Once we reached the other candidate I knelt as well, trying to look as graceful as I could manage.

“Greetings, Catherine Marie Morrow,” a voice in front of me intoned. I flinched at the sound of my True Name-usually I go by Catherine Baker. I’ve gone to great lengths to hide my True Name from the magical world, and here it was being shared in front of every damn faerie in the hemisphere. Great. My reaction was to be expected, but out of the corner of my eye I noticed the black-cloaked figure had flinched as well. I turned my head toward him as he looked toward me. I peered into the depths of that black hood and recognized him, much to my immediate shock, and my brain shut down as my mouth took over.

“Aw, hell no,” I growled. Leaping to the side, I knocked him off his feet and pinned him to the floor, and the man glared up at me with a mix of shock and hatred. “’Lo, Dad.”

I heard something like the rustling of a thousand wings at once and everything around me went black.

Throughout my life there have been several times when I woke up and swore that my entire body hurt. Generally I knew the sources of the agonizing pain: moving furniture, an unusually brisk self-defense class, too much drinking. That pain was nothing compared to the complete and utter ache that dragged me back to consciousness, my mind kicking and screaming in protest the entire way.

I blinked my bleary eyes open and discovered a thick layer of blur covered everything above me. Concussion was my first thought, and I reached up to check the status of my broken head. My fingertips brushed my eyelashes and I realized my glasses were missing, which revealed the source of the blurriness. I fished around me for them but my hands found nothing but cool marble floor in my general vicinity. Slow and cautious I sat up, and the room did a lurching spin around me until it righted itself.

“Glasses,” I demanded of no one in particular. One of those multicolored blobs in my field of vision had to be a person.

“Here,” Lex said. My glasses were set into my outstretched hand and I put them on. He knelt at my side, and I glared at him. The hall had emptied out, leaving only the three Council members in front of me. Glancing behind me I saw both Portia and Tybalt, their faces grim, and that scared the hell out of me. Then I remembered why I’d been hit with the unholy huge whammy that knocked me out in the first place. I swore a vicious curse and leapt to my feet, rounding on my father who stood silently several feet away with the man in the charcoal suit standing behind him like a shadow. My hand went for the hilt of my sword, and I looked down in surprise when I didn’t find it there. Before I could do anything further Lex grabbed my arms and dragged me backwards.

“Calm down,” he warned.

“Lemme go!”

“Catherine, no,” Portia snapped as she appeared in front of me. The fact that she actually used my first name gave me a moment of pause-Portia’d never done that in the entire time I’ve known her. I took a deep breath and unclenched my fists.

“Murderer!” I spat at him instead.

“I am not responsible for what happened to your mother,” he replied calmly. It was the first time I’d heard my father’s voice in eighteen years. Amazing how much he sounded the same.

“Don’t give me that bullshit. You let your vamp buddies tear her apart like a piñata, you bastard.”

The assembled faeries gasped at the language. Faeries don’t swear, or at least they don’t approve of the use of “oaths and curses” as they call them. I was too furious to care, and the angrier I am the more horrifying my language becomes. Lex gave my arms a squeeze in silent warning to control myself, but I continued to ignore him.

The memory was still so raw and painful, as though it had happened yesterday instead of over a decade ago. I could still see her broken body on the floor of our living room, her eyes wide and terrified, frozen forever, and still smell the awful stench of blood and death and worse. Fury burned inside me, and the floor beneath my feet trembled with it. There were no streetlights to attack here with my excess power, and that power was looking for somewhere else to escape.

“Lord and Lady, I will make you pay for what you’ve done.” My voice was deadly calm, and as the words left my throat something around me seemed to pop. I knew what I’d done-I’d sworn a vow in a faerie mound, a kinslaying vow no less-and invoked my gods at the same time. I was far too angry to care.

The faeries, however, did care.

“ENOUGH!” The word boomed through the room like a crack of thunder. I felt everyone around me step away as I turned and gave my full attention to the speaker. I knew who she was, even though I’d never met her in person before: Cecelia of the Silver Crescent, a truly stunning sight to behold. A frost fairy like my cousins, she looked as though she had been created from silver and moonlight, with iridescent hair falling almost to the floor and wings that glowed with their own light. Large blue eyes stared at me, disapproving, and I had the good sense to feel guilty under her gaze.

“I think you have interrupted these proceedings quite enough, Mistress Morrow,” Cecelia scolded, and I blushed redder than a genetically modified tomato. I would’ve said I was sorry, but I was certain that opening my mouth would get me zotted into unconsciousness again, and I wasn’t sure I’d live through another blast. The faerie folded her silvery hands in her lap and leaned back into her seat, appearing relaxed and unaffected by the fact that I’d been ready to stab the face off my father’s head just a few short moments ago.

“Both of you have come here to petition for the open position of liaison between the realm of the Faerie and the Midwestern region of the United States of the realm of Earth. The council will initiate the new liaison during your next full moon. You will be tested during this time to determine your adequacy for the position.” Her blasé tone did not make me feel more comfortable, and I was nervous about what they had in mind for testing. It was a good bet I wouldn’t need my #2 pencils ready for it.

“Your first test begins now.”

I opened my mouth to form the word “Now?” but the floor dropped out from under me and someone blacked the lights out again.

Thankfully this time I was conscious, though the landing might have been more enjoyable if I had been unable to feel it. The breath whooshed out of my lungs as I hit solid ground with a very painful thud. Looking up, I expected to see light shining through the trapdoor that attacked me, but only saw more darkness. I reached down and unsnapped one of the pockets of my cargo pants, blindly grabbing a large hunk of crystal and pulling it free. Holding the lump in my hand, I spoke the incantation to activate the spell stored within it.

The crystal began to glow with a bright white light, surrounding me in a circle of illumination. Sadly there was nothing to see-no walls, no ceiling, no people-just more darkness outside my globe of visibility. I almost called out to ask if anyone was there, but I bit my tongue and decided against it. If there was anyone out there in the black, they probably weren’t about to come to my rescue, and were much more likely to try to kill me instead. Holding the crystal aloft, I took a few hesitant steps forward. The floor was rough earth, not the pristine marble of the great hall. Roots from indeterminate plants poked through here and there, and I eyed them, half expecting them to leap to life and attempt to strangle me. When the plants did not become homicidal I continued to walk forward, hoping to reach a wall, or better yet a door.

The silence was eerie, even more so than it had been since first I entered the mound. Tilting my head to the side, I paused and sniffed the air, but everything still reeked of cinnamon and was of no help at all. With a disappointed frown I went back to my slow, cautious walk. Maybe this wouldn’t be as difficult as I first thought. Maybe this was just a test to see if I could get myself out of wherever I was, which should be easy enough. All I had to do was leave the faerie realm, and I had the materials to do that on me. I just needed the mirror in my compact and my-