“I took your hand and accompanied you into the halls of my enemies, trusting you not to Null me. Return the honor, sidhe-seer.” The temperature was dropping. “I gave you my name, the means to summon me at will.” The rain turned to sleet.

“Not inspiring trust with your little display of temper.” A strong gust of wind dumped a sudden bucket of rain on me.

“Oh! You did that on purpose!” I dragged a sleeve across my face, mopping at it. It didn’t help. My sweater was soaked.

He didn’t deny it. Just cocked his head, studied me. “I will tell you about the one you call Lord Master.”

“I don’t call him Lord Master and never will,” I bristled. I battled the urge to leap out the window, grab him, and demand to know whatever he knew.

“Would you like to know who he is?”

“You said you’d never heard of him when I told you about him.” I studied my nails, knowing if he knew how badly I wanted the information, he’d make it harder to get. Probably try to trade it for sex.

“I have learned much since then.”

“So, who is he?” I said, in a bored voice.

“Accept my gift.”

“Tell me what your ‘gift’ is first.”

“You have no plans for the afternoon.” He glanced at the flooded street beyond his warm, sunny oasis. “You will have no customers. Will you sit in your chair and pine for lost things?”

“You’re pissing me off, V’lane.”

“Have you ever seen the Caribbean Sea? There are hues in those waves that nearly vie with Faery.”

I sighed. No. I’d dreamed of it, though. Sun slanting off water was one of my favorite things in the world, whether it was swimming-pool-blue or shades-of-tropic. During the winter in Ashford, I used to go to the local travel agent’s office in town and thumb through the pamphlets, dreaming of all the exotic, sunny places the husband I hadn’t met yet was going to take me. Part of the reason I was so depressed in Dublin was from simple lack of sun. My time in the subterranean caves beneath the Burren had sapped me. I not only love sun, I need it. I think if I’d grown up in the colder, drearier North, I’d have been a completely different person. Sure, the sun comes out here, but not nearly as often as it does in Georgia, and not the same way. Dublin doesn’t get those months of long, blissfully blazingly hot summer days, crowned by a sky so blue it hurts to look at, and a sultry heat that warms you to the core. My bones are cold here. So is my heart.

A few hours in the tropics, plus information about the Lord Master?