One day, something is going to kill me. It might be some monster. It might be my own foolishness. It might be what gets most everyone in the end: simple, implacable time (although I wasn't betting on that one). I'd been closer to the idea of my own death lately, having been dead, or at least mostly dead, for a good while, and I wasn't any more comfortable with the idea. I didn't have any more desire to go out in an ugly, painful way than I did before.

And if you've gotta go, there are probably worse ways to do it than in a blaze of sybaritic glory.

Damn, Maeve had a great pitch.

Heh.

Everyone selling something to a sucker does.

The entire hall had gone completely silent, except for my own harsh breathing, and I suddenly became aware of the tension in the air. Every being there was waiting, and I suddenly realized that this was the second murder attempt of the evening. Maeve was trying to destroy me.

"You ever make Lloyd that offer?" I asked.

Maeve tilted her head, staring at me, her smile suddenly frozen.

"Cat got your tongue?" I asked in a louder voice. I put scorn into it. "Did you not hear the question?"

The frozen smile became something subarctic. "What did you say to me?"

"I said no, you psychopathic hosebeast," I answered, spitting out the words with every ounce of contempt I could muster up. "I saw how you treated Lloyd Slate. I saw how you treated the changelings of your court. I know what to expect from you, you arrogant, spoiled, self-involved, petty, cruel little queen-bee twit."

Maeve's expression changed, though not in any kind of focused way. She looked . . . startled.

Sarissa gave me a shocked look. Then she glanced around, as if hunting for a foxhole or bomb shelter or perhaps some kind of armored vehicle to throw herself into.

"You sent your last handmaiden to murder my friends on their wedding day, Maeve," I continued, in a voice loud enough to be heard by the entire hall. "Did you think I'd forgotten that? Or was it just too small and unimportant a fact for you to keep it from dribbling out of your alleged brain? Do you think I'm too stupid to understand that you set up this 'surprise' party in the hopes that you'd startle me into spilling blood at court, Darth Barbie? You tried to murder me just now, Maeve, and you think a little psychic  p**n  is going to make me forget it? I can't decide if you're insane or just that stupid."

Maeve stared at me with her mouth dropping wide open.

"Now hear this," I said. "You're cute, doll. You're gorgeous. You inspire supernatural levels of wood. And so what? You're damaged goods. So turn around and move your naked little ass away from me-before I do it for you."

For a long moment, there was dead silence.

And then Maeve's face twisted up in fury. The seductive beauty of her features vanished, replaced by an animal's rage. Her eyes blazed, and the temperature in the air dropped suddenly, painfully, enough to cause icy frost crystals to start forming on the ice. The freaking ice iced over.

Maeve glared at me with naked hatred in her too-big eyes and then gave me a small bow of her head and a little smile. "It would appear we yet have a life to celebrate," she hissed. "Music."

From somewhere in the room, the symphony began playing again. The silent gang-circle ring of bedtime-story villainy broke up with fluid grace, and seconds later you would have thought you were at any kind of extremely wild, extremely posh costume party.

Maeve's eyes glittered and she spun once, displaying herself to me with a mocking little flick of her hair, and then vanished into the crowd.

I turned to Sarissa and found her staring at me with wide eyes. "You turned her down."

"Uh-huh."

"No one does that. Not here."

"Whatever," I said.

"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.