​She’s working for a fae in finance, business plan, 6’ 5”, big wings…

In this hilarious contemporary fantasy romance, from debut author Juliet Brooks, an exasperated low-level investment banker is trapped in a magical realm by a faerie prince, where she must survive in a strange new world with only her wits—and a solid Wi-Fi connection.

Read an excerpt from A Fae in Finance, on-sale October 21, below!

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Chapter 1

My manager’s email was titled YOU ARE LEADING THE CLIENT CALL.

Do not commit to, agree to, or provide a deadline

When he tells you he needs the deliverable tonight, hum noncommittally

Do not say any sentence including the words “you will have it by”

I mean it, Miri: DO NOT MAKE ANY COMMITMENTS WHATSOEVER

I will be listening in but will not speak.

Jeff

I stared at the email for a moment, twisting the thin gold band on my index finger. Doctor Kitten, the black and white cat on my lap, also stared at the email for a moment.

I giggled. Doctor Kitten glared up at me, disturbed by the movement. “Sorry, it’s just kind of funny,” I said, scratching his head.

Obviously I wouldn’t agree to anything the client asked—obviously I wouldn’t bind myself in promises or pearls for the Princeling. But there was something mundane and hilarious about this note, delivered via Microsoft Outlook and not scrawled in black ink on the soft underside of a torn bit of bark.

I tapped my fingers lightly on the keys, unsure whether Jeff wanted me to confirm receipt. He might just find the extra email irritating.

Finally, I sent a quick Understood; thank you.

When I shifted in my chair, my thighs stuck to the faux leather. The tiny window air conditioner was more enthusiastic than efficient, and I was already sticky from the summer heat. I had two screens glowing an unnatural blue in front of me: my silver work laptop and my larger second monitor. The artificial light hurt my eyes.

Doctor Kitten remained stubbornly nestled on my knees, despite my attempts to remove him. In the background, my “Pop Punk Hits of the 2000s” radio station started its third Good Charlotte song, putting me in exactly the wrong mindset for a client meeting.

The computer pinged—the soft insistent blip of a Microsoft Teams meeting—and the pop-up on the lower right-hand side of my screen invited me to Join Meeting. Of course the Princeling had started it early.

“Robot Overlord, please stop the music,” I said, and the speaker turned off.

I joined the meeting, my left hand curled around a glass of what used to be iced tea.

The Princeling greeted me the moment the meeting loaded. “Hello, fair one,” he said, his voice distant and tinny.

“My lord,” I replied, scanning the attendees for Jeff. The Princeling’s unfairly attractive retinue had all joined, sharp faces against the artificially blurred backgrounds of the video software. No sign of Jeff, who seemed to feel that while timeliness may be a virtue, he’d never agreed to be virtuous.

“Share the agenda,” the Princeling instructed. I couldn’t tell if he was frustrated by my slowness, if he expected me to have it up and shared already. Perhaps I should have.

I shared my screen, the agenda now visible to everyone.

“Not much today,” I said, and my voice cracked. I wasn’t really new to this job anymore, but still in the liminal space where I didn’t know whether to start without my manager. Jeff wouldn’t talk, but he’d said he wanted to observe. “We should be done soon.” I shifted in my chair, which tilted backward unbidden.

The Princeling smirked, raising an eyebrow. “I knew I sensed prophecy in you,” he said.

I blanched. Did I just promise something?

“Not a prophecy,” I replied, frozen in place. “Just a guess.” My phone buzzed from the far side of my desk, beyond the lukewarm tea.

“She has prophecy, though,” the Gray Knight said, coming off mute. A loud shriek came through her mic, then cut off abruptly. “Look at her fractured eyes.”

Fractured eyes? I’ll fracture your face, I thought, because I’d spent half the night rereading the death-by-magic-flower adventures of The Jasmine Throne and the rest of the night formatting PowerPoint footers. Both of those activities made me feel murderous.

“’Tis true,” said another—the Red Knight. The Red and Blue Knights should have been indistinguishable, with equally shiny spills of untamed chestnut hair, penetrating eyes the frozen brown of soil packed down under an ice melt, and shoulders broad enough to splinter a front door. Fortunately, the knights always wore their colors. “Observe the tilt in the zygomatic bone,” the Red Knight added, gesturing with his pointy, dimpled chin.

“Anyway,” I said, before they could begin discussing my cheekbones in earnest. “Today we just want to talk about the seller’s presentation, to make sure it lines up with your expectations.” I stopped again. My phone buzzed several more times, lit up by a flurry of messages in my Games Games Games group chat. I flipped the screen face down and tried to stay focused.

“Yes,” the Princeling said. “The seller’s presentation. Do you truly think mortals will buy our acorn cups and cobweb curtains?”

“Um,” I said, wishing my manager would join already. “Jeff says people will buy anything if you have a celebrity endorsement.”

Jeff believed that many things could be simplified by the mention of a “celebrity endorsement” but hadn’t yet explained how to obtain one.

None of the faeries appeared reassured by this statement. “And I think that people will want to buy faerie-made products either way,” I added.

The Red Knight unmuted himself and heaved a dramatic sigh. “Would that this debasement were not required.”

The Blue Knight remained muted but rolled his eyes with gusto.

“Look,” I said. “I think it’s a really good thing we’re doing. An important thing. It’ll help people know you—know faeries. Help humans and faeries…be friends. You know, like, uh, globalization.” I winced, experiencing the unique brand of agony that only comes after one has opened one’s own mouth.

“Globalization,” the Princeling repeated, his face wrinkled in either immense pain or disgust. “I know this not. Let us continue. I have many councils scheduled today, sorceress.”

“Right.” I glanced at the attendee list. Still no Jeff. “Not a sorceress. But let’s get started. We’ve got a valuation range for the company.”

I glanced up—with the Princeling, I was never sure how much to explain. “We think that we have an exciting story for investors, because of the, uh, supernatural element.”

Jeff always said “supernatural element.” Jeff said that if a celebrity wouldn’t endorse a product, you could just write supernatural element on your materials to achieve a similar effect.

“You have mentioned,” the Princeling noted dryly. “Is there no progress, then?”

“No, there’s a lot of progress! Did you get the new pages we sent?” I leaned forward, smushing Doctor Kitten a bit in my lap. He still wouldn’t move.

The Princeling sighed. “Yes. They were not to our taste.”

This was why Jeff was late, really. He’d taken a strong dislike to our client, in part over differences in creative vision. And to be fair, I also found the Princeling’s vision…creative, for lack of a better word.

“Okay, that’s fine,” I said. “Can you let me know what worked and what didn’t?”

“What worked?” the Princeling repeated. A tiny crease had come between his peaked brows, and I remembered that faeries are quite literal.

“Uh, what you liked about it,” I amended.

“Oh,” he said, almost brightly. “Nothing. I liked nothing.”

Faeries cannot lie. I fought the urge to cringe.

“Okay, cool,” I said instead. “That’s, um, a good start.” It was not really.

“I do not believe it is an auspicious start,” the Gray Knight said, coming off mute again. Her filter had slipped; she was leaning against a tree, silvery bark and silvery eyes and the cheekbones of a movie star. I flushed at the dismissal in her tone and tried to focus. She held her camera at an odd angle, tilted down toward the part in her hair, which should’ve been unflattering but just made her look sharper, mesmerizing like the thin blade of a knife.

“I have heard humans say that,” the Princeling told her. “It means naught.”

“Right,” I said.

“This means correct,” he added.

“Right,” I said again. I felt that I had perhaps lost the plot a bit. “Um, so, Jeff says that buyers will be used to seeing a presentation like the one we shared with you,” I told them. “So maybe we can think about keeping some of the elements of that presentation—”

“Miri, Jeff here,” Jeff interrupted, brusque. “It’s all good, let’s do what the Princeling asks.” He hadn’t turned on his camera. I pushed the annoyance off my face. He’d said he wouldn’t speak.

“Okay, well, um, my lord,” I said, voice rough. I reached with shaking hands to pet Doctor Kitten, who sensed my stress and took this opportunity to jump from my lap. “What would make this presentation more agreeable to you?”

“If it were expulsed from the world,” the Princeling said, “and expunged from the books of heaven and hell.”

We stared at each other through the cameras, his long face earnest and his green eyes somber.

I cleared my throat. “So, ah, if I can’t do that, what would work?”

Silence.

“More green,” the Princeling said, after a long, considering pause.

“And more leaves,” the Gray Knight chimed in helpfully.

The Crone, the Red Knight, and the Blue Knight—the others in the retinue—did not speak but nodded in their respective frames.

“Miri can add more leaves,” Jeff said, which seemed unfair to me because our graphic design and software budget was approximately seven dollars and a pack of washable markers. No one was giving me funds for a glue stick, let alone for digital art packs.

“Yeah, totally,” I said aloud.

“We shall see,” the Princeling said. “When will you provide us with this new document?”

“Soon,” I said.

“Will you provide a span of moon or sun?” the Princeling requested. Do not agree to a deadline.

I waited for Jeff to speak.

He didn’t.

My air conditioner huffed indignantly.

“Perhaps within the arc of this day,” the Princeling prompted.

“Uh, we’ll do our best to get it done soon,” I said. Do not commit to a deadline.

“Very well,” he said, and in one moment his entire retinue had signed off.

“Jeff?” I asked, hoping to talk about the art packs. Silence.

With a sigh, I exited the meeting.

I really had to pee, but the second I stood up, Jeff pinged me on Teams. I answered right away.

“You need something,” he said accusatorily as soon as the call connected.

I debated saying You called me, but that wouldn’t be productive.

“How do I add more leaves to the presentation? Do we have access to leaf art somewhere?”

“How the absolute fucknuts am I supposed to know?” he snapped.

“Uh.” I didn’t have my camera on, so Jeff couldn’t see how my eyes were wide with exhaustion and stress. “I don’t know. You agreed to it, so I thought you might have an idea.”

“No, I just don’t want to deal with their moronic bullshit anymore, Miri. They’re the stupidest people I’ve ever dealt with, and that’s saying something.”

“I don’t think they’re stupid,” I said, hunching my shoulders and staring at the computer screen. The Princeling doesn’t need a human girl who can’t throw a punch to defend him went the voice in my head.

Jeff huffed. “Okay, Glinda the Good Witch.” The impassive circle bearing his initials stared back at me.

I flinched at the attempted insult but didn’t reply.

The voice in my head, which is of the dual opinions that violence solves everything and that I am bad at violence, growled. But the voice in my head had also never felt so defensive of a client, supernatural or otherwise. Ugh—truthfully, I’d never even thought about anyone so much outside of work before. I tried to tell myself something magical was at play, that I was falling under some faerie spell—

Exactly the type of prejudiced bullshit I’d have called anyone else out for.

“Don’t we just need to teach them what’s normal for the industry?” I ventured, after some tense mutual silence.

Jeff snorted. “No. Just do what they want. It’s fine. Everyone who sees the presentation will know it’s because the client is a faerie, and faeries are crazy.”

This sounded like a logical fallacy. It also sounded like something he wouldn’t say in the office, where our few faerie and werewolf colleagues could hear him. The vampires would remain blissfully ignorant via the simple expedient of not coming into the office until after dark.

“Okay, but the leaves?” I prompted.

“Just google some free leaf graphics, I guess.” He sounded distracted. No doubt he was, already reading a different email.

“Okay,” I said. “Do you want to see it before I send it?”

“No, I don’t care. The whole thing is stupid.”

I rubbed my eyes. “Okay,” I said again. I felt a lump in my throat, frustration burning hot behind my eyes.

He hung up without another word.

I glanced around my living room, feeling itchy and stagnant. I desperately needed a walk but was afraid to leave the apartment, worried that as soon as I got out the door someone would call me about work.

Sighing, I opened the PowerPoint document titled Faerie Trade Goods and stared at the front page again. The entire presentation touted the sedate colors of our bank, a sea of blues in RGB (0, 0, 255) and (0, 180, 255) and (70, 20, 230).

I thought about the best way to change the presentation. I could mock up a few slides and send them to the client, but if Jeff saw that email he’d be annoyed that I didn’t ask him to review, even though he’d just told me not to. I could try to find a style guide for our company (the style guide does not exist; this was just stalling). I could stuff my face with tofu noodles and then deal with another irritated lecture from Jeff when I didn’t get this done as quickly as he wanted.

With another sigh, I opened the Noun Project on my computer and searched leaf. A bunch of black and white icons appeared. I glanced longingly at the sliver of afternoon sunlight bravely reflecting off the windows across the street while the results of my search loaded. Cartoon maple, clover, and ginkgo leaves filled my screen. I probably should’ve asked for slightly more guidance from the Princeling.

Doctor Kitten mewled and hopped back into my lap. He looked as annoyed as I felt, which was kind of unfair, because he didn’t have to make any PowerPoints and his ability to sell this stupid company likely wouldn’t impact faerie-human relations for the foreseeable future.

Oh, and I still had to pee, but I couldn’t get up because Doctor Kitten had settled in for a long scratching session, and also if I got up I would possibly be pinged on Teams.

I looped my arms awkwardly over Doctor Kitten, who was smugly coating my shirt in white cat hair, and started to type.

I shouldn’t have gone out with Thea and Jordan. I should have stayed in my musty apartment and worked. But Thea had texted me just as I felt the phantom oozing trickles of my own brain fluid down my neck, so I’d shut my laptop and agreed to meet them at the convenient restaurant beneath my apartment.

Thea, my first absolute best friend in the whole wide world, stood waiting in the entrance, wearing her summer uniform of jean shorts and a tank top. When she saw me, she strode across the almost steaming pavement and swept me into a hug. “Hey,” she whispered, squeezing me until I lifted onto my toes. I hugged her back; even just seeing her face improved my mood.

I felt someone barrel into me from behind and realized the arms of my other best friend, Jordan, had come around both of us. I sighed and sagged between them, a boneless noodle being supported by her two besties.

“Let’s eat, I’m starving,” Jordan said fervently into the back of my skull.

“Same,” Thea agreed. “I had meetings all day and had to skip lunch!”

Jordan let go of us, and then Thea and I parted. “You could’ve eaten if you’d texted the group chat less,” Jordan said, leading us into the restaurant. “No one cares about your character’s lists of attacks; this one shot is about a game show.”

I snorted.

“Jordan, I’m spending my entire Saturday playing Dungeons and Dragons with you,” Thea said. “And I don’t even like Dungeons and Dragons. So you will appreciate the effort I put into my character, even if all we do is role-play Jeopardy! as orcs.”

The host, who’d heard the end of this little tirade, hid a smirk behind one hand.

“You’re coming Saturday, right, Miri?” Jordan asked as Thea requested a table for three.

The host led us through the dimly lit low room to a booth at the back, where the worn vinyl seats and exposed brick wall waited in muted reds. I sagged into the booth and leaned a shoulder against the wall for support.

“I…don’t know,” I said, while the other two slid in across from me. I tensed up at the twinned expression on their faces: This was an intervention. I was about to be intervened. Again.

“You need to take care of yourself,” Thea said. I tried to hide how piercing I found both her remark and her speckled hazel eyes by staring at the menu, where absolutely none of the words resolved themselves into anything recognizable. Since this was a burger joint, that was probably a function of my currently limited brain power and not a language barrier.

“I am taking care of myself,” I muttered, toying with my ring.

“Miri, this is worse than your old government job,” Thea said. She reached across the table to hold my hands, stilling the frantic motion of my fingers. I stared at her clean, short nails and held my breath. “At least there, you were making some kind of positive difference for supernatural people.”

“Integrating supernatural folks into business is the best and fastest way to reduce prejudice,” I said, mulish. “And at least I can afford my apartment now,” I added, since one of their (fair) gripes with my last job had been the low pay.

I got the impression of a waiter from off to the left; a disembodied voice asked what we wanted. “Grilled cheese and tomato soup,” I guessed, and that must have been on the menu because no one said anything. My friends ordered, but I couldn’t really hear them over the buzzing irritation in my own ears.

“Miri,” Thea exhaled. “Financial services don’t make a positive impact.” She squeezed my hands for emphasis.

“In fact,” Jordan added, in the voice that meant he was being clever, “the biggest measurable impact of financial services is that you’ve missed every important life event and several fantastic romantasy books since you joined that company.”

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I glanced at my friends, whose twinned expressions had turned simultaneously disapproving.

“It’s work,” I said. Thea let go of my hands and propped her chin on her fist. Jordan made a face.

I yanked my phone out of my pocket. It was an email from Jeff, which had the subject line WHY AREN’T YOU ONLINE? and absolutely no other text in the body.

Wordless, I turned the phone for them to see.

“What a dick,” Jordan exploded.

“Has he never heard of dinner?” Thea asked with righteous indignation.

“I’ll get dinner to go,” I said, pushing down the guilt as I slid out of the bench seat and toward the front of the restaurant. “And pay separately.”

Before either of them could voice displeasure, I stalked away.

I finished my draft of the deck around two a.m. I stared at the cover page on my computer for several minutes, now adorned with green, leafy borders that had taken forever to format. But I was finally satisfied that this would please the Princeling.

I stayed seated at my desk, eyes scrunched shut, and wondered whether I should send it to Jeff or straight to the Princeling. Jeff had said he didn’t want to see it, but we’d played this game before—if I didn’t send it to him, he’d likely ream me out in the morning. I pulled up a blank email and wrote:

Hi Jeff, please see attached the draft for the client. Please let me know if you want to take a turn or if I should send it over.

I attached the draft, confident that it was flawless and also that Jeff would find or fabricate some mistake. There was nothing more to do, so I stumbled into the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash up. I was too tired to shower, and when I got into the bedroom I flopped onto the bed, butt-up on the mattress. I didn’t even have the energy to lie flat.

Doctor Kitten hopped up next to me and mewled, annoyed.

With a groan, I rolled onto my back, my eyes still shut. Glowing green leaves danced behind my eyelids. The conversation with my friends floated up from my subconscious to join the terrible, stupid party in my brain.

My team was the Supernaturals and Preternaturals Banking and Brokerage Group Business Development chapter of Tartarus, the fourteenth-largest financial services firm in the world. I’d joined four months earlier to help companies with nonhuman founders and inclusive business plans raise money. On nights like this one, it was hard to see the connection between my work and the world I wanted to build. But business was fast, and government was slow, and I’d hoped—well, at two thirty a.m., it didn’t matter what I’d hoped. It mattered that I got four hours of sleep.

Doctor Kitten stepped onto my stomach, making biscuits with his front paws. It hurt. I sighed and put my hand out, feeling in the darkness for his head. I scratched behind his ear until he settled on my chest. We both fell asleep on top of the covers.

My dreams were restless, full of the Princeling, broad and cold. He sat at the foot of my bed and watched me, his green eyes glowing in the dark, just like those damn leaves. When I kicked out, he put a hand on my ankle, holding me in place. “Human girl,” he said. “You do not yet know what you will give me.”

I woke up exhausted, having slept through four separate alarms.

Chapter 2

It was an in-office day. I arrived at eight thirty in the morning and set up at my desk, plugging my laptop into the docking station, logging into the system, then kicking off my sneakers and sliding my feet into the heels I kept under the desk. The shoes pinched my toes even more than usual this morning.

My computer pinged and my pulse spiked. I jabbed at the mute button. Luckily, it was only a daily industry update, something I could easily delete. I didn’t even skim the headlines on those emails anymore. I knew what they would be: snippets about Elf off the Shelf, the elvish home goods company that had hurled the supernatural into public consciousness four years ago; the capital raise for the fitness company founded by six vampires ranging in age from four hundred to nine hundred years old—all of whom swore by “this one simple routine to stay fit”; and some other new entrant, a company started by an entrepreneurial immortal with wings, claws, or fangs.

Soon my colleagues would come in, and I would be surrounded by men in matching white button-down shirts who made me feel completely alone.

On cue, Corey rounded the corner and plopped into the cubicle next to mine.

“How was your evening?” I asked him, though I already knew what he would say—

“Terrible,” he said, “I worked until two a.m.”

I didn’t know what he spent all this time working on. He didn’t have a deal going. Or any clients. Or a manager. He spent all of this time on his computer doing…PowerPoints? Research? One time, I saw him rendering a video game background in MS Paint.

“Bummer,” I said.

He shrugged.

I sighed, still trying to engage him in conversation for some reason. “You hear we might be going to Faerie soon?” I asked. We meant me and Jeff.

“Yeah, travel sucks,” he said.

This didn’t feel like the appropriate response to being told your colleague was one of the first humans invited to Faerie in centuries.

Or at least one of the first humans publicly invited.

Jeff rounded the corner, wearing a full pinstripe suit and matching blue tie that made his skin look positively pink. He was always clean-shaven and had reached the age where men’s chins start to sag into their neck, no matter how slender they are.

He grunted toward us and strode past into his office.

This was a good greeting, for Jeff.

I turned back to my computer and alt-tabbed over to an Excel spreadsheet, shushing my roiling stomach. Maybe it would be a calm day after all.

“Miri, get in here!” Jeff barked from his office at the end of our row of cubicles. “When you have a minute,” he added, perhaps for the benefit of a colleague walking by.

When you have a minute meant now. I pushed away from my desk and stood, my knees cracking. So much for calm in the office.

The thirty steps to his office were muffled by the gray carpet and punctuated by sharp pains in my big and pinky toes. I leaned against the doorframe.

“Jeff,” I said, because he’d already turned back to his computer.

“Miri,” he said. “What do you need?”

I blinked, unsure what to say. He’d just called me over like, fifteen seconds ago. “Uh, did you—uh…” I stopped, stumbling over my words. Jeff’s window looked over New York City, out west to the Hudson and Jersey City. Up into the endless sky.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “We’re going to dinner tonight in that shithole. Dinner’s outside, can you believe it?”

“We’re going to Faerie tonight,” I said in disbelief.

“Yes, the Duke said tonight.”

“Princeling.” The title of Princeling didn’t exactly mean a prince or a king, wasn’t a name like Rowan or Oberon, and wasn’t a descriptor like Fairy Godmother.

The Princeling just was. And most of all, what he was was in charge of everything Faerie. The very few public statements we’d gotten about the Fae bore his signature, and the faeries who’d come out of the woodwork to join the mortal realm all claimed loyalty to him. As far as I could tell, he was their ultimate authority.

“Yeah, Princeling. I know.” Jeff stuck his pinky in his ear and started scratching.

I shifted my weight away from the doorframe. “Are we bringing our own food?”

Jeff finally looked at me, his eyes narrowed. The purple bags under his left eye were bigger than the bags under his right. “Why would we do that?”

I rubbed my thumb against the gold band on my index finger, queasy. “Um. Doesn’t faerie food trap you in Faerie?”

Jeff snorted. “Food can’t trap you somewhere, Miri,” he said, his tone cool. He leaned back in his chair. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

I swallowed. “Jeff, I—”

“Where did you even hear that? Seriously.” He chuckled, shifting in his seat. He’d taken off the suit jacket and I saw the perspiration stains under his arms.

“It’s the only legend they’ve confirmed, actually,” I said. “There’s a New York City Department of Public Health advertisement campaign about it in the subways.”

Had he not seen Just Say No, the campaign they’d enacted when faerie fruit sellers started popping up on street corners? Had he not noticed their slitted pupils and their berries that gleamed golden like little spheres of sunshine?

“I don’t take the subway,” Jeff said, matter-of-factly. Of course he didn’t.

“I’ll grab us takeout,” I said.

“You’ll embarrass our hosts if you do that!” he snapped.

I gulped.

“Don’t bring any food, Miri,” he said. “We need this dinner to go well.”

Jeff stared at me, blue eyes cold like the wind between the buildings in the winter.

“O-okay,” I said, my stomach tight. I just…wouldn’t eat anything. And if Jeff wanted to get himself stuck in Faerie, there wasn’t anything I could do about it.

I shoved down a wave of nausea and left his office.

At lunchtime I took the elevator downstairs and stood in the courtyard of our building, staring at my phone.

My mom had called me three times that morning. I’d let the calls go to voicemail, keenly aware that her friend Mrs. Phillips’s nephew had just tragically broken up with his fiancée and moved to New York City and this meant that I was about to be conscripted into a blind date.

With a sigh, I called her back. The phone rang once before she picked up. “Good afternoon!” she said, sounding delighted. She always sounded delighted to hear from me.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, ready to derail. “I’m going to my first client dinner tonight.”

“Oh, sweetheart!” she squealed. “Are you excited? What are you going to wear?”

I groaned.

“The black suit,” she said firmly. “And don’t forget makeup.”

I pictured my mom sitting at the kitchen table and playing solitaire on an iPad.

“Do you have shoes?”

“Yes, I have shoes,” I said, scowling into the middle distance. Two young men in suits scurried past me.

“The black pumps?”

“Mom, I think Faerie is on a hill, or under a hill, or something. I’ll wear my sneakers.”

I paused, expecting her to argue.

“I had a dream about this,” my mom said suddenly.

“Witch,” I said, grinning. We’d joked that my mother was a witch for years, even before anyone knew the paranormal existed.

“Miri…be careful,” she said.

I blinked. My mother wasn’t usually this circumspect in her warnings.

“Mom, I’m always careful.” I started toward the little marketplace in the northeastern corner of our building. “I’m going to grab lunch.”

“Miriam”—usually my full name was a bad sign—“it wasn’t a good dream.”

I twisted my gold ring from my index finger onto my thumb. “Did I die?”

My mother hadn’t predicted anyone’s death, exactly. But still. Sometimes she dreamed about a person dying, and then they died, not in the way she’d dreamed of, and while I wouldn’t call that a prediction, I also wouldn’t call it optimal.

“You were in a cage,” she said, “too small to stand in, and the bars were woven branches and ivy, and you were so thin.”

“That probably made you happy,” I said, trying to sound glib. “Me being thin.” I walked into the marketplace and looked around at the food options. Bao buns, tacos, three different sandwich shops, a blood shake pop-up bar with evening hours, and a vegan grain bowl place.

My mom was silent.

“Mom?”

“I love you no matter what size you are, honey,” she said.

I stopped at the vegan grain bowl shop. “Mom, I know,” I said. “I’m sorry, that was a bad joke.”

“Please be careful, Miri. I don’t want to lose you.”

I swallowed around the lump in my throat. I wanted to ask follow-up questions, or reassure her, or tell her she needed to go into business as a fortune teller because she was really freaking me out.

But I was in a crowded, public place. “Sorry, I gotta go, Mom. Love you.”

“Wait!” she exclaimed. “Did you know Mrs. Phillips’s nephew Ra—”

I hung up.

When I got to the front of the line, the cashier smiled at me. We’d become buddies these past weeks, by which I mean the cashier smiled at me and I narrated a budding friendship on top of it.

He slid my rice and lentil bowl across the plywood counter and I tapped my credit card. “Thanks,” I said, staring down at the unappealing brown patties covered in thick, tasteless mango chutney. The vegan grain bowl shop rarely had a line, for reasons beyond mortal comprehension.

I started for the door, clutching my sad lunch in one hand and my phone in the other. My music had started as soon as I hung up, and an indie lesbian steal-your-girl anthem drowned out the chatter in the hall. A gaggle of men in suits parted around me. One of them bumped my right hand, almost upending my bowl.

The frustration boiled within me as I beelined for the door. My fingers drummed on the back of my phone case. My steps were longer, faster, staccato on the polished concrete.

I just needed to breathe. In through my nose. Out through my mouth. Deep breaths over and over until I made it into our building’s lobby and then to our elevator bank.

Just as I walked into an opening elevator, someone else walked in next to me. I didn’t see him, but I felt his arm brush my shoulder as he passed me, hurrying to lean against the back wall, the mirror reflecting the knot of black curls at the base of his neck.

“Sahir,” I said, and inclined my head. I paused my music but left my headphones in.

“Miriam,” he replied, with a slow blink back at me.

“Hold the elevator!” someone called out. I stepped forward and stuck my arm out, entering a battle of dominance with the closing door. The door submitted, reopening.

The man who’d shouted came into view, eyes flicking from me to Sahir. His nose wrinkled. “It’s okay, I’ll wait,” he said.

I withdrew my arm, following his gaze. His gaze led to Sahir, whose pointed ears and sharp features marked him Fae. Sahir’s eyebrows contracted as he realized what had happened.

The elevator doors slid shut. I leaned against the wall next to Sahir, staring at the curve of his crooked nose. His visage never ceased to fascinate me, though I knew it left many in the office unnerved.

He’d pursed his lips; his eyes were fixed on the stainless steel doors.

“How are you?” I asked, suddenly desperate to distract him.

“Weary as a winter lamb,” he said, without looking at me.

“That sounds, um, bad,” I said.

“We live to feel,” he replied, “and cannot feel joy without pain.”

“Which is why you went into banking,” I countered.

Sahir’s lip quirked, though his head didn’t turn. “Sharp tongue for a soft woman,” he said.

“I’ve got rock-hard biceps,” I replied, flexing. He couldn’t see them through my jacket, of course, but he finally smiled at me—the expression rounded his craggy cheeks, softened the bitterbark brown of his eyes into something more like molten chocolate.

“Apologies, Miriam,” he said, and chuckled. “Soft you are not.”

I smiled back. “We’re going to dinner with the Princeling tonight,” I said.

The elevator came to a stop and the doors opened on our floor. Sahir gestured for me to precede him into the stark white hallway.

“My liege may lay bounties before you,” Sahir said, pulling out his wallet. The wallet looked like two dried autumn leaves sewn together, but before I could examine it, he drew his key card from a fold and slid the wallet back into his pants.

“I’m sure he will be generous,” I replied.

“My liege will offer gifts and curses.” Sahir tapped on the card reader and then opened the door for me. I tried not to stare at his broad back, the ripple of his shoulders beneath the taut fabric of his black suit jacket. Until I’d met Sahir, I’d always been able to compartmentalize attractiveness and coworkers: They existed in different and unconnected circles. Sahir had unfortunately turned those circles into a Venn diagram.

“Everyone offers gifts and curses.” I flipped my hair and traipsed past him. “No point worrying which is which until the time comes.” Every time I spoke with Sahir, the part of me that thought I was a sassy sword-wielding protagonist in a fantasy novel took over.

“Good day, Miriam,” Sahir said, turning right. I turned left past the giant painting of our founder, then three rows of cubicles, and finally slid into my rolling chair.

My team was in the office now, in the three cubicles around mine.

“What’s for lunch, Miri?” my colleague Levi asked, glancing over at my desk. I stared at the wide laminated surface, my pink reusable water bottle in one corner and my coffee thermos in the other.

“Grain bowl,” I muttered, sliding my key card into my computer.

“You gotta eat more protein, princess,” he said, helpfully. “That’s how you get gains.”

Levi believed in one macronutrient: protein.

“No pain, no gain,” I said, to say something.

He laughed. I looked over at him; his gelled brown hair had been slicked back into four distinct ridges, presumably where he’d run his hand through it. He was in his shirtsleeves, leaning back in his chair.

“Don’t report me to HR for calling you princess,” he added, his voice slightly too high to convince me he was joking.

I shrank down in my chair a bit. “I wouldn’t,” I said.

The silence settled, thick and viscous like a bathtub full of Jell-O.

I glanced around our group.

“Jeff and I are going to Faerie,” I told Levi, trying not to sound nervous. I told Levi so I wouldn’t text Jordan and Thea, who would absolutely blow up my phone, and probably show up at my workplace in the hopes of tagging along.

“Yeah, so, the thing about client dinners is, you cannot get too drunk,” Levi said, which was the only wrong response. On my other side, I could feel Corey perking up.

“There go my plans,” I muttered, clenching my thumb under my other fingers. I should’ve just texted my friends, because as unhelpful and culturally insensitive as an entourage of twenty-somethings in cosplay would’ve been, I knew it would be better than whatever wisdom Levi was about to impart.

Levi nodded earnestly. “I know you will want to drink. I know you think you can outdrink them. But don’t. One time I double-fisted Jameson and ended up under a table narfing in a client’s bong and jangle, if you catch my drift.” I stared at him; it wasn’t that I didn’t believe him, but I honestly couldn’t believe he was saying it out loud. On my left, Corey snorted.

“It wasn’t the client who told us he would fuck all our mothers,” Levi clarified, because this was obviously something that needed clarifying. “You remember that story, right? Anyway he wasn’t happy when I upchucked on his Chucks.”

I blinked at Levi. The others had turned around to listen to him, as they always did when anyone talked about the “good old days” of banking. Now whenever anyone wrote fuck in an email we got a compliance notice, and Jeff had to give us a lecture, which I personally found hard to internalize when every third word out of Jeff’s mouth was fuck.

But in the good old days, which were somewhere between five and thirty years ago, you could spank a secretary or call an analyst “a smeared crust of dogshit on the underside of an old boot” and that was a fine thing to do.

I opened my bowl and stuck a fork into it, the gloopy mass immediately sticking to the utensil.

“But did you guys close the deal?” Corey asked, his face brighter than usual. Corey had once said “investment banking is sexy” in a meeting and meant it. Since Corey didn’t appear attracted to any of our colleagues and had never referenced a romantic partner of any kind, I wasn’t sure where he got that from.

“Oh yeah. One-point-three million fee,” Levi crowed.

“Nice,” Matt chimed in from the other side of the aisle.

I ate a bite of chewy brown goop, staring at a report on my computer and trying to erase that conversation from my head. In our operational model, the logistics of scaling one gnome under a tree into a faerie factory flattened into revenue and expense lines.

“Levi,” I said, “do you think you’ll have a chance to help me with this model soon?”

“Sure,” he said, not looking at me. “What’s the issue?”

“Well, they don’t really have a business plan to scale, so I don’t think the numbers make sense.”

“Miri,” Levi said, in the tone he reserved for me. “We don’t worry about the assumptions, remember?” He separated each word, like he wanted to make sure I could digest them. “It’s not our problem if they can do it or not. It’s the investor’s problem.”

This wasn’t true, and as I had recently taken my licensing exams, I probably could have pointed Levi to the relevant regulation stating otherwise. But it absolutely wasn’t worth arguing with him.

“Sorry, I forgot,” I said, staring at the computer. I hit F2 and started auditing the model, because we had to get it out to the client before we went to dinner.

Not that Levi or Jeff cared what I did regarding our client. Levi didn’t really engage with them, and Jeff hated them passionately.

I took another bite of grain mass and squeezed my eyes shut. It was going to be a long day.

At seven thirty p.m., Jeff came out of his office to talk to me. No one had given me details about when we’d be going to Faerie, or how we would get there, but I’d learned not to ask questions.

“Hey, Miri,” he said, standing over my chair. I spun the chair to look up at him and immediately regretted it. He was slightly too close for me to stand up, his knees almost touching mine.

“Hi, Jeff,” I said, staring into his nostrils. He glowered down at me, like a stilt walker at a Ren faire who’d just tripped over a stroller.

“Let’s get in the car.”

I glanced at my own shoes and almost bumped my head into his stomach. “I wanted to wear sneakers,” I said, unsure if I was asking for permission or stating a plan.

“Wear sneakers, I don’t care,” he said, leaning an elbow on the divider at the edge of my desk. I watched it tilt precariously. “They’re magical creatures, Miri, they don’t know about fashion.”

I didn’t know about fashion either.

“Okay.” I spun back around—Jeff still standing behind my chair—and slid my shoes off. I waited for him to move, but he didn’t, so I had to toe around under the desk for my sneakers without sliding back into him. After a few seconds, I found them and hitched myself into a backbend to get into the shoes without moving the chair.

“Let’s go, Miri,” Jeff said.

Assuming he’d moved, I twisted out of the seat and bumped into him. Jeff grabbed my arm to steady me. “Jesus, balance much?”

I frowned up at him. He let go and led the way out into the elevator bank, talking. I grabbed my computer, shoved it in my backpack, slung the pack over my shoulder, and followed him.

By the time I caught up, I’d clearly missed a few sentences.

“But anyway, the thing about clients is they’re always right, but they’re never right. You shouldn’t ever seriously listen to a client, but you should always agree with them.” He jabbed his finger on the down button, so hard his nail went white.

“Oh, interesting,” I said, following Jeff into the elevator. He stood in the middle of the car, facing the back wall, so I inched left around him and leaned against a side wall.

“The client will have a lot of opinions, but you don’t need to pay attention to them. But if they ask why you didn’t do something, you just say you’ll circle back to them on that. Then you can forget about it. That’s what I do,” Jeff said, in a distressing stream of consciousness. I wondered if the elevator would move. I wondered if Jeff intended to lean against a wall at some point. “Also, it sounds like they’re sending a car for us,” Jeff added, when I only nodded in response.

“Faeries don’t drive,” I said, staring at the television screen blinking stock market updates in the right-hand panel. The elevator began its descent.

“Clearly they do, Miri, and don’t contradict me tonight. It looks bad.” He straightened his tie. I glanced down and saw he was still wearing his nice shoes. I wondered if Jeff did care what the Fae thought of him.

Faeries can’t drive, I thought. They’re not allowed to in New York. New York State wouldn’t let faeries on anything faster than a moped, ostensibly because of concerns that the pure metals in vehicles would weaken them, leading to drowsiness while driving.

The Princeling had never commented on this regulation one way or another.

“Okay, sorry,” I said aloud as the elevator door mercifully opened.

Jeff strode toward the southern turnstile and out into our opulent marble lobby, which had been designed by a man who was apparently trapped in the Parthenon for thirty years and was also apparently twelve feet tall. The security guard leaned against a fluted column, glaring inward at the vast misery of his own psyche. I waved at him, but he didn’t see me.

When we reached the glass revolving doors, Jeff shoved forward forcefully. I scurried into the next slot.

It was late enough that the sun had phoned it in and hung in the sky unenthusiastically, pierced by spires. But the city shone bright and angry around us, pulsing with life. Across the street I saw a gaggle of middle schoolers, wearing sweatpants and flinging their skateboards around, shrieking like banshees. Behind them, three banshees sat sedately conversing at the wine bar we sometimes went to after work, nursing long-stemmed glasses of red.

A giant delivery truck rumbled to a stop in front of them, Tornado & Sons Tender Tenderloins emblazoned in green on the side.

“Tornado tenderloins are tough,” Jeff told me. “Werewolf owners. They probably chew the cows to death. And their logo isn’t centered on the truck. Bad design, I don’t know how they sell anything.”

Before I could respond, a gaggle of cargo-shorts-clad tourists who’d clearly bought Yankees caps as camouflage started gasping and pointing. A few New Yorkers leaving work in their somber black suits also cast surreptitious glances away from their phones and toward the commotion.

Following their focus, I saw a faerie knight turn onto our street, astride the biggest horse I’d ever seen (though in fairness, the only other living horses I’d seen were the carriage-pulling ones in Central Park).

The knight was resplendent in perfectly tailored monochrome, silvery garb that glittered in the halogen streetlights. Her sparkling silver hair cast sharp shadows across her even sharper cheekbones. Her somber silver eyes glinted in the dying summer sunlight, so bright even down the street that they made the orange cast of early evening seem dim. She radiated confidence, like she was the protector of any land she set foot on, not just her own home in Faerie.

The Gray Knight, in the flesh.

She led two other horses, each half as wide as a car, and stopped in front of us. When the Gray Knight slid off her horse—a gorgeous dappled gray, twice as tall as Jeff—she turned to me first and inclined her head.

“My lady,” she said, her hand outstretched. I went to shake it, but she brought my hand to her lips and kissed my knuckles, staring up at me through the thick fringe of her lashes. “May our first real meeting be a boon and a blessing.”

“I am honored to meet you in person, fair one,” I replied. Fair one just felt like the move, I don’t know. But it seemed to please her, because she smiled against my fingers and pulled away.

I glanced at Jeff, who had shifted so his own hand dangled in front of him, limp and ready for a kiss.

She straightened. “Jeff,” she said, staring at him. He dropped his hand back to his side.

“Gray,” he said.

The Gray Knight gestured toward the horses. “I bring you transport for our evening’s revel,” she said. She led me to the nearer horse, a brown animal with an almost golden mane. “Let me help you mount,” she said, holding her hand out to me.

Jeff chortled behind us.

“Thank you,” I said, reaching for her. She ignored my proffered hand. In a fluid motion, she slid both hands around my waist, thumbs under my backpack, and before I could gasp, she’d lifted me onto the horse.

I was startled: That lift would’ve been a challenge for almost any human, and she’d done it with neither fanfare nor difficulty. A not unpleasant shiver ran up my spine. I shook my head and tried to ground myself, splaying my hands on the horse’s neck.

Though I could have sworn the horse’s back was bare when I stood on the ground, I sat in a saddle with a round knob protruding from the front.

“What’s their name?” I asked, shifting forward on the horse’s back and patting the thick neck.

She looked up at me, her gray eyes swirling with stars. “A name is a powerful thing,” she said. “But you may call her Sparkles.”

“Sparkles?” I repeated.

The Gray Knight had already moved toward Jeff, who seemed determined not to accept her help. He kept trying to climb the other horse, his hands grabbing awkwardly at its back and side. He’d hitched one foot against the horse’s leg, and I was shocked that he hadn’t been trampled to death.

She examined him for a moment, her head cocked predatorily, and then put both of her hands on his side and shoved him up, like a barrel over a waterfall. And then she went back to her own silvery-gray horse—were they matching?—and she leapt. She was like a lion in a nature documentary, or like Doctor Kitten trying to get on a counter. She tensed, and I could almost imagine a tail twitching as she found equilibrium—

No. I wasn’t imagining it; she had a tail, a thin silver one, like a birch branch against the sky. I gaped at it, hypnotized—they didn’t all have tails…did they? The Princeling had wings. How did I not know that faeries could have tails?

Our horses moved of their own accord, into a single-file line going down 44th Street. Jeff had righted himself, though he rode before me like a man who had never straddled anything in his entire life. In front of him, the Gray Knight sat comfortably astride her horse, her shoulders back and her head twisting from side to side as she took in her surroundings. Whenever she looked at me, I felt my back straighten, my shoulders pull away from my ears. Our eyes met and I flushed, flustered by the force of her full inhuman attention. I looked away.

“Sparkles, do you obey traffic laws?” I asked the horse, patting her shoulder. She didn’t say anything, but her ears tilted back.

At least I didn’t have to make small talk with Jeff as the horses turned north on Sixth Avenue.

Tourists stared in awe as we rode down the street, and a kid on the sidewalk did a double take when he saw us, but for the most part, the native New Yorkers had seen weirder. I worried about Doctor Kitten for a moment—he didn’t like to be alone for too long—but I’d be home later tonight, and he’d get to ignore me to his heart’s content.

We entered the upper fifties, and I wondered if we were headed for Central Park. No one had confirmed it, but people said there was an entrance to Faerie somewhere inside.

Sure enough, the horses crossed 59th Street, going north up Center Drive. The sickle moon, weirdly visible hours before sunset, disappeared behind a cloud and was suddenly gone. The moment we passed between the low stone walls, the air around us quieted, like the squirrels and pigeons were preparing for a performance. The world darkened, the trees thicker and the sky more velvet than gray. I could hear Jeff wheezing ahead of me.

The trees grew harder to avoid on horseback. A branch softly brushed my face, and then another, and I closed my eyes to avoid getting poked.

I felt Sparkles turn, stepping off the path. A rush of air brought wafts of heather and mown grass; everything felt subtly different and simultaneously unchanged, like we were a toy race car jumping from one track to another.

I opened my eyes, and gasped. It was still the park…but it wasn’t. The colors had brightened so I could see—not like daylight, but like a movie set, with muted light throughout the open area in front of us. There was a wide plain laid out at Sparkles’s feet; it ended abruptly at a wall of trees on the horizon. I could see each trunk, the moss growing up from rich dark earth, the shifting shadows made by rustling leaves.

And there was no moon. Stars spun overhead in silver whorls; filaments of liquid mercury spilled across the black velvet sky.

I felt the breath catch in my chest. Faerie. The wide, hard-packed patch of dirt before me was Faerie.

We’d come out—in?—a few yards from a long wooden table, set with plates and bowls that shone dimly. Off to my right, a path led toward the uniform mass of a hill.

Arrayed before us stood the Princeling and the remainder of his retinue: the Blue Knight, the Red Knight, the Crone, and Sahir, whose place in the Court I still wasn’t sure about—though I was glad to see him here.

“We could’ve carpooled,” I said to him, forcing a grin to hide my awe. He came toward me and held out his hands.

“I doubt you would have been delighted by my steed,” he said as I fell, ungainly, into his arms. He caught me with ease. Sahir slid me down his body, gently, until my feet touched the earth. I tried not to feel how warm his palms were against my spine.

Determined not to be creepy, I pushed away and turned to the horse.

“Thanks, Sparkles,” I said, and patted her on the shoulder as high as I could reach. She tossed her head and stalked off into a wide meadow, radiating the self-satisfaction of a quadruped who’d vastly exceeded expectations.

Jeff sat on his horse, frowning at the Princeling, who had come to stand by his side. The Princeling was much taller than I’d expected, towering over everyone present, but otherwise looked exactly the same as he did on the video calls: the slightly sharper features inherent to most Fae, with a nose like a weapon and shoulders that made me think about the month in college I’d spent binge-reading romantasy and pining over brooding magical dudes. He was basically straight from the pages: broad, with a wide chest and a triangular torso that hinted at hours spent in physical combat but were probably just physiological. His green eyes sparkled like faceted peridots as he took me in.

And there were his wings—smaller than I’d expected, from what I’d seen over his shoulder on camera. They were composed of soft-looking feathers in an array of greens and golds, though they were almost translucent; I could imagine them catching the light so beautifully when outstretched.

Without looking away from me, he held his arms out to Jeff, offering assistance on the dismount.

When Jeff glanced over and saw that I was already on the ground, his face flushed and he shook his head, instead flinging himself off his horse into space. He landed on the Princeling with a loud “Oof!”; the Princeling buckled but didn’t fall. There was no gentle release, though, and the Princeling let Jeff stumble away.

Jeff straightened up and nodded at me, a jerky motion that meant get over here. I went to stand next to him and inclined my head to the Princeling. “My liege,” I said.

Obviously, the Princeling was not literally my liege. But what do you call a liege who isn’t yours? Mister Liege? Their Liege? Hello, Someone Else’s Liege.

Jeff grunted, which meant I should be talking.

“Lady of the True Dreams,” the Princeling said to me. That was at least better than “sorceress.” His green eyes were almost dappled, like sitting below a tree in midsummer.

He turned to Jeff. “Jeff.”

“Well, I’m starving,” Jeff said, and chuckled. “Should we eat and talk?”

My stomach tightened. Was he just…not going to listen to me at all? I stared at the Princeling, who looked back like he could read my mind.

“Yes,” he said, with a smile that made his lips thin and white, “we should eat and talk.”

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