I frowned at the tiny faerie. "Does she understand me?"

I barely saw Elidee stamp a tiny foot. The scarlet light around her flickered sharply, twice.

"Yes," Toot-toot translated. "Two lights for yes, and one light for no."

"Two for yes, one for no," I muttered.

Toot frowned. "Or is that one for yes and two for no? I can never keep it straight." And with that, the little faerie blurred and zipped past me and away to join the swarm of softly flashing lights demolishing the pizza.

Elidee, for her part, recovered from the miniature cyclone that Toot-toot left in his wake, whirled around dizzily for a few moments, then spiraled down to me and settled on the bridge of my nose. My eyes crossed trying to look at her. "Hey," I said, "do I look like a couch to you?"

Two flashes.

I sighed. "Okay, Elidee. Do you want any pizza before we go?"

Two flashes again, brighter. The tiny faerie leapt up into the air again and zoomed over to the cloud around the pizza.

Footsteps came down the alley, then Billy stepped out of the shadows, pulling his sweatshirt down over his muscular stomach. I felt a brief and irrational surge of jealousy. I don't have a muscular stomach. I'm not overlapping my belt or anything, but I don't have abs of steel. I don't even have abs of bronze. Maybe abs of plastic.

Billy blinked at the pizza for a moment and said, "Wow. That's sort of pretty. In a Jaws kind of way."

"Yeah," I said. "Don't look at it for too long. Faerie lights can be disorienting to mortals."

"Gotcha," Billy said. He glanced back at me. "How'd it go? You get what you needed?"

"Yeah," I said. "You?"

He shrugged. "Alley isn't the best place to pick up scents, but I should be able to recognize them again if I'm in my other suit. They didn't smell quite normal."

"Gee, what are the odds."

Billy's teeth showed in the dark. "Heh. So what are we waiting for?"

Elidee picked just then to glide back over to me and settle once more on the bridge of my nose. Billy blinked at her and said, "What the hell?"

"This is our guide," I said. "Elidee, this is Billy."

Elidee flashed twice.

Billy blinked again. "Uh, charmed." He shook his head. "So? What's the plan?"

"We go confront the Winter Lady in her underground lair. I do the talking. You stay alert and watch my back."

He nodded. "Okay. You got it."

I looked over to see the last piece of pizza lifted up into the air by greedy faerie hands. They clustered around it, tearing and ripping, and it was gone in seconds. With that, the faeries swarmed away like a squadron of potbellied comets and vanished from view.

Elidee fluttered off my nose and started drifting down the alley in the other direction. I followed her.

"Harry?" Billy asked, his voice a touch hopeful. "Are you expecting trouble?"