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.”
“How can you be sure?” Cristina asked.
“They’re gentry. Court hangers-on. Oban would be in trouble with my father if he killed them all.”
“Kieran is right,” said Mark, the moonlight silvering his hair. “You cannot save them, Cristina. And we cannot linger here.”
Reluctantly Cristina followed as they pushed swiftly through the crowd. The air was full of sweet, harsh smoke, mixing with the mist from the occasional pool of water.
“Prince Kieran.” A faerie woman with hair like a dandelion clock drifted up to them. She wore a dress of white filaments, and her eyes were green as stems. “You come to us in disguise.”
Mark’s hand had gone to his weapons belt, but Kieran made a quick settling gesture at him. “I can trust you to keep my secret, can I not?”
“If you tell me why an Unseelie Prince would come hidden to his own brother’s revel, perhaps,” said the woman, her green eyes keen.
“I seek a friend,” Kieran said.
The woman’s eyes darted over Cristina and then Mark. Her mouth widened into a smile. “You seem to have several.”
“That’s enough,” said Mark. “The prince would proceed unhindered.”
“Now, if it were a love potion you sought, you might come to me,” said the faerie woman, ignoring Mark. “But which of these two Nephilim do you love? And which loves you?”
Kieran raised a warning hand. “Enough.”
“Ah, I see, I see.” Cristina wondered what it was she saw. “No love potion could assist with this.” Her eyes danced. “Now, in Faerie, you could love both and have both love you. You would have no trouble. But in the world of the Angel—”
“Enough, I said!” Kieran flushed. “What would it take to end this bedevilment?”
The faerie woman laughed. “A kiss.”
With a look of exasperation, Kieran bent his head and kissed the faerie woman lightly on the mouth. Cristina felt herself tense, her stomach tightening. It was an unpleasant sensation.
She realized Mark, beside her, had tensed as well, but neither of them moved as the faerie woman drew back, winked, and danced away into the crowd.
Kieran wiped the back of his hand across his lips. “They say a kiss from a prince brings good luck,” he said. “Even a disgraced one, apparently.”
“You didn’t need to do that, Kier,” said Mark. “We could have gotten rid of her.”
“Not without a fuss,” Kieran said. “And I suspect Oban and his men are here in the crowd somewhere.”
Cristina glanced up at the pavilion. Kieran was right—it was still empty. Where was Prince Oban? Among the rutting couples in the grass? They had begun to make their way across the clearing again: Faces of every hue loomed out of the mist at her, twisted in grimaces; Cristina even imagined she saw Manuel, and remembered how Emma had been forced to see an image of her father the last time they had been in Faerie. She shuddered, and when she looked again it was not Manuel at all but a faerie with the body of a man and the face of a wise old tabby, blinking golden eyes.
“Drinks, madam and sirs? A draft to cool you after dancing?” said the tabby faerie in a soft and cooing voice. Cristina stared, remembering. Mark had bought her a drink from this cat-faced faerie at the revel she’d been to with him. He held the same gold tray with cups on it. Even his tattered Edwardian suit had not changed.
“No drinks, Tom Tildrum, King of Cats,” said Kieran. His voice was sharp, but he clearly recognized the cat faerie. “We need to find a Seelie procession. There could be several coins in it for you if you led us to the road.”
Tom gave a low hiss. “You are too late. The Queen’s procession passed by here an hour ago.”
Mark cursed and flung his hood back. Cristina didn’t even have time to be startled that usually gentle Mark was cursing; she felt as if a hole had been punched through her chest. Emma. Emma and Jules. They’d missed them. Kieran, too, looked dismayed.
“Give me a drink, then, Tom,” said Mark
, and seized a glass of ruby-colored liquid from the tray.
Kieran held out a staying hand. “Mark! You know better!”
“It’s just fruit juice,” Mark said, his eyes on Cristina’s. She flushed and glanced away as he drained the glass.
A moment later he sank to the ground, his eyes rolling back in his head. “Mark!” Cristina gasped, flinging herself to the ground beside him. He was clearly unconscious, but just as clearly breathing. In fact, he was snoring a bit. “But it was just fruit juice!” she protested.
“I like to serve a variety of beverages,” said Tom.
Kieran knelt down by Cristina. His hood had partly fallen back, and Cristina could see the concern on his face as he touched Mark’s chest lightly. The smudges on his cheeks made his eyes stand out starkly. “Tom Tildrum,” he said in a tight voice. “It’s not safe here.”
“Not for you, for the sons of the Unseelie King are at each other’s throats like cats,” said Tom Tildrum with a flash of incisors.
“Then you see why you must lead us through to the road,” Kieran said.
“And if I do not?”
Kieran rose to his feet, managing to exude princely menace despite his dirty face. “Then I will yank your tail until you howl.”
Tom Tildrum hissed as Kieran and Cristina bent to lift Mark and carry him between them. “Come with me, then, and be quick about it, before Prince Oban sees. He would not like me helping you, Prince Kieran. He would not like it at all.”
* * *
Kit lay on the roof of the Institute, his hands behind his head. The air was blowing from the desert, warm and soft as a blanket tickling his skin. If he turned his head one way, he could see Malibu, a chain of glittering lights strung along the curve of the seashore.
This was the Los Angeles people sang about in pop songs, he thought, and put into movies; sea and sand and expensive houses, perfect weather and air that breathed as soft as powder. He had never known it before, living with his father in the shadow of smog and downtown skyscrapers.