Adam was smiling his hunting smile as we followed the three galloping horses who moved as fast as the SUV could safely negotiate the narrow mountain road that bore no resemblance to the road that used to go to the Ronald Wilson Reagan Fae Reservation.
The road might go different paths, but the walls around the reservation had been left, block cement topped by stainless-steel razor wire. The guard towers were apparently empty, and the gates hung wide open. It looked abandoned, but it didn’t smell that way. It smelled green and alive, even through the filter of the SUV.
The horses slowed to a walk to cross through the threshold of Fairyland, and Adam slowed the SUV to follow them.
Zee made no sound as they crossed into the reservation, but I could smell Tad’s sweat. Aiden’s heart beat double time. Jesse and Adam were the only ones in the car who weren’t affected. I include myself as the affected. The one time before that I’d been in Underhill had been a scary, scary thing.
We followed the walking horses through streets that could have been in any unimaginatively-laid-out suburb in America as the sun rose and lit the world. The streets were set in a numbered grid—as if the original architect feared that people might get lost here. I knew how they felt, but I also thought that the hope that a sign could lead someone out of Faery was the belief of an innocent.
Magic was stronger here than it had been the last time I’d come. I gripped Adam’s thigh and practiced a swimmer’s breathing, in through my mouth and out through my nose, in an effort to block the overwhelming rush. It wasn’t as bad as when Beauclaire sank Cable Bridge, but it was bad enough.
“Are we feeling Underhill?” asked Adam in a low voice.
I looked at him. Adam wasn’t very sensitive to magic, but his wolf looked out through his eyes, so he was feeling something.
“Yes,” said Aiden. His voice was faint. “This is what happens in places where there are too many doors in too small an area. Her magic leaks out.”
“Even though the doors have long been closed in the Old Country,” Zee added, “there are places that people avoid because the spill of magic lingers. And others that they visit in hopes of miracles.”
There were still fae in Europe, I knew, but most of them had come to the New World fleeing the spread of cold iron. Iron had followed them here, too, but they seemed to have come to some sort of terms with it. Tolkien’s elves had traveled to the West, and there were scholars who argued that Tolkien had known some of the fae left behind who spoke with longing of their kinsfolk who had traveled to the New World.
The horses stopped in front of what had once been a municipal building of some sort—the sign in front of it was hacked into indecipherable splinters, the bits of wood left where they lay, though the lawns were mowed and tidy.
As soon as the riders began to dismount, Adam turned the SUV off and got out. I scooted out behind Jesse because I wanted to make sure she wasn’t standing alone in the reservation for long. Of the six of us, she was the most vulnerable—which was why Adam had tried to leave her at home. Standing here, among our enemies—or at least our unpredictable and dangerous acquaintances—I wished he’d succeeded.
Two of the riders led the horses away, but the other one waited to escort us into the building. Adam went first, Zee and Tad took the rear guard, and the rest of us spread out between them.
The building wasn’t much to look at. Built to the military specs of the eighties, cement steps took them to a plain painted door set into uninspired vinyl siding. But inside . . .
Jesse sucked in her breath, and said, “It’s a TARDIS.”
“A what?” asked Aiden.
“Bigger on the inside than it is on the outside,” Jesse said.
She was right, because we’d entered not a small antechamber that probably had originally been the first thing visitors saw, but a spacious room with marble floors and pillars. The marble was pink, flecked with patches of black and gray. The room was empty, and our escort didn’t slow down as he crossed the room and out through one of many doorways. This one led to a large office, easily large enough it didn’t feel crowded despite floor-to-ceiling bookcases and the seven of us. In contrast to the size of the room, Beauclaire’s desk was of normal size. The fae lord himself sat behind it.
“Sir,” said our escort, “I bring you the guests you were expecting.” He didn’t wait for acknowledgment, just turned and left the room.
Beauclaire cleared away the papers he was working on and set them in a folder without hurrying. His desk was as hyperorganized as Adam’s. Adam had learned to organize in the army; I wondered where Beauclaire had picked up the habit. Only when the papers had been properly stowed did he turn his attention to us.
“Gentlemen,” said Beauclaire, his gaze drifting past Adam’s face and lighting on mine briefly before stopping to dwell on Jesse’s. “Ladies.”
“My daughter,” said Adam, answering the question the fae wouldn’t ask. “She needed to see us off on our journey.”
Beauclaire knew about daughters. His face lit with appreciation of our predicament.
“I told him no harm would come to her here,” said Zee.
Beauclaire met Zee’s eyes in a way he hadn’t Adam’s. “I am pleased to help you keep that vow.”
Zee inclined his head regally.
“You wouldn’t happen to know why Órlaith and several other fae of her cadre are missing, would you?” Beauclaire asked Zee.
Zee smiled and said nothing.
Beauclaire smiled back. Evidently, none of the missing would be missed by him.
Beauclaire reached into a desk drawer and brought out a roll of vellum. He stretched it out across his desk, so the lettering faced us, putting a paperweight at the top and the bottom to keep it rolled out. “The others have signed,” he told Adam. “When you have read it and signed, I’ll make my mark, and the bargain will be made.”
Adam nodded, pulled up a seat, and began to read. I read over his shoulder.
We, the Gray Lords of Faery, representing themselves and all of Faery, do make this bargain with Adam Alexander Hauptman and his mate Mercedes Athena Thompson Hauptman, who represent themselves and the Columbia Basin Pack . . .
When Adam was finished, he stood up and looked at Zee. “Would you mind going through it as well?”
Zee nodded. It didn’t take him as long as it had us. “It says what we think it does,” he said, his smile brief but real. “It helps that the fae want this more than you do.”
After Tad nodded, too, I wrote my name in the space left for me, then handed Adam the quill pen to sign. Beauclaire rounded the desk to sign rather than turn the sheet around.
When he was finished, he set the pen aside and put his hand on the vellum. He took three deep breaths, and magic swelled. I sneezed twice and still couldn’t get the tickle out of my nose.
Beauclaire bent his head then, and spoke a word. Adam put his hand on my shoulder, but Beauclaire didn’t use the kind of power he’d called when destroying the bridge. When he took his hand off the document, there were two copies.
He rolled them both and wrapped some kind of keeper around the rolls. One of those he left on his desk, and the other he gave to Zee.
“I’ll take you to a door,” he said, and started out of his office, only to pause in the doorway. “You should take off any iron or steel you have on your persons.”
But Adam had spent the night going through the go-bags he kept ready and waiting in our closet. He’d substituted plastic and nylon for most of the metal.
I had a thought. “Adam. Your dog tags. What are they made from?”
“Stainless steel,” Adam told me, and started to take his off.
I had one of his tags on the necklace I always wore. I undid the clasp and looked at it. It was an untidy mess—a gold lamb charm, my wedding ring, and the tag. I put out my hand and took Adam’s steel necklace with his remaining tag—and then I put both necklaces around Jesse’s neck.