Page 124 of A Fae in Finance
He frowned. “Not usually to humans,” he said.
Lene’s eyes had fixed on the shimmering magic veil, and her claws dug into my upper arm. I let her latch on to me, relaxing my jaw to breathe through the pain.Treat her like any other cat, I reminded myself.You wouldn’t dislodge a cat for your own comfort.
This was perhaps not conventional wisdom, but I lived by certain principles.
“We cannot go back through the Queen’s Court,” Sahir said, “as she might consider it a second trespass and decide to kill you.”
Delightful.
The corridor was fairly empty, one man in a corner wearing a tan trench coat and another man by the door holding a vape pen. I looked around, trying to determine the time. A large digital clock over the far doorway proclaimed 2:18 p.m.
“Sahir, we need to stop at my parents’ on the way back to the Princeling’s Court,” I said. “I need to see them before I go back to Faerie.”
I expected him to argue, but he only sighed. “I know,” he said.
“They live in Princeton, so we can just get on the train.” I took several confident steps toward the ticketing area, dragging Lene along with me.
“What is a train?” Gaheris asked. “I do not think my sister told me of them when we went to the aquarium.” I wondered if his hair could feasibly look red from a distance. Then I saw that the vaping man had started to back away from us, which answered that question. Unless he’d seen Lene’s furred face. Or her tail.
“A form of transportation that brings you from place to place at great speed,” Sahir said.
When we reached the ticket machine, I stopped and patted my pockets like a dude trying to get out of paying for a date. “I think I don’t have my wallet,” I said, feeling guilty. “I can Venmo you,” I added when Sahir reached for his own pocket.
Sahir slipped a credit card from his autumn-leaf wallet. “I do not know what that means,” he said sagely. “Nor do I care.”
He printed four tickets to Princeton Junction, and I brought us across the station hall to the turnstiles.
“Go through,” I said to Lene, feeding a ticket into the machine.
She stared in horror as the mechanism guiding the glass panels whirred, separating them. “What dark art is this?” she whispered.
Gaheris, displaying a startling presence of mind, shoved her in the back so that she stumbled through.
The gate closed behind her, and she yowled at volume, startling the few other people in the station. When they looked over and saw three faeries, they all looked away again.
I felt a surge of anger at that.
Sahir fed another ticket to the machine and Gaheris sped through, gathering Lene into his arms. He squeezed her until her feet left the floor, and she quieted.
Sahir and I let ourselves into the station and shepherded Gaheris and Lene onto an escalator.
Lene’s keening started again when she realized she was standing on moving stairs.
“I remember this from the aquarium,” Gaheris explained, patting the rubber railing. “It is an excavator.”
“Escalator,” I corrected. “Lene, it’s okay. There’s a motor below us that moves the stairs. It’s all mechanical.”
“I don’t know what any of that means,” she said between howls. My head throbbed.
We stepped off onto the platform, Gaheris lifting Lene bodily so she didn’t fall over. The train sat in the station, doors open.
I glanced at the sign above our heads. “The train leaves in six minutes,” I said to Sahir, my eyes on the highly vocal Lene. “Do we, like…” But I trailed off, well aware that if you knock someone out in real life, they can get a pretty nasty concussion.
He raised an eyebrow in a way that indicated the beginning of a headache and then took Lene’s arm. “Lene, listen to me,” he said. “I come to this world every week. I have survived everything we will do today.”
“You’ve never met my mother,” I muttered, but Sahir ignored me.
“I am going to lead you onto the train,” Sahir said, staring into her face. “It will move, but it will not hurt us.”
