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didn’t drink, I didn’t smoke, and I very seldom had sex, though I was willing to change that. But I loved
my sun, and it was bright in the sky today. Sooner or later I’d pay for it, but it remained my weakness. I
wondered if maybe my fairy blood would give me a pass on the possibility of skin cancer. Nope: my
aunt Linda had died of cancer, and she’d had more fairy blood than I had. Well . . . dammit.
I lay on my back, my eyes closed, dark glasses keeping the glare to a minimum. I sighed blissfully,
ignoring the fact that I was a little on the cold side. I carefully didn’t think about many things: Crystal,
mysterious ill-wishing fairies, the FBI. After fifteen minutes, I switched to my stomach, listening to the
country-and-western station from Shreveport, singing along from time to time since no one was around
to hear me. I have an awful voice.
“Whatchadoing?” asked a voice right by my ear.
I’d never levitated before, but I think I did then, rising about six inches off the low folding chaise. I
squawked, too.
“Jesus Christ, Shepherd of Judea,” I wheezed when I finally realized that the voice belonged to Diantha,
part-demon niece of the half-demon lawyer Mr. Cataliades. “Diantha, you scared me so bad I almost
jumped out of my skin.”
Diantha was laughing silently, her lean, flat body bobbing up and down. She was sitting cross-legged on
the ground, and she was wearing red Lycra running shorts and a black-and-green patterned T-shirt. Red
Converses with yellow socks completed her ensemble. She had a new scar, a long red puckered one that
ran down her left calf.
“Explosion,” she said when she saw I was looking at it. Diantha had changed her hair color, too; it was a
gleaming platinum. But the scar was bad enough to recapture my attention.
“You okay?” I asked. It was easy to adopt a terse style when you were talking to Diantha, whose
conversation was like reading a telegram.
“Better,” she said, looking down at the scar herself. Then her strange green eyes met mine. “My uncle
sent me.” This was the prelude to the message she had come to deliver, I understood, because she said it
so slowly and distinctly.
“What does your uncle want to tell me?” I was still on my stomach, propped on my elbows. My
breathing was back to normal.
“He says the fairies are moving around in this world. He says to be careful. He says they’ll take you if
they can, and they’ll hurt you.” Diantha blinked at me.
“Why?” I asked, all my pleasure in the sun evaporating as if it had never been. I felt cold. I cast a
nervous glance around the yard.
“Your great-grandfather has many enemies,” Diantha said slowly and carefully.
“Diantha, do you know why he has so many enemies?” That was a question I couldn’t ask my greatgrandfather
himself, or at least I hadn’t worked up the courage to do so.
Diantha looked at me quizzically. “They’re on one side; he’s on the other,” she said as if I were slow.
“Theygotyergrandfather.”
“They . . . these other fairies killed my grandfather Fintan?”
She nodded vigorously. “Hedidn’ttellya,” she said.
“Niall? He just said his son had died.”
Diantha broke into a hoot of shrill laughter. “Youcouldsay- that,” she said, and doubled over, still
laughing. “Choppedinta pieces!” She slapped me on the arm in her excess of amusement. I winced.
“Sorry,” she said. “Sorrysorrysorry.”
“Okay,” I said. “Just give me a minute.” I rubbed the arm vigorously to restore the feeling. How did you
protect yourself if marauding fairies were after you?
“Who exactly am I supposed to be scared of?” I asked.
“Breandan,” she said. “Itmeanssomething; Iforgot.”
“Oh. What does ‘Niall’ mean?” Easily sidetracked, that was me.
“Cloud,” Diantha said. “All Niall’s people got sky names.”
“Okay. So Breandan is after me. Who is he?”
