A/N: YOU GUYS I HAVE A BETA NOW. To her credit should go all noticeable increase in quality and/or coherence. Her name is syntheticaesthetic and she is awesome and talented, and if you're into The Walking Dead or Marble Hornets, you should RUN NOT WALK to go check out her stuff! You can find her linked on my profile, or in my favourite authors.

TW [see profile for key]: (s), implied (t), (ae), implied (ag), implied/attempted (aq), referenced (as), (aw), implied (ay)

Chapter 4

Satan, Settle Down

My death waits like an old roué,
So confident I'll go his way:
Whistle to him and the passing time.

"My Death," Jacques Brel via David Bowie.

Satan, settle down.
Keep your trousers on.
You can warm the globe, but leave my wretched soul alone.

"A Children's Crusade on Acid," Margot and the Nuclear So & Sos

She shuts her eyes, but she can still feel his gaze on her, a crawling, prickling heat, and she wants to tear it from her skin. She wants to press her hands over her ears and curl up into a ball and scream. She wants her mother, she wants her father, she wants to be miles away, she wants anything else, anyone else, anywhere else just as long as it's not this. It's too much. It's too much.

But she's the hero. That means she doesn't get to break, and she doesn't get to quit.

She rakes her hands down her face, then opens her eyes and says, with a tolerable assumption of calm, "So, I'd be the tithe payment in their place, then."

"No." He gives a strange lurch, as if he'd been about to lunge forward and restrained himself only at the last minute.

She flinches away from the force of his reply, staring. She's never seen him so agitated—never imagined him capable of agitation. Anger, yes: cold and cruel and slow as ice, or hot and clean as fire, but never this. He looks wrong. Unstable, as if he were a house of cards teetering on the verge of collapse.

"I have served," he mutters, staring into space, clenching and unclenching his fists. His face works furiously, emotions flickering over his face too fast for Sarah to recognize, let alone name. His eyes look almost black the pupils are so swollen, and his hair—are those feathers in his hair? "For centuries, I have served. I am owed—"

He breaks off, catching sight of her face. She meets his gaze and it's like staring into an open wound, raw and bleeding.

"Not you," he says, more gently, but with a fervour that is far more frightening than any of his fury. "Never you. Only promise me your death and I will make any oath that will satisfy you."

All of a sudden she can't stand there a moment longer, bearing the weight of that gaze. She turns away, and in a few steps, reaches the other corner of the alcove. She props her arm against the wall and rests her head against it, relishing the roughness of the wall against her skin. Because anything which distracts her right now is welcome, even if that something is pain.

He makes some noise and she hears him step forward. She reaches behind her and thrusts out her free hand, palm outstretched. The sound of movement ceases.

"I'm thinking," she says, harshly.

She is thinking, trying desperately to work it all out: what he's asking, what he's offering, what it is he actually wants. What's at stake. If she said yes… she'd be saving the life of someone whose… whose death would impact her when she died? She thinks again of Alisse.

And she'd be free of him—free of the magic, free of the Underground, free to live out the rest of her life in peace. Isn't that what she wants? Isn't that what she deserves?

But after—and she's not sure she even believes in after, even now, but if she's wrong… She thinks of the hunger on his face and shivers. She'd belong to him. Forever. Or as good as.

A wave of revulsion rises in her. No. Never.

She squares her shoulders and turns around to face him. "No deal. What else would you accept?"

His face shutters. After a few moments, he says, with something approaching his earlier ease, "In that case, you could always wish me away a replacement."

It must be a particular talent of his, because the fact that there's anything that can still throw her after what's happened so far tonight is astonishing. "You want me to wish someone away to you? Again? Are you insane? I'm not going to sacrifice one person just to save another!"

"Ah, but Sarah," and if she hadn't already known he could be cruel, that glinting smile, the mockery in his eyes would have been evidence enough, "consider. You'd be saving far more than one life. A mortal soul is a valuable thing—far more valuable than the lives of any of my people." There is a brief and bitter twist to his mouth. "But a living human? For the sacrifice of one living human, you would spare a thousand souls."

She remembers sitting in the cafeteria, and Ernie Ling plopping down across from her with a truly evil grin, announcing that he was doing a project for Philosophy, and asking, if they could prevent a fatal train accident by diverting the train onto a track with a person standing on it, would they? What about two people? Or five? Would they push someone off the platform onto the track, if that would stop the train from crashing?

She remembers the way Alisse rolled her eyes and told Ernie he was a freak, and anyway, obviously a whole train full of people was more important than five people, why was he even bothering to ask? And the way the whole group was willing to sacrifice the life of, as Monica Lewis put it, "the kind of idiot who hangs around on train tracks anyway," but after that, opinions began to diverge and everyone fell into debating, drawing, erasing, and redrawing lines in the sand.

She remembers the look of satisfaction on Ernie's face as he watched them argue, and the nausea building in the pit of her stomach with each successive question, each new and increasingly horrible iteration of the moral dilemma. She remembers wondering what was wrong with her, and why it didn't feel like a hypothetical. Why it felt like some huge, momentous choice, like whatever she said now would be entered in some great cosmic ledger—like whatever choice she made would be somehow graven in stone, irreversible. Inevitable. She remembers Ernie turning to her at last with that cocky grin, not knowing, not knowing, and she remembers, 'What about you, Williams? I know you've got an opinion to share,' and the rest of the table turning to look at her and opening her mouth and—

She remembers the sick, guilty, blessed feeling of relief that rushed through her as the bell rang. She remembers thinking, Thank god, not today.

"No," she says, not looking at him. "That's—that's not my call to make. No one should have that kind of responsibility."

"Someone has to. Why not you? Surely you'd be a better candidate than I. Surely the hero is far better equipped to sort the righteous from the unrighteous than the villain. You've always fancied yourself the hero, haven't you, Sarah? Call it…heroic responsibility." He savors the last two words.

She flick her eyes to his and then looks quickly away again. How she hates him in that moment, for knowing her—for daring to know her—and for using that knowledge as a weapon.

"No," she says, and it's herself she loathes now for how lost and lonely and desperate and afraid she sounds—herself, and him most of all for hearing it. "No. I won't. I won't. No!" She catches her breath on a near shriek.

Keep it together, Williams.

She inhales. "What else?" she asks, voice far from steady.

"I'm afraid you'll have to be a little clearer with your questions, precious."

"What else can I offer you as a bargain, so that you'll save this person's life and leave their soul alone?"

He looks at her coolly. "There's nothing you could offer me."

"What?" Sarah goggles, her heart begin to race. "But—"

"I have offered you two bargains with fair and reasonable terms, and you have refused them both. Quite emphatically. I know of nothing else that you can offer me that would be worth this soul."

And there must be something wrong with the air because her throat is closing up and she can't breathe she can't breathe. And there must be something wrong with her vision because she's looking at him but she can't seem to focus properly. She knuckles her eyes, but it's still like looking through a tunnel, and her heart is racing and all she can hear is the sound of doors closing. Wrong choice, something sings in the back of her mind. Wrong choice! Wrong, wrong!

"How else can I stop you?" she manages.

"There are several ways you could have stopped me, if only you had come prepared. But now? No other method is known to me."

She massages her throat, fingers almost brutal, willing her airways to open—her pulse to slow. "Doesn't matter," she says. "Do you hear me, Goblin King? It doesn't matter. I'm still going to stop you."

A flash of teeth. "You can certainly try."

"I'm done," she says, struggling to keep her voice calm. "I— This is— We'redone. No more questions. Just—just snap your fingers or whatever and let me go!"

Not waiting for a response, she whirls around, not even sure of her direction just so long as it's away.

A hot, prickling itch begins under her skin and a faint buzzing drone fills her ears. She stops, massages her ears and temples with the heels of her hands. She takes another step. The prickling and the buzzing increase. She stops again.

"Forgetting something?" His voice comes from behind her. "Not very pleasant, is it?"

"I— What did you do to me?"

"Not I. I, as you take such delight in pointing out, have no power over you. It is the compact, demanding that its terms be fulfilled."

Her mind is racing. What—?

"A lock of your hair," he reminds her with a mocking lilt. "Chosen by me, cut by you, and given to me."

"Right," she says, shaking her head to clear it. She turns around, takes a step towards him. The buzzing and the prickling fade. "Okay. Just—point out the lock of hair you want, I guess, and I'll cut it and then we can go."

"No need for haste." He smirks. "Time is going nowhere. And I can't simply, as you say, 'point out' the requisite lock. I need to find one that suits." He takes a step forward and gestures towards her head. "If I may?"

"Fine," she says, feeling foolish and out of sync. How did he keep doing that? When had the tone between them shifted? "Just be quick about it, will you?"

He gives an ironic half-bow and gestures for her to turn around. She does, swallowing.

He pulls the hair tie from her hair and hands it to her. His hands are almost maddeningly gentle, his search slow and methodical enough that she's certain it must be done deliberately to annoy her. She bites back her irritation and tries to pretend he isn't there—no easy feat when he's all but breathing down the back of her neck, hands woven through her hair. She tries to think over their conversation, for anything she's missed—

"Jareth," she says suddenly.

An intake of breath from behind her. Then:

"Yes?" he purrs.

"No, your name: Jareth. Why didn't you like me using your name?"

"Did I say I disliked it?" He leans forward a fraction. His breath stirs her hair. His voice is low, as if confiding a secret. "I don't dislike it in the least."

And she must admit that he certainly doesn't sound like he minds, if the rumbling caress of his voice is anything to go by. But—

"When I first called you by your name, you were angry. Why were you angry?"

His head withdraws a little. "Apart from the fact that you could only have learnt it through the treachery of one of my subjects?" He huffs out a breath. "The name is a binding—it binds me to the oath I swore and the pact we made. I am already bound to obey both oath and compact," he says, cutting her off mid-protest. "The name just … hastens things."

She takes a moment, mulling this over, trying to ignore the fingers still gently sifting through her hair, the occasional brush of leather against her scalp. "We made the pact together. Would my name bind me the way yours does, or…?"

He lowers his head again, murmuring directly into her ear as he begins winding a lock of hair at the base of her skull around one of his fingers. "I don't know, precious. Shall we find out?"

He tugs suddenly on the lock twined around his finger, and steps back. Sarah tries, not entirely successfully, to smother a gasp. Her back seems suddenly very cold and exposed.

"This will do admirably," he says, tone brisk and businesslike. "Now, do you have such a thing as a knife on you, or shall I conjure one?"

"What's the price?" she asks warily.

"So suspicious! Consider this pro bono. After all, it benefits me as well."

She still doesn't trust him, of course, but what else is she going to do, bite the lock off? She looks over her shoulder and sees a little silver knife gleaming in his outstretched palm. Quickly, she redoes her ponytail, leaving aside the lock he's chosen—somehow, quite without her noticing, he's managed to tie a ribbon around it. She takes the knife in one hand, pulling the hair taut with the other, sets the knife just over the ribbon, and slices.

She isn't prepared for how sharp the knife is, slicing through the lock of hair and on into the skin of her neck before she even realised what's happened.

"Shit," she says, thrusting the knife and the lock into his hands and feeling the back of her neck for the wound. Blood, but not much by the feel of it.

"A small injury," he remarks. "Easily healed. If you would permit—"

"What's the price?" she asks again, twisting around to look at him.

He arches an eyebrow. "I was going to offer my services gratis, but I do so hate to fall short of your expectations. Shall we say … a kiss?" His smile is teasing.

Is he-? Surely he's not flirting? And she'd thought the night couldn't get any more surreal.

At least this she knows how to deal with. She snorts. "In your dreams, Goblin King."

His smile widens, all teeth now—a shark's grin. "Ah, Sarah, my Sarah, didn't your mother ever tell you? Dreams are for fools and mortals and I, dear heart, am neither."

As if she needed another reminder that he wasn't human.

"Yeah, well," she says. "I think I'll take my chances with some Neosporin when I get home."

He shrugs lightly. "Very well. Then the compact is concluded."

He doesn't even snap his fingers this time. All of a sudden there's the breeze again, wafting the scent of cigarette smoke from around the corner, and the deep thrum of the bass and the noise of the crowd.

She stands for a moment, at a loss, thrown by this last, abrupt change.

"Was there anything else? I don't have all night, and unless I'm very much mistaken, neither do you. Or, for that matter, your … connection."

Her face twists. "Fuck you."

Then she turns on her heel and sprints back to the entrance of the party.

Jareth watches her go, humming thoughtfully to himself. Music is about the only art form his kind is capable of producing, but he has spent enough time Aboveground to develop a certain taste for mortal compositions.

"It's too late," he sings softly, delicately turning the silver knife to catch the light, "to be grateful."

Although of course, he is grateful—more than grateful. What a boon is mortal ignorance! Sarah's blood. He'd never dreamed he might be so fortunate. And freely given—she had actually handed him the knife with her blood still on the blade.

"It's too late—"

He summons the power and lets it crystallize around the knife, then tosses it in the air where vanishes it with a satisfying pop. It will be waiting for him in his study when he finishes this night's work.

"—to be late again."

He repeats the process on the lock of hair, and, turning to go, spots the discarded roll-up lying on the concrete. Now that he has the blood, the saliva on the rolling paper is all but superfluous, but still, waste not… He stoops down to pick up the cigarette, pops a crystal around it, vanishes it, and straightens again.

"It's too late—"

He closes his eyes, feeling for the death like a hound searching for a scent. Venues like this one make for poor hunting grounds—too many people means too many signals—too much data. Get enough people together in one place and to the psychically inclined, it's all so much white noise. Were it not for Sarah, he would probably have searched out a target elsewhere. He hadn't really expected her to promise her death to him just like that, although of course he had hoped…He tamps down the unfamiliar swell of emotions. No matter. It's just a matter of time now. She is human after all. A delicious, endlessly surprising, headstrong human certainly, but human nonetheless. Humans. What a burden all that curiosity must be. Never was there a creature less equipped to resist temptation. And now that she knows what wishing someone away to him really means…

"—to be hateful."

He smiles complacently. Just a matter of time. The prospect of forever stretches out before him. The Goblin King, thinking on a green-eyed girl, looks upon forever, and finds it good.

And thereit is at last, buried deep in the crowd, beneath all the dreams and wishes and desires: the deathmark, like a barely-noticeable smudge of ink on the collective psychic body of the revellers. Just a second, and then it's gone again, buried somewhere in the middle of that mad, roiling sea of possibility. But it's enough.

He dusts off his gloves fastidiously, then pulls the glamour tight about himself like a cloak, and rejoins the crowd.

It's almost like drowning. To step out of the coolness of the evening, the stillness and the crystalline quiet of the Goblin King's frozen moment, and into this: the noise and the heat and the frenetic movement of the lights. The sour smell of beer and sweat, the urgent press of hundreds of restless bodies—Sarah can feel the weight of it all bearing down on her, can feel the current threatening to pull her under. The main difference, she thinks, grimly elbowing her way through the crowd, is that when you push on water, it moves. It doesn't push back. Drowning, she thinks, a desperate laugh bubbling to her lips, would be an improvement.

And then, finally, she's through, because there's Ernie Ling, straining to support a very drunk Christine Templeton, who appears to be attempting to fuse with him on a cellular level.

"Williams!" he calls over the top of Christine's head, face splitting into a grin.

"Ernie!" she says. "Ernie, we've got to go."

"What?"

"We've got to—"

"Sarah!" Alisse cries, wriggling through a gap in the crowd. "You're back already?"

"Alisse," Sarah says urgently. "Come on. We need to get out of here."

"That was so fast! Kyle isn't even—"

Sarah reaches out and gives her friend a little shake. "Alisse, we've got to go. Where is everybody?"

Alisse's dark lined mouth falls open in dismay. "What? Why?"

Now there was a question she really should have anticipated.

"Because—"

She casts around desperately for an excuse. What would frighten Alisse enough into leaving without asking any more questions? She scans the crowd, searching for inspiration. The music gives a sudden wail and the strobing lights flash red and blue—

"Someone called the cops! They're on their way right now."

"What?" Alisse's face is alight with equal parts panic and indignation. "Someone narced?"

"Yeah, I just heard! We've got to go now, before they get here."

Alisse stares at her for a moment, clearly struggling to process this new information.

"Alisse!" Sarah gives her another little shake. "We need to find everyone and then we need to get out of here!"

The urgency in her voice breaks the spell.

"Right," Alisse says. "You get Ernie. I just saw Andre over by the DJ…"

Jareth passes through the crowd, skimming the dreams which rise like seafoam in the minds of the dancers. His pace is leisurely; he moves with ease, the crowd flowing apart like water before him. To an outside observer, there's nothing obviously unnatural in his passage apart from the fact of its ease—the dancers seem scarcely to notice him, much less consciously make room for him. It's simply that anywhere he chooses to go, other people… aren't.

He pauses for a moment, inhaling deeply, and gives a little sigh of contentment. Dreams are so near the surface here, readily available to anyone who knows how to look. He's always approved of mortal intoxicants for this very reason. He smiles, thinking fondly of the opium dens which had spread through Europe and Asia—was it a century ago? Two? Heroin—child of that same poppy—cuts a similar swath through the mortals of today, but to his mind, it lacks a certain…aesthetic appeal.

But this— He can't remember the last time he's been to a proper bacchanal. Not that this is a proper bacchanal—he hasn't seen a true bacchanal since the founding of the Underground, back when he and his kind walked under the true sun and were mistaken for gods, before mankind discovered the bite of iron and the sting of salt. This revel is as nothing in comparison to the ecstatic rites of the Greeks, the Beltane of the Celts, or the fertility festivals for the goddess Ishtar, but, for a shadow, it is pleasing and well-delineated.

Someone touches his arm and he whirls around. A red-haired girl is gazing up at him. As he meets her gaze, her jaw drops a little. She begins to speak, but her voice is drowned out by the music. Jareth lowers the ambient noise around them just enough to hear.

"—even cuter than I thought." Her face is flushed, dewed with sweat. "You want to dance?"

Jareth considers her. Her dilated eyes are glazed, but somewhere buried in their depths there is a spark— She must have some small aptitude for magic even to have noticed him long enough to desire him, though it is almost certainly untrained. Another time, when he didn't have a job to do, perhaps he might have dallied.

Behind her, he catches the eye of a gangly youth with acne scars and a most ill-considered moustache. Jareth doesn't even need to dip into his dreams: it's all there on his face, the resentment, the jealousy, the frustrated desire.

No reason he can't amuse himself, even without dalliance.

He looks back down at the girl.

"Do you want me?" he asks, voice low and pitched to thrill.

She blinks, and that small spark in her eyes seems to flare with her uncertainty. "I—" she says in confusion. "I want to dance with you…"

"That isn't what I asked."

She licks her lips. "Yes," she whispers.

It's power enough.

"Julie," he says, plucking the name out of her mind. "Julie." He savors the music of its syllables. "But you don't truly want me, do you? You want that young man there, who watches you with such hunger in his eyes."

She wrinkles her forehead, following his gaze. "Who? Cliff?" She shakes her head. "No, I want—"

He finds her dream of him—of a dance with an elegant stranger, of kisses, of night air and the hiking up of skirts and the damp, shuddering glide of flesh on flesh—and pushes.

He steps back. Julie is already turning away from him, back towards her friends, and Jareth is amused to see the sudden, dumbfounded hope on the boy's face as she meets his hungry gaze with one of her own.

Lord, what fools these mortals be.

Laughing softly, he resumes his search.

Forty minutes later they're piling through the door of Andre Mitchell's basement.

"Just keep it down, guys," Andre urges. "My dad doesn't give a fuck, just don't wake him up, you know?"

Alisse slumps onto the ratty couch, gasping. "Shit," she says. "Shit."

Sarah glances around, doing a rapid headcount. There's Andre, Alisse, Monica—

"Where's Mike?" she asks.

Andre jerks a thumb towards the bathroom. "Puking," he says, succinctly.

"You know how he gets about stress," Monica adds, rolling her eyes.

"And Ernie's helping Christine. That's probably them now."

Sure enough, the basement door is opening, and Ernie is helping a giggling Christine down the steps.

Sarah closes her eyes in relief. All accounted for then. It had occurred to her, as they fled, that Jareth had only said that someone at the rave was going to die, not that they were going to die at the rave. But as long as she can keep them here, under her eye, they'll be safe.

Well. As long as the house doesn't burn down. Andre's basement is a house fire waiting to happen. But, she reminds herself, if the house burns down, they're all screwed, and Jareth had only talked about one person dying. Surely if it was more than one he would've mentioned it. He wouldn't have missed the chance to apply more leverage in order to get—she shudders—whatever it is he was trying to get from her. Her death? Her afterlife? Her soul?

She looks around again. Here, under the basement lights, surrounded by week-old pizza boxes and sprawling teenagers, bereft of the confident rush of adrenaline, she feels suddenly unsure about the whole thing. What if it was the drugs? Surely that's the most likely explanation. She reaches up, touching the little wound on the back of her neck surreptitiously, and winces at the sting. But she could have got that—oh, any number of ways.

There's the sound of another door opening and Mike Stephanopoulos emerges from the bathroom, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.

"Oh, ew," says Monica. "Mike, for fuck's sake—"

But Ernie interrupts, speaking from the corner where he sits with Alisse, a still giggling Christine propped between them. "Hey," he says, looking around, frowning in concern. "Anyone seen DeLuca?"

The hunt lasts for a good hour longer. He catches several tantalizing glimpses of the deathmark as he searches, brief flashes of darkness, like a shadow glimpsed out of the corner of the eye, or the tail of a black dog disappearing around a corner. Whoever he seeks is evidently on their own, or at the very least, not much valued by their companions—none of the dancers he encounters bear even a hint of a shadow such as the one that his quarry's impending doom had cast upon Sarah and her friend.

Nevertheless, whoever it is he pursues clearly hasn't been stingy with their attention this evening. As he moves through the crowd, Jareth spots traces left by the fate on half a dozen girls, strange discolorations and pittings of the aura—contact burns, though already half faded. A particularly unpleasant fate, then, or a particularly noxious bearer, to leave such marks. Delving into the girls' muddled and fragmentary minds provides few further clues—either his quarry lacks the ability to make themselves impressionable enough to feature in the thoughts or dreams of those they've intimately encountered, or they have a particular knack for picking out women too intoxicated to remember.

And then, at last, a girl with an aura rippling and bubbling at the acid touch of the fate, and an image in her mind—wavering and roiling with confusion and conflicting emotion, but distinct enough—of a narrow face, dark eyes framed with girlishly long lashes, and a mop of black curls.

Jareth moves closer, searching for the source of the aura. The crowd parts before him like the Red Sea, and Jareth finds himself staring down a corridor of people at a tall girl, her back obscured by a waterfall of dark hair. He inhales sharply. There's a strange sort of twang in his chest, like a guitar string plucked out of tune. If not for the unfamiliar aura, he could almost have mistaken her for—

But there, hands on her shoulders, mouth at her ears, hips brushing hers insinuatingly, is the boy marked for death. Had the girl not so startlingly resembled his Sarah, he would have noticed him sooner. How had it taken so long to find him, with a fate like that upon him, black and cruel, riding his shoulders like a witch?

He reaches into the boy's mind, drawing out thoughts and strands of dream like candyfloss, picking apart his desires in search of something he can use—and stops abruptly as he comes across a familiar face. Sarah—his Sarah—dancing under flashing lights, eyes bright and vacant, mouth open and wet. He pushes deeper, memory and fantasy blurring into a flickering montage: Sarah, her pretty mouth pulled into a thoughtful scowl, hunched over a desk with a pencil in hand—Sarah in shorts and a mussed ponytail, sweat trickling down her forehead, spiking a volleyball over a net—Sarah sweating and panting, back pressed to a wall—Sarah in the cafeteria, opening her mouth to take a bite of an apple—Sarah on her knees, opening her mouth to—

Jareth claws through the boy's mind, searching out the threads of intent that bind together memory and fantasy, barely noticing as the boy jerks away from the girl, pressing a hand to his head. And there it is, the boy's plan—he snatches viciously at it, ignoring his victim's moan and sudden pallor. A small bag of innocuous looking white pills, tucked away in a pocket of the boy's trousers.

And now he's deep enough to see the shape of the dying on him, to trace its familiar contours. Not that he needs to see it to know. He already knows—already knows this is one soul that will be spared the Tithe, because he hasn't the slightest intention of saving this boy's life. Quite the contrary.

He shrugs, accepting the loss of the soul philosophically. He has, after all, taken many a soul—many a death—over the years, but it's been centuries since he's taken a life. A small, cruel smile distorts his mouth. He may even enjoy it.

He gives another tug on the boy's psyche—and had Jareth believed in a higher power, he would have sent up gleeful hosannas in praise of mortal drugs and how open they leave the mind, how vulnerable to influence and intrusion. The boy gives another moan, his hand going up to cover his mouth as he retches. He turns away from his dancing partner and begins to push his way through the crowd. Jareth obligingly surrounds him with a little of his own aura: the crowd melts away before him, easing his path to the exit.

The Goblin King watches his passage, feeling a feral anticipation rise in him—a pure and savage joy. He can feel his hold over his current form weaken as the predator in him emerges, feel the fine hair along his arms softening into the down of feathers. He tugs off his gloves, careful not to snag them on fingers already curving into talons, and follows the boy outside.

A/N: Poor Kyle. Created solely for the purpose of being a scumbag and then being killed for it. Kings tho, amirite? So pissy when you try and horn in on their territory. Jareth is very clear on this—only he is allowed to roofie Sarah.

Show of hands: who thought she was going to take the deal?

The lyrics Jareth sings are from "Station to Station" (because obviously he's a Bowie fan and no, I have no intention of providing any sort of explanation for that). I was kinda torn between the creepiness of having him sing (is there anything more sinister than someone singing as they go about their villainous deeds? esp when it's the most paranoid, gloriously coked-up song in the entire Bowie repertoire?), and then the fact that I was including a song in the fic. But I figured, it's Jareth. He sings. That's like his schtick. So whatevs. If songs in fics give you hives, sincere apologies—I'm not planning on making a habit of it.

The phrase "heroic responsibility" I nicked from HPMOR. It's a great place to nick things from, if you're of a larcenous disposition. The bit with Julie and Cliff is an adaptation of a scene from Neil Gaiman's Sandman, with Jareth standing in for Desire.

Alisse is pronounced uh-LEESS (like what you might get if you don't want to buy a car: "a lease").

Songs (not going to bother including the ones in the epigraph—that goes without saying):

"One Engine," by the Decemberists. (Sarah's theme)
"Gold," by Sir Sly (for the intercut scenes of Jareth stalking through the crowd while Sarah frantically tries to herd her friends out of danger. For, ya know, the film adaptation of this fic…).
"Red Right Hand," by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. (Jareth's theme)
"Prisoner of Love," by Tin Machine. ("I smell the sickness sown in this city/ It drives me to hide you, yeah, even deceive you/ I'm so afraid for you/ That I'll break any thug that maps out your passage to ruin." See, I told you it was this chapter!)

Thank you to kellyn1604, xoBrandyxo123, Sazzle76, Jetredgirl, lizardsjade, Honoria Granger, Rose, Red, FelineGrace, Max, Ebony-Dove, Nanenna, syntheticaesthetic, Taylor, kittyspike08536, Crystal Dreams09, SarahlousideDodge, ElementalFoxGoddess, and Guests for reviewing, and another extra big thanks to Charlotte Fox for help with 90s raves! And especially thanks to y'all who've been reviewing every/nearly every chapter—you know who you are and you rock my world (speaking of the 90s…)

Next chapter (entitled "Five Years") out in hopefully around two weeks—current plan is two chapters a month, although we'll see how that holds up once grad school starts again. In the meantime, please leave a review and let me know what you think! It makes me (a) happy, (b) more productive, and (c) a better writer! Am also accepting relevant song recommendations—I was listening to the radio the other day and "Under the Earth" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs came on and that's now a whole new minor plot arc, so music is inspiration and inspiration is better story!