“You’re part fairy?”
“About half, yeah.
“Fuck me.”
“Your sister’s way prettier, so I’ll pass.”
Jarvis stood there staring at me for another long moment, his entire worldview shifting under my gaze, then he finally nodded and said, “What’s next?”
And that was a damned fine question.
2
Well, like we told Harker, the last time we had to get to Fairyland, we went through a portal at Ruby Falls,” I said, looking around at my gathered team.I had a shaved Sasquatch, a human who was kind of a douchebro, a tech genius who couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a twelve-gauge, a Latino priest who I barely knew but had proven himself capable in a fight, the mostly psychotic kid sister of my dead first fiancée, and one of the most dangerous people I’d ever met, who gave the middle finger to Satan and had breakfast with Dracula at least once a week.It was not the team I would have hand-picked, but it was the family that picked, me, so it was the crew I was gonna go to war with.Oh, and there was a nonbinary stagehand who was just along for the ride as far as I could tell.I hadn’t decided what I thought of Ash yet, but they seemed to be the only person enthusiastic about going to Fairyland, so that had to count for something.
“I reckon we load up in a couple vehicles and go to Chattanooga.Then we cross into Fairyland and get our people back,” I said, sincerely hoping someone would come up with a better idea.
Harker cleared his throat.“Yeah, that might be a problem,” he said.
“Why?”I asked.“It worked once, no reason to think it won’t work again.And last time, it took us right into the Winter Court, so it oughta be just a hop, skip, and a foot in the ass to get to Mab and free everybody.”
“Except I closed that portal last year,” the demon hunter said.
“What?”I asked.
“I told you I had a run-in with Oberon, right?”Harker asked.
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with a portal to Winter?”Skeeter asked.
Harker looked at him like he was an idiot, then relaxed a little.“Okay, I’m gonna have to give you more information about magic, especially dimensional travel, than you probably want to know, but you’re gonna get it anyway.Portals aren’t fixed on both ends.Honestly, they aren’t fixed oneitherend, but they seem to be.It feels like you stepped into a doorway in Chattanooga and stepped out in Winter, but that’s not what happened.”
“Hate to break it to you, pal, but that’s pretty much what happened,” I said.“I remember, on account of being there.”
“No, that’s what it felt like happened, but what really happened was you stepped into a void between planes, and your will and desire connected one end of the portal to the place you most wanted to go, and that’s where you popped out,” Harker said.
“That’s stupid,” I argued.“I didn’t even know where Winterwaswhen we went through.How could I have wanted to go there?”
“You told me once that your mother was with you on that trip, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“And your mother is a Princess of Fairy, the Heir of Winter, right?”
“I repeat, yeah, so?”
“Then she probably was very familiar with Winter and its castle, right?”
“Shit,” I said.That made sense, in the kind of weird sense that stuff makes with magic, which is kinda saying it didn’t make any sense at all unless you hold your head just right.“Because Mama was with us, and she knew the Winter Court better than any other place in Fairyland, her subconscious took us there.Is that what you’re saying?”
“Pretty much.Which means that even if the portal to Faerie was still open under Ruby Falls, which it isn’t because I’ve been closing down every portal I could find ever since I found out Oberon wants to destroy all of humanity, there’s no guarantee it would lead you to the same place.”The wizard shrugged.“Sorry about that.”
“Well, now what?”I asked.“There’s a whole lot of humans trapped in the wrong dimension, and we’ve got to get them out!”
Harker let out a half-chuckle, half-sigh.“Funny enough, that sounds like almost the exact thing I had to deal with on my last vacation, except mine involved a lot more dismemberment.”
“I haven’t started ripping people’s arms off yet,” I shot back.“What did you do?”
“I went to Hell and got them out.But I know how to get to Hell already.”
