Nobody was sitting next to it. The top hat rotated my way as I took a seat, four empty stools away. A deck of tarot cards was artfully arranged in its suit pocket, a natty handkerchief, cards fanned. Knobbed ankles crossed, displaying patent-leather shoes with shiny, pointy toes.

"Weight of the world on your shoulders?" it called like a carny selling chances at a booth.

I stared into the swirling dark tornado beneath the brim of the top hat. Fragments of a face-half a green eye and brow, part of a nose-appeared and vanished like scraps of pictures torn from a magazine, momentarily slapped up against a window, then torn off by the next storm gust. I suddenly knew the debonair and eerie prop was as ancient as the Fae themselves. Did the fear dorcha fear dorcha make the hat, or did the hat make the make the hat, or did the hat make the fear dorcha fear dorcha?

Because my parents raised me to be polite and old habits die hard, it was difficult to hold my tongue. But the mistake of speaking to it was not one I'd make twice.

"Relationships got you down?" it cried, with the inflated exuberance of an OxiClean commercial. I half-expected helpful visual aids to manifest in midair as he hawked his wares-whatever they were.

I rolled my eyes. One could certainly say that.

"Might be just what you need is a night on the town!" it enthused in a too-bright voice.

I snorted.

It unfolded itself from the stool, proffering long bony arms and skeletal hands. "Give us a dance, luv. I'm told I'm quite the Fred Astaire." It tapped out a quick step and bent low at the waist, thin arms flamboyantly wide.

A shot of whiskey slid down the counter. I tossed it back swiftly.

"See you learned your lesson, beautiful girl."

"Been learning a lot lately."

"All ears."

"Tarot deck was my life. How's that?"

"Told you. Prophecies. All shapes."

"Why'd you give me THE WORLD THE WORLD?"

"Didn't. Would you like me to?"

"You flirting with me?"

"If I was?"

"Might run screaming."

"Smart girl."

We laughed.

"Seen Christian lately?"

"Yes."

His hands stilled on the bottles and he waited.

"Think he's turning into something."

"All things change."

"Think he's becoming Unseelie."

"Fae. Like starfish, beautiful girl."

"How's that?"

"Grow back missing parts."

"What are you saying?"

"Balance. World lists toward it."

"Thought it was entropy."

"Implies innate idiocy. People are. Universes aren't."

"So if an Unseelie Prince dies, someone will eventually replace it? If not a Fae, a human?"

"Hear princesses are dead, too."

I gagged. Would human women be changed by eating Unseelie and end up becoming them in time? What else would the Fae steal from my world? Well, er, actually, what would I and my-I changed the subject swiftly. "Who gave me the card?"

He jerked a thumb at the fear dorcha fear dorcha.

I didn't believe that for a minute. "What am I supposed to get from it?"

"Ask him."

"You told me not to."

"That's a problem."

"Solution?"

"Maybe it's not about the world."

"What else could it be about?"

"Got eyes, BG, use them."

"Got a mouth, DEG, use it."

He moved away, tossing bottles like a professional juggler. I watched his hands fly, trying to figure out how to get him to talk.

He knew things. I could smell it. He knew a lot of things.

Five shot glasses settled on the counter. He splashed them full and slid them five ways with enviable precision.

I glanced up into the mirror behind the bar that angled down and reflected the sleek black bar top. I saw myself. I saw the fear dorcha fear dorcha. I saw dozens of other patrons gathered at the counter. It wasn't a busy bar. This was one of the smaller, less popular sub-clubs. There was no sex or violence to be found here, only cobwebs and tarot cards.

The dreamy-eyed guy was absent in the reflection. I saw glasses and bottles sparkling as they flipped in the air but no one tossing them.

I glanced down at him, pouring high and flashy.

Back up. There was no reflection.

I tapped my empty shot glass on the counter. Another one clinked into it. I sipped this one, watching him, waiting for him to return.

He took his time.

"Look conflicted, beautiful girl."

"I don't see you in the mirror."

"Maybe I don't see you, either."

I froze. Was that possible? Was I missing in the mirror?

He laughed. "Just kidding. You're there."

"Not funny."

"Not my mirror."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm not responsible for what it shows. Or doesn't."

"Who are are you?" you?"

"Who are you you?"

I narrowed my eyes. "Somehow I got the idea you were trying to help me. Guess I was wrong."

"Help. Dangerous medicine."

"How?"

"Hard to gauge the right dose. Especially if there's more than one doctor."

I sucked in a breath. The dreamy-eyed guy's eyes were no longer dreamy. They were...I stared. They were...I caught my lower lip with my teeth and bit down. What was I looking at? What was happening to me?

He was no longer behind the counter but sitting on a bar stool beside me, to my left, no-to my right. No, he was on the stool with me. There he was-behind me, mouth pressed to my ear.

"Too much falsely inflates. Too little underprepares. The finest surgeon has butterfly fingers. Airy. Delicate."

Like his fingers on my hair. The touch was mesmerizing. "Am I the Unseelie King?" I whispered.

Laughter as soft as moth wings filled my ears and muddied my mind, stirring silt from the dregs of my soul. "No more than I." He was back behind the bar. "The cantankerous one comes," he said, with a nod toward the stairs.

I looked to see Barrons descending. When I looked back, the dreamy-eyed guy was no more visible than his reflection.

"I was coming," I said irritably. Fingers handcuffed around my wrist, Barrons dragged me toward the stairs.

"What part of 'directly' didn't you understand?"

"Same part of 'play well with others' you never understand, O cantankerous one," I muttered.

He laughed, surprising me. I never know what's going to make him laugh. At the oddest moments, he seems to find humor in his own bad temper.

"I'd be a lot less cantankerous if you admitted you wanted to fuck me and we got down to it."

Lust ripped through me. Barrons said "fuck" and I was ready. "That's all it would take to put you in a good humor?"

"It'd go a long way."

"Are we having a conversation, Barrons? Where you actually express feelings?"

"If you want to call a hard dick feelings, Ms. Lane."

A sudden commotion at the entrance to the club, two levels above us, caught his attention. He was taller than me and could see over the crowd. "You've got to be kidding me." His face hardened as he stared up at the balconied foyer.

"What? Who?" I said, bouncing on my tiptoes to try to see. "Is it V'lane?"

"Why would it be-" He glared down at me. "I stripped his name from your tongue. There hasn't been an opportunity for you to get it back again."

"I told one of his court to go get him. Don't look at me like that. I want to know what's going on."

"What's going on, Ms. Lane, is that you found the Seelie Queen in the Unseelie prison. What's going on-given the condition she's in-is that V'lane's obviously been lying about her whereabouts for months now, and that can mean only one thing."

"That it was impossible for me to permit the court to know that the queen was missing, and has been missing for many human years," V'lane said tightly behind us, his voice hushed. "They would have fallen apart. Without her reining them in, a dozen different factions would have assaulted your world. There has long been unrest in Faery. But this is hardly the place to discuss such matters."

Barrons and I turned as one.

"Velvet told me you required my presence, MacKayla," V'lane continued, "but he said your news was of the Book, not of our liege." He searched my face with a coolness I hadn't seen since I'd first met him. I supposed my method of summoning him had offended. Fae are so prickly. "Have you truly found her? Is she alive? In every spare moment, I have searched for her. It has prevented me from attending you as I wished."

"Velvet is a Fae name?"

"His true name is unpronounceable in your tongue. Is she here?"

I nodded.

"I must see her. How does she fare?"

Barrons' hand shot out and closed around V'lane's throat. "You lying fuck."