CHAPTER 1: The Door
The door had not been there yesterday.
Lena Voss was certain of this. She walked past the narrow alley between the bookshop and the dry cleaner’s on Caldwell Street every morning on her way to work, had walked it for three years, and the alley ended in a solid brick wall exactly as it had always ended—except that this morning it ended in a door.
Arched, black wood, no handle visible, ornate hinges that had the look of very old iron. An arch of carved flowers around the frame that seemed to shift slightly when she looked at them from her peripheral vision.
She stopped walking.
She was going to be late. She had a department meeting at nine and a project review at eleven and she was wearing her good blazer, which had cost her two weeks of freelance work, and standing in an alley staring at a door that shouldn’t exist was not in the plan.
She turned to keep walking.
“It opens for you.”
She stopped. There was a small woman sitting on a crate she was also certain hadn’t been there: silver-haired, ancient, with the patient expression of someone who’d been waiting for exactly this moment and was prepared to wait longer if necessary.
“I’m sorry?” Lena said.
“The door. It opens for you.” The woman looked at the door. “Not everyone, mind. Hasn’t opened in forty years. But you—” She tilted her head. “You have the blood.”
“I have the what?”
“Your grandmother’s mother was born in the Fae courts,” the woman said, simply. “That kind of thing doesn’t dilute much. It just—hides.”
Lena looked at the door.
“I have a meeting,” she said.
“You’ll have a meeting,” the woman agreed. “If you go through now, you’ll be back well before eleven. Time moves differently there.” A pause. “But if you don’t go now, the door will be gone tomorrow. They won’t call it back again.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“The Summer Court. They sent the door.” The woman folded her hands. “There’s a reason, but I can’t tell you what it is. That would spoil the asking.”
Lena looked at the door for a long moment.
She put her hand on the arch. The carved flowers were warm under her fingers—warmer than the morning air justified—and when she touched the wood it gave slightly, not like a door yielding, but like something responding.
She pushed.
The door opened.
The light on the other side was not morning light. It was the light of somewhere that had its own rules about what morning meant—golden and diffuse and carrying a smell that she couldn’t identify but that registered somewhere in a part of her brain that was older than language.
She stepped through.
“Welcome back,” said the light, which was not quite light.
The door closed behind her.
