If Sarah had longed for a respite from blue, her hopes were swiftly dashed. Jagged, free-form blue crystal lamps were mounted on the wall at regular intervals over small filigreed oval mirrors, illuminating the twilight-blue velvet of the seats and curtains, reflecting on the polished silver of the proscenium arch. They were a lighting director’s nightmare, really, conjuring far more shadows than they dispelled. She counted her blessings that the light was no brighter, for the unprecedented depth and intensity of the colors made her eyes ache as it was. Dazzling shades of blue found in no earthly spectrum, they reduced the ordinary world to a washed-out study in grey on grey.

Escorting her to front and center, the Goblin King gallantly motioned for her to be seated. Best seats in the house, of course. You received certain advantages when the performance was being staged in your own brain.

Fussing with her skirt to occupy her mind, she cast uneasy glances at the stage. Its emptiness was more unsettling than a company of ghouls, offering her the promise -- and the threat -- of anything and everything. As Jareth seated himself next to her, she pointedly disregarded the encircling arm he placed around her shoulders, and waited for the drama to begin.

She didn’t wait for long.

An elderly man with a kindly face and a grandfatherly aura walked out upon the stage, wearing a simple brown robe. An odd stirring nudged the recesses of her memory. She knew she’d seen him somewhere before . . .

He heaved a dolorous sigh, and gestured sadly to an offstage comrade. “Romeo, come forth, come forth, thou fearful man: Affliction is enamor’d of thy parts, and thou art wedded to calamity.”

The blood rushed screaming in her ears, and she heard no more. Adam Leeds! The portly, sad-eyed man who’d played Friar Lawrence opposite her mother. He’d given Sarah a beribboned box of chocolates and a copy of the script after the show, letting her join him in acting out a wonderful weepy scene between his character and Sarah’s enthusiastic rendition of Juliet. He’d told her she displayed great promise, and he had no doubt she’d one day grow to be as lovely and talented as her mother. Several years later, Sarah had cried when Linda casually mentioned that he’d died of a heart attack soon after that performance.

And Romeo . . . that was Stephan “Call me Steve, cherie” Therien, no doubt about it, looking as blond and delectable as he had when Linda had fallen head over heels for his French-accented declarations of eternal devotion (although eternity, somewhat like forever, had proven to be not very long at all). He had fallen to one knee and proclaimed the “what light through yonder window breaks?” speech upon meeting Sarah, proffering a rose and pretending to be utterly overcome by her eight-year-old charms. Even at that age, still hampered by a guilty pang of disloyalty to her father, Sarah could understand what Linda saw in him. She laughed shakily in spite of herself. Her mother and her had always shared a superficial weakness for blond-haired, accented men in tights, apparently.

Her head began to throb as the play progressed. Angela Woodley was back from the dead as well to reprise her role as the Nurse, and that most certainly was the imposing Eleanor Marshall as Lady Capulet. County Paris, his name had been Ryan somebody, hadn’t it? God, and the child-hating, bulldog-faced Theodore Sanders as Lord Capulet! She shivered at the memory of his foul temper, how he had icily sneered to Adam Leeds that he really should encourage the child to set a higher goal -- surpassing Linda’s talent was such an insufficient challenge, even for one so young. How she’d hated him for the scene in which he’d browbeaten Juliet! She’d gone home and imagined her own alternate ending to the play, smiling with childish satisfaction as Romeo slipped the poison to Lord Capulet instead, and ran away to France with Juliet to live happily ever after. Even knowing he was just a ghost of a memory, she glared daggers at the unfortunate Lord Capulet as he bid Paris and the Lady Capulet goodnight.

Then the stage was empty. The silence steadily built in pressure, unbroken even by the random little coughs and mutterings which normally would come from an audience of this size. She turned to Jareth for some cue, and found him already watching her. Waiting.

“What? Why did it stop? Why are you looking at me like that?” No answer. “What is everyone waiting for?”

Tapping the rose against his thigh, he mused, as a petal drifted to the floor, that it was not nearly as satisfactory for the purpose as a riding crop. “You should know, Sarah. It’s your dream.” When she only continued to stare in confusion, he relented. “They’re waiting for their Juliet. The next scene requires her presence.” He paused for effect. “They’re waiting for you.”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “If you think I’m going to voluntarily get up there on that stage and play your sick little games, then you’re out of your mind. God knows what you plan to spring on me up there. Maybe set the stage on fire? You seem to have acquired a taste for that.” She stood to leave, then noted with despair, but no real surprise, that the doors were gone.

He radiated the tolerant, dismissive indulgence of a parent whose child has just announced the presence of goblins lurking beneath the bed. “It’s just a play, Sarah. Nothing more.”

She rolled her eyes. “But if I turn this way, and act in it, then it’ll show me my dreams?” That’s it, Sarah. Mock him. Give him a little of his own medicine and see if he likes the acrid taste of it any better than you do.

He only laughed, a low, throaty merriment which seemed maddeningly immune to her venom. “Perhaps. It’s up to you. It’s your dream, Sarah. It’s dressed you in your mother’s dress, resurrected your mother’s cast. Your mind must have a reason to want you to perform your mother’s role, as well. Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted, really, since that night? Forever longing to follow in her famous footsteps? If you can’t face your dreams, Sarah, how are you ever going to be able to face a genuine audience? Why are you so afraid?” The questions came in a too-rapid succession, effectively pummeling her defenses, refusing to allow her to regroup.

Suddenly, in the midst of her confusion, Sarah remembered one of Monty’s favorite “Flying Circus” quotes. “Fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.” The absurd humor of it gave her courage, as visions of Jareth wearing a red Inquisitor’s robe while threatening her with “the comfy chair” halted her imminent breakdown in mid-collapse. “Calling me a chicken isn’t going to work, Jareth. I’m not a child anymore. You can’t just dare me into doing anything.”

“Pity. You seemed braver as a child.” He settled back into his chair. “It’s your choice, of course.”

She walked away, up the aisle, trying to ignore the scrutiny of a hundred unfriendly eyes. She ran her hands along the wall, testing the shadows for an opening, any opening. “Dammit, Jareth, where’d you hide the door?”

The answer was solicitous, affectedly apologetic. “I’m afraid there isn’t one. Not until the performance is complete. That’s just the way your mind works, you see.”

Allowing herself the luxury of a scream, she kicked the wall in frustration, noting bleakly that she hadn’t even torn the wallpaper or perturbed the audience in the process. Another Hobson’s choice. She could either stand here facing the wall indefinitely, back turned to who-knows-what approaching danger like an ostrich with its head buried in the sand, or get up on that stage and move the damn play along. Although she sure as hell was only going to pretend to drink the sleeping potion when the time came. She knew better than to accept any comestibles from Jareth ever again.

And she was damned if she was ever going to take any Valium again, either. Or advice from her mother, for that matter.

Tonight was just shaping up to be one learning experience after another, now, wasn’t it?

Stalking back up the aisle without so much as a sideward glance, awkwardly hoisting bulky velvet fistfuls of skirt to keep from tripping, she mounted the steps to the stage. “All right, you bastard. Let’s get this over with.”

Her anger defused as she watched Steve Therien approach her, an odd set to her expression. The eight-year old inside her had remembered Romeo as being so much taller . . . She shook off her reverie, and cleared the lump from her throat. “Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day. It was the nightingale, and not the lark . . .”

And so her performance began.

Sarah valiantly endeavored not to grin as she fought with Lady Capulet, Juliet’s mother, over the arranged marriage with Paris. Eleanor Marshall had always been convinced that the most effective way to emote a sense of anger was to look as constipated as possible. It was extremely distracting. Then again, if she’d had to act alongside Theodore Sanders, she’d probably look much the same. Looking at him night after night, let alone pretending to be his wife, had to wreak havoc on one’s digestion.

She examined the apoplectic countenance of this selfsame Theodore Sanders/Lord Capulet, who was presently preoccupied with calling her a “disobedient wretch.” It was the big confrontation scene, and Sarah was hard-pressed to play the part of the contrite daughter before him, given that she’d vastly prefer to employ the right hook she’d wasted on Jareth. Not that it really mattered, when all was said and done; dreams were rarely reviewed by any of the bigger Broadway critics. Still, some perverse part of her longed to show off in front of Jareth, make him eat every nasty comment he’d ever said or thought about her acting abilities. It would be undeniably intriguing to see how owls enjoyed dining on a little crow, now, wouldn’t it?

A sudden uneasy twinge made her refocus her full attention on Theodore Sanders. Was it the bluish light, or was the mottled redness of his skin actually changing, blending into a sallow uniformity? She stared in fascinated revulsion as his features began to twist and merge subtly, almost imperceptibly, morphing into something horribly familiar. Sarah would have won a Tony Award for her portrayal of a terrified Juliet at that moment, as she stared into the bilious face of Dr. Lawrence Ashby.

Without missing a beat, he continued his scripted tirade against her as a “wretched puling fool, a whining mammet,” ending by shoving her roughly backwards. Stumbling to the floor, she felt herself burn with speechless humiliation and pain as, in the role of an outraged Lord Capulet, Ashby grabbed a fistful of her hair and wrenched her head upward, his foul breath reeking as he bent contemptuously over her prone form and riveted her with a bloodshot stare. “Hang, beg, starve, die in the streets, for, by my soul, I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee, nor what is mine shall never do thee good. Trust to’t, bethink you, I’ll not be forsworn.” Releasing his grip, he flung her to the floor like a scrap of rubbish, and left her lying crumpled on the stage.

She huddled for a full minute in a quivering heap of blue, eyes tightly closed, her neck aching where he’d yanked her hair. She wanted to go home. Not back to the dorm; home-for-real, the rambling, comfortable, Victorian gingerbread edifice she grew up in what seemed like centuries ago. She wanted to go home, and find her father and her mother waiting. Her real mother, not Karen. She wanted her mother to smooth back her hair and give her a cup of instant hot chocolate, like she had done that one time when Sarah was sick while visiting her in New York. She wanted to stop spending every waking second of her life trying and failing to prove herself to everyone -- most of all, to herself. Most importantly, she wanted to wake up.

Swallowing down her rising nausea, she struggled up from the floor. The sooner she finished this farce the sooner she’d wake up, if Jareth kept his word. And if he didn’t, well, then, she’d . . . she’d . . . she’d throw up on him, that’s what she’d do. Ruin his nice satin shirt. It’d serve him right. She smiled weakly at the priceless mental image of his outraged expression.

She turned to where Eleanor Marshall had been standing, ready to say her lines to Lady Capulet. The words died in her throat as she stared into her mother’s face instead.

Linda Williams was wearing the same gown as Sarah, looking at her with an indefinable expression of disapproval. Even in her state of shock, Sarah began to blush, feeling vaguely like a child caught playing dress-up with her mother’s best jewelry and evening gown. She was an imposter, a pretender, a usurper facing the wrath of a rightful queen. Mother and daughter. Blue velvet and dark hair. Hard to tell where one ended and the other began.

Sarah opened her mouth to apologize, to say she loved her, to say anything. Instead, of their own accord, the words to the play haltingly emerged, cruelly inevitable as a manifest destiny. “Is there no pity sitting in the clouds, that sees into the bottom of my grief? Sweet my mother, cast me not away. . . . ” Her voice trailed off, a cracking, broken thing, unable to complete the speech. The ensuing silence poised expectantly. Hungry. Impatient.

The vision of her mother looked long and hard at Sarah, puzzled by her weakness; Linda Williams had many faults, but weakness was hardly one of them. Something flashed within her eyes, something that was almost sympathy -- but not quite.

For the second time in one evening, Sarah felt herself the object of pity.

Then Lady Capulet resumed the script.

“Talk not to me, for I’ll not speak a word. Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee.”

She and the Nurse dissolved into the pattern of dust motes swirling in the remaining blue spotlight. The silhouette of Sarah was left alone, sobbing hopelessly.

She wasn’t acting anymore.

Gradually, a sound pierced her awareness. A sharp report, almost like a shot to the heart. Staccato and regular in its repetition. Sarah raised her head, wiping at the film of tears that blurred her vision.

Jareth was ascending the steps to the stage, his face a smoothly neutral mask devoid of all expression. Slowly, with deliberate irony, he was clapping. “Bravo. Very convincing performance.”

She didn’t even have the energy to tell him to take a flying leap into the Bog. She felt drained, empty. Alone. “Please go away.” Her voice was oddly polite, almost detached in its despair.

The mask began to falter, his finely chiseled profile reverting back to its habitual smirk as the muscles underlying eyebrows and lips settled back into the derisive curves they best remembered. “Why? I’m paying you the ultimate compliment. It’s the highest honor your craft can hope to achieve. You portrayed the pain of rejection to perfection, I thought.”

She looked at him then, eyes brimming over, and turned his interrogating tactics against him. “Why are you doing this? Do you really hate me this much?”

Disarmed and caught on the defensive, he looked down like a chastened child, absently plucking one petal after another from the rose, only half-watching as they floated softly to the floor like a drift of autumn leaves. She loves me, she loves me not . . . Uncurling his grip, he let the empty stem drop as he quietly contemplated the lines of her face, stroking a tear-damp curl from her forehead with a hand that had grown suddenly hesitant. She had seen that look of befuddled yearning upon his face before, a look of implacable arrogance yielding to a desperate, disappointed craving, features falling in perfect sync with the crumbling Escher Room. He lowered his mouth to her ear, lips almost touching, the warmth of his breath electrifying the hairs upon the nape of her neck with icy chills. “The question is, why are you doing this to yourself, Sarah? I’m just your audience. Your critic. You know that, don’t you? And . . . I’ve never hated you. You know that, too.”

His halting murmur melted into melody, and he began to sing.

“Was it just a shade of grey
Or a splash of blue that made up
The colors of your eyes?
You're slipping away
Eroded by a sea of forgetfulness
Don't forget . . .

I was thinking as usual
In my own living color
Of the glass that pierced your heart,
Of the mirror in your eye
With my own vivid clarity
And a touch of distortion
I saw our love thrown out the window
I saw a shade close in your eye
And a silent hint of autumn frosts my heart
Crystal blue is my hell
The absence of your eyes leaves
The seasons standing still

Even my Juliet with her faded rose
Can't conceal the obvious, crimson tears that fill your life's cup . . .
Cried from a heart that no longer
Feels the warmth
Cried for a heart that no longer
Feels the day by day,
Do I think of you with a smile
Full of contempt?
I would start to laugh but I just
Can't find the punch line . . .

In tune with my memory your visions dance across
The embers in my mind
By night it's the silence that alarms,
Your refusal was so quiet that it
Nearly drove me mad

Even when Romeo strikes his favorite pose
He can't conceal the obvious, crimson tears that fill my life's cup . . .
Cried from my heart
Do you think of me with a smile
Full of contempt?
I would start to laugh but I just
Can't find the punch line . . .”

The tempo shifted as Jareth backed away and raised his right arm. With a serpentine shift of his slender hand, subtle and wordlessly eloquent as the gestures of a Balinese dancer, the shimmering shadows coalesced into a single crystal poised upon his fingertips. Instead of emptiness, multifaceted images danced within. Images of childhood, of Sarah playing by herself, wrapping herself in a shatterproof cocoon of fantasy. Images of her mother stealing away without a real goodbye, leaving only a note and a gnawing empty space that nightmares swiftly sought to fill. Images of Linda Williams skimming butterfly-bright and careless through life in an endless search for the perfect audience, heedless of the heartbreak she left in her wake. Scenes from the Labyrinth’s ballroom of a beautiful girl in white running from the dance, fleeing from the arms of a picture-book Prince Charming. A final vision of the same girl, poised at the foot of a flight of stairs, solemnly explaining her eternal dilemma to Ludo and Hoggle and Sir Didymus, the best friends she’d ever allowed into her life. “I must face him alone . . . that’s the way it’s done.” That was, quite simply, the way she’d always done it. The cheese stands alone, or, as Dr. Ashby would say, the cheesy actress. Perhaps that explained why she’d been so ready to forgive Hoggle; his betrayal had been no real surprise. In the final estimation of things, Sarah had learned early on to rely upon no one but herself.

Jareth watched her watching the crystal like a hunter might assess the condition of his prey, lips slightly parted, eyes almost black. The stiffness of his stance intimated that hurt had yielded to an accusing anger, hardly shocking in a being for whom mercurial mood swings were even more frequent than costume changes; a simmering, belittling bitterness reasserted itself as his song continued. Hell hath no fury like a Goblin King scorned . . .

“Nearly four years of sailing through stormy seas
We have to be wiser now
Looking back I see dreamers, deserters,
And promises that weren't kept
And I know that my conscience is clean

Moving onward, hoping to go on
Though anger won't go on long

And I'm not into excuses,
Complaining just bothers me,
And I'm tired of the whining and spinelessness

And I've heard all of your pipe dreams,
Your big schemes
Just hot air from a fool
But I know that I shouldn't think that way
Should I think that way?

And autumn comes and summer dies
And promises begin to lie
And years roll and we become the things we said,
The things we've done

Turn around and see what's behind you,
Are you happy with the world that you've made?
Look away and think of the future; is it ok?

Are you sure you've got all the answers
without a doubt?
Are you feeling confident?
Is that smile that you're wearing real?

Seize the love, seize the meaning,
Seize the moment, seize the memory
Seize the effort, seize the truth, seize the day.”

As the music died away, he drew her to her feet, speaking the conclusion to the verse with a quiet conviction. No arrogance now; just an overwhelming self-assurance that scattered her doubts like so much milkweed chaff in the wind. “Seize your dreams, Sarah. Begin again with me. I’m willing to forgive.” The colors in the crystal bled together and faded away to leave it empty once more, sparkling with a myriad magic possibilities. A blank slate; a fresh start. The essence of potential.

“That loneliness you saw within the crystal, the rejection -- that’s your real nightmare, isn’t it? Not all this smoke and mirrors.” He waved his free hand contemptuously at the theater. “That keen awareness of your separateness from everything. The fear, the virtual certainty, that you’ll always stand apart, in utter isolation. Never trusting anyone, never able to care about anyone. Never finding anyone who sees anything worth caring about in you -- because She never found you worthy.” He did not need to explain the referent to “She”; Linda Williams’ presence permeated the theater, her tinkling laugh ringing through every silence with its fairy chime.

The razor’s edge of truth had drawn first blood; Sarah gnawed her lip, eyes wide, as if merely physical pain could camouflage the overwhelming ache within her heart. He took a step forward; she automatically retreated a step back. They repeated the sequence a few more times, caught in a meticulous minuet of point-counterpoint. Abruptly, he paused, spreading his arms wide like a man who seeks to prove he is unarmed. “It doesn’t have to be this way, Sarah. You don’t have to be alone anymore. Come to me, Sarah. It has to be your decision.” All open arms and reassuring smile, his pose recalled the Christ in the college chapel, bearing a crystal in lieu of a cross. A glittering Savior with impeccable fashion sense. “I’m willing to forgive . . .”

Her brain rebelled at the absurdity of it all. For all her love of fantasy, Sarah was a rational person, a logical person, her perceptions firmly grounded in reality. She refused to drown in this sea of self-pity into which he had so ruthlessly submerged her, trying to exploit her inherent urge to view life as a tragedy. Anger; anger was the rock she needed to cling to right now. It simmered through her veins, flushing her pale cheeks, heating her flesh beneath the stifling layers of blue velvet.

“You’re willing to forgive me, Jareth? How generous. The problem is, I’m not willing to forgive you.” The shrewish fierceness of her clipped reply surprised and encouraged her. It was worth it all to see the shock plainly written across his face for one wonderful, uncontrolled instant, eyebrows raising, jaw dropping. “I’m through playing ‘This is Your Life’ with you.” Beads of sweat rolled down her forehead, soaking her hairline, stinging the sensitive membranes of her eyes. She yanked resentfully at her heavy sleeves, smiling with a vandal’s satisfaction as she heard the fabric tear. “First of all, let me the hell out of this velvet oven you call a dress. I’ll shred my way out of it, if I have to.”

Jareth’s shock dissolved into a wicked, calculating smile. With a tiny nod of his head, the crystal vanished, the dress was gone, and it was Sarah’s turn to gape in shock.

She was completely naked.

For one breathless instant, Sarah simply stared at Jareth, then the leering audience; her nude image confronted her from the hundred blue-lit mirrors on the wall to the accompaniment of the unmistakable sound of the Goblin King’s mocking laughter. Hugging her arms around her chest, she scurried to the edge of the stage, wrapping herself in one of the heavy velvet curtains.

He closed in on her, grinning like a deviant Cheshire Cat, eyes dancing as he saw her move to dart away, then reluctantly remain in place, trapped by her need to hide behind the fabric shield. “Such a fickle thing is woman. Once again I grant you what you ask, and once again you seem shamefully unappreciative of my efforts.” His lips released their grin to fall into a contemptuous curl, arms crossed and head tilted. In a voice dripping with derision, he baited her mercilessly. “Naked before your audience. The worst fate that can befall an actress, isn’t it? Complete exposure, total vulnerability, with no role, no script, nothing to hide behind. Just yourself, offered up for judgment.” He punctuated his final words by effortlessly prying her fingers from their death-grip on the curtains, dragging her struggling form to center stage, gloved hands cold upon her elbows, the air chill upon her sweat-soaked skin. “No hiding, Sarah. That’s not a ‘fair’ way to play the game, now, is it?”

Her parched tongue refused to obey her command to speak in answer to his taunting. Her eyes, dry as velvet, burned and blinked in the suddenly harsh glare of the blue spotlight, lowering submissively before Jareth’s amused scrutiny. His backlit form loomed above her as a stark silhouette, eyes glowing with preternatural blue fire. Cupping her chin in his hands, he forced her to look directly into those soul-searing eyes, forced her to acknowledge every iota of the humiliation and carnal fear, and offer it up to him as a penitent’s sacrifice. He traced her face like a blind man seeking a tactile vision, exploring the tilt of her nose, the fullness of her swollen lips, the fragile blue-veined surface of her eyelids. His hands toyed with her tangled hair, stroking her back, inciting tiny tremors where they passed. Her body melted and her blood ignited as his teasing leather-clad touch slid over the firm curves of her neck and shoulders, moving in a lazy arc to cradle the softness of her breasts, rubbing his thumbs over the tight, sensitive thrust of her nipples. Trailing his fingertips lightly down her stomach, he stopped just short of the virgin junction of her thighs, smiling at her wince of apprehensive anticipation. Grasping her hips, he pulled her body tight against his. The sensory overload of fabric meeting flesh slammed through her like a blow; his satin shirt brushed against her arms with an oily-cool smoothness while the plush warmth of velvet tickled her breasts and thighs with an insistent, arousing caress. She gasped as the cold metal of the pendant pressed against her chest like an icy brand. As he bent his head to kiss her still-open mouth, the silken crush of lips and tongue allowed her to savor a taste of his bare skin. It was maddening, having the rest of the heat and hardness of him separated by such a tantalizingly thin layer of fabric. It was sheer, unadulterated torment. Deliberate torture on his part, of course. Refuse him, would she? He’d make her beg for him to take her, in every sense of the verb. Take her away, right now.

Sarah felt the world tilt. Gravity shifted and the polished hardwood of the stage rose up to meet her back with a cold embrace as Jareth lowered her to the floor. The weight of his body, still fully clothed, was vastly preferable to the burden of her petty misery, his touch more devastating than his words could hope to be. He tempted her to succumb to a labyrinth of pure sensation, to lose her loneliness within him, to lose herself. His mouth left her lips and turned its attention to the pulse where her neck met her shoulder, hands restraining her as she writhed in response to the almost violent jolts of synapses flashing like Christmas tree lights. Moving on to her breasts and stomach and ending with her inner thighs, his tongue flicked over her trembling flesh with practiced precision, striking with the raw electric force of lightning. She was moaning, tiny, barely audible, involuntary sounds, toes curling, hands clutching convulsively at nothing. “No . . . please . . . I want . . .”

He raised himself up upon his elbows, hovering less than an inch above her, and waited for her reactions to calm. When he spoke, she shivered at the transparent note of triumph in his intonation, flushing with shame. “You want me, Sarah. You’ve always been naked before me. That lost soul of yours has always been mine, since the day you first opened The Book. You refuse to allow anyone else to penetrate your defenses, but you’re powerless to keep me out. Ask yourself why you try, Sarah.”

She fought to control the ragged pace of her breathing. Beneath his restraining weight, she couldn’t move her limbs, she couldn’t even look away. “That’s not true. I don’t want you.” She almost choked on the enormity of the lie.

One eyebrow arched so high that it appeared poised to migrate from his forehead. “Do tell? Who do you want, then? That pathetic little lapdog would-be boyfriend of yours? What’s his name -- Murray? Mickey? Muffin? Mitzi?”

He’d made the mistake of giving her a cause; she felt far more secure defending another than she felt defending herself. Every muscle in her body squirmed with the suppressed energy of exploding rage. “Don’t you dare insult Monty! He’s all the good things you’ll never be, you piece of sh--”

A gloved hand muffled her in mid-curse, and he chuckled softly. “Tsk, tsk. Such language from a lady. I’m truly shocked. Still, it’s wonderful to see that you reciprocate the boy’s affection so entirely that you’re ready to leap to his defense. I’m very happy for you both. You do love him, then?”

She glared at him suspiciously as he removed his hand from her mouth. She chose her words with care, sensing a trap. “He’s been a wonderful friend to me, like a big brother --”

“And he has a wonderful personality?” he interjected sardonically, laughing outright. “Poor bastard. The kiss of death from the ice maiden. He hasn’t a chance, and he’s too big a fool to know it. Exactly when were you planning on breaking the news to him, Sarah? After you’d used him as much as you possibly could? Keep him at arm’s length, wring out every drop, then throw him away when he becomes tiresome, is that the plan? Your mother would be proud of you, Sarah. You’ve learned her lessons well. That’s the future you’re choosing: a fading legacy of mediocre acting and an inability to open up to anyone. What horrors can I hold compared to that?”

“You’re a filthy liar, damn you! That’s not what I’m doing! That’s not what she’s doing, either! Her career’s doing great, and she’s finally met someone she really loves. I’ve seen pictures of her and Mark together. They look perfect.” She defiantly flung each word at him like a shard of crystal, praying it cut deep.

He smiled cruelly, allowing her to see the play of secret knowledge in his eyes. The eerie tangle of blue light and shadows contorted his face into a skull, contours gleaming white as bone. “Sarah, Sarah. Of course they looked perfect. They’re actors. It’s all about appearances, isn’t it? But I see that you must not have talked to your mother lately. How typical. Still, it’s hardly my place to break her news to you.”

“What are you talking about?” Her voice dropped to a sickened, tremulous whisper.

“Only that her life is far less charmed than you seem to presume.” He leaned to the side, easing his hand gradually lower as he locked eyes with her, parting her legs with an insistent pressure. From below the stage, in the pool of darkness, she could no longer ignore the lascivious stares and lewd whispers of a hundred voyeurs, vicariously enjoying her body.

She tried, and failed, to push his hand away. The overwhelming panic had her in its vicious grip again. “They’re watching!”

He shook his head, the floating wisps of hair recalling the swooping grace of a bird in flight. “They’re only figments of your imagination, Sarah, remember? Representations. Dreams. They’re only as real as you make them. Besides,” he added with a sadistic glint of mischief, “I thought you thrilled to have an audience in your thrall. This is by far your most riveting performance to date, in my admittedly biased opinion.” She stiffened as his hand probed deeper, massaging her gently to release the mounting tension into a back-arching sequence of spasms, sweet shocks that seemed to go on and on. She was falling, burning, drowning . . . a helpless, utter dissolution into ecstasy. He watched her lie perfectly still afterwards, eyes squeezed shut, like a foolish possum playing dead in the path of an oncoming truck. Hot tears glinted in the corners of her eyes, trickling down into her hair, her ears. He caught one on his fingertip, balancing it like a miniature crystal. “Look at yourself, Sarah. You can’t even let yourself enjoy the pleasure without fighting it. You’re afraid to surrender control of yourself to me for even a moment. You can’t stand being naked, being touched, can you?”

“You mean I can’t stand being violated by you,” she half-sobbed, her mind reeling. “Who are you to talk, you hypocrite? I don’t see you ever taking off those gloves.”

He drew back, a tiny smile easing the severe line of his mouth. “You have a point.” Smoothly standing upright, he tugged at the fingers of his left glove, one by one, revealing a pale and perfect hand. Dropping the glove to the floor, he repeated the procedure with the right glove, his smile deepening in response to Sarah’s obvious, cringing fear. Turning his right hand towards her, he brought a newly-formed crystal into her line of vision. He began to toy with it, sending it rolling up his arms, across his hands, back and forth in a mesmerizing magic dance of light and power. Other people chewed on their hair or twisted a pencil when they fidgeted; Jareth, of course, had to be more dramatic.

Without warning, he broke the rhythm, clutching the crystal in his left hand and reaching out towards Sarah with his right, elegantly manicured fingernails gleaming dagger-sharp and blue as steel. “Take my hand, Sarah. Touch me and the choice is made.” He wasted no more time with persuasive speeches, merely commanded and waited. The Goblin King had clearly reached the end of his admittedly short store of patience.

Sarah lurched to her feet, and looked at his hand for an endless moment. “No.” That single syllable seemed to drain the last of the meager energy she possessed, leaving her weaving drunkenly on unsteady limbs, too weak to flee. Not that there was anywhere to flee to, anyway. She waited dully for a flash of rage from Jareth, a fit of pyromania. Nothing. Only a drawn-out sigh of exasperation.

The very texture of the air altered subtly, assuming a dead and musty tinge. The velvet of the seats and curtains faded to a tawdry, spotty blue, large sections of shabby plush rubbed bare with abuse. The silver was tarnished and peeling, the mirrors cloudy and cracked. And how could she not have noticed the cobwebs dulling the lamplight, the dust thickly covering everything like a funeral shroud? She shivered at the transformation; she had the sense of looking at an aged courtesan at the end of the evening when her mask of makeup has started to run.

A restless murmuring from the audience caught her attention. Disapproval radiated from their eyes, their voices, their every pore. This wasn’t how the play was supposed to end. Juliet should accept the dagger to the heart like a good girl, immerse herself in Romeo like any decent tragedian should do. Self-preservation wasn’t a valid part of the script. It didn’t take a genius to perceive the collective thumbs-down she was receiving, like a Christian who had obstinately insisted on ruining the evening’s entertainment by besting the Lion with a stray miracle or two. Shadows warped and twisted; silks rustled and dissolved. Sarah suddenly stood facing an audience of hostile goblins, who looked liable to charge at any minute, with absolutely nowhere to run. Her heart sank.

A few seconds later, the rest of her body began to join it.

Looking down frantically, Sarah realized that the solid wood beneath her feet was transforming into a viscous liquid swirl of quicksand, resolutely sucking her down. Her subsequent floundering and thrashing only succeeded in hastening her progress. Goblins were clambering on the stage to form a jeering circle, hurling obscene epithets, handfuls of quicksand, and unidentifiable bits of filth at her. Shielding her face with her hands, she looked up desperately at Jareth’s impassive face, pleading, claustrophobic panic written in her eyes. When you died in dreams, could you die for real?

After watching her sink to her neck, Jareth walked to the edge of the deadly circle, scattering goblins in his wake with a few well-placed kicks. He crouched down, extending his bare hand. “The offer stands.”

Her hand wavered for a moment, almost touching, then withdrew. She began to babble wildly to herself, like a terrified child. “Wake up, Sarah. You’ve got to wake up. Wake up, wake up, wake up . . .” Then the quicksand flooded her mouth and nose, gritty and bitter as ashes, choking off her chant. The last thing she saw, just before the dark and scratchy flood blinded her eyes, was Jareth’s regretful smile.

Lungs bursting, she went under, silently screaming herself into oblivion.

Clawing off the blankets, raking her sleeve over her burning eyes with a frantic motion, Sarah flung herself out of bed and ran full-tilt into the bathroom to retch for a solid minute. Catching sight of herself in the mirror as she turned to leave, breathing shakily, she almost retched again. Good God. Her hair was wildly matted, eyes red-rimmed as a junkie, colorless cheeks deeply sunken around pale, cracked lips. Running her hand through her disheveled hair, she began to tremble as she saw stray grains of sand hit the porcelain sink, bouncing with a tiny plinking sound. Noting a glimpse of redness on her chest, she hesitantly pulled down the collar of her sweatshirt, hands shaking with trepidation. There, still clearly outlined in a welter of angry red lines, was the impression created when his pendant pressed against her during their embrace.

Groping her way back to the bed, Sarah collapsed on the edge, picked up the telephone, and dialed with a shaking hand. To hell with going it alone. She couldn’t handle it; she freely admitted it. She needed help. She needed support. She needed love. She needed . . . .

She needed a mother.

Unfortunately, Linda Williams would have to do.

Feather image edited from Graphics by Tammy; Moon image edited from Yahright Graphics Archive; Background from Joerg Doehring's Backgrounds.