"Keep that up," he warned her, "and you're really gonna find out what pain's all about. Now make nice. You're working for me now."
"I "
"Repeat after me, sweet stuff: I'm Cutter's girl."
Tears welled in Lesli's eyes. She looked around the park, but nobody was paying any attention to what was happening to her. Cutter gave her a painful shake that made her teeth rattle.
"C'mon," he told her. "Say it."
He glared at her with the promise of worse to come in his eyes if she didn't start doing what he said. His grip tightened on her shoulder, fingers digging into the soft flesh of her upper arm.
"Say it!"
"I I'm Cutter's girl."
"See? That wasn't so hard."
He gave her another shove to start her moving again. She wanted desperately to break free of his hand and just run, but as he marched her across the park, she discovered that she was too scared to do anything but let him lead her away.
She'd never felt so helpless or alone in all her life. It made her feel ashamed.
"Please don't joke about this," Anna said in response to Cerin's suggestion that they turn to Faerie for help in finding Lesli.
"Yes," Meran agreed, though she wasn't speaking of jokes. "This isn't the time."
Cerin shook his head. "This seems a particularly appropriate time to me." He turned to Anna. "I don't like to involve myself in private quarrels, but since it's you that's come to us, I feel I have the right to ask you this: Why is it, do you think, that Lesli ran away in the first place?"
"What are you insinuating? That I'm not a good mother?"
"Hardly. I no longer know you well enough to make that sort of a judgment. Besides, it's not really any of my business, is it?"
"Cerin, please," Meran said.
A headache was starting up between Anna's temples.
"I don't understand," Anna said. "What is it that you're saying?"
"Meran and I loved Nell Batterberry," Cerin said. "I don't doubt that you held some affection for her as well, but I do know that you thought her a bit of a daft old woman. She told me once that after her husband after Philip died, you tried to convince Peter that she should be put in a home. Not in a home for the elderly, but for the, shall we say, gently mad?"
"But she"
"Was full of stories that made no sense to you," Cerin said. "She heard and saw what others couldn't, though she had the gift that would allow such people to see into the invisible world of Faerie when they were in her presence. You saw into that world once, Anna. I don't think you ever forgave her for showing it to you."
"It it wasn't real."
Cerin shrugged. "That's not really important at this moment. What's important is that, if I understand the situation correctly, you've been living in the fear that Lesli would grow up as fey as her grandmother. And if this is so, your denying her belief in Faerie lies at the root of the troubles that the two of you share."
Anna looked to Meran for support, but Meran knew her husband too well and kept her own council. Having begun, Cerin wouldn't stop until he said everything he meant to.
"Why are you doing this to me?" Anna asked. "My daughter's run away. All of all of this ?" She waved a hand that was perhaps meant to take in just the conversation, perhaps the whole room. "It's not real. Little people and fairies and all the things my mother-in-law reveled in discussing just aren't real. She could make them seem real, I'll grant you that, but they could never exist."
"In your world," Cerin said.
"In the real world."
"They're not one and the same," Cerin told her.
Anna began to rise from the sofa. "I don't have to listen to any of this," she said. "My daughter's run away and I thought you might be able to help me. I didn't come here to be mocked."
"The only reason I've said anything at all," Cerin told her, "is for Lesli's sake. Meran talks about her all the time. She sounds like a wonderful, gifted child."
"She is."
"I hate the thought of her being forced into a box that doesn't fit her. Of having her wings cut off, her sight blinded, her hearing muted, her voice stilled."
"I'm not doing any such thing!" Anna cried.
"You just don't realize what you're doing," Cerin replied.
His voice was mild, but dark lights in the back of his eyes were flashing.
Meran realized it was time to intervene. She stepped between the two. Putting her back to her husband, she turned to face Anna.
"We'll find Lesli," she said.
"How? With magic?"
"It doesn't matter how. Just trust that we will. What you have to think of is of what you were telling me yesterday: her birthday's coming up in just a few days. Once she turns sixteen, so long as she can prove that she's capable of supporting herself, she can legally leave home and nothing you might do or say then can stop her."
"It's you, isn't it?" Anna cried. "You're the one who's been filling up her head with all these horrible fairy tales. I should never have let her take those lessons."
Her voice rose even higher in pitch as she lunged forward, arms flailing. Meran slipped to one side, then reached out one quick hand. She pinched a nerve in Anna's neck and the woman suddenly went limp. Cerin caught her before she could fall and carried her back to the sofa.
"Now do you see what I mean about parents?" he said as he laid Anna down.
Meran gave him a mock-serious cuff on the back of his head.
"Go find Lesli," she said.
"But"
"Or would you rather stay with Anna and continue your silly attempt at converting her when she wakes up again?"
"I'm on my way," Cerin told her and was out the door before she could change her mind.
Thunder cracked almost directly overhead as Cutter dragged Lesli into a brownstone just off Palm Street. The building stood in the heart of what was known as Newford's Combat Zone, a few square blocks of night clubs, strip joints, and bars. It was a tough part of town with hookers on every corner, bikers cruising the streets on chopped-down Harleys, bums sleeping in doorways, and winos sitting on the curbs, drinking cheap booze from bottles vaguely hidden in paper bags.
Cutter had an apartment on the top floor of the brown-stone, three stories up from the street. If he hadn't told her that he lived here, Lesli would have thought that he'd taken her into an abandoned building. There was no furniture except a vinyl-topped table and two chairs in the dirty kitchen. A few mangy pillows were piled up against the wall in what she assumed was the living room.
He led her down to the room at the end of the long hall that ran the length of the apartment and pushed her inside. She lost her balance and went sprawling onto the mattress that lay in the middle of the floor. It smelled of mildew and, vaguely, of old urine. She scrambled away from it and crouched up against the far wall, clutching her knapsack against her chest.
"Now, you just relax, sweet stuff," Cutter told her. "Take things easy. I'm going out for a little while to find you a nice guy to ease you into the trade. I'd do it myself, but there's guys that want to be first with a kid as young and pretty as you are and I sure could use the bread they're willing to pay for the privilege."
Lesli was prepared to beg him to let her go, but her throat was so tight she couldn't make a sound.
"Don't go away now," Cutter told her.
He chuckled at his own wit, then closed the door and locked it. Lesli didn't think she'd ever heard anything so final as the sound of that lock catching. She listened to Cutter's footsteps as they crossed the apartment, the sound of the front door closing, his footsteps receding on the stairs.
As soon as she was sure he was far enough away, she got up and ran to the door, trying it, just in case, but it really was locked and far too solid for her to have any hope of breaking through its panels. Of course there was no phone. She crossed the room to the window and forced it open. The window looked out on the side of another building, with an alleyway below. There was no fire escape outside the window and she was far too high up to think of trying to get down to the alley.