Dead Reckoning

you himself. Eric arranged that, too. I suppose he thought that he would get Niall’s goodwill as kind of a finder’s fee.” Dermot shrugged. “That seems to have worked for Eric. Vampires are all venal and selfish.”
    The words “pot” and “kettle” popped into my mind.
    I said, “So Niall appeared in my life and made himself known to me, via Eric’s intervention. And that precipitated the fairy war, because the water fairies didn’t want any more contact with humans, much less a minor royal who was only one-eighth fairy.” Thanks, guys. I loved hearing that a whole war was my fault.
    “Yes,” Claude said judiciously. “That’s a fair summary. And so the war came, and after many deaths Niall made the decision to seal off Faery.” He sighed heavily. “I was left outside, and Dermot, too.”
    “And by the way, I’m not withering ,” I pointed out with some sharpness. “I mean, do I look withered to you?” I knew I was ignoring the big picture, but I was getting angry. Or maybe, even angrier.
    “You have only a little fae blood,” Dermot said gently, as if that would be a crushing reminder. “You are aging.”
    I couldn’t deny that. “So why am I feeling more and more like one of you, if I have such a little dab of fairy in me?”
    “Our sum is more than our parts,” Dermot said. “I’m half-human, but the longer I’m with Claude, the stronger my magic is. Claude, though a full-blooded fairy, has been in the human world for so long he was getting weak. Now he’s stronger. You only have a dash of fae blood, but the longer you’re with us, the more prominent an element it is in your nature.”
    “Like priming a pump?” I said doubtfully. “I don’t get it.”
    “Like—like—washing a new red garment with the whites,” said Dermot triumphantly, who had done that very thing the week before. Everyone in our house had pink socks now.
    “But wouldn’t that mean Claude was getting less red? I mean, less fae? If we’re absorbing some of his?”
    “No,” Claude said, with some complacence. “I am redder than I was.”
    Dermot nodded. “Me, too.”
    “I haven’t really noticed any difference,” I said.
    “Are you not stronger than you were?”
    “Well . . . yeah. Some days.” It wasn’t like ingesting vampire blood, which would give you increased strength for an indeterminate period, if it didn’t make you batshit crazy. It was more like I felt increased vigor. I felt, in fact . . . younger. And since I was only in my twenties, that was just unnerving.
    “Don’t you long to see Niall again?” Claude asked.
    “Sometimes.” Every day.
    “Are you not happy when we sleep in the bed with you?”
    “Yeah. But just so you know, I think it’s kind of creepy, too.”
    “Humans,” Claude said to Dermot, with a blend of exasperation and patronage in his voice. Dermot shrugged. After all, he was half-human.
    “And yet you chose to stay here,” I said.
    “I wonder every day if I made a mistake.”
    “Why are you two still here, if you’re so nuts about Niall and your life in Faery? How did you get the letter from Niall that you gave me a month ago, the one where he told me he’d used all his influence to make the FBI leave me alone?” I glared at them suspiciously. “Was that letter a forgery?”
    “No, it was genuine,” Dermot said. “And we’re here because we both love and fear our prince.”
    “Okay,” I said, ready to change subjects because I couldn’t get into a debate about their feelings. “What’s a portal, exactly?”
    “It’s a thin place in the membrane,” Claude said. I looked at Claude blankly, and he elaborated. “There’s a sort of magical membrane between our world—the supernatural world—and yours. At a thin place, that membrane is permeable. The fae world is accessible. As are the parts of your world that are normally invisible to you.”
    “Huh?”
    Claude was on a roll. “Portals usually stay in the same vicinity, though they may shift a little. We use them to get from your world to ours. At the site of the portal in your woods, Niall left an aperture. The slit isn’t big enough for one of us to pass through standing up, but objects can be transferred.”
    Like a mail slot in a door. “See? Was that so hard?” I said. “Can you think of some more honest things to tell me?”
    “Like what?”
    “Like why all those fae are at Hooligans, acting as strippers and bouncers and whatnot. They’re not all fairies. I don’t