Lesley Livingston: Wondrous Strange

Kelley scoffed in disbelief. “You saw what I just did in there, right?”

“And heard, yes.” Jack chuckled. “You mangled just over fifty percent of your lines. I don’t care what Quentin says, for a first timer that’s not half bad. Well-it was half bad. But that’s the point. It was also half good .”

“You…really think so?” Kelley asked, trying to gauge whether Jack was being sincere.

“I really do.” Jack shrugged and drained his coffee. “You’ve got a voice. You’ve got a presence. More importantly, you have the heart and the passion and the sheer mule-headed stubbornness that could very well take you to places most of us scarcely dare to imagine.” He screwed the cup-lid back onto his thermos. “Now, call that destiny, call it purpose-whatever ‘it’ is, my dear girl, you have it in good supply.”

Kelley was not entirely convinced, but she smiled, grateful for the kindness. “Has anyone ever told you that you’ve got a silver tongue, Jack?”

“Many times. Unfortunately, never the reviewers.”

“Thank you.”

“No need for that, my dear.” Standing, Jack tipped an imaginary hat to her as he went back inside the theater.

The second half of rehearsal also ended early, but this time it wasn’t Kelley’s fault-it would have been hard to screw up her lines when she’d been ordered to rehearse script in hand. Although it was humiliating for Kelley to still be “on book” so close to opening, the company whipped through the large ensemble scenes at a pace and with a level of competency that even Quentin could only manage a few halfhearted mutters over.

After a couple of hours he released most of the cast, holding back the two girls playing Hermia and Helena so he could work on their monologues-because, he remarked pointedly and well within Kelley’s earshot, “they already know their lines.”

Lucky them , Kelley thought, as she changed back into her street clothes. She gathered up her stuff and hotfooted it out of there before the Mighty Q could change his mind.

Outside the day was glorious, the October sky deep blue and the air mild. The sun was shining brightly, and it reminded Kelley of fall days at home in the Catskills. She felt a wave of sudden homesickness.

Why am I doing this? she wondered.

In her six months in New York, Kelley had never once questioned her life choices: graduating high school early, dropping out of theater training to move to the city-leaving behind what few friends she’d had, not to mention her aunt, who’d raised her single-handedly since her parents’ death twelve years earlier. Kelley was all Emma had and they adored each other but, instead of continuing on with her studies at a nearby state university, visiting Emma on weekends, here she was. Living in the toughest city in America, chasing a selfish dream that- Let’s face it , she told herself morosely-apparently, she really wasn’t any good at. No matter what Jack said.

She scuffed her feet as she wandered up Eighth Avenue, reluctant to make her way uptown to the fourth-floor walk-up that she now called home. Except that home was something else. It was sky and grass and the trees of the woods outside her old window, and peace.

Kelley came to a stop at the corner of Fifty-fifth Street. Central Park was only a few blocks away. There would be trees and grass, and benches where she could sit quietly, looking over her lines away from the city crowds. Turning right to veer east, she broke into a jog.

Sonny Flannery opened the French doors and stepped out onto the stone terrace of his penthouse apartment. With cat-footed lightness, he leaped up to perch on the smooth, wide granite of the railing. Heedless of the nineteen-story drop to the pavement far below, he crouched there like a gargoyle, elbows resting on knees and his long, slender hands hanging in front of him, watching as the afternoon shadows of New York’s countless high-rises began to grow long over Central Park.

It was too early for him to be so keyed up-the Gate wouldn’t open for another several hours. Still…even the thought of what was to come made the adrenaline thrum through Sonny’s veins like siren song. He’d heard actual siren song once, and it had not been a pretty thing. Beguiling, yes. Pretty…no. Beneath the heartbreakingly lovely surface of the Sirens’ melodies, all Sonny had heard were discordant notes of hunger and rage. Need. Madness and nightmares. Compulsion.

The same kind of compulsion that had driven him down into the park every night for almost a year in preparation for what was to come when the Samhain Gate opened and all that would stand between the Otherworld and the mortal realm were thirteen Janus Guards. Including Sonny Flannery, the newest member of that elite rank.

This was his first year of service as a Janus and would be his first time guarding the Gate. He could hardly wait.

The October breeze was brisk that high up but, even shirtless and barefoot, wearing only a pair of jeans, Sonny was unaffected by the chill. Still, when the temperature plummeted in the apartment at his back, he couldn’t help but notice.

“My lord,” Sonny called, not turning to look. “Welcome.”

“Sonny.” The greeting floated out to him.

From his perch on the balustrade, Sonny turned to see Auberon, king of the Unseelie Court of Faerie, lounging against the door frame. A mane of charcoal-gray hair, shot through with silver, flowed down his back, and a mantle stitched from the furs of timber wolves fell from his shoulders in rich platinum layers.

“Your door,” Auberon said. His voice was low and melodious, with hints of the slow crack and boom of a frozen lake breaking open on a midwinter night. “It was unlocked.”

“I know. Most unwanted visitors never make it past the front-desk security in this place. Either that, or they’re not the kind who come up in the elevator, so I don’t usually bother.” Sonny knew perfectly well that Auberon had not come over the threshold. The Winter King, Lord of the Unseelie, had no need of such trivial things as doors. He was simply being polite-in his own inimitable way.

The Faerie king’s pale lips twitched. “Unwanted visitors?”

“Not you, lord. Of course.” Sonny grinned and jumped down onto the flagstones. His bare feet made no noise as he crossed the terrace.

“Of course not.”

“I only meant that I’ll have enough doors to worry about keeping locked soon enough.”

“Aye. You will.” Auberon’s cold eyes glittered.

“And, at any rate, this is your apartment.” Sonny waved a hand at the expanse of polished floors and sleek furnishings. “I only live here.”

It was true. Auberon’s decrees had forbade the Faerie from having any interaction with the mortal realm, and his enchantments had made it virtually impossible to do so. But as king of Winter, the most powerful of the Four Courts of Faerie, Auberon could come and go as he wished. He’d done so through the years, and in the course of dealing with humans, Auberon had-among other things-amassed an impressive portfolio of priceless real estate, including Sonny’s corner penthouse apartment on Central Park West. Lavish couldn’t even begin to describe the young Janus’s accommodations to most people; New Yorkers would sell body parts to get their hands on a place like it. But Sonny had grown up in the unimaginable splendor of Auberon’s palaces.

Sonny was a changeling-a human, stolen as a child from the mortal realm by godlike beings who did not often produce children of their own. Growing to adulthood over the course of a century or more rather than years (for time in the Otherworld moved differently than in the mortal realm), the changelings served as surrogate offspring for the Faerie, walking in the shining halls of bright palaces, resting and feasting in canopied bowers. Mortals made almost immortal, they lived in that timeless, dreaming place, doted on or ignored by their capricious masters, sometimes treasured, sometimes tormented. But always in the thrall of the Faerie.