That did not improve things, and frankly, I didn’t know what would. I suddenly, fervently, wished I had Rhea here, with her gentle ways and sweet words, to soothe the crazy out of this one before every nasty thing in the forest found us. But I just had me, and I wasn’t even that good at soothing myself, much less—

“Lady?”

The screaming abruptly stopped. “What is she doing here?” the telepath panted, staring behind me.

Well, shit.

“Do you have a name?” I asked her tiredly.

“What?”

“A name. Something I can call you other than ‘the telepath.’ It’s getting old.”

She stared at me some more. She seemed to like doing that. I nudged her gently with my shoe.

“Lady?” Rhea’s soft, if rather worried, tones came from behind me again. I sighed.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I don’t know what I’m doing and I screwed up, okay? I didn’t mean to drag you into this—”

“What is this?” she asked, sounding concerned.

And then the telepath started screaming again. I scowled and crouched down beside her, only to hear my damned skirt rip at the waist. Son of a—

“Why are you screaming?” Rhea asked the woman, looking a bit freaked out, while I examined the damage.

The telepath stopped long enough to glare at her. “I don’t know! I don’t know anything! Leave me alone, the both of you!”

“Then stop making those sounds,” I told her.

“Or what?”

“Or something may come along and try to eat you.”

“It already did!” She looked back at the hungry tree, which was just standing there, looking all innocent and tree-like at the moment. “My God—”

“I thought you were part fey,” I said. “Haven’t you ever been to Faerie before?”

She transferred her stare from the tree to me. “Is—is that where we are?”

How many Earth trees have ever tried to turn you into mulch? I didn’t say, because I didn’t want her to start screaming again. “Yes—”

“Why?”

“Because I need to see a guy and that’s where he is right now,” I said crabbily. “Although he’s not supposed to be.”

I didn’t know why Pritkin and Mircea were hanging around the feys’ merry murder land. Most people who tripped through a fey portal tried to trip back out of one as soon as they possibly could. But it had been half a day since I’d seen them, and since they’d escaped whatever the hell had been going on in those tunnels.

So, why weren’t they home yet?

And why were they hiding? I looked around again, but there was no sign of either of them. Mircea had been right there before, when he’d pulled me into his last escapade, so where was he now?

“I have a bad feeling about this,” I told Rhea.