I’d once caught a glimpse of Beauclaire without the glamour that made him appear human. It hadn’t prepared me for the whole deal. He was, unlike a lot of fae, almost entirely human-shaped, and his height was somewhere between tall and average, an inch or so taller than Adam and of a similar build.

He turned to greet us, and I could see the hints of the Beauclaire I knew, parts that he’d pulled into his glamour—but he didn’t look like a human. His cheekbones were high and flat beneath eyes like expensive emeralds, clear and deep. Other than his eyes, his coloring came from the sun: his skin would have been the envy of a California bikini enthusiast; his hair, which reached past his shoulders in a thick, straight fall, held all the colors of gold with hints of red. Was he beautiful? I couldn’t tell. He was extraordinary.

“You are just in time,” he said. “I have pushed the last of the humans off the bridge—so I am ready for our little demonstration.”

Goreu huffed a laugh, then turned to us. “He didn’t mean that like it sounded. He encouraged the people who have been working on the bridge to find something else to do. We don’t need to kill people for this demonstration.”

“One of our Council members was convinced we should flood one of the towns—Burbank or Richland,” Uncle Mike said. “It took a while to persuade her that killing that many people would ensure that we’d never get a treaty of any kind with you, and it would play right into the hands of our foes on the Council.”

I shivered, though it wasn’t cold, and walked as close to the edge as I dared. We had a spectacular view, not as scary as the one from on top of the crane the other day, but spectacular. The Lampson crane was to our left, but it was the view of the Columbia and the Cable Bridge that was breathtaking in a different way than it had been from on top of the crane. From the crane, it had looked distant and small. From our current vantage point, it felt like we were standing right on top of it—and it was huge.

Beauclaire raised his hand and said something. It might have been a word, but it sounded bigger than that. It resonated in my chest and in my throat. Below us, under the center of the bridge, the water of the Columbia started to swirl.

Magic, thick and rich and warm as the noonday sun in August, pressed down on me, and I went to my knees. Adam put his hand under my elbow, but he had to wrap his arms around me before I could stand. I breathed like a racehorse, and my face grew hot, then very cold, and still the power moved.