Sylvester called a month after I walked out. I hadn’t seen or heard from anyone at Shadowed Hills during that time; not even Quentin. Not until the day I came home from following a cheating wife and found the message on my answering machine. “The funeral will be held at our estate in the Summerlands on the new moon. Please come.” That was all he needed to say—I ran away from him once, but now, I always come when he calls. Gordan was right about that much. When you get right down to it, I’m Sylvester’s dog.

Quentin called the next day, asking nervously if he could escort me to the funeral. I said yes. What choice did I have? If he needed to see me half as much as I suddenly needed to see him, refusing would have been cruel. We agreed to meet at the Japanese Tea Gardens and walk from Lily’s knowe to the edges of the Torquill estate. I wasn’t ready to go back inside the knowe at Shadowed Hills. Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

The day of the funeral dawned bright and clear. I met Quentin in the Tea Gardens five minutes after I’d said I’d be there. His arm was in a sling, and he was wearing a black doublet and hose that made him look like Hamlet’s forgotten younger brother. A don’t-look-here spell shielded him from tourists, eliminating the need for a mortal disguise; anyone watching saw me smile and link arms with nothing, then climb the garden’s tallest suspension bridge. If they watched closely enough, they may have even seen me disappear. I don’t think anyone saw. People almost never look that closely.

We walked through Lily’s knowe, stepping out the back gate into the Summerlands. All the glory of the endless Faerie summer was on display, and I stopped, catching my breath. I’ve been living in the mortal world too long, and it takes time for me to adjust. Summerlands air is too clean for lungs accustomed to modern pollution, and the constantly changing twilit sky disorients me. I still love those lands, but they’re not home anymore, if they ever really were.

The sky was the color of burnished amber, and the hills were bright with flowers. I picked a blue daisy, and smiled as it dissolved into a dozen tiny butterflies. The Summerlands are like that. Logic is just a convenience there; change is the only constant, and even that’s false, because the Summerlands are founded on the concept that life—our life, the life of Faerie—can last forever. They’re wild and strange and slowly dying. They weren’t the first home of my people. They’ll almost certainly be the last.