She arched a red-gold brow. "To what ends?"

"I need to speak to them," I said. "To Mab and Titania."

Her expression grew distant, pensive. "You must understand that I cannot protect you from them, should they strike at you. My power has grown, poppet, but not to those heights."

"I understand. But if I don't get to the bottom of this and find the killer, I'm as good as dead."

"So I have heard," my godmother said. She lifted her right hand and extended it to me. "Then give me your hand."

"I need my hand, Godmother. Both of them."

She let out a peal of laughter. "No, silly child. Simply put your hand in mine. I will convey you."

I gave her a sidelong look and asked warily, "At what price?"

"None."

" None?You never do anything without a price."

She rolled her eyes and clarified, "None to you, child."

"Who, then?"

"No one you know, or knew," Lea said.

An intuition hit me. "My mother. That's who you're talking about."

Lea left her hand extended. She smiled, but only said, "Perhaps."

I regarded her hand quietly for a moment, then said, "I'm not sure I can believe that you're really going to protect me."

"But I already have."

I folded my arms. "When?"

"If you will remember that night in the boneyard, I healed a wound to your head that may well have killed you."

"You only did it to sucker me into getting you the sword!"

Lea's tone became wounded. "Not only for that. And if you consider further, I also freed you of a crippling binding and rescued you from a blazing inferno not twenty-four hours later."

"You charged my girlfriend all her memories of me to do it! And you only saved me from the fire so that you could put me in a doghouse."

"That does not change the fact that I was, after all, protecting you."

I stared at her in frustration for a minute and then scowled. "What have you done for me lately?"

Lea closed her eyes for a moment, then opened her mouth and spoke. Her voice came out aged and querulous. "What's all that racket! I have already called the police, I have! You fruits get out of our hall or they'll lock you away!"

I blinked. "Reuel's apartment. That was you?"

"Obviously, child. And at the market, earlier this eve." She lifted her hand in the air, made an intricate motion with long, pale fingers, and opened her mouth again, as if singing a note of music. Instead, the sound of police sirens emerged, somewhat muted and indistinguishable from the real thing.

I shook my head. "I don't get it."

She moved her fingers again, and the sirens blended into another silver-sweet laugh, her expression amused, almost fond. "I am sure you do not, poppet." She offered her hand again. "Come. Time is pressing."

She had that part right at least. And I knew she was telling me the truth. Her words had left her little room for evasion. I'd never gotten anything but burned when making deals with the faeries, and if Lea was offering to help me for free, there had to be a catch somewhere.