Page 11 of A Fae in Finance
The Princeling had never commented on this regulation one way or another.
“Okay, sorry,” I said aloud as the elevator door mercifully opened.
Jeff strode toward the southern turnstile and out into our opulent marble lobby, which had been designed by a man who was apparently trapped in the Parthenon for thirty years and was also apparently twelve feet tall. The security guard leaned against a fluted column, glaring inward at the vast misery of his own psyche. I waved at him, but he didn’t see me.
When we reached the glass revolving doors, Jeff shoved forward forcefully. I scurried into the next slot.
It was late enough that the sun had phoned it in and hung in the sky unenthusiastically, pierced by spires. But the city shone bright and angry around us, pulsing with life. Across the street I saw a gaggle of middle schoolers, wearing sweatpants and flinging their skateboards around, shrieking like banshees. Behind them, three banshees sat sedately conversing at the wine bar we sometimes went to after work, nursing long-stemmed glasses of red.
A giant delivery truck rumbled to a stop in front of them,Tornado & Sons Tender Tenderloinsemblazoned in green on the side.
“Tornado tenderloins are tough,” Jeff told me. “Werewolf owners. They probably chew the cows to death. And their logo isn’t centered on the truck. Bad design, I don’t know how they sell anything.”
Before I could respond, a gaggle of cargo-shorts-clad tourists who’d clearly bought Yankees caps as camouflage started gasping and pointing. A few New Yorkers leaving work in their somber black suits also cast surreptitious glances away from their phones and toward the commotion.
Following their focus, I saw a faerie knight turn onto our street, astride the biggest horse I’d ever seen (though in fairness, the only other living horses I’d seen were the carriage-pulling ones in Central Park).
The knight was resplendent in perfectly tailored monochrome, silvery garb that glittered in the halogen streetlights. Her sparkling silver hair cast sharp shadows across her even sharper cheekbones. Her somber silver eyes glinted in the dying summer sunlight, so bright even down the street that they made the orange cast of early evening seem dim. She radiated confidence, like she was the protector of any land she set foot on, not just her own home in Faerie.
The Gray Knight, in the flesh.
She led two other horses, each half as wide as a car, and stopped in front of us. When the Gray Knight slid off her horse—a gorgeous dappled gray, twice as tall as Jeff—she turned to me first and inclined her head.
“My lady,” she said, her hand outstretched. I went to shake it, but she brought my hand to her lips and kissed my knuckles, staring up at me through the thick fringe of her lashes. “May our first real meeting be a boon and a blessing.”
“I am honored to meet you in person, fair one,” I replied.Fair onejust felt like the move, I don’t know. But it seemed to please her, because she smiled against my fingers and pulled away.
I glanced at Jeff, who had shifted so his own hand dangled in front of him, limp and ready for a kiss.
She straightened. “Jeff,” she said, staring at him. He dropped his hand back to his side.
“Gray,” he said.
The Gray Knight gestured toward the horses. “I bring you transport for our evening’s revel,” she said. She led me to the nearer horse, a brown animal with an almost golden mane. “Let me help you mount,” she said, holding her hand out to me.
Jeff chortled behind us.
“Thank you,” I said, reaching for her. She ignored my proffered hand. In a fluid motion, she slid both hands around my waist, thumbs under my backpack, and before I could gasp, she’d lifted me onto the horse.
I was startled: That lift would’ve been a challenge for almost any human, and she’d done it with neither fanfare nor difficulty. A not unpleasant shiver ran up my spine. I shook my head and tried to ground myself, splaying my hands on the horse’s neck.
Though I could have sworn the horse’s back was bare when I stood on the ground, I sat in a saddle with a round knob protruding from the front.
“What’s their name?” I asked, shifting forward on the horse’s back and patting the thick neck.
She looked up at me, her gray eyes swirling with stars. “A name is a powerful thing,” she said. “But you may call her Sparkles.”
“Sparkles?” I repeated.
The Gray Knight had already moved toward Jeff, who seemed determined not to accept her help. He kept trying to climb the other horse, his hands grabbing awkwardly at its back and side. He’d hitched one foot against the horse’s leg, and I was shocked that he hadn’t been trampled to death.
She examined him for a moment, her head cocked predatorily, and then put both of her hands on his side and shoved him up, like a barrel over a waterfall. And then she went back to her own silvery-gray horse—were theymatching?—and sheleapt. She was like a lion in a nature documentary, or like Doctor Kitten trying to get on a counter. She tensed, and I could almost imagine a tail twitching as she found equilibrium—
No. I wasn’t imagining it; she had a tail, a thin silver one, like a birch branch against the sky. I gaped at it, hypnotized—they didn’t all have tails… did they? The Princeling had wings. How did I not know that faeries could have tails?
Our horses moved of their own accord, into a single-file line going down 44th Street. Jeff had righted himself, though he rode before me like a man who had never straddled anything in his entire life. In front of him, the Gray Knight sat comfortably astride her horse, her shoulders back and her head twisting from side to side as she took in her surroundings. Whenever she looked at me, I felt my back straighten, my shoulders pull away from my ears. Our eyes met and I flushed, flustered by the force of her full inhuman attention. I looked away.
“Sparkles, do you obey traffic laws?” I asked the horse, patting her shoulder. She didn’t say anything, but her ears tilted back.
