It wasn’t the first time I’d felt that way—when school was out, I had to spend way too much time in the presence of my mother, the drunk—but it was even more welcome this year than most. This year, it promised a kind of normalcy that had disappeared from my life the moment I’d set foot in Avalon, the one place in the universe where Faerie and the mortal world intersect. You see, I’m a Faeriewalker—a rare individual who has just the right mix of Fae and mortal blood to be able to travel freely in both the mortal world and in Faerie. I can also take magic into the mortal world and technology into Faerie. My unusual powers—and my late aunt Grace’s attempts to use me as a weapon to usurp the Seelie throne—had made me very unpopular with the two Queens of Faerie, and I’d been living in a bunker-like safe house under threat of death all summer. I had reached an agreement with Titania, the Seelie Queen, and she was no longer out to kill me, but my status with Mab, the Unseelie Queen, was less clear.