them together somehow, I would be in business. Fighting to focus past my headache, I opened my eyes and climbed back into the car, where the dome light would let me see the key more clearly and the heater would keep me from freezing.
There seemed to be no logic to the twisted brambles making up the key’s head and handle; they were tangled like real vines, and looked like they’d keep on growing if left alone. For all I knew, they would. I narrowed my eyes, looking for the place where the briars began. There were differences in the lines of metalwork if I looked closely enough. Some of the tangles were picked out in darker metals—copper, bronze, or gold—while others blended back into the silver handle. I chose a vine outlined in gold, following it through an overhang of carved ivy and rose branches until it faded behind a triple-twist of interlocked thorns. Jackpot.
Threes are sacred in Faerie. We have three Courts and three rulers, the absent King and Queens that par ented our myriad races. Most of our legends say there are three roads to any destination: the hard way, the easy way, and the long way. Evening was a traditionalist. Even when she played human, part of her wasn’t willing to fully hide what she was, and so her human name was Evelyn Winters, and the name of her human business was Third Road Enterprises. She brokered her faerie gold and natural skills through the doors of Third Road, and no one ever looked twice, even though the name announced what she was hiding.
Third Road Enterprises, whose offices were coincidentally just a short drive from where I was studying the key she’d been so anxious to protect. I don’t believe in coincidence. Everything happens for a reason in this world. I had a destination again. Now . . . well, now I just needed a lock to go with my key.
NINE
THIRD ROAD ENTERPRISES WAS DARK when I arrived. According to the clock on the dashboard, it was a little less than an hour to dawn, when the janito rial staff would probably start to arrive. The rest of the staff wouldn’t show up for a few hours after that, if they came to work at all. It was two days before Christmas, after all. If there was any time when I’d be reasonably able to get in and out undetected, it was now.
Despite my best efforts, I found myself wondering how many of the people who worked there would spend the next few days feigning sorrow before suddenly finding work a lot more pleasant. Evening was even worse with people than I am; she froze them out, while I just let them pass me by. Most folks would forget me if I disappeared again, but they’d remember Evening. They always remembered Evening: she was too wild and strange and fair to forget.
The people in that building would never have believed in Evening’s true face. They thought they knew her, but they were wrong. They knew a woman as human as they were, and I was willing to bet none of them ever looked for anything deeper. They’d never needed to, because in their world, you put Faerie away when you turned off the nursery lights. There’s no place for us in the human world these days, and still we can’t let go.
And when the hell did it go back to being “we”?
I walked toward the building, grateful for the lack of security guards. Considering my stained and increasingly grimy gown, no one was going to believe I had a good reason to be entering an upscale office building in the middle of the night. There’s pushing the bounds of credibility, and then there’s just getting silly.
The taste of roses faded as I walked. It was like playing a game of Hot or Cold with the rules reversed: the closer I got to my goal, the harder it got to know where I was going. If I caught Evening’s killer, the curse would snap and the roses would fade altogether, leaving me free to live or die as I chose. My fingers continued tracing the outline of the key cupped in my palm, trying to puzzle out its secrets. Evening had been more worried about it than she was about her own life. Why? Borrowed memories moved in the back of my mind, hissing, The key will open the way in Goldengreen, in her voice. I stopped where