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so damned hard to talk to each other, Noah?”
    Noah’s dark blue eyes went absolutely brilliant with emotion, but before she could speak there was a clink of glass behind him. Immensely relieved at the distraction, Jack turned around. Silvius had poured out several glasses of whisky. He handed one to Jack, offered one to Noah, who refused, then gave a glass to Weyland before turning back to a side table and picking up another for himself.
    Harry, Stella and Walter already had drinks.
    “To your return, Jack,” Silvius said, and raised his glass.
    Weyland grunted, set his glass aside, and turned away.
    Jack downed his whisky in a single draught. “It’s no cause for celebration,” he said. Suddenly all he wanted to do was to get away from this room, and all the tension it contained. “Look, it’s late, and I—”
    “We need to know where you stand,” Stella said. “George was right. We need to finish this. Soon. No one,” she glanced at Grace as she said this, “can survive another hundred or so years of this agony of indecision and reprisal by the Troy Game. It is destroying us all, piece by piece. So tell us, Jack, where do you stand? Are you going to complete the Troy Game and condemn us all to hell? Or will you destroy it, and destroy us as well?”
    “Stella,” Jack said, “I walked away all those hundreds of years ago because Noah destroyed the very ground on which I walked.”
    Out of the corner of his eye Jack saw Noah wince, but he didn’t care. He was too tired to hide behind diplomacy.
    “She shifted everything when she chose to take Weyland as her lover,” Jack continued, “give him a child, and decide she didn’t want to like the Troy Game after all. I don’t know where I am, or whoI want to be. I don’t know where I stand, and I don’t know what choices are open to me, damn it!”
    “Stella,” Harry said, walking over to Jack and taking his glass to put on the tray on the side table with his own, “Jack is tired. He has only just arrived and he needs to rest and find his balance. And we will all need to decide what to do. It is not up to a single one among us, but all of us, to find a way out of the disaster that threatens. Jack, what do you want to do tonight? You can have a room here, or…”
    Thank the gods, Jack thought, that Harry had so adroitly salvaged this conversation. “Did you manage to obtain the lease I sent word to you about?”
    Harry smiled, just slightly, the movement enough to crinkle the skin about his eyes. “Yes. Copt Hall is yours.”
    Jack nodded, and would have said something, but Walter exclaimed first.
    “Copt Hall? But that is a ruin!”
    Harry’s smile broadened a little, and he walked over to a desk and opened a drawer. He drew out a vellum indenture, rolled up and bound with a soft pink light, and handed it to Jack.
    “The lease agreement is between yourself and the Faerie,” he said. “It has no binding on the hall as it stands within this mortal realm, but only how it stands within the Faerie. It was a good choice, Jack, and I was pleased to execute the arrangements for you.”
    “Thank you,” Jack said as he took the indenture and slid it inside one of the pockets of his greatcoat, which he shrugged on.
    He stood a moment, looking about the room, meeting the eyes of everyone there (save Grace, who still had her face averted). “I don’t know what I am going to do,” Jack said softly. “I don’t know where to go and to whom to turn. I don’t know whatawaits any of us. All I know,” he stepped back a pace, “is that I need some solace, and I have no idea where I can ever find it.”
    With that, he walked over to the door leading to the terrace, and let himself out.
    “Jack! Wait!”
    Jack stopped just as he’d been about to walk down the steps leading to the lawn. He turned around.
    Harry was hurrying towards him.
    “Jack, we need to talk about—”
    “For gods’ sakes, Harry, I’m as tired as hell. Can’t it wait?”
    “I’m