Locks down faerie

Cat Sith turned and padded down the hallway, toward my bedroom. He stopped in the hall at the door to the linen closet and lashed his tail once, then looked at me. “Very well.”
I frowned at him. Then I went to the closet and opened the door.
Autumn air, humid and smothering compared to that of Arctis Tor, flooded into my lair. Brilliant lights shone on the other side of the door, and it took me a few seconds of blinking against them to adjust, and realize that I was being blinded by simple streetlights. Inside my closet, there was a bit of sidewalk and then Michigan Avenue stretching out to the storefront opposite.
I blinked several times. Sith had opened a Way between Faerie and Chicago.
The spirit world, the Nevernever, is vast almost beyond imagining. Faerie is but one part of it, for the most part occupying the realms of spirit that lie most adjacent to the mortal world. The geography of the spirit world isn’t like that of the real world. Different places in the spirit world will connect with places with a similar energy in the real world. So dark, spooky parts of the Nevernever hook up with dark, spooky places in the mortal world.
And my freaking linen closet in Arctis Tor hooked up to Chicago—specifically to Michigan Avenue, to the Gothic stone building across the street from the Old Historic Water Tower. It was night. Cars went by occasionally, but no one seemed to take notice of the open portal to the heart of Winter. Arctis Tor was isolated in the Nevernever, difficult to reach without inside help. Even traveling by Ways takes at least some time, and I’d expected a hike back to the real world.
“How?” I asked quietly.
“Her Majesty had it made,” Sith said.
I whistled. Intentionally forming a connection from a specific place to a specific place took amounts of energy so enormous that even the White Council of Wizards could rarely manage it—I’d seen it done only once in my lifetime, the year before, in Chichén Itzá. “She had it made? For me?”
“Indeed,” Sith said. “In fact, this is, for the time being, the only way in or out of Faerie.”
I blinked several times. “You mean Winter?”
“Faerie,” Sith stated. “All of it.”
I choked. “Wait. You mean all of Faerie is on lockdown?”
“Indeed,” Sith said. “Until dawn.”
“Why?” I asked.
“One presumes it was done to give you a head start.” With that, Sith walked calmly through the door and onto the sidewalk. “Your car, Sir Knight.”


Cold Days Chapter 9, Page 74-75