A/N: The length of this chapter was getting out of hand, so I polled reviewers (see, all you favouriting and following non-reviewers, you could've been polled, you are missing out) to see whether more frequent, shorter chapters or less frequent, fuller chapters were better. Because ya'll are classy, the preference was overwhelmingly for longer chapters. Except I'd sort of got attached to the idea of splitting the chapter (see all you non-reviewers? you're missing the chance to have your input ignored!) soooo… Actually, it's really more that I need self-imposed deadlines to function.

TW [see profile for key]: (y), (aw)

EDIT (6/29/2016): Updated to incorporate suggestions from my lovely beta, syntheticaesthetic. Find her linked on my profile and in my favourite authors!

Chapter 3

An Eerie Tale to Tell

'And pleasant is the fairy land,
But, an eerie tale to tell,
Ay at the end of seven year
We pay a tiend to hell.'

"Tam Lin," Scottish border ballad (Child 31:A)

Pleased to meet you,
Hope you guess my name.
But what's puzzling you is the
Nature of my game.

"Sympathy for the Devil," The Rolling Stones.

Sarah blinks. "Sorry," she says. "Could you repeat that? I think I heard you wrong."

With that same air of exaggerated patience, he does.

She hadn't.

She gives her head a little shake to clear it. "Is this some kind of a joke?"

"I don't know enough about mortal humour to say," he replies, quirking an eyebrow. "If what you mean to ask is whether I'm in some way deceiving you, then let me remind you that I am doubly bound, by custom and by the terms of the compact, to answer your questions truthfully."

"A metaphor, then," she says, grasping at straws.

He gives another of those strange, birdlike tilts of the head. The gleam of calculation in his eyes is tempered by something else—amusement?

"Souls aren't real," she tells him, half angry, half pleading.

Definitely amusement. "I'm sure it's as you say," he says, with heavy irony, "though it perplexes me that you accepted so readily the existence of the Goblin King, a figure in whom no one in your family and very few in your culture believe, yet refuse to even consider the idea that souls, in which the vast majority of the human race believes, might also exist."

She's really not sure just how her life went this wrong, because here she is, wearing a neon crop top and enough makeup (courtesy of Alisse) to make a mime artist do a double take, stuck in a patch of frozen time outside of an illegal rave, debating theology with the Goblin King.

Her laugh is tinged with hysteria. "I mean, I didn't exactly choose to believe in you. Unlike you, a soul has never whooshed in through my window and carried off one of my family members."

"True," he acknowledges, with a small and private smile. There's something suspicious about that smile—like he's thinking of a joke that only he gets. A soul has never whooshed in through my window…

"Wait," she says, and is as uneasy as she is pleased at the look of consternation that flickers across his face. "Does that mean you don't have a soul?"

"Not necessarily," he says cagily.

"Not—" She stops. If he's still managing to stonewall her, despite the compact, she must not be asking the right questions. "Do you have a soul?"

He bares his teeth—she might have mistaken it for a smile, but for the way his eyes flash. "I have had many souls, precious, thousands upon thousands over the centuries. I have several at present, and hope soon to have one more. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

He leans forward as he speaks. The shift in lighting throws his features into high relief. The high ridges of his cheekbones shine stark and pale above cheeks suddenly rendered hollow with shadow—a skull's face, but for the glittering eyes.

Looking at him, at all his beauty suddenly made eerie and wrong, makes her skin crawl.

She squeezes her eyes shut. "Do you have a soul of your own? One that didn't belong to someone else first?"

She opens her eyes to see his grin widen—how had she never noticed how sharp his teeth were? He dips his head in mocking acknowledgement. The very grace of his movements is a threat.

"I do not."

And she doesn't believe in souls, wasn't raised to believe in souls, but Christ if that isn't the scariest fucking thing she's heard all night. Shuddering, she turns away from him, wiping her sweating palms on her jeans.

"Is that why you want this person's soul? Because you don't have one of your own?"

"In a sense."

Looking back, she sees that he has propped one shoulder against the wall again, and is watching her, the look of studied amusement on his face belied by the fixity of his stare. Now that he's no longer under the light, his face appears normal once more—otherworldly, certainly, but not uncanny. It doesn't matter. She can see the potential now—the bones which lurk beneath the skin.

At least she's starting to get the hang of this questioning thing. "In what sense is it true?"

"There is an undertaking for which souls are valuable. Not having them ourselves, we must look to outside sources."

"What undertaking is that?"

"It's called the Tithe. That is its name and that is what it is."

Oookay. "What's a tithe, then?"

His eyebrows fly up and he tsks in mock reproof. "Sarah, I'm surprised at you! And you used to love your fairy tales so."

"Yeah, well," she mutters, rubbing her nose, "having lived one has kind of put me off the whole thing."

He tilts his head consideringly. "A tithe is a payment—a portion due."

"And in this particular case, a portion of what due to who?"

He wrinkles his nose, as in mild distaste. "A portion of us. I don't know the answer to your second question."

Sarah stares at him in dumbfounded horror. She knows he isn't human—knows his—his—call it "moral sense," for lack of a better word—doesn't work the same way as hers, but this— "Of us—you mean of goblins? You owe a portion of your own people in payment and you don't even know who to?"

"I mean all of us in the Underground, goblins included. And you are correct, I do not know to whom the tithe is paid."

"Then why do you pay?"

He shrugs, as if to say, what can you do? "It is the price for the survival of the Underground."

She gapes at him. "What does that even mean?"

"It means that were the Tithe not paid, the Underground would cease to exist. The land might persist, I don't know, but all those who dwell there—at best, I suppose, we would be cast out, forced to return to this world of salt seas and iron cities. Many Undergrounders are rather more … delicate than I or my goblins. Most would perish. At worst…" He shrugs again. "I really can't begin to imagine."

Sarah raises a hand to her throat, fighting down the first stirrings of real panic. She was prepared to save a life, yes, but this… An entire world? She's not ready for these kinds of stakes. She's only eighteen. It isn't reasonable. It's not—

I wonder what your basis for comparison is, the Goblin King mocks in her memory. She screws her eyes shut and takes a deep breath. If these are what the stakes are, these are the stakes for which she'll play.

"So that's why you take people's souls," she says, and is proud of the evenness of her tone. "To pay this Tithe. So that your people don't have to?"

"In essence, yes."

Christ. "And what happens to them? The souls? After you've paid the Tithe?"

"I couldn't presume to guess."

It's the look of genuine unconcern on his face that gets to her, through the sickness in her stomach and the fear in her chest and throat. "You don't know? You trick these people into giving away their souls to pay your debt and you don't even know what happens to them?"

He gives her a look of mild surprise, then raises a shoulder in an elegant half-shrug. "I don't know what happens to them if they aren't tithed. Who's to say it's not worse?"

"That's—" she stares at him as if truly seeing him for the first time. "That's monstrous."

He sneers. "So you'd have me leave these mortal souls to an unknown fate, ensuring the destruction of my home and my people, rather than assign to them a different unknown fate and preserve the Underground thereby? I admit, I've always found human morality somewhat baffling. Perhaps I'm too much of a monster to see it clearly."

"You twist everything—"

"Same little Sarah. Still so cruel. Still so selfish. Always so righteous, always so willing to cast others as villains rather than look at the world around you and think."

She starts forward and checks herself, shaking with rage. "Same old Jareth," she spits out. "Still so arrogant. Still so persecuted and misunderstood. Still so heartless."

His features twist and he pushes himself off the wall, coming forward. "A bold statement, if anatomically ill-informed. I have a heart, precious. It's a soul I lack, or had you forgotten?" His lips curl back into a jagged, mocking smile. "Though not for much longer."

She stares up into his face, breathing hard. "What do I have to do to save this person's soul from you?"

Something like triumph flashes across his face, but it's gone before Sarah can say for sure whether she imagined it or not.

"Very good," he approves. "There are several courses of action you could take. The first—and the simplest—would be to kill me."

She flinches back from him. Kill him? She couldn't—could she? To save a life?

She puts a hand to her head, suddenly dizzy. Images begin to flicker across her mind—her hand holding a bloodied knife, Jareth below her, a study in red and white, a second, gaping mouth carved into his pale throat—

"Or," he continues, "perhaps slay is a better term. That's the word they use in your legends, isn't it, to describe the death of a monster at the hands of a hero? Yes, you could slay me—"

—both of her hands this time, thrusting a wooden stake through his bared chest, and she can almost feel the bone splintering, the sickening, squelching give as she pushes the stake through his ribcage, straight into the beating heart of which he had boasted not a moment before—

"It's not a task easily accomplished, I grant, but as your particular talent for upheaval and destruction has already been proved several times over upon my subjects, my capital, my castle, and my own person, I have no doubt you could manage."

—the roughness of rope against the unblemished skin of his neck—the weight of a brick in her hand as it crashed down—the silver flash of a needle cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye oh God oh God—

"And after all, I am pacted to answer your questions truthfully. You need only ask how you could most easily kill me, and I will be compelled to—"

"No!" she bursts out, clutching her hands to her face.

He falls silent.

"No," she repeats, more calmly. "No one is dying tonight."

"Well," he says, after a pause, "perhaps that's for the best, then. After all, if you kill me, I won't have the opportunity to save the mortal who is to die tonight. What's more, there's no knowing whether my successor would be able to make up the required numbers before the Tithe comes due. So, if you were to kill me, you'd also be responsible for the deaths of one tenth of the Underground."

One tenth?

"So, I suppose your only other choice is to strike a bargain." He smiles. "Offer me something worth a mortal's soul."

Another bargain. God.

Sarah swallows. "What do you want?"

He throws back his head and laughs. "What do I want? Oh precious, where to even begin?"

"Never mind," she says hastily. "I withdraw the question. What kind of bargain would you accept?"

"What kind of bargain?" he muses, tapping his teeth with a white-gloved finger. He smiles around it. "As I'm feeling quite generous tonight, despite considerable provocation, let's say, a fair one. You were once very much attached to the idea of fairness, as I remember."

Sarah grits her teeth.

"Let's see…" He strikes a thoughtful pose.

Sarah's indignation increases, momentarily overwhelming the anxiety and the fear, because he's enjoying this, the rat—

"Ah, I think this will do admirably. A fair bargain: a life for a death." He pauses, licks his lips, though whether in nervousness or anticipation Sarah couldn't say. "Your death."

She recoils. "My— I'm not going to let you kill me!"

He grins—or at least, his lips curl back and bare his teeth again. "So you do have some instinct for self-preservation. After your performance in my Labyrinth, I had wondered. But I said nothing of killing. It's not your dying I want, but your death." His tone gentles, grows wheedling, but his eyes are feral. "Only give me your death and you may live out your mortal days in peace Aboveground. Pursue some pointless career, wed some fatuous mortal, squeeze out a few brats—"

Sarah chokes. "Excuse me?"

"Grow and age and whither and die as you will, it matters not. But everything that comes after…" The hunger on his face is a terrible thing to behold. "Everything from the moment your soul leaves your body until the last star burns out in the sky will be mine."

A/N: God I love cliff-hangers. I think this fic is uncovering my latent sadistic tendencies. What a journey this is for us all!

Any T.S. Eliot fans catch the reference to "Whispers of Immortality?" (Although honestly, maybe the question should just be, "Any T.S. Eliot fans?" Is that even a thing?)

Also, I know I promised you a bit of action—that's in what is now chapter 4, coming within a week. But it is coming! I've written most of it!

AND I'm happy to say we've finished the exposition-heavy part of our story. I mean, I tried to make it as tense and sexy for ya'll as I could, but when it comes down to it, 50% of the story so far has been Sarah and Jareth just laying out all the background to the main plot while not touching (I'm sorry, the dialogue is like drugs—I get started and I just can't stop). But now that's done and we can get eventful up in hurr! (Woop.)

Songs:

"Sympathy for the Devil," by the Rolling Stones.
"The Killing Type," by Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra (the reason it gets all weird and morbid).

Thanks to Jetredgirl, Honoria Granger, kellyn1604, kittyspike08536, Ebony-Dove, rahnaesmomma, Starcrier, Nanenna, FelineGrace, and Sarah for reviewing!

EXTRA BIG SPECIAL THANKS to CharlotteFox for playing both researcher and research subject about 90s raves—you have been the most obliging and valuable of humans and I am very grateful!

I know I am a cruel and wicked author, but I live for your reviews, I really do! I actually do love you all (in a non-awkward way) who read and review and enjoy.

Silks