“I don’t know. This is just new . . . or rather, unexpected.”

“Yeah, it’s been awhile, hasn’t it? But I haven’t been taking out-of-town gigs for some time now.”

It hadn’t really occurred to me before, but now that he mentioned it, I realized it was true.

“How come?” I asked.

“There was always the revel . . .”

“Ah, the revel . . .”

He’d asked me to go a few times, back when he was first going, but Ialways felt like it was too much of an imposition, asking him to take care of the invalid I was at the time. After that, it just didn’t come up again.

“You never did go,” he said.

“You make it sound like they’re not having them anymore.”

“I’m sure they are. It’s just that I found out yesterday that my going as often as I did was due to a . . . I don’t know . . . a compulsion that was put on me.”

“You mean like a spell?”

“I don’t know. I guess.”

“Well, what did Mother Crone say when you asked her about it?”

“She’s the one who put it on me.”

“What? And you haven’t confronted her about it?”

“I haven’t. Not yet. Christiana told me. She said she went to the mall and asked Mother Crone to lift the compulsion.” He smiled suddenly. “Though knowing Christiana, I doubt it was necessarily a polite request.”

I smiled with him. “Yeah, she can be feisty, all right.”

“But the weird thing is the reason Mother Crone gave her for having put the compulsion on me in the first place. Apparently, she had some kind of premonition that if she didn’t keep me close to the court, something bad was going to happen to me.”

“What kind of something bad?” I asked, already worrying.

He shrugged. “She didn’t know.”

“And you’re not worried?”

“Of course I’m worried. Mother Crone’s a seer. But what can I do? If she doesn’t know, and there’s no one else I can ask . . .”

“Do we know that for sure? Maybe Bones or Cassie could help you.”

“I don’t know that Bones likes me all that much.”

“Oh, pooh. It’s your brother that drives him crazy. You he likes.”

Geordie smiled—I’ve pretty much always been able to jolly him out of a mood, though during the fallout from the Tanya breakup it was a tough sell. He had the rest of my sandwich and washed it down with some more coffee before turning to me.

“You know about fairies,” he said. “Have you ever heard of an enmity between the ones that are native to North America and the ones that immigrated here?”

“Not really. But Bramley would. He should be back some time this afternoon.”

“Can’t—I’ve got this gig, remember?”

“Right.”