prick of a thorn. She finds him, asleep upon a coffer, Winter’s sword upon his breast. Fox kit long forgotten, he sleeps, turned to stone. Her tears do not wake him, nor does her kiss upon his cold graven lips. She weeps, to have taken another of my men.

Troy breaks off a horn, grunting like a lover, groaning like an elfshot beast, and she chips away, this Goddess. My friend. At the stone of him, my lover. And the stone comes away in her hands, burnished bright in torchlight, until Alvy lies in state without armor, with nothing at all. Our knight, penis sweetly sleeping upon a thigh. Only then can he wake. 

He’ll hold a grudge. What would Michael think of that? “When your hands are dirty, you may wash them clean.”

He turns his anger into flame and his flame into action, and I cannot hate him for this. My War is to love these people, and there can be no pity in that, either. No pity.

*

When there’s weather of any kind in Southern California it becomes a matter of utmost importance. The perfect is ever the enemy of the good, but nowhere is that more true than in the case of Los Angeles weather.

Her torrential downpour continues; it tastes cleaner than anything. It tastes like what your dark green leafy vegetables are supposed to do, cleaning you out to the cells, with no trace but the power they leave behind. It tastes like a Vitamin B shot feels. Do you think anybody will notice the sharp rise in births, forty or so weeks from now? I hope they do, and batten those hatches down.

Selena nods at Troy, some unspoken confirmation, and he sighs, smiling with eyes closed. “The reservoirs are filling. One of your labors done, my lady,” he says, bowing deeply to me.

“I didn’t do this.” The pitch of the clouds makes me think it’s mostly off the coast, which is good. I guess she remembered people live here. That’s comforting.

Selena smiles. “You kind of did.” I won’t accept it. Moving on, though.

“Do you need to meet the...” I look around, but the sopping crowd is already dispersing. Faeries are usually nuts about the rain, for some reason; I figured they’d be splashing about in the puddles for as long as they could, before they remembered the Realms are on lockdown.

“I did,” she smiles, secretly. “I met all of them. Like everywhere.”

Which makes me wonder how long until she pops onto the media sphere as though she’s always been there, because for once we won’t have to do it.

*

Troy doesn’t like this kind of magic so I usually just bribe a drone to help. It’s a trick you can do with actual mirrors and a wifi router, rolling back caches and archives just softly enough that it feels like a déjà vu, and then the fear of missing out makes everybody talk about you twice as much, in case there’s a conversation the person somehow wasn’t part of it at the very, very beginning. This trick works on white guys of a certain age especially, since they already control most conversations, but really everybody’s susceptible. Just a tiny little memory fuzziness to open up enough plausible room to introduce us like we were always there. 

There are a few actresses, singers, where something went wrong, I could name names but you know who I’m talking about: “Will they ever stop trying to make X happen?” What you’re remembering is the time it screwed up and reentered the memory stream, or else you wouldn’t remember her at all. She really would happen. That’s a tricky loop to get out of; most of the women it happens to end up dead, or married. I use it for a quick boost even though that’s off-label, but now that I’m going to end up dead and unmarried, I’ve lost my taste for it. 

Just riding it out didn’t seem like a great idea until today. Until I saw and felt and tasted her, I thought, I have to stay strong to save Selena and Troy and everybody. Actually quantifying what she’d become was never possible, but I guess I just assumed I’d improvise. But now that I’ve seen it, the enormity of it, I want to set my toy soldiers going and then retire for a day or two and just think of ways to use her. The part of her we can see and the parts nobody can.

“Pherepapha,” Selena says, as though it is my name. “Plato called you that in Cratylus. ‘Because she is wise, and touches that which is in motion.’ And Nestis, Empedocles called you, because your real name was too strong for the world. ‘Now hear the fourfold roots of everything: enlivening Hera, Hades, shining Zeus. And Nestis, moistening mortal springs with tears.’”

“Is this a thing you’re going to do? Are you a computer, or a...?”

“I just wanted you to know it’s still me. And that I know you, still. Isn’t that beautiful, though? Because she is wise, and touches that which is in motion.”

“Half right. But I guess that was Plato’s deal. Are you going to need to sleep, or eat, or... What’s the recovery?”

“S, I feel better than I have felt in my entire life. I’m... See that store window over there? And then past the diorama or whatever, there’s clothes and tables. And then further back than that, there’s the offices. There’s a new manager back there, she just started this week. And right now she’s embarrassed, because I just brought on her period and she wasn’t ready for it. Okay?”

I cock my head.

“...And now it’s a false alarm. Do you see what I’m saying? It’s fine. Most of the passersby were jizzing their pants so hard they were cross-eyed, pardon my French. I’m good. Are you guys okay?”

I’m a little shaky, actually, but I want to be good and strong for her. I don’t entirely trust that she’s not going to fall sideways momentarily, but I don’t want to indicate that either. So I just nod. 

“Not me, man. I feel wrecked. And good. I’m exhausted and zippy. I want to kiss everybody and like, I don’t know. Slap somebody. I want to dance and sleep at the same time. I think I am a sponge or something. I will lead a great Hunt across the sky. An army of the dead. I feel like a wild monster and like a sweet little baby, when they measure your feet for shoes. That sliding thing,” Troy babbles decisively, shaping his hands carefully in the air like he’s describing an hourglass, slapping his belly like a drum. Pap pap pap. Alvy throws his arm around Troy, firmly and kindly, and prepares to walk him back to the car.

Which is when three things happen, I remember, exactly when he touched him: Thirdmost, the Drones arrive, and began setting up their tripods and livestreams and whatever tech. Selena can’t move, from here on out, until they’ve gotten every angle in the changing light, bouncing it off her as they move around and about and about each other, choreographed in silk-rustling quiet. I get my shots in right away, in case either of us suddenly ebbs, and step out for her solo stuff. 

She’s saying something, in such a rumbling soft way they inch forward, desperate for her words. I like this in theory but in practice it grosses me out, so I get to watch the second thing happen, which is that black dog comes back and it’s clear everybody can see him. He’s not one of us, since we’re all accounted for, which either means he’s a good guy or our trickster, or both. I’m just glad to see him, for whatever reason. He gives me a long look before turning to the others.

Alvy nearly shows his teeth. Troy whispers “puppy” to himself, clenching fingers like he wants to grab that thick fur and hang on for a quick ride around the block. Selena nods respectfully, still holding the cameras by the gaze; the dog’s great muzzle dips toward the sidewalk, and then for Selena he folds his forelegs quite carefully before him, dipping again. 

“Downward Dog, downward dog,” Troy breathes, holding out a hand to gentle the great beast, at the other end of the block. The dog does not bare teeth, nor does he bristle. He holds absolutely still, long enough for Troy to reach him, and then—just the slightest bit—jerks forward, making Troy laugh with excitement before licking his hand, luxuriously. And before he can pet the thing in turn, it’s gone. And then Troy’s the first one to drop.

But the number one biggest thing that happens is Michael. Our huge angel friend in his great big suit, like a circus tent bunching across his giant body as he hustles faster than could have been anticipated toward us. Troy holds out his arms and is swept up into Michael’s, instantly, but the angel keeps running, our Wild Boy in a football carry, the length of the block from the dog’s sudden vanishing back to Selena and the rest of us. He places Troy carefully on his tiny feet, so like Gabriel for just that second, and Alvy steps up behind to hold him up as Michael screws his eyes closed, tight, looking for all the world like he’s about to go on a blind date, or start crying, or both.

The angel turns, then, toward Selena on her star. She gestures to the Drones; as one, they point cameras to the ground, or the sky. The barn will go unrecorded, for just this moment. For this moment, anything could happen. And then, obscurely, anything does:

“Father,” the angel chokes, weeping; and he kneels at her feet. 

“I never stopped believing. I never stopped trying. It has been cold and the Choir grows tired. I loved a mortal man and it only made me love Thee more, for I saw in him Your glory. In their faces, all, and Father, they are so beautiful. I did not know. The Choir knew not. They never were a yoke, nor a goad. They long to be loved, so much, Father! I have never known such joy, in all these searching times. Not since Thee. Oh, tell me only that I still do serve; only bless me, and I shall beg no more of Thee.”

She laughs, tears streaming down her face at him, in his sweetness. A thousand shutters snap in light, like stars.

*

The image that hits the stands, in the end, isn’t Selena Kirke and her gal-pal It Girl Estelle Harlowe. It isn’t future love triangle S versus S for their favorite wild boy. It isn’t even Estelle with her arms around Selena and Alvy Roosevelt, kissing one or the other of them, hinting at it all.

It’s Selena, standing on the Boulevard; reflecting the morning sun like a film filter, wind in her hair from nowhere. The light is specific and strange, a nostalgia for something there will never be words for exactly: 

We yearn for the hope of our parents, and our grandparents, when they were children. For a kind of America, a kind of celebrity, that belongs to the world and which we may never perfect. An innocence, a clarity of desire, a lack of shame. 

The knowledge that, even if the movies don’t show it: Those people fucked, and said the word fuck, and they hurt each other, and loved each other, gloriously, and still they survived. That people have been as strange and unique and wonderful as long as there have been people. That they did all the things we need to know they did, because inside ourselves we know—with the strength of faith and the clarity of proof—that we absolutely do not live in a fallen world.

It’s my Selena Kirke, in that light, with a great beautiful man at her feet. A new look, new talent, they’ll say. Worshiping her; they’ll grasp for words because they have never seen this: Not subservient, nor cringing; simply quiet, simply honoring. For all of us, on behalf of all of us. Teaching us how to treat her.

And it’s my Selena’s hand upon his head, blessing him as the tears roll down his face. And what the cameras, mysteriously, never pick up is what he what he’s saying, as he begins to sing. 

But it brings them all to tears, nevertheless.


Chapter Forty-Five: Celebrity Skin

After a short formal introduction to the Mosquito Queen, whose deference was both satisfying and maddening, I take Selena out on our first public date. She does this funny routine with the drone that’ll be tailing us to the restaurant, like, “Aloha” or something, I didn’t really hear it, but it made the guy laugh, which I’ve only ever seen once before.

Troy was after this guy pretty hard—this was three locations before Blue Heaven, which is months dead now, but in the regular-people part, when it was peaking—and doing I would say pretty well, from what I could tell. One of those big guys that’s into small ones, which is the easiest for Troy to catch and the first ones he’s apt to throw back, both for the same reason. But this one, he thought was special... I don’t know, something about comic books or something, they were hitting it off. It happens every day, somehow, all over the world.

But so the guy offers to take Troy somewhere else, to a second location—which is where you’re likely to be murdered, by the way, even if you’re a relatively powerful witch, which is why we don’t do this—and the new drone that was detailed to him was walking backwards with his own camera, flipping the cord out of his way with the toe of one shoe, Troy says; says it was fascinating to watch, especially for someone so green. 

But they went for hot dogs at one particularly trendy truck right before it closed down for the night, so now you’ve got Troy trying to maximize his seductive powers, which presumably he possesses, and also trying to eat this veggie dog without the camera catching him, for obvious reasons. So they’re walking, the guy is doing this like, hacky-sack move with his foot, and Troy keeps asking the dude questions that necessitate a fair amount of speechifying, which is Troy’s number one trick for boys, so that the camera will be distracted by this guy, and Troy can take a bite. This situation is obviously a house of cards. 

So of course at some point the dude—not the drone, note, or he would have been killed by his peers, they have this whole ritual—drops the ball, and one by one they all go down. Which is when I got there: Troy’s splayed across this big comic book guy, they’re both covered in ketchup and sauerkraut, drone guy is like, choking on his camera cord, and the whole thing is being recorded. I could have helped. There are a lot of things I could have done. You can surely understand why I did not.

Drone guy isn’t big like the dude, but nobody moves as fast as Troy. So he’s up, yelling at me, before the other two can even figure out what’s going on. I don’t even remember what Troy’s problem was, whether it was that I was there or that I followed him or that I let him go have hot dogs with a nerd in the first place. Whatever it was, it was specious, and we both knew it. So Troy chilled out, and spat an apology in that petulantly honorable way he has, and then he notices the camera is still rolling, so he goes on a double-sized wobbler on this drone guy. 

But clearly his whimsy muscle had recovered, because the stuff he was saying was so funny, just these scattershot things about the guy’s family and stuff, like just nonsense, that he cracked them both up. They are just laughing in each other’s faces, the camera—sadly—is pointing down at the ground so it didn’t even make air, and the whole time Troy is just waxing super poetic about this guy, his parentage, his sexual habits. And then he kisses him. Kisses a drone right on his perfect lips.

Now, I don’t know if Drones have sex or a sexuality or what, but this is not a guy that regularly has sex with men. And so now he is caught between two things, which is that he wants to kiss Troy some more, and he also wants to take a second to evaluate what is currently happening. And that just pitches his laughter up an octave, so now he’s kind of screeching, and Troy’s eyes are wide and delighted, because that’s like getting a rise out of a soldier at Buckingham Palace. Like neither of us have ever seen anything like it. But then the voice is going up, up, up, until it sounds like a glitching mic, and we remember that Drones aren’t people, they’re leftovers of people, and Troy sort of shrugged at me like, “Well, I broke it...”

*

“Wait, what about the comic book man?”

“I think he was unconscious. I think the fall knocked him out, I don’t remember. Troy came home with me though. So I guess the guy got home okay?”

Selena shrugs, shaking her head. “You guys used to be pretty careless.”

I don’t feel great about that, but there’s not a lot of story left to tell, so I just quiet down and hope she changes the subject. Kind of annoying, like she had to point out that we were jerks to that guy. Like that’s something I wouldn’t know. 

She quirks a smile at me, looking up and to the side. “He’s fine, by the way. And he was married, at the time.”

“Who?”

“Comic book man.” She names him, which is not something I—or probably Troy—would be able to fact-check, so I just shudder and wait for her to change the subject. Better this time, hopefully. “His wife’s a lot happier now... So’s he, actually. Actually, you know what, their divorce started becoming probable that night. So you kind of saved them.”

Is this okay? What about privacy? I don’t care what Selena knows, because she’s Selena, she’s great. But maybe I shouldn’t know these things.

“I wouldn’t betray anybody, S. Only the good parts. I want you to know the good parts, so you can love yourself more effectively. You think too much about death, and pain, because you are going to die so soon.”

“Um.”

“Right? So you need to be as happy as possible before then. I am here for that. I mean, I’m here, and I want that. You and Troy and Alvy.”

She doesn’t name Michael, but she doesn’t have to. He loved Gabriel more than I’ve ever seen a person just openly love somebody, but that has very little to do with what is going on with him now. He was not a joyful person. He was kind of a scary person. And now he’s... I mean, he’s not exuberant, like he doesn’t throw Troy in the air or anything when he gets excited. But he is, quietly, more joyful than anything you would think is possible for a human without coming off like a maniac. Troy says you can get high off it if you touch enough of his skin.

Through a string of magickal coincidences Troy got the house next to his for a steal, so Selena’s set up in a safe spot for now, and close to the boys. Alvy took care of the Summerland detail at my place, so we’re good there. The troops have taken most of Summer anyway, so they’re needed back home. Summer’s in no position to be scheming. 

Nor must they need to. Without Gabriel there’s no chance of Winter getting the upper hand with Hell, so my Tithe will just be another in a series of good days for the reigning champs, until we take the capital. Once we do that, once we get the May’s home back, we’ll have everybody ready to go after Hell. Or, assuming I fall through the cracks, ready to come and get me.

Which is what we’re planning now: Being famous as often as possible, as the unrest grows and news spreads of Gabriel’s death, which we haven’t formally announced, trying to get the former Gabrielles (ugh) onboard with this new relationship with Alvy, pushing our relationship with each other—and, separately, with Troy—there’s not much else to do. But my birthday looms, and if it should come, and depart with my spirit, we’ll need to compress the timeline. Touch that which is in motion.

It’s not that I’m afraid of Hell. I am, in that everyone should be. But I’ve been imagining it ever since I was a child. Thinking about what might happen if I displeased Gabriel, and I ended up caged in flame or drinking an endless river or whatever, until he chilled out. I have done the research, and I fear it. But without a War Chief you’ll find the Fae about as easy to herd as a bag of cats. Which means it’s time to discuss phase two of Project Marilyn.

*

“Okay, so you’re all checked in with the Drones, and so can get a couple days off after this, if you want to take Troy and Michael out on the town instead. What else is on the agenda?”

“You tell me.” Selena leans back. 

She is poised, with a fire in her bones even when she’s sitting perfectly still; always composed, always happy. Not self-satisfied, although I realize sometimes I am putting that on her anyway. When I’m not missing her, which is what I am doing absolutely at all times we’re not together. But that’s only going to get worse.

The black dog appears again, I notice, as I bring up the next thing. I’m almost used to him, now.

“Well, I don’t know if Troy told you about the contingency...”

“—You mean where we fight? That’s what you want to talk about? You want to get that underway now, so we’ll have time to reconcile before...”

I nod, a little sad about it for once instead of numb. “I know it’s kind of gross. I don’t want to model ‘bitches fighting’ for little girls, for women. So I thought about ways it could be amicable or...”

“Can’t we just not talk, and then like, talk again? Like if we were both busy with things.”

“Nope. Maybe if you were in a movie or something, but that doesn’t start until the winter, right?”

First week, they found her. Most of the casting directors she saw could have sworn they’d already put her in other stuff, of course. She’s not getting my point, and I feel like this is on purpose. Like she’s trying to teach me a nice lesson or something. Wouldn’t think it would be possible to hate this more than when Troy does it, but she’s found a way.

“If I do it. I would rather... Well, we’ll see how it plays out.”

Uh, guess we will. If I had to point to a moment where my mind was made up, it is now.

“Whatever you want, Selena. I want you to be as happy as possible. No matter what happens.”

“I know. Which is why I’m really resistant to the idea of avoiding you on purpose. You’re my best friend. And I know it’s killing Troy. He wants us all back in that pillow fort, it’s all he thinks about. Putting more distance in there...”

Is exactly what I want. But I can’t do it to his face. You have to take him away with you. We need to plan it out, so carefully, so he won’t get hurt. And you’re just pushing against the plan instead, wasting time.

“—He’s sweet and he’s not dumb, but trust me. Michael’s keeping him busy.”

“I’m their neighbor, S. I’m well aware.”

We grin, but it’s too close to the unspoken to really bond. So I speak it. “I’m thinking about, um, going all the way. With Mr. Roosevelt.”

She jerks her chin up. “You don’t have to notify me about stuff like that.”

“I mean, we’re best friends. I thought that was what girls do.”

Not true. In fact, I wanted to bother her. If she’s not going to play along with the fight, then there are steps to take. Piss her off, or gross her out, and that takes care of Troy too. I’ve been so afraid of embarrassing myself in front of her, for so long, that doing it on purpose feels horrible and wonderful, like lying in the Winter Court. To look at somebody you love, and strike out for no reason. It’s power. It’s sick, but she basically told me to do it.

She’s a goddess now. You can’t really expect her to understand the severity, or the timeframe. She’s got an entirely different set of references now. You can’t ask someone for anything that exceeds their limitations; that’s the real cruelty. 

So if she is a goddess of compassion, of peace, the only way to alienate her is with unkindness. A store of which I suppose I’ve been sitting on for a while. It’s the only way to protect her that I can think of. She has to hate me. Before I’m dead, and after.

“I guess that’s true. But not always. Anyway, that was my reaction. But uh, good for you. He seems really into you. And... driven. For the cause.”

Obscurely there is a part of me that wants to apologize to her, but I don’t know what that part is or why it wants that, so I let it lie. It’s hard to be two people, much less three, which is what that would be. I’m already pretending I don’t want to throw myself into her arms and beg her to fix me. I can’t make it about sex too.

“I mean, I’m not jealous, or... It’s because of Gabriel, Estelle. If he’s still in your heart, or...”

I’ve thought about it. “There will never be a time when he isn’t. First love is first love, and I worked on that one for twenty years. But there are parts of me that need rewiring, and Alvy’s interested in that, as a challenge. We are a good team, War-wise. I mean it fits. I think he is very attractive. So there’s that. Very attractive guy.”

“He is that. It’s just hard for me to believe even you would just accept that it can’t... be like that again, one day.”

“Like how good it was with Gabriel? Selena...”

“No, I know. I just think you have a lot to give, and he’s been through a lot. You both have.”

“We all have. If you wait for everything to be perfect you never go anywhere. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Unless you’re God, I mean,” and she wrinkles her nose.

“The whole time, my whole life before I moved here, I always had a boyfriend. It was always about somebody else. Not like to serve them, just... I had a lot of free time, and I liked thinking about my boyfriend, whoever the boy was. I had a lot of free-floating emotion and I like having somewhere to put it. So when I came here, you know, I was like, celibacy. At least until I figured out what the hell was going on with everything. With life. And now, it’s the opposite. I don’t want a boyfriend or anything like that because I’m kind of having sex with everybody all the time. Or like, everything. The world. I stopped needing to be loved back.”

It sounds incredibly sad to me, but she’s so peaceful when she says these things, I don’t know how to respond or how to take it. If I said that kind of thing it would be a cry for help, which is why I never would, but on the other hand I don’t really disagree with what she’s saying or where it comes from.

“You’re incarnate, Selena. You’re allowed to be human. That’s part of the deal.”

She nods, happily. “I’m looking forward. But it’s only been what, two weeks? I kind of want to see what there is. I mean like, okay: Making friends with men. That’s not something I have ever done before. They don’t get resentful now, if I don’t want to sleep with them, because they feel loved on this fundamental level. So there’s a whole kind of face to them I’ve never seen before, where everything is just... fine. Men are pretty okay people. I mean, they’re people. So. Being nice to them because you feel like being nice, not because you already know it’s going to cut down on the hassle later.”

Which is when I start to cry, for what I suppose will be the last time in my life. My Gabriel. If he was here, it’s true: I would feel like just being nice to him. No matter what he threw at me. 

That nasty little coughing scoff when you said something he found patently ridiculous, even if you knew you were right and could prove it. The way he would interrupt you, not even to tell you anything important—just to tell you the thing the word in the middle of your sentence reminded him of, because even just that alone meant it was of equal importance to whatever you were saying—and then trail off halfway through whatever he was saying, because it didn’t really matter to him either. The way he’d answer any thought with an immediate and simple solution nobody asked for, even an unsolvable thing like a feeling or a memory: Just instruct you in something you already had thought through and discarded. He was a pretty okay person. 

A pretty okay person growing, against all the odds, into a more than okay person. Until I broke his heart, and then his family, and got him killed. I can’t believe I ever gave him that much power to wreck himself, how I let him bother me so much that I tortured him for fun, even when I knew it was just his limitations that made him that way. I liked him that way, be honest; I hated it when he tried, because that made him more real. And if he was real, the whole thing was real, and I was caught, trapped like a rat. So I did my part to keep him small, and stupid, and shitty, and pretended that was love. Or martyrdom. Maybe I am not an okay person.

Selena pats my arm, throwing on a bit of a glamour around us so nobody will care, and I really put my back into it then. She always does this, drives me to a breakdown, and I hate it. But not really. She considers coming around the bistro table to grab me physically, which sounds like a really good idea, but then I hear her slide herself, her chair, back under the table, and she clears her throat.

The black dog puts his head in my lap, snuffling out that doggy sigh they do, and Selena regards him again with that silent respect, dipping low. He closes his eyes, standing perfectly still, and simply breathes, until we’re asked to leave.

At the street, she holds my shoulders, like Gabriel used to do with Michael, and looks deeply into my eyes. She seems regretful, as if she knows it’s the last time we’ll see each other before I’m gone. I wonder if she knew that before I did? I didn’t know until I decided, and that was only halfway through lunch. I wonder if she came to the table, already seeing my path. It wouldn’t change any of the stuff she was saying, I know her well enough to know that, but it does put a different spin on how much of an idiot I looked like.

She’s already gone by the time I say her name. So quietly not even the wind can hear. 

Just loudly enough that I will.

*

Quick change in the twilight: A late dinner, later the better, so the East Coast blogs will have gone to bed and we’ll have another twelve hours of quiet before the cycle starts up. Short as hell, this dress—still black, but spicing it up with more red every day—and a quirky hat just to see what happens. 

Alvy in sort of rustic Dungeons & Dragons inspired couture, which is the look the market has determined works best for him—maybe it’s the hint of an accent, or the pronounced tilt to his eyes and heaviness of brow that Americans tend to associate with a certain lower-class stratum of the British Isles for whatever reason—and which is fine with me, because I like being the normal one.

And anything to contribute to the aesthetic. This pagan thing Troy’s doing, which is raising his own Q, is great for the armies back home. They’re more than half-convinced, from what my generals tell me, that the real world will welcome them with open arms, once they’ve burned their own home down. Good luck with that. 

There is this rude girl when I’m standing at the bar who, I see in some random flash, is fated to become a star if she meets a particular producer who is at the bottle tables up front—there is a line connecting them as strong and bright as a tube map. And then there’s another line crossing it, where the producer’s wife is heading to the bar for another round. And when I push her into the wife, for being rude but not even really that rude, those lines cross and shatter. Three-pointer even blotto. Troy couldn’t have done it better. Cutting off her future like an old witch in a fairytale cuts off a nose, or a pert blossom.

Roosevelt Arthur Ailbe is a virgin, did I tell you that? Likes girls and boys, has been with neither, Knight of the White Rose and the Blue, too busy for love, too busy for sex, too busy for anything but mourning his dead sister, constantly, like a widow with a candle that never goes out. And so when I am done with this random girl, who will be out of town by the end of the month after this latest disaster, I drag him home for his deflowering, and that’s the last thought I really think. About Summer, the troops, all those in the Realms who think burning down their own houses will save them, but it’s about him too. And, I guess, about Troy and Selena:

Maybe we’re burning history because it’s just what we do. Nobody ever goes back home, ever. 

The whole time I’m fucking him, the black dog watches from the fire escape. 

We’ve never been so famous.



Chapter Forty-Six: Gates of Dawn

I spend the morning of the assassination hiding in the shower.

Troy will be by at some indeterminate morning-ish time to drop off our meds, and none too soon: I can tell Alvy’s been getting itchy. I tossed him my phone last night and he jumped clear out of the way, letting it drop to the comforter with a small thump. Even just that tiny bit of iron in there is getting to be too much. It isn’t his world. Less and less mine every day, it feels like.

The wards in the loft take care of a lot of the steel, in the beams and casing the wires, but still. It’s the little things. He’ll gulp down his bitter herbs and smile a particular smile and we’ll go back to pretending this is the way things have always been.

During the Walk of Fame, when Selena Kirke ascended to godhood, that was not an easy time for any of us. To be loved completely is not something I would wish on just anybody. It’s hard in the moment, it burns, like being taken apart—but it’s so much worse afterward. They don’t tell you about that. About when the light goes away again. 

The fury and the cold push back in, the noise of every day, and you can barely remember what it was like to be so calm. Like a song that gets in your head, just the chorus, just the flute at the beginning, and won’t come any closer, and it won’t go away either. Just always there, to be remembered, over and over. Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

If I go outside, even in a towel, and Troy is there—probably with the angel, they don’t seem to spend much time apart these days—he’ll push in on me like that, like Selena at lunch yesterday, and he’ll have the same look in his eye. This sorrow and compassion and excitement to see me, shoving into my space, saying, “Just tell us. Just tell us what’s wrong, and we can fix it together.”

And if I see that I will come to a sudden halt, I will drop dead. So I’m hiding in the shower, until something happens. Until it all changes again.

We do not know where the erstwhile Queen of Summer sits, but we know it’s tangential to the Realms. Some Autumn-occupied territory, like they’re always building: Trains running through shadow on tracks off the maps, or virtual spaces in tall towers full of servers, like buzzing honey hives. Underground memory places, up-high dream places, forever Thursdays. Some place like that. Some soffit somewhere rage never knew. 

What we do know is what happens when we find her. Nothing before, or after, but what we have agreed that sits in the middle: That I, Princess of Winter, will show my empty hands and be accepted into her grace in this, the time of her great exile. Pushed out by a pretender, forced into the enemy’s camp; I can relate, with the May Queen on my rightful throne back home. 

I’ll tell her I love her, we can work together, bring the Realms back into alignment and the endless Faerie rush. I will tell her, Autumn and Winter: We are ever sisters in the cold and sleep. 

And when she has kissed me, that’s when Alvy strikes.

*

Gertrude will be very into this plan. Not so much the murder part, which I’ll be vague on—quick flash of Gabriel, how he’d let loyalty rewrite the story unfolding before his eyes, when it suited him; the sweet and ugly wilderness of Palm Springs—but I’ll tell her just enough to excite.

This is the sort of thing we do all the time in Faerie, I shall say. We were born to be changelings, weren’t we? And wouldn’t you like to step out, back into the real world? See what it’s like to be Estelle for once? Splash around in the life that was denied you.

And Gertrude will wonder, without asking: What about the dangers? And so before she asks, I must make my voice so quiet and deep, and tell her this jape is not without consequence. 

Remember: Estelle Harlowe has no magic of her own, no glamour. Just her wits and her crew, and the latter (at least) you’ll have to do without. Take some pictures, ride around in a car getting out at various prearranged locations. Look bored, look wonderful, until the clocks run down and the sun has gone to sleep. Talk constantly, say nothing. Be aware of every camera, deliver the angles, never be the same pretty thing twice in a day.

Gertrude will ask after Alvy, Michael, Selena and Troy: Wouldn’t it be better to put her in their context, to surround her with a ladies’ court to ward off every suitor and traitor that comes calling? Well, I will say. 

Remember back home, now, they’re watching me. Us. You. You can be strong and tough out here in the world, by yourself. Can’t you? And then go home to Court, and tell them all exactly what we’ve done. They will know then that you are Faerie born and real-world strong, and one day make a pretty, lordly Queen. 

It’s your coming-out party, not just here but there. Why share the spotlight?

Her voice will grow sly: Why her, why now? Why this? Well, I’ll say. Well then.

What was done to Gabriel was done to us, too, sister. Nothing about what was done to the May, to every May Queen since the world was young: She needs deniability. Almost as much as Selena and the rest, who can’t even know about this part of the plan. They need to be able to turn on the TV and see me there and know I am safe. At least until the deed is done.

Alvy’s itchy, it’s true. But there’s an anger in him that could be better channeled and a good old-fashioned regicide should do the trick. He’s so devoted to the May, even now; I wonder how much of him is her, and how much is his dead sister, and how much is me. Me and Troy and the whole mess. This world.

I think I could respect him, if we get this done. I will at least like him more.

*

I can’t say this has been my plan from the beginning. I thought of it first on the boat, when we met and I realized how much it would solve. If the Queen of Summer dies, the Puck implied or I inferred, the May moves up, like Alice in Looking Glass; Pawn becoming Queen. I capture the castle, I capture Summer and then have them all, in essence. Autumn dreads and Spring adores, but neither of them really care about outcomes. Just the changes.

I can’t say I’ve been planning it from the start, as I say, but I can say we’ve been practicing a good deal with our sniper rifles in the weeks since. Summer won’t see that a-coming, will she? She’ll be looking for poison rings and veiled threats and all those courtly games. Blunderbusses and cannon shot, maybe, but not a vengeful Princess. Not girl with a boy and a gun and an escape plan.

Which is what I will have, once I get a layout of her location. Which I can’t find until I get to a safe distance for some of that magic the Ladies don’t love.

I went to the Drones and they sent me to Autumn, which I can’t afford right now. I scryed for her at the blue moon, hoping to be lost in the ocean of Selena at her height, a tree in the forest. But I came right up against Troy to the north, looking for me in a half-lotus in his front yard, probably for the same reason. Hungry little wolf, tail wagging, about to make contact when I shut it down. 

I could just ask Troy to find the Queen—he’s even offered, as a diplomatic measure—but what I have in mind isn’t diplomacy, it’s violence. And if he finds that out, Selena finds out, Michael finds out, and we have ourselves a good old-fashioned intervention, hug it out, cry it out. Some cartoonish ceremony of reconciliation to unburden ourselves, and then we all feel a whole lot better. Nothing actually changes, I still die, but we feel better about it. 

The sole point would be to get them all clean again. Stop worrying about me and whatever downward spiral I can see them thinking, behind their eyes. So why get them dirty in the first place? 

That’s the thing not even Alvy can explain properly. He’s itchy about me, too. Maybe that’s really what he’s itchy about, full stop. If so, I don’t need to know that either, or he’s out the door too.

“You need to marshal your forces,” Alvy says, this day-one knight who trained for decades for a war that never happened; this little boy in the body of a man. “You can’t cut off your nose to spite your face. You have to use everything at your disposal.”

I can’t explain properly, in turn, that this is exactly what I’m doing: Using what is at my disposal. Selena, Troy, even Michael, aren’t expendable. 

But if I said that, he’d notice who I left off the list, and he would either be fine with that or fall out of love faster than a stone from orbit. I couldn’t stand either. So I lose my eloquence, and shush him, and pour him a drink. And we pretend that’s the way things have always, always been.

*

“That kid,” he’s chuckling when I finally make my way back out into the loft. “Where did he come from? How do you get a Troy?”

“His Moon’s in Virgo and he’s a Gryffindor that got raised like he was a Slytherin, because he was gay, and that’s what it is. Fate decreed he’d either start a cult or join one, and he chose the latter. What else did he say?”

Alvy doesn’t like my tone, when I talk about any of them. He has this idea that we are all still a family, a war coven. He doesn’t know how fast it changes, because he has no sense of time, because he’s a hundred and something years old and still thinks Doritos are dinner.

“They miss you so much. I can identify.”

I hold out my hand for the week’s herbals, busying myself with the electric kettle so I won’t have to look at him. Saying things like that. He thinks it’s a movie, even when it’s not. Very dramatic.

“Gross me out. Listen, I know him. He’s fine. He’ll be sad for three blocks, max. And then he’ll see a billboard for some superhero movie, and go home to fuck Michael and that will be the end of the sadness. You have got to stop thinking you’re the Hayley Mills of this, okay? It’s all taken under advisement. If you miss them so much, go hang out with them. But don’t compound my sadness with more pressure about it. That won’t end well.”

“How’s your head?”

“Splitting. Doesn’t matter. Ten minutes and we’ll run it again.”

He can’t touch the guns until the herbs kick in, so I sip my tea and play with my phone again, dialing up some spam at random.

How are you ? 
Simple bacterial infection can develop into pneumonia and endanger your 
him, in as few general words as he could, of the circumstances which

Sure, but it doesn’t get us closer to a location.

“Hey Estelle? He said some other stuff too. He said Selena will always get you out. I don’t know what that means or why he said it but when I asked him he just... I don’t know. It was weird. And he said Michael wanted you to... Oh!”

Alvy pats around at his pockets, finally reaching his chest. Hands me a photo.

“Michael wanted you to have that. Troy said it was okay.”

I already know what it is. Slap face down on the table, sipping my tea.

“You look really great today, Alvy. Good day for it. I like those military lines on you.”

“Not military, but yeah. That designer you like got me more samples. The Israeli guy.”

“You have the most perfect men’s size. That’s really helpful, expense-wise. Trust me. I wonder if it comes in white? For after. Black is best for today.”

“You’re changing the topic. Which is fine, I just... Don’t want to talk about clothes.”

“What else is there?”

“Well okay. So you were saying the problem with tracking the Queen is that you don’t want the other guys to know where we’re going.”

“Right, because it would endanger Gertrude. It has to be seamless. If they knew the Winter Princess was out of her cage, Summer would rally. We’re holding position as it is.”

“Yeah, I know how much you care about Gertrude and her safety. That’s clearly what this is about, for sure. But anyway, I was thinking why do you need to find out? Why can’t I just go? You told me I need to go out more by myself and be famous, and I was thinking that if I had my own contacts...”

“I support both of those things, but you’re thinking of them like a Faerie. They’re two separate things. Opposite things. You can either be in public or you can be with magic people but nobody would thank you for doing both. There’s no way to stay safe. And you’re kind of a major figure right now in the War, so they’ll be gunning for you. Somebody, somewhere, will see you as a bounty. And I won’t let that happen.”

“...Again,” he says bitterly, as though he’s buying the tabloid story too.

In retrospect I guess that makes sense. He doesn’t look as different from Gabriel as I first thought, not really.

“Look, it’s you and me and the dog. We’re a team. I admire the thought but I don’t think it’s exactly the right time for that move. Not yet. Once we get the May on her throne you will have a lot more autonomy, okay? In both places. You can go anywhere in the Realms, once that happens. But first we have to do this, and it’s already the most dangerous thing you have ever been close to. So put that throbbing hot brain into action on things that make you more safe, not less, and let me think about finding her.”

He won’t break his gaze, I guess while that very brain melts down trying to figure out if I’ve somehow offended his delicate masculinity by wanting him to stay alive, but luckily the phone rings. Or, semi-luckily.

“S, it’s Gertrude.”

Chapter Forty-Seven: Imaginary Numbers

Alvy believes, from my particularly dismissive wave, that it’s less about halting our conversation—which is what it is actually about—than about the fact that my sister gets heavily on my nerves. For no real reason, which is one of the most irritating things about her.

“Soo. Bit of a... I think it’s okay.”

“Gertrude. Sister. Are you not meeting us in Pomona in like an hour? What.”

“It’s the Puck, Estelle. He says there’s no time for you to figure this out. The train’s leaving, you have to be at the station when it does.”

“Okay, and so what does that mean?”

“I think it’s the Queen. I think he’s giving you the Queen. That’s what this is all about, right? Summer succession. That’s why you want me as your body double. So you can go off and murder this lady, who’s like... Our aunt or something... And then what, I go down?”

“No, Gertrude. Absolutely not. I don’t want any of us going down. I just need to move the cards around while it’s going on. I’m sorry I didn’t entirely tell you. But you figured it out anyway, right? So that’s a good sign.”

“You are the most condescending person I have ever met in my life, Estelle Harlowe. And it’s so stupid because you can just explain things to me. Like, you could just tell me honestly what you want and why, and I would probably do it. But you never do.”

“Fine. It’s because I resent you and I don’t like who you’re turning into.”

“I’m turning into who I am, Estelle. So you don’t have to be. You can’t hate me from both directions. Just... pull your shit together. Please. I will meet you in Pomona in one hour.”

And when I hang up, I know I’m doing the Look before Alvy even kisses me. 

That’s the face he likes the most.

*

The Puck will not, of course, be at the handoff. He can’t be anywhere near this latest kidnapping and assassination and whatever else. This heist. Of course he will be in attendance when it goes down, but that’s not the same thing. Frankly, his involvement in the assassination is worrisome as hell, because it means he has a plan and we are not read in on this plan. But I guess that’s always been true.

It’s helpful to think about it both ways at once, just to calm down. Like when Selena showed up at my house with a little girl, and we were just three young ladies in an automobile: Vastly superior to imagining we had just kidnapped a very important political figure—she was just a little girl. 

And so now, on the one hand it’s like we’re going on a fun drive with our dog, to meet my sister and have a little bit of a picnic: Way less important, almost invisibly beside the point, that this might also be described as a fairly complex military op designed, in cold blood, to murder one of the faces of God as my people understand it.

Troy says this is the secret of magic. (Troy says everything is the secret of magic, which is itself also the secret of magic, according to Troy.) Selena was having real trouble with some of the theoretics—which admittedly he drones about in a particularly robot way, I’m guessing because he doesn’t love doing that part either—because as she explained it, she couldn’t understand how something so boring could supposedly make something amazing, which is the downside to how easy he makes it look. He explained that electrical engineering is also boring, but it’s how we get TV.

Then he said that different parts of your brain are doing things all different, and it’s just our little selves trying to keep up, tie it all together in a big bow. Like when you meet a new person, part of your brain is talking to them and learning their name, and another part is recognizing the face of someone you loved, just like by the angle of their chin, and you won’t know it but you’ll always treat them a little differently because of that. And maybe you find some thing about them sexy, or disgusting, like their smell or their posture, and that goes in too, and changes how you treat them, but because it’s your body doing that, you won’t notice it either. 

You think this is all one person, you, making all these decisions. But really you are just balancing very topsy-turvy on the tip of an iceberg that is always moving around, and always changing. We pretend that we love the things we loved when we were kids, we get very defensive sometimes about our nostalgia, try to ascribe objective quality and merit to things that are not that great—but the honest truth is just that you still have that kid down there inside you somewhere, say, seeing Star Wars for the first time.

And that kid doesn’t need to like the same things you do now, but that kid does deserve a voice, and if she doesn’t get it, she will freak out on people for not liking Star Wars the same way she did, when she was the one balanced on the iceberg so many years ago. But she’ll think she’s a grownup: She will think she is you. And you will let her, because suddenly it’s about you, and how smart you are.

So when you do a magic spell, he said, you’re just getting all those crazy horses going in the same direction. Feeding the little kid that wants to do magic ceremonies with potions and smoke and bells and circles, and the emotional you that wants to be loved by the universe, and the horny part of you that just wants to connect with everything.

Maybe the ceremony part, the boring math part, is just to get your brain in line with whatever else is going on. Maybe by distracting it, he said, but probably more like, by telling the same story but in a math way. He said you have to respect the part of you that likes boring things, too. It’s just as demanding—if not moreso, since it likes to pretend it’s the one driving at all times. And most of us let it.

You’re doing this one dumb thing—waving a wand in a circle or saying magic words—but you’re also calling up spirits or making friends with fire or whatever the spell is supposed to do. That’s why he uses kitchen knives for spells where there are knives, and then the knives go back in the drawer, for cutting up apples or pomegranates. Because then it also goes the other way: When you’re doing regular kitchen things, you’re still in the magic, too.

He says it’s like two dumb little kids that don’t know any better, arguing about whether Santa Claus exists. The kid that believes and the kid that doesn’t. But do you want to be a dumb little kid or do you want to understand magic, he said, staring at the ground: The point wasn’t ever whether Santa is real, it’s what Santa can do for you. Mathematicians don’t bully each other for talking about imaginary numbers.

And then, and this is a very good Selena trick, where she asks the obvious question you’re trying to get to, to save time but it also makes you feel smart. It’s a good trick because even if you see her doing it, it’s still like you’re working together: “So how can I be God, even though I don’t actually believe in God?”

And he smiled that sexy little crooked smile and he said, “Magic.”

I miss that boy so bad.

But it’s also the reason that, climbing into the car with my black dog in the back, or when he rests his chin on my shoulder or Alvy’s, driving to Pomona, I can think that he is just a dog, or a monster I made from my sadness, or a spy for the enemy, or some other kind of magic thing. 

And I can think he’s Gabriel, too. 

And I maybe won’t ever have to know for sure. I can just feel better with him there, no matter which way it goes down. Dog magic. Dog doesn’t care, he’s just a dog. Alvy for sure doesn’t care, Alvy’s still trying to figure out what Santa Claus even is. He’s met a few old elves in his time but none of them were jolly; in Summerland a lot of them end up turning into really grumpy trees. 

But me, I make a conscious decision not to care. And that’s magic. That is my kind of magic.

*

On the drive to Pomona the main thing I have noticed is Alvy doing little finger plays along the dash, armrest, and especially the window. I think he likes the feeling of the steel under his fingers. I never get the whole story, driving, but presumably it’s something he did as a kid. Acting out what he’d like to happen, or what he is afraid of. I can’t say I ever did anything similar but I do like it. I wonder who they are, these little finger people running around, pledging allegiances, pleading for mercy. Turning their backs.

They sing along with the radio: “Without love, where would you be right now?” Not a favorite of mine, but Gabriel liked it. Oldies. His kind of oldies. He didn’t really like music, the way Troy does or I do, but he thought he did. 

I don’t know what kind of music Alvy likes. He seems to like everything. A real boy that says that is lying, but Alvy, I’m not sure. I want at least some of my world to be sweet for him. A dance for every song, at least once, before we’re done. 

*

At the gazebo in Pomona it’s just Gertrude at first, sitting on the steps. Her hair’s no longer that strange deep auburn now that she’s me, but there’s still something off. Ice blue summer dress and a crown of flowers. She waves quietly as we drive up, and doesn’t move.

“Four Winter Guard,” Alvy mutters as if I haven’t clocked them already. The dog whimpers. “Eight and two o’clock and the other two on the far side of the park.”

“Easy, Alvy. They’re ours, remember?”

He pets the dog anxiously, anyway, as she stands and makes her way across the grass toward us. I leave the driver’s side door open, bell ringing softly, and climb into the back. We can’t be seen together. She’ll drive us to the train station and then head back to my loft, to prepare for the night’s revels. That gives us about ten minutes for download, while Alvy checks the guns and the dog sniffs her, curiously.

Before we can speak, blushing with secrets, the Guard all shing their guns to attention; the dog hops in the air like a thing a tenth the size, but does not bark. Alvy lights up; from where he’s standing he’s the first to see Michael, hustling across the grass toward us.

“Princess. Princess Gertrude. I am dispatched to assist you. Troy told me to come to this place, leave my telephone behind. I worried I would not find you here in time. I asked for detail in his account, but he gave me the strangest look. As if he...”

“I get it. He didn’t know he sent you. But he did. And Michael, he won’t mind. If you’re with us it’s okay. You can just be with us.”

“I will join Alvy while you plan, Princesses.”

The angel drops his head to his chest, that sweet breathless smile never quite fading. If you’d said when they met that Troy could ever be so smitten we would have laughed: He was hot, but dour. Boring like an angel; kind to a fault and always solicitous with Troy, but more like a butler in an old-timey society. And after Gabriel, he was inconsolable, which is not sexy either. But now he seems like a bearer of very good news, all the time. Even if he rarely is.

“So that’s three. Four, counting the dog. Unless you want the dog.”

Gertrude rolls her eyes, smiling. She must get enough of that with the Puck.

“They do seem to love you with the dog. I saw a thing of you and Alvy throwing a Frisbee to the dog and it was like an hour long. Nothing even happened, just some healthy looking Americans and a giant dog, romping around.”

“It was the clothes we were wearing, they made us do that. Drew a crowd. It was dumb. So listen...”

“I feel like I get it, Estelle. I have been practicing. I won’t show you because you would be offended either way but I do a pretty good Estelle.”

She’s right about that. I don’t even like hearing my own voice on tape. There is no way that’s a winning proposition. I’m not so intrigued by myself that I can handle seeing somebody else’s idea of what I’m about. But she’ll serve.

“I think parts of the Court have guessed what you...”

I shush her with a finger, not interested in talking about what happens next, and she smiles and nods easily.

“It’s been... Interesting. Watching the Court consider Alvy. You know, they’re a lot more ambiguous about your, um, former fiancé than I thought they were? They like that Alvy’s a Faerie, and I guess they kind of are into Summer right now, maybe because of me. But I expected more pushback.”

“They don’t get mortality. What you’re looking at is how the Realms treat death. Like a rare treat or... It’s always magical, when it’s us. There’s always some kind of deeper magic involved. Even Wars are sacred. All that death has to mean something, go somewhere or... They don’t get how Gabriel could be our age, and also be dead.”

They are not alone in that.

“Well. I regret for you. I’m not sure of the words, but... He is remembered in Winter. Not forgotten.”

“He would have liked to get to know you, Gertrude. I wanted that, for both of you.”

What I mean is, Thanks. What I don’t mean is: Anything I just said. But it makes her happy.

*

Gertrude safely nestled behind the wheel of my car—my car—she waves as we set out on foot. The dog cocks his head at me before bounding back to her, having made up his mind. I cannot say I will miss him after all; one more fact I needn’t juggle, until we are all home again. In personality he is not wholly unlike Michael, after all. 

The train station is not far; the thing we are looking for leaves from every station, when nobody is looking. High-speed rail, of course; but from parts older than the rails themselves. Pyrope garnet almost black under the lights for its skin, bunching like muscle over ancient bones, a thrumming in the air; windows like mirrors, like eyes. 

I expected something buglike, I suppose because Autumn is so quiet when they move, but that’s not it at all: It is an eight-legged horse, a snake so long you’ll never see its head. It is comforting, in a way; warm and breathing outside, all the amenities inside. Troy would call it a cat bus. Michael gives it a look of approval as we board. Perhaps it’s of angelic make somehow; maybe he just senses a kindred gigantic spirit.

Our car is left mostly to us, in the back. Head toward the front and that’s where you’ll find her, in a room made of gold within a room made of lead. Off on holiday, her one day a year as a commoner, while they get up a girl in glitter and roses and tear her apart, and she can return: The exiled Queen of Summer.

Right up there by the engine, where she can hear it scream.


Chapter Forty-Eight: Our Wildness

We still have an hour, Michael tells us, before the train’s last stop and next leg north, when we make our move. He says this with one eyebrow cocked, looking out the window’s sash into the sun, and so it went unquestioned. The things Michael knows, not even Michael knows he knows. I guess that’s part of the deal. Alvy’s got his feet up on the bunk, uncommonly at ease in this moving beast. 

“Michael. Listen, about you and Gabriel...”

I cut Alvy dead with everything I’ve got, but his eyes slide right off. It seems awfully unkind, from where I’m sitting, but Alvy’s comfort is obscurely intriguing. He half raises me a glass of champagne, but his eyes are somber.

The angel considers him, quietly. His smile retreats to his eyes but does not flame out. He must be moving along quickly indeed, with old Troy. It’s as irritating as anything. 

“Ask, then.”

I think of busting out the rifle early, just to wave it in Alvy’s face if nothing else. He finally cracks his neck, mouth a firm line, indicating Michael at the window; he’s doing a thing, and I need to watch the thing he’s doing.

“How did you meet? How did that ever... How did you find each other?”

That beatific smile, again. Quiet, and sad, but still somehow infrangible. Sacred or something, some word like that.

“How we did find one another. In all the time and space of our infinite creation. That is in itself a tale. It is a lucky thing, is it not. You know, I have heard and seen the way you all thought of him, those that knew him. Each to each, you carry a different memory of him. The many Gabriels. I cannot claim mine is any less fragmented, but it is mine. Of that we can be sure.”

*

It is not possible for the Song to be silenced entirely, for my Father to so turn His face we are alone. Any, any more than the dark of the moon means no moon at all. Do you see? But neither are we always beheld quite the same way; it is not continuous. Times there are He is the sun rushing behind a cloud, a bride behind Her veil. And though these are cold times, by comparison, they are not death. No matter though they feel that way; when the Song returns, that pain passes.

It is said by my wiser brothers perhaps this is merely lighting up from some unfamiliar angle. As the sun does revolve around the earth, you see, but shining through it. I have not the words. You do not. They are not necessary. I try to be clear. You are hearty companions and you have a necessary need. I must fulfill it, and tell you the story. I find myself troubled to begin. To find words.

Perhaps we are illuminated by the Song, goes this theory, regarded from a direction we have not yet considered. Angels, you may have cause to notice, can be a single-minded folk. Simplicity is sanctity. But I would imagine it is like your ultraviolet, your infrared, perhaps your microwaves. A color you cannot see. But that proves thus nothing but your own limitations. And so, perhaps, it is when we feel the presence of the Song recede. We prove our limitations.

I sat me on a bench in a city by the river, as the penumbra approached. There are certain physical symptoms that precede the darkness. We are urged to look within, at this time, for new ways to light the dark. To see the shadow as a mirror. I do bend to this task. I bend to it most fearfully. 

But to be brave, Princess, Knight, is not to be unafraid. It is to be afraid and yet to act. And so it is with these moments. No faith is never doubting, but to believe in the face of that doubt. It is contrary; it feels sometimes like a tantrum, contravening law. We are the only beings ever made who are incapable of doubt, and so perhaps it pains us especially to come so close. 

Or perhaps you hurt, all the time, and know it not. I do sincerely hope that is not the case.

*

A man came to me upon this bench and he said, without prelude and without pretext, “You are very beautiful and very lost.” 

This you see was your man Gabriel. In his brightest flower of a mood, under the sun.

“I am very beautiful,” I said. “But I am not terribly lost.”

And this man looked very deeply into me, with no fear at all. This was key. Glances glance from us like bullets, for to observe us is to see purely, you see. To look into a sun. Perhaps this was after all the moment of my eclipse, then. Perhaps I shone less, in his demon’s sight.

But this did not feel like Falling, discordant, and I did not fear. Even as he looked into me, and realized his demon’s lies would have no purchase, and took another tack.

“You are not lost,” this young man said, “But without purpose, for the moment.”

Well, he was correct. My moment of eclipse was more painful on that day, the day he found me, because I had nothing more yet to which I might devote myself. But nothing is not known, and so then I thought to myself, perhaps this is my task. This little man with the bright eyes, wanting something from me that neither of us could name: To be his, this would be a service worthy of the strongest, indeed. 

You think, little soldier, that I do not see you but I do: You think that I knew this was the enemy, and risked Falling. But I tell you that I have no enemy. Hell likes to think there is a War but that does not mean I must play along. I am not the sort of warrior that looks for War every single place. You cannot love with one hand and with the other fight. You cannot harry their halls, at the same time ever singing, as ever we do, “Please come home.”

You wait, and you love, and you grieve. You leave a place by the fire. Leave the lights on.

And so it was with this man. He did not attack, it was not his war, and so neither was it mine. He touched my tears with his hand, and it was warm. He dared himself, there by the river, to touch my face and so he did. Perhaps this was a moment of great import for him, perhaps it was nothing much at all. I certainly know not. 

I know that there was nothing fascinating about him to me, yet still I was fascinated; and believe the same held true for him. A greater plan, or something more mundane; a bargain was struck.

And then he was my task. I accompanied him, I shadowed you and the Wild Boy, I followed Selena when she arrived. I was everywhere, thanks to his ugly gift. The night you met Selena, Estelle, a vampire stalked Troy all the way to the wards of his home before I killed him. I took the villain’s place at the window and watched Troy lie down to sleep. Gabriel arrived in a black car a few minutes after and took me home, stripped me down, washed the blood from my body. The Summer troops outside your apartment met a similar fate. And so on. 

Your War flushes out such darkness; it is by this and other signs that I know you are righteous.

He lifted me from my momentary shadow; and if you believe my brothers and in this case I do, revolving me perhaps, to feel that light from a direction I had not known. One that felt like darkness, and sometimes still does. But it is mine, and I was his. As I am yours now.

This was my glory. Do you understand? To be of purpose. There is no being that has ever existed, not Hunter nor Puck nor you, that does not long for this. To excel, to act in accordance with our wildness, is to touch God. Most completely. And so to stray from our purpose, our calling, is to retreat into eclipse. To Fall.

And I believe it is this that Gabriel saw in me most clearly: To play his games, his murders, to fight honestly in his service, this was a beautiful thing. It kept me clean. As you do, now. As we three here today do move to do. 

In accordance with our wildness.

*

“I am not comfortable with that.”

The angel nods sadly.

“This is why I did not say. I try to sing it quietly, for you. You must still believe in a difference between war and murder, following different rules as you do. But to understand Gabriel, the part of Gabriel that I knew and the part of me that was his, I must tell you all of it. And this begins with death, and killing. But it includes such love, Estelle. Such extravagance of care. If ever you wanted to know him when he was tender, know only that he was. He could be.”

Alvy looks at me nervously, wondering if we’re treading on dangerous territory; it redoubles when he sees the Look, lighting up our little traincar.

“He was allowed to love you because you would never... Because you didn’t really care. I mean he told me this. I guess I thought about the other side of it. Like the Ladies. You loved him no matter what, so he couldn’t embarrass himself. He could do anything, be anything, and you wouldn’t... Gosh.” 

Gabriel had a lot of love to give, I suppose. Just not the language. I like to consider him this way, in his wildness as Michael says. Such extravagance of care.

“He could be cruel, as well. You did not love a stranger, Princess. You knew the man. He was... Once we found ourselves with others. Not in a soffit, this was a rooftop spa. A private penthouse party. I did not enjoy these overmuch but I was brave. I made conversations. And Gabriel who wanted always to ‘keep the party going,’ he would always say, afraid to sleep alone, or simply to sleep at all. ‘Keep the party going,’ he would say, and by this I knew he would somehow find his way to me, before falling asleep. Curled against and atop me, like a boy.”

I can’t help but smile at that. Just exactly how I always imagined them.

“This night he says it many times. And then there are fewer of us. And the refrain becomes different, minor, a new sound in the song. ‘This girl is really into you,’ he says. Something he has said before that I did not understand. This night he said it twice, and we kept the party going. And then he said it twice more, ‘This girl is really into you.’ I’ve no real capacity to determine the veracity of this claim, but it makes me uncomfortable. And still there are less of us.”

I know where it’s going, not only because I remember this side of Gabriel but because I have been around people before; Alvy’s mouth is hanging open like it’s another one of Michael’s war stories. Perhaps that’s what it is.

“By the time it is only we three, the woman has begun to agree vociferously, whatever her opinion before. This girl is really into me, she too says. And I see a thing taking shape, between the two of them. Between the three of us. And for a moment, though it stings to admit, I did question my task. Have I been in the house of my enemies all this time; is this cambion boy, this half-demon, nothing but a miser after all. A liar. And this is when he takes me aside...”

Michael’s eyes get hot, tearing up. Troy said he didn’t cry, driving away from the sick gardens, but here they seem real enough. 

“’How much do you love me,’ said our man. Our strong, wise, brave, young man. ‘How much do you love me,’ just like that, like he is spitting words upon the floor. We have kept the party going, I realize, further than it needed to go. His tolerance for drink is legendary but not inexhaustible. I must speak him true, whatever nightmare is now unfolding. ‘More than anything, in all this time, in this eternity, save One,’ say I, which is the truth. For me there was home and there is Gabriel, and I see no need to hide that fact. Even as the trap around me springs.”

Alvy nods, getting there slowly. I’m fascinated. It’s a little like a car accident and I feel like I might be sick, but this is a Gabriel I could have really enjoyed watching, at the least. He was a map of collisions; then too a reactor, a supercollider. Cold fusion, hidden away where you cannot see it. Until the explosion.

“I bend to my task. It is no... We did not eat of the Fruit. My body is innocent. To say better, I remember that my body is innocent, as you have forgotten. That is the right of it. And so if this is love, if this is keeping the party going and this girl is really into me, and Gabriel there in the corner, watching this thing he has made, is love, well. I am a simple thing and Gabriel is not. I will not judge what I love, will not pick it apart.”

This would be where Gabriel freaks out, I think; almost want to pat Alvy’s shuddering shoulder in comfort, is how sure I am what happens next.

“And then I see at the very moment the greatest fear in his eyes, this man. How much do you love me? Perhaps too much. Perhaps this is what frightens him.”

I shake my head, unwilling to interrupt; if that’s the wrong read it’s sweet enough to let it pass.

“I feel a dreadful twisting in my gut, as though something unholy driven through, at the fear and pain of him. This man, not yet angry at me nor disappointed: Simply afraid. As if I attack him. Make to take from him. I betook myself to the bedroom, shutting the door behind me as quickly as possible, and spent no small time there pacing the floor. One might say this was cowardice, but I would call this ungenerous and incorrect. I removed myself from a situation whose time had come to end, and my presence unrequired. I know not what he did or said, to make the woman leave. When he joined me in the bedroom he was alone, and...”

Michael breathes, hard enough that it steams the window. I’m afraid something will break the spell, holding my breath in turn. Alvy’s hand finds mine, sweetly. Sweaty.

“I saw in him, in his eyes and written through his bones, a disgust. A hatred and a disgust and a... When I was not the one. He, Gabriel, he was the one. I believe we should not have kept the party going, certainly, but I also think that since the invention of wine truth has viewed it as a method of escape. And so I wonder if this were not something he needed to learn; if this was not another form of service. And yet, too, I wonder at his abuse, long after she was gone. As though this idea I could conceive. Any of it. As though I could require anything else, the body or even the simple presence of another person, to be completely at peace and to know joy. With him.”

I wonder how much of this Troy has heard. It seems like a lot. Michael’s way of thinking about all of this stuff, I mean, not the story itself: Michael’s blindspots and intensity, in equal measure, seem like a unique challenge for someone like Troy, who thinks everything is simple as anything. Simple as fire.

“I do not like to be confused. But this has confused me and I think upon it often. I must assume, and so I do with ease, that one day it will be made clear to me. What he wanted from me, and why, in that moment. And whether my purpose was fulfilled. For I have too the luxury of knowing that I could have done nothing more for him, then or any other time, than I did. But should he have need, and I could not provide... The thought burns, still. One day I will know.”


Chapter Forty-Nine: The Ferdinand Moment

“None of that was... I did not need to know those things. How can I find soldier’s readiness, to calm the breath and move forward with our plan, and your angel standing there, as a valet waits upon his master.”

Alvy’s not wrong. It was not the best time to decompress, immediately after all that. We’re alone now; Michael clambers along the traincars’ tops, or so he planned, to provide backup and possibly extraction once we’re done. I am in agreement with Alvy that it’s a relief, in some ways. It was nice getting to know him, in some ways; in most ways it was not.

I’ve packed two separate Spring outfits for us; among the Realms it’s the closest thing to invisibility, Summerlands mufti. One in case anyone might see us boarding the train, and these now to make our way forward in the cars, past Autumn bloggers and Winter revelers and all the rest. Summer playing cards and riddles as we go. We struggle into them, shedding our Michael experience like the clothes we toss out the window, into the wind.

“If Troy knows half of that, he knows it all. Send an assassin on an assassination. He could be saying he’s onto us. Which means my intervention is happening the second we get home.”

“Assuming we make it.” Alvy shivers, excited for action. 

I wonder how famous he wants to get, here. “None of that. No martyrs. No collateral damage. We do this job, we get out, we do the plan. Nothing exciting, okay? Nothing cool.”

I can tell he wants to throw me off, and can’t find the right words to do so without lying. He just nods.

“Did you notice he didn’t actually say what he and Gabriel got up to, in the end?”

In fact I had not noticed that. Out of faerie practice. Good to have a Summer around.

“I don’t suppose it matters, at this point. We know he’s with Troy and Gabriel is dead. Let it lie. Is that really why you asked about it?”

Alvy shakes his head easily, hands spread wide.

“I wanted to know. You all had this friend who died. I feel left out. I like Michael, a lot. And it seems like Gabriel is a favorite subject of his, and I thought he could talk about it, and that would make him happy.”

I suppose that’s true, actually, if not the whole truth. Angels are boring because they are into their thing. But Michael’s thing was Gabriel, for some intense amount of time, and maybe more like he was mine than I really thought about, so it wasn’t boring. It most assuredly was not that.

“He did seem happy. Happier. I guess it must be a relief in certain ways. I just can’t imagine why he would think I wouldn’t want to know.”

“Which part? The sex part or the serial killer part?”

“Honestly, either.”

Alvy knows that one was a lie, but it slides.

“I think he is fond of you and not just because he belongs to you all. You don’t see it but he likes you.”

“It’s not that I don’t see it, Alvy, it’s that I don’t care. I like him too. Doesn’t matter. We’re family, or... Even if he weren’t sworn to us he’s still Troy’s, so he’s mine by default. Like you’re Troy’s.”

This last purely to make him smile. “A small man has a density,” Alvy chuckles. 

One of Michael’s stranger pronouncements, as he tried to illustrate for an enrapt Alvy exactly what the attraction to Troy entailed. “Among mortals the fashion is ever height in men, which I have never understood. Troy is every bit a man like you, Alvy. A Son of Adam, great in spirit and in stamina. Not like a child, as some among you would have it, but very much a man. Full of man’s passion. Yet he is small. He is compact. There is a...” 

The angel looked to me, curiously, for the word. The word I suggested, flippantly, was density, but he nodded sharply. 

“Precisely. A small man has a density.”

*

We pick our way up, Springed all to hell in Free People shift and Ren Faire leather vest, awkward backpack like we’ll be hiking wherever this train is going, pausing to chat between cars just to defuse the weirdness. Time isn’t like in the Realms, here, but it’s not realtime either. There’s a little bit of the bends, between cars. None of the porters or watchmen is noticing us yet, either: They see the ungainly pack and their eyes slide off. Hard as diamond, I think and smile.

In this car, however many remain before the main event, there is a group of Summerland youths, sneaking competitive looks as they jockey for position in their social games. To be on the Queen’s train, even though that is a secret, is still spiking their antennae in some way. Not every Courtly reward is death. There is the trooping, an honor; there are infinite official titles and circles and guilds and nonsense. There are also, it seems, luxury travel packages.

They can barely contain themselves, playing poker with wicked cards and hooting in voices that can carry. I never thought about it, but young Summers are actually pretty likeable. They have not grown into themselves, yet; have not hardened behind their masks, into their roles. They are more like real people than any Summer I’ve yet met, with the exception of Alvy. Even catch a couple of smiles, as we make our way through them. Not much in the way of density.

On our next break, I don’t even have to ask.

“Those Summer kids. They won’t go to the War. They won’t have heard of it, some of them.”

I brace myself for another class struggle protest, but he shrugs with a smile instead.

“One day they’ll all be like that. We won’t war anymore because we won’t have anything to fight about. And they don’t even know it. We’re giving that to them and they’ll never know.”

The freedom of the homeless, the refugee, the émigré. He never seems to see that side of it. Perhaps it’s inborn, this blindness; maybe he just doesn’t want to say it aloud. So I do not. He’s been at all the meetings, he’s been party to the tactics—he’s good at it, for starters, and well-read on war; he’s also officially our Summer ambassador, as they are annexed, so he’s around for that too—but he never seems worried about what to do with all these people we are freeing. Freedom is enough, I suppose, for now. Or at least for him.

“This is the Franz Ferdinand, you know that. We kill this woman, it all starts. The Realms fold in upon themselves. We may not have to move troops, depending on how the topography reacts. Not even the Puck can predict that. They could be superimposed, they could buckle, we don’t know. Either way it will be unholy chaos.”

“Contradiction in terms,” Alvy says lightly, and moves to the next car.

*

The next car is full of darkness, and fucking. I think Winter but it’s dark enough it could be anybody. They seem to be having fun, though, which isn’t really our style. Nor Summer’s. I have no idea what Autumn does when it’s alone, to consider itself. But perhaps it is this. As our eyes adjust, I can see that they’ve lit some candles, which I believe confirms it. They love candles.

“Alvy, do you know what you’ll do, after this?”

“After what, dear. After we kill this lady? After we unite the Realms? After we harry Hell?”

“All of the above. I may not be around for all of that, so it’s good to discuss.”

“I don’t want to discuss it right now, Estelle. It needn’t be now. Time enough for that later. My question to you, instead, is whether this will drive you further from your friends, or closer.”

It’s a good question. I know what I want, and what I want behind that. But they don’t signify.

“These are two separate campaigns, Roosevelt. We can get back together with the crew when the Realms are unified. I can say that. I will hold out until then. It’s just too dangerous otherwise.”

“You are a fool in this way, this one particular way, in which you think they will forget you.”

“I hope that they do, when I’m gone.”

“I mean now, Princess. I mean that you are torturing yourself, and them, holding yourself apart. You have said it is for the optics and you have said it is because you are working on becoming disgusting and you have said that it is for their safety. One of those would have been sufficient. But you claim them all, which leads me to believe there is a fourth reason more true still. We do not multiply entities, you always say.”

But the same is true for him, of course. He wants to annoy me and Michael into some kind of spontaneous breakdown about Gabriel, to clean it out for good. As Troy said, and Alvy took very much to heart, sunlight is the best disinfectant. But that multiplies entities, because he also wants me and Selena to be together again, and he misses Troy terribly. Those are different needs he wants to be the same need, because he wants to be on the same page about everything.

“The fourth reason is that you are a Knight of the Fae and have no understanding of mortality or what time is. You think you understand but you are not fluent in the language of time; you still translate it in your mind. What is to regular people an hour is, to me, a day. But that same amount of time is to you both a year and a single moment. You don’t live in the real world and you never will. That’s the thing you’re overlooking. We don’t have time to clean everything up and snip every messy thread. I am going to die. Soonish.”

He breathes, hard, back against the orgy car’s door. Sheepish.

“You are correct, Estelle. I cannot conceive of that.”

What he means is, I’m sorry.

“What angers me about it is that I should not have to. You dwell upon death overmuch. And I say this not as your naïve Summer boy, but as sworn companion and dear friend. I am no Fae when I say to you, you dwell too much upon your death. You have never had a moment free of it. It follows you always, since you were born, and you are caged by it. And this to me is the tragedy. And I think you are afraid they will take that away from you. You fear distraction not from your War but this romance with your doom.”

“That is a horrible goddamn thing to say.”

“Indeed it is. And so I must love you very much, or not at all.”

The next door, I kick in.

*

They hop to, with guns: Summer’s indistinguishable troops, as we enter. But even if they had not; even if I hadn’t alerted them to our presence like I have, I would know: A heat emanates from the fore of the car, and you can hear the engines growling. This is either the royal car, or one more to go.

We hold up our innocent hands. Of course none of them recognize Alvy—even if they did, it would be so embarrassing given his rank and his sister they’d be hard-pressed to resolve it before we had them on their knees anyway—but I’m almost miffed they pass right over my face, as well. Expecting a couple of flighty Springs, drunk or high, wandering around the cars like fools, no doubt. I’m sure that’s most of the duty. I wonder if even here in her proximity they know the precious cargo they carry.

“We seek the counsel of the golden room,” I say uncertainly, and they nod, conversing silently.

“And who asks passage?”

I breathe. In the corner of my eye I can just see Alvy gearing up. So ready to go. They won’t notice, though: All eyes are on me, and he’s very subtle.

“A lowly pilgrim, a supplicant. Bearing a lantern. Let us pass.”

They aren’t sold, and I didn’t imagine they would be. Ask again.

“Who asks passage, upon this rail?”

“A servant of the Queen Mum, and the Puck who bears no banner. And a Knight in Summer’s service.”

I could lie. I could tell them any manner of hogwash and they’d believe me, looking behind the words rather than the ones I am saying. Playing faerie games and games of men. It is so much better to tell the truth and be ignored, than to lie and be ignored anyway.

“I ask again, and for the last time. Speak true, who comes?”

“The Princess of Winter, and her Knight. To take the throne of Summer for her Majesty the May.”

Alvy produces double daggers, but the men stand aside.

“We are but sentries,” the speaking one says into his chest, “I knew not who we guard.” I catch the glance of another, still itching for a fight. This could still explode.

“Let us pass and we will free you from your servitude. And all the Summerlands once more a bower and a kingdom, of love and celebration. Without fear, standing in the sun. Let us pass and all shall be made right.”

They confer. Now that I am lying, it starts to feel weird and bad.

“You would have us defect, most dishonorably join the forces of your Court.”

“I would not. The new Summer will bow to no Realm and no ruler. Hell will be harried, and the Courts triumphant and free.” They hear the voice over and above my voice, on this last; the ring of truth.

“Lady,” he says. And as one they lower their weapons, turning backs upon the blazing hall. Alvy and I stare for a moment, unmoving; the gauntlet of their disregard. A young Summer lad, rosy cheeks and curling hair, steps forward from the rear of their company.

“I would join with you now. I saw the May, on her day of coronation. As she strode out it came to me that I should do the same. I was not brave then. No braver am I now, but I would join with you. As you troop to her door.”

Alvy shrugs, and the boy steps in line. I don’t bother asking his name; there’s no time to deputize him now anyway. Dub him. But he will be rewarded, should he survive. The rest of them remain, backs to us and to the center aisle, lit by the bronze fires of the engines as they move. Tears in more than one set of eyes, perhaps, but holding.

And if my last thought, before we enter the great Court of Summer in Exile, is one of demographics, well. I am only what they made of me. The leisure class back there, like Alvy always said they would be, is ready for a revolution. They’re of the age. And if the military has already turned, this Queen has not been doing her job. The rest are tied up with the Court, and will follow the Queen’s lead, whoever she might be. The refugees are already ours, by compact and tender ministration. And that’s all of Summer.

We never could have killed her at home. But who knows how deeply she is woven into them, the hearts and breath of them and their kingdom. Perhaps if she retained her domain, if the May had not walked out, they wouldn’t be doing this. The last time a Queen and King of the Realms fought, the Puck never ceases to remind me, it broke the world. Maybe this is a sign of that, or maybe it’s just time. Either way.


Chapter Fifty: Harvest Home

The Puck is on me before I have taken her in: Sliding in beside me on the couch at the Oak King’s revels, as though she were never gone from my side. Cobwebs and cowslip in her hair, lavender blue; empire waist and sleeves artfully draped to suggest a hot summer wind has just bedraggled her. A shoulder, brushed by a curl, jabs into mine swiftly. In Summer the Puck is no friend of mine.

I do not immediately acknowledge her, for doing so would draw attention and we are only just barely welcome. In a deep, darkly green forest there is a misty lake, not quite wider than the eye can see, to the treeline. And in that lake there is a mossy island, three acres at most, and on that island the Queen of Summer and her consort, surprisingly, hold their revels in a pavilion. Open air in the sunlight, even as the mists converge around our island.

They knelt to us, when we came through the door, and said we were expected. Led us to a flat-bottomed canoe at a dock cunning in its decrepitude. I had not thought Mabon would be upon them so swiftly; that they would cling so already to death. White, wide-winged birds circle in the mist. It was easy enough to glamour up a quick change of outfits, Alvy proudly rowing, as we saw what we’d be dealing with.

We were met by three of the Queen’s personal guard, who’ve escorted her out of the Summerlands every year since they can probably remember being alive, hundreds and hundreds of years. And none of them ever there for the ceremony itself. For them May Day would be a day of revelry, wine and sex. No uncomfortable thoughts. They’ll be a harder sell, if we must turn them; they’ll be impossible, if we have to fight our way out. 

I can only picture Michael on the other side of that knobby garnet-riveted door, where it is still a train. Awkwardly avoiding the soldiers’ eyes as he wonders how to make his entrance. I wonder if he even can, unbidden. Suppose we should have thought of that. Summer dresses are less binding, but somehow less comfortable. I wish I had pockets.

I’m not sure of the enchantment, being that this train is an Autumn conveyance by agreement: It’s not like my pleasure boat with the ballroom in back, not a dream within the dream of the Realms. And yet here we are, in a place that cannot exist, retired to a high judge’s tower at the edge of the clearing. We were waited upon, before backing slowly out of the party, by footmen our soldiers could be slaughtering. It is a welcome refreshment, and pushed so far to the back of our crowd, on our little divan high above the revels, I can eat without feeling any eyes on me.

Any but hers, of course. The Hob-Goblin.

“Your sister told my message true, then. You come on her behalf, and Winter’s. The Princess Gertrude, and the...”

“I do wander everywhere, swifter than the moon’s sphere.”

The Puck nods, crystal-beaded headband dipping low on the left. She pushes it up again. “The King doth keep his revels here tonight.”

“I noticed that. Who’s holding down the fort back home? If I’ve got the ... girl... And the Queen Regent is here, and her husband...”

Alvy clears his throat, locking gaze with his Puck as I might, in another form: “The King will be transfigured tonight, Highness. You don’t know all our customs. You identify with the May, and so you remember her death. But it is not the only one.”

“The Oak King dies and is reborn, you say.” I remember it now. It’s true. I was instructed in all these things, but my tutors’ interest in the other Courts only barely outpaced mine: If it wasn’t about Hell, the real world, or strange things like the Ladies of the Canyon, I didn’t want to hear about it. I was a bullet fired out of the Court from the time I was born, it wasn’t anything I’d need to know on my way out.

“Like they are going to kill an old man? Like they do the little girls?”

Alvy shrugs. “Symbolically.”

“Oh, symbolically. Funny how that works out.”

The Puck shakes her head, almost admiringly. “And now, Princess. What infernal business plan you, in your far-away seat so high.”

“I’m already taking their lands, and not symbolically. I plan to put the May upon the Throne, sometime in the next hour or so. What’s to stop me from making a clean sweep?”

Even the Puck, staring down at her children from our tower, shivers at the thought.

“Lady. I thrill to your undoing. But this? Recklessness will be your wrack. You whistle up a symphony of storms.”

“Good. Answer me true, what’s to stop me? If ever a Summer you did advise...”

The Puck looks down at her hands, no longer smug or smiling. Gives it some thought.

“Here in Summer I cannot say. I am the skin in which I walk; no oracle of yours. You will put a bastard Queen upon every throne, before you are done. Is that not what your Champion said, the day the War began? Perhaps he spoke true.”

“Perhaps? Or always.”

The Puck concedes, fond of Troy as ever, crunching ice between exquisite teeth. Fat curls like a nasty cousin in a romance, falling out around her headpiece as she fidgets. She smooths the pale rose of her gown, all the way down to her knees.

“Indeed. I find myself at the moment of my crisis. Imagine knowing every word of a song but the last. I shall not be unscathed. None yet will. But I must urge you on.”

Alvy hisses at her, across me; presses one tan hand upon my own, in my lap. “So you admit the world will break, should she do this thing. I agreed to vengeance, justice. This is murder. This is a coup.”

The Puck nods without moving; a single eyebrow agrees. “The Princess will do what she will, Knight of the White Rose and the Blue. Arthur Ailbe, it’s already done. Do not presume this conversation affords you any portion.”

Alvy pulls my hands into his own, to all the world an impassioned swain. If any of them, far below, could see us. Planning the end of their universe, up here in the breeze. If any looked up they would see a Summer errant in love, and his belle dame. “Then let me do it. Let me pull the trigger on the world. You are mortal, I would not see you damned.”

I know what he means is that he wants to be the one who did it. Angle it right, he could end up on that throne himself. Right beside our little friend.

“Alvy, you don’t know me at all if you think I’m going to let you make some... Even if you secretly think it’s going to impress me, it’s not. It’s just gross. I have vengeance here, too. The Oaken King, the Queen of Summer, they are as much to blame as my own Court. They are culpable. You see a Kingdom, land of your birth, underwritten by the Fallen, and mistake it for the world.”

“I see a girl who is subject to mission creep, who brought me here for a reason.”

“And I am not stopping you from killing the Queen. I’m just telling you, more than that is excess. I can be damned all I want, Alvy. I am going to Hell either way.”

And they’ll never crown a regicide. They can forgive him for killing the Queen, especially if the replacement is this momentary hero figure the May. But a son of the Realm killing their father, that they won’t forget.

“Then we are agreed. Together. Side by side.”

He leans over to kiss me then, eyes and cheeks on fire with it for one moment: Our story, and his. This brave Summer and his revolution. 

It is not the most satisfying kiss of all time, to be honest.

*

I still look to get eyes on Michael, if he’s managed his ingress, before Alvy’s in position. None of this has to go down, if the angel will just show up. He’ll find the weak point and destroy it, as our sworn guardian, and if Alvy still wants the Queen’s head he can have that too. An angel at the center of this revolution would really get them going. That would drive everybody nuts.

Time, the way it behaves, means we could be nearing Mabon—my birthday, the equinox—even as we sit here, biting cherries off the bough they brought around. Strange, to be here on a Queen’s errand, at the King’s last revels. Not so long ago it was Midsummer and the King in Oak was at his height, even outside the Realm when he joined his exiled bride. We forestalled the War so long for that, it felt like centuries. And now he sits here, upon his breezy bed, watching the tourney and the dancers, the fools, beside the Queen, muslin banners in the breeze. Laughing. Their hands clean as anything.

When I cannot stall him anymore, Alvy heads to take the place he’s chosen: A copse of trees down by the water, a natural blind at my nine o’clock. He’ll have a free shot at the Queen even if she deigns to drop to the blossom-strewn grass as she keeps threatening to do. Snapping the scope out of my rifle and hiding it in one curled hand like a street magician, gun at my feet on the platform, I take her in.

The Queen of Summer is a cruel beauty; soft and dew-kissed, with hardness in the very edge of her mouth, like a kiss that sternly refuses to be taken. She affects a generically aristocratic style, pearls in the beehive and all that, unblended rouge like a child’s doll—to commemorate the murder back home?—and larger breasts than is the usual custom, corseted to her chin. She does not look desperate or overlush; she looks, by definition, perfect. But there is an artifice to it, the bounty of her appointments, the generosity of her smile, that makes her seem small.

I wonder how old she was when she took the throne. How many died, backroom deals were made, other girls just barely missing the spotlight. I wonder how long she has been Queen. Time means less than nothing, here, but possibly she is tired, and that’s where the edge comes from. Or maybe it’s a natural Summer trait, this unknowable selfishness in the back of the eyes. I remember Gabriel’s mother: It never got less ugly, she said: She just learned to enjoy it more. Her eyes glittered like this, too.

And my prey? He sits, still on his great bed, flags flying, sated as an infant. Round cheeks; my mother always referred to his face, “like a fat baby’s face!”, as though he could help that. As though it meant a difference to his rule. I wonder why they have not had children. 

“Puck, be good. Pookha, be true.”

“I wait upon thee, mistress.”

“How many times in your memory has the Teind come from Summer?”

“One in every four, mistress.”

“Speak me true, Hob-Goblin. How many were true citizens of Summer? How many of the Blood?”

“Neither. In my memory. They do enjoy their tricks on mortals. Merry pranksters, the Seelie Court.”

“No Summer citizen has ever been damned to the Tithe? In your entire memory?”

“My memory is the land and tower on which we stand, dearest monster. You breathe its air.”

True enough. I can see why she wouldn’t want me questioning that. The Summer boy we picked up in the last traincar circles around behind the pavilion, presumably to catch any stragglers when they scatter. His fellow soldiers are indulgent with him, all ruddy cheeks and excitement.

“...But they do not bother with the marriages, the arrangements, the rewards in Hell. To save their prey, they are not given to kindness. To changeling and fetch, to the many princesses... That is a Winter trait. Summer merely kidnaps, and sells. Quickly.”

But is that better? Or worse? Is she telling me to do it, or warning me about what happens next? I tick off my fingers, one by one.

“Power vacuum. One that suits my purposes. It’s a coup. And I have a Queen lined up that won’t even disturb the deeper magicks of the Realm. So that’s fine.”

“Indeed,” she nods, blank-faced. Too blank, in fact, for comfort.

“Puck? Why are we here now? Why now, at the Oak King’s last revels?”

She looks me straight on, then. In the eyes.

“Kill him and find out. You won’t get another chance.”

I should have brought Michael in. Obviously, that was the smart play. The King of Winter and Summer’s Oak look a great deal alike, in the way that all old men conform to a central type. Michael could kill him and it wouldn’t be a problem; he’d love it, probably. Glory in it, and Troy nowhere around to feel weird about that. But he isn’t here. And unless he shows up before Alvy loses his nerve, that chance will pass. My wrack.

“You imagine the angel could save you from this? Save your soul? Princess, in a kingdom far away I knew a girl much stronger than this. You send soldiers every day to kill. And you here now, with your shiny new toy, fading at the task.”

“You sound desperate. Next you’ll say you love Gertrude more than me, or...”

“Never could I. She is touched by corruption; when you called her out again into the world it was ecstasy upon my Winter skin. I swear you this. But Highness, she is not here, either. Here there is only you, and I, and your fear.”

The Puck takes my hand, the scope, and holds it to my eye, sighting Alvy in the blind, straight down her arm. Exposed, if we leave them any sense of stability or control. Leave them a King to protect and they’ll scramble, like a chess game. He won’t have backup. Our little recruit at the back of the island, too, if he gets overexcited or cocky and they realize he’s a traitor.

“And, of course, your consort there. He will have his revenge. A new Queen upon the Summer Throne. And then he will go down, like a fox to the hounds, because you did not complete your pact. Cowardice or dishonor, he will know you have betrayed him. That will be your legacy, when the Black Dogs come. Or, over on this side...” She moves her arm just that inch necessary, sighting the King dead-on. “...You have a man complicit in your doom. A man who profits no less and considerably more than the Queen of Cinders herself, from this arrangement. You did not suffer that one to live long, either. The Puck does wonder, is it only Queens that you can murder?”

And I suppose that’s sound. It’s hard to hold men responsible for anything, once you see how little they have to work with. On the other hand, that’s how they stay in control.

“He is not a goodly man, like your royal father. He requires no room to move, to think. Where his sweetness would lie, there is only appetite. He would have bedded your little May without a thought, because it is what’s done. He would have sold you to Hell even faster, to protect his sons. For is that not exactly what he did? What they all do?”

The problem is they are too much like my parents, she’s right. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing, any more than the King and Queen of Winter. Sitting in that castle, gone dark, singing little songs because they don’t know what else to do, as it falls down around them. We are in that vision, now. We are watching it happen. “They’re too dumb, Puck. Like animals.”

“And yet. If we show them mercy, by that measure, must we not show all villainry the same?”

Like Michael was saying. One-sided War is no War at all. It seemed so reachable when he said it. So good.

“Allowed without question, it continues. Alvy’s influence hangs heavy in your sky, Princess. You think it vengeance, justice. Punishment. But in your heart, your Winter heart, you know...”

“It’s just politics. It stops.”

The King of Cinders—and I mean, this is through the filter of Gabriel, but I saw enough to corroborate—and the particular pressures he applied to his son, even the ones that didn’t make sense, didn’t they come from somewhere? His father, maybe. Or some other King in Hell. And those too felt the pressure. I thought the King hated Gabriel because he was half-human and that felt soft to him, but if the Fallen are as hard as Michael, that wouldn’t be it. No matter how twisted. 

It would remain, vestigial, an appendix. Like language, handed down from father to son: Meaningless code to act against your inclination to be kind. And then reinforced by the boys, young men, Kings among themselves: What is acceptably soft, what is too much silence, what is not enough. The way the world nearly ground the magic right out of Troy, before he found me. All these unspoken rules, out of a central fear: Weakness, which in Hell is death. 

And so the only way to save Gabriel, or our future son—perish the thought—was to sever things in time to preserve whatever stayed clean in him. Cut him off not just from those nonsense stories about himself, but from the politics. To stop it. I kept him small enough to get it done, too, if he hadn’t died on me. I didn’t want to punish the King of Cinders—now, of course I do, but growing up—I just wanted to save everybody from him. How is this any different?

“Your War is to love these people, Princess. And this is how. Kill their King.”

Alvy pulls a red handkerchief from his sleeve, swiping it through the air, side to side, until I can return the signal. It’s time, he’s ready. No more waiting. Michael’s great shaggy head would be visible from any distance, over the crowd as they revel. 

He will be sad to have missed this. In accordance with our wildness.

Time seems to slow as we take our separate shots. My first shot goes wild, but Alvy’s is true. 

The Puck hurries away, through the gunsmoke as the soldiers and the faeries riot, in confusion; skirts pulled up to her knees as she goes, away into the darkness of the forest. In the moment of her crisis, she does not dwell overmuch on death either.

I can just imagine the hot tears in Alvy’s eyes, as he makes this a grand moment: Knightly duties discharged, honor restored. A rose under glass in his family garden. A fox in the hedge, as it struggles. And at last she is free. He could drown in so much drama, all about him. His righteousness. But still, and yet, the Queen is dead.

And then, just a moment later, the King goes down. Looking me, somehow, impossibly, up the scope as he goes. Right in the eye. And as he nods, deeply, my laughter is bitter. 

Summer boys and their romance.



Chapter Fifty-One: The Queen’s Lesson

After some length of time there is the sound of great wings. The mist around our little massacre has cleared, revealing only a small pool where once we were surrounded by water: Everything else is wreckage.

What lies around us now is a broken train, bodies and smoke, small fires. Less like a derailed train than a plane crash. Naked Winters, their bodies entwined. Summer kids still clutching their cocktails and playing cards. A melted, hissing place where the engines of the Autumn train burned its coal. A faerie circle made of bodies and garnet like magma, like ropes shining.

“Little chieftain. Estelle. Are you awake?”

Michael stands over me on the grass, surrounded by the garbage of the blast. Too late, once again. Bleeding from knees and a deep cut on his face, looking down with naked worry.

“Michael. My head’s still all... I think I have a concussion or something. Where are we?”

“No name for it, now. You were in a between place I could not search out. I remained upon the train, looking for your light. Eventually the blast... Where is your man Roosevelt? Shall I find him? We must hurry, Princess. You are needed at home.”

“Where is that.”

“The Court of Winter. Best to just leave. I will not trade gossip with you, but it is dire. You have broken the world, I think. Perhaps Faerie holds no boundaries against Hell, I cannot say. But I think the wards are gone. I think there is now only chaos.”

Unholy chaos, Alvy said: Contradiction in terms. And the wards... My heart sinks. He won’t say it, but I know it. I know that look: Gabriel’s arms tightening around the Queen of Cinders, growing ever brighter. I have brought war home.

“My mother is dead.”

Michael puts his chin to his great chest in sorrow, like a pelican.

“You are needed, Estelle. Troy and Selena are headed there. The May... Summer’s Queen awaits.”

“Where’s Gertrude?” She’ll need to know. She’s the Winter Queen, now. Bastard Queens on every throne. I have killed her mother and mine.

The angel shivers, unable to speak. What has happened to my sister?

“Well. She’ll probably be pissed at me. I can’t deal with that yet. If she’s still on the prowl in the city, maybe that’s best.”

“None can find her, in world or Realms. Selena does not think it is related.”

“So she’s just compounding my hassle. As usual. Michael, tell me what else. There’s something else. My father? The King in Winter. I...”

I can feel it, somehow. A child stamping her little shoe so hard the ground opens up, like Rumpelstiltskin. Falling, forever. 

Michael weeps, gathering me in his arms like a doll. Like his little man Gabriel. Carrying me through the smoking, stinking dead.

“You have united the Realms, Princess. You have brought the War to Hell. Your aims have been accomplished. Mourn them, but do not follow.”

I want to kick, and slap, and punch him; even with his arms locked around me as he walks. But I realize this is why he didn’t want to talk about it, tell me what was happening. He shudders with it, knowing he can’t protect me from this, knowing he’ll give me any truth I demand.

The mists gather and part, behind and before us. I don’t remember the distance to the pavilion being quite so far, from up high. Time and space doing funny things, here on the periphery. He does not step over the bodies, but around them. Quietly respectful and ultimately meaningless, just like everything he does. Like any angel. 

I consider him, as we go. There is a peace to him, even now—the angles and planes of that craggy, eternal beauty—that is repulsive as it is magnetic. He could be taking out the trash.

“Minor Courts? Did I kill them too?”

The angel shakes his shaggy head, neither yes nor quite a no. Unlikely as ever to look me in the eye. But he holds me tighter than he needs to, which tells me something. 

I thought Alvy was a good companion because he cared more about this stuff than me, so he wouldn’t mind the things I had to do. But Michael, he’s whatever lies beyond that. He doesn’t care, not because he cares about something else more, but because he can’t. Or because the thing he cares more about is unknown to me. Or I already killed it.

I wonder how far Gabriel went down this road, while he lived. How much comfort that love, its uncaring eye, its flux, must have brought him. He always wanted to know how he was doing. For someone like me, it’s no comfort at all when the answer is always, “Wonderfully.” Even the Ladies of the Canyon made it clear they loved both sides of me, sweet and dirty. But Gabriel?

“There is no throne occupied. Your destruction was eightfold. There is only your Queen, for now. Gertrude, if she can be rescued from her plight, whatever it may be. There are no Kings or Queens in Hell, Highness. That is only a game they play, aping their betters.”

He sets me down lightly on my feet, great paws gripping at my shoulders.

“The only enemy is history, you said.”

I did. And I didn’t know what I was saying, any more than Troy did when he prophesied this. Or when the little May Queen asked for all their heads on pikes. I knew, and didn’t know. 

And perhaps I was like Gabriel in this way too: I wanted the option, always, of crawling back to the safety of the cage. In those last moments before my death, I suppose I had fantasies at times of crawling back to their arms, to the cold and remote embrace of Winter. To the root and seed of what I was destroying. I want Michael to hate me, then, badly. To slap me, like he might slap Gabriel, and bring me back to the short and sharp.

“Selena and Troy can’t be there. I can’t look at them.”

He shakes his head again, with great sadness. I can see him thinking of Troy, Troy’s breaking heart, written upon his face. God, what Troy must be feeling right now. That Autumn boy, on my pleasure boat, and the story he told about the videogame: You invite the vampire in, and later you find she’s been quietly murdering everyone you love, all along.

“They want nothing more, Estelle. The sacrifice is not in dying, but in having to kill. You are a warrior, you know this. Face your shame bravely and you will find peace.”

Tall order. But in the absence of lies, an ugly truth must feel like a lie. It feels like bullshit, what he’s saying, but I can’t seem to stop making him say it. Altogether uncharacteristic, not to mention uncharitable. Let Michael be Michael.

“Let’s get Alvy and get out of here, then.”

A groan issues from beneath the remains of the Summer pavilion: A bloodied face, staring out through the lattices that shore it up. Alvy Roosevelt, my accomplice murderer. Taken nearly apart. Smiling, gleaming in the dark.

“Alvy, my God. What happened?”

His pained smile shines at us, up from the darkness.

“War, Highness.”

*

It’s too much to risk the real world, now. Too much time could be lost in the crossing, and we’re needed on deck immediately. And so we will walk. Through the formless unchanging smoke and mist of the Realms, we walk. Alvy’s right arm is broken and my hedge magic won’t work, so we bind it up. He holds onto me with his left, as we go.

“I’m barely standing, but I don’t matter anymore. The May has taken her throne, and you are her Knight, Alvy. True Knight of Summer, now. Winter’s throne stands empty until we find Gertrude. The War between the Kingdoms is ended. We won. Time to harry Hell, I suppose.”

Michael shakes his head again, in that noncommittal way.

“Highness, we’ll discuss it when you’re home. But I think there is no Hell to harry. Hell is here. We are political animals, now. Dissidents. Written in the deepest magics, they say, the Courts held their rent and tithe against the dark.”

I wanted to bring the Realms to the real world, not dissolve them together. Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms. But Alvy cocks his head, quick as a raven on the fields of war.

“Does that mean the Teind is forfeit? Are you safe, Estelle?”

I hadn’t considered that. To be honest, I haven’t considered that in a while. I was so focused on my deadline I didn’t really worry about why, or what it would mean.

Somehow I don’t think I’m that lucky.

“I don’t care. I said I would take down Hell and that’s what I am going to do. I want to look Gabriel’s father in the eye, and murder him. If I can kill one King, why not two? Why not all of them?”

It won’t feel like murder, when it’s him. The Kings of Hell ape their betters: Michael was right about that part. We can bring the War to them, bring down the whole regime. No more Realms at all. And then if I die or if I don’t, it won’t matter. I will have won.

Alvy nods, excited. “You are moving too fast to see clearly, Highness. I want to ride along.”

It makes me laugh, a barking ugly sound. For she is wise, and touches that which is in motion.

“Michael, what will Selena do? What’s her stake in this?”

He nods. That part, apparently, is easier to talk about.

“She holds the real world, Princess. Our games are none of hers. She comes to you as a friend and nothing more.”

“And Troy? Spring Court?”

He grins. “That is not for him. He will be no King in Faerie, now or ever. His destiny is far greater. More I cannot say.”

And I can tell he means it: He really can’t. I wonder what he knows, if anything. The pride on his face could be just that. But it’s comforting to know they won’t be coming after me. Even if that would be easier.

*

My mother came upon me once, looking through a high tower window. Down in the courtyard, little Gabriel was playing with the boys: An experiment.

He was so afraid of boys, when he was small and tender: I can’t believe I ever forgot that. He shivered all the way down the stairs, looking back to me egging him on with no small amount of harshness. It would delight his father at the least, I thought, if he learned to play more roughly. We both knew it was something he was doing for me, to make me love him more, and I suppose neither of us knew it, too. But on, I urged him, and on he went.

“Your little knight, today. I would not have thought you’d have him out there so easily.”

She leaned, back to the wall, like a schoolgirl telling languid secrets. I was so terrified and rapturous, under her gaze, I could barely speak. Afraid it would come out garbled, or in curses.

“I think it’s important. His mother...”

My Queen nearly blushed, rolling her eyes an imperceptible amount.

“His mother wants him to stay a boy forever, she thinks. What she really wants is to keep him from becoming a man like his father. But those are not the only men, dearest.”

“When I am grown I would be a woman like you. I will be a Queen. I would not wish to be like her. She is silent when she should speak, and prattles when she should rest. The Puck says...”

She shook her head, the tiniest amount.

“The Puck holds no respect for Hell. Nor for any of us. You should keep an eye on your treasures around that one, daughter. As you know.”

I did know; I remember being incensed that she would think to warn me of his treachery, after handing me over to him for my upbringing. Visits to the nursery, the intoxicating scent of her; glimpses down a long table on my best behavior. Like the Moon, hiding her face the second you’d come to depend on her; shining coldly again when she bid it. She could read all this, and more, upon my face.

“Resent me not nor hate my counsel, daughter. You will be a great Queen. You must trust I know the way to tease it out.”

With coldness and sweetness in equal measure, I knew. But it rankled, even with my beloved standing there alongside me, trailing a finger down my arm and smoothing hair back behind my ears, adoring me so openly: As if we were friends, of an age. As though I should giggle and laugh with her, like two ladies’ maids. As if I didn’t have Gabriel for that, when I could.

“I would be nothing the Courts have ever seen. To surprise and bewilder. I want to do things you have never thought of, to make you gasp. Afraid. I want the Puck’s eyes to grow wide and shine like flames, in my indiscretion and audacity.”

She nodded, closing herself up like a courtesan’s fan. Like a bell going back over the last dish.

“Do or do not, little majesty. But never speak it. You think I am a terrible mother and so I will give you terrible advice, but you must listen. Never write what you can say. Never say aloud what you can say with a look. And the greatest and most difficult skill: To keep silent even in that silence, betraying nothing. Especially if you plan to surprise anyone. A wise Queen keeps her own counsel.”

“You must be lonely, then. For nobody knows you, do they? Not even my dear Father. You perplex him. Gabriel’s parents watch you like a wild beast. Is that the Queen that I should be?”

She laughed then, deeply and lovingly. Proud. Surprised, after all.

“Dear one. You couldn’t help it if you desired it so. Be always what you are. Is that not what the Puck advises?”

“What I am,” I said, as though it were a full and complete sentence. “What I am, Majesty, is very angry. I cannot say why, only that it burns in me.”

“Cherish that, daughter. That rage is your safety. The Puck won’t tell you this, because she thinks you are like a great blazing fire she can direct. But you are no more hers than mine. You must know this. Never be a weapon. Hold the anger here”—she poked me, hard, in the chest—“and burnish it, like the Winter Guard with their swords and pikes and shields. Take what is hot and make it colder than ice. For that is what it will be, for you: A weapon and a shield.”

“Is that the secret, then, of rule? Is that what they teach Queens?”

She grew sober, sad.

“Not of rule. Merely survival. A Queen survives, or a peasant, or a demoness. It is what mothers must teach their daughters.”

And as she grew bored, caressing my face a last time before wandering away, I realized she would never be particularly proud, or particularly surprised, or particularly anything I could want. She would not be proud of me, if I did this thing. If I shined my anger bright as a shield, no matter how well, she would not be impressed at all.

Which was, I reflected, as good a reason as any to do it.

The Puck did not know, but perhaps somehow could sense it, after that day: How I kept a part of myself hidden from him, and from the Court and all. Not until the Ladies of the Canyon swept me up to their bosoms and their harshness and told me I could look, did I think more upon it, as it grew. 

But oh, how it bubbled up in dreams; righteous and strong, like a mountain spring. Clear and cold, shining in the sun.


Chapter Fifty-Two: No Taller Than Angels

“I can’t help noticing there’s a bit of a spring in your step, good sir.”

Alvy has seemed on the verge of whistling for some time now. Great war chants and shanties.

“Estelle, don’t. I’m sorry there was collateral damage, but I cannot bear it. You cannot want with one hand and despise with the other. You did it. We did it. I did it. What I came to do. What I came, to you, to do. And told you would we do, and you told me that we would. I will not celebrate on a battlefield, I have respect for them. They didn’t need to die. They came at me, and I was victorious. In the end, we are alive and they are dead.”

But he’s wrong about that, too. They didn’t need to die. We were trying to save them. Revolutions always turn to the right. You are always subject to mission creep. He can see the darkness in my thoughts.

“War is not so clean as that, Highness. Nothing is so easy as you’d have it. The only difference between those bodies back there and the fallen in your assault on Summer is that you must look at these.”

Which is, of course, too true. Troy carved out little game pieces for us, to plan our War: Great horses for the mounted forces, bishops for the archers and grenadiers. They didn’t have faces, just shapes. Pawns for the ones in front, the infantry. We kept our numbers down, checked in twice a day.

“But that wasn’t an assault. We were annexing them, taking them under our protection. Their Queen was exiled. Both of them. They had no one. We gave them something to fight for.”

“And so they did, Highness. And they have won. You insult their honor.”

“By caring more about the day-tripping kids who didn’t agree to it?”

“Yes. What about the kids back home in Summer who didn’t particularly want to be ruled by Winter, or the Queen in exile? Who didn’t like a couple of girls pushing them around?”

“I feel like you’re accusing me of something, Alvy. And I can’t figure what.”

“Well, Highness, I feel the same way. We have escaped death. We will do so again. But it’s damned unsporting to worry about the dead now. They were yours to command. Do you suppose there were peasants on that train? Did you think there were people like me? No. Those were born to leisure and died at leisure, and that is all they knew of the world. It is for peasants to fear, whether at War or in peacetime. Your sight is occluded.”

And if in turn he is still so blind, with his faerie eyes, to my problem with what he is saying, then, wouldn’t they be also? They didn’t suffer, most of them. Most of them went out like a light. They were immortal, near-royalty. It isn’t like the real world. They didn’t know anything about time, or death, or anything real. They would have stood by, all of them, and watched me die. Watched the little May Queen on her marriage bed. Called us both heroes and laughed when we were dead. Is it fair to ask him to think like me, when he really just thinks like them? Wouldn’t any of them laugh, trying not to sing, just like he is now?

Yet still they loved, and they ate, and they fought with their siblings, and they had a favorite song and a favorite shirt and a word that sounded wrong to them, every time someone said it. They had a book or a story they read over and over, and their favorite place to be alone, and each a secret they never told.

That’s what Troy would say, I imagine. What I would say, now. What I want to say to Alvy. But I know he would only go dark, those brows knitting like Gabriel’s. Like I’m accusing him of something. When all I want is for somebody to say these things to me; to make it real, somehow, in a way I can sense but not yet see. He would be so hurt. Like the twelve Princes, that day Michael told them they could wash their hands at any time.

“Forgive me, Knight. Forgive me, lover. I will not shame you. But you must know it is different for me. There is in me a curious fault, mortality. It tells me their lives held up against mine, or yours, or quick Troy, or steady Selena’s, would somehow seem every bit as long and detailed. For you the enemy is history, and I honor that. For me, there is no enemy. There is only salvation. And those revelers behind us will never have that.”

Michael clears his throat, as if to argue, but nods to himself in his silence: Not yet. Not today.

“Angel. Where go the Fae, when they are gone? Where do we—they—go when they die?”

“Not too far, Princess. East of the sun and west of the moon. They haven’t souls, you see.”

That doesn’t seem right, either. Propaganda. Selena would tell him energy and matter are interchangeable, nothing is lost. But Michael is even more lost talking about time than Alvy is: The Fae live so long as to approach infinity, but it’s only as a limit. To Michael, all of this is a song that was written long ago. Even the parts that haven’t happened yet. I won’t trouble him. 

There is a part of me that, even knowing all he is and what he’s done, how many those hands have killed, wants to keep him safe and apart. To never see death again. Nothing burdens him, that back does not bend, and yet. This strange desire to protect him, still. More than Troy, who loves getting dirty, and Selena who sees love in everything now, so much it perhaps blinds her, I want to protect this angel from a sadness he can never feel. I suppose that’s in line with my priorities.

“Michael,” I say, after saving my breath a mile or two, “If you could have any result here, what would it be?”

He turns his face to the sun, swiftly; seems ashamed.

“It is not mine to dictate. Destiny will have its due. When the Earth is cold and dark and forgotten I will be as I am now. I will not criticize the details, there is no honor in it.”

He’s not lying, but he’s not telling the truth either. Perhaps he desires something; perhaps it warps against his nature to do so. Knowing him as I do, I can imagine that a wish, for an angel, would be the greatest offense. It must feel like falling, to want things. I don’t want that for him either.

“You have been a wise and strong protector, angel. Gabriel would be proud.”

He chuckles, then, shifting his weight and stretching great arms overhead.

“Gabriel would be... something. That little man. He would have loved to have been there, in the thick of that. Before it all stopped moving—I saw only a glimpse. But he would have gloried in it. Great armies, he imagined, moving in Hell. A place I could not go, he remembered, and so he would tell me instead what it would be like. As they took the place in your name, Princess. To make for you a home.”

And on that day, I wondered, what would lonely Michael do? My husband’s best friend and first groomsman, forbidden from the wedding and our future. Wait around for us, on the occasions we might make it out to see him and the rest? That doesn’t seem likely. 

Find his way back to that park bench, with the sun behind a cloud, sinking into his eclipse. Listening for the song, fearing something had permanently changed perhaps. Terrified that in some place he could not see, but the song could, that he had come to love Gabriel just a little more than home, and Fallen with it. Until the sun came out again.

Or maybe he would have come across Troy, somehow. I like to imagine that: A love born out of something clean.

“You are very beautiful,” he would say. One of them, to the other. “Very beautiful, and very lost.” 

And the story would begin.

*

It becomes a game with myself: My poor mortal body, against the angel’s and the rapidly healing faerie. How many leagues before I must rest again, and try again to wish up some food from the wispy remains of the Realms. Troy can always whistle up some magic, find pockets of leftover stuff, but I never learned it. And faerie food never fills you up anyway.

They are solicitous when I do give out, which burns. Ever more the more they hide it, knowing I feel weak and stupid along with everything else, to slow them down. Minutes into hours and, true to faerie’s ways, hours back into minutes. They have no need of keeping time. Each time I rest, I know, it makes no difference to them whether the last was an hour or a day ago. It matters only to me. I want to compete and I know they’ll never understand why. This body bothers me so much, the closer we get to Winter.

We left all of our things behind, our guns and kit bags; I hadn’t packed much food anyway, but it’s strange to simply walk, in our Summer garb as it falls to rags. Like a fairytale, I guess. Big strong men and fainting little girl. I wish for a wolf or a riddling goblin, something I can do to pull my weight.

If Gertrude is missing, where is my dog? I don’t want to remind Alvy, he loved that thing too. Even though we all three knew he belonged to me. Big black lunging thing without a name. Maybe he found his way to Selena. That’s what I would do.

*

The floor of the forest beneath our feet is springy and wet with moss; it smells like a real forest, certainly. As my shoes fall apart it’s a greater comfort by the mile. I keep thinking if I turn around we’ll see our deadly island again, with those great white birds circling the mists. Wiped clean by the vagaries of Faerie, or still circled round in death. I imagine it both ways.

There is no end to the variety, the interesting rock outcroppings and dead trees and things. The shape of a woman’s body, as if struggling from between two pines. A great man’s face in a cliff, bleeding rusty tears. Lichens spelling out magic words and runes upon the shale. Spots where everything is cold and sleeping; other places hot with life.

Once I feel like we’ll spot Laurel Canyon, ranging around a low hill: That mysterious passage between the rocks, and the fields and fields of heather and corn you can’t see until you can. But around that hill is another hill. Sometimes angling softly down, a few times sharply up, and we must climb. Nothing taller than the angel, but I can tell it hurts Alvy where his arm is still healing.

If this is what remains when the Realms are gone, I can handle it. It feels fertile and rich and full of secrets and darkness. Not scary darkness, but just alive. Wild. A dove could fly out of a crack in the rock, white as anything. A snake in the path could roll over for a belly rub. It is sleepy at Mabon, putting itself to bed slowly and with creaking kindness. A candle going out, all over the world.

Up in the pines near our East Coast refuge, where Gabriel liked most to visit me, you could spy down on the makeshift beach the townies had made along the inlet, bringing in sand by the truckful and arranging artful driftwood every summer. Bonfires and beers and furtive lovemaking, sometimes. Hearts broken and healed. He found it all so mysterious, back then. Before he joined the world. Whether they were fighting or kissing or howling in their skinnydipping altogether, it was all equally worthy of his wonder: Turning to me in our hidden place with eyes wide, those lips rounded in a tiny prince’s “o.”

Gabriel was a little bit older than me but we never acted like it. Part of the game was always having me in charge, which suited me just fine: Look at that. Look at this. Don’t look now! His shocked face, that eyes-wide wonder, was an invitation for me: To be as unimpressed, or wise, or giggly as I may. However I might react, that face said, it didn’t matter: Just share in this with me.

The secrets we would take with us, to share with nobody. And once home, not even with each other. But he might catch my eye at dinner and smile a certain smile, and I just knew exactly what he was remembering: The time they shot at bottles, thrillingly, or drove their ATVs in circles loud as anything. The ten thousand mysteries of the real world, waiting for us. And under that, too: One day he would feel older than me, and then he would show me the mysteries. 

Oh, he loved that so much he barely talked about it: The day he’d finally be the one in charge. Telling me when to look and not look, when to move, where to go. What we’d be doing that day, every day, for the rest of time. Hiding little secrets for me to discover, building delicate bowers to be quiet in, and mazes to chase me through, and puzzles to solve. Tying ribbons on me, seamstresses bearing a thousand dresses made of moonlight, swan’s wings, molten gold and silver; parading me through and before every royal court in Hell. His Queen.



Chapter Fifty-Three: Exactly One Second

“Princess. I hate to make offense but...”

“I’m stalling. I don’t want to see them, so we aren’t going to see them. Until I say. Is that it?”

The angel waves a hand vaguely at the forest around us, blushing. I had sort of figured that out, but that doesn’t make it easier to stop. We could walk forever, gathering wool. I could tell him my memories of Gabriel aloud, he’d like that. But he wouldn’t forget I’m the one keeping us going in circles, and not saying it would just make me feel worse.

“I just want something to imagine. Everything is easier when you can know how it will go.”

Michael nods. He sees the comfort in that. He lives there.

“We will enter the palace of Winter. The walls around your castle will be gone, not even briars to replace them now. It will be a stark and a cold place. And we will enter. Selena will be there, keeping worry from her eyes. Troy will fall upon you like a hungry animal, to shower you with kisses. The Queen of Summer will bestow favor upon her Knight. There will be a final Council of War. We will plan our last assault on Hell, and extraction for your sister. We will divine the date in the real world, to see...”

He falls quiet, but I know what he’s thinking: My birthday. The Autumn train was set for equinox when we boarded, which means it could well be the day. My wedding day, once. My death, always. Birthdays have never been something I celebrated, much to Troy’s quiet dismay.

“Fine. Got it. We’ll be there soon. That’s enough.”

It isn’t, though. Not by half.

*

My father was not an ineloquent man but he chose his silences carefully. A King keeps his own counsel, too. When he arrived in the playroom or the nursery, to sing a song or tell a tale before bed, I know he saw my face fall, that he wasn’t her. Children love their mothers. I would like to remember not remembering that part; not enjoying the quick sadness that flit across his face at my disappointment. That’s how I would like to remember it.

He was like Alvy: In love with war. If not infantry, than the sea. He did always love the sea. But he was born to the crown, and so the crown he wore. I cannot picture or imagine the moment this was clear to me, but it made an impact. From a very early time it’s how I thought of him: A knock-kneed boy in King’s costume. He was beloved in Winter, perhaps because he didn’t quite fit. You could not say he was a commoner, but you could see something. A boredom, perhaps. He was more interested in his Queen than rule, that was known and none too scorned. But without her, he would have been lost. A child on a throne. They served each other, in that way.

“Do you like it, when I tell you stories of war? Shall I tell you stories of princes instead?”

Whenever he felt he’d strayed too far into his own territory; shown me some boyish part of himself, in a tale of pirates or long-ago heroes, that was not conducive to my upbringing. He had a sense of duty that was not natural to him, but overwhelming; he twisted in it. Unmoving, nearly silent, he was always so afraid you might catch a glimpse of his heart and find it wanting.

“I only want to hear stories of war, Father. Warrior queens and soldier witches. Tell me those.”

And he would. No lack of those, in his stories. Perhaps it wasn’t a soldier’s heart at all; perhaps my father was a troubadour, a bard. A poet.

The Summer King, the King in Oak, was a rapist and worse. He profited from misery in ways my father could never have allowed, or at least admitted. I did love and hate my father. I bore no such strength of feeling toward his counterpart. The question becomes one of balance.

*

I see it. Over the next rise, strong as anything. Wearing its roughhewn face, like an ancient Tuscan tower, all plaster and square windows; bright as anything, bright as ice. Blue spruce and cypress, still in their regimented lines. Tree soldiers in the Winter Guard.

“Princess?”

“You should not call me that anymore. I don’t like it. Call me Estelle, call me S. I’m no princess now.”

“Chieftain. You remember what I said. Selena will be still, but longing for you. Troy will embrace you like a hurricane. The Summer Queen has changed. This is all that lies in store.”

I nod, thankful. “And the Puck?”

The angel laughs. “The Puck is quite busy, Estelle. He does not hold to simple forms or languages, at the moment. Perhaps he will be there. Perhaps as a dog, or moonlight, or a whisper between quiet things. Trouble not with the Puck. You have done his bidding in this, as in all.”

Not entirely comforting, but maybe a little comforting. Michael’s fondness for the Puck is inscrutable as ever, but I guess if you’re not afraid of something you don’t have to worry about liking it too much. If the Puck can’t do anything to you, or tell you what to do, maybe you can get lost in his eyes, or the scent of him. Maybe that’s why Troy was so into it. He was never afraid.

I do stall, one more time—to Alvy’s wry grin—as I bind his arm again and wish up some outfits. It may be a dead regime but it’s still Court, and I can’t walk in there without looking like a million bucks. He’s grateful for the healing, of course. Not used to hurting. But he still thinks it’s funny, like he knows a secret. But there is no secret: I am fearful in a way that refuses to become anger.

These weeks with Alvy, it’s been funny. He isn’t quiet, exactly; there’s always something, some rumble of forthcoming laughter or a screed on aristocracy. But behind that, it’s a connection that doesn’t need a lot of words to make sense. He still sparkles when he wants something, but less and less has it been wanting something from me. He seems made to be a boyfriend, the way Selena always talked about: Some of us were born to pair, some were born to never do so, and the vast center curve of that graph tries them both on, over and over again.

Until Michael I thought that was Troy’s thing: He was like me, born to die a lone wolf no matter what the fates decreed. And I suppose he thought that too. He would never describe himself as lucky, not even in his current arrangement, but I know he feels it. None of that greedy smug joy we all get, either: It’s like Michael was big enough, or bright enough, to obscure his essential lack of interest in that sort of thing. Eclipsing it. That seems lucky to me.

The Ladies of the Canyon pressured me to fall in love, as long as I can remember. Not to love Gabriel necessarily—although they would have liked that—and not to marry anyone, but simply to love. It never sounded like a desirable state, the way they would talk about it. Agnes with her paeans to self-sacrifice; Agatha’s description of love as a refining fire. I can’t say I ever felt that.

I guess I will never be able to say I’ve felt that. I loved Gabriel a great deal, I love Selena and Troy in a slightly different way. I guess I love Michael, insofar as it’s possible to make a choice about these things. I do love the Puck, come to it. I may love Gertrude, in some part of myself that doesn’t want to slap her.

But that fire Agatha talked about, the fear in it: I never had that option. The fearlessness of love, the way people throw themselves into that without even thinking what it will do to them. Incomprehensible.

And I can’t say that Roosevelt Arthur Ailbhe stirs anything like that in me. But one thing I have never felt with a man is: Comfortable. And he makes me exceedingly comfortable. And a faerie at that. I have been more afraid of Fae men’s bodies than even demons, in my time. 

Mortals fall in love with faeries against all sense and it devours them entirely, like black holes, and you can see why: So much wanting, so little giving. 

But maybe it was all that time hiding in the apartment with him, itching for our drugs like some kind of horror story. All that time on the run, or planning monstrosities. Keeping secrets from our friends. Whatever it was, it’s safe with him in a way it has not been with anyone else. I can imagine, if things were very different, falling in love with him like we were regular people. I wonder if he feels that way, or if it’s all tied up with duty and war for him. The defining question of my life for most of it was whether faeries can love at all. The jury’s still out on that.

But I know he would not sell me to Hell. At least one thing he’s got on the rest of them.

*

Things in the Winter Court are not exactly as Michael described them. The building is sound, but with less passages than I remember, less rooms. The whole place feels so small. Cracks in things and frosty ice plants coming through. Hardy creeping vines and weeds. Mother would love that look. The aesthetic of disrepair. Falling-down towers and long-forgotten walls.

There is a sort of flower, much prized among Winter’s children, that results from water freezing within the arteries of plants: It bursts out, building on itself in some Fibonacci kind of way, making diamond blossoms like ribbon candy from the stems of the bodies it’s killed. Beautiful and cold and gone with the sun.

I won’t let them tell me about how my parents died. I don’t want details and they won’t want to give them, but they’ll try to tell me so I’ll know. They weren’t there, on our little island. I see the shot tearing through the King in Oak, sometimes it is my mother and sometimes my father, and that’s too much to imagine already. So I won’t let them.

In the greatroom there are six courtiers, twice that many Guard, an empty throne for my sister, and the Summer Queen on my father’s throne beside it. Selena and the dog, sitting on the dais steps, are the first to spot us. The dog runs to me, but does not jump. Selena is quiet, too. She nods, breathing, and clasps first my hand and then all of me, looking in my eyes with a love and a searching that cuts right through.

Troy is altogether more demonstrative, swinging me in his arms so delightfully and with such strength I forget who and where we are, for a moment. Michael and Alvy stand well clear.

“Do not think I will talk to you about what happened or anything. I won’t add to it. We raise each other up, not pull each other down. So I’m happy to see you and I am glad to see you, because I didn’t think I ever would. I thought you’d be out there forever, drowning in it. I’ve been so scared. We brought snacks but they... withered. No people food. Just us. And we’ve been waiting. So talk to the May and we can get out of here, please.”

All this in a rush, like a single sentence. Like a single line of a song. He looks incredible, this kid. The picture of health, once out of my shadow. He backs up into giant Michael to stare at me and smile and mug, and I feel like... I want to grab him, physically, and never let go. I want him to keep talking, forever and ever. I want to be the kind of friends that hold hands.

“Selena is famous as hell now. Even the Drone Queen is nice to her, she’s scared of her. We don’t have to go out or do any of the things. If there’s a party and we want to go to it, we just go to it. Everything’s backwards. It turns out parties can be fun. Did you know that?”

His eyes are wide. He seems comfortable. Safe. I can’t help thinking getting out of the way was the best thing I ever did for him.

“Don’t even think that,” he says, without blinking. “You two took off and you guys hid like meth addicts and it was disgusting. There wasn’t anything cool about that. Don’t take credit for something you didn’t do. It would have been better with you. Everything is.”

“Then you’ll have to take me to the next one, Troy. I’m sorry.”

And I am. It doesn’t change what I had to do, or why I did it. But I am sorry. It’s easier to say than I would have imagined it. If I’d ever been able to imagine it.

“I don’t really want to talk shop at all. I want to hear about Hollywood and all your adventures.”

Troy nods. “You should, they are very interesting and you will like them. But first you have to work. Things are moving very fast.”

Selena slips an arm around me, moving so quietly. Dressed like the moon on a very dark night; violet blossoms in her hair, in my mother’s honor.

“We’ve got time. We don’t have to talk about LA but we can take a little time. I missed you so bad, Estelle. I didn’t even know you, and then we were together all the time, and then you were just gone. And we knew why you were doing it, and we thought it was stupid, but that didn’t make it go away. But now you’re here and you can’t hide anymore, so you’d better get back.”

I squeeze her back. She feels the same, smells the same. Same Selena Kirke. I guess I’d replaced her in my head, too. The Ladies call that borrowing trouble. “Your body is getting ready for a fight but there’s no fight, it’s just in your head. Don’t let your body tell you what is happening if you know better. Sometimes there’s no fight.”

“How did you find my dog?”

He grins, licking those fearsome black chops, and bends at her knee. Tail wagging just enough you can tell he likes us being together more than apart. I thought he’d forget me entirely. I thought they all would.

“He found me. Whatever happened with Gertrude, it happened halfway through her first night out. He wasn’t gone more than a few hours and then he turned up at my door. I’ve been sleeping with him in the bed. I guess I just missed you. He’s warm. But not as hot as I thought he would be.”

Just right. He never got a name, but he did have that going for him. I kneel down to look him in the eye, and he whines sweetly.

“What did you do to Gertrude, mister? Where’s my car? Did you leave her the second you could? That’s what I would do. And you went home. Good boy.”

The dog looks from me, to Selena, and then to Alvy. He’s off like a shot and they’re rolling around on the floor, growling, before anybody knows what is happening. Here in the greatroom of the Winter Court, in its disrepair, monarchs murdered: Roughhousing. Troy and Michael smile at each other across them, reunited, and for exactly one second everything is perfect.


Chapter Fifty-Four: Just Such a Place

Servants enter, preparing the way for the Summer Queen. Red and golden leaves for Autumn, blue tuberoses for Winter, and finally boughs in full flower for the Summerlands. She wears holly in her hair, leaves and berries, for me. A bouquet of blue roses and white, for her knight, clutched in her tiny white hands. She nods at Troy and Michael, serene, but doesn’t look at the rest of us until she’s pushed herself up into that throne. Her crown is a delicate filigree, stags’ horns and roses worked in silver.

She’s still small, but much closer to being a woman than the last time we spoke. When she bowed Alvy before her and dubbed him Knight in her service, and handed him a sword that wasn’t hers to give. It’s hard to believe this young woman was ever that bushy-haired little Weasley in my living room, talking about heads on pikes.

“Sister and Princess. Welcome home, to the Winter Court. You’ve been busy.”

There’s something dangerous in her tone.

“I have, Majesty. Congratulations on your coronation.”

She nods, smiling briefly, and turns to Alvy.

“Sir Roosevelt. First Knight in our service. You’ve been busy, too.”

He raises his head to meet her eyes for a moment, then drops his gaze to the floor again. His body tells me something is wrong but I can’t tell what it is.

“You come home to a mess, Estelle Harlowe. A mess of your making.”

True. I cock an eyebrow, nodding with what I hope is respectful confidence.

“We mourn our fallen subjects. And fellow regents. Do you not mourn, Estelle?”

I take a breath, ready to let her have it, but she holds up that tiny hand again.

“I have word for you, Princess. Estelle. I have been visited by messengers. I do hope your constitution will bear it.”

She’s all the way Fae, I can see it now. Nothing, or everything, behind the eyes. Impassive, impassioned. Harder to read than my mother ever was. I missed the entire time she had a crush on me, begging Gertrude for gossip. I feel like a bad sister.

“Had you left a Winter, or a Summer, from which to be banished, I supposed you’d have to be banished. With our regrets. Instead you have created ruin across the Realms. You march on Hell, a worthy adversary. And we commit our full strength to you. As the regent of the four Courts and beyond, I do so. We will take this place. You will see your aim realized.”

My gaze slides off Selena’s face, unheeded; Troy looks like he’s about to start crying.

“But?”

“But you are not welcome in the Realms, not as they stand nor as they will come to rest. You have murdered Kings and Queens. It isn’t safe to have you here, whatever happens next. From the mortal world you were stolen and to the mortal world you must be delivered. You may retain your memories of this place and what transpired here. But I caution you: That is by careful design and compromise.”

So there were powers in Faerie that wanted to give me the whole van Winkle? I can live with that. That’s an egg I would have been proud to break for this particular omelet, if I’d known it was on the table. Imagine the girl I could be then. Nice, but not stupid. Perfect.

“My Queen, you seem not quite finished with my punishments.”

“Not punishments, but consequences. I am your advocate. But you’ve driven a dagger through the heart of the deepest magics we know, written so long ago no one knows where they remain. Not even your angel there. Sacrifices will be made. And you are correct, they number three. You are banished. Your name will be stricken from the record of this War and all you have accomplished...”

She turns red, staring at her hands in her lap. I have nothing else for them to take. My always-impending death demanded that. Not even my magic is faerie magic, so they can’t take that away. What else is there?

Troy blushes, ashamed and sad.

“It’s the Ladies, Estelle. You can’t go back to Laurel Canyon. Ever.”

“Wrong. Fuck that. No, that’s wrong. They’re not anything to do with you, with this stuff. That’s mine.”

The Summer Queen looks to the side, breathing deep.

“And yet, Daughter of Winter.”

Troy clears his throat, looking desperately to Selena, who has begun to cry.

“It’s not the faeries, S. It was them. The Ladies say you can’t come home.”

*

I would not say that I flee the greatroom exactly. I look at the floor for what seems like an awfully long time, breathe out until there’s nothing left, pick up my skirts and head out a side door. Troy holds out one arm, straight and strong, to keep Alvy from following. 

Michael’s is the last face I see, standing by the door like a bodyguard with fists together, near weeping for me as well. And as I make my way past a turn toward a room I remember hiding in from childhood, fixing my mind upon it to draw it near, I can hear Selena dispatch the angel to follow with a quiet word.

After a few minutes of shallow breath and some half-formed begging aimed at nothing but the cold, I wonder what he’s waiting for.

“Michael, are you out there?”

“...I stand.”

“You can come in if you want.”

He does, bringing his bulk to bear on the chaise near me. Easing it down, as though I’ll bolt if I notice him sitting so close. We consider the painting, of which I remember every line and stroke: An oil of a hunting party, all horns and drums, and the jaws of the hounds, and the sweet red fox in the corner, turning to fight. I memorized her when I was young.

“Estelle.”

“The sacrifice is having to kill, right?”

“Chieftain, I...”

“I mean that’s what you were going to say, right? Something along those lines.”

“Your parents are dead. Your refuge taken from you atop it. I would not counsel you against mourning any of this. You are mortal, you burn very brightly and quite hot. To cage that flame is to seek catastrophe. You think I will say that in the Song, all is fair. The balance of the spheres. You think I do not want better for you; recompense for your bravery. I have been learning.”

That is precisely what I was expecting him to say, so apparently he has been learning. It doesn’t help.

“My parents are dead, Michael.”

“It is true.”

“And the only place I loved is gone.”

“It is true.”

“They think I’m disgusting. You told me Selena and Troy would still love me, and you were right. And I knew you were right. But Agnes and Agatha... I have learned to love the City. It’s home. But they were something more than that. It’s where my heart was.”

“You are in eclipse, Estelle. This is what it feels like. The sun behind a cloud still shines.”

He’s talking about angel stuff again. Beautiful and lost. Beautiful and damned.

“You mean the Ladies don’t hate me? That’s sweet but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“There is no hate in them. You know that. Did you not tell me this? That they love you as I loved Gabriel, without question or pause.”

“Would you ever tell Gabriel he couldn’t come home? That you wouldn’t look at his face?”

He seems pained by the thought.

“It is not my love for Gabriel, nor yours, that we discuss. Shall I not hate the world, then, if I cannot return to Heaven? Shall I despise the beauty and infinite variety, to prove a point?”

“You think I’m proving a point?”

“The Ladies still love. Their house does still stand. You still yet strive. What else would you have?”

“I’d like the fucking option, Michael. I’d like to know there are places I’m not disgusting.”

“You have fled, just now, from such a place.”

He doesn’t get it. Doesn’t get the Ladies. Still thinks Selena’s his dad, somehow. Everything through his angel’s lens.

“I get what you’re saying and I get why you don’t understand why I’m upset.”

“Estelle, that is offensive. Of all in these Realms, Hell beyond the gates, I understand better than any. But your Ladies are everywhere around us. Even here. You knew this once. You trespassed the first law of mortals and you tore asunder ancient, greedy magics. It carries consequence, surely? You can admit this. It is what you wanted, is it not?”

“I don’t love the Ladies because they’re magic, or whatever they are. God. I don’t love them because of that stuff, or even because they took me in when I was starving myself to death and getting cold and mean. I love them because they’re awesome, funny, maddening little old ladies. Cooking and playing records and drinking too much on a Saturday, and dancing. Planting trees for me to feel safe. I love them because they love me.”

“Then you have nothing to fear. You can mourn and you can go on fighting, but you are not disingenuous. The Canyons are simply a place. Do not use it to hurt yourself, it’s unworthy of the Ladies and certainly unworthy of your brave self. You broke the world. Put it back together.”

“...You said that’s offensive. Just like that, ‘Estelle, that is offensive.’ You sounded exactly like Troy.”

His smile is indulgent; so satisfied it’s almost sexy.

“Much does offend him. I have often said this.”

*

“You were there, I guess. What were they like? What did they say it like?”

Selena’s still stricken, but Troy’s relieved to see me back, after getting it together. The Summer Queen looks exactly as when I left the room, moments ago: More interested than otherwise, but not by much. Alvy stands by her side, every inch the soldier. He nodded when I returned, not unkindly, but he did not speak.

“Agnes was trying not to cry. Stiff upper lip stuff. She kept futzing with her hands, she finally made you up a picnic basket, with wine and cookies and all that. Agatha was worse.”

“I bet she was.”

“No,” Troy says firmly, mouth a line, head shaking. “She was a mess. It was really upsetting to watch. She shook, her hands were... Old lady hands, like paper, shaking. And she wouldn’t talk. Just Estelle Harlowe is no longer welcome in this place, and then she didn’t say anything else. They called us there, we’d just been there the day before when you did it, so they called us all the way back and told us what you were up to, and Agnes kept talking and talking, like she’d fall apart. And there’s Agatha, with her back straight like in Rooster Cogburn and those mean bright eyes. She looked scared to death. I had to get out of there.”

I spent what seems like the entirety of my teen years trying to make that woman cry, or scream, or hit me, and nothing worked. Always just that air of disapproval and curiosity. Watching to see what I’d do next, how far I’d go. It drove me insane. I can’t believe I didn’t get to see her break.

Selena nods. “It was pretty intense. I knew they loved you, but I guess I just never expected to see it. They told us so much stuff, contingency plans and backups to the backups, in case you didn’t come back, or something else happened. It was like they’d been planning this or something. They had every answer.”

“They always do. And did they—did Agnes, at least—give you any message for me?”

Selena twists, stretching her back, looking for words. She nods, but doesn’t speak.

“Selena, what. What else.”

She holds her hands apart. “You know how they are. Sweet girl, dirty girl. She said you were a widow and an orphan and you weren’t even drinking age yet. That you needed us, and we needed you, and we shouldn’t listen to anything you’d say otherwise. That we could still all win, if we stick together...”

“—But probably we wouldn’t,” Troy interjects. “They said that too. Dooms gather. And they told me I was right that Selena doesn’t have to die, but it doesn’t matter. Or wouldn’t matter. I don’t understand that part yet. And anybody can do anything for one hour?”

“Anyone can carry his burden, however heavy, until nightfall... Oh, they loved the shit out of that one. Fine, I get it.”

“You do?” Troy cocks his head, pleased to have produced something meaningful.

“We can’t just leave these people without a home. We can’t just let Hell keep running things. It means it doesn’t matter if I die or not. Doesn’t change anything either way.”

Michael smiles, and I guess that’s kind of what he was trying to say before. Just way more obnoxious. I curtsey to Her Majesty, and I can see the others getting ready to pack it in.

“My Queen, your hospitality and your pledge of strength are sweet and welcome. You’ll see them burn yet. I would take your Knight with me, to finish what I’ve begun.”

Her assent is regal, if regretful. The assembled Guard bow their heads as he passes. I guess he’d be their boss, now. Silly old Alvy, a General of the great and trooping. How his sister would have loved to see that.

“Constant contact with you and the Puck, over these the last days. Any update on Gertrude...”

Summer gasps. “Have you news of Winter’s Queen?”

“Not yet. But I will find her for you. And have justice for her, too, whatever’s gone wrong.”

She lowers her gaze, grateful. I guess they’re sisters now. 

Better her than me.


Chapter Fifty-Five: Loud & Lost

A hellish symphony greets us before we’ve made it to the car: My phone, connecting, blowing up. It makes me laugh. The mentions! The notifications! The senseless blather of life from a hundred years ago. 

Missed calls, surely. Drone Queen, others extant from the Realms checking in, reporters. Of course Gertrude couldn’t hold it down, it was stupid to expect just handing her the perfect life would ever work out. I wonder for the first time if they asked her about Gabriel—I didn’t even think to brief her on that one. Hope she disappeared before doing too much damage.

The phone goes in the trash. Troy is, to say the least, aghast.

“No more burners, folks. No more stupid parties, no more vodka jacuzzi rooftops. No more holding weird Japanese things up for weird Japanese ads. No more Gabrielles, no more Stelena, no more being famous. I liked it but it’s over and we deserve to celebrate. There’s a War on.”

Selena dumps her phone too, in solidarity. Alvy’s only too happy to go along. But Michael’s looking at Troy, and Troy is looking at the sky, head to the side like a dog hearing something strange. Without taking his eyes off that expanse, he draws out his phone and thumbs the screen open.

“Not so fast, Chief. Drone Queen is on alert. Could be a Gertrude thing. Gertrude is pulling back the skin on something nasty and she... Hang on.”

Troy flips through, fast as a child, eyes darting. 

“Hey Estelle, side note. Your birthday was a week ago, so happy birthday. You aren’t dead. That’s good. I missed the equinox so I’m a bad witch but you don’t...”

His face goes pale and he stumbles into Michael.

“Oh, hell. Just hell.”

Face impassive with shock, he hits play on a video and we all crowd around: Straight from the Drones, from the source. Our nasty little nightcrawlers can’t hurt us now, I want to say. But I feel like that’s incorrect, somehow.

In the video—ESTELLE HARLOWE HAYWIRE?—you can see Gertrude attacking someone in an elevator. The person doesn’t look familiar: Could be a paparazzo, could be a stranger. But her face isn’t human. The comments compare her to Britney, to Solange: Every one mentioning Gabriel’s death, which I guess has become news at some point. I have become a beast, harridan, grief-stricken nightmare. I suppose the Gabriel part makes it salvageable.

“That’s fine. What’s unbearable is that it’s Gertrude.”

Troy shakes his head, scared. “But really look.”

The video plays on a loop, so you can focus on the details: She is straight out of her mind. Just completely gone. Fingers like claws, like those hissing sisters back in the Springs. What the hell happened? Did somebody do this to her? Was this to get me? Could that be me on the screen?

“Maybe there’s audio or another video or...”

He slaps his thigh with his right hand, still thumbing with the left. Selena leans against the car, turning herself inward, scanning like a radio dial for something useful. Alvy shivers, muscles bunching; the dog stands behind him, looking around his leg at me with something like pity. Ready to fight.

“I am a fucking fairy princess, you son of a bitch. How dare you talk to me like that? I should fuck you up. I’ll do a spell on you with my magic wand...”

Troy shrugs at me, eyes wide, impressed. Nothing like a public record of yourself going full-on crazy to take the sting out of your parents dying. My inbox is going to be a bloodbath, and that’s just buyers and sponsors dropping me. Not to mention the other magic folks ready to rumble, I’m sure, with the paranoia. They never understand how little purchase that kind of talk actually gets, because they’re so excited about being part of the demimonde whatever shadow world. When all you’ve got is a secret specialness to sell the select few, you hold on tight.

But really, it’s too crazy sounding to make a dent: The headline isn’t that magic is real, it’s that a girl went crazy, and a girl goes crazy every second of every day. They make sure of it.

*

“This one’s happening now. She’s out on the street being you right now, being nuts right now. Estelle, something is really wrong with her. Like medically.”

“Ever fuck a princess? You wanna be a King, daddy?”

Something in her tone sets it off: This is Monarch shit. The baby voice, the submissive sex stuff. How many times did she bring it up, trying to get Selena on board? Was she grooming for them this whole time? Has she recruited anybody else? Did they find her in Missouri, before she even got kidnapped? How long has she been theirs?

“You know what that is. I can tell by your face,” Selena chokes out past her disgust. “Estelle, what is this?”

I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t know what all happened to Troy before we found each other, but I know this isn’t something I’m comfortable talking about in front of him. Michael and Alvy will be nonplussed but retreat to their superiority; the things mankind does. What we do.

“It’s, um. There’s a place in Orlando. I don’t know the details. Hell won’t even deal with them. They’re strictly a human enterprise. Project Monarch. Conspiracy stuff, it’s... Troy, it’s really ugly. Okay?”

He nods. On the same page enough that we don’t really have to look at each other.

“I don’t know much about the roots of it. I thought it was over after the last one shaved her head, until Gertrude brought it up. They um, think of it like the Walk of Fame, but without magic. Or like the bone machine back in the Springs, but for women. Mostly. I mean girls, and they... It’s brainwashing, I guess. MKULTRA, Manchurian Candidate stuff originally. Keywords from fairytales. For um, businessmen. For making deals. I don’t know. Since like the Fifties I think.”

Selena stares into the distance. “She did talk about it. More than once. Even while you were gone. She just kept saying it was the Regency, even though you said it wasn’t, and once I took the Walk I knew it wasn’t. There’s a shadow over that place... I can’t see in there. I didn’t know there were places I couldn’t see. It’s horrible. It shifts. Why didn’t I notice this?”

Troy nods. “It transmits. I can see what you’re saying now. That shape. They roll out the red carpet. They tell you it’s how it works and you don’t know any better. You think you’re going to get somewhere good. A way for the bravest ones to get ahead. Skip the line...”

Michael shudders, uncomprehending. “Troy, certainly you don’t...”

He smiles, weakly. “I didn’t ever have the opportunity. But I didn’t want to be famous, I didn’t have that in me. I didn’t have a talent like that, like I would do anything to share it with the world like that. But I saw it happen. Boys that could dance or sing but didn’t want to go on reality shows, so they would... You see them later and they act very normal. Like too normal. The gay ones come back straight and the straight ones come back not too straight. They run in packs so I met some girls, before I got spooked and stopped hanging out. I didn’t know it was a thing. I didn’t know it was an industry, I just thought it was like drugs. Or vampires. Just a bad luck draw.”

Selena’s eyes are like twin flames in the dark. “We’re going to follow this tumor. Estelle, I know there’s a War on but I won’t have this in the world. I don’t want any more details than we need, but we’re taking this down.”

I’m not about to argue. The dog noses at my hand, snuffling encouragingly.

“We are going to take care of it. They’re not demonic but they’re Hell-adjacent, and that means more strength for us here, when we finish the fight back there. But that means first we find Gertrude and see what can be done. She’s going to be really mean, probably. And it’s going to be on you, because I can’t really be out and about while she’s doing this. Alvy and I will run support and clean up with the Drone Queen, and you guys go get Gertrude. Just hang on and get her somewhere safe, get some clothes on her, and Troy can do his shaman thing on her. We’ll try that first. Knock her out if you have to. She’ll fight like anything but you have to hang onto her.”

Alvy shakes his head, as though from a reverie.

“Explain again, please. What is amiss with Winter’s Queen?”

“Alvy, it’s bad. It’s um... They did stuff to her, to make her their kind of princess. It’s a factory for making stars. Turning girls into stars. Singers, mostly. Child actors, a lot of them. Triple threats. They put them into these fairytale scenarios and they... She’s in there, but she’s not driving. It started with assassins and then it was just girls, I guess. Too dangerous for spies.”

He nods. “They tried to make her a princess. But she already was one. They wanted her to be a mortal so she would want to be something else. They would make her special. They couldn’t know she was of the Fae. They tried to build a house on top of a house. We can save her. That will be easy.”

Not so sure about that, but I like the general direction. Anything to get us away from picturing the vaguely horrifying stuff we’re picturing now. 

“Just like that?” I smirk, leaning down to inspect myself in the rearview before we head out. The park lights are a little ghoulish, but I can work with it.

I haven’t glamoured myself since I came out, it’s tricky: What we think of as our faces are simultaneously an infinite collection of microexpressions and angles, and a simplified cartoon. You aren’t seeing yourself in the mirror, you’re somebody else seeing you for real. It can get really weird if you don’t remember that: That we exist in our beauty for other people to look at.

Not this time, though. I like her, this girl I have become. Short black bob, slight overbite and dimpled cheeks for laughing. A rosy glow. Pock scars on the forehead, a smattering of freckles. The plumpness of youth. 

I’m not quite Gertrude, but I could be her sister.

*

We’re halfway back to Hollywood before I think about my phone, still buzzing and flashing in the garbage: What if those missed calls weren’t just from the Drone Queen? What if she called for extraction, or worse, and I never got the message? Just blithely tossing it, in a grand gesture of freedom.

Imagine that, I think. Gertrude, Winter’s Queen, begging her awful sister for help, begging me to pick up the phone. And I’m too busy starting the apocalypse, killing her parents she barely ever got to know. I suppose in some way I have some things to make up for. Just a few.

But if this goes right, we’ll be square. She can sit on the throne, drink up all the glory of victory as Fae forgets I ever lived at all. It’s a bizarre measure of comfort, imagining that. Queen Gertrude, storied Scourge of Hell. I can give her that, at least. Assuming there’s anything left of her to salvage.

“I am going to have to get a job. That’s thing number one. Maybe I will move up to Silver Lake with the rest of you. Alvy, can you do anything?”

He’s silent, beside me with the dog in his lap. I nod, after a moment.

“You’re the Commander of the Trooping Fae now. You can’t be my boyfriend anymore.”

He doesn’t look up from the panting thing, but he takes my hand.

“I have very much enjoyed being your boyfriend, Estelle Harlowe. You are a hero of the Fae.”

What he means is... What he said, I guess.

“I don’t think I give you enough credit. I only know a very few people well.”

“Then I am in good company,” he says, winking at Troy in the backseat. The Wild Boy smiles quietly, a great angel resting on his shoulder, staring out into the night between us.

“You don’t have to do this. You could start tonight. Head back to Pomona and...”

“Selena has a good job,” he says quietly, changing the subject. “She can take care of you.”

Selena nods, gratefully. “We’ll figure it out. You’re working overtime as it is. You deserve a year’s vacation at least. Don’t... You don’t have to always be planning anymore.”

I snort, ungratefully. It sounds different, in my new mouth, but no lovelier than ever.

“Oh, I do. But I know what you mean. We’ll find a new shape. All of us.”

Troy gleams; grins conspiracies with Selena. If you looked at my résumé it probably wouldn’t be very impressive. No college, no real employment in all my years. But I have a lot of on the job training. I suppose that could be useful, with Selena. I could manage her, or handle her, or whatever it is called. Whatever Troy does for me. We could be her entourage.

The romance of it hits me, then: To be the woman behind the woman, that would be something. Knowing it would be clean, and that I was doing something good helping her shine. Doing actual good work, for the world. For women, and kids, and everybody that needs it. We can keep up the pagan stuff, Fae will need all the real-world support it can get for the War. And we can take down these Monarch freaks, whatever their agenda is. Expose it all without even working that hard. That's a legacy. A real one.

Sometimes when I was hung over and not wanting to get out of bed, I would think about the future as a thing that didn’t hurt. Imagine ways it could be okay. It was not out of the question that Gabriel might become President. His dad had the hookup. And that would make me the First Lady of the United States, and not the first technically dead woman to hold the role, according to certain sources.

I’d fix his tie and walk out beside him, and everybody would endlessly talk about my clothes and my hair, but it wouldn’t be gross then: I would be doing it for them. Everybody talks about princesses like they’re this disease, but princesses are queens in training, and queens are nothing to mess with. Even in the real world. 

You hold the people in the palm of your hand, like Goldilocks friends: Not too hard and not too soft. Just right. Pictures of the First Family on the mantel next to their own families: Mother to the nation, and to the world. It wouldn’t feel like power but it would feel good. 

And that’s the fantasy I would have, sometimes. Not very often. My Father was the man behind the woman, and everyone liked him. They didn’t even ask for stuff; it wasn’t like Gabriel’s mom, always the side door the creeps would try and sneak through. They just loved him. I thought sometimes he played it up, never too incompetent but never too competent either. Just a calm and loving person who, by standing there, made them feel better. 

I could have done that for Gabriel, I guess. Let him enjoy the perks. But if I could do that for Gabriel, then I sure as hell can do it for Selena. All we have to do is finish destroying the world, and then we can put it together again.

I wonder again what it was like for Alvy, kneeling down before the May like that. Suddenly being a citizen, a warrior in her service. Sir Roosevelt. He looked at her like you wish a boy would look at you: Like you don’t go away when they close their eyes. 

I wonder what working for Selena like that would even look like: I could kneel, like Michael that first morning, easier than anything. It wouldn’t feel gross, it would feel right. But she wouldn’t want me to. She would just laugh and kiss me on the cheek and tell me to keep doing what I was going to do anyway. Which is exactly why I would want it so much. Or I guess, why I do.

I am grateful for the angel now, snoozing or whatever he is doing on Troy; if I could speak aloud, at this moment, there is no telling what would come out of my mouth. As it is, we speak in a hush against the quiet hum of the engine, as I drive. 

Sir Estelle Harlowe. Knight of the Moon. I like it. This life.

A grove of hollies grown from scratch, and Troy’s rowan, and Selena’s vines curling all around and between. Dark and cool beneath the branches. Something for Michael, too, if he wouldn’t mind. A great alder, standing watch over all of us, with its leaves like wings. Better than Laurel Canyon for damn sure. Some secret place like that. Grow together like funny old ladies, saving girls and boys from the nasty darkness of the world.

“Sweet girl,” we’ll say, “Dirty girl,” when they creep up to the screendoor, in ones and twos, looking for refuge. They’ll give Selena lip and I’ll fix them with my coldness until they apologize. They’ll scream and holler for Troy, when he can come, and he’ll carve them panpipes of willow and whisper them out from under our noses, to show them robin’s eggs and foxes’ kits.

See her making hot cocoa when it’s cold, and I give them the freshest, coldest water in the summer. They gulp it down, take everything we can give them, take and take. Eat and eat until they’re full and they can think again. 

They will forget ever having been afraid. We’ll tease out their wildness, breathing it to life like a coal of a fire, and show it to them and say, “How beautiful you are. How absolutely wonderful, when you remember who you are.” 

And when they ask me what I was like, when I was a kid like them, I’ll shake my head—just the slightest quirk of a hidden smile—and say I was a smartass.

Ill-mannered, filthy. Loud and lost.




Chapter Fifty-Six: Vagaries of Satin

“The boys, and the tall one,” Estelle says quietly. “The other girl I don’t know.”

The bouncer steps aside, one hand on the small of Selena’s back as they go, up the carpeted steps to the corner table where Estelle holds court with her current round of well-wishers. Not quite the climbers I would have chosen, when I was Estelle, but of course this new one can’t be expected to do anything right.

The bouncer—tattoos, so much muscle it bunches at the back of his neck—may or may not know who he’s dealing with, but he certainly doesn’t spare me a second look. It is the most beautiful feeling, place after place: People are so interested in looking for someone important to stare at that they don’t notice you staring at them. Quick glance and on to the next. People’s faces are really interesting when you can get a solid look at them.

It only took three different clubs to find her; a little like following her trail of dead, only instead of bodies it was tight groups of weirded-out individuals trying to get themselves sober. Focusing around a pinprick of stability like a lens, trying to piece together what happened, what is happening, what is going to happen. Curlicues and whirligigs in their eyes and around their heads, like when that bird used to talk to Snoopy in the funnies. 

And a trail too of half-hearted, near-faded, purposefully tattered glamours at the periphery: Spots where it’s still raining, angles where the light reflects like tinfoil off nothing, strange melting traceries of baroque and fractal frost, shattered glass rearranged as by a poltergeist, into hearts and stars and roses. Not a Faerie Queen’s best work, and absolutely the least discreet thing I’ve ever seen someone do—this kind of shit, not even unprofessional crapsack vampires would try—but I think that’s the point. Ripping up the world.

And the trail led us here, some rapey wannabe-Pearl’s kind of place that was dying before I even put on my little show on the Autumn train and is most certainly cold now. I’m sure she just went for the nearest leather banquette she could find, whatever bottle was most expensive, probably super loud, probably looking around at everybody while she did it. Thanks for that, sister.

Although considering the due-any-time mayhem about to commence, given the wreckage at the last three places, I suppose there are worse things she could do to my reputation. Telling everybody she meets—right before she punches them or gives them a lapdance—that she’s a goddamn fairy princess, for starters. 

Not a great look, and it’s certainly not the way I was planning to go crazy, as agreed upon six months ago with the Mosquito Queen. That was going to be righteous, paranoid, “this world is bullshit” ranting. Actually give the kids something to work with on my way out. 

Nothing so vulgar as to question the actual mores of society, or the industry, nothing blatantly feminist, but something to indicate that maybe I—that maybe all girls, and boys, who go crazy—had fairly obvious, concrete reasons for doing so. If you look to celebrity to validate your philosophies, better still to look for where it all breaks down. But this isn’t about me, or them, or any kind of anarchy at all. I’ll be damned trying to figure out what it is about, besides her.

There are plenty of powers out there who would see her dead just for doing this, and nobody, not even this Estelle, knows she’s Queen of Winter now. Or that Faerie is falling apart. Or that there’s no reason to keep any of it a secret anymore. There hasn’t been time to get the word out. And if people don’t know that you’re safe—if you don’t know that you’re safe—then really you are not safe. Hence my entire LA career.

In the car, on this point, Troy was inordinately helpful: “Have you considered the awkwardness of how you are going to have to tell her that you killed her parents, whom she just barely met? Because I have, and it seems like a lot.”

On which I suppose I should thank him for breaking the ice. Certainly I wasn’t sure how he was going to feel about that, but the fact that he sent his boyfriend to bodyguard me on the mission means something. I don’t know if Troy actually knows that it means something, he could have just been acting on a hunch, but it means something to me: It was not Sir Roosevelt that kept me sane in that place, or got me out again once I’d killed the world. It was the angel Michael, and for that I am maddeningly grateful. Glad Alvy’s gone home again.

“I will take care of Gertrude,” Selena said calmly. “She likes me. I’m the one she likes. You guys might have to be bad cop, though. She’s getting pretty rough in some of these videos.”

Those are the ones that I like: The ones where she’s bashing folks over the head, sometimes with her dress crawled halfway up her body, or her hair all in a tangle. The ones I don’t like so much are the ones where she acts like a sex kitten robot. I’m comforted to know that, of all the footage my sister is generating in my name tonight, the sad sexual shit is the most likely to get posted—and since there isn’t a lot of it to see, that means she isn’t doing a lot of it.

Which is problem number two. Even though our kind of people may not know she’s safe and that we’re out of the woods on a lot of our more secretive activities, even if they aren’t taking the temperature of my fanbase and Selena’s and seeing how quickly they glommed onto our Craft-y, Rookie, teen-witchy aesthetic—because God knows if teenage girls are into anything you’d better forget you ever heard of it, lest anyone think you’re similarly disposable—and even though some or all might see these shifts in the Realms as an opportunity for some shock-doctrine profiteering, which it is, they are not my concern: The person she’s turning into, once she notices what’s happening, bullets would just bounce off.

It’s not the Courts and it’s not the magic folks and it’s certainly not Hell—currently one legal powwow away from flipping the collective hell out, once they can get their internecine ducks in a row—that I’m worried about: It’s people. Specifically the very human, very corrupt enterprise known as Project Monarch, which even Hell finds too repulsive to barter with.

*

CIA black-bag operation MKULTRA, which most of us have heard of: Mind control, psychic powers, LSD, Nazi-derived occult techniques, staring at goats, Manchurian Candidate. When that folded back into the Company one of its chief quarters, Monarch, was monetized, and for sixty years since has been developing and perfecting the art of empty heads and battered bodies. 

LA offers moments of intersection between self-improvement cults and some modeling agencies that work on the Monarch model, so I have come within one degree of Monarch people on more than one occasion. But only enough to know that it is a real thing, and that I didn’t need to know more about it. I thought it was dead, quaintly gross—like the Freemasons, or Crossfit—but apparently it is not. And apparently they tried their black arts on an unwitting Fairy Princess at some point in the recent past, and now we are cleaning up the results.

It has been tough trying to explain all of this to Selena and Michael—they were all there for the bone machine down in Gabriel’s cellar, which is as good a way to explain it as any; a sophisticated device intended to sever the soul from the body—but impossible to explain to Troy, as we forge our path in Gertrude’s wake, beyond saying very firmly, in a voice Michael will recognize as a directive, not to google it or even think about it too hard.

Because it is some very sad, sick shit, and all anecdotal, from the sort of people who... If you remember the Satanic Panic from the ‘80s, how quickly it becomes clear that the people describing that stuff had clearly undergone something, and those fairytales were their way of dealing with it: That’s how a lot of Monarch talk comes off. 

What I mean is that if somebody told you they were raised from very early childhood as part of a CIA program to create the perfect sex slave, you would understand what they were trying to tell you, underneath what they were telling you. And that’s how I explained it to Troy, and that’s how I finally got him to stop asking about it. Shut him up real quick. And Michael nodded to me, and took the boy in his arms, and that’s what you call being a family.

“But of course the soul cannot be severed from the body in such a way,” Michael said softly. “The soul does not reside in the body, the body resides in the soul. Wildness is not given to us, we are given to it. Anyone can tell you this.”

Whatever it is, it makes you act nuts. It makes you act like Gertrude, who is currently wearing my face and doing some really uncool things with it. It also, when done the way they do it over in Orlando, makes you an extremely talented actor, or dancer, or singer, or all three. Triple-threat. They ship them overseas for a couple of years and when they come back, they hit their marks every time. Occasionally a few make it out, and that’s predictably unpredictable. You know the people I mean. 

And then in other countries they do it different ways. The last time I even thought about any of this was last spring, when Troy was telling me about a new Korean pop idol girl group whose shtick is that they are being forced to perform as a pop idol group, against their will. 

Wildly successful, of course. Swirl that around in the glass, see how it tastes.

All of which is to say I spotted the warning signs, not quickly enough to fix it, and now we are trying to fix it. But as with any arcane system, there are a lot of rules and I find I can’t remember a lot of them. I only remember Faerie rules because they were drilled into my head from birth, and the LA scene because it is my job, but trying to stay fluent in Hell’s law, say, or what families are rising in the Summerlands at any given time, I find that kind of thing awfully difficult. Much more so if it’s this, a thing I didn’t really ever believe in or care about at all.

I know they’re supposed to wear butterflies, earrings or necklaces or stuff. Up through the ‘70s they had tattoos, I remember that, because I thought it was as funny as a joke, that anybody with a tattoo of a butterfly could be a sex slave on the verge of going catatonic if you said the right magic words. You just never know. I know that their imprinting starts with starvation and sleep deprivation, moves through a whole de Sade catalog of abuses, and eventually they start making you watch Alice in Wonderland or Wizard of Oz, stuff like that. Because of course they do.

What I can’t remember is how or when you’re supposed to bring it up with them; possibly, you are under no circumstances to bring it up with them. I have a sinking suspicion it’s the latter, and like most operatives out of the remnants of MKULTRA they have suicide killswitches installed. I would like to be more secure in my understanding of these rules before talking this over with Gertrude. At least while she’s wearing my clothes.

*

I hang at the edge, scanning the crowd for familiar, important or dangerous faces, and consider the tableau: Estelle, Selena, Troy and Michael. The thing we were supposed to be, from here on the outside. 

Selena and Troy attentive, worried sick about their friend Estelle. Trying not to spook her, in case she runs away again. Michael, impassive but watchful, silent reminder of all she’s lost. The missing space he implies, where Gabriel should be. Their secret language, the four of them, whipped up over a handful of months, barely even art-directed or market-vetted, thanks to their near-constant flight from one magical emergency or land to the next. 

They seem war-weary, bonded. Loving. You can see why you’d want to be a part of that; why people do. Like a club you know you should be in; like maybe one day you will, if somebody would just come knocking.

Estelle, without even her gallant Knight there at her side, or her faithful black hound. Just Estelle, buzz already growing about her beautiful breakdown, the uncanny magic poetry performance of it. The sheer originality in claiming to be a magical fairy princess rather than, say, a space alien, or God, or sometimes both. Estelle who was so sad she lost it, and so soon after her birthday. Candle burnt out long before the legend.

Estelle, in her moments of rest: Is she planning some barb or devastating truth bomb, or is her legendary reticence more than just a mirage? Does she think in there at all? I see why they ask, finally. Some of those expressions are not as cute as I always thought they were.

In the age of digital photography what you get, instead of a proof sheet of a couple dozen shots, is a million billion infinite photographs. Each of them potentially a real photo. No alchemical darkroom process of finding out what you have: What you have is there, in the machine, ready to be retouched all to hell and sold to the highest bidder. And if you think about how many pictures you can take in a single minute—or however long it takes the prey to get away—that’s a lot of awkwardness.

Imagine if, every single time you ever sat down, the chair squeaked. That, but visually. Every single time you eat lunch where a person can see, there will be at least ten pictures of you looking as if you are burping, or enraged, or about to cry, or about to barf, or doing any shameful thing we desperately want to see people do. Pictures don’t lie, exactly, but it’s like in Faerie: Unstaged pictures can go sideways on you in a lot of ways, just telling partial, accidental truth.

Which further tells us that when you are merrily feeding them images of yourself acting like a maniac, drug addict, or sex pervert mid-psychotic break—which this bitch has now been doing for several hours—those cameras are going to catch a lot of pictures of you doing just that. And every single one of those has potential for becoming real.

And in the case of Estelle, fairy princess on the loose and absolutely in it to win it, every single one of those has the potential for getting her straight up murdered for exposing even one single thing about Monarch. If I saw the signs, and they don’t even register on my radar usually, how much more clearly is she broadcasting to the people who know what to look for?

So I scan the crowd for that, too. They’ll have people on her by now, surely: You don’t stay this far in the gray without a serious dedication to intelligence, for the same reason that child pornographers have the best firewalls. 

So far, nobody’s showing anything besides the usual, but maybe they’re just waiting to get her between clubs. Which is why Selena needs to shut this down fast, so we can get this girl home and into a nice straitjacket before she makes me look even worse, if that’s possible. My crash course in assassinations didn’t cover extractions, but luckily I was Estelle for a long time. I know how to get it done.

And I trust Selena to do it. Heat she’s packing, she could probably shut this whole place down with a look: Everyone in the bar asleep like babies, tick-tock in the silence as the briars grow up around us. Asleep in a glass coffin, until we’re long gone. And I trust Troy, too, to keep Estelle’s head on straight long enough to listen. And Michael, to keep it to just the four of them. They’re a good team.

And me, invisible in LA, standing outside that circle for a moment: Pretty enough, but not special enough for Technicolor. Watching these four friends who’ve been through it, how they shine to the people on the other side of the rope. Troy’s reassuring hand on Selena’s back, as she asks Estelle easy questions, gauging her response. Michael on the end there, looking everywhere at once somehow, relaxing easily into Troy’s tiny frame. The way he looks when Selena smiles at him, lingering just long enough to show you how much the angel loves her still.

And Estelle: What’s to say about Estelle? She knows where the light is best; what angles present her face, which backgrounds bring out her hair, what makes her eyes sparkle. She knows how to move, just a little bit slower than a person who wants anything. She knows to the millimeter how much skin is showing, and where. What will happen if she turns too quickly, this way or that, and her skirt wrinkles just stiffly enough to give her a tummy, strange lumps, weird gathers at the crotch; this girl who always knows exactly what is going on with her nipples no matter what.

But catch her in just the right moment, breathing in or breathing out, drinking something, crunching ice even—a habit not even the Puck could break—and you might catch a glimpse of something new. Melancholy, which boys like and girls love. Sometimes a ferocity, a barely human cock of the head like a woman about to scream in rage, who never quite does. Every now and then she’ll mourn, hold it just long enough for your camera to capture, before she’s on to the next thing.

I don’t love Estelle; I’ll never understand that impulse, that territorial worship for a person you have never met, comes from. It was never necessary for me to understand why it worked, just that it worked; how to keep it working. But I am astonished to find I don’t hate her, either. 

I have been standing here for what seems like half an hour, trying to put myself into the shoes of someone who hates Estelle Harlowe, trying to pick her apart in my head, find things to complain about, ways to judge her. And what I thought would be the easiest thing in the world has turned out a good deal more impossible than I could have imagined. I suppose Troy would like to hear about that, sometime.

I can’t imagine she’ll be very happy with me, for killing our parents. Even though I’ve made her rightful Queen. And I don’t think she will thank us exactly, for this extraction. What I see now behind her eyes, maybe where only I would look for it, is something a little darker than that, and a little more worth loving, too.

Because that Estelle up there, that girl is scared to death.


Chapter Fifty-Seven: Good Reasons

Estelle catches my eye, as the song overhead goes slower, and then very intently leans over, laying a kiss on Selena before looking me in the eye again. It’s an interesting choice, and I can see some hands fumbling for cameras before the moment fades, but rather than being angry or grossed out I just clench my fists, ready for another showdown. Maybe this time she’ll come at me, I think, and feel the wild Look steal over my temporary face at the prospect.

A few whispered words to the bouncer at their VIP, and he’s on his earpiece, directing her with half his attention toward the ladies’ room while the rest of him focuses on making sure her coast is clear. Another thing I don’t miss about being Estelle Harlowe: The minutiae and meaningless bureaucracy of the celebrity-adjacent, everybody trying to tell you how special they are by demonstrating how useful they are. An agenda which has not once, in the whole of history, had the desired effect.

She gives him whatever “thank you soo much” validation he’s looking for, indicates in a way that does not brook resistance that Troy and the others should stay put, and quirks an eyebrow at me. I am afraid to follow, but not so afraid that I won’t do it. I just want this over with. There’s too much to talk about, too much horror, and I can’t return with her to Faerie to explain it all, so it’s going to be a two-step operation. Maybe I shouldn’t have come at all. 

“You shouldn’t have come at all,” she hisses, the second we’ve got the door closed.

I wouldn’t have, if it weren’t my responsibility to at least tell her what I’ve done.

“You are not in a position to be telling me what is appropriate, Gertrude. Not tonight, not wearing that face.”

She nods, embarrassed. Sheepish.

“I didn’t think you’d be back so soon. I’m still not clear on how all that works. The passage.”

“There aren’t any rules, or if they are they’re some kind of supermathematical thing we can’t possibly comprehend that works out the same as just chaos. Sometimes if the Moon and planets are in certain places you can predict it better, but that’s more a job for Troy, and anyway I don’t think it really matters right now, do you?”

She looks at the floor, quiet for way too long. I’m not very pretty when I’m ashamed, I think.

“I just mean it complicates things. I didn’t even think this would... The past few months have really been a rollercoaster, Estelle. You get that. I’m less and less myself, and I like it. I don’t miss my old life. I mean my parents were nice but they... The longer I’m in Faerie the less stuff here seems to matter.”

I’ve spent my life disappointed in everyone around me. It seems like a good way to be. 

“I get it. What I don’t get is why you decided today was the day to drag me through the dirt.”

“I’m going to start at the beginning. Okay? And you can’t ask any questions or it’ll take too long and they’ll know something is up.”

“Selena and Troy? The people in the club? Do you have some kind of handler? How far back does this go?”

All questions.

*

About six months before we met, I was in a pretty bad place. I mean, I know you had it tough so I feel weird bringing it up to you. I don’t want to compare notes. I just want you to understand.

I mean, in the absence of ... all this ... What I knew of the world was that I was awfully hungry, all the time, and most things hurt to touch, and nobody ever liked me. I couldn’t act normal, I couldn’t be sweet or tell white lies or say thank you for anything. It hurt me so badly, inside, when I tried to act that way, that I just gave up early. Tried to make it my thing. I tell it like it is, you know. Say it to my face. 

I learned the tricks to say thanks without saying it, so people wouldn’t think I was insane. I figured out ways to make people feel good about themselves, so they would feel good about me.

I mean, I was so far away from my body. That made it easy to be far away from everybody else. But I turned twenty and I saw what was happening with the people that I knew, at school. I mean I didn’t have friends but I did have people who didn’t mind me very much. Or thought I was interesting enough in my weirdness that I...

“Got it.”

...So they were all growing up, dating seriously, even the ones that were weirder than me. They were taking part in life. Figuring it out. And then there’s me. Gertrude, all alone. Getting smaller and hungrier, all the time. They were leaving me behind, and they didn’t even know it, because I didn’t really matter that much to begin with. I mean it was profound. My parents wanted to help, but honestly I never really felt like they liked me much to begin with. Like I was defective and they wished there was a factory they could return me to. You pick up on little things.

“You’re trying to break my heart.”

No, I’m trying to...

“It’s working.”

Right. I had all these dreams; go to the city, any city. Find my people, find my tribe. I mean I knew they had to be out there, somewhere. That I didn’t exist just to be alone, like this, all the time. But the idea of actually setting out to do this, putting myself out there like that, was crippling. If you give something all of yourself and then that gets taken away, what do you have? Nothing. There would be literally nothing. So I stayed at home and out of their way, and I took the bare minimum courseload, and I read a lot of books.

“If I hadn’t had the Puck and Gabriel, and a retinue of ladies’ maids specifically tasked with keeping me social, dragging me out into the sun, I would have faded too. I mean, I know that about myself.”

My favorite thing to do was plan vacations. I would do all the research, read up on a place, learn phrases. Create elaborate itineraries and calculate to the dime, then plan separately exactly how long it would take to save that money. And just go. And then when the plans were perfect, every spreadsheet and every strange custom and what I would order from every menu...

“You’d nuke it. Delete the whole thing, so you could enjoy making it all over again.”

Yeah, that exactly. I... That’s really weird, how would you guess that? Anyway, so these people, who I probably would have felt sorry for in another life, felt sorrier and sorrier for me. They would drag me places. And one time it was a party. 

I don’t like parties. Or I guess I used to not like them. Now I do. Because now they don’t hurt, and I don’t have to do anything or say anything and I’m still interesting. I can just be. I can sit on that throne all night if I want, just watching, and that’s me doing my actual job. Tremendous.

At this party a man—and I mean I can’t tell you how desperate I was, at this exact moment; it was the darkest period of what I’m talking about—wouldn’t leave me alone. He didn’t make me nervous, it wasn’t creepy or demanding, he just... Kept finding ways to be near me. And I didn’t freak him out by being intense, or drive him off by being rude, or anything. Anything I did was cool with him, because I was...

“Here we go.”

And so he tells me he’s got something that will change my life. Says that he can tell I’m one of the special ones, and it didn’t even sound like a line. He said, You just need to find your people. You’ve spent your life knowing that you were something unique, and nobody has ever confirmed that for you. Your body aches and your heart is alone and nobody notices, because they are too busy with their own stuff. But you, you know. You get it about yourself.

“This sounds like a training script at a child molester bootcamp, Gertrude.”

I know. I can’t get across how... I mean, I was a changeling too. The things he was saying were true. There was no way he could know how true they were. I was all alone in the whole world, just... I was in the wrong universe. Something inside me responded. It wasn’t like being flattered, I’ve always gotten bothered by that, but something deep down there was like, Yes.

I know what you’re thinking and don’t worry, we won’t talk about it. But I was not very far into it. They don’t start with that stuff, the real bad stuff, right away. But there were some weekend trips away for training and money, my parents thought I had a real job, and... I didn’t remember a lot of stuff. I lost a lot of time, even going back to the beginning of it. I think there was one week where they did actually lock me in a room, I remember that a little bit, but I think they were just getting started. I think I would remember more if it were really bad stuff.

“Okay. I don’t believe you, but okay.”

And so they put me in this dress, a practice run I guess, and sit me at this table with some kind of State Senator and his wife. My mission is, she goes home alone. I wasn’t even supposed to do anything with the guy—I would have quit right then, for something like that—just get the wife to go a little crazy. I mean maybe that’s what was supposed to happen. Maybe other stuff and I don’t know, and if so I don’t want to know. This is how I remember it. This is the bare minimum.

“When was this, Gertrude?”

Just... So they’re handing out these awards or whatever was going on, a lot of speeches, and I was trying to apply what I’d learned, and the man was responding. And that made me feel good. And then the wife leaned over and said something, I don’t know what, all I hear is a rushing sound when I try to remember it, and that was it. Some kind of a switch flipped. I heard that if anybody calls you out about it—and thank you for being sensitive to that—you might kill yourself. So I guess that’s probably what she did. I guess she noticed me doing something and recognized it for what it was. Or maybe she just made me feel gross, and that was enough.

“But you’re not dead, so...”

No. I went to bed that night, in my bedroom. Just like every night. And the next day I woke up and I didn’t even put on makeup or anything. I just spent a long time picking out the right book from Dad’s library. I don’t really have a favorite book, I wish I could say it was that, but not really. I just wanted to fill my head up with wonderful images and poetry, I wanted it to be a beautiful place in there when I killed myself. To scribble over what was going on, which was increasingly all I could think about: Just these blank spaces that I knew were bad, but I couldn’t see them. And I didn’t want anybody to know what was happening, so I took the book to a coffee shop, and I was about to start reading it, and then...

“Summer. The blonde woman with her hair in a bun, and the one with a gun on his belt. Troy said it was a diner but I guess if you were sitting at the bar...”

They marched me out into the sun, and then to Summer, and it was so mean and scary there, but I didn’t want to die anymore. It was like they’d replaced that idea. And then I met the Puck, and she told me it was an extraction. I wasn’t allowed to kill myself, so she was just bringing me home.

“Coincidentally starting a clash of forces unseen since the time of legends, touching off a War and a chaos that threaten to end the Realms permanently, and probably the real world into the bargain. Good old Puck.”

If he didn’t have multiple reasons for doing the things that he does, he wouldn’t be the Puck.

“Why Summer? And why this tonight? We’re still not...”

I don’t guess I have anything going on in my head now. I think whatever it was, didn’t take. But the night you were supposed to take the Autumn train, the reason he sent you right to it, is so I could come out here and do this. To flush them out, he said. If Hell goes down...

“There will be a power vacuum, worse than the ones before. And you think...”

Monarch. You can say it. But yes. The Puck said they were poised to take Hell, operating out of the real world, and there was nothing you could do about it. He said you were remaking the world and if Monarch got in there, with all their influence and stuff they’ve already got, that would be it for the world. Like Orwellian stuff. Worse than what you’re stopping now.

“So tonight, you were flushing them out. Making them think a Monarch agent had gone wrong. Or rogue. Or... You didn’t stop to think that they’d know I was never recruited?”

I don’t think it matters. I think just doing it would set them off enough. I mean this was planned out like a chess game. I don’t know all the sides in play. Maybe only the Puck does. Maybe only the Puck can. But the plan was to join your crew and do this, so Selena and Troy could work on tracking it back. And then when you came home, we could all take them down. 

I like being in the world. I mean, I love Faerie, it’s my home the way this place never could be. But just being out here, like myself—or yourself—rather than what I remember, it’s a blessing. The world is full of colors and smells and tastes that I didn’t know about, before. I love it. I love it here.

“And all of this was on the Puck’s say-so?”

Well. The first thing I did, a week ago, was check into a hotel. I know I was supposed to be touring around the city for you and I planned on doing it. I queued a bunch of pictures so you’d have at least one feed going, but I knew that wasn’t enough. And I got scared again.

I always wanted a sister. Do you understand? I grew up thinking if I just had a sister, like in books, somebody who had to love me no matter what, maybe I would have been stronger. I wouldn’t be so greedy and the world wouldn’t feel like knives under my feet. If I just had one person that I felt looking back at me when I looked at them, instead of just something strange that didn’t fit: Too pretty to be so weird, too weird to really be pretty. If I had somebody to tell me it was going to be okay.

When they told me you were coming to Winter, it was the greatest day of my life. I went from being a statistic and a victim, to being the most important person, and our parents were just instantly into me, so much. I wanted to crawl into her lap and just live there as long as it took for me to feel better. And then on top of it: You have a sister! She is the most popular person in the Realms. Maybe you know of her in real life, even, that’s how famous she is.

When you came into the room it was like looking into a funhouse mirror, but the opposite: You were so perfect, and I was still just... Gertrude. The Before picture, before all the bumps and awkward bits get sanded off. And you were so mean to me, you said all those things and I know you were thinking even worse ones, and I was a disappointment. Like this final judgment came down and I lost the appeal: I’m nothing, it was true the whole time. It made Faerie cold. So I tried really hard to make it there, and do all the faerie stuff, and you hated me for that too. 

All I really had, even when my dreams were supposedly coming true, was the May. She was the only person who really seemed to like me. But I could tell she liked you more. I wanted to be a big sister to her and tell her how the world worked, but I didn’t know that either. She ended up giving me advice, on the Court and faerie manners and how to do the most basic things. I could tell she was frustrated more than she wasn’t.

We have our parents but they’re not really our parents, you know, and the May is a different person from us. You’re the only person like me, who lives in both, who remembers both. The more you won in the War, the more amazing things you did, the more scared I got. Every time you came to visit—not me, never me—you would bring some new amazing person with you and I would think well, that’s another lovely thing she has, that I won’t ever have. 

You have so many reasons to hate me and zero reasons to love me, but I fell in love with you the second you walked in that day. You were the only thing that has ever made sense to me in my entire life.

I couldn’t handle the idea of disappointing yet more people, but especially you. And I kept doing it over, and over, and then you gave me this amazing way to get your respect and I just... flubbed it. Paralyzed. I let your stuff go by the wayside, and I hung out by the beach getting more and more nervous and angry at myself, but I just couldn’t walk out the door. Not into your city that loves you and you love it. I thought, I guess it was an excuse, but I thought it might be better for you to just disappear, than have me going out screwing it up more.

“Clearly you have changed your mind on that point.”

Well. You were supposed to be gone. The Puck sent word that while you were out of town, I should do what I could to prepare the world for your return, and that meant getting Monarch out in the open, and I had to do it right away. So I did. That one I could do, because it didn’t matter how weird I got. Weird was required, so it was perfect. And even if you got mad at me, at least you would know there were good reasons. 

I mean. Are they good reasons, Estelle?

*

I have no interest in discussing her feelings about me, or about all this. Our bond. It turns out once you get Gertrude talking there is very little you can do but step out of the way; even half-Fair as she is she is still very sloppy with her feelings. But I hear it, and I understand it. 

“They are very good reasons and I think you are a hero.”

It’s not Thanks, but it’ll do. She’s happy about that, at least. 

When she cries she looks a lot like our father. I guess that’s what does it. Or maybe some of the things she’s saying make it through. Maybe it’s just seeing how hard she’s been working, which is very hard. 

She’s certainly believable enough about how I might have come across. I have heard that I can be a little intense. That is a thing I have heard.

But whatever it is, it takes us both by surprise when I wrap my arms around her so tightly in that bass-thumping bathroom that she gasps a little strangle. And then, muffled by my hair:

“Oh! And happy birthday!”

Well, it is. That makes me laugh. It is, and it will be. 

We have a new enemy to fight.



Chapter Fifty-Eight: Hot, Cold & Just Right

“Problem. Drone won’t come here. My wards are too good, I guess, because I am such a good strong witch. They said it’s a dead zone, we have to find neutral ground.”

I was kind of counting on that, getting a Drone away from the hive mind, but I can work with it.

“Neutral ground, they said? Not come in?”

Troy shakes his head. She won’t want me or Gertrude anywhere near the hive, not now. Not with Monarch sniffing around, I guess. Or with my dirty deeds making her go nuclear.

“Well, I don’t care where. I just want to get this done quickly, so we can get Gertrude home.”

Gertrude turns her face—her old face, her real face; her beautiful face—to me, hurt, from Troy’s couch. She brought me coffee from the kitchen, when she was finished changing, without asking. So now I have to drink it.

“Gertrude, while they’re setting that up, I have some stuff to tell you. A small amount of good news and also a great deal of very bad stuff. I didn’t know some things, going in on the Summer Queen. I feel it’s important to stress that I could not have known these things. And to reiterate that the Puck probably did.”

She puts down her coffee, wary from my tone; Selena and Michael retire to the backyard with the dog, while Troy works his magic on the Drones.

“I got on that train with Alvy to take down the Queen, so the May could take the throne, as you know. To replace corruption with youth, and all that. And while we were getting into position, I had a clear shot at Summer’s King, the King in Oak. And I thought about the May, and Alvy’s sister, and... Well, I haven’t told anybody about this part. I didn’t even think about it at the time, but it was in there.”

The night before the assassination, with Alvy one side of me and the dog on the other, was not one for restful sleep. It was also not one for tossing and turning, so I felt a little trapped. Trapped in a nice way, but without any real outlets for the buzzing in my head. So I ran scenarios. 

If we killed Summer’s Queen, the May would step up and maybe become the child bride of the King in Oak, her would-be rapist. And we would have to deal with that. If we took them both out, Alvy could be elevated to King in Holly, which would have really great optics but make me feel very gross and weird if May was up there beside him. I had to remind myself they were closer in age to each other than any of us, but that kind of technicality is when you know you’re being a supercreep.

If something happened to the Winter Queen as a result of what we did, that opened up a throne in Winter. But Gertrude couldn’t marry her father—there’s precedent, nothing good there of course—so my suggestion would be to put her on Summer’s Throne with either the King in Oak or Alvy by her side, depending on how that fell out. And then the May relinquishes her throne, and comes to Winter as Queen: Again, perfect optics, a sign of goodwill and the melding of the Courts toward the higher goal of eradicating Hell. Everybody living wherever and however they want. And my face everywhere you look.

But then the May is married to another elven King. A very nice one, to be sure; my favorite of them all. But still not so different from what they tried to do to her. And not any different at all from what they tried to do to me.

“Which is to say, I guess some part of me knew it could have wider effects. And I didn’t tell anybody that, because I barely remembered it the next morning. But I guess I just thought it would be better to remove those obstacles altogether. That killing Summer’s King was worth losing our father, if that’s what had to happen.”

Gertrude is silent, for a long while. Considering our hands, in our separate laps: Nearly identical, except for her chipping manicure situation.

“So you are saying it was mostly political? That you killed my parents because you...”

“—No, I’m saying it was a possibility that I discounted, when it came down to it, because he was right in front of me. Do you know how long the current King in Oak has been on the Throne? Because I don’t. But at least two hundred years, if not thousands. That’s two hundred girls, if not thousands. All because the power structure, and the landscape, depended on it. Because some old idiot from Faerie signed off on Hell’s Louisiana Purchase without considering the small print.”

“If I weren’t a faerie I would probably be pretty pissed. If you did anything to our real parents I would probably hit you. But as it is, I don’t know. It seems like the natural order of things. You never really got to know our parents the way I did. I mean, in the way that I did. They didn’t watch me grow up. I was just this woman suddenly in the middle of things, ready to worship them. They liked that.”

I am sure they did.

“So they were casual, or... Not casual, I mean they were never that. But it was different. Her back would go straight when you walked in the room. She knew you were going to come at her and she was getting ready for a fight. And after Gabriel died, he would just get softer when your name came up. See-through. It was interesting to watch. My parents, showing me how they felt about their child, who was not me. And then watching them cover up. I think they liked that we didn’t get along. I think it made them feel special. They would ask questions and you could hear them sometimes, just the tiniest bit excited to hear about it. Which one of us loved them more.”

They’d do the same thing with Gabriel: Talk to me like he was just a kid, and I wasn’t. I hated it.

“The May gets it, too. She was so standoffish with the King and I thought she was just working him, you know, so he would like her more. But really I think it was just too much. He was too into her. He missed having a daughter, a little one like that. And so he’d babytalk her and try to read her stories and... I think marrying him in any capacity would have killed her. That is a gross plan.”

“I’m well aware. I probably wouldn’t have done it. I’m just saying, I knew it could happen. Somehow I felt the laws underwriting it might have something to say about us just killing a couple of them.”

She nods. Takes it in. I watch her mind work. For a second she is a better version of me: Cold in a way I could never copy, no matter how hard I tried.

“We will mourn them. Throw a big party. I liked them a lot. Could have loved them one day, if I’d had time. But... Bastard Queens on every Throne, and a sky full of fire. Something like that, right? So now there is only one Queen in all of Faerie, and it’s the one who deserves it the most. And all our armies are...”

There it is. Her eyes go wide, eyebrows way up. And then that faerie look: Deep satiation. I can barely keep from recoiling.

“I am the Queen of Winter now. That’s what that feeling was. I’m...”

I nod. It’s not a crown I ever wanted, but act like you’ve been there. I’m sitting in front of you.

“We shall need a Knight. Like hers. If we’re going to lead the trooping faeries against Hell’s bastion, we will need a General. There can’t be division in the ranks.”

“Exactly. Which is why we need to get you home, to get things settled and get on the same page as the May. And that means you have to let me handle Monarch from here on out. Which is why we’re calling in the Drone Queen. Use humans to fight humans. I can work the Mosquitos and Troy will rally the Spring outposts to the north. Selena holds the City. And you go home.”

She nods, still giddy. Such a hungry girl.

“I am no War Chieftain. I can’t do what you do, not yet. But as Queen... Estelle, is this what you want? What you wanted?”

I can feel the Look steal over me, careful as I am.

“I’m no Fae. I can’t even go back. I can’t even see the Ladies of the Canyon. Trust me when I say this is all I have. I am spoiling for a fight. They sell girls.”

She clutches at my hand, and I let her.

“I knew you could do it. The Puck said you would take it on but I wondered. You seem above all that stuff. I thought human trafficking would bore you.”

I can see why she would think that. But what she’s not considering is how fast I can adapt: It’s a human skill. We don’t flow with time, like the faeries, nor stand apart from it like the angels. We take moments and make memory, and art. We scar. Our lives are books written a page at a time.

I am free, for the first time in my life, from exactly the thing she’s giving me to kill. I wasn’t meant to wear a crown, but that doesn’t mean I can’t lead. I just needed the right kingdom.

Wildness isn’t given to us, we are given to it. I see what he meant now.

*

So Selena and I will meet with the Drones south of the City, while Troy and Michael are dispatched to Pomona, escorts befitting a Queen. If Troy can work the angles right, he might get an audience with the Puck, which could help us immensely. That merry wanderer of the night is less discreet with mortals, since he doesn’t consider them real. Think but this, and all is mended.

“Autumn can do a video, like Kony. And Spring, I can get RAINN on the phone. First America and then the world. We won’t reach out to survivors and we won’t touch on the conspiracy stuff. Can’t call it by name. But the witchy stuff, I can use that if you let me use your accounts.”

“Do whatever you want, Troy. I’m not famous anymore. That’s light from a dead star. It’ll take them weeks to even figure out I’m gone—that’s one thing this year has taught me. The biggest brands spend the most on marketing so they stay big, but if they stopped they wouldn’t fail. Not for a long time. Use that. I built it for you to use just like this. You can be me if you want.”

He laughs.

“Not for one million American dollars. But I bet I can do a good job. Michael can tell me when I’m getting too soft. He’s probably very good about staying on message.”

An eternity of practice, in fact.

“I’m firing the PR people, okay? It’s going to be just us. And that means consistency, it means all the art you can muster. I don’t need approval but come to me with any questions. I can record something tonight about my meltdown yesterday and drop some more breadcrumbs...”

I can tell Gertrude still feels bad about that part.

“Gertrude, it’s nothing. I don’t need a persona anymore. We can do anything we want with it. It’s just a little dolly we move around, now. Estelle Harlowe is an idea that has nothing to do with us now. Just a pretty thing that does what we want. Let her work.”

“Good. Because if they can find you, they will kill you.”

I nod excitedly.

“They’ll try! I invite them to try. Hell couldn’t do it. All the Realms couldn’t do it. Gabriel’s horrible mother couldn’t do it. I doubt very much that some gross old white man sex club is going to get away with it, regardless of how well connected they are. But I need you out of the real world, just in case. I can’t think about us both.”

She clasps my hand again. So reluctant to let go, now that she’s finally found me. Now that I’ve finally let her.

“You won’t be banished for long, Estelle. Once the Summer Queen gets her feet under her, and trusts me, I’ll fix this. We all wanted to destroy the world, it wasn’t just you. But you’re the one that did it. Not even Winter can argue against that, not anymore. When we take Hell, you will be there. Let me do that for you. I’ll talk to the Puck...”

Who is crazier than either of us ever thought of being, now, as his mind and spirit fall apart around him. The last time I saw him, he was swimming backstroke in that brackish little swan pond, strobing back and forth between manic pixie and Morrissey teen goth. But she’ll see that for herself, soon enough. She was always more his creature than I was, I think. We were both his weapons, but he shaped her life. At least I always got a choice.

“You don’t have to do anything for me, Gertrude, but I appreciate the sentiment. We’ll party.”

Gertrude smiles, rolling her eyes, and finally consents to the car. The dog stands on the porch, watching me and Selena wave goodbye, madly, until they’re gone.

*

Waiting for word from Troy that he’s cleared a location for the drone meet, Selena and I mix up some weak cocktails and retire to his wild, mad backyard. Her favorite place. 

“Welcome home,” she says brightly, clinking my glass, but I can tell she’s got more to say.

“I ditched you and I’m sorry, Selena. I ditched you all. I just didn’t want you to see me.”

“I won’t bother you about it. The Ladies took their share out of your hide, that’s how I see it. You did what you had to do. I told you, I never wanted to see you weak because eventually you’d hate me for seeing you.”

“I mean, that’s true about a version of me maybe, but...”

“—I don’t see Sir Alvy around here anywhere, Estelle. Have you really not thought about why that is?”

Fine. I don’t want to relegate him merely to his usefulness, but she’s not wrong. It’s a relief that he’s not here, just as I’m glad every time the dog looks up at me so lovingly, without any idea how far out I waded. The fact that Alvy wouldn’t even care is the opposite of comforting. But when I see him next, I will be happy to see him. And he will be happy to see me, and tell me all the stories of his adventures, and I will be happy to sit and listen to them, until he is exhausted. And that’s all we really need from each other, to know we did it right.

“There were so many bodies. It was like... Civil War reenactors massacring a Ren Faire. I don’t even know what went down. The gunshots spooked a few and then the train crash out in the mists scared the other ones but they were only fighting each other. There wasn’t actually anyone to fight. It was just them, so used to having no cares in the world that one scary thing made them riot. Gratuitous. Just kids, panicked and stupid and lost.”

Selena sighs. “That’s every war, Estelle.”

“Getting pretty deep, Kirke.”

“Goddess habit. You have no idea how stupid all this stuff with the Realms seems now.”

I can guess. It makes me laugh.

“But Hell. And Monarch,” she spits, “That’s worthy of you. That’s your legacy. And you have your whole life to bring them down. You’ve done it. Maybe not the cleanest way, maybe not anything Troy will let go of any time soon. But you got it done. And I think it was hard on you. Not as hard as the thousands of people you killed, but pretty hard.”

I can’t agree, but I can’t disagree either. I don’t love the way that makes me look. Very little of what Selena sees when she looks at me is flattering. But she says it like it’s no big deal. I never thought I would find it easier to comprehend the angel Michael than Selena, but there it is.

“I thought about you all the time. Did you know that Troy gave me that picture, the morning of the assassination? Marilyn and Jane Russell, with their hands in the cement.”

Selena grins sleepily.

“I left that out for him to find, so he’d bring it. He’s honestly pretty confused about all this.”

“He’s not alone.”

“No, he’s not. And neither are you. Are you really home this time? Are you... Can we rest?”

That way it sounds terrible, it sounds like dying, but yes. We can rest, for a moment. Life isn’t something you can save, it’s not worth anything if you don’t use it. Treasure it, use it, wear it out. Most things that are true sound like clichés, but the reason is that they’re true. 

The Ladies would say, Fight when you’re fighting, and love when you’re loving. Don’t force the past or the future to intrude, give them that dignity: Be who you are, when you are. And right now, the only thing left to do is a phone call with some fake journalists that I could ace, and have done, blind drunk. 

“I had this idea about you and me, Selena. When this is all done.”

So be who you are.

“I thought maybe we could get a little house. Unless you get a boyfriend or something, that wouldn’t work. But I thought somewhere close to Troy and Michael, you know. And maybe we could find kids to help, together. I’m not a magical person and I don’t have the Ladies backing me up anymore, but I know some things. And you’re you, so I thought...”

Selena’s hand upon my knee, as she leans out to search my eyes.

“You are seriously the weirdest person I have ever met. I know that now. I thought it was just the situation or the way you were brought up, but no. You are naturally off the beam. And I love it. And yes, I would happily open up some kind of magic foster home with you if that’s what you want. We’re going to be saving a lot of kids. They’ll need somewhere to be.”

I thought Marilyn was a sex goddess and maybe she is. But there’s a lot more to it than that. I can feel my way along the limits of the City, the Knowledge or whatever you want to call it, and sense where it’s hot. And here in the center there’s Selena, and her City is the whole world. All the things in it, hot and cold and just right. Imagine loving so much that you can even love the bad parts; those clear eyes cutting straight through, watching even the worst stuff happen, and still being able to say, “I can help. Just come home.”

So when Selena Kirke tells me everything will be okay, there’s no reason not to believe her. Maybe not even a choice.


Chapter Fifty-Nine: The Ones Who Sell Girls

were nicked

Across a haze of violence, Michael taking down two guys I don’t recognize. From the angle it seems like Troy is crouching somewhere, hopefully out of the way. You can almost see the Pomona gazebo in the background, small and white. I’m not sure how to proceed, but by the time I have my breath back he sends another one. Gertrude, nose bleeding but otherwise unharmed, hunkered down beside him still wearing my clothes:

dont go to the Drones n dont come hee

I wish for, and get, another shot of Michael’s attackers: Cameramen, nightcrawlers. Nearly identical, when you line them up like that. Why would Drones be after Gertrude?

theyr calling her dstelle they dnt know its her

So, definitely after Gertrude. Which is me, apparently. Gabriel would know what this is. Hell watches all these groups, he’d know how they’re connected. Waving Selena in from the backyard, hoping he’s on silent, I finally send something back: My thumb, fuzzy.

Let them take her. I’ll be Gertrude, they won’t hurt Estelle. Hostage.

Troy’s surly mouth, shouting orders at Michael from their hiding place:

she doesnt want to play it like tha .  she doest

She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She thinks she’s being brave, taking my place, because she still thinks I’m the point. But she’s not being brave, she’s being stupid: If they’re after Gertrude, if they know she exists and isn’t me, then they know who she is and there’s only one power pulling the strings on this. 

Monarch couldn’t find Gertrude to bring her in, so they’re kidnapping her sister. The Drones can’t afford to let this get out, because they don’t interfere, they just document. They’ll kill all three of them rather than let that happen. If they’re under Monarch, it goes way back, and that means this doesn’t end until everyone is dead, on one side or the other.

If she can’t pull it together to get to the gazebo, and she can’t Winter Queen her way out of the real world—if that’s even a thing you can do—then the only choice is to give her up. Queen’s Gambit. 

Once I show Gertrude’s face, they’ll let her go. They don’t need the trouble. They’ll be looking to keep their contract with Estelle. Hell, they’ll still expect me to show up for the meet. It’s how they think.

Say they have to take her in. She demands to be taken into HQ. They’ll comply.

And so will she. It won’t be up to her, if you call off Michael before he kills too many of them. Just hand her over and let me work.

Tell her May walked out. So brave to go to Winter. Just a kid. You are a Queen. Get her moving.

And with no reply forthcoming, I can only assume that it did. Selena looks into my eyes for a long time, in the quiet. I can’t tell if she’s looking for something in me, or just resting her gaze on me while she does goddess stuff, but either way it’s not disconcerting. In some ways it’s more of a conversation than when we were talking.

“You’ve got the Look. You sat there an hour ago and told me we could rest.”

“Selena, I didn’t plan to get kidnapped, or held hostage, on behalf of myself. We can fix this.”

“I can’t believe they made it all the way to Pomona. That sucks. They were so close. Troy’s going to be pissed. He hates when you get so close and then it fouls up.”

We should have tried a different route, maybe. They can’t see the house, not even Monarch’s footsoldiers could have tracked us here. But if they were watching exits, and know Gertrude’s connected to me, they’d be watching Mulholland and the 10. We didn’t think.

“It’s not fouled up. We’re just ahead of schedule. She was supposed to be out of town so they’d put eyes on me, and I would be ghosting while we worked. The only thing that has changed is that we know who the enemy is now.”

“Yeah. The people that were supposed to help us. The megaphone we were going to use, to keep you safe and save all those girls. The best weapon. Your best weapon.”

I like this. I like simple. Chasing our tails around Hell and Summer and Autumn was how my life was going to end, and I hated that, even if I was good at it. Trying to figure out who was running who. But this is easy: The ones who sell girls, running the ones who sell girls.

“Using the Drones to push our messaging was not the cleanest solution, just the most expedient.” 

Selena wouldn’t know, because I never would say, that I didn’t feel great about it. Even Troy’s been getting sick of them. They’re getting sicker. They are... There’s a race to the bottom and they’re on it. Like executives who jack up their quarterlies because they know they’re out the door by the time the checks get cashed. 

“So I don’t really care if this is some kind of devil’s bargain, or they’ve been in on it all along, or what. We thought they were spectators, and maybe they were always more than that. Or maybe there’s no difference, maybe spectating is doing now. Either way, they’re the enemy. I never wanted to leave my world in the hands of nightcrawlers. Now we don’t have the option.”

“I can see the appeal, for sure. It just seems like at some point you have to wonder when the fight will stop coming to you. I mean, isn’t this exactly the kind of stuff you love?”

“A month ago I was dead. I’ve been dead for twenty-one years. Now I am alive. We’ve got time. Do you really want something like that, crouching down in the heart of you?”

Selena shudders. So that’s another one onboard. And once Troy and Michael get here and we know they’re safe, we can figure out a way to barter for Gertrude. Find something they want, there’s always something they want more. They get high on blood.

Like the Puck said, who rebuilds the world writes the laws. We act like that isn’t the only kind of history that’s real: The story that’s left when the dust settles. But if it is, then history isn’t the enemy. It’s the usurpers looking to write it. And that could be us, just as easily as them. 

Especially if they’re dead.

*

“I don’t think he’s dead. He’s not moving but... Do they breathe?”

We four stand over the open trunk of my poor, battered car. She’s nearly gone. Just worn out.

The drone inside has a slick undercut, like a good boy from the Fifties. If you pull his shirt up a little bit you can see a surgical scar across his abdomen, clean and straight, from when he was a boy. He seems inordinately healthy; none of that sallowness and pallor they get once they stop sleeping. The lucky ones get sort of fashionably skinny but the really compromised ones, the ones who weren’t prepared properly, they don’t get fashionably anything. 

The Drone Queen’s offices have a syndicated show where paid actors stand around a mockup of the bullpen, pretending to discuss the stories they’ve researched. The real ones, sometimes, while they’re pretty enough. But the majority of them don’t ever come up to breathe. It would be too easy to tell just how unhealthy that air is, there in the hive. Recycled and chilly; smelling of her. Sweat and clicking chitin.

I used to think it was so important to remember that they were people; contracts signed in blood or no, there were people in there. Maybe that was just so I could feel like my hands stayed clean.

“I don’t recognize this one, Troy. Is he new?”

Troy prods him with a foot, gingerly.

“I don’t either. The last few times it’s been the same guy, a little older than this, and shorter. Maybe he wore out.”

I can tell what he’s thinking: This could be a new crop altogether. Maybe we’ve never met this army, and never traded with them. Never walked into those offices, under Monarch’s eye. Maybe sometime while the Realms were falling, and Hell was building up its reserve army, the Drones were being turned. Maybe it was quick as anything.

“A software virus would do it,” Troy says. “If it was magic you could send that over the tipline. Turn ‘em all within an hour, as they checked into the hub.”

I will take his word for it. But I know he’s just wishing for it to be true. We both know we’re looking at the same exact drone as the ones last year, and the year before that: Money struggles, or cold ambition, or actual sociopathy, and on the perfect day for it, the recruiter shows up...

“Have you ever met their HR department? Scarier than the Queen herself. Like Autumn but stupid. Cold and fun. They all have blogs and talk about movies. It’s the worst.”

“What are we going to do with this guy? What happens when he wakes up, or reboots, or...”

“Well,” Troy says, hands on hips. “We’re in the dead zone now. He can’t call out, and they can’t track him. They can get a couple blocks away maybe, but they don’t have the critical thinking skills you would need to actually look around, once they’re in the zone. They’ll just flip out and run back to the mothership. He’s possibly not even a Drone anymore. Just a whatever is left.”

There’s a tiny spot where he hasn’t shaved, which is notable only because the rest of him is so impeccable. Even his trousers are barely wrinkled. Definitely a new one.

“You mean they’ll just cut him off?”

“Soldier bugs, lady. They don’t have individual meaning. You could say he was going to die and he’d just shrug. Like sounds fake, but okay.”

I can tell Troy’s remembering the hot dog night, when he kissed the Drone and it started screaming. It’s still not a bad memory; I kind of smile at him and he kind of smiles back.

“So we get him in a circle, right. Lock him up tight, just in case. See what he has to say?”

See what we can make him say, I don’t add. And after this, we can rest.

The others nod, and Michael hoists him out of the car while Selena and Troy head inside to prepare a space to bind him. He’ll draw all kinds of stuff on the floor, she’ll say some words, it’ll be boring and take too long, but not so long that he’ll wake up. And if he does, Michael will just choke him out again.

“Good job bringing him in, Michael. I know it was hairy out there.”

“I did not want to stop. It hurt to do so. I wanted to keep fighting until they were no more.”

He shifts the boy on his shoulder, in a jerk.

“I’m sorry, Michael. I wish for that, too. I’m sorry it hurt.”

He nods his shaggy head, grateful for the sympathy. Little psycho.

“They have your sister now. You have given her to our enemies.”

“Our enemies, yeah. But not hers. So if she keeps up the act...”

“She does an impression of you that is convincing,” Michael says, and then looks sharply to the side, as though willing the words back into his mouth. You have to laugh.

“I am sure she does. So let’s figure out how to get her back. I’d like to see it.”

*

When the drone comes around, there’s nothing there. I mean he’s in some kind of shock and maybe it’s just how a boy acts when an angel cracks him one on the noggin, but my instincts tell me this is as good as it gets. Television tuned to a dead channel.

“Can you not... Is there some way to be a hacker here? Get back to them somehow? Maybe drop another virus on them?”

Which none of us even believe is what happened, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work for us. Maybe that was Troy’s magic telling us what to do. 

Selena clears her throat.

“Not that I would suggest it as a habit, but I mean, she’s the Queen, right? Can’t they...”

It’s a good thought.

“It would take an army. A couple of faeries with guns is not equal to what they’d be walking into. We don’t troop in the real world.”

Michael cocks his head.

“That is not entirely true. The Wild Hunt, Troy. We were told you...”

Troy shakes his head, firmly, without looking at either of us. It shuts the angel up. And Troy won’t meet my eyes, which means he won’t talk about it at all, and we’re running out of time. I pull out my phone and Troy nods when he sees me going for the spam filter. A sign that he’s willing to get guidance from anybody; not a great sign. I like it when Troy knows what to do, because when I don’t know what to do I really do not know what to do.

Arranged around a glitchy jpg of a generically sexy, awkwardly posed woman hawking dick pills, I see it:

Hello Friend! Believe my word, this is your last chance, for crying out loud!
He paid his homage and kissed the ground

...I can handle that.

*

“So we trade hostages. That’s the call.”

Selena shakes her head, looking to Troy for backup.

“One second out of the dead zone and Monarch is on you. What would be the point?”

“We don’t get anywhere if we don’t leave the dead zone. Eventually they might do stuff to her, just to draw me out. Or how long until she cracks?”

Troy isn’t impressed, but that’s not what I’m saying.

“I’m not being mean! They don’t know what she is. They’ll think they’re torturing me. If she forgot her meds this morning, or thought she didn’t need them going back to Pomona, even just putting cuffs on her is going to draw blood. This was supposed to take three hours. I bought us that amount of time, and we’re pushing it.”

Or that’s my estimate. There’s no telling what’s really happening, of course. Not with this drone useless, dribbling piss on Troy’s kitchen floor. No way to check in and see what they’re doing to her. But I doubt very much that Monarch would take Estelle in Gertrude’s place, so it’s not like any of them have a stake in hurting her. The nightcrawlers are no crueler than maggots.

“They don’t care about him but they care about leaving no trace. I saw a drone one time that got hit by a car and they had somebody there before the next nightcrawler even showed up. The fastest people known to man in this city, and their body men showed up faster than that. Trust me, it’ll work. He might even come back from this, somehow.”

His face is going slack, on one side only, in a melting kind of way that suggests that’s a longshot.

*

“Uber’s here,” I say from the doorway, hopefully keeping my tone light. Michael sits on Troy’s bed, strapping him into bulletproof gear; Selena’s in the kitchen watching the drone. Troy leans down to turn his socks inside out, and I laugh.

“None of that. Not today, no tricks, no hinkypunk. We want them to know exactly where we are.”

He nods, settling back into his role. Cold, steely, that eerie calm when things are really going haywire. There is a look in his eyes at these moments, I guess I never noticed it before, but it’s a little intimidating. A little sexy, even. When the soldiers back home settle in, like that: Like they are moving faster than the world, so it moves slowly. Michael claps him on the shoulder, and they stand.

“You three and the drone, I called for a van. Tell me when you get to their HQ, and I’ll step out of the dead zone. They’ll know you’re in good faith, hand over Gertrude, and come for me. You’ll be free and clear to take her to Pomona, and we can meet back here. Easy.”

Selena’s still not clear on why she’s going along, but she wouldn’t be wrong in thinking she is, like Michael, an insurance policy. Even before the Walk she was an uncanny witch, and now? It’s not worth talking about, she has to be in the moment for it to happen. I know that much, just like when Troy tells the future. She and Michael can’t really be injured, of course, but I don’t want her looking too closely at why I don’t want her with me for this part.

There will be a lot of men there, at the Drone Queen’s offices. Monarch men, ex-CIA or current CIA for all I know. Maybe not the head of the snake, but a good portion of the snake. Back when the last Monarch girl blew, I remember, it was bumper to bumper black cars. A fleet of them. Maybe they don’t even know what they are doing; maybe they think they’re soldiers after all this time. Call me a dirty bomb, call me an outbreak, call me a terrorist. Whatever it takes. The point is that they’ll be concentrated around the site.

And down in the cellar of that monstrous hive, in the sickening green glow, whispering nonsense in a million languages, to all her sisters: The Mosquito Queen. This half-human thing that never even knew what I was, or thought I was, just saw a product willing to go through almost anything to be famous. Testing my boundaries, watching them move as I got more and more afraid. Never asking, not even caring why I needed it so badly. Just asking what I want, and getting angry when I said I didn’t know yet. Watching me circle my tail, around and around, pinned to the floor and bleeding.

Get out of the car with no panties on. Do a line on camera, fuck a movie star and his wife. Drive the wrong way down a one-way, we promise you won’t break anything necessary. Gabriel can find you cheating on him, and knock you around: They’ll forgive him in a week or less, like it never happened, but you’ll be reaping SEO for months. Let this magazine writer interview you and spend the whole time talking about your tits and when it’s done, let him take you out for drinks. Nothing below the waist. Showing me the charts and graphs and saying, through one functionary or another, This is how easy it could be. This is how you get to that next level. 

All that blood magic. 

Do you even know what you want?

I do. I finally do.


Chapter Sixty: That Which Is In Motion

I clock six... no, eight suits. Two of them are drone security, the rest must be Monarch. A distinct lack of Drones in the group waiting outside HQ when their van pulls up; I wonder if this isn’t strictly a Monarch operation after all, but remember the knowns. I know what happens here, and I know how it has helped me. And honestly my pride wouldn’t let me go back to the Drones even if I had a reason.

Because I figured it out. Those girls that are so into me and Selena, and the witch stuff, even the ones still crying about poor Gabriel, they don’t watch a hell of a lot of TV. They live in a post-Tumblr world, where videos and unattributed quotes paper the world. They don’t need an official source, they know what to believe and what to discount based on their gut.

It won’t take a media company, to get Monarch. It’ll work better this way, in fact: Let the teen girl squad network spread the word. Starve the beast. The ones that still go in, even with eyes open, even knowing what will happen, they were going to self-destruct anyway. They’re on the hunt for it.

But the rest of them: Who would you trust more, a girl you know or a company you don’t? They’ll figure it out soon enough, they probably already have fake girls—or real girls—catfishing prospective recruits as we speak. They’ll evolve to meet our threat. 

But they’ll never have the ability to understand what they’re fighting: The window for recruitment into stuff like this is incredibly narrow. If they don’t get you by twenty, they stop trying. But those girls, the ones they don’t catch, stay up nights talking just like the rest of us. And they keep telling the story.

How Estelle Harlowe died trying to protect them.

*

Trunk full of unused C-4 from the heist on the train, what I like to think of as my birthday present from Alvy. A brick from Troy’s garden for the gas pedal. A few artful selfies taken a few blocks away, so you can just barely see HQ down the way. Trusty sniper rifle and a pistol for my boot, in case my escape goes sideways. A short Instagram video about a trafficking system right here in the USA, naming no names, as non-crazy as I can make it sound. The girls will do the rest on their own, remixing and analyzing it, so I have to keep my voice steady; the voice on top of the voice saying, It may not be true but it’s something I believe utterly. Fight this in my name when I’m gone.

Down my scope I can see them, finally, bring her out. Bag over the head, the whole thing. They toss her Michael’s way, and I can see Selena rush her back to the van. Almost go time.

“Estelle, we have her. You can go back to... You’re not there. Why aren’t you at my house? Estelle, what are you doing?”

“I’m recording this conversation, Troy. I need to tell you something. Gabriel loved you.”

“I know that. Estelle, what’s happening.”

“I know you thought it was just a dumb visual but he wouldn’t go anywhere without you. I think we just knew each other too well. I wouldn’t have wanted to either. I didn’t want to. I don’t ever want to be anywhere without you. Okay?”

“The feeling is mutual, which is why I’m concerned.”

“They would not believe it. All that talk about going online and making videos and stuff, it’s... Your kind of people would pick up on it. My people, Selena’s people. But that’s not enough. It has to be big. It has to hurt.”

“I will shut this whole thing down right now, Estelle Harlowe. I call bullshit on whatever you think you...”

“—Hush, baby. It’s already done. I just wanted to tell you that. Get out of town, go the usual way. They won’t follow you. I am watching. I’m watching you right now, don’t look around okay, but I can see you. I’m looking at you right now. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

He snots into the phone, waving his arm behind him uselessly, to grab for Michael. But Michael’s not listening: He’s watching the Monarch guys, while the Drones retrieve their broken brother. Selena doesn’t see him either, she’s too busy taking care of Gertrude. It’s just the two of us.

“I won’t forgive you. If you do something crazy and scary I won’t forgive you for it. I will be angry at you forever. I won’t even let Michael say your name. I’ll be best friends with your sister.”

I laugh at him, through tears of my own.

“She deserves that. She’s going to need you, Troy. All of you.”

“I need you. What was the point of all this? Dying for her. Wasn’t that what we were trying to stop?”

“I’m not dying for her, Troy. It’s not just her. It’s me, and you, and the May. It’s Michael. It’s Gabriel. None of us should have ever had to... We should have been children. We should have had that chance. Just trust me.”

“I think you’re being lazy. I think you’re giving up. I think...”

“I might be giving up, but it’s not because I’m lazy. I can’t watch this sputter out. Outside the system is a very cold place and that’s where you’ll be, if I don’t do this now. It can’t be just a crackpot podcast, or some poster campaign, or... They have to really understand.”

“35% of the children in California are unvaccinated by choice. I think we should talk about crackpot podcasts as a possibility.”

“That number seems high.”

“I don’t know. I just know that we can find a way. You always want to do the big thing. You’d hit with two faces up. I thought it was a faerie thing but that’s not it. I thought it was because of how you grew up but now I think it’s the only way you survived. So I love it about you. You think big thoughts and dream very big, very destructive dreams, and then you make them happen. But I thought that was over, I thought this last one was the last one. I thought Selena would calm you down...”

“—Don’t blame her. I want to give her something, too. And when you’re mad at me, talk to her about it. She’ll help. And don’t beat up on Michael about it either. This is between you and me. Copy?”

“No, I do not copy. You copy. I will throw myself in front of their bullets right now and you can watch that, how about?”

In my scope, past his shoulder, the Monarch heavies are lining up to face Michael. Selena waits for them in the cab, and one of them finally takes notice of Troy, standing off to the side.

“Troy, they’re taking notice. You need to hang up.”

“I don’t care. I want to talk to my friend.”

“No, you need to get in the car and drive away. Now. It is about to get very ugly, whether or not I do anything right now. They are going to come for me and I won’t be ready. I need to get started. Now is the time.”

He won’t say goodbye. I pray he doesn’t. Just hang up the phone. Get free.

And when he does, that’s when I break. That had to hurt. That one, I’m sorry for. He’s going to be so angry later. 

But the recording is great.

*

Troy pulls Michael away from the Monarch men; I recognize the set in his shoulders now, that says he would like nothing better than to kill them all where they stand. I can see, now, how it hurts him to walk away.

They pack into the van, around the side where I can’t see, and the Monarch men—silver hair, high and tight, curly earpieces connecting them to some central command—line up, eerily in sync, to watch them go. Waiting for me to light up some arcane board, so they can start the hunt.

It’s hard to remember they’re only men. Fathers and sons; grandfathers, some of them. Not with those shades, those crossed arms. Waiting for their prize. I hope Estelle gave them absolute hell.

Every part of that machine around the angel, thorny vines and clockwork bits and cannulae, the almost-recognizable bones, jaws and hips: None were evil, or ugly. They just looked like nature. But put them together, and you’ve got a reason to kill your mother. Make an angel weep.

That’s the thing Troy will never understand. He goes out into Silver Lake and talks to the likeminded about these forces, misogyny and capitalism and racism, and how we have to stop them. They don’t name names, they would think it was too mean to call it out. Faerie was easy to bring down because the rules were written in skin: The system was expressed in its people, written in their veins and hearts. The word of Hell.

And what Monarch tells me is, that’s true out here too, in the real world. So if I can kill a few Kings and bring the system down, that’s what needs to be done. Up in that building, floors and floors we never saw: What happens in them? 

Conference rooms, like glass coffins, where the Queen’s hospitality waits upon Monarch, and if there’s Monarch then there could be anybody up there. But I do know nobody in charge is down on the street. The kind of person who rises in the ranks of that, they don’t go down to the street. They don’t get their hands dirty with hostages.

It goes down a long, long way. It stretches upward just as far.

When I bring the scope back down to street level, the Uber still hasn’t left. It’s the first time I’ve felt worried, beyond the generalized anxiety about lying to Troy and Selena about what I’m doing. Lying first when they were leaving, and again now. Why isn’t he moving?

One of the Monarch men nods, to some silent directive, and wrenches the door open. He doesn’t reach in—I can’t stand to think what Michael would do if he does—but he regards them. Barking threats and warnings, from his posture. Is he just intimidating them as a show of power? 

No. The other guys are itching, moving into position. Something got messed up. 

Troy palms his phone when I call, taking the call without speaking, leaving the line open.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says a fairly good impression of Estelle Harlowe. 

“I don’t even know the girl. I met her a month ago, I had no idea I had a sister. Do you think I would really still be lying for her? After the day I’ve had?”

“Ma’am, I only know what they tell me. And they’re telling me you aren’t Estelle Harlowe.”

“Then what, are there three of us? How many Estelles do you imagine exist?”

“They just said they need visual confirmation. Before we can let you go. Ma’am, I just...”

“They had me locked up in that trashy place for hours, they didn’t get visual confirmation then? Are you stalling? What’s your name, sir?”

“That’s not important, ma’am.”

“It’s important to me. Who are you talking to? Maybe I know them. Are they part of the...”

“It’s the... Downstairs. The woman downstairs is all he’ll say.”

“Old friend of mine. Let me talk to him.”

“I can’t do that, ma’am. Just please sit tight. I’m sorry about the confusion.”

“I don’t suppose you’d want me to pull out this phone, would you?”

“Ma’am, please keep your hands where I...”

“Just a phone, sweetheart. Just placing a quick call. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Ma’am, I’m going to ask that you hand that phone over.”

“You’re not a cop.”

“I have a gun. And this isn’t a police matter. I’m Federal, ma’am.”

“Oh my God. Did you seriously not notice I’m recording this conversation?”

“Me too,” says Selena, and I can hear Troy laughing. Whistling past the graveyard, but it’s a beautiful sound no matter what.

“I’m going to need to confiscate those phones, then. Now I don’t know what you get up to out here, but you have really stepped in it. They’re talking terrorism, they’re talking about...”

“Right. I’m a terrorist. What am I a terrorist about, did they tell you that? Wearing tights as pants? Unrealistic images of women in videogames? Staggering price of Crème De La Mer?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, ma’am, but I have orders to shoot if you and your friends don’t stand down.”

And well, that’s just about enough of that.

*

Unshoulder the rifle, clap on the scope. We did this blindfolded. I have kept up practice, in the night, when nobody could see me. It brings me comfort, even if a sniper rifle is no good up close. But I’ve got the pistol for that, if it comes down to it.

“Wild Boy. Wild Boy, count to three.” 

I don’t know if he can hear me at first, over Gertrude’s continued harassment, but the second time I say it he coughs loudly, to show me he’s listening. Pulls his leg back into the car and quietly closes the door. Reaches behind Gertrude to the driver’s arm, squeezing it in a pulse, and he nods. The poor guy must be scared to death. That’s got to be good, right?

I think without even noticing, Gertrude conforms to the mood of the car, pulling back and even strapping in. A bravura gesture, simultaneously acquiescent and dismissive. No more talking. The guy gives up on grabbing their phones, and she even—from the sound of it—rolls the window partway up. Smart. That’s some classic Estelle Harlowe right there. A+.

“One,” Troy says in his low voice. “Two.” On three, I take the shot and Troy taps the driver. 

The Uber jackrabbits out into traffic, smoothly enough, and dodges away around the corner, before the silver-haired fellow even hits the ground, completely confused forever. His last thoughts would be irritation, long-suffering duty. 

He wasn’t afraid, and he didn’t feel pain. That’s something.

While the Monarch men scramble to block and retrieve the body, facing outward toward the street, another contingent comes running out for their black fleet cars. They’ll flood the streets, just like last time. Track her in no time.

That would have pissed off the Mosquito Queen mightily: Having the girl in her grasp, ready to hand the product over, and then letting her go by mistake. What an embarrassment. What an awful shame, nightcrawler. And then a realization: She’s still just downstairs! Ready to submit weakly to a government agent. Too bad he didn’t know the magic words.

They’ll sight me in a second, follow the path back off the angle, and come straight for me. I did this backwards. I should have sent them here in my car, with the bomb in the trunk, and then pulled up to grab them when it was time to detonate it. That’s what I should have done. But it’ll still work. Nothing is changed. I just won’t have a headstart for my escape.

The actual bombing, that goes off without a hitch. Of course they will know I’m still alive, and they’ll still think I’m their prey. But it’s beautiful, for a moment: The greatest gout of flame, glass sucked in and shattered out, and best of all: No people in the building. 

Slavers, rapists, insects. Pieces of a machine, some of them nearly blameless. But no humans, not anymore. I don’t want to kill any more. 

I don’t want to split hairs like this anymore, either. I don’t want to say it’s okay because they don’t have souls, or because they are remote operated robots, or whatever. It’s sick, no matter what I do to them or how I do it. This is the end of that. When I run out of bullets, that’s the last time I shoot. 

But I guess that was always true.

*

Troy tried to teach me once how to hotwire a car, not so much in case of the extremely unlikely situation where I would need to do it, but just because he liked to show me things and I liked to watch him show me things. The car thing I never quite conquered, but I picked up on lockpicking pretty fast, and I can do the smallest hedge magic, and that’ll do for a hybrid. Hopefully not one that will shut itself off after being stolen, but you never know.

Because now there really are three Estelles: The one going home to Faerie, the martyr that died in that bombing just now, and me. And the only one—finally—I have to save now is: Me.

“You got this, bitch,” I say into the rearview, but that doesn’t feel right anymore.

“Sorry. Um, you have it. The Knowledge. So use it. Let the city speak to you. Let her drive you.”

Of course it’s not that simple. But I think about Selena, loving everything; and Michael, feeling absolutely at peace even despite himself. When you are all dead and forgotten, I will be as I am now. And Troy, always saying the secret of magic is that everything is the secret of magic. 

The firm, cold set of his mouth as he breathes out his mind and breathes in his soul: Getting ready for a fight, getting ready to shout, throwing magic at the dancefloor until the heroes rise up into the air. Always that presence, that absence. That breath. Remember him that night, with the Supermans and Kitty Prydes: How he flowed into the dance and the dance flowed into him. Letting his wildness take the wheel...

That almost does it; I can feel the streets and highways lighting up around me, like a web. Like a great net, holding me in its arms. But what gets me the last part of the way, until I’m just my body and my body’s just the car and there is no Estelle at all, is Gabriel: He really thought the world was about his pleasure. He really thought, right up until the end, that the whole universe held him in the palm of its hand, and found him wonderful. Found him perfect.

He had the Knowledge, I laugh. I just never thought it was beautiful until now. 

*

Skating around the 405 like a slalom racer, I hit Mulholland in a record twenty; I can’t even see them behind me when I take the exit. I think about calling Troy, to tell him I made it out, but I can’t focus enough to do that. I need to find out where the City wants me to go, and that means listening to nothing at all. 

I can’t form words yet. Once I get a sense of where I’m heading, where I’ll be safe, I can think about doing something else. But they’ll be out for blood, now. They hate when their toys act up, more than anything. 

The Drones may not be cruel, but cruelty is all Monarch understands. They don’t even see it anymore; it’s just the ocean they swim in.

It’s only when I see the signs for Coldwater Canyon that I realize where we’re going, and I falter: That isn’t the Knowledge. That’s just me being pathetic. 

You never come at the Ladies from the West, and yet here I am, halfway to them. Blindly stumping up the path, like a salmon going home to roe. And when I get to Laurel Canyon they won’t even be there. It’ll just be a regular canyon. Even if I came in from the East, they don’t want me anymore.

Or maybe that’s what it is, exactly. Maybe this is some kind of test, like in a fairytale. East of the sun and west of the moon. I will slam down in their front yard and they’ll pull me into their arms, and the Monarchs will be found wandering, stammering and mad, for daring to hunt a Princess and the Ladies’ darling. Live out their days aching for a beauty they glimpsed just a moment, before...

Nope, there they are. And gaining. With miles to go before I sleep. No turnoffs, either, so it’s just us. Just me and the Monarch. And they think I owe them. They didn’t even catch on when their pretty thing wasn’t human: How tenderly do you think they’ll treat me? It won’t matter that I’m not the girl: I am a girl, and my sister Estelle died in the fire, whatever I tell them. It’s just me, by any name. 

Hybrids take knocks for their pickup I suppose, I’m not your girl for car talk. But I do understand calculus, and physics, and I know I can take the curves on Mulholland as fast as this car will go. I know where the curves are, and the straightaways, and that’s probably not something these men know. They have a kind of knowledge, but not that.

So I will keep going. Faster and faster, until Troy would be throwing up. Faster than Selena ever drove, even. Into the east, trailing glory around every curve. And one of three things will happen: 

I will be forgiven, and land this stolen car in the front yard of the Ladies of the Canyon. 

I will eventually run out of gas, or road, pull out my guns, and take as many with me as I can. 

Or I will lose my grip on whatever meditative peace I have found, just long enough to flip the car a dozen times into the canyon, and hopefully lead them over the edge with me as I go.

But what I know is this: When I look into the rearview, it’s not black beasts, slavering to rip me up. It’s not a man in a black top hat on a bicycle, or however we think of it. It’s not the armies of Hell, or the Winter Court, or anything scary or magical. Nothing from the Realms. They’re just regular cars, with just regular people inside them, cursing me for scaring them, wanting to go home to dinner.

Twenty-one years in this world, among others, and it’s the first time I’ve looked behind me and seen anything other than

== XXX ==



NOTES ON WASTED BEAUTY