In the realm of very scary faeries, no one is safe. Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces the sixteen-year-old back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms—a struggle that could very well mean her death. Holly Black's enormously powerful voice weaves teen angst, riveting romance, and capriciously diabolical faerie folk into an enthralling, engaging, altogether original reading experience. Publishers Weekly, starred review A gripping read....[T]he exquisite faeries haunt as well as charm. Kirkus Reviews, starred review Debauchery, despair, deceit, and grisly death -- what more could you ask for from a fairy tale?...A luscious treat for fans of urban fantasy and romantic horror. Holly Black is the author of bestselling contemporary fantasy books for kids and teens. Some of her titles include The Spiderwick Chronicles (with Tony DiTerlizzi), the Modern Faerie Tales series, the Curse Workers series, Doll Bones , The Coldest Girl in Coldtown , The Darkest Part of the Forest , the Magisterium series (with Cassandra Clare), and the Folk of the Air series. She has been a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award, a finalist for an Eisner Award, and the recipient of both an Andre Norton Award and a Newbery Honor. She lives in New England with her husband and son in a house with a secret door. Visit her at BlackHolly.com. Tithe A Modern Faerie Tale By Holly Black Simon Pulse Copyright ©2004 Holly Black All right reserved. ISBN: 0689867042 Chapter 1 "Coercive as coma, frail as bloom innuendoes of your inverse dawn suffuse the self; our every corpuscle become an elf." -- Mina Loy, "Moreover, the Moon," The Lost Lunar Baedeker Kaye spun down the worn, gray planks of the boardwalk. The air was heavy and stank of drying mussels and the crust of salt on the jetties. Waves tossed themselves against the shore, dragging grit and sand between their nails as they were slowly pulled back out to sea. The moon was high and pale in the sky, but the sun was just going down. It was so good to be able to breathe, Kaye thought. She loved the serene brutality of the ocean, loved the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air. She spun again, dizzily, not caring that her skirt was flying up over the tops of her black thigh-high stockings. "Come on," Janet called. She stepped over the overflowing, leaf-choked gutter along the street parallel to the boardwalk, wobbling slightly on fat-heeled platform shoes. Her glitter makeup sparkled under the street lamps. Janet exhaled ghosts of blue smoke and took another drag on her cigarette. "You're going to fall." Kaye and her mother had been staying at her grandmother's a week already, and even though Ellen kept saying they'd be leaving soon, Kaye knew they really had nowhere to go. Kaye was glad. She loved the big old house caked with dust and mothballs. She liked the sea being so close and the air not stinging in her throat. The cheap hotels they passed were long closed and boarded up, their pools drained and cracked. Even the arcades were shut down, prizes in the claw machines still visible through the cloudy glass windows. Rust marks above an abandoned storefront outlined the words salt water taffy. Janet dug through her tiny purse and pulled out a wand of strawberry lipgloss. Kaye spun up to her, fake leopard coat flying open, a run already in her stocking. Her boots had sand stuck to them. "Let's go swimming," Kaye said. She was giddy with night air, burning like the white-hot moon. Everything smelled wet and feral like it did before a thunderstorm, and she wanted to run, swift and eager, beyond the edge of what she could see. "The water's freezing," Janet said, sighing, "and your hair is fucked up. Kaye, when we get there, you have to be cool. Don't seem so weird. Guys don't like weird." Kaye paused and seemed to be listening intently, her upturned, kohl-rimmed eyes watching Janet as warily as a cat's. "What should I be like?" "It's not that I want you to be a certain way -- don't you want a boyfriend?" "Why bother with that? Let's find incubi." "Incubi?" "Demons. Plural. Like octopi. And we're much more likely to find them" -- her voice dropped conspiratorially -- "while swimming naked in the Atlantic a week before Halloween than practically anywhere else I can think of." Janet rolled her eyes. "You know what the sun looks like?" Kaye asked. There was only a little more than a slice of red where the sea met the sky. "No, what?" Janet said, holding the lipgloss out to Kaye. "Like he slit his wrists in a bathtub and the blood is all over the water." "That's gross, Kaye." "And the moon is just watching. She's just watching him die. She mus