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He opened his eyes.
He wasn’t kneeling on pavement, as he would’ve expected, nor lying in his own blood, but on ultramarine-blue wool embellished with silver and woven into such soft thickness as found only in the most precious carpets.
“I apologize for the crude joke. Your brother’s bride as a lure—it was simply irresistible. She has the same grace your mother had, though she does lack a bit of the mystery, doesn’t she? It’s probably what your brother likes about her. He already has too much mystery himself.”
Jacob looked up to find the face for the voice. His neck ached as though someone had tried to break it. A man was sitting in a black leather chair a few feet away. The same chair stood in the museum. The museum in front of which Clara had pushed him into the moving traffic. Department for Modern and Contemporary Art. Get up, Jacob! He couldn’t tell what was making him more nauseous—the collision with the car, or Clara’s blank face as she’d pushed him into the street.
The man was maybe in his late thirties, and he possessed a beauty that seemed strangely old-fashioned. His face would have fit well in a painting by Holbein or Dürer. His suit, however, had been crafted by a modern tailor, as had his shirt. He gave an amused smile as Jacob’s eyes fixed on the tiny ruby in his earlobe.
“Ah, you do remember.”
The voice had been different when they last met in Chicago. Norebo Johann Earlking.
“Rubies.” He touched his ear. “I’ve always had a weakness for them.”
Jacob managed to sit up, though he had to grab a table for balance.
“Is this your real face?”
“Real? A big word. Let’s say it’s closer to my own than the one I showed you in Chicago. The Fairies like to make a secret of their names, and we Alderelves like to hide our true guises.”
“So the name is real?”
“Does it sound real? No. You can call me Spieler...”
He followed Jacob’s glance out the window.
“Fantastic view, isn’t it? We’re barely a stone’s throw from Manhattan. Amazing how easy it is to hide under the mantle of apparent disuse.”
The derelict landscape outside the window stood in stark contrast to the precious furniture. Crumbling buildings drowning in ivy, and the unrestrained growth of a forest battling human construction.
“You mortals place such a touching importance on appearances.” Spieler got up and went to the window. “Animals aren’t fooled as easily. A few decades ago, your lot were almost onto us because some rare heron didn’t want to share this island with us.” He drew on a cigarette he balanced between his slender fingers. Six fingers on each hand, as on all immortals. Spieler blew the smoke toward Jacob, and the narrow room suddenly became as wide as a palace hall, with walls clad in silver and chandeliers made of elven glass. The only object that didn’t change was a marble sculpture of startling beauty. This eliminated Jacob’s final doubt about who he was dealing with. The sculpture was of a tree, and captured in its bark was a face frozen in mid-scream.
“Exile. At first you try to make it bearable by imitating the familiar.” Spieler took another drag from his cigarette. “Yet that gets very monotonous very quickly, and it reminds you too much of all you’ve lost.”
The view from the window disappeared into smoke. The trees vanished, and the water of a river reflected the skyline of a city that seemed strange and still familiar. New York maybe a hundred years ago? No Empire State Building.
“Time. Another thing your kind takes too seriously.” Spieler crushed the cigarette into a silver ashtray, and the hall shrank back into the room where Jacob had awoken, with the same desolate view through the window. “Not foolish, trying to disappear the crossbow into the archives of the museum. After all, how could you have known that Frances Tyrpak is a good friend of mine? Of course, she knows me with a different face. A lot of the Met exhibits were donated by us. But I assume you realize you’re not here because of the crossbow. Or have you forgotten your debt to me?”
Debt...
Jacob thought he could smell forgetyourself, the mythical flower of the Bluebeards. Yes, his worry over the crossbow had made it easy to forget his debt. Together with the desperation that had made him ca
reless enough to engage in such a magical trade. Careless? There wasn’t much choice when you were caught in a Bluebeard’s labyrinth.
“There’s a charming tale from our world about a Stilt who teaches some useless peasant girl how to spin straw into gold,” Spieler continued. “She, of course, tricks him. Even though all he’d asked for was rightfully his.”
Today I bake,
tomorrow brew,
the next I’ll have
the young Queen’s firstborn child.
Jacob had never been too impressed by the Rumpelstiltskin’s threat—his mother had to explain to him what a firstborn was. And even now, he doubted he’d ever have children anyway.
Spieler saw the relief on Jacob’s face and smiled.
