Beauclaire was medium tall but built on graceful lines that didn’t quite hide the whipcord muscle beneath. Warren, Adam’s third, was built along the same lines.

He didn’t look like a sun god, a storm god, or a trickster, as Lugh was variously reputed to be. Beauclaire had been a lawyer before his dramatic YouTube moment, and that was what he looked like now.

Of course, fae could look like whatever they wanted to.

When I stepped back and gestured him into the living room, he moved like a man who knew how to fight—balanced and alert. I believed that more than I believed the lawyer appearance.

He walked into the living room, but he didn’t stop there since the main floor of the house has a circular flow. He continued through the dining room and around the corner into the kitchen, where he pulled up a chair with his back to the wall and sat down.

I was fairly sure that his choice was important—the fae place a great deal of emphasis on symbolism. Maybe he picked the kitchen because guests came to the house and sat in the living room. Family and friends sat in the kitchen. If so, maybe he was trying to present himself as a friend—or point out that I didn’t have the power to keep him out of the center of my own home. It was too subtle to be certain, so I ignored it altogether. Trying too hard to figure out the meaning in what the fae say or do would send anyone to Straightjacket Land.

“Ms. Hauptman,” he said after I sat down opposite him, “It is my understanding that you have one of my father’s artifacts. I have come for the walking stick.”

2

“I don’t have the walking stick,” I told Beauclaire.

He should know that. I’d told Zee, and, according to his son, he had told some of the other fae to protect me from exactly this scenario.

If he didn’t know, was it only because he was not from the nearby Walla Walla fae reservation? Or did that mean that Zee didn’t trust him?

“Where is it?” His voice slid silk sweet and dangerous into the room.

If he didn’t know, I didn’t want to tell him. He wasn’t going to like it, and I didn’t want to enrage a Gray Lord while he sat at my kitchen table.

“I tried to give it back to the fae,” I told him, stalling for time. “I gave it to Uncle Mike and it just came back.”

“It is very old,” Beauclaire said, and his voice was halfway apologetic. “The fae don’t have it, at least none of the fae in the local reservation. Do you know where it is, now?”