Adam was smiling his hunting smile as we followed the three galloping horses who moved as fast as the SUV could safely negotiate the narrow mountain road that bore no resemblance to the road that used to go to the Ronald Wilson Reagan Fae Reservation.

—

The road might go different paths, but the walls around the reservation had been left, block cement topped by stainless-steel razor wire. The guard towers were apparently empty, and the gates hung wide open. It looked abandoned, but it didn’t smell that way. It smelled green and alive, even through the filter of the SUV.

The horses slowed to a walk to cross through the threshold of Fairyland, and Adam slowed the SUV to follow them.

Zee made no sound as they crossed into the reservation, but I could smell Tad’s sweat. Aiden’s heart beat double time. Jesse and Adam were the only ones in the car who weren’t affected. I include myself as the affected. The one time before that I’d been in Underhill had been a scary, scary thing.

We followed the walking horses through streets that could have been in any unimaginatively-laid-out suburb in America as the sun rose and lit the world. The streets were set in a numbered grid—as if the original architect feared that people might get lost here. I knew how they felt, but I also thought that the hope that a sign could lead someone out of Faery was the belief of an innocent.

Magic was stronger here than it had been the last time I’d come. I gripped Adam’s thigh and practiced a swimmer’s breathing, in through my mouth and out through my nose, in an effort to block the overwhelming rush. It wasn’t as bad as when Beauclaire sank Cable Bridge, but it was bad enough.

“Are we feeling Underhill?” asked Adam in a low voice.

I looked at him. Adam wasn’t very sensitive to magic, but his wolf looked out through his eyes, so he was feeling something.

“Yes,” said Aiden. His voice was faint. “This is what happens in places where there are too many doors in too small an area. Her magic leaks out.”

“Even though the doors have long been closed in the Old Country,” Zee added, “there are places that people avoid because the spill of magic lingers. And others that they visit in hopes of miracles.”

There were still fae in Europe, I knew, but most of them had come to the New World fleeing the spread of cold iron. Iron had followed them here, too, but they seemed to have come to some sort of terms with it. Tolkien’s elves had traveled to the West, and there were scholars who argued that Tolkien had known some of the fae left behind who spoke with longing of their kinsfolk who had traveled to the New World.