The check engine light had been on for so long now that Jellal didn't see it anymore. The car creaked, it was as old as he was, it sighed, tired from a long life of abuse, it whined, the caliper seized for the last three weeks, it was a gas guzzler, of course, and burped grossly if he didn't put premium in it—that was when it decided to run. Just then, it was dead at a stop sign in northern farm country and it wasn't looking good. He popped the hood and used the flashlight on his phone to peep at the motor as if he'd suddenly know exactly what he was looking at and would miraculously be able to fix it.

Everything looked the same as it ever did. Hoses and fans and belts. There was no fluid spurting, nor was there any steam coming from the radiator. Jellal concluded it was fucked for no other reason than he was in an unfamiliar place and—perfect—his shitty phone had no service.

"Really?" he muttered. The only thing to respond was a chittering raccoon. He glowered into the treeline, silently cursing Ultear. It was her fault that he was out there, after all, picking up some of her mother's personal belongings to bring to the hospital, and it was his fault, he supposed, for bowing to her begging. He didn't even think he liked Ultear on the best of days. Why was he there?

Jellal put away the frustration-birthed pettiness. He would have come anyway, Ur was sick and Ultear worked too much and no matter how much he tried to deny it, she really was his best, and maybe only, friend. She was the only one willing to put up with the long, grueling hours he spent in silence reading papers on Cosmogony and writing lit reviews for his masters. If he missed the re-runs of Coraline on TV to be here Halloween night, what did he care? He was an adult. With a love for spooky Claymation and Neil Gaiman and tradition amongst other things.

Not automobiles.

Jellal slammed his hood down with force and held his phone up to the cloudy sky. No Service occupied the top left corner. He reserved swearing for after he got back into the car and tried the ignition again to no avail.

A cold October wind whistled through his car's rusty frame, forcing Jellal to consider his options. Stay there and wait—pray—someone drove by? Or get out and try going up the road, looking for a house that had a landline? This was old country, there was absolutely someone that had something other than a cell phone.

He sat in silence for a count of twenty before deciding that it was too cold to just sit there and hope that someone would come. He took his keys from the ignition, though it wasn't like anyone would steal his hunk of junk—they'd be welcomed to it if they could—and braved the gale force winds.

Leaves rushed noisily down the street. Jellal zipped his jacket all the way up to his chin and hunched his shoulders. The wind still cut through the fabric, of course. It hadn't been so cold when he left the house that afternoon so he hadn't bothered to grab anything truly warm, just a windbreaker that Ultear swore was ugly as sin and the reason he had no lady in his life. She was mean.

Jellal lengthened his steps, taking himself away from the intersection and his parked car and into the unknown. All the roads were dark—there wasn't even hydro lines running through this part of the world. He considered using his cell phone again as a flashlight but he only had half of his battery left and didn't want to kill it anymore.

A guardrail came out of the dark. Jellal stepped around any garbage that had caught in its wooden bars, afraid of nails or the dead. That really would be the perfect end to what was shaping up to be a shitty night. On the other side, the road turned from paved to dirt. He tread carefully here, wary of potholes.

Jellal walked for what seemed to be a long time without seeing another car or a driveway, just listening to the wind push through the treetops, so it was a bit of a surprise when ahead, a small light exploded into life near the side of the road.

"Hello?" There came no answer but the light was coming closer. It's a lantern. Jellal recognized the glass and the wick and the fire dancing inside. When it was within ten meters, he tried again. "My car broke down about two kilometers back."

Yellow light touched his feet and his legs, and then Jellal was close enough to see the holder. Her hair caught his eye first, blue like the ocean, and then her lips, similarly painted. She wore something thin and flowy that may or may not have been sheer. Her dress might have thrown him if it weren't Halloween, though it was cold for that kind of thing. "Broken." Her voice was like water trickling over rocks, calming.

"Yeah. I don't get reception here, either, I was wondering if I could use your phone."

"Come." She took his hand without reserve and turned back the way she came, holding the lantern in front of her.

"Thanks. That's a big help. I'm not from around here, my friend's mom is, though, and she's in the hospital. She needs stuff picked up from her house. My car, though—" He was prattling on. Small talk had never been a strong point for him, he preferred to keep his human contact to a minimum and didn't often have strange girls appear out of nowhere and take his hand. He normally wouldn't have let it ride, either, but the contact felt nice in this lonely area. The girl didn't answer; he assumed he was doing abysmally and tried again. "Do you live in the area?"

"This has always been our home," she said simply and stepped off the road, through the wet ditch and into the forest.

"Where are you going?"

She pulled him with force without suggesting an answer and Jellal found himself stumbling after her through a small river that tried to soak through his Blundstones. He got out of there just fast enough and found himself stepping into a different world as the trees opened up for him and a path revealed itself. At its terminus was a massive mansion glowing with the kind of light that could only come from fire; music came from the walls and the windows, violins and pianos. Eerie stuff that he'd expect for late October. Each step he took brought to life lanterns lining the pathway and beyond them, small pale blue globes bobbed between trees.

"You guys really went all out, huh? I don't suppose you get many kids here, though."

"Sometimes, we have travellers. You're the first in a long time," she said vaguely as she mounted the limestone steps.

Jellal lagged behind as much as he was allowed, trying to take in the house before he entered it. The brick was red and it's mortar new looking, the window trims white and bright, the rocking chairs left out on the steps, two in total, creaking back and forth gently. It was then he noticed that the wind had mostly died down.

His hand was yanked and he was forced up the steps and into the waiting house. Warm light wrapped around him, gifted by a hundred candles, at least, that sat upon end tables and hung off the walls, dropping from the ceiling. They lined a hallway leading into a grand, open section where a feast could be seen, spread out on a massive table draped in red tablecloths. Buns and stuffed duck, roast beef, potatoes and squash, regular fare, and then exotic things Jellal didn't recognize, fruits and vegetables from parts of the world he'd never been.

"This way." The girl pulled him inside toward the spread without hesitation. Aside from the food, there was a lot to look at, honey coloured floors and walls the colour of gold-dusted cornflower, vases from eras long gone, paintings. One in particular stood out from the rest, a lady in red in a dead forest, with hair the colour of fresh spilled blood. She was a prowler, seeing everything from the canvas. She was deadly, that much was obvious, and enchanting.

Jellal made himself look away and focused on the women in the room, dressed similarly to his guide in long flowing robes of varying colour, blues and whites and purples, greens. They were all sheer, he hadn't been wrong about that, and there was nothing beneath them but bountiful bodies. Jellal tried to keep his eyes up and mostly succeeded. There had been the quiet whisper of reserved conversation before they entered the room but all of that ground to a halt and all eyes turned their way.

"What's this?" One of the women stepped forward, unearthly beautiful. Her colours were too stark, her hair too white, her eyes too blue, her lips too red. More importantly, though, her voice was too sweet. Honey-sticky, distilled.

Jellal's guide answered the address. "I found him on the road."

Another woman separated herself from the pack, hair the colour of coffee, eyes deep enough to drown in. She prowled around Jellal as a wolf might its prey. "Is he lost?"

"Juvia thinks he said he's Broken."

'He's broken.'

'He's broken.'

'He's a broken man.'

Who spoke? Everyone? No one? It was impossible to tell, though pinpointing something like that should have been easy. Goose bumps broke out over Jellal's arms. He beat his apprehension down and tried to be reasonable. "My car. My car is broken." Not him.

Another girl broke away and seemed to float over, more graceful than any dancer Jellal had ever seen, blonde and buxom. Her fingers touched his chin and lifted it. Jellal had never been judged so calculatingly and felt his skin heat. He leaned out of her touch. The woman was unaffected. "He was wandering?"

"My car's just at the first intersection south."

They all acted like he hadn't spoken. His guide said, "For Juvia to find."

"The queen will like this one," another woman spoke up, this one with hair as black as shadow and wearing a matching garment. She stalked closer on the tips of her bare toes and unashamedly touched his chest with the flat of her hand. Jellal's heart lifted and fell oddly and sweat pricked his brow. He suddenly wanted out of there.

"You're in the middle of something. I just want to use your phone. I'll call my friend and get her to come pick me up and then I can get out of your way."

"Stay."

"Stay."

"You must stay."

'No one leaves.'

'No one.'

'No.'

'One.'

More whispers came and belling, echoing laughter, so erratic that Jellal couldn't pinpoint its location. He took a step back. His guide was there with her hands on his hips. She wasn't alone, more women appeared and surrounded him, slowly, slowly closing in.

"Okay." He didn't think about the twang of panic in his chest because that felt like giving into something dangerous. "You know, that's fine, I'll just try another house down the road." He turned and thought he could make a run for it but another woman blocked his path; impossibly, she looked just like the woman from the painting. Her hair was the same frightening red, so were her lips. The colour matched her own sheer shawl and brought warmness to eyes that may have otherwise been cold. She touched his chest and it was like being electrocuted and nailed to the floor all at once. She was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. He'd always been wary of beautiful things, they had a tendency to be cruel but for the life of him, he couldn't drum up his same hesitance.

"You won't." Her voice was the smooth glide of steel against steel.

Jellal's tongue felt like lead. "I won't?"

She stepped in close to him and lifted on tiptoes, body brushing his. He could feel every part of her through that thin shawl, every generous swell and deep valley between. "No. You're ours now."

'Ours.'

Air cold enough to make Jellal shiver brushed over his cheek, chased by a dark thrill. He pulled back to look at her. The calculating look in her eye had faded for something welcoming. She'd barely said anything but Jellal knew—he knew—she wanted him to stay there. Maybe he wanted to, too. He spat out the right words to form a protest. Even if he didn't mean them, they were out in the open and maybe there they had power. "I need to. My friend's mom is in the hospital and I was supposed to bring her stuff and my car's dead and—"

She lifted one black-tipped finger and put it against his lips, silencing him, and smiled. "If you please me, then when we're through." Then she did the unthinkable and replaced her finger with her lips. It was insane. Jellal knew it was insane. A house full of beautiful, scantily clad women in the middle of nowhere, that wanted to kiss and touch him didn't exist, but here he was, lured off the road by one such woman and thrown into the hibernacula.

She leaned back just far enough to ask, "Is that nice?"

Jellal wasn't sure what was going to come out of his mouth when he opened it up. "I don't even know your name."

Women tittered, letting him know he was still monitored and mocked. Red the Wicked opened her mouth and said, "Lady in the Forest."

Befitting. "You have no other name?"

"The Fae covet their names, Jellal. There is power in them."

Jellal wasn't even surprised that she knew who he was, she seemed like she knew quite a bit about everything. Like how to kiss. Her mouth was on his again and he wasn't pushing her aside; the thought was distant, distant, distant. Sheer silk was below his fingers before he recognized that he'd grabbed her and her arms were around his neck. Every time he felt her tongue, it was like getting life breathed into him. All of his muscles sang, including his heart, and his thoughts raced. Even when she released her hold around his shoulders, he didn't let her go, he didn't stop kissing her, he couldn't. She had to break away and then it was only to remove her shawl. It fluttered to the ground like feathers and lay like a dollop of paint that Jellal could barely look at. He was trapped by something else: pale skin. She was full and heavy and stood for his appreciation. He gave it to her. Forgotten was his car, his frustration, his fear.

"You're beautiful."

"Yes." More tittering followed her acceptance of his compliment. Jellal didn't care. He stepped toward her as if drawn in by a magnetic force; hands kept him in his place. Where had they come from and who did they belong to? Everyone and no one. They pulled at his coat and his shirt, his belt and then his pants, stripped him of everything and pushed him down to his knees. The Lady in the Forest came for him and what she wanted was obvious. He obliged, taking her by the thighs and kissing the spot between her legs. She tasted like a woman and not, like things forgotten, horrible and beautiful things. She sighed like a woman, though. She traced her fingers through his hair like a woman, too. Jellal gave her everything she wanted, lifting her leg above his shoulder and slowly massaging the bud between her legs with his tongue. Women held her up, some brushing their fingers through her hair, some grabbing her breasts and her hips. The ones that didn't held her open for Jellal's ministrations. He didn't expect to be touched and wasn't disappointed. Everyone worshipped the Lady in the Forest, not the traveller they'd brought in.

She orgasmed when Jellal inserted his fingers, clenching around him and sobbing noisily. It was a beautiful sound and made him harder than stone. He would have kept pleasuring her but hands closed on his elbows and shoulders and pulled him up off the floor and into a gold and ivory settee he didn't recall seeing or moving toward.

The Lady in the Forest followed with her entourage and dropped to her knees in front of him. Jellal held his breath, afraid of her touch and eager for it. She grabbed his hips and pulled him to the edge of the couch and then took the base of his cock in hand. It was like being hit with an electric shock, startling, painful, and the aftermath left him tingling. The feeling intensified when she leaned in and put a kiss on the tip. The kiss deepened, her tongue joining in. Her hair, the silken red curtain, fell over his thighs, cold like a winter's night, and her fingers dug into his skin. Jellal watched, manically focused, as her mouth opened up and she took him in. He hit the back of her throat and she kept going until he was all the way inside. The blue haired girl moved her hair and watched carefully. When the redhead lifted up, she received a kiss from each of the others, saving Jellal for last. He never wanted to stop kissing her. He never wanted to stop. Never.

She did.

Jellal was pushed away and chastised for being greedy. The Lady in the Forest got off her knees and followed him onto the settee, her legs on either side of his hips. She was warm, her body taking his, silken. He would have held her hips but the girls kept his arms wide. The Lady in the Forest leaned back and there were hands waiting for her, holding her up and massaging between her legs while she rocked back and forth. Jellal watched through hazy eyes. It felt like a dream and it felt like the realest thing he'd ever done. It felt like he could come.

"Not yet," Lady in the Forest told him and like a slave, he suppressed the urge. Her hands pressed against his chest and then his throat. She asked, "Is that okay?" and the only thing he could do was look at her and try to convey yes because words had fled. She understood. Her grip never became rough but firm; her eyes fluttered and something, some insane feeling, some manic presence filled the air. Jellal arched into her every hip lift, ready for the comedown, and Lady in the Forest leaned forward. Her hair was like fired wisps, her lips the incinerator.

The room fell away, the music, the women holding him down for the Red. The Lady in the Forest. The Fae.

She pushed Jellal to the very edge and stopped before he toppled over so she could turn around. Her hair fell over her shoulders and landed at the small of her back. Jellal was finally able to touch it, released by the women because they were preoccupied with gathering around the Lady. Mouths left marks on her skin and tongues kissed between her legs. She never lost focus, taking Jellal inside again and beginning anew. This time when he reached his limit, she dug her fingernails into his thighs and let him fall. The ground on the other side was both soft and prickly, for she left him and he felt like an addict, scrabbling for more, needing red, the Lady in the Forest.

Protests or not, when she rose from his lap and drifted away like ash in a late autumn wind, Jellal was incapable of stopping her. He watched her fade, the lights, the music, and then he closed his eyes, exhausted.

Cold was in his bones. The kind that brought with it chattering teeth and chills long after shelter had been sought. Jellal opened his eyes slowly, expecting golden walls, burned out candles, and the remnants of a feast. Everything was wrong. Drab daylight peaked through broken boards on the roof and the walls, leaves drifted over the floors with a wicked rain-filled breeze, pushed through an open and lopsided doorway, an ancient wooden wind chime tinkered incessantly.

Confused, Jellal dug his fingers into the surface beneath him. Damp fabric disintegrated and rusty springs broke completely when he sat up, feeling hungover and disassociated. Standing made the floorboards beneath his feet bow, spongy with moisture. Above his head was cobwebs and to the right near the door was a pile of sticks and detritus; some animal had been using this as a home. It smelled musty and ancient and looked dilapidated. It also looked familiar. There was the chandelier and the table that was once stacked with food. Now there was only ancient looking bowls long absent of whatever had filled them. Most telling, though, was the portrait on the wall of Red the Wicked, the Lady in the Forest. Her back was to him now as she drifted back to whatever cruel place she'd come from.

Was it a dream?

An unhappy raven croaked, startling him into the moment; on its tail, another gust of wind chilled him and he realized that he was nude, his clothes in a pile by the front door, rumpled. Jellal got drunkenly to his bare feet and dressed hurriedly. Though there was no immediate threat that he could see, his heart was beating unnaturally hard.

He burst out of the front door before he was truly ready, his boots untied and his coat in his hand. The house looked crooked and ancient here, too, the porch in such bad repair that his foot went straight through a board so rotted that it had turned pulpy. He made it in and out of the hole painlessly. This wasn't how it was last night. It wasn't. He leapt off the remaining steps as to not repeat the process and stumbled down a crumbling walk. Ahead was a copse of trees and beyond that the road could be seen.

Jellal took a step forward and cold November wind rushed through the branches and almost pushed him down. Roots licked at his feet, too. Despite his love for spooky things, he wasn't a superstitious man; he didn't believe in the preternatural, either, he was a scientist by trade. But in that moment, he thought the forest was trying to keep him. He hurried because to linger was to consider its offer.

Breaking through the treeline was like stepping from dry land into water. The wind stopped, the forest stopped trying to keep him. It was just him and the dirt road. A look to the north showed his car much closer than he thought. A man was standing in front of it on his radio—a cop. Jellal felt too disconnected to jog properly but tried anyway. His body relearned how to do it along the way.

When he was close, the cop pulled his aviators down and scrutinized Jellal. "I think our boy just showed up. I'll get back to you." The radio crackled something back that Jellal missed but the cop seemed to understand and then silenced again. The cop waited until Jellal was within five meters to ask, "Are you the owner of this car?"

Jellal slowed and gasped in a breath. "Yeah, it's mine. It died last night. I was—" He paused to get his thoughts in order and catch his breath. "I was trying to find a phone to call. I don't get service here."

"No cell towers around." The man squinted hard grey eyes; it made the scar over his eye wrinkle. "One of the locals called this morning, said this car's been here all night. Did you sleep in the woods?"

It looked like he had, his clothes were so mussed. "No. There was a house. And women."

The cop's look got harder. "Are you taking the drugs?"

Jellal didn't even have the gusto to mock his country accent. "No. There was one with a lantern, with blue hair—"

"The lantern had blue hair?"

"No. One of the girls did. She brought me in to this house. There was music and food and everyone was—" Beautiful and worshipful of the Lady in the Forest.

"Hot to trot to get a piece of that ass, right?" the cop joked. "Titania lured in your hapless, lost soul for Hollow's Eve?"

He was being mocked, Jellal knew, but… "Titania?"

"Here's some advice, kid, don't go rooting through town legends before you come out here and smoke up, eh? That's how idiots like you get lost in the forest."

"I wasn't," Jellal protested.

The cop wasn't listening, returning to the cruiser that was parked behind Jellal's car.

"Where are you going?"

"To get my breathalyser."

"I'm sober." Jellal's protests fell on deaf ears.

He did the test and passed and when the cop was satisfied, he made Jellal try his car again. Unbelievably, it started up. Jellal felt betrayed and foolish as the cop tapped on the hood and told him,

"Stay out of Titania's gardens now, hear? She doesn't usually let her men go."

He put the car into drive without answering and turned right at the stop sign just to drive past the house again. There was a lantern hanging in the branch of one of the many trees but the house was nowhere to be found.