Sarah heard the commotion before she even reached the bottom of the tower. The goblins were excited about something, and anything that excited them, Sarah thought, couldn't be anything good.

As she entered the throne room, she saw Jareth seated in his throne, staring intently into a crystal cradled in his hands. A goblin carrying something small and giggling went by at a skipping run. There were other goblins doing very much the same thing, or variations of it, all over the place. There were babies everywhere; crawling on the floor, pulling on the goblin's ears and fur, even playing patty-cake for Christ's sake. She saw two goblins tossing a little boy back and forth to each other, the child squealing in either terror or glee—she couldn't actually tell which.

"Jareth, what—" A baby of indeterminable sex, came flying toward her and she threw up a hand immediately to block it. The child froze and hung suspended in the air in front of her, laughing delightedly.

Grumbling to herself, Sarah took the baby in her arms and handed it back to the goblin who had thrown it. "Don't do that," she scolded it. It gave her a sheepish look and trotted off with its prize held triumphantly over its head.

"Jareth, what the fuck is going on?" She demanded, striding over to glare down at the crystal ball. The image was so distorted that she couldn't tell what they were supposed to be looking at. "You're going to give yourself eye-strain," she told him.

He lifted his head and handed her the ball. "See for yourself," he said.

Sarah took the crystal and squinted into it. Inside, she recognized the wall and the gates that opened into the Labyrinth, and outside it, there were people. Lots of people. So far, they had been unable to get the gates to open for them, and a few of the more adventurous—or desperate—individuals had taken to climbing the wall. They weren't making much progress—whenever one of them seemed to be getting close to the top, their foot would slip in some lichen or slime.

"It would seem," Jareth said, then paused. He appeared calm, but she had come to know him a little better in the months since she first began living in the Castle, and she knew that he was angry. Probably very angry. The Goblin King was not one of those men who lost control in his anger; he gained it to an even greater degree. "It would seem that someone . . . someone wrote a book. A book that has been published," he said, giving her a meaningful look. "And, that someone was foolish enough to put the words in it. The words, Sarah, exactly as they must be said to banish children into the Underground. Now I wonder, who could have done such an abysmally stupid thing?"

Realization was like a thunderbolt. Sarah gasped and looked around at all the children in wide-eyed horror. "Oh no! Jareth, I . . ."

He nodded. "I thought as much. With your affinity for the written word, it almost had to be you."

"Jareth, I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't think—"

"That's obvious."

She glared at him and tossed his crystal back to him. "I am trying to apologize here. Don't be an asshole."

He lifted a brow at that and snapped his fingers, popping the crystal like a bubble. "Fine. I will accept your apology on one condition."

Sarah rolled her eyes. "What do you want this time, Goblin King? My first born child?"

He went suddenly very still, his gaze sharpening on her face in a way that made her shift uncomfortably.

"It's just a figure of speech," she assured him. "Don't get any ideas. I am not, nor have I ever been, interested in babies. They are manifestly uninteresting creatures by nature."

"I suppose that means you're not going to be begging me for one of your own anytime soon."

"Ha! No, I don't think so," she said. He was teasing her again, and she much preferred a teasing Jareth to an angry one. Angry Jareth could be mean. "Besides, baby-making may be fun, but the resultant baby sort of puts a cramp in your sex-life—or so I've heard."

Jareth grinned and unfolded himself from the throne so that he could look down at her. He caught a strand of her hair, still wet from the shower, between his fingers. "We definitely don't want that."

She smiled back at him, amused. "That's what I thought you'd say."

"Did you indeed?" he murmured, lowering his mouth until she could feel his breath on her lips. He gave her a quick, light kiss on the forehead and turned to pace away from her. "Back to my condition . . ."

Sarah glared wrathfully and folded her arms under her breasts. "Don't think I'm going to let you get away with that," she said.

"What?" He said, all confused innocence.

"You," Sarah said, marching up to him and jabbing a finger at his chest, "are a goddamn tease, and don't think for one minute that I don't see what you're trying to do. Whatever it is, the answer is no."

"Who else would you suggest I leave these precious little darlings too?" Jareth asked, gesturing with one hand to encompass all the crawling little children.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me," Sarah said. "I said I'm sorry, and I am. And don't you look at me like that. You may be good, honey, but nobody's that good."

"But you're human," Jareth pointed out.

"So?"

"And you're a woman."

"You noticed that too, did you?"

He raked his hands through his hair and tilted his head back like he was praying for divine intervention. "Look," he said patiently, "I have to go to the gate at the beginning of the Labyrinth. I have to tell these people the rules, and I have to let them in. Should any of them actually reach the Castle, I'm sure they would take it rather hard if their child was missing some of its limbs when they got it back."

Sarah sat down in the recently vacated throne, leaned back, and crossed her legs. "You're not actually going to make them all run the Labyrinth, are you?"

He gave her a puzzled look. "Yes."

"Can't you just . . . give the children back?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"It's against the rules," he said. "Don't you think I'd give them back if I could? One child I can handle—it can even serve as an interesting diversion—but there must be twenty of them—"

"At least."

"Yes," he agreed. "And believe it or not, I don't fancy having my throne room turned into a nursery."

"Can't you just break the rules this once?" Sarah asked. "After all, they're your rules."

"Some of them are," Jareth said. "But not this one. This one is the Labyrinth's."

Sarah blinked and sat forward. "What do you mean by that?"

Jareth sighed and conjured a chair to sit in. "Everything in the Underground gains its power through belief in the Aboveground. The power of every magical creature is in direct proportion to how many mortals have heard its stories, or songs, or how many humans superstitiously cross themselves when they speak its name. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Sarah said slowly. "But what does this have to do with the Labyrinth? It's not a living creature, it's an inanimate object."

"But it's an object of power," Jareth said. "And as such, gains or loses its power through human belief. I can't just give the children back because that would break its power. Those humans standing outside the gates would never see inside it, and when they went back, when they read this book you have written, they wouldn't believe. They would believe in me, because I have stolen their children, and they would not forget that. But they would not have seen the Labyrinth, they would not have endured its trials to save their young ones, so they would disbelieve. And disbelief is a thousand times more destructive than non-belief."

Sarah put her face in her hands with a sigh. "I'm sorry Jareth. I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

He reached out and lifted her face with a hand under her chin. "I know."

"I'll take care of the kids," she said. "Make sure the goblins don't eat them."

His lips twitched at that, then he stood. "I'll be as quick as I can," he promised.

"Jareth," she said, not looking at him. "How many of them do you think will make it?"

He was silent for a long time, and she thought he wouldn't answer, then he said, softly, "Not many."

She watched him slip his skin and become the white owl in a fog of glitter, then, feeling guilty and a little sad, she waved her hand and turned a passing goblin into a teddy-bear.