Jem had been surprised to find that he was welcome in most Shadow Markets now. He had been to many, over the years, and quite a few of the vendors and attendants were immortal. People remembered him, and after a time, they had stopped fearing him. He hadn’t even realized it, but he had become a familiar sight, his visits marking a Market night as lucky: he was the only Silent Brother most of them had ever seen. The first time he’d gone to a Shadow Market once he was no longer a Silent Brother, hand in hand with a warlock woman, seemed to confirm the Shadow Market people’s opinion that he was close to being one of their own. Showing up with Kit, who had basically grown up in the Shadow Market in Los Angeles, pretty much cemented that.

“You see?” Jem murmured. “No problem.”

Kit’s shoulders were relaxing and his blue eyes beginning to shine with a familiar wicked gleam. He pointed out several interesting features of the Market that Jem was already aware of, a Market boy showing off, and Jem smiled and encouraged him to keep talking.

“They do it with magic mirrors,” Kit whispered in Jem’s ear when they stopped to see two mermaids doing tricks in a tank.

The mermaid glared at Kit, and Kit laughed. They stopped at a stall to buy candied moonflowers, since Kit had a fiendish sweet tooth.

“I know you,” said the faerie vendor. “Aren’t you Johnny Rook’s boy?”

Kit’s smile died a swift death. “Not anymore.”

“Whose are you now?”

“Nobody’s,” Kit answered quietly.

The faerie vendor blinked, a second eyelid sliding in sideways and making the blink rather impressive. Jem reached out to touch Kit’s shoulder, but Kit was already moving on, browsing the sweets as if he found them deeply fascinating.

Jem cleared his throat. “I hear there is a special stall run by warlocks and faeries, offering potions and illusions? My friend Shade told me of it.”

She nodded understanding and leaned down to whisper in his ear.

The stall devoted to the faerie-and-warlock joint venture was a carved wooden caravan parked in an antechamber of the Canal Street building. The caravan was painted bright blue and adorned with paintings that moved: as Jem and Kit approached, birds took flight from several gilded cages and soared free over the bright-blue painted sky.

The faerie woman had mushrooms growing in her hair, and ribbons looped around them. She seemed very young, and enthusiastic about selling Jem the medicine he asked for. Jem lifted the porcelain lid to examine its contents carefully and apologized for doing so.

She waved this off. “Perfectly understandable, considering what it’s for. Lovely to meet you properly at last. Any friend of Shade’s. Such a distinguished gentleman. Perhaps it’s the Irish in me, but I do love a fellow in green.”