He shook his head. "I was . . . intrigued. The stories were supposed to keep children safe by giving them reason to avoid dangerous areas. But they had the opposite effect on me. I wanted to see if the mermaids were as beautiful as everyone said. To find the Afang and see the fabled spikes on its hide. To follow a will-o'-the-wisp, in case it would lead me into faerie . . .

"I listened to her stories, the most frightening ones she knew, and then asked for more. Why not? They were the most exciting things about my life! And most of them were about faerie, where I wanted to go more than anything."

"To find your mother's people."

He nodded. "I didn't know why they'd left me. Just that the fey were different; you never knew why they did what they did. But everyone always said the same thing: they would come for me someday. They always came back for their children."

But they hadn't. Pritkin had repeatedly shown a lot of knowledge about faerie, even going to negotiate with the dark fey king, or the guy calling himself that, in my day. He'd also made a later visit to find out some information about a would-be assassin. But neither of those trips had exactly gone the way I'd have expected for someone who had spent the majority of his childhood among the fey.

Instead of, say, slipping through whatever portals he could find and running amok until they threw him out.

"I was six years old the first time I ran away," he told me, "six and convinced I had outgrown that sorry place. I recall packing my small belongings-not too difficult-and being on my way several times. To be honest, I am surprised they didn't let me go."

I wasn't.

I'd met his father.

"But they always brought me back, before I'd had a chance to see anything. They said it was for my own good, and of course they were right. I'd have likely died of exposure or been picked up by slavers or worse on my own. But I didn't understand that. All I knew was that nothing ever happened on that farm. Every day was exactly the same: a list of chores, a bowl of soup, a cuff on the ear-or two. I was a terrible child."

"I don't believe that."

"Oh, I was. I asked a thousand questions and fair drove the old woman mad. The old man simply ignored me. I think he was half deaf, something for which he was doubtless grateful!"

"Asking questions doesn't make you a bad child."

"No, but running away does. And disobedience and defiance. I knew they didn't want me, that I didn't belong there, but they wouldn't let me leave. Money came every year for my upkeep, money they desperately needed, and it felt as if they were keeping me prisoner because of it. I was too young to look at it from the other side, to see that they might feel trapped, too. As if they had no choice but to house a monster-"

"You weren't a monster!"

"-a potential monster," he amended, "because of their poverty."

"They were the adults, not you. It wasn't up to you to make excuses for them!"

"Well, I didn't. I resented the hell out of them and caused them no end of trouble." His head tilted. "You didn't feel like that?"

"No."

"No anger at all?" His brow furrowed, like he couldn't understand that. And I supposed not. Anger had always come naturally to Pritkin.

"No." I drew my knees up. They made a good table for my massive mug of beer. They also provided a barrier, but Pritkin didn't take the hint.

"Fear, resentment, bitterness, envy?" he persisted.

"No."

"You must have felt something. It's impossible to just feel nothing."

"No. It really isn't."

He sat back and looked at me, and it was that look. That here's-something-interesting-that-I-don't-understand-but-I'm-going-to look. Only he wasn't, not this time, and not merely because I couldn't explain.

But because he wouldn't get it anyway.

You learn some things when you grow up in the household of a psychotic vampire. Like not to interrupt a feed, unless you want to be dessert. And not to touch the boys' gun collection, unless you want to play William Tell with real bullets. And that when Tony slammed through the house in that one particular way, it was probably time to go find a closet to hang out in for a while.

And how to be small, which helped with everything else.

Not physically so much, although I had tended to skulk around in corners, according to one of Tony's gals, and I couldn't argue with her. And not mentally, because if there was one thing you needed around Tony's, it was to keep your eyes open. Just small.

To the point of being able to walk across a room and have nobody notice. To the point of being able to practically blend in with the furniture and have people forget I was there. To the point that sometimes, I'd started to wonder if I was really there, or if maybe I could see ghosts because I was one, too.

I'd eventually decided that anyone with as many scraped knees as me was probably human, but I'd never forgotten how to be small. In fact, I'd sometimes thought that the main reason I'd been able to avoid Tony's guys for so long after I ran away was that I'd practically spent my life practicing for it. And in a household of creatures who read emotions almost as well as actual words.

Vamps wouldn't like the comparison, but they were like dogs in how tuned in they were to their surroundings. The extra-sharp senses helped with that, but it was more than just better eyesight or whatever. It was the need of a predator to tell who is vulnerable and who is not. Who will make a good victim, and who will fuck your shit up. Vamps don't make those kind of mistakes often, especially vamps who work as the foot soldiers for a vampire mobster.

Tony's boys were good.

But so was I. And I'd figured out that a major part of staying small was being able to detach your emotions from your surroundings, to flip a switch and just go dim, there but not there in some vitally important way. Vamps didn't notice me a lot of the time, because I didn't fall into the category of either predator or prey. I wasn't dangerous, but I wasn't afraid, either. So I was invisible, or as close as anyone could be to creatures with that kind of eyesight.

I thought of Pritkin, that curious, stubborn, angry little boy at Tony's, and shuddered.

And looked up to find him watching me.

"If I didn't react, they didn't notice me as much," I said. "It was . . . easier . . . not to be seen."

He looked away, at the still-running spectacle, and his jaw tightened. The changing orange-red light limned his profile and lit his hair. For a moment, he almost looked like his fire-self: a glowing sprite thrumming with barely repressed energy. Then he suddenly looked back at me. "I see you."

You always did, I thought, watching sparks dance in his eyes.

And then I drank beer. "Did you ever find any fey?"

Pritkin looked frustrated, like he wasn't ready for a change of topic yet. But in the end, he went with it. He sat back.

"No. But it didn't matter. When they were ready, they found me."

"What?" My head came up.

He nodded. "I was young, but I remember it perfectly. A group of them, dressed in fine clothes, like nobles, but with no horses. I thought that was odd. How did they get around with no horses?"

"How did they?"

"I found out later that there was a portal in the woods, not far from the house. They'd left their horses on the other side. It seems that, every time they brought them into our world, some damn human stole them."

I grinned in spite of myself. "I'd have liked to see that. The mighty fey, sloshing through the mud."

"There wasn't any that day, I'm afraid. But you should have seen the Svarestri this morning. They'd found some old mule and loaded it up as part of their disguise. But it was having none of it. It's why I gave them a second glance: a too-tall group standing around in too-fine clothes in the middle of the road, cursing a mangy old mule."

"Did it help?"

"Quite the opposite. The creature had stopped to eat some weeds, but when they began cursing it, and then striking it, it bucked and reared, almost hitting one in the teeth."

"Too bad it missed."

He nodded agreement. "After which it ran off, and they didn't bother to chase it, despite the fact that it supposedly held all their goods. And I became . . . curious."

"You're always curious."

"How would you know?"

"You . . . come across that way."

"That's strange. I can't figure you out at all."

"Don't try."

"But I want to try. A woman who wears peasant garb but carries a fortune in magic. Who travels alone, without guards, which many men would hesitate to do these days. Who knows about portals and recognizes faerie, but doesn't know who the Green Fey are."

Damn it.

"Who calls me by a name that isn't mine, but who seems to know me . . . and to care what happens to me."

I always forgot how smart Pritkin was, and it always bit me on the ass. "Tell me about the fey," I persisted. "You said they came to your house?"

He regarded me solemnly for a moment, and for the first time, I thought he might not answer. I wasn't exactly being forthcoming myself. But he surprised me again.

"They showed up one morning, out of the blue. The old people were cowering inside, afraid to even speak to them, just praying they'd go away. I doubt they'd seen any fey before, but they'd heard the stories; they thought they were going to be abducted. And I . . . hoped to be."

"What did the fey want?"

"To ask about my mother, my father, what I remembered. But I couldn't tell them anything. I'd been too young when I came to the farm. It was all I'd ever known.

"Then they wanted me to do some magic for them, but I barely even knew what it was. Magic was something out of the fables, and far less interesting than the monsters and the heroes who slayed them. Or the cauldrons that gave unlimited food. Or the great battles fought with mythical weapons. Magic was something for potty old wizards; I wasn't interested in magic."

I smiled.

"But they insisted, and seemed annoyed by my confusion. Finally, one of them showed me something." Pritkin's eyes grew distant. "He was blond, not dark like the others. And wearing plain gray instead of green. He raised a leaf from the ground without touching it, asked me to do the same. I didn't know what he meant at first; I kept picking it up and handing it to him."

I bit my lip in sympathy.

"I was only seven, and they were so tall, and they were all looking at me. One of the others smirked and said something I didn't understand. But the one in gray was patient. He told me not to think of the leaf but of the breeze. To call it to me."

"And did you?"

"I didn't know how. I just remember getting angry. I'd wanted the fey to come for so long, so very long, and now they were there, but instead of taking me away, they were asking me to do this impossible thing. This thing that no one could do, but that I wished I could. I wished the leaves would rise up and swallow us, so I wouldn't have to see their smug faces anymore . . .

"And then they did.

"A little breeze blew up, all of a sudden. And the leaves-it was autumn, and they were everywhere-whirled up all around us, like a miniature storm. First a few and then more and more, until I couldn't see the fey anymore, until I couldn't see anything."

There was still wonder in his face.

"I take it they were impressed?" I asked.

"No."

"No?"

"If anything, they seemed . . . unhappy. There was a discussion. I don't know what was said; I couldn't understand them. But there was a woman there, beautiful but cold, and she kept scowling at me. Looking back, I was probably ragged and dirty and ill-mannered, just a worthless urchin in her eyes, but at the time, I didn't understand that. I just knew she didn't like me, and in the end, they went away."

"They were stupid, then."

He smiled slightly. "Do you know, some of them came back? For several years, they came, by twos and threes, men and women in gray, and stayed for a while in the forest near the house. They didn't invite me to their camp, but they knew I would come, and I have to believe that was why they were there. They taught me things: magic, the lore of their world, even some of their language. But they never took me with them when they left. And they never told me why."

"They were stupid," I said again, more harshly that time, because there had been wistfulness in his voice, and the echo of the confusion and pain of a child who didn't understand why he wasn't good enough. Why nobody wanted him.

"They were fey," he repeated. "They think differently than we do. Although I've never understood their criteria for who they take and who they don't. I've seen them take some who . . ." He cut himself off.

"Be glad they didn't take you," I told him. "You were better off."

"I doubt that."

"I don't. You don't know what it's like, growing up around a bunch of people who treat you like an inferior, who see you only as a commodity to be used, who couldn't give a shit about you unless you're benefitting them in some way. . . ." I stopped, biting my lip. "You'd have tried to fit in, done your best to learn about them, to be one of them. But it would never have worked. You'd have always felt like what you were-an outsider. Because you're not like them. You're not . . . like anybody."

I looked up to see his face swimming in front of me.

"Be glad they didn't take you!"

"Someone in your life was stupid, too," he told me. And then he kissed me.

Chapter Forty-nine.

The explosions, flickering light, and gasps and oohs from the crowd, all receded into the background. For a second, there was nothing but sensation: warm hands, stubbled jaw, lips that should have been hard, that were always hard, but were suddenly soft and gentle. And a strange feeling in my stomach, something like when we went over the falls.

I don't know why; it wasn't even a particularly passionate kiss. Wasn't like the one on the riverbank, which had been lusty and amused, a payback for my spying on him coupled with a half-serious offer. Or the one after we got here, which had been all happy and relieved and glad to be alive. I wasn't sure what this one was, except that it was tender and sweet and yet somehow more unsettling than the others, a lot more, and- I broke away, half panicked for no reason I could name, and a wash of noise and light broke over me.

"Look," Pritkin said softly. "It's your big moment."

"What?"

I blinked, and looked around in confusion. And then at the big, empty space, which wasn't empty now. Because it was full of an image of me facing off with the Svarestri leader, a tiny, flimsy figure next to the staunch solidity of the trolls or the jagged electricity of the Svarestri.