Abrial's hair was long and black, a tone so dark that it seemed to filter the very light out of the air around him. It swallowed it like a black-hole and made him appear to always be in shadow. His eyes were also dark and strongly resembled a lunar eclipse. The irises were stained the same black at the pupils, except at the edges where they were rimmed in gleaming silver. On the rare occasion when he was amused, it sometimes looked like starbursts exploding in his eyes. Only a fool would mistake him for human, but he had discovered that there were fools aplenty wandering in the physical world. And many of them were women. They believed his lie about contact lenses.

His body was long and trendily lean, while still being well-muscled. He was all gaunt angles and hard plains. Photographers drooled over him. Agents were always trying to sign him up as a client - model, actor, movie-star. They were certain they could get him anything he wanted. Had he been interested in a day job, he might have taken them up on it. But he had other work to amuse him, what he liked to think of as his continuing education.

Abrial respected Jack Frost and understood the reasons for the death fey to forge an alliance among traditional enemies. But even without that, he would have agreed to this assignment. Usually, he preferred dealing with evil people, and he specialized in invading their sleep. Nothing was quite as much fun as screwing with the wicked -human or fey- in their dreams before he executed them.

At the very least, if he had to go after sane and reasonable humans, he liked something with political ramifications - warning Caesars of impending doom, giving Charlemagne visions and making him change religions, scaring Torquemada into a heart attack - just because he was The Executioner and could do it if he wanted to. He liked to work on things cataclysmic, maybe avert a holocaust or two. If only he'd been there when Eve was being tempted by the serpent! He could have laid some real fear of God dreams on her. Now that would have been a genuine kick in the head!

Nice and probably human lady psychics just weren't his usual gig. But this woman, Nyssa Laszlo, was something different and she had intrigued him for a long time. For months, he had shadowed her from a distance, tailing her through her dreamwalks whenever she stayed in the present day, metaphysical levels. For some reason, he couldn't follow her into the past. He had tried, but had found himself shut out by an iron gate that stretched out and up into infinity.

It had irked him at first that she could elude him this way, because no one should be beyond his reach in the realm of dreams, and he had wondered for weeks what she was doing when she strolled into the past looking excited and returned looking pleased. Finally he had caught her coming home while carrying a forgotten mental prop from her visit. She must have been distracted that night to make such a mistake because it never happened again. Maybe she had seen Mozart die. In any event, his question was answered. She was taking piano lessons.

He was at once reluctantly charmed and disappointed. Humans! When someone with such a short life was given the chance to see all of history, why would they choose to waste the opportunity and only take music lessons?

Unless that was just experimentation, early boot camp for more serious expeditions? Maybe she was like Prometheus and planning on snatching someone's divine fire, and she had put herself into training for the venture.

This seemed a more reasonable explanation and since he enjoyed hearing her ritual, meditational playing before she journeyed, he continued to follow her at night. He made every effort to show up early and hovered just outside the place where she staged her dream trance, so he could listen to her tinkle the ivories before she went scouting.

Before he had made up his mind about dropping in on her dreams for a get-acquainted chat, her pattern of behavior changed. There were no more happy jaunts to and from music lessons. Nyssa began traveling later at night and she no longer looked excited when she disappeared behind the iron gate into The Yesterdays. She was frightened— nervous going in and often grim when she came out. He could almost smell the fear clinging to her at times, but she kept going back. Her hobby or mission or whatever it was, had become an obsession.

Human obsessions interested him immensely. They almost always lead to trouble and opportunity.

Then one night while in The Yesterdays, she had found something that deeply agitated her. Nyssa had bolted through the gates back into the present with something clutched in her hands and had suddenly turned her fevered eyes on Cadalach. She hadn't ventured close to the tomhnafurach on that dream-walk, but Abrial had felt the moment when the shian became aware of her astral probing and marked her for observation.

It was also the moment when the lutins somehow reached out from behind their own psychic gate and turned covetous eyes her way. He could feel the ripples from both magical kingdoms pass by as they sent metaphysical queries and traps her way. Traps she had so far avoided with the help of ghosts, but they were getting ever more deadly and devious. She wouldn't be able to avoid them forever. The lady needed help.

That Jack had approached him the next night with instructions to intercept this woman on her way back from Mexico and bring her to Cadalach didn't come as any great surprise. If the shian knew something, then Jack Frost and Cyra Delphin knew it too. And once they knew, it would have been only a matter minutes before Cyra's husband, Thomas, had found out everything there was to learn about Nyssa in cyberspace.

The situation was in fact fraught with deadly danger. That was perfect. He did love a challenge and Abrial was quite looking forward to the assignment. He’d get her that night while she was busy ransacking whatever library had caught her eye. He suspected that his interrupting her research into the arcane wouldn't endear him to her. It never did.