“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I hope so. We’re really just grasping at straws, and I still have to find where this month’s goblin market is being held.” Luckily, I had a pretty good idea of who to ask for that information. The local dryads of City Park were rumored to be some of the oldest faeries in New Orleans and knew almost all there was to know about the city’s secret life. I just hoped the price for that information wasn’t too high.
“The full moon is tonight,” I went on as Annwyl absently brushed a dead branch. It came to life again beneath her fingers. “Once we find out where the market is, we’ll head over and have a look around. Even if Keirran doesn’t show up, there has to be someone there who might know where he is and where he’ll be.”
Annwyl nodded again. “I hope so,” she whispered. “I don’t know how long I have left.”
The sense of foreboding grew. “Come on,” I said, starting back toward my truck. “I’ll tell you the whole story on the road. But we should get going.” And let’s hope that when we find Keirran, Annwyl will still know who he is and why she wants to see him.
* * *
It was still morning when we cruised past the New Orleans city limits and into the urban sprawl of one of the most heavily populated faery cities in the human world. New Orleans was a place of voodoo and magic, mystery and superstition, and it drew countless fey to its haunted corners and near-mythical streets. I’d never been to New Orleans before; it was in the top five of my Places to Avoid Due to Faeries list. Of course the irony that, not only was I here, I was here looking for the biggest goblin market in the country, a place where thousands of fey would converge to bargain and make deals, wasn’t lost on me.
The highway went right through City Park, and I had Annwyl read me the directions I’d copied from MapQuest, until we finally pulled into a near-empty lot at the edge of the lawn. It was quiet when I got out of the truck, the serene stillness of early morning, and almost no one else was out. As we entered the park, a woman and a frizzy terrier jogged past us down the sidewalk, and the dog took a moment to yap hysterically at Annwyl, much to the woman’s embarrassment. Apologizing to me and scolding the dog at the same time, she pulled it away around a bend, and then we were alone.
“I like it here,” Annwyl mused, gazing around the park in quiet awe. Since leaving the truck, she looked better, not quite as pale and insubstantial. “I can breathe more easily—my mind doesn’t feel like it’s in a fog. Magic is still strong here.”
“Yeah.” I couldn’t feel the magic and glamour in the air, not like she could, but I could certainly See the evidence all around us. A piskie buzzed by my head like a mutant wasp, leaving high-pitched laughter in its wake. An undine, pale blue and piranha-toothed, glanced up from the edge of a pond before sliding noiselessly into the water. A huge black dog glided through a patch of mist between trees, looking like someone’s pet that had slipped its collar—until you saw its eyes glowing with blue fire and noticed that it walked on top of the grass instead of crushing the blades beneath its paws. It blinked solemnly and trotted into the mist again, leaving behind no evidence that it had been there at all.
I suddenly wished I hadn’t left my kali blades under the seat of my truck, hidden and locked away. Wandering around a public park with a pair of swords was risky and could get me into real trouble, but if we were jumped by a redcap motley or a hungry Nevernever beast, I would almost rather take the chance.
Thankfully, the park fey seemed indifferent to us as we made our way toward a cluster of massive oak trees in the center of the lawn. Huge and gnarled and draped in Spanish moss, the ancient trees were home to several dryads who inhabited the park. At one point, the park had also been home to the Elder Dryad, a very old tree spirit who had helped Meghan defeat the Iron King more than thirteen years ago. Over the years, I’d heard enough snippets of this very popular legend among the fey to piece together what had happened. When I was kidnapped by the Iron fey and taken into the Nevernever, Meghan had come here to ask for help in defeating the supposedly invincible Iron King. The Elder Dryad had given my sister something called a Witchwood arrow, a splinter of pure Summer magic that was like kryptonite to the Iron fey. But the Witchwood was also the heart of the Elder Dryad’s oak, and giving it to Meghan essentially killed the tree and the dryad it was attached to.
I sobered, thinking of Meghan as we stepped into the shade beneath the enormous boughs. She had risked so much for me, all those years ago. Left home, gone into the Nevernever, made bargains with faeries and endangered her life, all to rescue me. Why couldn’t she be here, right now, when I needed her most? Why was she keeping secrets when so much was at stake?
“Ethan?” Annwyl’s quiet voice broke me out of my dark thoughts. The Summer faery cocked her head at me, green eyes inquiring. “Are you all right? Has something upset you?”
Only the same person for the past thirteen years. “No.” I shrugged. “Why?”
“Your glamour aura changed just then,” Annwyl said solemnly. “It became very dark and...sad. Confused.” She blinked, and I suddenly felt exposed, like all my secrets had been dragged into the open. I’d forgotten that the fey could sense strong emotion. Fear, anger, grief—they could read it like a rain cloud over someone’s head. Some theorized that was what made humans so fascinating to the Good Neighbors, that the fey had no true emotions, so they experienced them through human contact. I didn’t know if that was true, but Annwyl didn’t need to know my family problems and, being fey, wouldn’t understand them if she did.