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"Me either," Val said, because suddenly all of it seemed equally surreal, equally random and unbelievable It felt less possible that Ruth should be sleeping on cardboard in Central Park than that faeries existed

Luis slid his hands up under Lolli’s skirt and Val took took another sip of the cooling tea, ignoring the flash of skin, the gli not to notice the wet sounds and the giggling As she turned her head, she saw the leg of Luis’s baggy pants, hiked up so high that the scorch marks on the inside of his knee were visible, scorch marks that could only come from Never

As Ruth’s breath evened out into sleep and Lolli and Luis’s breath escalated into so else, Val bit the inside of her lip and rode out the pain of withdrawal

Chapter 10

They love not poison that do poison need

--Williaot no better The crarew until she stood up and crept away from their crash spot so that she could at least twist and ed She walked across the rocks and started back through the Ra a flurry of crumpled leaves from their branches She took another sip of the tea, but it had turned icy cold

Val had grown up thinking of Central Park as dangerous, even more than the rest of New York, the kind of place where perverts andfor soer She res But now the park just see drills, thrusting the tip of the wood into the knothole of a thick elht have lived there The htly nauseated and when she shook her head, she thought she saw hts on a nearby path

The wind picked up just then and the air felt charged, the way it did before a thunderstor, she squatted down and waited to see if there was anyone there

The hipped past her, nearly pulling her backpack off her shoulder This tihter She turned, but there were only the thick bands of ivy crawling up a nearby tree

The next gust of wind hit her then, knocking the cup out of her hand, spilling the re the white cup in the wet dirt

"Stop it!" Val yelled, but in the silence that followed, her words seeerous to shout into the still air

A whistle turned her head There, sitting on a stula of snow Are you one of us?"

"No," Val said "I’ht bow

"Wait I need--," Val started, but she didn’t kno to finish She needed to score; she needed Never but she had no idea if the faeries had a name for it

"One of the sweet tooths? Poor creature, you’ve wandered far from the revels" The ivy woe "I’ll show you the way"

Val didn’t knohat the ivy woman meant, but she followed, not only because Lolli and Luis were breaking Dave’s heart on some nearby rocks and she didn’t want to have to see it, not just because the dead eyes of the policewoman see that see her own pain And where there were faerie revels, there would be some way to find surcease

The ivy woman led Val back to the terrace with its carved walls of birds and branches, the fountain at its center, and the lake beyond The faerie rustled across the tiles, arolled up off the water, a silveryin the air for a moment before it roiled forward, too dense and fast to be natural Val’s skin prickled but she was too dazed and full of aches to docame in like the tide on some dark shore

It settled around her, ware perfuh the air--the tinkling of bells, a ulfed and blinded by swells of hter, close by, and turned The fog ebbed in places, leaving Val looking at a new landscape

The terrace was still there, but the vines had grown froe flowers and thorns long and thin as needles Birds flew fro from the stair rails and squabble with fist-sized bees over the steely apples that littered the pier

And, too, there were faeries More than Valthe iron and steel of the city, faeries with their strange eyes and knifelike ears, in skirts woven of nettle or meadoeet, in T-shirts and vests with e under the s that seemed to be branches and a face carved frolasses with lenses of blue beach glass She passed ahis hunched back He sht she knew hi flalowed hot and terrible in thethe edge of the lake, were cloths woven with gold and heaped with all manner of delicacies Dates, quinces, and persimmons lay on platters of cracked and dried leaves, next to decanters of sapphire and peridot wines Cakes piled with roasted acorns were stacked beside spits of lieons and cups of viscous syrups Nearby them, in a heap, were Ravus’s white apples, their red innards visible through velluot her fear

She grabbed one, and bit into the warm, sweet flesh It slid down her throat like a bloody chunk of ain, juice sluicing over her jaw, the skin of the fruit giving under her sharp teeth It didn’t feel like Never, but it was enough to nu

Relieved, Val sank down by the lake as a creature ofpewter fish in her ain Too tired tobut sated, Val contented herself by watching the crowd To her surprise, she saw that she was not the only hu to be out of middle school, rested her head in the lap of a blue faerie with black lips that braided tiny bells and beggarsweed into the child’s pigtails A irl withe of a blade, licking the knife to get all of the juice

Were they the sweet tooths? Hu for a taste of Never, not even knohat it was to stick it in your arain Never Never more Never Never NeverNeverLand She didn’t need tothe wrong path, gloating that at least she was picking her disaster Noany other troubles at bay

Another faerie ca with his skin; it lookedin places One of his ears and part of his neck looked like they were sculpted crudely from clay Some of the others drew back as he strode across the terrace

"Iron sickness," soirls froh she wore an anklet of holly berries

Val shuddered "Looks like he was burned"

"So to happen to all of us if we don’t stay in the park or go back where we cairl nodded "One of my lovers was also the lover of a well-favored Lord He h I had stolen a bolt of cloth It was ical fabric, the kind that shows you stories--precious stuff--and the punishant and severe My sisters and I went into exile until we could prove ining the uard by the faerie’s question "I guess you could say I was in exile" Then, looking around, she asked "Is it always like this here? Do all the exiles cohed "Oh, yes If you have to go Ironside, at least you can co back at court And, of course, there’s gossip"

Val s a sidekick It was automatic for her to ask the questions that her companion wanted to answer and a relief to listen The faerie’s words drowned out her own restless thoughts

The girl grinned "Well, the best bit of gossip is that the Bright Lady, the Seelie Queen Silarial, is here in the iron city They say that she’s to take care of the poisonings Apparently Mabry--one of the exiled Gentry--knows so"

Val sank her nails into the back of her other hand Had Mabry accused Ravus? She thought of Ravus’s abandoned place inside the bridge an scowled