I really pleased with myself two updates with in a week for Power Over Me and A new story published if you have't already please check it out. "With the Right Leverage" should also be updated soon. I'm determined to finish both storys before summer.

As always please, Please, PLEASE leave me a review. Did you like it? Hate it?

Cheers.

Chapter 27

Jareth somehow found the strength to take a further step back from Sarah. He longed to taste her lips again but he couldn't trust himself not to take it further. Instead he brought her hand back to his face and rubbed his jaw against it one last time before placing a kiss in the centre of her palm before grudgingly taking one further step back.

"Till tomorrow then?"

"Yes, we'll need to leave rather early."

"I'll be here at eight."

He watched as she entered her home before turning and walking away.

After she closed her apartment door Sarah couldn't resist looking through her spyhole at the retreating form of her King. With every step his form dissipated a little more until all that was left was a faint shimmer of glitter until that too vanished.

A royal throat clearing behind her caused her to jump. She spun to face Titania with her cheeks filling with heat at being caught.

"I hope that Jay was as well behaved as usual?" She asked hurriedly trying to change the subject and ignoring the wicked gleam in the Fae Queen's eyes.

"He was a perfect angel. As I hope the next one will be, though with Jareth being the father that might be too much to hope for."

Sarah smiled at the thought but the remembrance of how the pregnancy came about soured her good mood slightly.

"He's in his crib, asleep." Titania continued as she moved back towards the sitting room, "My husband however is asleep on your sofa. I think the little one wore him out."

Sarah peered over Titania's shoulder to look and the sleeping High King. The sight made her giggle slightly. There were finger furrows in his short hair and baby food on his clothes.

"I'm guessing the High King isn't very practised at stopping little boy's from playing with their food."

"I'm afraid to say that that may be my fault. I was angry at him for...well..." She broke off before starting again. "And he didn't like arguing in front of the children, so he left their care very much up to me and buried himself in work. I had the support of various nannies and governesses but he missed out on rather too much because of my anger."

"What will happen about Jay?"

"He is your son, Oberon and I agree on that point. Jareth will be able to formally adopt him if you marry and we will protect him if you don't." Titania refrained from mentioning the possible consequences if the High Council found out, "He won't inherit the Goblin throne as he isn't the Goblin King's natural child, but he will have titles and status, as much as any of the wished away have."

"If I hadn't had the power to stop him Eric could have legally taken him couldn't he?"

"If his father had known what that boy was going to do there would have been hell to pay." Titania tried to avoid Sarah's eye.

"That's not answering the question."

"How was your evening with my step-son?"

Sarah allowed the High Queen her conversational segue, "It went very well. I'm taking him to Sunday dinner at home tomorrow."

"Does your father own a shot gun? Only the Fae don't really react that well to lead shot or bullets for that matter."

"Daddy doesn't own a gun at all, I'm gonna give Karen a call and warn her to have Daddy on his best behaviour. Toby might be more of a problem, I'll have to collar him ASAP tomorrow about not outing Jareth as the Goblin King"

"In that case we shall be on our way." She roused her husband softly and they transported back to Avalon.

The peace of her apartment seemed strange after all the comings and goings of the last few days. She check on Jay and then phoned her Step-Mother. It was short conversation though Karen seemed happy for Sarah to bring a guest and that Robert would be on his best behaviour, Toby too.

Somehow they'd managed to battle through to the middle of dinner. Toby unfortunately had yet to get over his awe of the Goblin King so the conversational fillers he usually supplied were absent. Her father, Robert, was still glaring at Jareth. That introduction had not gone well. Sarah was glad that her dad didn't own a gun. He'd taken Jareth into his office before dinner and they hadn't reappeared until Karen had called them to the table so Sarah hadn't had a chance to ask Jareth what had been said.

Outwardly the Goblin King was acting as normal even in his human disguise, if he had looked more eager to please maybe her dad wouldn't still be glaring, but Jareth was Jareth. In company he could never let down his guard. Karen was trying her best to fill the gaps but the tension in the room was palpable.

OK so it wasn't going as well as she had originally hoped but no one had ended up in the Bog of Eternal Stench yet so it could always be worse. The small groups of Goblins that Sarah could hear faintly from the corners of the room were slightly more worrying. Were they here because of the King? Her parents obviously couldn't hear them but she'd never heard so many gathered together in her house.

Sarah actually felt slightly relieved when Oberon and Titania, in full Royal Fae Splendour and Regalia appeared in the dining room of her childhood home adding the paranormal to the surreal elements of the afternoon.

Jareth was the first to react. Standing to attention in the presence of his parents. Sarah rose to her feet soon after, knowing that if the High King and Queen had appeared before mortals something terrible must have happened. Robert and Karen sat in stunned silence. Toby already knowing "Tania's" true identity and appearance was less stunned but he kept his mouth shut. Cutlery scraped against china as knives and forks were dropped.

"What has happened?" The Goblin King asked all traces of his mortal disguise melting away.

Oberon was the one to answer. "Thalia bribed her way into the dungeons and has seen Eric. She found out about Jay and petitioned the High Council not more than an hour ago. They are coming to take the child."

"Like hell they are!" Sarah promised.

Her father finally found his voice. "Sarah, what on earth is going on here?"

"May I introduce their Majesties, Oberon and Titania, High King and Queen of Avalon and the Underground Realms, and you have already met Oberon's son, Jareth, King of the Goblins and Ruler of the Labyrinth. Dad I know Nana Joyce taught you enough of the old legends to work everything out from there."

"Sarah?" Karen didn't seem to be taking the sudden apparition of Fae royalty quite so well as her husband and son.

"Do you remember that little red leather book I always used to carry with me and read from?"

"The Labyrinth?"

"Did you ever read it?" Sarah knew she didn't really have time for this but her family deserved explanations.

"But it's just a fairy story." Karen protested. It took her a few minutes for her brain to process this new information. "You wished my son away to the goblins!"

"I told you Jareth engineered a meeting. Anyway I got him back. It doesn't matter right this minute."

It was Robert who butted in again breaking the moment between his daughter and wife. "What has this got to do with my grandson?"

"He also happens to be our Grandchild." Titania informed him. "We recently discovered that our son, Eric, had sired a child on a mortal on mortal girl. We only found this out when he tried to take him because his adopted mother was not a friendless underground as he obviously assumed. We tried to keep him silent on this fact by keeping him sequestered away from his wife, Thalia."

"They will be here soon." Oberon, who had been conversing with Jareth, broke in. "Where is the child?"

"In his playpen in the next room." Karen seemed to have recovered some of her equilibrium.

"No he isn't." Sarah realized she couldn't feel her son nearby, a sense that her magic must have gifted to her without her being conscious of before, the worry that had filled he during dinner had been due to Jay's absence.

Jareth darted into the lounge but his face when he came back into the room confirmed her instinctive knowledge. "They've already taken him." He moved closer to Sarah but knew that she would not take comfort from him.

"And I'll make sure they regret it." She replied with venom.