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Evangeline Walton and R. A. MacAvoy—”
    The girl leaned forward. “You can
study
those? In
college
?”
    “Oh, yeah. My parents weren’t thrilled—they wanted me to do engineering—but I placated them with a double-major in—”
    “Tilien!”
thrummed a woman’s voice by his ear. “Is that tilien you’re drinking, mortal?” Anush swiveled on his stool to look into eyes the color of violets on the first day of spring. “Here, let me try it.”
    The impossibly slender, pale fingers lifted his metal cup, carried it to rose-petal lips that parted like the gates of Paradise to take a sip of his lassi. As she drank, her lashes fanned her cheeks like the peacock feather fans of a prince’s wife.
    “Not tilien.” The lassi-scented breath was almost in his own mouth, so close were her lips to his. “What call you this drink, mortal?”
    Cam plunked a juice can down in front of the elf goddess. “It’s yogurt lassi made with guanabana. Also known as soursop.”
    “Gua-naaaaa-bana.” In her mouth, the word was a poem.
    He leaned forward to savor it.
    “Very nearly as good. I will taste it again soon.” She smiled at him. “What is your name, mortal man?”
    “Anush Gupta.”
    “No!” the scruffy girl next to him cried. Maybe her tea had gotten cold.
    “Then come, Anush Gupta,” said the Trueblood elf. “Come with me. For we have much to discuss.”
    *   *   *
     
    “Never mind, honey,” said the ponytailed waitress. “He was too old for you, anyway.”
    Trish flushed. “It’s not that. I wanted him to tell me about Harvard! And myth classes. And safety schools. And that Welsh thing. Where Prydain comes from.”
    “Try Elsewhere Books. Someone there will know.”
    “He shouldn’t have told her his real name,” Trish fretted.
    “Probably not.”
    “Doesn’t it give them power over you?”
    “Kiddo, she didn’t need his name for that.” The waitress held out her hand across the counter. “I’m Cam, by the way.”
    When Trish saw the tips of her ears, she tried to suppress a gasp.
    “It’s cool,” said Cam. “I’m a halfie.”
    “I’m, um, Tara.” Trish hadn’t really gotten used to the false name yet. She’d thought about being Eilonwy, but no way did she qualify as the feisty redheaded princess from
The Book of Three.
And besides, she wasn’t really sure how you pronounced it.
    *   *   *
     
    This is it
, Anush thought as he left the Hard Luck Café with the elf—the Trueblood—woman. He was dizzy with desire for her, and as strong as a hundred bulls with the certainty that the courtship rituals of exogamous elves would soon be within his grasp. Sure, a trained anthropologist wasn’t supposed to get data this way, but he felt sure his professor would understand.
    He followed her down Ho Street and into a tangle of alleys he didn’t recognize. At a narrow side door, she paused and passed her hand over the latch. It turned from iron to gold. She opened the door and led him up shadowy, uneven stairs and into a room that reminded him of a forest, and of a ship, and of something he’d been promised once and never gotten.
    When they lay together at last, peaceful and quiet on a bed of bracken that rustled like silk, she said, “You are beautiful, Anush Gupta. Like the night sky in an autumn wood. Ask me something, and it shall be yours.”
    Anush sighed deeply. He thought of asking for a notebook, but that might be blowing his big chance. Instead he said, “I do have a few questions, actually.”
    She was fine with the first three. She didn’t mind discussing Trueblood hierarchy or scarcity or isolationist self-segregation. Even the relative ages of mate selection just made her laugh. But when he got to “And how many sexual partners would you say you have in a year?” the woman reared up over his head, her hair falling like frozen water around them both.
    “The counting of favors is a cruel thing, Anush Gupta. As well count the breaths it takes to speak your