“Fae of Foreign Lands,” I said.

“You’ve been learning Welsh.”

“It seemed prudent.”

He chuckled and flipped open the book. It was handwritten, like many of his volumes—bound journals rather than printed books. The black ink gleamed so brightly it shone, and the words wriggled like eels, slipping and sliding across the page.

“Focus,” he said.

“I am.”

“Boinne-fala,” he said. “As impatient as the children you are.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“That you lack the patience of—”

“Boinne-fala,” I said. “The fae use the term for humans, but the translation is ‘a drop of blood.’ Which makes no sense.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“I could see if you used the term for those with fae in their bloodline. For the disgynyddion—descendants—rather than epil—offspring. We do have a drop of fae blood.”

“You have far more than a drop, Liv. You may not be a direct epil, but you have enough Tylwyth Teg and Cŵn Annwn to make you more fae than human. To fae, boinne-fala is a disparaging term, meaning one who has no more than a drop of Old Blood. A base and mortal creature. So, when I call you boinne-fala …”

“You’re mocking me.”

He smiled. “Exactly.”

I shook my head but did take his point about my lack of patience. I concentrated on the ink squiggles, on catching them and forcing them to be still. Soon they settled and turned into Welsh words. I started to translate.

“They appear as young maidens just past the cusp of womanhood, of marriageable age and …”

The words shimmered and bled into one another, and I struggled to pull them apart again, but they kept running across the page, turning it into a pit of black ink, and then …

I was on a hill. Ahead stood a small marble temple. I climbed the hill to see the temple columns wound with snakes.

I stepped inside. A mosaic covered the nearest wall. I had to squint in the candlelight to see it, but when I did, I could make out a woman in bed with a man who was half snake. Olympias and Zeus, if my classical mythology was correct. History claimed that the mother of Alexander the Great had been part of a snake-handling cult devoted to Dionysus. Mythology further claimed that she’d been impregnated by Zeus himself in snake form. As for the second mosaic … well, I recalled that both snakes and Dionysus were associated with fertility, and that next mosaic certainly suggested that. Let’s just say there were a whole lotta young men and young women and snakes having a whole lotta fun. Well, the men and women seemed to be enjoying themselves. It was tougher to tell with the snakes.

“May I help you?” a high voice asked.

I turned to see a girl, maybe sixteen, dressed modestly in a linen peplos—the gown so often depicted on women of ancient Greece, a long tubelike affair, fastened with clasps at the shoulders, leaving her arms bare. A belt cinched the waist. A snake-skin belt.

“May I help you?” she repeated, but she wasn’t addressing me. A man stood in the temple doorway. Perhaps twenty, with a military bearing, though he wasn’t in uniform. He looked about the temple uneasily, his brown face darkening with a blush as he saw the mosaics.

The girl smiled. “I am afraid we cannot offer entertainments such as that.”

“N-no,” he stammered. “Of course not. I … I simply wish to pay my regards … That is, I wish to honor …”

“You came to pay your respects,” she said. “And to honor the gods with me.”

He nodded and held out his hand, coins in the palm. The girl smiled and motioned for him to deposit them into the mouth of a carved snake. Then she took his hand and led him to a room in the back.

The scene went dark, and I heard a girlish giggle. I turned to see dim light filtering through a crack in a stone wall. I followed it and came out in a room, unlit by anything except that seeping light. Another giggle. Then I spotted a girl in a simple Edwardian-era garb, suggesting she was a maid or of similar station. A well-dressed young man bore down on her as she danced away.

“Do you want something, my lord?” she asked.

“You know I do.”

He lunged again and she feinted, and eluded his grasp for a few minutes, only to be captured when he faked another charge. He pushed her up against the wall, fumbling with her petticoats. When he shoved them up, I saw a belt of snakeskin around her waist. He got his trousers down and was inside her so fast she gasped. Then she wrapped her hands in his hair, pulling him against her as he thrust.

“You’re good to me, Anna,” he said.

She smiled. “We’re good to each other, my lord.”

The scene darkened again. Nighttime now. I heard whispered voices—a man saying, “I don’t usually do this,” and a girl’s laughing reply, “That’s okay. Neither do I.”

After a moment, I could pick up just enough light to make out what seemed to be an alley. A very dark, very dirty alley. Music boomed from a nearby club. Footsteps sounded and I saw a girl in a miniskirt with a snakeskin belt, cropped leather jacket and leg warmers, her hair teased a mile high. She led a man by the hand. He had to be in his forties, wearing what looked like eighties-style club clothes meant for a guy half his age. A middle-aged divorcee—or not-so-divorced—out for a night on the town. As for the girl, despite the outfit, she didn’t look more than sixteen.