It wasn’t so much that the world changed as it felt like Lily herself changed. Something shifted in her center and her perception snapped into place. The echoes that had reverberated under the canopy dissipated, and the ground warped before her eyes. For a disorienting second, Lily couldn’t tell what way was up. Then, it settled.

Rays of sunlight darted across the tree leaves and danced in her eyes, their angle suggesting a fast-approaching twilight. There was no real wind, but still she heard occasional puffs of humid breeze ruffling the vegetation. Birds tweeted somewhere in the background—there must be a nest nearby.

Dazed, she walked past the shrub of red flowers, following the clear gurgle of water, and not three yards later, she caught the glint of weak sun reflected on running water.

“What is this?” she asked, turning around. The place was both the same and different from the one she had stood on a blink before.

“The riverside,” Troy said.

“I was on the riverside? All along?” She pointed the shrub, the path under her feet.

He narrowed his eyes, choosing his words with care. “The path you wandered was superimposed to the riverside, yes.”

Lily thought back once more to the stories she could recall from her grandma. Most characters entering or exiting a faerie path wouldn’t even realize they’d left the real world until it was too late, so it made sense. Still, for the entrance to have been so close, and for her to be unable to feel it…

She shivered and then, to hide it, began to pick her way to the river. Troy followed on her heels, his strides easy and confident.

“How long since the attack? You told me saying ‘yesterday’ could be misleading, and I think I remember time doing weird things in the faerie paths.”

“Well done,” he said, giving her a look of surprise and honest praise. “Time does tend to run quicker in mortal lands, and sometimes it folds many times over in the heart of our territory. This path was close to your world, and close to the river, so the correlation should be quite straightforward. I suspect little more than a day might have passed, perhaps two.”

“I’m worried the trail will turn cold,” she admitted. “Or that someone noticed the attack and called the cops. They’ll never understand what happened and they might make it difficult for us.”

Troy shrugged. “Mortals prefer not to see the affairs of fay.”

“I can sort of see why.”

They reached the river just then. It wasn’t wide, but the water was pure and the current fast. Glancing up and down, she saw no known landmarks, no houses. For all she knew, it wasn’t even the Dee.

“Is it far to my grandma’s?” she asked, still worried about their timing.

“I shall take you there,” he said, avoiding her question.

The memory of the way he had changed when escaping the bogeys rushed back to her and hit her like a sledgehammer. Her mind had shoved it into a box labeled delirium, allowing her to cope, but his comment brought the vision of a stallion flashing to the forefront of her awareness, with coat like coal tar and eyes like cut emeralds.

“Wait,” she said. “Is there no other way?”

He smiled, the gesture reaching his eyes, alighting them with a wicked gleam, and stared at her long enough to make her squirm.

“And what appears to be the problem with this way, Lily Boyd?” His voice softened a little when he pronounced her name and she only felt a tingling and a gentle encouragement instead of the violent pull she had experienced earlier.

“I don’t want to ride you,” she blurted, blushing. His smile widened and she cursed her pale skin. Judging by the heat, her cheeks looked like apples.

“I thought all the little girls wanted their own pony,” he pressed, amused by her distress.

Lily bit the inside of her cheek. Part of her wanted to react to his innuendo. Another petulant part wanted to tell him she wasn’t a little girl. Yet another part wanted nothing more than to salvage whatever was left of her dignity, and in the end, the last part won.

“I can’t ride, I told you,” she replied, as if that were the whole reason.

“You did so quite admirably before.” He went along, but his tone and eyes made it clear he hadn’t been fooled.

“Must have been the stress. You know, life-or-death situation. I’ve read adrenaline does that to you.”

“Judging from your delicious babbling, an insufficient stress level should not be a problem this time, either.”

She opened and closed her mouth. “Damn it,” she said at last, averting her eyes and glaring at the floor. “Isn’t it embarrassing for you?”

“Not at all. Why would it be?”

Lily scoffed, but then she caught his expression. There was a hint of curiosity there. For him, it was a legitimate question and the fact gave her some pause.

It can’t be just me losing my mind in the gutter. The idea of a girl riding a guy is universally dirty, isn’t it? Unless faeries don’t work quite that way. Unless he thinks of himself more like a horse. Unless he’s not seeing me as a girl at all. But I am a girl, and he isn’t an animal.

She forced out a small cough. “Never mind,” she said after too long in silence.

He nodded, claiming the verbal victory with grace, and then his form became a liquid shadow that shifted and coalesced into the tall steed.

“You cannot fall,” he said in her head just like he had the previous time.

“Is it related to the protection magic?” she asked, feeling awkward for speaking to a horse.

“It is related to a kelpie's nature. Our riders never fall.”

“Okay.” Subdued, she did her best to climb on his back and he endured her accidental hair pulls and knee blows. Then, she was up and she felt what Troy meant. A subtle, gentle energy began pouring over her skin, the sensation not unlike being submerged in tepid water. A feeling she didn’t want to dwell on.

“That’s handy,” she said, “but we should probably hurry.”

And then they were off.