2. Princess

Soundtrack for Chapter 2:

Velvet Underground: "Venus in Furs"
Stone Temple Pilots: "Sour Girl"

She stared at him in shock. Everything in her rejected his reality, but at the same time, her eyes drank him in. His clothes were all in shades of brown and red, and his pendant winked out like a gold eye between the lids of his half-open red shirt. He wasn't wearing the make-up he'd affected last time she'd seen him, and he'd drawn his hair back tight against the nape of his neck, showing his slightly pointed ears. He could pass totally unnoticed in the streets of Manhattan, but she would never mistake him for anything human.

The shock to her was that he was still beautiful to her, and she hated him for that. She hated the way he used it against her, making her feel, with an evaluating look of his own, small and grubby and babyish.

"Well?" he asked.

She turned on her heel and ran for the door on instinct, pure panic.

"Where are you going?" his voice followed her.

"Away from you!" she cried, struggling with her boots. Her eyes flicked back and forth between her suitcase and her backpack, and chose the backpack. She felt that sickness again, vomit rising in her throat, and she had to pause to pinch her upper lip again, take time to breathe again, shallow gasps that gave his voice time to find her around the corner, speak low and pliant as if his lips were next to her ear.

"You certainly could leave, Sarah. I can't stop you. But then, I'd be left all alone with your mother. Are you willing to let that happen? The consequences could be… dire."

Cornered, she thought, slumping against the wall. He was holding her mother hostage against her, just like he'd once used Toby. You son of a bitch.

When she went back to the living room, he was slouching in his chair again, a goblet balanced precariously on the upholstery between his vulgarly-spread thighs.

"Your boots don't match," he said mildly. "Is that the fashion these days?"

"What are you doing here?" she asked, chest heaving. "What have you done with Jeremy? What are you doing with my mother?"

"Jeremy and Linda split up some months ago, Sarah. You'd know this if you'd been following her press. It was quite the nine-days' wonder. I'm filling in that rather copious vacancy in your mother's life until she finds a new man to ensnare. But at this particular moment, I suppose what I'm doing is offering you a hot drink. The hippocras came out very well. Do you want some?" He poured out a second goblet and handed it out to her.

"Like the last time I took something from you?" Sarah hissed. She smacked the drink out of his hands where it made a stain on the fluffy white rug, like blood in snow. "I want you to leave. Now. Get out of here!"

"I can't. I've been summoned. I have duties," he drawled. "And unless you'd like to accept the offer I made you some six months gone, I'm not your slave, to do your bidding." He drew a circle around the rim of his glass with one slim white finger. Slowly, he dipped that finger into the hot wine, and then brought it to his lips, sucking it clean. His eyes never left hers, and she felt herself blushing.

Oh yes, she remembered his offer very well. She had ignored it in the final moments of the game, believing it just a last-ditch effort to distract her… but afterward, days after the victory celebrations, in the dark of night as she lay naked between clean sheets, she had remembered. And she had wondered, as she had traced her cold fingertips down her sides, what it might be like, to surrender everything to him, and in return, have him be there for her, be … something she couldn't quite imagine. Something adult. Something… luxurious, decadent, wicked. Sexual, certainly; the pleasure come with a series of little jangling shocks that sent her flesh afire. Then she had wondered if he was somewhere there, outside, watching. She had been left embarrassed. She was embarrassed now.

He was still looking at her with that sensuous smile on his face, as if he were tasting all her thoughts and finding them savory. "By the gods of hell, you've only become more lovely in your ripening. Your pale face and your red lips. You're ready for me now."

Sarah's mouth dropped open, appalled. "You're disgusting," she snapped.

He gave her a lazy and knowing look in return. "Deny it if you must; we don't have time for me to force your confession. There are three hours left, perhaps less than that, before your mother returns. I can tell you much to your profit, if you ask me the right questions."

Another pang of fright caught her heart. "Does she know?" Sarah quavered. "Does she know just what you are?"

"Oh yes," Jareth said, setting his goblet aside and advancing on her. "Linda Williams knows me exact. What she doesn't know is that you had a little adventure in my Labyrinth recently. She doesn't know that we're intimately acquainted. And if you wish to avoid an untimely death, you won't tell her." He had backed her against the wall, leaning over her. She could smell cloves on his breath, could smell him, the scent of his male heat, beneath his clothes. She trembled as he reached out a naked hand, as if to stroke her hair. "You can't possibly know how much I've been looking forward to seeing you again, Sarah," and his voice was a lover's murmur.

"You have no power over me," she said, wielding the words like a shield.

He rolled his eyes. "Most certainly not. This is well-established."

"Then back off," she said, hating that her voice shook. But he obliged, as quickly as if she were fire and might burn him. "There's no point talking to you. I can't believe anything you say."

"I've never lied to you."

"No?" This was a disturbing idea, too frightening in its implications to be considered at this moment. He wasn't to be trusted. He opened his mouth to say more, but her panic overwhelmed her. "Shut up," she told him. "Just shut up."

The words died between his lips, and he backed up another step. His face was white with frustration. Clearly he wanted to say things to her—slimy innuendo, upsetting compliments, cruel flirtation. But he couldn't. Could it be…

"Stand on one leg," she commanded him, with sudden insight.

Teeth clenched, the Goblin King obeyed her, tucking one ankle behind his knee.

"Jump up and down," she said, unable to believe what she was seeing. Silently, lips a white scar as they held his words back, he hopped on one foot.

"No way," she breathed. "You have to do what I say? You have to do what I say!" She laughed hysterically. "Oh my God, you have to do what I say!" She caught her breath, hugging herself with joy. How was this even happening? "Stop," she told him. He stopped jumping. After a moment, he slowly lowered his leg and stood with both feet on the floor. The anger in his face had darkened to something more like hatred.

"Why is this happening? Is it some trick?" She pressed her hands over her mouth. Maybe the train had crashed and she was dead, or in a coma, or maybe it was yesterday and she was asleep. "Speak!" she told him. "Talk to me!"

"Don't do that to me again!" and for the first time, his voice had the whipcrack edge of temper. Sarah flinched, feeling little-girlish and ashamed. "How would you like it, if someone turned you on and off, like flipping a switch? I'm not your plaything."

I wish you were, she thought defensively, and the words were half out of her mouth before he thundered, "Stop!" He held up a hand in warning, or in defense. "Have a care for what you say to me, little witch. Some words cannot be unsaid." His eyes burned shame into her like twin brands, one black, one blue. "Your mother ought to have taught you better. Throwing your power around, willy-nilly, not giving a damn for what it does so long as you get your way."

"You've got some nerve, telling me about throwing power around. You fairy thing," she returned, defensive in the wake of feeling like she owed him an apology. I don't owe him a thing, her mind shrieked, even as another part of her questioned whether, perhaps, she did.

She circled around him warily, as if he were a strange dog who might bite, and came to the endtable where his half-full goblet sat, waiting. She had never wanted a drink more in her life. "Tell me, what will happen to me if I have a cup of this?"

He huffed with impatience. "You'll become drunk. It's very potent."

"Nothing else?"

"I suppose you might choke on it," he said with a growl, clenching and unclenching his hands, "But that's probably too much to hope for. Come on, hurry up, you stupid girl! Ask me questions. The right questions!"

She poured wine into his own goblet and drank deep, and slowly, asking nothing. She narrowed her eyes at him over the rim. Somehow, she trusted him more when he was outright insulting than when he was attempting to seduce her. What was his game this time? What was the point of all this?

"Sarah," he said in a new tone, attempting a new route, conciliatory and pleading. He held out his hands. "You think I'm here as your adversary. You have every reason to think so, given what happened between us last time. But circumstances are changed. I want to be your friend, your helpmeet, if you'll just let me." His face, for one slim moment, was open and vulnerable. She saw fear there, and a terrible tenderness.

"Why?" she asked, not impressed. "Why should I believe that? Why do I need saving?"

"Your mother is a witch, and you are her competition, Snow White. The Hunt is on, and tonight she's determined to finally have your heart in a box, fairest of them all."

"Oh my God!" She wanted to throw her glass down at his feet, but two stains on the carpet would be a bit excessive. Instead, she stamped her foot on the floor, feeling she could crack the tile under her heel. "You prick, you unbelievable prick. No, stop," she said, as he opened his mouth to say more. "I'm done with you. I need time to think. You say you can't leave the apartment?"

"No," he said, whisper slim as a knife.

"Go stand out on the balcony then. I need a shower and a change of clothes, and I want you as far away from me as possible. If I can't get rid of you, I can at least put you some kind of outside."

Looking over his shoulder at her as he did so, he opened the French doors and stepped out. His feet made soft tracks in the heavy blanket of virgin snow. He glared at her as she tossed him his coat, a leather in red so saturated it was almost black, the skeletons of leaves the lace in the seams. She shut the doors on his face.

"Turn around and look the other way," she told him through the glass, finishing off the wine. "I don't want you peeping." She watched in wonder as he obeyed, and she still couldn't quite believe it. More snow had begun to fall, in heavy wet leaflike flakes. She smelled the wine as she drank it, heard the sound of the city streets, snatches of songs from buskers, the chirps of whistles, snatches of shouts and calls from human beings, and the beeping chorus of car-horns. And she saw in the last of the afternoon light how the snow melted against his pointed ears and down his neck, how his shivering made his entire body tremble.

Good, she thought. Very good. This is exactly as it should be. I wonder, if I make him stay out there, will he die? Can things like him be made to die, if they're commanded to? The idea was completely satisfying.

She left off staring at him and hauled her luggage to her room.