Corinne couldn’t quite figure out how it had happened, but at some point in the last hour she had obviously stepped off the train at the Crazyville station. Either that, or all those aspirin she’d swallowed had damaged her brain instead of her liver. How else could she explain how she’d gone from waking up in the world as she knew it, to sitting in the office of a werejaguar having a conversation with a fairy—sorry, a Fae—about why he was worried that another Fae had been sighted around New York City?

There was no other explanation. She had clearly—and likely irrevocably—lost her mind.

“The Queen of Faerie,” she repeated slowly, feeling the words roll around in her mouth and deciding they really didn’t fit well at all. “The Queen of Faerie sent you to bring some guy named ‘Shock’ back to…Faerie with you. Do I have that right?”

The enormous man with the pointy ears nodded. “Close enough.”

It was too bad about the ears, really. In the instant when she’d first laid eyes on Lucifer call-me-Luc Macanaw, every cell in her body had sat up to attention and cried, Hello there, big boy!The man was just too gorgeous to be real. Which, of course, he’d turned out to be. Not really human, anyway. At least six-five or six-sex—er, six-six—the man towered over not only her, but also every other man she’d ever dated, including the oh-so-elegant Rafael De Santos and the six-foot-two construction worker Corinne had drooled over for most of last summer. This guy wasn’t just tall, though; he had brawn to back up his height, with the kind of muscle definition most men would kill for.

His skin had a luminous golden cast to it, and his eyelashes were thicker and darker than any man’s had a right to be. They made his crystal-green eyes stand out and emphasized the dark, rich coffee color of his hair, which was at least long enough to be clubbed back into a ponytail. She couldn’t see how long it was, but her fingers already itched to run through it.

Long hair on a man pushed all her buttons, especially when it was that particular shade, that brown so dark it looked black until the light hit it just right and pulled out those rich, chocolate highlights. She wanted to feel that hair wrapped around her while she climbed on top and rode him straight on till morning—

Holy shit! What is God’s name was she thinking? This man couldn’t possibly be her type; he wasn’t even her species!

She shook her head to clear out the unexpected and unwelcome fog of lust and drew a deep breath. “Okay,” she said, “but I still feel like I stepped into this movie twenty minutes past the opening credits. Can one of you maybe fill me in? From the beginning?”

The story wasn’t that long, but it still left Corinne with the same feeling she’d had after reading War and Peace—the one that went something like, Du-huh?She understood the part about Luc’s reasons for coming to…well, he kept calling it Ithir, but since she wasn’t quite ready to deal with any “alternate realities” stuff, she’d just stick to saying Manhattan. The part about him being a personal guard to the Faerie Queen made a sort of fantasy-novel sense, but after that, he lost her.

“Okay,” she said again, the word drawn out the way she might have said it if she’d been attempting to placate an ax-wielding maniac. “Um, I think I understand what you’re after, but I’m having a little bit of trouble with the why part.”

“The ‘why part’?” Luc repeated.

“Yeah. Why does everyone seem to assume he’ll need to be dragged back by his hair like a runaway cave-wife? Can’t you just call and tell him the Queen wants him home?”

Luc and Rafe exchanged what Corinne would have called a manly look, the kind that implied they were trying to be patient with her feeble feminine understanding.

“He didn’t exactly leave us an itinerary,” Luc said in that really annoying tone. “He’s not supposed to be here at all. He never received permission from the Queen.”

Corinne felt her eyes widen at that. “Permission? What, like a visa? Why would he need permission to leaveFaerie? I understand needing something like a passport to enter a place, but to leave? Is Faerie some kind of giant prison compound?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

She glared at him. “Oh, you need permission from Mom to cross your own borders, but I’m the one who’s being ridiculous?”

Rafe shifted in his seat and cleared his throat. “Moving between here and Faerie isn’t like driving across the Canadian border,” he said, almost apologetically. “Faerie occupies its own dimension, for lack of a better word, and the only way to travel between worlds like that is through the use of magic. In this case, magical portals, or doorways.”

“And the doors are tightly controlled,” Luc added. “For several reasons.”

“Such as?”

The Fae guardsman looked at her like he’d rather shake her than answer her question, but he managed to maintain his grip on sanity long enough to answer. And save himself a swift kick to the balls.

“First, because the Others here prefer it that way,” he said. “You mentioned it yourself earlier—the Others in this world work very hard to keep ordinary mortals from learning they exist.”

“Yeah, because they’re afraid of how we’d react, that’d we’d try to exterminate them or put them in a lab and study them or something,” Corinne agreed. “But how does that relate to visitors from Faerie?”

Rafe spoke up. “Right now, the Council of Others believes that humans are neither ready nor willing to acknowledge that what they think of as the supernatural—as magic—exists.”

Corinne had heard of the Council from Reggie, whose husband, Dmitri, once headed it; now, apparently, Rafe had that pleasure. “Yeah, I know. Because you think we’re primitive morons.”

Luc nodded. “Compared with most other species, you are. Primitive, not morons,” he hurried to add when she turned to glare at him. “Look at it from the Others’ point of view. Werefolk were around for millennia before humans evolved much past the Cro-Magnon stage on Ithir, and even though vampires were once human, they have a much deeper connection to magic than their human cousins ever did. And Fae…well, we left Ithirabout the same time humans started realizing that round things made nifty accessories for the bottoms of their sleds. In relative terms, humans are like infants to us.”

Corinne couldn’t decide if she should be confused or just insulted. Or maybe both. “Right. We’re the cosmic equivalent of amoebae. Great. But that doesn’t explain why it’s so important to interrupt this Seoc guy’s tour of Ithir.”

“Actually, it does,” Rafe said. “One of the primary reasons for the regulation of travel from Faerie into Ithiris to keep the Others’ secret safe. You’ve seen what happens when someone comes through the door with the wrong intentions, or with no intentions at all. If people in this city are catching sight of Seoc, the chances of his identity being discovered increase by the minute, and once people know who and what he is, the veil of secrecy that protects us from discovery gets that much thinner. Break the barrier of disbelief in supernatural beings by once acknowledging there’s a race of non-humans out there and people become much more likely to believe in all the races out there. In other words, it’s a short step from a Fae visitor to a resident pack of werewolves.”

“You’re right,” she acknowledged, pursing her lips. She might have to say it, but she didn’t have to like it. As a reporter, she had a core-deep antipathy toward secrets. “But you said there was another reason.”

“I’ll admit the second reason might sound a bit self-serving,” Luc said, and shifted uncomfortably. “By controlling the door into and out of Faerie, we can control who knows about our existence and who can find their way into our realm. Faerie can be a dangerous place for those who aren’t Fae, partly because it’s home to very powerful magic, but that magic can also be a powerful lure for those who think they can use it for themselves. The Fae left Ithirbecause humans either feared our magic or wanted it for themselves. Rather than hide in plain sight, like the Others, we removed ourselves from this world and closed the doors after us. But what do you think would happen if someone found the doors and showed everyone where they were?”

Put like that, the idea made Corinne pause. She could imagine what would happen—the same thing that would happen if the truth about the Others came out, only in this case human beings would take the show on the road. People would be either frightened or fascinated. The frightened ones would try to destroy what they didn’t understand, and the fascinated ones would trample it in their eagerness to experience it for themselves. They’d pour through the doors like shoppers at a one-day sale.

“A person can learn to cope with a shift in his reality,” Rafe said gently, “but people, as a group, are a different story. If Seoc keeps this up, he’s going to open those doors. Then Ithirand Faerie will both suffer.”

Luc agreed. “Faerie would be overrun by humans. Some of them would be honestly curious, but some of them would be afraid or greedy or malicious and would destroy the world we’ve spent centuries building for ourselves.”

Yeah, she could see where that would suck. As much as she wanted to defend her fellow humans, people did tend to be a hell of a lot stupider and more selfish than individuals could ever be. As a reporter, she’d seen enough of the destruction people could create to know that.

“Then there’s the fact that if the balance between Ithirand Faerie shifts, all the creatures we took with us when we left would come pouring back into your world. When was the last time you saw a real live nightmare?”

“Do you count?” she muttered under her breath, then hurried to cover it up. “Point taken. If Faerie is full of all the fairy-tale bogeymen they talked about in the kids’ stories, then I agree that it would be better if they stayed there. So how do you plan to make that happen?”

The men exchanged glances again, and Corinne stifled the urge to smack them both upside the head. Did they think she couldn’t see their little moments of silent communication?

“I think we need to concentrate on finding Seoc,” Rafe finally said, nodding at Luc. “Not only is that the reason Luc came here, but if we remove him from the city, we remove the threat of anyone discovering his true identity. That is the ultimate goal.”

“What about the people who’ve already seen him?”

“Do you know who they are?”

She nodded. “I have names and contact info, since I’m supposed to start interviewing them.”

“If you will share that information with me, the Council will take care of it,” Rafe said.

Corinne thought about that for a second and eyed him suspiciously. “Take care of it how?”

“Relax.” The Felix flashed her a grin. “No one will so much as nibble on a single one of them, I promise. We do occasionally have to deal with situations like this, when one of our kind is seen by an outsider. Usually we can find a way to…alter such recollections. Convince them they have seen a stray dog instead of a wolf, and so on. Painlessly, of course. So long as we keep the number of witnesses down, we should be able to deal with it easily enough.”

The idea of anyone playing around with someone else’s memories didn’t exactly have Corinne doing cartwheels, but she supposed it was the most practical solution. And at least they wouldn’t be messing around in her mind.

“All right,” she agreed. “I’ll make you a copy of the info, but before you go and do whatever it is you’re going to do, I still need to interview these people.” She pulled her backpack onto her lap and opened the buckles to rummage inside. Digging out her notebook, she flipped open to the section marked what did i do to deserve this? and skimmed through her notes. “None of the initial reports was much help. They all saw basically the same thing: tall blond guy, brick walls, bright lights, disappearing trick. Of course, the initial reports are more like thirdhand scuttlebutt, since the police weren’t exactly interested in filing reports on the ravings of folks they assumed should be in Bellevue.”

“Did the witnesses talk to anyone other than the police?” Rafe asked.

“A couple of tabloids, a PI or two. Those reports aren’t much better, though.” She snapped her notebook shut. “That’s why I had intended to start redoing interviews myself. I need to talk to the witnesses firsthand if I’m going to get to the bottom of anything.”

Luc nodded. “Great. Then that’s what I will do.”

“Um, excuse me?” Corinne looked at him dubiously. “What do you mean what you’lldo?”

“Agreeing to share your contact information is helpful to the Council’s efforts to contain the story, but I need to be the one interviewing these witnesses. I must be able to follow every trail before it goes cold if I’m going to find Seoc and drag him back to Faerie.”

“You know, enough with the talk about dragging. Have you ever considered just telling the guy what you’re worried about and askinghim to head back home?”

“Seoc knew he wasn’t supposed to be here when he slipped through a door that he’d been forbidden to use. He knew he was supposed to return to Faerie when the Queen commanded him to do so. He’s not late for his curfew, for Lady’s sake, he’s sparking an interdimensional incident of epic proportions!”

Corinne drew back from Luc’s vehement roar and glanced over at Rafe to see if he’d noticed the little display of temper, but Mr. Cowardly Lion had decided to examine his manicure.

“All right. Sheesh. No need to go ballistic. It was just a question.”

“You have no idea how badly I wish I could just put you under a sleep spell,” he said, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. “It would make my life so much easier.”

“Except, of course, that it would make it very difficult for her to help us find the Queen’s nephew,” Rafe cautioned, giving Luc a firm look.

Corinne blinked. The idea that the Fae warrior could cast spells had never occurred to her. Of course, she’d never known anyone from Faerie before, so she really didn’t know what they could or couldn’t do. “You could do that? Just put someone to sleep?”

“Not you, unfortunately,” he grumbled.

“But you can do it to other people.”

“To some other people, but to humans, absolutely. Which is one of the reasons why I need to conduct these interviews. I’ll be able to tell if the witnesses are lying. I might even be able to help them with details they can’t consciously recall.”

“I can see where that would come in handy.” She shoved her notebook back into her satchel and stood. “I guess you can come along, then.”

“Come along?” Luc shook his head. “You misunderstand. I will take the contact information you provide and do the interviews myself. Alone.”

“No, you won’t.” Seeing him about to howl a protest, Corinne held up a hand. God, men could be so stubborn. “Look, whether or not you get any useful information from these people, I still need to talk to them to do my story. My editor gave me the assignment, and he’ll know something’s wrong if I suddenly do a shitty job as a reporter. I’m not saying I’ll put anything I learn in the article I turn in, but I have to do my due diligence. Don’t you think it will stir up a lot less interest in this whole story if we do the interviews together instead of separately?”

She saw that Luc wanted to argue the point with her, just as she saw that he could find no good reason to do so. Satisfied, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a business card. Scribbling the address of interview number one on the back, she held it out to him. “This is the first place I’ll be going tomorrow. Meet me there at ten am, and we’ll see what we can find out.”

He glanced down at the address and his eyes narrowed. “This is where we’re going to find someone who spotted Seoc?”

“Yeah, why?”

Luc passed the card to Rafe, whose eyes widened considerably. “Who did you say these witnesses are?”

“A rabbi, three models, a sex shop owner, and a bartender.”

Rafe snorted. “Walk into a bar, or are stranded on a desert island?”

Corinne rolled her eyes. “I know it sounds like the setup to a bad joke, but I’m totally serious. Those are the witnesses of record to the elf sightings. Although one of them did call him a leprechaun. I’m not sure who, though. Probably not the bartender.”

Luc snorted. “Someone thought he was a leprechaun?”

“What?” she asked. “Is that one imaginary creature that really is imaginary?”

“No, they’re real,” Luc assured her, “but they’re short, ugly, foul-tempered little bastards. You can’t mistake one for Fae.”

“Yeah, well, the witness must have missed that day of Things That Don’t Exist One-Oh-One.”

Rafe cleared his throat and handed the card back to Luc. “So tomorrow the two of you will be hitting The Pink Pillow?”

Corinne tried very hard not to think about the way that sounded. She also tried very hard to push away the images it conjured of her and the Faerie prince over there tangled up on rose-colored bedsheets.

“Yes, I agree that it’s a ridiculous name,” she managed, after a small cough, “but that’s where our first witness is. He’s the owner.”

“Ah, the sex shop owner. I’m really glad it isn’t the rabbi.”

Corinne refused to laugh.

“Ten o’clock,” she repeated, moving back toward the office door.

Luc blocked her way. “Why wait until tomorrow? It’s a sex shop. They must have evening hours. Why don’t we go tonight?”

Corinne lifted her chin and met his gaze defiantly. “Because I have other plans for tonight. I’m sure no one will be fleeing town before sunrise. We can start tomorrow.”

He scowled down at her. “You think a date is more important than these interviews? Didn’t we just go over what’s at stake if we don’t find Seoc as soon as possible?”

“I didn’t say I had a date,” she snapped, refusing to be intimidated by the sheer bulk of him looming over her. Corinne had never considered herself short, but this guy made her feel tiny. “I have some more background research to do, and I thought it would be smart to get it out of the way before we start in on the witnesses. Not that I think I need to explain to you how I do my job.”

“You do if you’re doing it stupidly.”

Rafe stood and looked very much as if he’d rather be somewhere else. “Ah, children—”

“Not now.”

“Sod off.”

The Felix nodded. “Right. I’ll just head home then. I’m certain the two of you can find your own way out.”

Neither of them noticed him leave or the door clicking shut behind him.

“Men don’t get to call me stupid,” Corinne growled, poking a finger into the layer of granite muscle over Luc’s sternum. “And you sure as hell don’t get to call me anything on the basis of a twenty-minute acquaintance. Don’t they teach kids growing up in Faerie not piss off people they need in order to accomplish their goals?”

“Don’t they teach little girls in Ithirnot to pull on the tiger’s tail?”

She didn’t get to answer. Instead, she got a mouthful of hot, angry, aroused man.

Luc grabbed and lifted her before she could so much as squeak in protest, and forget squeaking once his mouth slammed down on hers, punishing, devouring, claiming, and cherishing in an unfathomable deluge of sensation. Hell, forget thinking. All Corinne could do was feel, and she felt things for this aggravating, non-human warrior that she’d never felt for another man in her life.

Electricity seemed to arc between them, surging through her body in a current that could have resurrected Frankenstein’s monster. A force this intense could power a star, not to mention start a heart beating. Corinne feared it might have stopped her own.

She couldn’t catch her breath. She could only breathe in Luc, the heat and strength and musk of him. He filled her head until she forgot all about being called stupid, forgot what they had been fighting about, forgot her own damned name. All she could remember was that male and female bodies fit together like puzzle pieces and she wanted this man’s to fit to hers. Right now.

She wrapped her arms around him, would have wrapped her legs around him, too, she was so far gone with lust, but Luc tore his mouth from hers and set her down, holding her at arm’s length and shaking her until she opened her eyes. Damn it, she didn’t even remember closing them.

“Now,” he growled, staring down at her with green eyes that seemed to glow with intensity. “Tell me where weare going tonight.”