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against the tree.  “You must repay the damage you've done.” How?  With what? I can't even guess at how valuable that rose is.
         “That's why you have to let me go back,” the girl reasons.
         I shake my head.  “No, your mortal coin does nothing for me.”
         She closes her eyes and sucks in so much air that her breast grazes my arm.  “What do you want for it?”  There’s an ominous tone to her voice, as if she hates that she’s even asking.
         Good question.  One that I don't have an answer to.  All at once my anger collapses under the weight of my uncertainty.  What can I do to make up for this?   Pulling away, I sheath my dagger.  My eyes find the rose, red as blood against the dark moss and decaying leaves of the forest floor.  I gingerly pick it up.  Such a perfect rose – perhaps the most immaculate rose ever created.  It’s understandable that it caught the girl’s fancy.  I can't imagine why I never noticed it before.
         But then, Jeanette has a way of making even the stupidest thing seem important.
         I straighten.  Where had that thought come from?  I look back at Lovely.  She's staring at me intently, like she expects me to pull my knife on her again. Jeanette?  Is that her name?   Perhaps I heard that man she lives with – her father, I think – call her that?  Out of the corner of my eye one of the brilliant red rose petals falls off the head with a tiny click – as if plucked by an invisible hand.  The girl's eyes follow the petal as it skims to the ground, weighted and calculating, like that petal means the world.  I can't help but stare at it, too, like a tiny version of the rose, blood on the dying earth.  The rose is already fading, already losing life.  And it’s my fault.
         Suddenly overcome with terror at the thought of the petal being alone and lost on the ground, I suck in a breath and scoop it off of the ground.  It’s warm against my palm, as if sitting against flesh for quite some time.  I slip it into the empty pouch at my belt.
         When I look up, she's running away.
     

Chapter 9
     
    Jeanette
     
         I run through the park like the four horsemen of the apocalypse are charging after me.  I run from the Green Man – his intimate hands, his dark, husky voice, and the promising oceanic grey of his eyes.  I run from the threat of his knife and the rose that brought him upon me.  And I run from the heat of his green skin.
         I run until my lungs burn and then I continue to run.  I run as fast as I once ran through these same woods when bells and invisible hooves pursued me by dark of night.
         I pay no mind to the tears being captured by the wind whipping my face.  I pay no mind to my hair being ripped out in clumps by hungry coniferous branches.  I don't care that my legs are stinging and bleeding from thorn bushes.  I don't care about seeing Amber's meet or besting Celeste.
         I almost died.
         I want to get away from him.  But no matter how fast I run the feeling of his hand burns my skin, the wild scent of him floods my nose, and his chiseled features sit in my orbitals like he's hovering over me – still daring me to run.
         I just crossed paths with the unknown, something I thought wasn’t real.
         I skid through the back door, scaring the crap out of Neko-Neko, my cat, and slam it closed behind me.  Shaking, I sink to the floor and continue to sob until my whimpering drowns out my thundering heart.
     

Chapter 10
     
    Tamrin
     
         As I slip through the waygate leading from Earth to Tír na nÓg , I’m greeted, as always, by the site of Alaphos, the troll who guards this side of the gate.
         He bows, though his deep-set, beady eyes betray that he loathes to do it.  “Master Tamrin.”
         I give him a cursory nod, but nothing after.  He doesn’t respect me.  Bowing and calling me master are things he does