Read A Kind of Magic for Free Online Page B

to be in horse form. I suppose they may not have had the strength to venture out while the Realm was waning, but have been revived recently.”
    She felt a sinking feeling in her gut that she knew had nothing to do with bad takeout coffee. “Oh. So it’s because of Sophie and Nana, then?”
    “It’s not only the good things about the Realm that were reawakened. But I will let the queen know what’s happening.”
    “Good. Then we can leave Sophie out of it so she can focus on the ballet. Oh, I forgot to tell you, she’s going to be dancing in The Nutcracker here. It’s a big deal. You should go see it. I think you’d like it.” With a grin, she added, “It even has fairies in it, though not any you’d recognize. Sophie’s the Snow Queen. I have shown excellent restraint in not saying anything about her being any kind of ice princess, no matter how tempting that is.”
    The world around them suddenly changed. The last time she’d seen something like this it had been mostly a market with some entertainment. This was more of a concert festival with a few booths. A band was playing in the bandshell, and the ground around the bandshell was full of fairies dancing wildly. Emily had been cold a moment before, but the eternal summer of the Realm had apparently come with the revel, and she soon had to unbutton her coat.
    As tired as she’d been after the night’s performance, her toes started tapping to the music. Within a minute, she put her coffee cup down and grabbed Eamon’s hand. “Come on, let’s dance.”
    As they whirled around in front of the stage, it occurred to Emily that she was doing the same thing she feared her castmate had done: dancing the night away with fairies. The difference was that she was doing so consciously. When she woke in the morning, sore and exhausted, she’d know exactly why.
    But that made her wonder if there were any humans here who didn’t know what they were doing. It was hard to tell exactly who was human and who was fae, since the fae could appear human and the humans who spent time in the Realm took on a fae quality. She also didn’t know if someone taken to dance all night would look like she’d been hypnotized or if she’d be fully conscious now and just have her memory wiped later. Her best course of action, she decided, was to look for people she knew. She knew most of the Broadway dancers in New York, at least by sight, so if she noticed someone she’d ever been up against in an audition, she’d investigate further.
    It was hard to do that while keeping up with a fast jig. It didn’t help that she was having so much fun that she kept forgetting to look out for people she knew. She couldn’t help but wonder if she’d ever been taken to dance and didn’t remember it. There had been that one time when she was a teenager and Sophie came to get her, but she’d been awake then. Recalling that incident, she figured that no fairy would have dared take her after that. They wouldn’t have been brave enough to face the wrath of Sophie, even before she became the queen.
    The next song was slower, so she had a chance to catch her breath. That is, until Eamon pulled her closer and she became breathless again for an entirely different reason. “Do your people do this sort of thing often?” she asked, speaking directly into his ear.
    “Dance?”
    “Bring humans to dance with you. Like, do you ever take people away, dance with them all night, then bring them back and make it so they don’t remember?”
    “I certainly don’t. But I am not much of a dancer.” He was better than many professionals she’d danced with, but he did seem almost clumsy compared to the other fae, so she didn’t argue the point with him.
    “But others do?”
    “It is done.”
    “How would you know if it happened to someone?”
    “They’d be tired even though they slept all night. And they might be sore, but not know why.”
    “Well, yeah, but a lot of people feel like that naturally.” At