“Nah, this is just a layover.” Falk fished a pocket watch from his trench coat. “The portal to the bazaar won’t be aligned for twelve more minutes. All the portals have different schedules. Nowadays, of course, computers track most of them and set up layovers like this one. But back in the day we had to do it by memory and feel. It took skill and balls, like jumping trains.”

“You sound like you miss the old days.”

Falk appeared troubled by the idea.

“No, they were rotten times, really. People died—sometimes badly—and nobody could afford to give a crap because that was just the price of knowledge back then. I’m glad all that’s gone now.” Falk closed his pocket watch and slipped it back into his coat pocket. Then he offered Jason one of his self-conscious, crooked grins. “I’m just a codger who misses the man he was before all those good old days took their toll.”

Jason considered him: his ghostly, luminous quality and his rough appearance, all those scars, his missing finger, and that tattoo like a brand left on him by the man who’d recruited him.

“Something really bad happened to you back then, didn’t it?” Jason asked.

“Something bad happened to most everyone back then. At least I’m still walking,” Falk replied. He watched Jason almost warily. But Jason wasn’t about to force him to talk about anything he wasn’t ready to share. He’d endured too many mandatory psychiatric sessions himself to treat another person’s private history so cavalierly.

“So where is this place?” Jason asked instead.

“Remains of the Elysian Fields after the bombings of ’42,” Falk replied. “Eight square miles of dwarf-flower preserves. A community of faeries settled here about fifty years back. Whatever you do, don’t swat any of them.” Falk thumbed up at the sky.

Jason gazed up to see a single, colorful cloud rolling slowly closer. As it drifted near, Jason realized that it was composed entirely of pale moths and butterflies. The majority of them settled across the carpet of flowers but several of them fluttered only a few feet from Jason.

A faint haze surrounded each insect with what looked like the silhouette of a human body. Then suddenly the haze around the nearest moth grew solid and in an instant the moth was gone and a dainty woman with oddly yellow hair, eyes, and lips stood only a foot from Jason. The faintest shadow of a moth fluttered over her heart. Jason didn’t scrutinize it too closely, since it did nothing to clothe her small, bare breasts.

“A new face to our sunny fields!” The woman cocked her head back to beam up at Jason from just above his belt. “Have you come to dally among the flowers, fair traveler?”

“No. We—we’re just passing through,” Jason replied quickly. The woman’s flirtatious gaze and nudity unnerved him far more than her sulfur-toned mouth.

“He’s with me, Buttercup.” Falk took an almost proprietary step closer to Jason. Buttercup’s lemon brows rose and she peered up at Jason.

“You don’t look like one of the dead.” She leaned so close that her cheek brushed his arm; her skin felt as cool and powdery as cornstarch. She flicked out her shockingly orange tongue as she drew a deep breath of Jason’s chest. “You don’t smell dead either…Oh, not at all! In fact, you smell sweet and fiery and young, like cinnamon bark and semen!”

An embarrassed flush heated Jason’s face.

“Give it a rest, Buttercup. He’s spoken for.” Falk gently drew Jason back and Buttercup stared at him.

“Oh! That’s how it is?” She raised her brows.

“Yeah, that’s how it is,” Falk stated firmly, though he shot Jason an odd glance. Then he went on talking to Buttercup. “But I have a different proposition for you, my girl.”

“Of course you do! But what could a tiny starving faerie offer you, Half-Dead?” Buttercup smiled brightly at Falk and batted her long yellow lashes. “Not my helpless little body?”

“Your little body’s about as helpless as a black widow’s,” Falk replied. “I’m looking for three pinches of dust.” Jason wasn’t sure what exactly that meant, but Buttercup nodded.

“What you got for it?” Buttercup eyed Falk speculatively, though Jason noted that she never drew too near him.

“Treasure from another kingdom.” Falk reached into his pocket and drew out what looked like three red-and-white-striped straws.

“Pixy Stix!” Buttercup’s entire expression lit up. The shadowy moth floating over her heart beat its wings wildly, as if attempting to fly to Falk’s hand. Jason noted several other moths rise from the flowery carpet at their feet, but Buttercup swung her arms out, waving them away.

“Mine!” she called out and the moths fell back. When she returned her gaze to Falk, Jason thought her eyes might actually be sparkling. “Three for three.”

“Three for three,” Falk agreed. He extended both his hands, proffering the paper-wrapped candy to Buttercup with his right. “A trade fair and true, says I.”

“Fair and true, says I,” Buttercup echoed. She flicked her right hand from her chest to Falk’s empty left hand three times. Each time Jason saw her fingers brush through the shadowy moth at her heart, collecting a velvety gray dust from its wings, which she brushed across Falk’s palm. The instant she made the third exchange she snatched the candy from Falk and bounded back as if she expected to be pursued.

Falk closed his hand into a fist and then slipped it into his coat pocket—where Jason was beginning to suspect he kept an inordinate number of odd things.

Buttercup tore open one of the red-striped straws and tossed back the contents. An instant later she let out a crow of joy and danced back to him and Falk. Her cheeks flushed bright orange and her feet hardly touched the ground as she skipped around them gleefully.

“What was in that thing?” Jason asked softly.

“Colored sugar, citric acid, and all the anticipation of a six-year-old on Christmas morning.” Falk’s expression softened slightly as he watched Buttercup. “The bright packaging doesn’t hurt any.”

“More beautiful than phlox, sweeter than honeysuckle, sharper than lemon blossoms!” Buttercup paused a moment to hold the straws to the cloudless blue sky. “I would wed you, sweetness, if I weren’t going to devour you instead!”

Falk gave a quiet laugh and then asked offhandedly, “You haven’t heard anything of a bauble-snatcher called Phipps lately, have you, Buttercup?”

“Passed through early yesterday, sweating and swearing. Left word that buyers could find him at Red Ogre’s.” Buttercup glanced away from the bright candies for only an instant. “Be careful doing business with him, Half-Dead. He’s just your opposite, a handsome hollow wrapped around a rotten pit.”

“I’ll keep my head up. You take care as well, beautiful.” Falk flashed her a smile, then turned to Jason and beckoned him toward the port-o-let.

“It’s about time for us to go. But first, there are a few things I need to tell you about the bazaar. Most importantly is that our human laws have no authority there, so be careful and stay close to me. Law in the Grand Bazaar is a force unto itself. Definitely don’t accept anything unless you’ve paid for it, even if it seems like it’s being offered for free—nothing is ever free at the bazaar. And don’t give anyone your real name. Your identity in particular needs to be protected. So today you’re Agent August, got that?”

“Agent August,” Jason repeated, though he doubted that anyone would mistake him for an agent of any kind. “What should I call you?”

“Most everyone knows me as Half-Dead Henry.” Falk sounded tired of it, but then his tone lightened. “You could just call me Henry, if you like.”

“Sure, Henry it is.” Jason didn’t know why, but he felt almost touched to be on a first-name basis with Falk. Then he scowled at his own sentimentality. Fortunately Falk had turned to return Buttercup’s farewell wave.

“I don’t really look the part of an agent,” Jason commented as Falk’s attention turned back to him.