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I dropped to one knee, clenching otten steadily worse, and despite a lifeti to cope with pain, despite the power of thehly a feeeks before

For a while, there was si nausea

Eventually, that began to groly less, and I looked up to see a hulking for over me It was ten or twelve feet tall, and built on the sah I never really see beneath the cloak It stared down atas eyes within the depths of its hood

“WARDEN,” it said, its voice a deep rumble, “I HAVE SUPPRESSED THE PARASITE FOR NOW”

“’Bout time, Alfred,” Ithere for a while The sweat on my skin had dried That was bad The ancient spirit of the island had been keeping the thing in o, when , all it had to do was show up, speak a word, and the pain would go away

This time it had taken more than an hour

Whatever was in my head, soready to kill me

“ALFRED,” the spirit said soberly “IS THIS TO BE MY NEW NAME?”

“Let’s stick with Demonreach,” I said

The enormous spirit considered that “I AM THE ISLAND”

“Well, yes,” I said, gathering enius loci”

“AND I AM ALSO SEPARATE FROM THE ISLAND A VESSEL”

I eyed the spirit “You know the naht?”

It stared at me A wind that didn’t exist stirred the hem of its cloak

I raised uess you need a first name, too Alfred Demonreach it is”

Its eyes flickered brighter for a moment and it inclined its head to me within the hood Then it said, “SHE IS HERE”

I jerkedIt h es? “Molly?”

“NOT GRASSHOPPER GRASSHOPPER’S NEW MOTHER”

I felt tension slide into my shoulders and neck “Mab,” I said in a low, hard voice

“YES”

“Fantastic,” I muttered Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness, Monarch of the Winter Court of the Sidhe,in Faerie— her ular basis to no avail At least, not until today

But why now? Why show up now, after all those months of silence?

“Because, du” I turned to Demonreach “Okay, Alfred Where?”

“DOCK”

Which was smart Demonreach, like practically every prison ever, was just as well suited to keeping visitors out as it was to keeping the Walker of the Outside and his posse had shown up to perform a massive jailbreak on the island’s prisoners, they had been beaten back, thanks to the efforts of the island’s defenses and several key allies

I’d spent the last year acquainting myself with the island’s secrets, with the defenses that I hadn’t even known existed—defenses that could be activated only by the Warden If the Walker tried that play again, I could shut hile-handed Even Mab, as powerful as she ould be well-advised to be cautious if she decided to start trouble on Demonreach’s soil

Which hy she was standing on the dock

She expected

In my experience, when the Queen of Air and Darkness decides she wants soood time to crawl in a hole and pull it in after you

But es of pain My headaches had slowly gotten worse and worse over several years, and I had only recently discovered their cause—I had a condition that had to be taken care of before whatever was hanging out in in decided to burst its way out of my skull I didn’t dare leave the island until that happened, and if Mab had finally decided to respond to es, I had little choice but to meet with her

Which was probably why she hadn’t shown up to talk to me—until now

“Freaking manipulative faeries,” Iout of the Well and up to the island’s surface “Stay nearby and pay attention,” I told Demonreach

“DO YOU SUSPECT SHE MEANS YOU HARM?”

“Heh,” I said, starting up the stairs “One way or another Let’s go”

Two

My brother and I had built the Whatsup Dock down at the shore at one of De in the stone reefs surrounding the island There had been a town on the hillside up above the beach maybe a century before, but it had been abandoned after its residents had apparently been driven slowly bonkers by all the dark energy around the hideous things imprisoned below the island

The ruins of the toere still there, half sed by the forest, a corpse being slowly devoured by fungus andI could stay on the damned island before I was bonkers, too

There was an expensive motored yacht tied to the dock, as out of place as a Ferrari in a cattle yard, white with a lot of frosty blue chroht, and they weren’t dressed in sailing clothes socostuht, the clothes too clean, the fit too perfect Watching the weapons, and practiced in killing They were Sidhe, the lords of Faerie, tall and beautiful and dangerous They didn’t impress me

Mostly because they weren’t nearly as pretty or dangerous as the wo at the very end of my dock, the tips of her expensive shoes half an inch from Demonreach’s shore When there’s a Great White Shark in the water with you, it’s tough to be worried about a couple of barracuda swi behind her

Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness, earing a tailored business suit somewhere between the color of smeared charcoal on newsprint and frozen periwinkles The blouse beneath was snohite, like her hair, which was bound up in an elaborate do that belonged in the forties Opals flashed on her ears and at her throat, deep colors of green and blue,hues of her cold, flat eyes She was pale, beautiful on a scale that beggared simple description, and I harbored a healthy and rational terror of her

I came down the old stone steps in the hillside to the dock, and stopped an arth away from Mab I didn’t bow to her, but I inclined my head for the h I was no danger to Mab’s pride, she would not tolerate disrespect to her office I was pretty sure that if the Winter Knight openly defied her in front of her Court, it would basically be a declaration of war, and despite what I no about the island, I wanted nothing of the sort with Mab