And then he was gone, stepped away into nowhere, and she was alone at the top of the stairs. She stood there for a moment longer, listening to the river lap against the shore below, before she finally turned and went back into the hotel.

It was time for their next set.

Up until meeting Grey, she’d been really looking forward to getting back on stage—the energy had been so good tonight. At least it had been so far. The way she felt now, all she wanted was for the night to be over. She wanted the gig to be done, for the band to be wherever they were playing next, for all this weirdness that had intruded into her life to go away and bother somebody else. She could think of any number of likely candidates.

The band played a few Renaissance Faires as well as festivals during the summer. Wandering around the grounds of the Faires, she’d met all kinds of people who couldn’t shut up about fairies and magic and the like. Half of them dressed like they were fairies, complete with pretty little store-bought wings attached to their backs, the other half claimed to have met them—though with what she knew now, that didn’t seem quite so preposterous anymore. But still. Why couldn’t this be happening to them instead? They’d at least appreciate it.

Her mood hadn’t improved by the time she was back on stage and picked up her fiddle. Looking out at the crowd, they didn’t seem to generate energy now, as much as be a source of irritation. She sighed and turned her attention to making sure her instrument was in tune and rosining her bow. Siobhan stepped closer to her.

“What happened to you?” her cousin asked, making sure to speak away from the microphone.

“I met Grey again.”

“What, just now? What did he—”

But before she could go on, Andy called over to them, asking if they were ready.

“Later,” Lizzie told her cousin.

“I’ll hold you to that.”

As Andy started to count them into their opening number, they turned back to the audience and waited for their cue to begin the first reel.

Lizzie started the opening set of tunes still feeling glum, but by the time they’d finished those reels and started another set, the magic of the music pulled her out of herself—just as it always did—and the strange mood Grey had put her in faded away as though it had never crept up and taken hold of her. Soon she was grinning back at Siobhan, flirting with some of the guys on the dance floor, and generally having as good a time as she’d been having before they took their break and she’d run smack dab into another tangle of fairy weirdness.