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left but the Host and I wish you well in that world!”
    She matched him, glare for glare; then before he could make a move she was sliding down the tree and running for the house that Finn had called the Gruagagh’s Tower. She moved so fast, thanks to whatever magics that the hob had stitched into her sneakers, that she was at the back door before he was even down the tree.
    “I’ll show you!” she cried to him. Turning, she hammered on the door.
    “Jacky Rowan, no!” Finn cried.
    He knew what she couldn’t, that the Gruagagh was quick to anger; that he had real power, not the small skilly stitcheries of a hob; that if he was roused in anger she would regret it for all the short minutes that remained in her life. But he was too late. The door opened and the Gruagagh was there, tall and forbidding in the doorway. Finn saw Jacky take a halfstep back, then square her shoulders and look up at him. “Mr. Gruagagh,” he heard her say. “Can we talk?” Finn sped across the yard, but the door closed behind them before he reached it. He lifted a hand to knock himself, hesitated, then let it fall back down to his side. For a long time he stared at the door’s wooden slats, then slowly he returned to his perch in the oak tree. He sat there, staring out over the park, at the Big Man and the solitary member of the Wild Hunt. He thought of his cousin, Redfairn Tom, of what had happened to him, and he shivered.
    “It’s all gone bad,” he muttered to himself. “Oh, very bad.”

    CHAPTER FOUR
    « ^ »
    Jacky followed the Gruagagh inside. Moonlight came in through the window looking out on the park, throwing a vague light on what appeared to be a kitchen, only its furnishings seemed vague and insubstantial, shifting and changing as she looked around. One moment the shadowy bulk of a
    refrigerator was by the door, the next it was over by the sink, and then it didn’t exist at all. Ghostly stoves, kitchen tables and chairs, cupboards and counters came and went, never present long enough to quite focus on. In the darker corners where the moonlight didn’t reach, there were rustlings and stirrings, as though small hidden creatures were disturbed by their entrance.
    The Gruagagh lit a candle with a snap of his fingers and the darker shadows vanished. There was nothing in them. There were no ghostly furnishings. The room was empty except for the two of them. Jacky swallowed thickly. Just a trick, she told herself. But now the flickering light banished the shadows from the Gruagagh’s face, and she wasn’t so sure if it being a trick or not made any difference.
    If Finn had seemed a little grim at first, the Gruagagh radiated a forbidding power that made Jacky wish she’d stayed outside in the hob’s tree. His eyes were a piercing blue and he would have been a handsome man except for the scar that marked the whole left side of his face, puckering the skin.
    “They did that… didn’t they?” she said, looking at the scar. “The Unseelie Court…”
    He made no reply. Instead, he sat down in the windowseat that commanded a view of Windsor Park and gazed outside, into the darkness. There was no place for Jacky to sit. She shifted her weight from foot to foot, wondering what had possessed her to come here. The Gruagagh scared her without making a move, without saying a word—and he was one of the good guys. She hoped. She cleared her throat and he looked away from the window, back to her.
    “Why are you here?” he asked.
    His voice was gravelly and low, not cold, but not exactly friendly either. Jacky tried a quick smile, but the set expression of his features didn’t change. He waited for her reply. He looked as though he could sit there and wait forever.
    “I… I want to help,” Jacky managed at last. The Gruagagh smiled humourlessly. “What can you do?” he asked. “Can you command the Wild Hunt?
    Are you a giant-killer? Or perhaps you mean to spirit us all away to some safe haven?”
    Jacky took a quick step