“The Winterrose was a friend of the boss. She did many things for us here . . . ma’am.” He used “ma’am” like it was a dirty word. Only the barest of margins saved it from being an insult, and that gap was shrinking.

“Cool it, Manuel,” I said, raising my hands. “I didn’t mean to piss you off. Evening and I were friends for a long time, even if we didn’t always act like it. I’m going to find out who killed her, and they’re going to pay.”

The anger in his eyes faded, soothed by the promise of revenge. “I just wish we’d known sooner. If someone had told us . . . we could’ve saved her.” He sounded so sure of himself, secure in his misplaced faith. Part of me wanted to shake him, but the rest of me wanted to swaddle him in cotton and hide him somewhere where the world would never take that faith away from him. The world isn’t a nice place—ask anyone.

Ask Evening.

“It wouldn’t have done any good,” I said. I hated myself for the words, but I wasn’t willing to lie to him, not even by omission. Not about this. “We couldn’t have saved her.”

“We could have kept her alive, gotten her to someone . . .”

“She was killed with iron.”

He froze. “Iron?”

“Yes, iron. We couldn’t have saved her.” The sound of the door opening saved me from his response, and I turned, painfully glad for the distraction. Maybe he was going to grow up someday; that didn’t mean I needed to watch.

Dare stood in the doorframe, trying to look cocky and unconcerned. She was failing. Maybe it was the red welt on her cheek that spoiled the effect, already darkening around the edges toward the bruise it would become. “The boss-man says he’ll see you now, but you better hurry if you want him to keep on waiting.” There was a panicky look in her eyes: those were Devin’s words, not hers, and she expected to be the one that got punished for them. The old bastard never changed.

Maybe that’s why I loved him for so long.

“Great,” I said, and stood, pushing past her into the back hall. The door swung shut behind me, but not fast enough to keep me from hearing Manuel start to cry. Damn it.

He would have found out eventually: if he had been Evening’s pawn, someone else was bound to grab him and keep using him in the great chess game of faerie society. Any piece, however small, is too valuable to be allowed to just walk away. Hope isn’t always an easy thing in Faerie, but I wished him what hope I could—that he would find his feet before the world found him, and that his new master would be as kind as his old one. Evening was a lot of things, but she was never cruel, not even to her puppets. Her hands were always gentle on my strings.

SEVEN

THE HALL WAS THICK WITH stale cigarette smoke, and the walls were lined with tattered concert posters. The irregularly-spaced lights didn’t so much dispel the darkness as displace it, forcing it back into the corners. The dim light and low ceiling combined to keep even fae eyes from seeing what was really underfoot. I stepped on something that squished under the heel of my shoe and grimaced. Maybe the limited visibility was a good thing.

Only one of the hall’s four doors was labeled. The doors on the left led to the bathrooms, while the first door on the right led to the broom closet. The three were identical in everything but position, and it was always fun to watch a new kid trying to figure out which he needed. Some of them always got it wrong, but that’s the way life works; you grab a door at random and hope it’s the one you want, especially if your business won’t wait.

There was a sign on the fourth door, marking it for the sake of folks who didn’t feel quite as adventurous, or maybe for the ones who wanted to play a more dangerous game. It was just a piece of tattered cardboard, with the word “Manager” scrawled in black marker. Someone had written “is a serious bastard” underneath, in crayon. Both statements were accurate, in their own ways: Devin was in charge, yes, and he was also someone you didn’t want pissed off at you. His temper was legendary, and he rarely gave second chances. He was also the first man I’d ever loved, and now that I was Home, I was starting to realize how much I’d missed him, even after everything we did to each other. I should have come to see him before there was blood between us to force my hand. Maybe we would both have been happier if I had. My eyes on the sign, I raised my hand and knocked.

“Come in,” called Devin, in the sort of rich, melodious tenor that makes teenage girls preen and swoon. I’d heard it before, of course, but that didn’t stop the hairs on the back of my neck from standing on end as I turned the knob and stepped through.

Devin’s office was lit by a dozen lamps that threw the grimy walls and aging furnishings into sharp relief. It wasn’t flattering, but it also wasn’t an illusion—he showed you what you were getting, right up front. I had to respect him for that, even as it worried me a little. Most purebloods are obsessed with light, immortal moths chasing mortal flames. They can see perfectly well without it, unlike humans or changelings; they want it anyway. Maybe the attraction is in the uselessness. Devin wasn’t a pureblood, but that didn’t stop him from following the light. I’d never been able to figure out why.

Devin himself was behind the desk, half reclining in his chair. I stopped in the doorway, just looking at him, trying to breathe.

You’d never guess by looking at us that Devin had more than a hundred years on me; he was a changeling, but his blood was stronger than mine, and the years had been more than kind. Everyone’s born to fill a certain role in life. Devin was born to rule his own private Neverland, and he came almost supernaturally well-prepared for the part. His hair was a dark, wavy gold that made my fingers ache to run through it, and his face would have been better suited to a Greek god. Only his eyes betrayed his inhumanity—dark purple crossed with white starburst patterns, like flower petals. You could fall into the crossed and counter-crossed flower-petal darkness of his eyes if you looked into them for too long, finding out what he really was even as you lost track of yourself.

No matter how hard I tried to taste the balance of his blood, I never figured it out, and he never told me. I always suspected that there was Lamia somewhere in his background; the serpent-women have been known to slow their dances long enough to love human men and it’s not impossible that there could be children. Stranger things have happened in Faerie. It would have explained the way he sometimes seemed to look deeper with those eyes of his than anyone had any right to look.