3.

San Francisco, it turned out, was absolutely the right choice, but it was harder getting there than expected.

When she returned from the carnival, her parents weren't speaking to her, and she cut short her visit home altogether. She spent the next two weeks finalizing her affairs, and getting an official leave of absence from the university, so she could keep her scholarship and easily return in case she changed her mind later.

She didn't think she would, though.

Finding an apartment in San Francisco was trickier. She finally found a place overlooking Lake Merced, which was the closest she could get to downtown without spending a fortune for a studio. Haggling over the rent was a lot of back and forth with the broker, and she needed an advance on her first paycheck for the move, but her new boss was very obliging.

All told, she was moved in within a month. Her first order of business was connecting the electricity and getting a cat. She named the cat Alexander the Great, and the cat clearly thought he lived up to the name, judging from the way he strutted. He reminded her a lot of Jareth, in some ways.

By the second month, she was settling in well at work and designing a new marketing campaign for the company. By the next, she'd joined a local improv group and made some girlfriends. The city had plenty of places to go and things to eat, and whenever she got tired of the city, there was the lake with its bike trails and picnic spots. People were upbeat, not afraid, and it was easy to socialize. It was about as different from Hampstead as it could get, which she liked.

Her first improv performance was a hit, and a few weeks later she was invited to tell stories at a festival ... which was how she found herself standing onstage and performing a one-woman show called Labyrinth to an eager audience of a hundred small children. They shrieked with laughter when she made goblin noises, and they cheered when she defeated the wicked Goblin King.

Piece of cake, she thought as she gazed out over the exuberant audience.

***

Dating left a lot to be desired.

It wasn't that she couldn't find men. San Francisco swarmed with them. And it wasn't that they weren't interesting, because they were. And it wasn't that they didn't know how to be sweet, because they definitely did.

But she was reminded of how different she was on a third date with a guy named Mike, who had seen a few of her performances and even read a draft of her novel. "Where do you come up with these amazing stories?" he asked. "It's like ... wow, what an imagination. You'd almost think it's all real."

But it IS real, she thought sadly as she poked at the tuna tartare on her plate. The sadness suckerpunched her. She didn't expect fellow grown-ups to believe in faeries and magic and things that went bump in the night, but she hadn't counted on how isolating it would be to live a magical life in a mundane world.

***

Dad started talking to her again around the six month mark, thanks in part to constant pressure from Karen.

He visited her that spring, and Sarah took him on the cable cars, and led him around Lands End and the Palace of Fine Arts. She showed him her studio apartment, which was small but homey, and she took him on a tour of her office and introduced him to the CEO. Jill wouldn't stop gushing over Sarah. "I know how hard it must have been to let Sarah come out here," Jill said. "We're thrilled to have her."

"We're real proud of her," Dad replied, and Sarah was surprised to see he meant it.

On his last day in town, he took her for ice cream like they'd done together when she was a little girl, and they sat overlooking the Bay while they ate their cones. "I'm sorry about the way I left," Sarah said. "I could have done it a lot better. I know me going to college means ... meant a lot to you."

Her father sighed. "Sarah, did I ever tell you how I left home?"

No.

No, he hadn't.

All Sarah knew about her father's childhood was that Grandma died young, and Dad dropped out of the 10th grade and bought a one-way bus ticket to Hampstead, where he worked in the mines and slept on Lee Bostwick's couch until he could afford a room at Mrs. Everett's boarding house.

Sarah didn't remember any of this herself. Dad had worked his way up to management by the time Sarah was born. She'd only ever seen him come home in a suit, not covered in coal dust, and by then they'd bought the house on Oak Street, which wasn't a mansion but it was sure nicer than the trailer park where her childhood friends Cindy Smith and Kayla Peterson grew up and survived off food stamps in the wintertime.

"My father was a bastard," Dad said. "You're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but it's the truth. He was a loveless, violent drunk who couldn't control his temper or his hands. Drove me from home when I was fifteen. Didn't lay eyes on the place again until I went back to bury him. The night I left, your grandpa put a knife to my face and told me if I tried leaving, he'd gut me. I punched him and ran. The next time I saw him was years later and he was in a casket. It was the most peaceful I'd ever seen him."

The breeze drifting off the bay was getting cold, and she'd forgotten about the ice cream melting in her hands. Sarah stared at her father and said nothing.

"I wanted you to have a better childhood than I did, and it went along okay until your mom left," he continued. "I was mad about that, though it meant I got to meet your stepmom. Figured the least I could do was make sure you grew up right and got an education. I didn't want you or your kids to have to go through what I did, and I thought college would make sure of that. Now I'm here in San Francisco and seeing you did just fine, and maybe you don't need college after all."

She felt like she was strangling. "Dad, why didn't you ever say anything?"

He shrugged. "What was I gonna say? Being a father means protecting your kids, and sometimes that means keeping your trap shut. You didn't need to hear about it."

"I might have done things different if you'd told me."

"But you didn't need to, baby girl. We both left home cuz we had to make our own way. Now I'm just glad you didn't have to punch your old man to do it."

"Almost had to," she muttered with a grin.

"Cheeky monkey," he retorted, but he was smiling.

***

She never went back to college.

By the following year, she had an agent for her novel and several publishers sniffing around (along with a pile of rejections). But Sarah wasn't worried. You had to expect failure along the way to success, after all, and she continued with the dogged determination that had gotten her to the center of the Labyrinth.

She got a promotion at work and was now CMO, which was unheard of for a 22-year old back home but not uncommon in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Alexander the Great ate an electrical outlet cover and needed emergency surgery, and the goblins set fire to the curtains over her sink. She removed both curtains and outlet covers in the apartment and figured the goblins would figure out the hard way not to stick forks in strange crevices. They seemed like sturdy creatures, especially with the way Jareth had treated them.

She missed music, missed its rhythm and the way it moved through her body, so she signed up for violin lessons. She missed dance too, but salsa didn't grab her interest and she didn't think she could hack ballet.

There was a flier at Whole Foods advertising pole dancing classes. I must be nuts, she thought, but she pulled it off the wall anyway and stuffed it furtively into her purse as if any moment Karen would walk up behind her.

The pole dancing class had no mirrors, which was a relief. Sarah didn't think she could stand seeing herself flopping around and falling off a pole. Fact was, pole dancing was less about working out and more about having fun, and by the end of her second or third class, she and her classmates were shrieking and twirling about on their poles like kids at a merry-go-round.

"It beats ballet," she told the girls when they met up for their post-workout dinners.

"And it helps your dating life," Rebecca added with a wink, and Mayumi and Kirsten and Andi had all laughed.

But while Sarah enjoyed dancing, it didn't make dating easier. She had a date that week with Raj (who stood her up), and a date with Jeff (who she didn't feel any chemistry with at all), and a date with Marcos (who seemed promising but it was way too early to tell). She liked that Marcos knew who Tolkien was and made art for a living. He sculpted the statues you saw on the city's buildings.

He'd freak if I introduced him to Ludo, she thought. Or the goblins. It would be hard explaining anything of magic to Marcos, assuming they got to the point where he was spending time at her place and would need to know why the shadows moved of their own accord and little explosions happened from time to time.

***

Sarah got two offers on her book in June. It was the same week San Francisco had an uncharacteristic heat wave and the AC went out in her building, which meant sleeping with the windows open and editing her book in front of a fan. Her sweat stained the pages and made the ink run.

She glared at the shadows darting behind the bookshelf. "Did you guys kill the AC in the building?" she asked the room.

Silence. Then: "NO!" And a chorus of childish giggles.

Now I know why Jareth enjoys kicking them. She dropped her manuscript on the coffee table and wiped the sweat from her brow, thinking. "Jareth, I need you."

The room was silent, but she felt the air shift, and then Jareth was sitting in the armchair across from her as if he'd never been away. He wore jeans and a button-up shirt and Converse sneakers, and his hair was shorter but messy, as if he'd just rolled out of bed. He would not have been out of place in the CEO's office of any startup in the Valley, except for the thin leather gloves on his hands, and his star-kissed hair, and those strange eyes, which Sarah swore were gateways into another world.

"Music to my ears," he said with the same shark smile that she remembered. "You know how to grab my attention, don't you? Hello, this is nice." He looked appreciatively about the little apartment. His smile back at her was less predatory, more satisfied, the way Alexander the Great looked when he got into the kitty treats cabinet. "You did it. I knew you would."

She shrugged with more nonchalance than she felt. "What can I say? I'm stubborn."

"Yeeees, I've experienced that firsthand."

Sarah smiled. She refused to act apologetic when she wasn't.

Jareth sniffed with more mockery than malice. "In any case, how can I be of service?"

Her smiled faded. Admittedly, she hadn't thought this far ahead. "Your offer," she said slowly, but Jareth said, "Yes?" a little too quickly, and then the air between them lost whatever playfulness it had a moment before.

"Why do you only come when I call?" she asked instead.

"Because you defeated me," he said wearily, "and I have no place in this world save when you anchor me here. I cannot stay without your approval, anymore than you can stay in mine. We are equals now, in ways that few of your fellow mortals will ever understand."

"I don't want to stay in your world," she insisted.

"You needn't," he answered, and she was taken aback by this. Not stay Underground? What had it all been about then, with him kidnapping Toby and asking her to stay? He must have seen the confusion in her face because he added, "My original offer said nothing about leaving your world forever. Servitude isn't contingent on location, you know."

"You sure are interested in this servitude thing."

"Everything I've ever done has been by your leave, Sarah," he said softly, and she sucked her lower lip and watched him watch her do it. "Mine is a strange little world with few imaginative colleagues in it. It gets ... challenging. I think you understand where I'm coming from."

She did. It surprised her how much she did. She thought of the dates with men who would all have heart attacks if they realized the stuff of their childhood nightmares was real, and her parents, who loved her but were so practical, and Toby, who might forget about goblins altogether and work the night shift at Litchfield if she didn't rescue him the minute he graduated high school.

It was frustrating sometimes, being different. It made a person crave a kindred spirit.

Yes, she understood the Goblin King a little better than most people would have, assuming they ever knew of his existence. She was perhaps the only person who'd ever defeated him too, and in his gaze she saw annoyance and arousal in equal measure.

"Jareth," she said, "come here."

He smiled then, a pleased self-indulgent smile, but he joined her on the couch and let her place his hand on her cheek. For the first time in her memory, she felt afraid when she met his eyes. "I want you to kiss me the way you did that day with the mirrors."

He chuckled but obeyed, kissing her softly on the lips, once, twice, thrice. The third time was the firmest of all, and he bit her bottom lip as if claiming her. "You built a lovely kingdom while I was away," he whispered. "Kingdom as great as mine, indeed. I couldn't be more proud, darling."

The next time he kissed her, she tasted tongue, and the heat between her legs became unbearable. He made a startled sound as she pushed him against the back of the sofa and straddled his lap, and he smiled at the sight of her above him. Then she moved against him, and his eyes fluttered shut as he rocked into the cradle of her hips. The friction was wonderful. She moved again, and his hands flew from her throat to her hips.

He trembled just a little then, and his face looked ... surprised? hungry? lost? She couldn't tell, but she cradled his face like he was precious and said, "Kiss me again."

He pulled her against his chest, and his next kiss seared her mouth. Her mouth was full of him, and so was her nose, and Sarah thought she'd never tasted anything so good in her life. It was impossible to get closer. She felt the blood in his groin through two sets of clothing, yet her mind worried they wasn't closed enough, no matter that Jareth crushed her in his embrace as if trying to fuse their bodies.

They kissed like that for a while, their breath mingled and frantic as they moved together, each eager to feel more of the other. She became desperate and peeled off his gloves, and he smiled against her mouth and unbuttoned her shirt with startling ease. The sudden feel of naked hands cupping her breasts made her gasp.

"You have gorgeous breasts," he murmured, and his breath was ragged against her mouth. He ran his thumbs over her nipples and the next time they moved together, it was agonizingly slow, and when she tried unbuttoning his shirt, she got impatient and ripped it down the front. Buttons made a satisfying popping sound as they went. Jareth laughed into her mouth, delighted, drunk with desire, but his breath turned ragged as skin pressed against skin.

"I have wanted this," he sighed, "for a very long time."

And then he bit her throat.

Sarah froze, stunned by the sensation, but Jareth increased the pressure as her delight became obvious. The ache in her turned vicious and her hips took on a life of their own.

He was doing something, reaching between them. She made a desperate sound of disappointment, because it meant separating from him, but then he was unbuttoning her jeans and giving her a knowing look as his hand cupped her through her underwear, and then she thought she really would die. She settled on his hand and whimpered as the heat built at the base of her spine.

"Sarah," he gasped against the delicate spot at her temple. "Breathe." He was almost past speaking, but he coached her anyway, gently, moving her hips with his own. Gentle breath against her cheek, like a kiss.

She obeyed, breathing deep, her hips moving of their own accord as she fucked herself on his hand. The pressure at the base of her spine was going to kill her, and then finally it felt like it did. The world contracted to a pinprick of light. The shudder that shot through her body squeezed her heart like a vise, and the world flashed white. All the stars went out.

When she could see again, the look on Jareth's face was at once triumphant and desperate.

"Move your hand," she begged. She didn't recognize her own voice.

So they slid tightly back together again, tight in each other's embrace. He'd been making excited sounds against her mouth, but now he grunted like an animal as she pinned his hands to the couch behind his head again, as their movements became measured and unified, as she whispered fiendishly in his ear, "Slow, Jareth." But he was too far gone for that, and he groaned into her neck as if she'd shot him.

They moved together perfectly, and Sarah shuddered as sheer joy crackled through her body again, this time from toes to scalp. Her heart skipped a beat and (for a second) stopped. It was so intense that it was almost pain, and then she shuddered again and thought she might black out.

Jareth cried out as if mortally wounded. His face went slack in blissful relief, and she thought she'd never seen such a beautiful sight. His hands escaped her grip and tangled in her hair, drew her tight against him, as if he couldn't bear to draw himself away.

"Command me," he groaned, the words nearly lost against her mouth. His skin was hot, his spine damp through the remains of his ruined shirt. When she touched him there, he trembled, and when she gripped his hair, he trembled again and buried his face in her neck. "Please. Command me."

"Stay," she said.

The end