“You don’t understand. The insult you’ve just given her is . . . is . . .” Sarissa shook her head and said, with masterful understatement, “You just earned a little payback, in her mind.”

“That was going to happen sooner or later,” I said. “What bugs me is her response.”

“Music?” Sarissa asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “And in a minute there might be dancing. Can’t be good.”

“It could be worse,” she said. She took a deep breath and settled her arm in mine again. “You won the first round.”

“I only survived it.”

“Here, that is winning.”

“So if we win the rest of the night, we’ll be making a good start.” I looked around us and said, “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Somewhere that isn’t the middle of the floor,” I said. “Somewhere I can put my back to a wall. And hopefully somewhere with snacks. I’m starving.”

Chapter

Five

I’m never really comfortable at parties. Maybe I’m just not the partying type.

Even when they aren’t full of lunatic elves, hulking monsters, and psychotic faerie queens, parties are kind of tough for me. I think it’s because I’m never sure of what to do with myself.

I mean, there’re drinks, but I don’t like being drunk, and I’m pretty sure I don’t get any more charming when I do get that way. More amusing, tops, and that isn’t always in a good way. There’s music, but I never really learned to dance to anything that involved an electric guitar. There are people to talk to and maybe girls to flirt with, but once you put all the stupid things I do aside, I’m really not all that interesting. I like reading, staying home, going on walks with my dog—it’s like I’m already a retiree. Who wants to hear about that? Especially when I would have to scream it over the music to which no one dances.

So I’m there but not drinking, listening to music but not dancing, and trying to have conversations with near-strangers about anything other than my own stupid life, and they generally seem to have the same goals I do. Leads to a lot of awkward pauses. And then I start wondering why I showed up in the first place.

Hell’s bells, the kind of party with monsters is actually easier for me. I mean, at least I have a pretty good idea of what to do when I’m at one of those.

The food table was set up over by the replica of the trapdoor that used to lead into my subbasement. It was open in the giant model, which meant that there was a gaping hole in the icy floor, and if you slipped at the wrong moment, you’d wind up falling down into Stygian darkness. I wondered whether the drop was to scale.

The table was loaded down with party food of every description, but apart from the sheer variety, it didn’t look like anything but regular old food. I inhaled through my nose and felt absolutely certain about that—this was mortal chow, not the fabled ambrosia of faerie.

“Thank God,” Sarissa said, picking up a pair of plates. “Food. I was afraid they’d have nothing but those flower trifles again.”

“Wait,” I said. “Are we sure this is food?”

“You can’t smell it?” she asked. “I can always tell. Local cuisine is . . . not exactly subtle. Practically the first thing I learned here was how to tell the difference.” She started loading up both plates, mostly with things I probably would have picked anyway. Well. She had basically been my dietitian for nearly three months. She’d know, by now, what I liked and didn’t.

Weird. Would it be like that if I ever had, like . . . a wife or something?

Whoa, where the hell did that thought come from? All the recent, if entirely bent, domesticity? My heart did a weird little rabbitlike maneuver, beating way too fast for a few seconds. Hell’s bells, had I just had a panic attack? At the very notion of calling some woman my wife? Though . . . now that I thought about it, I wasn’t sure I had ever used that word in connection with myself and somebody else at the same time. Not explicitly, anyway.

I shook my head and filed the thought away to be examined later, when I didn’t have a great big target drawn on my back.

I let Sarissa pick us some food while I kept an eye out for anyone or anything suspicious. After about twenty seconds of that, I decided that it was an impossibility, and dialed it back to watching for anyone who rushed us with a knife, screaming. I kept my defensive spells right on the tip of my mind, so to speak, and ready to erupt into reality at an instant’s notice.

I spotted a good, quiet corner for us to stand in, over by the giant mantel above the giant fireplace. I took the plates from Sarissa, and we started that way.

A form that I recognized emerged from the crowd in our path, and I found myself smiling. The creature that came limping over to me wasn’t much more than five feet tall, and leaned on a heavy, gnarled walking staff. He wore a hooded robe of undyed linen, belted with a length of soft-looking rope. Three folded strips of purple cloth were tucked into the belt—the formal stoles of senior members of the White Council of Wizards, taken after they fell to him in separate duels.

Oh, and he was a goat. Well, a very human-looking goat, anyway. He had the same long face as a goat, and curling ram’s horns on his head. His eyes were golden, his beard long and white, and he looked pleased.

“Eldest Gruff,” I said, smiling.

“Sir Knight,” he replied, his basso a pleasant rumble. We exchanged small bows, which also seemed to please him. “Please do thou accept my best wishes on this day of your birth.”

“Gladly,” I said. “How did they rope you into showing up to this freak show?”

He sighed. “Obligation.”

“Word.” I nodded to Sarissa. “May I introduce Sarissa. She’s been helping me recover from an injury. Sarissa, this is—”

“Lord Gruff,” she said, giving him a courtesy that somehow seemed natural. “How lovely to meet you again, sir.”

“It is pleasant to see thee, child,” Eldest Gruff said. “Thou dost seem to thrive despite the climate.”

“That may be a generous assessment,” Sarissa replied.

“I prefer to think of it as a hopeful one,” the Gruff said. “I see thou hast attached thyself to the new Knight.”

“No,” I said quickly. “No, she hasn’t. There’s been no . . . attaching. She’s been doctoring me.”

Sarissa arched an eyebrow at me, and then said to the Gruff, “It was Mab’s price.”

“Ah,” the Gruff said. “A heavy burden obligation canst be, for Winter and Summer alike.” He glanced aside at me. “Does he know of thine—”

“It hasn’t come up,” Sarissa said.

“Ah,” Eldest Gruff said, raising his hands. He had weird nails. They were hoofy. “I will then follow the course of silence.”

Sarissa inclined her head. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

Two more figures approached us, both of them over seven feet tall. I’m not used to being the shortest person in any given conversation. Or even the shorter person. I can change lightbulbs without stretching. I can put the star on the Christmas tree without standing on tiptoe. I’m like the Bumble, but with way better teeth, and I didn’t like feeling loomed over.