Her voice sounded small. “Does that mean we’re still friends?”

His fleeting smile was sad. He pulled at the door handle and this time it opened; Jaime slipped through it, past her, and vanished into the shadows.

“Dru? Are you all right?”

She turned around, scrubbing furiously at her stinging eyes. She didn’t want to cry in front of Helen—and it was Helen, her sister standing on the bottom step of the main staircase, looking at her with troubled eyes.

“You don’t need to worry about me,” she said in a shaking voice. “I know you think it’s stupid, but he was my first real friend—”

“I don’t think it’s stupid!” Helen crossed the room to Dru in swift strides.

Dru’s throat hurt almost too much for her to speak. “I feel like people keep leaving,” she whispered.

This close up, Helen looked even more thin and pretty and she smelled like orange blossoms. But for the first time, she didn’t seem remote, like a distant star. She seemed distressed and worried and very much present. There was even an ink stain on her sleeve.

“I know how you feel,” Helen went on. “I missed you so much while I was on Wrangel Island I couldn’t breathe. I kept thinking about everything I was missing, and how I’d miss you getting older, all the little things, and when I saw you in the Council Hall I kept thinking . . .”

Dru braced herself.

“. . . how beautiful you’d gotten. You look so much like Mom.” Helen sniffled. “I used to watch her getting ready to go out. She was so glamorous, she had such style . . . all I can ever think to wear is jeans and a shirt.”

Dru stared in amazement.

“I’m going to stay,” Helen said fiercely. “I’m not leaving you ever again.” She reached for Dru—and Dru nodded, just the smallest nod. Helen put her arms around her and held her tightly.

Dru rested her forehead against her sister and finally allowed herself to remember Helen picking her up when she was small, swinging her around while she laughed, tying ribbons in her hair and finding her lost shoes, inevitably discarded on the beach. They fit together differently now than they had then, Dru thought, as she put her own arms around Helen. They were different heights and shapes, different people than they had been once.

But even if they fit differently now, they still fit like sisters.

*

It was nothing like a Portal; there was no rushing tumult, no sense of being picked up by a tornado and hurled around wildly. One moment Cristina was standing in the library at the Institute, and the next she was in a green field, with Mark and Kieran on either side of her and music ringing through the air.

Mark dropped his hand from her shoulder; so did Kieran. Cristina shoved the artifact into her pack and slung it onto her back, pulling the straps tight as the boys looked around in astonishment.

“It’s a revel,” said Mark in disbelief. “We’ve landed in the middle of a revel.”

“Well, not the middle,” said Kieran. He was technically correct; they were just outside a field that was full of whirling, spinning dancers. Pavilions had been set up on the green, with one, more massive than the others, hung with swags of silk.

“I thought we were going to Bram’s Crossroads?” Cristina said.

“We’re close to it.” Kieran pointed. Across the field, Cristina could see the place where two roads met, surrounding by massive oak trees. “It is the place where the Seelie Lands and the Unseelie Lands meet.”

“Who is Bram?” said Cristina.

“Bram was King before my father, long ago,” said Kieran. He indicated the southern road. “Emma and Julian would be coming from there. The Seelie Lands. Any official procession would pass the crossroads.”

“So we have to get to the road,” said Mark. “We have to go through the revel.” He turned. “Disguise yourself, Prince Kieran.”

Kieran gave Mark a dark look. Cristina, not wanting to waste time, unbuckled Kieran’s pack, pulled out a rolled cloak, and handed it to him.

Kieran drew the cloak on, pulling the hood up. “Am I disguised?”

Cristina could still see a glimpse of blue-black hair beneath the edge of the hood but hoped no one would be looking all that closely. If they did, they could tell easily enough that he was a prince. It was in his bearing, in the way he moved, the look on his face.

Mark must have had the same thought, for he bent down, took a handful of mud, and rubbed it firmly into Kieran’s surprised face, leaving smears of dirt on his cheek and nose.

Kieran was not pleased. He glared. “You did that because you enjoyed it.”

Mark grinned like a little boy and tossed the remaining mud aside. Kieran scrubbed at his nose, still glaring. He did look less princely, though. “Stop it,” said Cristina.

“Thank you,” Kieran said.

With a grin, Cristina grabbed some mud and smeared a bit on Kieran’s cheek. “You have to get both sides.”

Mark laughed; Kieran looked indignant for several seconds before giving in and laughing as well.

“Now let’s not waste any more time,” Cristina said a bit regretfully. She wished the three of them could simply stay here, together, and not join the revel.

But they had no choice. They pressed forward into the revel, through the area where many of the dancers had already collapsed, exhausted. A boy with smeared metallic paint on his face and striped breeches sat gazing at his hands in a drugged haze as he moved them slowly through the air. They passed a pool of steaming water surrounded by mist; slippery bodies were visible through gaps in the smoke. Cristina felt her cheeks flame red.

They moved on, and the crowd closed around them like fast-growing vines. It was nothing like the revel Cristina had seen the last time she was in Faerie. That had been a massive dance party. This was more like a slice of a Bosch painting. A group of faerie men were fighting; their bare upper bodies, slippery with blood, shone in the starlight. A kelpie feasted hungrily on the dead body of a brownie, its open eyes staring sightlessly at the sky. Naked bodies lay entwined in the grass, their limbs moving with slow intent. Pipes and fiddles screamed, and the air smelled like wine and blood.

They passed a giant lying unconscious in the grass. All over his huge body were hundreds of pixies, darting and dancing, like a moving sea. No, Cristina realized, they weren’t dancing. They were—

She glanced away. Her cheeks felt like they were on fire.

“This is my brother’s doing,” said Kieran, staring grimly at the largest of the pavilions, the one that bore the crest of the Unseelie Court. An ornate throne-like seat had been placed there, but it was empty. “Prince Oban. His revels are famous for their duration and their debauchery.” He frowned as a group of naked acrobats hooted from a nearby tree. “He makes Magnus Bane look like a prudish nun.”

Mark looked as if he’d just heard that there was an alternate sun that was nine million times hotter than Earth’s sun. “You never mentioned Oban.”

“He embarrasses me,” said Kieran. A branch broke overhead, depositing a goblin-size horse wearing a garter belt on the ground in front of them. It wore woolen hose with runs in them and golden hoof covers.

“I can see why,” said Mark as the horse wandered off, nibbling at the grass. It studiously avoided the couples embracing in the tangled undergrowth.

Dancers whirled past Cristina in a circle surrounding a ribboned tree, but none of them wore expressions of enjoyment. Their faces were blank, their eyes wide, their arms flailing. Every once in a while a drunken faerie knight would pull one of the dancers from the circle and down into the long grass. Cristina shuddered.

From the top of the tree hung a cage. Inside the cage was a hunched figure, white and slimy like a pale slug, its body covered in gray pockmarks. It looks like an Eidolon demon in its true form, Cristina thought. But why would a prince of Faerie have an Eidolon demon in a cage?

A horn blared. The music had become more sour, almost sinister. Cristina looked again at the dancers and realized suddenly that they were ensorcelled. She remembered the last time she’d been at a revel, and how she’d been swept away by the music; she didn’t feel that way now, and silently thanked the Eternidad.

She had read about faerie revels where mortals were forced to dance until the bones in their feet splintered, but she hadn’t realized it was something faeries might do to each other. The beautiful young girls and boys in the circle were being danced off their feet, their upper bodies slumping even as their legs moved tirelessly to the rhythm.

Kieran looked grim. “Oban gets pleasure from witnessing the pain of others. Those are the thorns of his roses, the poison in the bloom of his gregariousness and gifts.”

Cristina moved toward the dancers, concerned. “They’re all going to die—”

Kieran caught her sleeve, pulling her back toward him and Mark. “Cristina, no.” He sounded sincerely alarmed for her. “Oban will let them live, once he’s humiliated them enough.”