Play the Game

Chapter 8 – Like They Do on the Discovery Channel

Sarah sat in the make-up chair and tried not to doze as Kathy carefully applied a thick layer of foundation on her face. Usually, she made a point to go to bed early on Sunday evenings so that she wouldn’t start the week tired. Last night, however, she’d goofed around with Jareth far into the evening, unsuccessfully attempting to shape shift, preparing a late dinner and finally passing out on the couch in front of the television. When she’d finally awoken around three in the morning, she’d been leaning against his side, and his arm had been wrapped around her shoulder. So much for holding him at a distance until his holiday was over. He was just so easy to be with, and the more time together they spent, the more seamlessly he fit into her life. He would flash her a smile or make a condescending remark about the average intelligence of her neighbors, and she would forget that he was going to leave in a week. Jareth was worming his way under her skin, and she had a terrible feeling that he was headed straight for her heart like some exotic virulent parasite.

And after he left, when would he return? In another fifteen years? Thirty? When she was old and gray? Even if things didn’t work out with Draco, at least he lived in town.

She almost groaned. Draco would most assuredly be on set today and would want to know why she hadn’t called to finalize or cancel their Saturday date. That she had forgotten wasn’t quite true. She had remembered several times, but she had yet to find her cell phone. Where it could have gone she hadn’t a clue! She had not remembered to order a new one during one of her many online sessions. Distractions abounded: there was a backlog of email to answer, a Goblin curling up on her feet, or a Goblin King playing with her hair. He had a fascination with it. Several times, she had caught herself wondering if it was an owl thing, like preening or something. She wouldn’t be surprised.

‘See that?’ Sarah silently chastised herself. ‘You can’t think of anything for very long before your thoughts lead you back to Jareth.’

This wasn’t a good sign, especially since she had yet to make any kind of firm decision. It wasn’t like her to be this indecisive. For the most part, when she knew what she wanted, she pursued it. Now, her head was telling her that Jareth was trouble on legs, and that Draco was the more practical choice. Jareth ruled Labyrinth and turned wished away children into Goblins for a living; Draco had a job as a Production Assistant here in Los Angeles. Jareth was at turns exasperating and adorable, but never dull. Draco was attentive and conciliatory, with a strange preoccupation with her health. Both men were wildly attractive and could kiss a girl’s socks off. Her heart encouraged her to flirt shamelessly with Jareth and let him play with her hair to his heart’s content. That he had yet to broach the subject of his request for a chance unnerved her.

He wouldn’t have forgotten, would he? Had he said it in a fit of passion and didn’t actually mean it? Had the whole “fear me, love me” thing been a bit of flowery speech from a man desperate for non-Goblin female companionship? Was she overanalyzing the situation as her gender was wont to do?

She had too many questions rattling around her brain and too little courage to ask them. At times, their peace seemed brittle, as if they were treading on different sides of a giant crack in a sheet of ice. Once false step would send one or the other plunging into freezing water – perhaps both.

“You’ve got the most beautiful skin, Sarah,” Kathy said wistfully as she dusted Sarah’s nose with a soft-bristled brush coated liberally with oil-absorbing matte foundation. “No freckles or wrinkles, no scars, no oversized pores. I just can’t believe you’re thirty. You have the skin of a twenty year old without the zits.”

Sarah chuckled softly while sitting absolutely still. “I know. My dad accuses me of not aging and wonders where I got those genes.”

“Hm, well if you could bottle it,” Kathy said, now applying shimmering eye shadow to her eyelids, “you would make a fortune.” Next came an all-day lipstick and gloss with a touch of glitter, and then Sarah was shuffled out of make-up and onto the set.

Jareth was already waiting for her on the sidelines, his long blond hair wrangled into a fluffy queue set low on the back of his head and tied with a wide strip of black velvet. His costume was Louis the XVI for this scene, with a long burgundy frock coat trimmed with black velvet and sequins, black kickers and heeled shoes with large silver buckles. A froth of black lace was at his throat and he held a slender riding crop in his gloved hand, which he was switching against the side of his leg. Sarah was slightly put out that he got costumes spanning centuries of fashion while she had to wear the same low-necked, high-waisted style of gown for every scene except one. When he spotted her approaching, he grinned and ran his other hand down the shaft of the crop.

“Say hello to my little friend,” Jareth said and flicked it smartly in her direction.

Sarah laughed and shook her head. “Jareth, no more late-night television for you. You’re cut off.”

He didn’t look at all chastened; if anything, he seemed more pleased with himself that she had understood his reference. Smirking, he said, “I’m sure we could find better things to do on that couch of yours, wouldn’t you agree?”

“You two have certainly gotten cozy,” Phil commented as he stepped up behind Sarah.

“It feels as if I have know dear Sarah for years,” Jareth said blithely as he drew closer to her in what appeared to Sarah as a possessive manner. It probably was, knowing Fae men. Phil inched away from her, seeming to unconsciously recognizing Jareth’s non-verbal claim.

“Glad to see you getting along, then!” Phil smiled brightly at both of them, and for a change, did not leer down her dress. “We’ll start with the castle nursery scene where the young princess is taken by the Goblin King. Take a moment to review your scripts while the crew prepares, and… ah, Draco! Make sure that the puppeteers know their cues.” Barking orders at the camera crew, Phil strode away.

Sarah flinched and glanced around, spotting the man walking decisively toward them, clipboard in hand. His thin white tee shirt was stretched over solidly developed pectoral muscles, and his black hair was bound into a long tail that hung over one shoulder, hiding ears that were undoubtedly pointed. Golden eyes sized her up and then warmed as she met his gaze. Next to her, Jareth tensed and stood absolutely still.

“Sarah, my lovely, I’ve been worried about you!” Draco tucked the clipboard under one arm and captured both her hands in his, brushing kisses across the knuckles. “You haven’t returned any of my calls or messages. I thought that you might have been hurt in the earthquake.”

“Yes, well, my phone went missing,” she said awkwardly, feeling distinctly uncomfortable with Jareth still standing closer to her than was polite and stonily silent. “I’m fine, though. Um, Draco, I don’t think you’ve met the male lead of this production—”

“Jareth,” snapped the Goblin King before she could finish, his voice colder and more forbidding than she had ever heard it. She shot him a pointed glance that he summarily ignored. His mismatched eyes were fixed on the poor Production Assistant, though Draco seemed to be taking his hostility in stride.

Grinning to reveal sharp white teeth, Draco nodded in greeting. “Ah, yes. Your reputation precedes you.”

“Jareth,” Sarah said warningly and nudged him with her elbow. “Draco is a PA for this project.”

Jareth turned his head to look at her, and she was taken aback at the anger seething in the depths of his eyes. “Am I to understand that this is that man that you have been seeing?”

“Yes,” Draco answered for her, drawing Jareth’s attention back to himself. She glared at Draco, but he was now locked in a staring match of epic proportions with the Goblin King. Sarah could almost see the angry arcs of energy snap and spark between the two pairs of inhuman eyeballs. “And you are her… friend, as I understand it.”

She could smell disaster brewing, and it smelled like the Bog.

“Guys…” she started, but neither one of them acknowledged her. This was why she had sworn off Fae men.

“Then it is fortunate that I have this opportunity to correct your misconception,” Jareth drawled menacingly. His voice was glacial, and the lines of his body were taut with tension. Only his fingertips moved, curling into grim parodies of claws. Draco was disdainfully nonchalant, his posture relaxed, but his golden eyes had chilled to bright amber.

‘Oh, for crying out loud,’ Sarah thought in exasperation. “Jareth—”

Draco interrupted her with a short, humorless laugh. “I doubt that is the case. Or do you plan to disprove it with a presentation of your jewels?”

Squeaking in outrage, Sarah gasped, “Draco!”

Still, the men ignored her. ‘Fine, let them drop their pants and piss on the walls for all I care.’ Spinning on the ball of her foot, she stalked away, fuming. She imagined them both roasting on the spits of their own male egos as she pulled a bottle of water from the ice bucket at the end of the snack table. A quick glance behind her verified that the men were still posturing and had in all likelihood not even noticed her departure. She supposed that a verbal prick-waving contest was better than Fae pyrotechnics, but she did not appreciate being ignored. She stoked the fires in her imagination, almost able to feel the rise in temperature herself.

Sarah didn’t know how long the bout of grandstanding would have lasted if Phil had not shouted at them to clear off to make way for the grips. Heading for a gaggle of unorganized puppeteers, Draco shot her a reassuring smile that she didn’t return. Jareth moved to approach her, and she glared so hard at him that even he was deterred. That, or he had run into the invisible barrier that she had placed between her and the two Fae men. She took sadistic delight in the fact that the snack table was on her side of the wall.

“Is it me, or has it suddenly gotten warm in here?” a male voice asked to her right. Irritated by the perceived pick-up line, she turned to glare at him, only to find that he was actually speaking to a balding man with one of his hands shoved up the torso of a Goblin puppet.

The puppeteer nodded, swiping at the beads of sweat that had collected on his forehead with a paper napkin that had seen better days. “I think the air conditioning is on the fritz again. Stupid thing always breaks on the hottest days.”

“Doesn’t help that this stage is a glorified convection oven,” the first man complained, shrugging out of a loud Hawaiian print shirt to reveal a graying wife-beater and a paunchy midsection. Both men shook their heads as they reached for chilled water bottles.

‘It doesn’t feel particularly warm to me,’ Sarah mused as she snagged several peeled carrots and a handful of celery sticks. Crunching on the vegetables, Sarah scanned the room, spotting Jareth standing as close to the barrier as he possibly could, alternately shooting annoyed glances at the humans that could move through it and harried, almost frantic glances at her. She met his gaze impassively and deliberately took her time chewing through a carrot. She hoped that he understood the symbolism.

“Will someone fix the damn A/C?” Phil shouted from his director’s chair. “You!” he pointed at one of the crew with his pen. “Call maintenance! I want this fixed before we start the shoot.”

“They are already on their way,” Draco called out from across the room where he was handing out vouchers to the few extras on set. Both of them were fanning themselves with their call sheets and looking wilted in their pseudo-medieval court gowns. Draco caught her eye, smirked, then set his clipboard on a low table. With a quick tug, he had removed his tee shirt, baring a pale expanse of chest sparsely dusted with fine black hair. The hair grew thicker just below a well-defined set of washboard abs, trailing down from his belly button to the low-slung waistband of his jeans.

It was proven, then: Draco was a fine specimen of a man.

Tossing the tee shirt onto the table, he reclaimed his clipboard and strode toward the camera crew, affording Sarah a delectable view of a leanly muscled back and two dimples at the base of his spine.

Sarah had to stuff her eyeballs back into their sockets, figuratively speaking. She had even forgotten to scowl at him. A sharp crack finally distracted her, and she instinctively glanced toward the sound.

Jareth appeared to have snapped the riding crop against his lower leg, forgetting that he was not wearing his tall boots. He was now rubbing the tip of the crop soothingly against the side of his leg where undoubtedly a faint redness was hidden beneath the black tights that he wore under his knickers. His expression, however, was a glower so fierce that it would have sent veteran studio executives running for their wet bars, and it was fixed on Draco’s bare back.

Sarah tensed, waiting for the explosion or thrown objects that were sure to follow such a glare. If he threw crystals at a Fae for simply spying on them, what would he do to a rival? It wasn’t until Jareth moved that she realized she had been holding her breath, and she let it out in a heavy rush that drew her confused looks from the other people near the snack table.

With feline grace and tightly leashed menace, Jareth bent down and leaned his riding crop against the wall. ‘All the better to throw things,’ Sarah thought worriedly, and without her permission, her feet began to drag her toward the furious Fae, though to what end, she wasn’t sure. She stopped in her tracks when he shrugged out of his frock coat and tossed it over the back of a nearby folding chair. His gloved fingers reached for the jabot at his neck, and Sarah knew that she must be doing a fine impression of a guppy, but couldn’t bring herself to care.

‘Is he stripping?’ she wondered incredulously.

As if he had heard her, his eyes slid over to her and trapped her gaze, the anger in his face evolving into something hotter, darker, but no less intense. The brusque movements of his fingers became languid and sensuous, and with a careless flick, the black jabot joined the frock coat on the chair. Raising a gloved hand to his mouth, he delicately bit the tip of his middle finger and slid the leather from his skin in one slow glide. Sarah’s skin began to heat with a flush that began below her belly button and spread outward as her thoughts narrowed their focus to Jareth’s hands. She didn’t notice when her barrier flickered and died.

The glove still dangling from his sharp teeth, he gently tugged the other glove free and stretched his fingers, the pale perfect flesh almost translucent as it shifted over delicate bones. Her eyes followed each glove as it was dropped onto the lace jabot, then riveted onto his fingers as they slipped each onyx button through the embroidered buttonholes of his burgundy brocade vest.

“You usually have to pay extra to see this,” Kathy’s voice spoke by her ear, and Sarah started guiltily. Her voice colored green with envy, she added, “He’s looking right at you.”

Sarah responded inarticulately, her voice lodged in her throat. Jareth was only down to the thin black shirt beneath the vest, and already she was calculating the time it would take to drag him to her star wagon and help him out of his knickers.

“I hope they don’t get the A/C fixed anytime soon,” Kathy said as she fanned herself with a stack of call sheets. The make-up artist was down to a camisole, and dark tendrils of hair were sticking to her forehead, but she wore a dreamy smile that Sarah completely understood. “Oh, and that’s nice too,” she purred as Draco strutted across the set to the tub of cold waters not far from where Sarah and Kathy stood.

Ignoring Jareth’s sharp glare, he grabbed a bottle and snapped open the cap, tilting his head back and raising it to his lips in a classic male-model swimsuit calendar pose. Sarah’s fingers itched to yank the elastic out of his long hair so that it would tumble down his back in a long black sheet. His golden eyes caught her staring, and he winked. Kathy squeaked at her elbow.

“He winked at you!” she hissed unnecessarily into Sarah’s ear.

“I know!” she managed to whisper, though she was quite certain that both Fae could hear them. And oh, did Sarah know! That wink had liquefied her insides and threatened to cut the ligaments in her knees. ‘I should go outside where it’s cooler,’ she thought distantly, not at all daunted by the triple-digits weather outside.

With his shirt unbuttoned to his navel, Jareth stalked to the tub, placing himself between Sarah and Draco. Withdrawing his own bottle, he turned to face her. “Sarah, might I have a word with you?”

She recognized the order for what it was and pulled together the presence of mind to frown at him. It might have had more effect had she been looking at his face and not his toned chest, but all things considered it was a good effort.

“Sarah!” he said again more forcefully and took a step closer. Her eyes snapped up, and Draco smirked at her over his shoulder and rolled his eyes. She frowned at him too, but Jareth stepped sideways and closer so that Draco was once again blocked from view. It also placed him closer to her than propriety allowed. Clasping her hands behind her back in case they decided to wander off on their own, she wondered belatedly what had happened to the barrier she had raised earlier. She didn’t have a moment to raise a new one before Jareth had grasped her arm and began to guide her to the back of the sound stage where the extra lighting umbrellas were kept. Once they were out of sight of the rest of the cast and crew, he rounded on her, looming with the shadows though his eyes glinted with a light of their own.

“What do you want?” she grated out, lust rapidly giving way to her former irritation. Jerking her arm out of his grip, she crossed her arms under her breasts and narrowed her eyes. It was much easier not to ogle him when she was pissed.

He looked down his aquiline nose at her, his chin set haughtily, and propped his fists on his hips. “I forbid you to continue seeing that man.”

“You… forbid me,” Sarah repeated slowly, carefully, making sure that she had got it right. If he had been anyone other than the Goblin King, than she would have doubted her hearing.

“He is Fae, Sarah, and a very dangerous one at that.”

“I know he’s Fae, and he’s a Production Assistant on this film,” she pointed out, trying to keep her voice at a reasonable volume. “And just where do you get off forbidding me to do anything?”

He must have sensed her mounting fury, for he quickly changed tactics. Abandoning his attempt at intimidation, he wrapped his fingers around her forearms and pulled her resisting body against his chest. To her surprise, his body was shivering slightly.

“Sarah, precious thing,” he whispered as he tucked his nose behind her ear, nuzzling at her hair. “Trust me on this; he isn’t who he seems.”

“Jareth—”

“He was the raven spying on us the other night.” His breath was hot against the skin of her neck, and a rash of goose bumps raced down her shoulders and arms.

“How do you know?” He pulled away just far enough to give her a sidelong incredulous glance.

So close, his face appeared alien, and she wondered how anyone could mistake him for human. His dark upswept brows started low on the bridge of his nose, almost at the inner corners of his eyes, and looked more like downy feathers than hairs, as did his thick eyelashes. The patches of white adjacent to his brows reached from the edges of his eyelids to the tips of his eyebrows and shimmered faintly in the dim light, but not as make-up would. Tiny errant feathery hairs were scattered against the field of white and were just as pale as the skin. The final broad strokes of black framing the triangles of white traced from the outer corners of his eyes, picking up where the lower lashes left off. They almost seemed tattooed, but no ink could be so black and alive. Even his uneven irises, one a deep blue and the other a rich caramel, were deeper, clearer, as if they had been carved out of gems instead of flesh.

‘Not human,’ she reminded herself, ‘and neither is Draco. He’s just trying to look out for me, but what does he know that he isn’t saying?’ Even with that in mind, she was still resentful of his high-handed treatment of her. “Yes, your ‘knowledge and experience in these matters.’ I remember.”

“Then you’ll stop seeing him.”

“Jareth—”

“Is it so much to ask?” he whispered hoarsely, his hands kneading her forearms as he searched her eyes. She felt exposed under his forceful crystalline gaze, as if he were trying to peel away the layers of her soul. “I’ll do anything you request of me; name it, and it is yours.”

Sarah groaned and dropped her forehead against his chest. A less scrupulous individual would have taken advantage of that supplication. The Goblin King was a powerful being capable of reordering time and moving stars when it struck his fancy. Even Sarah was tempted, and she considered herself an upstanding member of society. Like his request of a few days ago, this one seemed so simple, yet felt more costly than it should. A tightly wound coil of foreboding had begun to hum with tension deep within the pit of her stomach. Something was going on, something out of her control, but could heavily influence the course of her life. She didn’t like it one bit.

He was pressing his cheek against her temple, his long eyelashes tickling her hairline as his silky lips caressed the rise of her cheekbone. “Sarah…”

“Fine,” she heard herself mumble against his bare skin, not even believing that she had said it until Jareth wound his arms around her and hugged her tightly. ‘What happened to “just friends”, Sarah?’ she rebuked herself as Jareth trembled against her. ‘Or “distance does not a relationship make”? What are you going to do when he gets bored and flies away, never to return? Or drives you to homicidal frustration? Or Draco challenges him to a duel or something?’ She was being melodramatic, she knew, but her sense of dread seemed to warrant it. Her intuition failed to point her in any one direction that could ameliorate her fears. Jareth had warned her that Draco was dangerous and “not what he seems”, yet the same could be said of Jareth himself. How much of it was truth and how much was a lie born of jealousy and possessiveness? The only thing of which she was certain was that she liked standing in his embrace, with his bare hands tangled in the hair at the nape of her neck, far more than was good for her. Oh, and he smelled divine.

“What would you request of me in return?” he asked against her hair.

Sarah blinked in surprise, wishing that she could see his face. She hadn’t actually planned to ask for anything and certainly hadn’t expected him to remind her! ‘Draco owes me a concession as well,’ she mused unhappily. It appeared to be time to cash it in. But what should she ask of Jareth? She had plenty of questions, but this kind of boon wasn’t something to squander when he might simply answer them on his own. “Could we talk about this later? I’ll have to think about it.”

He pulled away again, his eyes wary and an inscrutable expression masking his emotions, but he nodded slowly.

---

”I’m thinking that it is time to get an heir and prepare for retirement. I’ll choose the mortal, and you will make it one of us.”

Draconus’ word floated through Jareth’s memory, and he cursed himself for falling so artlessly into the devious Fae’s trap. Hadn’t he known that taking one of Draconus’ bets was a Bad Idea? Hadn’t he just lost one of his infamous bets, and in the process lost Sarah?


“She is a charming young woman,” Draconus croaked from his perch in the giant willow tree next to Jareth. They both watched the pretty human clothed in white, flowers in her hair, as she ran across the old stone bridge that spanned a shallow duck pond. A shaggy gray dog loped faithfully at her heels.

Jareth ruffled his feathers in agreement. “She has the potential for magic. It will only take a nudge to plant it within her.”

“Do you think she will thank you for it? Humans are known for their fragile, fickle hearts.”

“She will accept it – and me – with open arms,” he hooted confidently. What girl wouldn’t want him? Draconus was a silly bird.

“Really?” Draconus cawed dubiously, only confirming Jareth’s opinion of him. “And what if you held something that she valued. Her baby brother, say? Would she choose you over him?”

“Naturally.” Jareth didn’t have any doubts; he had watched this girl far longer than Draconus had, spotting her on one of his flights back to Labyrinth and recognizing her potential. At once fascinated, he had made many trips since, learning of her frustration with her home life and her love of romantic fantasies. He was flattered by her obsession with one such story that had been written about his own kingdom. It would help her transition that she already held the fictitious Goblin King in high regard. Fruit ripe for the plucking she was, and he had wanted a female companion for a long time.

Draconus shifted his sleek black wings and sidled closer on the branch. “Let’s have a bit of sport, then. She will wish away her brother, and you will offer her a choice: you… or her brother. You will have thirteen hours to convince her to accept you. If you win, then I will give you her weight in jewels as a wedding gift. If you lose, then you will send one hundred of your strongest Goblins to the Mountain for a month. I have just found a vein of mithril that needs to be mined.”

Jareth turned round yellow eyes on the raven, cocking his feathered head and peering at him in consternation. Draco’s jewels were highly prized in the Underground, and Sarah’s weight in them was generous indeed. He didn’t understand why Draconus, one of the wiliest denizens of the Underground and infamous for his unwinnable bets, would make such a ridiculous wager. Even if she rejected the offer Jareth would make when she wished away her brother, and it was unlikely that she would for she despised the baby, Draconus must know that Sarah would be required to traverse Labyrinth to the Castle Beyond the Goblin City, a feat that few managed. Jareth would have ample opportunity to convince (or coerce) Sarah to concede and take her place by his side.

“Be prepared to lose,” Jareth told him with a smug hoot.

“You accept then? Excellent. But you may not tell her exactly what it is that you are offering her.”

Jareth squawked in indignation. He had forgotten about the catch that Draconus always tacked onto his bets. No matter, he had a few tricks of his own up his sleeve. Launching from the willow branch, he glided through the late afternoon sunshine to alight on the peak of a stone obelisk and watch his companion-to-be recite lines from Labyrinth.


Jareth had been so sure of his victory. Her first denial had not worried him that much. He had even been a bit proud, if not annoyed, that she had chosen to try to win her brother back. It showed that she was brave, loyal, and had strong moral fiber. That was important for a Queen. Few reached his Castle, though. Most found their way into the gate, but many were thwarted by the long, seemingly straight passage that ringed Labyrinth. Those that discovered the hidden openings that led inward often ended up in one of the many oubliettes that riddled the bowels of Labyrinth.

Jareth had grossly underestimated her. She had unraveled the mysteries and riddles of Labyrinth in an unusually short amount of time. Granted, she had had help, and he’d kicked a Goblin when he’d remembered that Hogsbreath had once been one of Draconus’ Dwarves. The hours he had taken from her had been as much a precaution for him as it had been a response to her boasting. If she had failed to reach the Castle within the ten hours, he would have had three hours to convince a distraught Sarah that not all was lost, if only she would choose him.

Against the odds, she had persevered. Not only had she chosen her baby brother each time he had offered her a choice, she had resisted his attempts to distract her away from her goal. She had reached the Castle and left with her brother, and he had spent his remaining three hours watching her cavort with his subjects and getting stinking drunk with Draconus in the otherwise empty throne room. Perhaps not the best use of his time, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to crash the party, not after her final humiliating rejection. Besides, there would be a next time. Draconus had just laughed at him when he’d slurred that statement.

‘But I will have the last laugh,’ Jareth thought with a wicked grin as he watched Sarah walk up to the dark Fae, resignation dragging on her posture and slowing her steps. Finally reaching him, she touched his arm and spoke quietly. Draconus must have muffled her voice, for though he could hear her, he could not understand what she was saying. Draconus wrapped his arms around her, and Jareth jerked in anger, his hands itching to rip the offending limbs from the other Fae’s body. Sarah would be furious, and it was the image of her horrified expression and refusal to ever see him again that kept his feet rooted in place. The embrace was brief, and with a quick glance in his direction, Sarah had walked quickly toward the doors that led out of the sound stage. Two pairs of Fae eyes followed her as she disappeared through them.

“You think you have won,” Draconus muttered under his breath far too quietly for human ears to discern, though Jareth could hear him clearly across the room. “You haven’t. If I’m not mistaken, you still have all three jewels and only five days left to lose them. The odds are not in your favor.”

Jareth glided over to the chair that held the bits of costume that he had discarded in his attempt to attract Sarah’s attention and alleviate his discomfort in his multi-layered suit. The sudden stifling warmth had been Sarah’s doing, though he doubted she realized it. He wondered what had prompted her to do that. “She rejected you for me. Because I asked her to,” he said in the same quite tone that Draconus had used. Sifting through the garments, he realized that one of his gloves had disappeared. How odd.

Feigning to take notes on the documents attached to his clipboard, Draconus smiled wryly. “She thinks you are leaving and intends to continue our ‘relationship’ where we left it once you are gone. As do I.”

Ice shot through his veins at those three simple words, and Jareth shivered despite the oppressive heat of the sound stage. Draconus had meant all along to take Sarah as his bride and father heirs on her. It was a fairly common practice among the Fae to steal mortals for that very purpose; males and females alike craved the vitality and freshness of the human race. On many occasions, Draconus and Jareth had worked together to capture and convert a mortal for one of their compatriots. Many of these mortals did not thrive in the Underground, siring or bearing their Fae spouses’ children and then dying after a mere couple of hundred years. Most Fae considered the time they had with their mortals well worth the heartache and grief when they passed. A precious few flourished in the magic of the Underground, absorbing it until their mortality faded away. Sarah would be one of the latter, he was certain of it, and this made her that much more of a prize to a Fae looking for a companion.

Well, Draconus could find his own damn mortal.

“You are fooling yourself. Not a difficult feat, that,” Jareth growled lowly. The humans around him simply thought that he was clearing his throat.

“We shall see.” Draconus’ smile only grew wider.

---

A/N: Sorry for the long delay – my beta, leanansidhe1228, has been super busy. I want to thank her for editing this chapter on top of everything else she has to do! I also want to thank my readers and reviewers here on aff... you guys are amazing. Thanks so much for your words! They mean the world to me.

Let’s see… the shirtless-off between Jareth and Draco was a request from my sister, for whom this fic is being written. If you don’t like stripping Fae, then blame her. The title of this chapter comes from the lyrics of a song called “Bad Touch” by the Bloodhound Gang. I think I’ve just dated myself. Can any of you guess from which movie Jareth’s quote about the “little friend” comes? It should be pretty easy… think late night basic cable…