Prologue: New Client


So you might wonder what someone does with advanced degrees in both mythology and criminology. It's a reasonable question, which my parents never tired of asking me during my time at Cambridge and UMaryland. My answer, since I have a serious hero complex, was to (a) take freelance writing and forensic consulting work to keep a roof over my head, and (b) hang out my virtual shingle to keep my soul from starving.

Which shingle might that be? The occasional heroine one, of course. True, it's a less common profession these days, but if you advertise in the right places, clients come a-knockin'.

It turns out the supernatural world tends to need official heroes more often than the everyday world does. It's just the way things are. Mythology didn't steer me wrong on that.

So I'm never all that surprised when the supernatural gives me a ping, asking for help at odd hours of the day and night. These days it's most likely to be a text message relayed from one of the various forums I'm connected to. Standard procedure: Have whoever it is meet me in a well-lit public venue and find out what's up. I'm fond of this little twenty-four hour hipster coffee place - they make a damned fine latte.

I've done this a fair amount. The hipster baristas know me by name anyway, and they don't bat a mascaraed eyelash at the string of odd folk I meet there.

So I suppose it's somewhat ironic that I was the one blinking rapidly in jaw-clenching shock at my latest prospective client. Those crystalline eyes and patrician features, that cornsilk hair - I'd know him anywhere. And never mind the fey grace that dripped like spiced honey from his lean frame. That was just an aesthetic bonus.

Jareth, the Goblin King, had come waltzing into my coffee joint, his John Fluevog boots clacking authoritatively against the floor with every step. He clearly hadn't lost his distinctive fashion sense and was being covertly appreciated by every hipster in the place. I sensed a run on Fluevogs in the immediate future.

Meanwhile, I struggled valiantly to recall my powers of speech. In my defense, I've been doing this for seven years, and it's never been Jareth before. It's also never been wrapped in a such a major come-hither aura.