A week later, Silver still couldn’t quite believe that he was back in his regular life. Before all of . . . that, the furthest he’d been from his home town was Los Angeles, which had been a twelve-hour road trip, taken in five days, three years ago.

Now he’d been to Faerieland and Hungary. And he was supposed to have saved the world.

You’d think that would have changed something!

Instead, here he was, back at work. He sat behind the wood-paneled counter in the tiny rustic lobby, playing free cell solitaire on the computer, just like he had done five days a week, every week, for the last six months.

Well, there was one thing different – now he could see through glamour spells. And some of these Fae were pretty interesting.

Oh, and also, he was completely paranoid at work, glancing nervously at the door every three minutes, half-expecting someone to rush in blabbering about assassinations or arrests or some other calamity going on outside, and worrying that everything would go terribly awry and his old friend Devon and his new friend Fiona were going to get hurt or even killed.

So, that was new and fun.

He wished Devon had at least given him a timeline of when to expect everything to start happening. Even if he did refuse to tell him exactly WHAT was going to happen.

As Silver glanced up again, the door did open and a slender, dark-haired man with a shimmer about him slipped in.

Silver froze. This was the first time he had seen Aillen since he’d learned that his boss was actually an evil conspirator trying to destroy the world.

He lifted a hand in an attempt at a casual wave. “Hey. Um. Hi,” he said. Silver could not, for the life of him, remember whether he was supposed to call the Fae Aillen or Kaelan. “What can I do for you – uh, sir?”

“Sir?” His boss raised his eyebrows. “Why so formal today?”

“Sorry,” said Silver. “I guess I’m just feeling a little out of sorts today.” He finally got it straight in his mind. “Aillen.”

“Ah.” Aillen turned around, scanning the tall bookcases that lined the wall across from Silver’s desk. “Well, if you feel like you need to go home for the day–”

“No, I’ll be okay,” said Silver, quickly. It was worse when he wasn’t here and was still wondering what was happening in his absence. “Just tired.”

Aillen pulled a green and gold hardcover book down from one of the top shelves and turned around with a sympathetic smile. “Well, thank you for sticking around, then. You’re doing a good job, Silver.”

“Thank you,” said Silver. He watched as his boss pulled open the door and departed, watched as the disguised Fae sauntered past the window, nodding his head at a couple of guests walking by.

He didn’t bother to pierce Aillen’s glamour spell with his stormworker powers – he didn’t think he’d be able to pretend friendliness with the Fae if he knew the appearance of Kaelan. It had been hard enough when he’d learned about the crooked book-keeping.

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Aillen had always been so nice.

Then again, nice didn’t always mean good. And if he was only being nice in order to trick Silver into taking the wrong side in a Fae war . . .

Silver heard a CRACKing sound and felt a sharp pain in his hand. He looked down and realized he’d been squeezing a pencil, which had snapped in half. He’d somehow managed to stab his palm with one of the jagged edges.

“Damn,” he muttered. He stood up and strode over to the tiny bathroom that adjoined the office, cradling his hand close to his body, palm up so the blood pooled instead of running down.

He turned on the faucet and let the cold water rush over the shallow wound, rinsing it clean. Turning off the tap, he examined his hand, realizing that it wasn’t as serious as it felt.

He waved his other hand under a sensor and a stiff brown paper towel emerged with a buzz and a whoosh.

Silver ripped the towel free and pressed it to his palm. He grabbed a band-aid and moved back out to the desk, seating himself behind it again.

He checked his hand, but it didn’t seem to be done bleeding yet, so he folded the paper towel into a thick pad, held it against the cut again, and lifted it over his head to wait.

Just then, the door opened again, and a human walked in – an ordinary human woman with no glamourous shimmer.

“Hi,” said Silver. “Sorry about this.” He shook his hands in their awkwardly raised position. “I just cut myself on a pencil. What can I do for you?”

The woman frowned. “On a pencil?”

Silver laughed. “I know, right? Leave it to me to do something like that. Are you checking in?”

“No, I mean – well, yes, I’m checking in. But why are you– why aren’t you–” The woman shook her head. “Sorry. I’m sure you have your reasons. But I’m just a little confused. Why didn’t you just soothe it?”

Silver froze. Devon had said that all of the humans who stayed here were stormworkers, hadn’t he?

The woman was looking at him, patiently waiting for a response.

A million responses were swirling around in Silver’s head.

Should he play dumb and pretend he didn’t know what she meant? Play smart and pretend he could soothe but had a good reason not to? Tell her the truth and ask her if she or someone else could train him?

Rosza had promised to try and set him up with a stormsoothing mentor, but he hadn’t heard from her since Aganya had come and taken him back through the portal.

He had no idea if she was the type to follow through on her promise.

Maybe he should ask this woman. Or maybe this woman would turn out to be connected with Duvslaine and if he said anything, she would mention it to Kaelan or Duvslaine and they would know that Silver knew about magic and the Fae and then they would want to know how and they would find out that he was on the opposing side and then they’d kill him and he would have no defenses because he was untrained, and why the hell had he come to work today?

“Well, anyway,” said the woman, finally. “If you could just check me in and give me my room key, I’ll get out of your hair.”

She tugged nervously on her light brown braid, her eyes darting around the room as though looking for an escape route.

“Yes!” said Silver, grateful to have the decision taken away. “Yes, let’s see.”

He lowered his hand, peeking under the paper towel, and was relieved to see that the blood had stopped flowing.

He discarded the bloody paper in the black wire wastebasket under his desk.

“What is your name?” His fingers hovered above the keyboard.

“Russo,” she said. “Stephanie Russo.”

He did a quick search, found a reservation, and without bothering to look, grabbed the relevant key off the board on the wall behind him. “Okay, Ms. Russo, you’re in room 105. Out the door, take a right, up the stairs, and another right.”

The key clicked against its tin keychain as he handed it off.

Ms. Russo gave him another nervous glance, then turned around and scurried out the door.