The concept behind any deal is the sacrifice of life, which allows us to channel those powers we cannot name. Lifeblood must soak the earth. Again, the idea is repellent to us, but if the deal is offered in such a way that it also fulfills our need for justice, then we can righteously act as mediators in the transaction.

The rest of the paragraph had been redacted. The next one started …

The earliest example I was able to find—which is almost certainly not the very earliest—was a case in the old country …

At last, the ink swam and I braced myself for it to open, and when it did, I tumbled through into a forest.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

A man crouched by a well-worn path. His clothing suggested a Celtic clansman, but my knowledge of such things is pretty much limited to movies and novels.

As he crouched there, breathing hard, I picked up the thunder of hooves. Then the bay of hounds, so loud the man stumbled back, and he grabbed a tree trunk, as if needing to hold tight to keep from running for his life. His breath came ragged and loud, his face a pale mask of panic. Fire blazed through the trees, the baying of the hounds softer, the pounding of hooves hard enough to shake the earth. A man raced past, tearing down the path like the hounds of hell were on his heels. Which they were.

The man himself wore armor—a helmet and leather breastplate. He had a sword in hand, but he didn’t stop to use it. As he tore past us, the hounds pursued, and I swore sparks flew as their paws struck the earth. They passed, and the man beside me threw himself toward the path, using the tree as leverage to launch himself there.

That’s when I saw the Hunt. The true Hunt. Black steeds bore down on us, red-eyed and fire-maned. Dark-cloaked men rode on their backs. Or I must presume they were men—their hoods were drawn up and all I could see were red glinting eyes.

The clansman dropped to the path and covered his head and shouted, “Mercy, lords of the Otherworld. Mercy!”

The soldier long past us shrieked and the hounds snarled, and I knew from that sound that they’d caught their prey. The horses whinnied, and the riders reined them in.

The scene stuttered, like a film caught in the projector. And I glimpsed a house, a modern house, so briefly that I could tell nothing more about it. A house and a voice, and then I was back in the forest, shaking my head and remembering what Patrick said, that there might be fits and starts from the book’s mutilation. When I looked up, the front rider had brought his steed to the cowering man.

“You are not our prey tonight,” he said, his voice a sonorous boom from the depths of that hood. I was pretty sure he—like the cowering man—didn’t speak modern English, but as usual, that’s what I heard. “Go home, and tell no one of what you have seen, lest the Hunt come for you next.”

“I-I wish to speak to you. I have waited for you.”

“You interrupt our hunt intentionally?”

“I beg pardon, my lord. It was the only way to gain your attention, and the hounds have taken their prey, so I hope the imposition is not too grievous.”

“You hope wrongly. I can tell you come from a family of cunning men, which explains how you know of us, and perhaps you think that excuses you, but that knowledge is the very reason why you have no excuse. You have impeded—”

“And I will pay the price, whatever it may be. But I beseech you, my lords, to hear me out. My wife has been taken by the Romans. She is forced to serve in their kitchens, and from what I have heard …” He swallowed. “That is not all she is forced to do.”

The Huntsman shifted on his horse, the beast dancing in place as he let out a sound not unlike a hound’s growl. “The Romans are a plague on this soil.” He gestured to where the hounds snarled in the distance. “We took one of their damned soldiers tonight. He’d come upon a dryad in the woods, and when she could not escape, he took his time with her and has now paid. This is still our land.”

“Yes, my lords. Yet as long as the Romans remain, we are subject to their tyranny. Freeing my wife would be difficult enough, but if she escapes, she brings down the wrath of the eagles on our heads. I need another solution. A magical one.”

“To free your wife in such a way that her captors do not realize she’s gone,” the Huntsman mused. “Presumably also freeing others from your village, which will require more than simple fae compulsion. An interesting proposition.”

“In return, I will do whatever you ask of me.”

There was a silence so long the man began to plead, but the Huntsman raised his hand. “Would you murder Romans?”

“Gladly.”

“Murder them in a way that you might find repulsive? There was a tribal camp a half day’s ride from here. A dozen women and children forced to flee their homeland. While their men were away, four Romans struck. They raped, and they slaughtered, and there is nothing we can do about it, no victim having fae blood. We would like the perpetrators killed in a way that will teach others that the women and children of this land are not their playthings.”

“Yes, my lords. I will do as you …”

The scene flickered again. I was in a bedroom, looking out from behind bars. The bars of a crib. I remembered the cribs in the abandoned asylum, but this was a child’s bedroom, sparking some deep memory—

“Got a deal for you,” a man’s voice said.

I shot back through time, landing this time in a tavern thick with smoke and stinking of fish and cheap whiskey and unwashed bodies. Three men sat at a corner table. They were not dressed finely, but they were clean and well groomed, and they held themselves apart with an air of fastidiousness, like travelers who’ve wandered into the wrong part of town in search of a drink. A few men circled, as if thinking they might be easy marks, but cold looks from the trio sent them scuttling off. All except this one, who stood beside their table.