Lowering the coarse white hospital towel, she stared into her own eyes.

"Is this all life is? One disaster after another?" she whispered.

Trying to see some hope in the plain brown eyes staring back at her from her reflection, Annabelle didn't notice the total silence until it was broken.

"Lucas!" Erin's voice echoed clearly through the door. "I knew you'd come."

"Lucas?" She shook her head. No one would be allowed up here except family. Her shoulders drooped as she realized what Erin's words meant. "Oh, no, please. She's talking to herself." It didn't take a medical degree and advanced psychiatric training to see the deterioration of her sister's condition. Would institutionalization be necessary? How in the world would they pay for it?

Thoughts of state-run facilities and the horror of it all played through Annabelle's mind.

"Annabelle," Erin called softly, "Come here, hurry. Lucas is here."

Eyes squeezed shut, Annabelle prayed for guidance. Should she go along with the fantasy and pretend to see Lucas? Or should she confront Erin with her delusion? Gulping a breath of courage, she pulled the door open and stepped into the room.

Erin lay in her bed, face alight with happiness. There was no Lucas standing by the bed.

"See, I told you he'd come," she said.

"Erin," Annabelle began, "please, honey, can't you see you're just imagining? The lowdown, dirty skunk got what he wanted, and he left you alone in the woods, and you've just got to face facts."

Erin smiled, Cheshire cat-like. "Oh, really?"

The scratching sound of the door and the scuffing of soft-soled shoes made Annabelle turn, expecting to see a night nurse coming with medication. Relieved to have some backup, she opened her mouth to ask for help in convincing Erin of her folly.

A young man in a doctor's green scrubs with shaggy russet hair peered out the door as it eased closed. He was very tall, slender but not slight, with wonderful, broad shoulders. Turning away from the door, he flashed a smile that twinkled in his black eyes and raised a finger against his lips. Annabelle watched him cross the room, pick up a straight-backed chair and take it to the door where he jammed it underneath the handle.

"What are you doing?" she asked, alarmed by his action. "Who are you?"

He came back toward her, his smile broadening as he extended his hand to her.

"I'm the lowdown, dirty skunk, Lucas Riley."

" Squooshed and flying, Gaelen picked up the trail easily enough. The particle residue Lucas had left behind burned bright. Even a human could have seen it.

"Holy Bridget!" he whispered as he followed it eastward out over the ocean. "That must have been one great lay!"

The thought that all this trouble was caused by sex made Gaelen even angrier. It wasn't as though Lucas couldn't have found a fairy woman to dally with. Or even a pixie. There were many right in Chapel Hill, each one of them beautiful and lush and willing.

The coast of northern Africa came into view.

Slowing only a little--too slow and humans could see the pinpoint of light a squooshed fairy appeared to be, and it was better if they saw nothing at all--Gaelen oriented himself along the trail of fairy dust and followed it into the Valley of the Kings. The trail petered out at the Great Pyramid.

At least Lucas had managed to keep himself on this world. Once, Gaelen forgot all his father's wise words and ended up on Jupiter, wing-deep in liquid ammonia and sore as hell. The girl hadn't spoken to him for years.

Of course, she'd eventually come around and Gaelen had redeemed himself.

Settling on the base of the Great Pyramid, Gaelen unsquooshed.

"Whoa!" he put out his hand to steady himself, waiting for the dizziness to pass. He hated squooshing. It was unnatural, smashing your atoms, compressing all the space out of them and reducing yourself to the size of a speck of light. But the lightheadedness of unsquooshing was the worst of it.

"Ah, but that's the fairy way," he repeated his old da's words. And for this particular task, it was the only way. He had to find Lucas, and get him and the girl back to New Jersey.

"Lucas!" His sent his voice out over the countryside. If Lucas were within fifty miles, he'd hear. And if he were hurt, as Gaelen suspected, he'd stay here until he healed.

"Lucas!" He repeated his call and strained to hear a sound.

For the first time since leaving the Council Chamber, Gaelen began to worry.