of the room, but there were still dark spots of sweat on his clothes and beading along the bare skin of his scalp.
Mac knew what the tough-guy face was about, and it clearly didnt bother him. He nodded to me as I sat down on a stool.
Mac. You got any cold beer back there somewhere?
He gave me an unamused look.
I leaned my staff on the bar, lifted both hands in a placating gesture, and said, Kidding. But tell me youve got cold lemonade. Its a zillion degrees out there.
He answered with a glass of lemonade cooled with his patented lemonade ice cubes, so that you could drink it cold and not have it get watered down, all at the same time. Mac is pretty much a genius when it comes to drinks. And his steak sandwiches should be considered some kind of national resource.
Business? he asked me.
I nodded. Meeting with Fix.
Mac grunted and went out to a corner table, one with a clear view of the door. He nudged it out a bit from the wall, polished it with a cloth, and straightened the chairs around it. I nodded my thanks to him and settled down at the table with my lemonade.
I didnt have long to wait. A couple of minutes before noon, the Summer Knight opened the door and came in.
Fix had grown, and I mean that literally. Hed been about five foot three, maybe an inch or so higher. Now he had towered up to at least five nine. Hed been a wiry little guy with white-blond hair, and most of that remained true. The wire had thickened to lean cable, but the shock of spikes hed worn as a hairdo had gotten traded in on a more typical cut for faerie noblesa shoulder-length do. Fix hadnt been a good-looking guy, and the extra height and muscle and the hair did absolutely nothing to change that. What had changed was his previous manner, which had been approximately equal parts nervous and cheerful.
The Summer Knight projected confidence and strength. They shone from him like light from a star. When he opened the door, the dim shadows retreated somewhat, and a whispering breeze that smelled of pine and honeysuckle rolled through the room. The air around him did something to the light, throwing it back cleaner, more pure, more fierce than it had been before it touched him.
Fix wasnt putting on a face, like I had. This was what he had become: the Summer Knight, mortal champion of the Seelie Court, a thunderstorm in blue jeans and a green cotton shirt. His gaze went first to Mac, and he gave the barkeep a polite little bow of respect. Then he turned to me, grinned, and nodded. Harry.
Fix, I said. Been a while. Youve grown.
He looked down at himself and looked briefly like the flustered young man I had first met. It sort of snuck up on me.
Life has a way of doing that, I agreed.
I hope you dont mind. Someone else wanted to speak to you, too.
He turned his head and said something, and a breath later the Summer Lady entered the tavern.
Lily had never been hard on the eyes. The daughter of one of the Sidhe and a mortal, shed had the looks usually reserved for magazines and movie stars. But, like Fix, she had grown; not physically, though a somewhat juvenile eye might have made certain comparisons to the past and somehow found them even more appealing. What had changed most was the bashful uncertainty that had filled her every word and movement. The old Lily had hardly been able to take care of herself. This was the Summer
Lady, youngest of the Seelie Queens, and when she came in the room, the whole place suddenly seemed more alive. The lingering taste of lemonade on my tongue became more intensely sour and sweet. I could hear every whisper of wind around every lazily spinning fan blade in the room, and all of them murmured gentle music together. She wore a simple sundress of green, starkly contrasting the silken waterfall of purest white tresses that fell to her waist.
More than that, she carried around her a sense of purpose, a kind of quiet, gentle strength, something as steady and warming and powerful as summer sunlight. Her face, too, had gained character, the awkward shyness in her eyes replaced with a kind of gentle perception; a continual, quiet laughter leavened with just a touch of sadness. She stepped forward, between two