After a day's contemplation, Nic had rejected both the oven and the table for her Florida-brownie trap, choosing instead to build herself a tower of beer-filled plastic cups, sausage-bearing plates, and noisy silverware on the seat of a warm rocking chair with the naked hard drive tied securely to the back. If anything happened overnight—not that anything possibly could happen— the Rube-Goldberg construction insured that Nic wouldn't sleep through it.
And she didn't. When the tower collapsed somewhere between midnight and dawn, she was sitting bolt upright in bed before the last fork clattered to the linoleum floor. There were no follow-up sounds, but there was light!
Grabbing her broom handle, Nic raced down the corridor in time to see something dark and cat-sized dart behind the refrigerator. The scuttling shadow didn't hold Nic's attention long. The light was in the living room—two lights: one feminine and familiar, the other masculine and also familiar, but more aristocratic now than he'd been in sunlight.
The man's dark eyes shone with an unfriendly temper. He tossed a flowing cape over one shoulder and stalked through the front door. The woman gathered her skirts but hestitated, watching the refrigerator as closely as she watched Nic.
"I set him free," Nic reminded her glowing guest. "Or her. I think that's what you wanted, and if it was, I think I'm entitled to an explanation. What happened? How did he, or she, wind up on a hard drive? What's with the squirrels? And, last but not least, what are you?"
"I am myself," the woman replied without moving her lips. Her voice was whisper-soft in Nic's ears, yet easily understood. "As you are yourself and the little ones—the brownies—" She made it plain that the label was not one she preferred to use. "Are themselves. They know better—" She cast a mother's stare toward the refrigerator. "But the ee-lek-trece-ity—" Another word that did not come easily to the glowing woman, "Is so sweet and their minds are so small. When they play, they cannot always remember the danger."
Darkness surrounded by dust bunnies emerged from beneath the refrigerator. Nic got an impression of spindly limbs and a leathery, sharp-featured face before it was gone—through the door—and only the dust bunnies remained, settling to the doormat.
"And they wind up trapped on a hard drive until you rescue them?" Nic asked.
The woman—the fairy queen, Titania?—shook her head. "Usually," she uttered a birdlike musical sound, "this happening is rare, very rare. We hear them suffering, but rescue is difficult —impossible."
"Without the help of something more irresistible than electricity, something like beer?"
Titania nodded. "There will be great celebration—and fear, too, that they will forget everything and think because one was rescued, there is no longer any danger. This happening was chance, not plan."
Nic heard more fear than celebration in Titania's voice. "If there's ever anything I can do ... set out another round of beer and sausages ... ?"
Titania raised her arm and Nic felt a brush of warm velvet against her cheek and the faintest scent of ozone, like dew-fresh air after a thunderstorm. Nic closed her eyes as the velvety touch passed over them. When she reopened them, she was alone.