“Underhill,” said Aiden stoically. He was afraid, but he also smelled resigned, like the rabbit who knew it was dead and quit struggling. The confidence he’d shown us last night was gone. He cleared his throat, and said, “Sometimes the terrain is forest or desert, sometimes it’s a snowy mountaintop or an ocean so deep, you can’t find the bottom. If you blink, it can change—but it doesn’t matter where you are, Underhill is always there.” His voice tightened. “Watching.”

“What do you think will happen?” asked Jesse.

After a moment, Aiden said, “She’ll pretend to ignore us at first, I think. She’ll be mad at me, and she’ll want to take her time to decide what to do.”

“Why mad?” asked Jesse. Since Aiden was telling her more than he’d told Adam or me, I thought I’d just keep quiet and see what Jesse could pull out of him.

“Because I left,” he said. “None of us was supposed to leave her. And I was the last one. Water. Earth. Air. Fire. Her creations, she called us. Her children. The others died or were killed when they left her. She told me about it.” He hesitated. “I think she caused their deaths. Or did something that made the fae cause their deaths. I left last because I was afraid to leave.”

“So why are you going back?” Jesse’s voice was cool. “If she caused their deaths, don’t you think she’ll kill you?”

“No,” he said, when, I could tell, he hadn’t intended to say anything at all on the subject. “Not while I’m in Underhill itself—because that would be cheating. If we get attacked, and I can’t defend myself, that’s a fair death, but she can’t turn her hand specifically toward that end, or she’ll ruin her own game.”

—

When Adam turned off the highway and took the road that used to lead to the reservation, dawn was lightening the sky, though the sun herself wouldn’t be up for fifteen or twenty minutes. He drove steadily past vineyards and cornfields into the hill country. I was pretty sure that he’d driven farther than it had taken to get to the reservation, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

The road took a sharp turn I didn’t remember, then Adam had to hit the brakes hard so he didn’t run into the horsemen lined up across the road. There were three of them, each riding a white horse and dressed in gray. As soon as the SUV stopped completely, they turned their horses and began trotting down the road.

“Our guides?” Adam asked the backseat denizens.

“Ja,” said Zee. “Good to know that drama is still alive and well among the fae. Schimmelreiter. Bah. Theatrics.”