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  Aerune smiled, reconciled to the discomfort of the Iron City by the sight of the triumph almost within his grasp. The children had broken their toy. That was good. Because like all children, they would soon want a new one. . . .

  His day having been thoroughly spoiled for him by his unsettling nightmare and the prospect of explaining things to Toni Hernandez, Eric moped around the house until he realized that was what he was doing, then went for a walk. He tried Toni’s door on the way out, but she was still out, or else not answering it.

  When he hit the street, the cold was a shock, and he slitted his eyes against the light. The raw December day at least gave him something else to focus on besides the assignment still lying undone on his desk. The end of the semester was in two weeks, and the coursework was piling up with all the time he’d been spending on rehearsals. He was going to have a lot to keep him busy over the next fortnight.

  And after that? His imagination shied away from the thought of the holidays like a skittish colt. For too many years, Christmas had been a cheap apartment and an expensive bottle: a holiday that everyone else but him seemed to celebrate with their families, whether biological or otherwise. Eric hadn’t seen his own parents since the day he’d left home, and for years he hadn’t felt any lack there. But the sense of unfinished business that had brought him back to Juilliard was tugging at him there, too, and he knew that sometime soon he was going to have to work up the courage to face the last of his personal demons. One way or another.

  He still had the next month to get through first, though. Christmas . . . alone again. For a time, Kory and Beth had changed all that, though neither Christmas in hiding nor Christmas Underhill was anything like a Charles Dickens novel, the Sidhe having no concept of Christmas and very little of seasonal festivals. He could go back to Underhill for the holidays, but managing the temporal transitions back and forth from here to Underhill with any degree of temporal accuracy was often difficult; if he went to visit Beth and Kory in Elfhame Misthold over the holidays, he had no guarantee that he’d be back before Groundhog Day.

  And this is something I’ve got to do on my own, or I might as well just chuck it now and go back to Underhill for good. That meant Christmas alone once more, and it was surprising how much it hurt. No wonder the suicide rate went up in December.

  None of which solved his even more immediate problems. Seeing Ria at the Winter Concert seemed as if it had happened a million years ago, not last night, and somehow, she—or her doppelganger—didn’t seem like quite so urgent a problem in the face of astral sojourns to the Night Lands, an invading elf-lord, and a bunch of wizards on Yellow Alert.

  He rambled down familiar streets, past Korean groceries, Italian delis, boutiques and antique stores. The streets were full of his neighbors—as much as any place in New York could be said to be a neighborhood—and if the faces weren’t familiar, the dogs were. Everybody in New York seemed to have dogs—he saw the woman with the three enormous German Shepherds (all bouncing around and tangling their leashes together), the professional dog-walker managing two Great Danes and half a dozen little fur-balls with ease and efficiency, and the man in the grey suit who walked his Himalayan cat twice a day. Eric stopped to greet her; she sniffed his fingers with ladylike disdain before continuing on her way.

  New York is really like a village, I guess. A really big village with about twelve million people in it. A few thousand years ago there weren’t that many people on the entire planet. There hasn’t been a city this big and this complex since the time of Ancient Rome.

  But Rome was long gone, and if he were a pessimist, Eric would think that New York was going the same way. In his dream, there’d been nothing left but ashes . . . and the goblin tower.

  Don’t think about that. It was a dream, nothing more.

  The walk cleared his head, and after an hour or so he turned conscientiously back toward Guardian House. He decided to stop along the way to pick up a peace offering—though why he should feel the need to make peace with Toni was something he didn’t really understand.

  Maybe I feel guilty for adding one more thing to her workload? I know this Unseleighe Lord isn’t my fault, but sometimes it seems that wherever I go, trouble follows.

  He spotted a familiar sign on the street ahead, and turned toward it. Sanctuary. And a chance to warm up—he’d gotten thoroughly chilled on his ramble.

  Bread Alone was one of Eric’s favorite places in his new neighborhood. It had the look and feel of one of those old Lower East Side neighborhood bakeries from the turn of the century, the kind of place where you could stop in for coffee and a bagel and to catch up on neighborhood gossip, with a painted pressed-tin ceiling, black and white marble floor, and a few antique cast-iron tables and chairs nestled into the corners.

  He’d just walked inside and taken a deep lungful of the warm heady vanilla-and-baking-bread smell when a familiar voice hailed him.

  “Well, if it isn’t the Pied Piper.”

  Eric turned toward the voice. Jimmie Youngblood was sitting at one of the tables, a large styrofoam container of coffee in front of her. She was off-duty, dressed casually in jeans and a black leather jacket worn over a plain white T-shirt. She waved him over, smiling.

  “Haven’t seen you since the party,” she said when he’d sat down. “How are you settling in?”

  “Some days are better than others,” Eric admitted. “I never realized how much time and energy school can take up. It’s different when you’re a kid, I guess.”

  She studied him critically. Though her flawless bronze complexion was more forgiving than lighter skin might be, Eric could see that Jimmie was tired—bone tired.

  “You’re not much more than a kid yourself,” she said. “Or are you using a little of that Bardic Magic to shave a few years off?”

  “I’m older than I look,” Eric admitted cheerfully. “At least inside. And I’m starting to think that’s where it counts. If your body’s twenty-five and your mind . . . isn’t, the mind is what counts, I guess.”

  “Ain’t it the truth,” Jimmie admitted with a long sigh. “Double-shifts and all-nighters were a lot easier when I was twenty. Places like this . . . I come here to re-charge. Look around. Have you noticed that everyone’s happy here?”

  Eric looked around the tiny bakery. Jimmie was right. The girl behind the counter, the older man (probably her father) transferring pastries from the cooling racks to the case, the patrons waiting patiently for their orders to be filled, even the Gothamites seated at the other tables with morning papers and breakfast, all looked contented.

  “Maybe it’s the Christmas spirit?” he suggested.

  Jimmie grimaced. “Christmas spirit is overrated. Take it from someone who’s on the streets eight hours a day. No, this place is like this year round. It sounds kind of stupid and New Age, but this is a happy place.”

  “You’re right,” Eric said with surprise. He’d found places like this in the human world before, but they’d usually been places touched by at least a hint of Sidhe enchantment. He lowered his shields cautiously and took a peek, but found no trace of elven magic here, only the happy contentment of people honestly enjoying simple pleasures. “I guess that’s one of the reasons I ended up here today.”

  “Rough week?” Jimmie said sympathetically. “I know you had that concert thing last night. How did that go?”

  Eric thought back to the hot lights and the watchful audience, remembered the soaring feeling of rightness as he wrapped them all up in his music, the joy of playing with an ensemble of talented musicians. There was no way to put those feelings into words. It almost made up for the downer the reception had been.

  “It was okay,” he said with a bashful smile. “What really gets me, though, is how people can start out in music because it’s something they love, and then forget why they did it. Something they loved just becomes a grind—a duty. It’s like they twist all the joy out of it.”

  “Way of the world, my friend,” Jimmie said. “When I
started out on the Force— Look, I’m up for another round—let me get you some coffee and something to go on with. You look like you could use it.” Before he could answer, she got to her feet and headed over to the counter.

  I wonder what she was going to say? Eric thought. One thing that Beth—who’d been Wiccan for as long as Eric had known her—and the Elvenmage Dharinel both agreed on was that there were no coincidences, especially for those who were the least bit sensitive to magic. The more you attuned yourself to the invisible currents of Power that underlay everything, the more you moved in harmony with them. And the more you end up in places like this, having coffee with your fellow magicians. Though it was hard to remember that Jimmie—practical, down-to-earth, New York street cop that she was—was a magician as powerful as any in Underhill. A line from one of his favorite Gilbert and Sullivan operettas came back to him suddenly: “Things aren’t always what they seem/Skim milk masquerades as cream . . .”

  A few minutes later Jimmie was back, balancing two tall containers of coffee and a couple of Danishes wrapped in bakery paper. They were still warm from the oven.

  “I got you decaf, because of what you said at the party about not drinking coffee much any more because the Sidhe can’t tolerate it.”

  “You’re right there,” Eric said. “Before I met Kory, I couldn’t even get up in the morning without that first cup, now I hardly ever touch the stuff. Caffeine in any form acts like the worst kind of drug for them—like a combination of cocaine and LSD. If you’re ever having problems with a mad elf-lord, just pitch a can of Coke at him.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Jimmie said, sounding tiredly amused. “You never know; it might come up. But they roast and grind their own beans here. It’s a special blend—you won’t miss the caffeine. And Papa Lombardi only makes these pastries at Christmas. It’d be a crime to miss them.”

  She handed one to Eric. The golden crust was fragrant with almond and cinnamon, and when he bit into it, Eric could taste citrus and currants as well. His stomach awoke with a growl, reminding him he’d missed breakfast by several hours, and he had to restrain himself from wolfing the whole thing in a few bites. He set the pastry down and took a sip of the coffee. As Jimmie had promised, it was rich and fragrant. No sugar, but it didn’t really need any.

  “Oh, man,” Eric said, around another mouthful of pastry. “This is heaven!”

  “When you’re out on the front lines, it’s important to remember the little pleasures. Without them, sometimes we forget who we are,” Jimmie said gravely.

  “Do you have that problem often?” Eric asked. He hadn’t meant to ask such a direct question—it seemed almost hostile—but Jimmie didn’t seem to mind. She smiled gently.

  “I’ve lost my way a few times,” she said. “Even after I became a Guardian. I’ve seen too many good people go down into the belly of the beast and not come out again. Out here—on the streets—every day good people die, and bad people walk away smiling. And sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “Is that why you became a Guardian?” Eric asked.

  “That’s why I became a cop,” Jimmie said, correcting him gently. “Being a Guardian came after—sort of a natural extension of the badge, don’t you know? When I was a kid, I always wanted to grow up to be Batman. Well, sometimes I wanted to be the Green Hornet, but usually it was Batman. Fight crime and evil, always come out on top. It didn’t hurt that my dad and my—my brother were both cops. I just sort of always knew this was where I’d end up. Not the Guardian part, of course.”

  “Do your folks still live around here?” Eric asked idly, still thinking about Christmas.

  Jimmie sighed and shook her head. “Dad caught a bullet about fifteen years back. El—my brother, well, we kind of lost touch. A long time ago.”

  Even through his shields, Eric could feel the flare of raw pain when Jimmie talked about her brother. She’d said he’d been a cop, and she hadn’t said he was dead. But a lot of things could happen, some of them worse than being dead.

  “I’m sorry,” Eric said, meaning it.

  “Don’t be. He made his choice, and I made mine. You can’t undo the past. But I didn’t mean to bring you down. When you walked in here, you looked like you’d lost your last friend.”

  “Not quite,” Eric said. More like I remembered how few of them there were. “I had kind of a rough night, and so I went out for a walk this morning to try to clear my head. And from the look of things, I’m not the only one who had a rough night.”

  “Can’t put anything over on you, can we, Banyon?” Jimmie asked with a rueful smile. “Actually I haven’t been to bed yet—Toni and I were chasing around the city all night like Starsky and Hutch because of some stuff, and I’m back on shift in another few hours. I do hate working nights. City gets crazy then. It’s like it turns into a whole ’nother place, you know?”

  You don’t know the half of it . . . or do you? Eric thought.

  “What kind of stuff?” he asked aloud. “I got—well, I don’t know if you want to talk about it here. But I was going to try to get ahold of Toni. There’s some things I need to tell her. But she was out when I came downstairs.”

  “Probably up in East Harlem, seeing if the santeros know anything about what’s going down. You don’t have to worry about talking here, Eric. I told you. This is one of the Good Places. And nobody’s going to overhear our conversation unless I want them to. Sort of one of the fringe benefits of being a Guardian,” Jimmie said.

  “Okay.” He liked Jimmie a lot—and more, he trusted her judgment. When you spent a lot of time on the street and the RenFaire circuit, you got to develop an instinct that helped you tell the good cops from the bad. And Jimmie was definitely one of the good ones.

  “So shoot. What’s got you walking the streets on a day like this?”

  “Well . . . .” He was stalling, and he knew it. But one of the things that Dharinel had drummed into him during his magical training was that words had power, and it almost seemed to Eric that by telling Jimmie the problem he’d be making it more real than it had to be.

  “I’ve already told Greystone most of it. And, well, it’s a lot of different things. Some really personal. Some I’ve been told to stay out of at all costs.”

  “Too bad that’s the kind of advice that nobody ever takes,” Jimmie said. She sipped her coffee, and for a moment her eyes were cold and far away, focused on some secret pain. He noticed that whenever she was thinking intently, her black eyes lightened almost to yellow. It was a startling effect. “The good people . . . they always try to help. And sometimes they get killed. But that’s what I’m here for. If anybody takes a bullet, it should be me. I chose to put myself on the line, knowing the risks ahead of time.” She took a deep breath, consciously shutting away the pain. “But that’s old news. Anyway, it’s one of the reasons I’m kind of touchy about civilians on the fire-line, if you hadn’t noticed already. Good people, who just want to help. But it’s my job to protect them—even to take a bullet if I have to. They never asked to be in the kinds of situations I run into. All they want to do is live their lives. And it’s my job to make sure they can. I don’t want any more deaths on my conscience.”

  Eric met her gaze squarely, thinking of his own dead. Of the people who hadn’t gotten out of the way in time when the magic got loose. Or—worse—had been dragged into situations by people who didn’t care who they hurt.

  “Understood,” Eric said. “I don’t like it either.” He shook his head.

  “Yeah,” Jimmie said, with a long sigh. “Looks like you know how it is. I lost a partner once, a long time ago. Because my gun was loaded with silver bullets and his wasn’t. Because I knew what we were chasing and I couldn’t find any way to tell him that it wasn’t his fight. Never again! I guess that’s one of the reasons why I never married—though the old joke about being married to my work has some truth in it. What about you, Eric Banyon? Any hostages to fortune?”

  “I guess not.” The answer
sounded wrong, and he examined it. “I have—I mean, I’m going to have—a daughter. But she isn’t really mine. She’s Beth and Kory’s. They just can’t have one together, so it’s more like—I mean, she’ll be theirs, not mine.”

  “No one else?” Jimmie asked.

  Ria. “No. At least, not that I know of. I mean, other than everyone. I’m not going to walk away from a problem just because nobody I know is involved.”

  “Good answer. Or a bad one. Some things you’ve just got to walk away from, Eric. It hurts, and you feel horrible, but if you got involved all you could do would be to make things worse.”

  Eric shook his head stubbornly. On one level, he knew what she said was true, but in reality he didn’t know if he had the detachment to just walk away from people in trouble.

  “I’m not sure I could ever do that,” he said slowly.

  “Then be glad you’re not a cop, because we have to do it every day,” Jimmie said fiercely. “But I didn’t mean to lecture you. You look just about all in.”

  “Bad night,” Eric said. “One of the worst, actually, but not really relevant to the business at hand.” Once more he hesitated about conveying Dharinel’s warning. He’d told Greystone. Surely that was enough?

  Thinking like that is what gets people killed, Eric told himself roughly.

  “Anyway, here’s the deal. I talked to Greystone when I got home last night. He said you were having kind of a situation, but I didn’t know about that until I got home from the concert. Before that, I got a warning from my friends that they wanted me to pass on to you.”

  “A warning?” Jimmie asked, suddenly alert. “For me by name?”

  “No. For the Guardians. In general. Dh—my teacher seems to know a lot about you folks. Anyway, he said this was your kind of problem, something that you were equipped to handle. He didn’t tell me much, but I’ll give you all the help I can. Apparently, Manhattan Island is one of those places that Sidhe just don’t go. Only last night I heard that an Unseleighe Lord—that’s one of the Dark Sidhe, and pretty much bad juju all the way around—is planning to move in and take over here. They say he’s going to try to open a Nexus to Underhill here in New York City. If he can do it, he’ll have quite a lot of power to play with, and from everything I’ve heard the Unseleighe Sidhe tend to play pretty rough. My friends said I should warn the Guardians, let them handle it.”