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He laughed.

It was the first sound out of him that wasn't measured or predetermined. Short and genuinely delighted. Both truckers turned around to look, then looked away fast and left without finishing their food.

"Good," said the Fae. "Very good. Yes. All right, then."

I reached into the hoodie pocket and took out the folded receipt where I'd copied the mark off the back of Sissily's hand before we drove away. I flattened it on the table and turned it around so it faced him.

"Before you leave, tell me what this is."

He looked down at it.

His courtesy slipped.

It lasted under a second. I'd have missed it if I'd blinked. Luckily, I've spent my whole life reading my grandmother's face for exactly that, so I was watching him like a hawk. What was underneath his facade had nothing human in it at all. And every bit of it was looking at that receipt the way you look at a wasp that has landed on the back of your own hand.

Then the mask came back like slipping on a well-worn pair of gloves. The hands folded. The wool coat sat perfectly on his shoulders again.

"Where did you get that."

"Sources." My smile was a baring of teeth that earned me a genuine twitch of his lips.

"Hazel." He used my name in a tone that suggested he was dealing with a spoiled child. He wasn't far off but I couldn't care. "I am going to ask once more, out of courtesy, and you should understand that I am asking rather than doing several other things presently available to me. Where did you get that mark?"

"It was given to me," I glanced around us to make sure no one was paying attention, "by something that can't lie. And before you ask a third time: no, you can't have it. No, I don't know what it means. And yes, I saw your face."

River had gone very still beside me. The cold coming off him had stopped being a temperature and started being a pressure. The lights over the booth had dropped by a shade, and I put two fingers on his wrist under the table and left them there.

The Fae looked at the mark for a long moment.

"It isn't ours," he said at last.

"River told me that."

"He is correct, insofar as he is able to be." He pushed the receipt back across the table with one finger, carefully, the way you hand back something you'd rather not have your prints on. "It is not Fae. It is not witch. It is not angelic and it is not infernal, and I am acquainted with all four alphabets."

"So, what is it?"

"Older," he said.

One word. He set it down between the salt and the napkin dispenser like a card he'd rather not have been holding.

"Older than what?"

"Than the four alphabets." He stood. The wool coat fell exactly where it was supposed to. "Keep it where nobody can see it. Do not show it to another of my people. And do not, under any circumstances, show it to a vampire."

"Why a vampire?"

"Because they are the only ones who were there," he said, "and they have very long memories and hold grudges like it's a blood debt."

He put two fingers on the table, the way a man does when he's about to say the thing he came to say.

"Hazel. When you stand before your Council on Thursday, do try to survive it. There are a great many creatures who would like the chance to be disappointed by you in person."

Then he walked out while I gaped after him like a fish.

The bell over the door chimed cheerfully. The morning was gray and ordinary through the glass. He crossed the wet parking lot without hurrying, and somewhere between the pumps and the road he simply stopped being there. No flash, no sound. He was just gone.

Nobody in that building noticed.