I sat on a concrete block overlooking the fairy ring, waiting for Dylan. The trees on the hill had dropped their leaves in a thick carpet around the mushrooms. The air felt damp, cool, not cold. The fairy ring gave off its own warmth, a residual effect of its power. Gargoyles crouched among the trees, humming to themselves as they enjoyed the concentration of essence. They gathered around the fairy ring like an odd bunch of people watching the grass grow. I was curious why Dylan had asked me to meet him there instead of at a bar.

Despite the late hour, people milled outside the ring. Two Danann security agents roamed the perimeter, not actively preventing anyone from going near the ring but sending the message to behave. They ensured the mushrooms didn’t get damaged. Every year the city asked the Guild for security backup since it was better equipped to deal with drunk fey people who might, for instance, accidentally set things on fire with their minds. The Guild beefed up security on Samhain especially. Fey groups arrived with competing claims to the spot, fought over space, and trampled the ring as they attempted to perform their ceremonial rituals. The veil between worlds wouldn’t open, just as it had never opened since Convergence; people would be disappointed; everyone would go home grumpy. Except the here-born like me.

The here-born were fey who never knew Faerie or the ability to travel the Ways across realms. The Samhain celebrations have the odor of nostalgia for something we don’t remember or believe. Older generations may talk of speaking with the dead and seeing long-lost loved ones, but to the here-born, they’re all just stories like those of Santa Claus. Nice to know growing up, hard to swallow as an adult. We went through the prayers and the ceremonial fire-lightings, then hightailed it out on the town for Halloween parties with the human normals.

“Woolgathering?” Dylan asked as he came up behind me. He swung his long legs over the concrete bench.

I shrugged. “A little. I was just wondering if rituals mean anything to me.”

Dylan gazed across the fairy ring. “Everyone has rituals that mean something to them. You’re asking a larger question.”

I eyeballed him. “Do tell, O, psychic one.”

He kept his gaze ahead, but smiled. “You’re wondering if anything means enough to you to have a ritual for it.”

Dylan always seemed to understand what I was thinking before I did. Apparently, he still had the knack. “True enough. I’ve been ripped down to the point where everything I thought I wanted is kinda meaningless.”

Dylan swayed his feet in small arcs. “We used to want the same things. You’re not as sure of yourself as you used to be.”

I smiled ruefully. “Maybe not all the same things. Lots of things have changed about me. I’m going to go with ‘that’s a good thing’ for now.”

He seemed about to say something, but changed his mind and chuckled. “Yeah. I guess you have to. We have to. Everyone has to get through the day.”

I glanced at him. That sounded a little world-weary for Dylan, but I didn’t detect any hint of melancholy about him. He was happy with where and who he was. It showed in the set of his jaw and the relaxed way he held his shoulders. He may recognize flaws in himself, maybe even admit to them, but they didn’t bother him. They never had, for as long as I could remember. He was comfortable in his own skin in a way I didn’t know if I could be anymore.

We sat in companionable silence. “Why did you leave like that, Connor? After everything that happened, you up and moved to Boston without even discussing it.”

The question was ten years in the making. I tried to brave it out, so I didn’t look at him and tried to sound indifferent. “It was my career, my decision.”

He snorted. “I didn’t say you needed my permission. We were a team. A good one. After the Pride Wind, we could have written our own orders. I thought you’d at least ask my advice. Danu’s blood, you left a message on my answering machine and didn’t take my calls for a year before I gave up.”

I rubbed my face. “I didn’t want the responsibility.”

He frowned. “For what?”

I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want to see the hurt. “You. I didn’t want to be responsible for you. That day on the ferry, when our essences merged, I felt what you felt. I didn’t want the responsibility of not hurting you. So I left.”

He shook his head. “Uh… thanks?”

My chest tightened with anger. I never wanted to have this conversation. Whether I was angry at myself for causing the situation or Dylan for pressing it, it meant facing up to yet another example of my bad behavior. I knew I had to if I wanted to get on with my life. I didn’t have to like it.

“What did you want to happen, Dylan? Have me tell you I didn’t feel the same way? Did you want to hear that? Could we have worked together after that? What would have happened if you took too many risks for me and died because of it? What kind of position is that to put me in?”

He shrugged and smiled. “The same one you’d be in anyway. When our essences merged, I felt what you felt, too, you know. The difference between us was that it confirmed what I already knew. I’m not stupid, Connor. I knew the score. The one thing I knew was that regardless, we would still do the right thing at the right time. That’s why we worked so well together. When that knife hit my chest, you threw yourself in front of that essence-bolt to protect me, and it had nothing to do with how you felt about me personally and everything to do with the man you are. Above everything else, I knew I could always respect and trust you. I thought you would do the same.”

I frowned. “What essence-bolt?”

He looked at me in disbelief. “The essence-bolt on the Pride Wind that hit you in the head. I thought it killed you.”

“Dylan, I don’t remember getting hit with an essence-bolt.”

His face turned pensive. “I’ll never forget it. You fell next to me. Everything but you faded to white. All I could see was you. The next thing I knew, you merged our essences and saved my life.”

I stared at my feet. I didn’t remember. My stomach felt sick. All this time, and Bergin Vize wasn’t the first time I’d lost my memory. Maybe the Pride Wind wasn’t the first time either. How the hell was I supposed to figure out the first time I didn’t remember something?

“Con?”

I shook myself out of my reverie. “I’m sorry, Dyl. That’s all I think I can say, and it doesn’t cover it. I should have trusted that you would have been okay about it.”

“You did, but, maybe not in the right way. I got over it. You. I would have either way. But, thanks. I needed to hear that,” he said.

“I’m an idiot. We could have been friends all this time.”

He shrugged. “We’re druids. Ten years is nothing.”

I didn’t want to get into my mortality fears, so I tried to lighten the mood. “Now that that’s out of the way, want to go get a beer?”

He hesitated, and I felt a smidge of guilt that he was thinking I was trampling on his feelings again. “Actually, I asked you here for your input on my current job.” He nodded to the fairy ring. “I was hoping with that hopped-up ability of yours, you could tell me what’s there.”

It wasn’t an unreasonable request. My essence-sensing ability focused on the surrounding essence, and an alternate vision of the landscape materialized. For those who can see, essence manifested as light in an infinite array of colors and intensities. Why it did that was anyone’s guess, but the effects of the various kinds and levels defined what it meant to be fey. Some of us could see it acutely, while others had a vague sense that it was there. Some fey had the ability to manipulate it with fine precision, and some did it with blunt force. Human normals can’t see or use it at all, one of the many reasons they fear the fey. I can’t say I blamed them.