The fact that the Goblin King had appeared suddenly after six years of silence on the labyrinth's end was not the thing that really surprised Sarah. While she was embarrassed about it, she wasn't even really surprised that their most recent meeting had gone sideways enough to leave her roommate with the impression that they were dating, of all things. What surprised her the most was that when she told him to leave, he actually left.
He left an ungodly amount of glitter in his wake, but he left. One minute he was there, and the next, he was not. Poof. Gone.
She hadn't even wished anything.
The next morning she called home before class to make sure that Toby was still there, as he should have been—he was—and she told him over the phone that if any strange men tried to talk to him, he was to kick them between the legs and run far. Toby solemnly promised over the phone to follow all of Sarah's directions and to call her if anything happened. He was acting like it was some sort of game, which didn't bother Sarah; at least it wouldn't scare him—she hoped.
For the entire morning, she saw neither Goblin King hair nor Goblin King hide, though she knew it was too much to ask to keep that as a permanent thing. She fully expected him to pop back up during some extremely inopportune time, like when she was trying to grocery shop, or put gas in her car, or maybe brush her teeth. She did not expect him to swagger in smack in the middle of her European history course, or to make a big show of sitting down next to her. Something about the necessity of paying for classes made her think that they were somehow sacrosanct.
Nobody else seemed to notice that he hadn't been a part of the class for the past few weeks, but they all definitely noticed the way he purposefully invaded her personal space.
"Knock this off," she said through gritted teeth, trying to wrestle her notes back from him without causing too much of a commotion. He let go suddenly, causing Sarah to land heavily back in her chair. "You're being a nuisance. I would have thought you'd have been scarier, considering how many times you tried to kill me before."
He bared his teeth at her in an approximation of a smile. "I can be frightening," he said, and the pen in his hand transformed into a scorpion, which he shoved under her nose. Sarah managed not to scream, though she did make a shrill squeak when she batted it out of his hand. It clattered on the floor, a pen again. "I attempted a search for your brother, of course," he said as if he hadn't just almost caused Sarah to have a coronary event. "It seems that Berwyn's old magic still holds strong. I cannot find you if not called."
"Who…? You know what? I don't even care. Good. You're not going to find him."
He leaned dangerously close, close enough that Sarah could feel her heart thumping in her chest, and smiled into her hair. "I will find out eventually," he said, and kissed the crown of her head. Her elbow only missed his stomach because he was no longer there.
He followed her to lunch and ate half of her French fries. Sarah hadn't thought it was a particularly kingly thing to do, but when swatting his hand away or switching tables failed to work, she simply gave up, bought another order, and left the store.
To his own surprise, he discovered that he rather liked following her around. The human world had made drastic changes since had had last existed in it. The food seemed to be an improvement, though he found it overall to be too noisy for his liking. But Sarah herself was a rare treat; in his occasional dealings with humans, most had cowered before him, or acted with deference that was too humble to be sincere. Sarah did not seem to care about any of that, though he thought it was possible she did not know what he was.
He followed her through a store full of food, which she called a grocery store, and then back to her apartment, where she made him stand outside until she had put everything away. When she came back outside, she stared up and him and puffed her checks out in the way that he now knew meant that she was thinking. Perhaps he had been starved of company for too long, but he was starting to consider her somewhat endearing.
What made her less endearing was the fact that he could detect traces of Berwyn in her. Not in appearance—she was too far away from him for that—but in the tiny sparks of magic that leapt from her skin on occasion. The only thing that held him back from insisting that she was the scion was the memory of the overwhelming magic in the labyrinth. That had not come in spurts or shudders; that had been a tidal wave, ready to crash down on him. And if she was the scion, then her path would undoubtedly take her far away from him.
And here was a secret: the book had not been wrong. While much of it was a lie, too much of reality had seeped into it. The Goblin King did indeed fall in love with the girl, though he wasn't sure if he had granted her certain gifts or not. But the girl was a descendant of Berwyn, and her brother the scion.
He had mixed emotions on that.
When she could think of no more errands to run, they found themselves at a coffee shop that played quiet guitar music. It was the sort of place Sarah thought she might have actually met somebody like the Goblin King, if he had been less Goblin King and more human.
"Why is it, exactly, that you're following me around? If you're really a king, don't you have more important things to do than to be a nuisance?" She tried to act casual, but there was still an undercurrent of anxiety running through her. Somehow, facing off with him had been easier when she was sixteen.
"What a question," he said, as if she had just told a joke. "Of course I have something better to be doing; do you think I am here for the pleasure of your company?" He waved his hand behind him, as if highlighting all of the other invisible things he had to do. "No; if I really must say it again, Sarah, I am here because I have business with your brother."
Sarah huffed, threw a textbook she wasn't using at his head, and opened a different one to a random page. For the next hour she ignored him completely, while he read Shakespearian sonnets. Eventually, both the silence and his staring wore her down.
"Goblin King," she said from over a textbook she had been using as an excuse to watch him. "Were you telling Alyssa the truth? Is your name really Jareth?"
He tilted his head to the side and stared at her for along moment. His gaze clearly made her uncomfortable, and he made no move to tone it down.
"It is one of them," he answered, turning his attention back to one of the textbooks Sarah was neglecting.
"Well, can I call you that?" she asked peevishly. "It's getting really old calling you 'Goblin King' all day, and while I don't want to have another bonding session, it's definitely less of a mouthful. And people will probably stop looking at me funny."
Jareth smiled in response and stood abruptly, offering Sarah a small mock bow.
"As you wish, of course. If you will excuse me, I have some other place to be."
And then she thought he left the coffee shop through the front door, but she couldn't really be sure. He seemed to be there one moment and then gone the next; it was confusing for somebody who had only ever read about magic before.
The rest of the day was suspiciously quiet. Every time she turned a corner, she half expected him to be there in all his leather-clad, confusing glory. She called home again, just to check in, and found that Toby was still safe and untouched. Somehow, this made her feel almost worse; she knew that something was going to happen, but she didn't know what or when. Her hours at the library ticked by at the slowest rate possible, and she spent most of it trying to look up the name that the Goblin King had said more than once. There was nothing in any of the books she could find on Berwyn, though she allowed for the possibility that she was looking in the wrong place. Perhaps the history section wasn't the right place, but she didn't have any other ideas. If this was somebody that Toby—and by extension, probably her as well—was related to, then it had to be a real person.
But there was nothing in any of the mythology books she checked in, either, which was somehow a relief and a disappointment. Sarah wasn't sure which one she should be more irritated at. It seemed that he had never existed at all, and Sarah wouldn't put it past the Goblin King to make something up just to confuse her.
She gave up once she decided that it was safe to leave the library after her shift. Sarah hadn't seen Jareth in a few hours, and she half wondered, half hoped he had gone back to wherever it was that he came from. At any rate, it allowed her to go home and take a bath in peace.
Alyssa came home in the middle of Sarah drying her hair, which would not normally have been a problem at all. The problem was that she brought bad news back with her. Of course, Alyssa didn't know it was bad news; she led a blissfully human life that happily excluded Goblin Kings and their related perils.
"Sarah!" Alyssa called into the apartment. "I bumped into your boyfriend earlier today. He wanted to know where your parents lived because he said he wanted to surprise you with a trip back home. You didn't tell me it's Toby's birthday, by the way, so I'll have to rush out tomorrow and get him a card so you can take it. Anyway, I swore to secrecy, but I figured I would give you a heads up anyway so you can pick out a few cute outfits." Alyssa waggled her eyebrows at Sarah. "If you know what you mean."
"And… you told him?" Sarah asked, trying to keep her voice light.
"Yeah," Alyssa said. "That's not a problem, is it?"
Sarah forced a smile on her face and gave Alyssa a light hug. Sometime later, Sarah would have to tell her that she really, really hated surprises, and to please ask before handing out knowledge about where her family lived, even to people Sarah said were her boyfriends. But it wasn't Alyssa's fault.
When Sarah saw the Goblin King next, she would kill him. She snuck into her room and called her family; it was too late for much of a conversation, and her father asked too many questions when Sarah told him to make sure that Toby was kept inside and checked on through the night.
"I wish," Sarah said exasperated, "that you would just believe me. One of my, uh, classmates said that there's a nasty bug going around. I just want to make sure that none of you get it."
"Sure, Sarah," her father said. "Of course we'll keep an eye on Toby. Wouldn't want him to get sick, after all."
Sarah breathed a sigh of relief, said goodbye, and hung up the phone.
But the Goblin King—she didn't want to call him by his name, not when she was so ready to slaughter him—would undoubtedly still find a way to her little brother. Perhaps he already had; the idea of a changeling was something that Sarah was at least familiar with, even if she wasn't very knowledgeable. And the king had been gone for hours, possibly. Alyssa couldn't remember when, exactly, she had met with him.
Sarah ground her teeth together and slipped into jeans and a tee shirt, throwing her hair into a sloppy, sopping wet ponytail. She grabbed her car keys from her bedside table and clutched them in her fist.
"I wish I could give that horrible Goblin King a piece of my mind."