“If I give you this, how do I know that you’d use it to keep the door open? How do I know you won’t use it to close the door?”

“Because I’m a doorkeeper,” I said without thinking. “It’s my job to open the door. If the Grove closes it forever …” I thought of Soheila and Diana being forced to choose between this world and Faerie. I thought of Liz growing old and dying without the benefit of Aelvesgold. I thought of never seeing Liam again … which shouldn’t matter because I’d already made my peace with not seeing him again. So why did my whole body feel like it had been hollowed out? I think it was that hollowness that Lura saw in my eyes, perhaps because it was the same emptiness I’d seen in hers.

She nodded, spit again, tossed the stone up in the air, and caught it. My eyes followed its progress like a dog watching a bone. She tossed the stone to me. I wasn’t the best catch in the world (Annie used to call me Butterfingers when we played softball together), but I snatched the stone out of the air as if I were baseball great Roger Maris catching a flyball. As if I had known it was coming. As if it belonged to me.

“See if that don’t give you enough power to hold the door open,” she said. “See if it don’t open up a whole passel of doors for you. Some of the doors,” she added with a wicked grin, “you just might want closed again.”

CHAPTER TEN

BEFORE I LEFT, Lura gave me a flannel cloth to wrap around the Aelvestone. “Don’t touch it anymore than you have to,” she warned. “It gives great strength, but at a price.” It was exactly what Liz had told me.

I looked closely at Lura as she stood beside my car in the late afternoon sunlight. She was staring at my right rear tire, stuck in a pothole. Her hair, which had seemed momentarily golden inside the house, was dull grey again, her face even more ancient looking than when I’d first seen her. The Aelvestone had given her youth – and something else.

“That’s how you were able to carry me out of the river,” I said. “You used the Aelvestone to give yourself strength.”

In answer she bent down and hooked a tiny hand around my rear bumper. She lifted the entire chassis to the left to clear the pothole. She let it down – a little less gently than was likely to be good for my suspension system – and straightened up, arching her back until it cracked.

“Ah,” she said, “I haven’t used Aelvesgold in over twenty years. I’d forgotten how it felt … It’s probably added a few months onto my life, but I’ll pay for it. Remember that. Only use as much as you have to.”

I told her I would and promised that I’d do my best to stop the Grove from closing the door. I started to thank her for saving my life but she spat on the ground and waved me away. Maybe half-undines didn’t like to be thanked anymore than brownies did.