“Are you well, Ángel?”

“Fine.”

“Do you regret last night?”

Ángel stopped playing. “Not at all. Do you?”

Oberon ran a thumb down the Yamaha’s shining strings, and then quickly adjusted the tuning by ear. “No.”

He began to strum “Jane Says.” Ángel smiled at him and played along. Oberon’s pick struck the strings with crystalline precision and Ángel said, “Relax. Let it sound a little buzzy. It’s not classical.”

Oberon’s pick hand got looser. They played a few more bars, falling into effortless synchrony.

“This is not a very complex song,” commented Oberon.

“Nope.”

“You are not entirely happy, Ángel?”

Ángel shrugged. They played. Oberon began to improvise, keeping the G and A chords but adding variation. Ángel maintained the rhythm while Oberon created a new lead melody, building a new song around the cycle of G and A chords. For a few minutes the song soared like a gull, and Ángel closed his eyes, exhilarated. Then Oberon modulated up a step and Ángel tried, a beat later, to follow suit; the song tangled and went pear-shaped, and they stopped.

“You’re so good,” Ángel said, smiling, leaning back in the swan chair and pulling his feet up, cradling his guitar across his knees.

“It’s been a long time since I played music with anyone.”

“We should do it more.”

“Yes, Ángel, thank you. We should. Now, will you tell me why you’re troubled?”

Not going to give it up, huh? “I’m— You know, I’m actually sort of a moody person, Oberon. You don’t need to come and try to make me feel better.”

“I understand that,” said Oberon, his voice warm and soothing.

The washy winter light slanted through the window and splashed across Oberon, shining on the yellow guitar top, on his streaky gilt-green hair, his beautiful, singular face. His skin was no longer scary-white but had gone a pale lustrous golden color, and his eyes shone like peridots.

Ángel thought about the coil of different things that were bothering him. Where to begin? “Well, for starters. We didn't use a condom."

"There are no sexually transmitted diseases in the Otherworld." After a thoughtful pause he added, "It has been centuries since any fae had sex with a human, and there are new illnesses here now."

Ángel belatedly realized that this was a question. “I don’t have any.”

"Then I think it's fine."

"Okay."

"Is that really what's bothering you?"

It wasn't, of course. "I’m really mad at the Otherworld. I still can’t believe they sent you here alone, Oberon. That you’ve been all alone for eight years. Can’t you tell them that you need to come home?”

“No.”

“Why can’t you? That poisoning thing that happened to you before—really looked like it was killing you.”