Читать книгу Heart of Briar - Laura Anne Gilman - Страница 9

Chapter 3

Tyler didn’t know how long he had been there, or even where there was. There were birdcalls in the distance, sweet and high. He tried to focus on them, reaching for the music that had always come naturally, but the voices in his ear were too loud. He did not know this language, although he tried to pick out words; when he was clearheaded he knew they did not want him to understand, that they were talking about him.

He was not clearheaded most of the time.

The chair was too soft, the air too thin; it all felt wrong, but he couldn’t say why, couldn’t put a finger on what bothered him. He tried to remember. He had been somewhere familiar, the smell of coffee thick in his nose, laughter and clatter around him, and then she had taken his hand, drawn it across the table, and spoken to him.... And then nothing, a sense of time passing but no details in the void.

He was not supposed to be here. He was not supposed to be in this place; it was morning, and every morning he...he... What did he do? The memory glided out of reach, taunting him with the memory of pale green eyes and soft skin, lighter than his and soft as a peach....

“Eat, sweet.”

He ate, although he couldn’t have identified what he was eating. Not a peach, although it was sweet, and soft, like overripe fruit, but without any juice, and the moment he finished it, the taste was gone, nothing lingering in his mouth or throat. He felt languid, drained, his usual energy faded to nothing.

A hand took up his, sliding against his fingers, the tawny skin almost translucent...did it glow? He could not trust his eyes, he could not remember his name.

They had hurt him, until the pain was too much, and then offered him a way out. All he had to do was let go, let go of...what?

“Walk with me.”

He walked, although he could barely feel his feet, unable to resist that voice. The path they followed was plush with pale green grass, and the trees reached overhead, blocking any view of the sky. It was night, he knew that—or thought he did, anyway. He had left his apartment at night, drawn by urgency, a fear that she would not wait for him.... He had...

What had he done?

There was a low, steamy-sounding hiss and a dry, metallic rattle somewhere behind him, then the low sweet voice whispered something and the rattle went away, fading into silence. The rattle-voiced ones were everywhere, but they never came close enough to see.

He shook his head as though bothered by a fly, and his feet stopped moving. He looked up at the branches, trying to see beyond them. This...wasn’t right. He had left his...apartment.... Why? What had he left behind?

Skin like a peach, sweet and succulent. Eyes like leaves. But who?

“Easy, sweet. Do not worry. All is well.”

The soft voice wound around him, bringing him back.

Stjerne. The voice was Stjerne’s.

The name brought memories to fill the gray void. Her hand in his, her lips on his skin, solace and cool comfort against the unbearable pain. She had brought him here and given him food to eat and wine to drink, and now she walked with him, her fingers laced in his own.

“Come. Walk with me.” It was less a request than a command, this time. The fingers were cool against his skin, her voice soft and heavy in his ears.

Tyler was not certain he wanted to go anywhere but could not resist. He breathed the air and smelled the same sweet scent of the food he had been given, the perfume that floated around Stjerne herself, and then exhaled. Chasing after a worry had never helped; whatever he’d forgotten couldn’t be that important, or he’d remember it soon enough. And a walk might help, yeah. It certainly couldn’t do any harm.

She led him through the garden, to a building made of silvery stone, where others waited. He tensed, the faded memories telling him what would come next.

“Do you trust me, sweet?”

Of course he did. He nodded, and she handed him over to those others. They took him, took his clothing, dripped too-sweet water into his mouth, and forced him to swallow, and left him naked and shivering in the odd light, his skin both cold and too warm, unable to move, feeling the clank-and-whir of things settling over his skin.

They had done this before. Before, and again and again...

“Stay with me,” she said. “Feel me. Give in to me. It will all be over soon.”

It would never end. He knew that, a split-second of clarity before the feel of tiny claws digging into his skin intensified, burning like drips of acid down through to bone. They held him down on the chair of feathers and thorns, the one that Stjerne said was his throne, built just for him, to sit by her side, and impaled him and burned him, a little more each time.

“Can you feel me, sweet?” Stjerne, just out of range, just beyond touch.

Tyler would have nodded, but he could not move. “Yes.”

He could. No matter what they did to him, he could feel her there, like the sun that he could never quite find anymore, the only warmth in this world.

Sometimes, he could remember another voice, another touch...brighter lights and different sounds, different smells. But they faded, and there was only her. She protected him. She took care of him. She would make them stop this, silence the voices and take him by the hand and lead him along the path that ended in a warm soft bed and cool hands stroking him to incredible pleasure. Everything she had promised. And all he needed to do was...what?

He focused, trying to remember, and her hands touched him again, calling him back.

“Open to me,” she said, her voice spice and smoke, swirling around him. “Let me in, and we will be together forever, you by my side, never aging, never dying. Sweet days and sweeter nights, and everything you could dream of, I will give you, once you let me in.”

The feathers swept and the thorns dug, and he could feel the things the chair was doing to him, scouring out what had been. Agony. Stjerne’s lips touched his, her scent filling his nostrils, and all he wanted to do was please her, so that she would make the pain go away.

But something resisted, held on. If she were in him, where would he go?

* * *

“There’s no more time to dither, or wait for you to make up your mind. We have to go. Now.” AJ was getting more agitated, his muzzle twitching with every breeze. A middle-aged woman pushing one of those wheeled shopping bags in front of her slowed down and stared, then sped up again when he growled at her.

“AJ.” Martin sounded scandalized.

Jan was now pretty sure that she had lost her mind. Or the entire world had been insane all along, and she was only now realizing it. But even if it was mad, it was real—and the mad ones were the only people who were taking her seriously. Even if what they were saying was impossible, insane, crazy. Even if what she knew she had seen was impossible, insane, crazy.

Maybe she was hallucinating all this: Tyler was actually asleep in bed next to her, snoring faintly, and she had dreamed it all, his disappearance, and everything since then....

It was real. She was stressed, and tired, and tearful, and afraid of that thing she had seen on the bus, more than even AJ’s teeth, or Martin’s...whatever it was Martin was, but she couldn’t deny that it was real.

“Go where?” she asked.

“Somewhere safe,” Martin said. “Where we can protect you. And explain things better, not...so out in the open.”

“Now,” AJ repeated, practically shoving them into movement.

Martin frowned, clearly trying to remember where he had left their vehicle, and then pointed back toward town. “That way.” They walked four blocks away from the park, to a street lined with old Victorians in various states of repair, and stopped in front of a small, dusty, dark red pickup truck.

Her lips twitched, looking at it. “I thought you nature types were all supposed to be environmentally conscious?”

“Funny human,” AJ growled. “Get in.”

AJ drove, while Martin sat on the passenger side, Jan squeezed between the two of them. Martin took her hand again, the way you would someone on the way to the doctor for surgery, to reassure them—or to keep them from bolting. She stared down at the black polish on his nails, then past him out the window. Neither of them tried to talk to her, or to each other, for which she was thankful. Anything more, and she thought her head might fly apart, or she might really throw up this time.

She needed time to take it all in, to figure out... No, there was no figuring out. She just had to roll with it until something made sense again.

They had an answer to what had happened to Tyler. She clutched that thought, warmed herself with it, soothed her uncertainty and the awareness that getting into this truck might have been the last, stupidest thing she’d ever have done.

Somehow, she didn’t believe they would hurt her.

“Last words of every dumb, dead co-ed ever,” she said to her reflection in the window, and sighed. And then, in self-defense, and because she couldn’t do anything useful, and neither of them seemed inclined to explain anything yet, Jan let her brain drift into white noise, her gaze resting on the rows of storefronts and apartment buildings as they drove farther out of town, trying not to think at all.

And, despite everything, or maybe because of it, she fell asleep.

* * *

Martin woke her with a gentle nudge with his elbow as they pulled off the road and parked, the engine turning off with a low cough. Jan, blinking, sat up and looked around. The sun had slipped low enough that streetlights were starting to come on, but half the posts were burned out. They’d gone east, toward the waterfront, but she didn’t know where, exactly.

She looked around as they got out of the car. They were in a small parking lot next to a warehouse that looked as if it had been abandoned for years. The nearest sign of life was a strip mall a little while away, the lights barely visible, and the sound of traffic on the highway a little beyond that. There were two beat-up pickups in the parking lot, which was cracked through with weeds and a sense of desolation beyond merely being abandoned.

“This way.” AJ started walking toward the warehouse, and Martin waited until she followed, then fell in behind.

Jan had the feeling, as they walked from the truck to the building, that they were being watched. The question—watched by what?—flashed through her mind. Not human. Whatever was going on, wherever Tyler had gone to, she was getting the feeling that getting him back wouldn’t involve sitting in front of a monitor fixing other peoples’ mistakes or listening to excuses. That might be a nice change.

Or it could get her killed. That would be a less-nice change.

Up close, the warehouse was in better shape than it seemed at first; the windows, set high up in the walls, were intact, and the cement walls had been repaired recently. The cargo-bay doors were padlocked with heavy chains. They walked around the side of the building to an oversize metal door with an “all deliveries to front” sign over it. The door looked heavy as hell, but AJ pulled it open without hesitation. It was unlocked, which surprised Jan. Why padlock the front, and leave the side open?

Inside the warehouse, the first thing she saw were remains of old cars, clearly cannibalized for parts, and workbenches filled with power tools. She took that in, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light, and saw, farther in the back, the huge lifts that you saw in repair shops. Off to her side there was a long metal table covered with license plates from a dozen different states.

Her eyes went wide, even though she would have sworn that nothing else could have surprised or shocked her then. “You guys are car thieves?”

“It’s a living,” AJ said tersely.

She was not given time to gawk, but led away from the machinery and cars to a corner of the warehouse that had been set up to look slightly more homey, with seating and a small kitchenette jerry-rigged against the wall.

AJ disappeared, and Martin indicated that she should sit down on the battered couch that looked as if it had been pulled from someone’s garage. It was like someone’s cheap college apartment; all it was missing were the milk crates up on cinder blocks.

“You want something to drink? I think we’ve got coffee, tea....”

“Tea would be nice, thank you.” The politeness made Martin smile, and he went off to fuss at the kitchenette, finally returning with a mug of tea that smelled like mint.

Jan hated herbal tea. She took it, anyway.

Martin sat down next to her while AJ returned with someone else he introduced as Elsa.

Jan blinked, and then laughed, the sound escaping her like a sob. “I’m sorry. I just thought you’d have—” Jan gestured a little, helplessly, sloshing her tea on the concrete floor “—more unusual names.”

“Some do,” Elsa said, not taking offense. Her voice was a rough, grating noise that matched her appearance perfectly. Jan understood better now why AJ and Martin had been sent to find her, if the newcomer was more typical of...what had AJ called them? Supernaturals. AJ’s face might be unusual, but nobody could avoid noticing a moving pile of rusty brown rocks shaped—vaguely—like a woman.

“I’m a jötunndotter,” Elsa said. “It’s all right to stare. I prefer it to those sideways looks people use when they’re trying to be polite.”

Jan, who had been trying to not look at her directly, blushed.

“You don’t want to meet the ones who insist on old-school names,” Martin told her. “They’re...difficult.”

“What swish-tail means,” AJ added, “is that they’re isolationist, and would just as soon humanity went a tipper over the edge into annihilation. Or went themselves, which is more likely.”

“There aren’t many of them. Not anymore.” Martin took her hand again, the one not holding the tea mug, and Jan pulled it away out of reflex. He was way too touchy for her taste, even if he was sort of homely-cute. “Humanity used to be good at getting rid of threats. The rest of us...well, there aren’t that many of us left, either. But we adapt. We try to blend.”

Elsa was not about to blend anywhere.

“Most of ’em aren’t blending so much as they’re sticking their heads into caves and leaving their asses hanging in the breeze. And good riddance to the lot of them.”

“We don’t play well with others,” Elsa said, almost apologetically.

“We don’t play well with ourselves, either,” Martin said, and AJ snorted agreement.

The sense of curiosity from earlier was tipping into panic again. Jan kept her life on an even keel. She liked her even keel. This was leaving her distinctly unkeeled. “You’re all... How many different... No. You know what? I don’t care.” Jan reached for her inhaler, just to have something real in her hand rather than because she needed it. “This is all insane, and the only reason I’m even here is that you keep telling me that Tyler’s been taken, that I’m his only hope—that those things are out to get me because of that...but nobody’s actually told me what’s going on!”

“We were too busy trying to save your life,” AJ snapped. “In case you’ve already forgotten.”

“My life wasn’t in danger until you showed up!”

Elsa shifted her weight, a crackling noise accompanying the movement, and glared at AJ until he looked away.

“It’s a lot to take in,” she said to Jan. “We know. But they had to get you here, safe, and even now there’s no time to answer everything, or explain things you don’t need to know. The clock’s been ticking ever since your boy was taken, and you waited too long to show up and claim him.”

“Excuse me?” Jan was, weirdly, relieved to feel angry. She didn’t like anger, but it beat the hell out of being scared and confused. She put the tea down, having only taken one sip from the mug, and glared at all three of the...whatever-they-weres ranged around her. “If you knew what the hell was going on, whatever the hell is going on, why didn’t you do anything? Before I was in danger—before Tyler was in danger?”

The jötunndotter lifted her hands, each finger a smooth length of brown stone, the palms like congealed gravel. “We couldn’t. Not without—there are ramifications and limitations to the natural world, and—”

“Elsa, stop.” AJ stalked back from the perimeter, which he’d been pacing, and crouched in front of Jan. He’d pushed the hoodie back when they’d come in, so she couldn’t avoid seeing the strange wolfen features, or how his oddly hinged jaw moved when he spoke. “We didn’t because we can’t. It doesn’t work that way. What’s going on caught us by surprise, too.” It hurt him to admit that, she could tell. “We’re trying to play catch-up.”

“So you’re not....” She didn’t know what she was going to ask, but AJ laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh.

“Humans veer between thinking they’re the only ones here and assuming that there’s this malicious cabal of woo-woo, messing with their lives at every turn. Both’re crap. There’s the natural, that’s you, and the supernatural. Us. We all belong in this world together...you people just take up most of the room. Mostly, we ignore you. Occasionally, our paths cross. It doesn’t end well for us, most of the time.”

Jan spoke without really thinking about it. “Fairy tales.”

AJ spat on the ground, and Martin sighed.

“Humans call ’em that,” AJ said. “Humans don’t have a clue. They revile what they don’t recognize, demonize what they fear, simplify it so they don’t have to deal with reality.” He sighed, his muzzle twitching, and then shrugged, as though deciding it didn’t matter.

“Like I said, we try to ignore humans, the same way you ignore us. Most of the time when our people meet, it’s just...skirmishes. Awkward moments and bad relationships.”

“But not always?”

“Not always. Sometimes it works out—not often, but sometimes. But that’s when it’s us, natural and supernatural.”

“There’s something else?” Jan felt her body tense, as if a fight-or-flight reaction was kicking in, although nobody’d said or done anything threatening in the past minute, and wasn’t that a nice change?

“Yes...and no,” Elsa said.

“Seven times that we’ve recorded,” AJ said, “something else gets added to the playground.” He held up his hand, not even trying to hide his claws now. Three fingers ticked off: “Naturals, supernaturals, and preternaturals.”

“Preter...”

“Humans call them elves,” Martin said. “What we call them isn’t so pretty.”

Elves. Jan thought of Keebler elves first, baking cookies, then the slender, coolly blond archers of the Lord of the Rings movies, and suspected AJ wasn’t talking about anything like that.

“Why two names? Aren’t you both—?”

AJ didn’t roll his eyes, sigh, or make any other obvious sign of irritation, but he practically vibrated with it. “Supernatural, above nature. Preter, outside nature. One belongs here, the other does not. Nobody teaches Latin anymore, do they?”

Jan had gone to school for graphic design, not dead languages.

“Supernaturals are part of this world,” Martin said. “The preters...come from somewhere else.”

“Fairyland?” Jan laughed. Nobody else did.

“And they...took Tyler? Why?” If they didn’t belong here...where had they taken him? How had they found him?

AJ settled in on his haunches, resting his elbows on his knees in a way that she would never be able to balance. Another reminder that he wasn’t human, that his body wasn’t what it looked like....

Jan tried to focus on what he was saying, now that they were finally explaining things.

“Preters have a history of stealing humans. Used to be, they’d slip through and steal whatever took their fancy. We didn’t know why they liked humans so much, but they do. Babies, especially.”

“Changelings,” Martin said.

“Right. Only sometimes they take adults, too. Males mostly, but sometimes females. And they never let ’em go.”

“And they took Tyler.... why?” Jan knew she was repeating herself. She was trying to process all this. All right, she’d accepted—mostly—the fact that there was more than she knew, more to the world than she’d ever dreamed, after what had happened on the bus. But this? Changelings and kidnappings and elves from another world, some kind of parallel universe or something? Seriously?

Tyler was gone. These people—supers—were here, and they were the only ones giving her any kind of explanation, no matter how insane it sounded. Unless ILM or some other Hollywood effects company was involved, there was no way this was any kind of prank.

Then her eyes narrowed, and she looked first at Elsa, then at Martin, and then back at AJ. “But why do you care?”

A werewolf’s laugh was, Jan discovered, a particularly atavistically terrifying thing, like a harsh howl that echoed against the roof and raised the hair on her arms. Almost instinctively she turned again to Martin for reassurance. He shook his head, his long face solemn, and looked back at AJ. So she did, too.

“Smart, yeah. You’re smart. And quick. Good.” AJ was serious again. “You’re right. We’re not all that fond of humanity overall. Sometimes we have periods where it’s bad, sometimes when it’s hunky-dory, but mostly, we don’t care. But this isn’t about you. It’s about us. Like I said, this world is our home, too. We both belong here. The preters...don’t.”

“They are not part of our ecosystem,” Elsa said, moving in closer. Jan shifted, uncomfortable, and the jötunndotter stopped. “They come in like invaders—”

“They are invaders,” AJ said. “Never forget that.”

Elsa nodded. “They cross borders that should not be crossed, and take from us. From this world. Humans, and livestock, and whatever else strikes their fancy. In the past, only a few have been able to pass, and only in force large enough to be noticed. Troops, they were called, and we could find them, and force them back.

“That has changed, Human Jan.”

Elsa seemed at a loss for what to say next, and Martin took up the narrative. It was almost a relief to turn to him, even though Jan knew damn well—intellectually, anyway—that he was no more human than the other two.

“It used to be, they had to wait until the moon was right, or some other natural occurrence, um, occurred. Then they came through either one at a time, or in a troop. Even with the natural world cooperating, it was an iffy thing, unpredictable. The portals shifted, moved. The damage they could do was limited, and if they stayed too long, we found them.”

The implication was pretty strong that, when found, they weren’t invited in for tea.

“The past year, maybe more, that’s changed. They’re coming in during times that the portal should not be open, in places they should not have access to—cities were never their domain. Even cities that were built on old sites: over time the pressure of naturals wore the access away, broke down the ancient connection.” Martin looked over at AJ, as though waiting for permission to continue, and then said, “The preters have found some way to open the portals that we don’t understand, move them to places they should not be, and they’re raiding us like an unguarded vegetable patch.”

“Taking humans...” Jan was still—understandably, she thought—stuck on that.

“Taking a lot of humans,” AJ said. “And that’s just in the three months we’ve been aware of it.”

“You didn’t know, before?”

“I told you. Mostly, we—supers and you naturals—ignore each other. And whatever use preters have for humans, we don’t fill it. None of our people disappeared. So, no, we didn’t notice that your species was disappearing at a faster than usual rate.

“Not right away, anyway. The dryads...they’ve always been fond of humans. No idea why, but...they like to listen. And they love to gossip. And they heard whispers. Those whispers reached us.”

Somehow, Jan suspect “us” meant him, AJ. For all his cranky manner—or maybe because of it—he reminded her of her first boss, a guy who’d known everything that was going on in the office, even the stuff they’d tried to keep from him.

“And then we discovered why. Or rather, how.” Elsa sounded almost...frightened. “The barrier between our worlds shifts, and can be influenced. We knew this, but never cared overmuch about the whys or hows...but the preters cared. Very much so. Before, it required, as AJ said, a natural turn, some conjunction to open a portal large enough to be useful. Now they have discovered a way to...thin the barrier. To create an unnatural portal that they can control, and not depend on the whims of nature or the tides of the moon.”

“How?”

“If we knew that...”

“It’s because of your computers,” Martin burst out.

“What?” Jan was suddenly lost again—her brain having slowly twisted around the idea of werewolves and trolls and elves, roughly hauled back to technology.

“Back then, it was all environmental. We could feel when they came into the system, when something shifted. Like an earthquake, or a storm coming in off the ocean; something changed. But it’s been quiet for a long time now. And then the whispers started, and we realized that quiet didn’t mean dormant.”

“They’re using technology, somehow.” Martin got up and paced this time, while AJ stayed put and continued explaining. “We know that much; once we started looking for it, we can feel it around their portals, the aftermath of them, like a static shock in the universe. It’s the same feeling that hovers around some of your labs, the major scientific ones. CAS, Livermore, CERN, Al-Khalili...” He shrugged, as though knowing all those names was unimportant. “But we don’t understand how. We don’t...that’s something humans do. Technology. Computers. But the preters have figured it out, and it’s giving them access—giving them control of where and when a portal opens.”

Martin touched her shoulder, drawing her attention. “That’s your world, Jan, not ours. Technology is a human invention. We wouldn’t know where to begin.”

Jan started to laugh. “So, what, you want me to shut down everyone’s computers? Set off some kind of virus to kill the internet? I can’t, I’m a website tech, not a hacker, I can’t do something like that, and I wouldn’t even if I could!” She worked with tech; she didn’t make it—or break it. Not intentionally, anyway.

AJ snarled at her, and this time it was a purely human—human-sounding—noise of frustration. “We’re not idiots. No. We can only find them after a portal opens—and that’s too late for us to do any good. We need to find out how they’re using it, learn how to shut it down. The only way to do that is to catch one of them. And the only way to do that is to play their game. But we don’t know what it is.”

“And you think that I do?”

“You can help us find out,” Martin said. “We need one of their captives, to find out what was done to them, and how. But they don’t take supers, only humans, and the only thing that can reclaim a human from a preter’s grasp is the call of their heart. Only a mother, or lover, has ever been strong enough. You’re the only one who can save Tyler...and Tyler is the only one who can save the rest of us.”

Jan officially overloaded. “You’re all insane. This is insane, this is...he wasn’t abducted! He went off with some hot chick, that’s all. He quit his job, just walked away from everything....”

“Not walked. Was led. The preters...” AJ was reduced to waving a hand at her—his fingers were tipped with short, blunt claws that looked as though they were designed to tear flesh off bone, so it was an effective swipe, making her scoot as far back on the sofa as she could. “Come on, woman, have you read no stories in your entire life?”

Jan stared at him, utterly at a loss. Then, slowly, the bits she needed surfaced from her memory, taken less from stories than role-playing games and movies, but enough that she began to understand.

“They seduce,” she said, slowly. “They lure...all of you do. Fairies, and mermaids, and will-o’-the-wisps.... You drag humans off...” Like they had done to her, she thought but didn’t say. Although, really, they’d used less seduction and more strong-arming. Was that better, or worse?

“Why do you care? Why not just let the preters drag humans off and good riddance? I mean, you’re all—” She waved her hand, as though to say “all the same, not-me, not human.”

Elsa looked at AJ, who looked at Martin, who looked up at the ceiling. Jan followed his gaze, as though there might be an answer. All she saw was a tangle of cables and industrial lights, most of which had burned out and not been replaced.

Something was going on that she wasn’t privy to, that they didn’t want her to know about. Jan opened her mouth to demand an answer when AJ cut her off.

“We’re not going to pretend to be saints,” he said. “But humans have a history of bad behavior, too, and they tend to use more violence. So let’s just call the past the past, okay? Like I said, we all belong here. We’re part of this world. So we have to deal with each other, even if dealing looks a lot like ignoring.

“That’s the difference. A thousand years of history show that preters don’t deal, they don’t compromise. This isn’t their place, it’s a...a storeroom they can raid. They don’t care about you, or us, or anything except themselves and what they want—and whatever they want? It’s bad for us. All of us.”

Jan shook her head. “You still haven’t given me any reason to trust you. How do I know that anything you’ve told me is true? You could be lying, this could all be some giant, impossible, stupid sick joke....”

The tickle in her throat got worse, and her chest closed up, the warning signs of an asthma attack kicking in. Too much dust in the warehouse, and with her luck she was allergic to supernaturals. She grabbed her inhaler, hitting it hard until things eased again. Two in one day: that wasn’t good.

Martin got up, shoving AJ aside and going down in a crouch next to Jan.

“Are you all right?”

What do you care, she wanted to retort, but the concern in his face was real, or looked real, anyway. His black-tinted nails glinted even in the dimmer light of the warehouse, and Jan thought of the tar-black hooves of his pony-form.

She waited until she could breathe normally, then shook her head. “Asthma. It sucks, but I’m okay. That’s not nail polish, is it?”

He ignored the question. “Jan. I’m not going to ask you to trust us. Trust is earned. But believe us.”

His voice was smooth and soft, especially after Elsa’s granite rumble and AJ’s growl. More, his touch was soothing, his hands on her bare arms, stroking down from elbow to wrist. The sensation eased the pressure in her chest even more, as if it was enhancing the drugs in her system. If so, she wanted to bottle that touch and make a fortune selling it.

“We’re selfish and we’re secretive, but I swear, on the river I was born to, I swear this: everything we’ve told you is true.”

Jan’s practical side fought its way through. Preters seduced. But so did supernaturals. The way he touched her... “Tyler was taken by elves?” Her voice was too high, as if she’d sucked helium instead of albuterol.

“I know what you’re thinking. That that’s crazy. Too crazy. You can see us, feel us, so you know we’re real, but we’re...strange. Monsters maybe, even. Elves? Elves are the good guys, the graceful ones, the moonshine and stardust ones. But they’re not. They’re predators.”

Behind him, AJ snorted, and Martin winced.

“They’re predators without an off switch,” he amended. “The only thing that’s kept us safe until now is the barrier between our world and theirs. A barrier they couldn’t control. And now they can.

“Jan, humans aren’t people to them, they’re toys. Things they take, use, break, and discard.”

Jan looked him straight in the eye, but included AJ—and all the others—in her question. “And you? Okay, fine, we’re all in this world together, woo, that has never stopped humans from beating the crap out of each other, doing horrible things. So, tell me, what are humans to you?”

He hesitated, although the motion of his hands never stopped. “Neighbors. Family. Extended family, yes, but... We’re all of the same soil, the same air, the same waters.”

Jan didn’t know if that was truth or bullshit. She didn’t know if any of this was truth or bullshit. But if it was true...her faith in, her love for Tyler was being validated. He hadn’t abandoned her, hadn’t been untrue, not willingly. Something not-human had taken him. She clung to that and nodded. It might all be insane, but the only other option would be to accept that everything she had believed in was a lie, to walk away, to give up on Tyler, to never trust her own instincts about love ever again.

“What do I need to do?”

There was a change in the air around her, as though the warehouse itself had exhaled in relief, and Jan had the sudden feeling that she’d just signed on for more than they had told her.

* * *

The feeling of being watched out in the parking lot had been real: while only three of them had come out to convince her, once she agreed, the shadows around the edges of the warehouse pulled back, and other figures began to emerge. Most of them looked human enough, like Martin and AJ, and she had to look carefully to see the scales or the horns, the slight hint of a tail or fur. Ten, maybe a dozen; they came and went around the auto corpses and workbenches with the air of people—things—people—on important missions, although none of them seemed interested, just then, in power tools or tires.

Someone shouted and waved an arm at AJ. He snarled in annoyance but got up and walked over to the shouter. After a hesitation, Elsa did the same, her body moving more slowly than AJ’s brisk lope.

That left her with Martin.

“What do you expect me to do?” she asked again, trying to ignore the flow of activity, knowing that they were all staring at her freely enough. “If you can’t find them until they’re already here, can’t trace them once they are here, how do you expect me to do any better?”

“You won’t. You can’t. But you can figure out how to lure them to us. Offer them what they want—a human who is willing to buy into their promises, give them what they want. And when they think they have you...we have a way to figure the portal out—and you can take back what is yours.”

Jan stared at him, and then laughed, a harsh exhale that didn’t sound amused. “I’m bait, in other words.”

Martin hesitated, just a bit. “Yes.”

“You know that I know what happens to bait, right?”

Martin tried to take her hands again; that seemed to be his thing. “We will protect you.”

She moved her hands out of his grip. “Uh-huh.”

Jan had a very strong suspicion that it wasn’t as easy as Martin was making it sound. But if they were right... If this had been going on for months, maybe longer, then she wasn’t the only one to have a loved one stolen away. But she was the only one who could do something about it.

“And the others...they’re part of a normal carjacking ring? Or...?” She made a vague gesture to include the entire warehouse.

“We’re all volunteers. The car thing, it was a small operation AJ’s pack ran. We’re using it as a cover, a place to gather. Whatever we need—whatever you need—they will provide.”

That was comforting, she supposed. Although she had no idea what she might need....

“Wait.” She reached out to touch Martin on the shoulder, but something—some memory of AJ’s words, warning her not to touch him in pony-form—made her stop. She had never been the hero type, never been asked to step forward, or picked first for any team. “I’m not the only one you’ve tried to convince, am I?”

Martin looked as if he wanted to escape, which made her eyes narrow. “Tell me, or I’m walking, right now.” He had sworn to her that he wouldn’t lie.

“No. You’re not.” His voice was full of regret, which made her not want to know what happened to the others.

“What happened to the others?” she asked, anyway, with a suspicion she knew already.

This time, when he took her hands, she let him. “The turncoats came after them, too. We don’t know how, don’t know how they knew, how they found them, unless the preters told them, but by the time we figured out who had the connection we needed, the gnomes were already there, and—”

Her throat hurt, suddenly. “And had eaten them.”

“Yeah.” He looked as nauseated as she felt; if his other form was a horse, then maybe he was a vegetarian?

“We found you in time, got you away from them. We’ll protect you,” he said again. “We need you to be safe.”

There wasn’t much more she could say to that.

* * *

Eventually, AJ and Elsa came back, their faces grim. Well, AJs face was always grim. Elsa’s craggy expression didn’t seem to change much.

Jan had never been to a council of war, only what she’d seen in movies, but she was pretty sure their version was pitiful: the four of them sitting on old furniture in an old warehouse, with supernatural creatures stripping cars in the background.

“We’ve been trying to predict where and when, with no success,” AJ said. “There doesn’t seem to be any pattern or logic to it, except that they always go back to where they came through, so the portal doesn’t move, and they can’t just open another one by snapping their fingers. But they never reuse one, either. Our old ways of finding them are useless, and we can’t wait for a portal to open and hope that you’re nearby. You need to tell us what to look for.”

“Me?” Jan was already tired of asking that. “I’m not the one who—”

“They are coming out of phase, at a time and place of their own choosing, and returning with their prey almost immediately. How?” Elsa leaned forward, the sound of gravel crunching with every move. “How did they find your leman and catch his attention?”

“Sex.” Jan heard the bitterness in her voice, thick in that one word. Elf—preternatural—or no, they’d used the most basic lure, and he’d fallen for it. Apparently she hadn’t been enough for him, that he had to fuck around, too.

“Yes, obviously.” Elsa gave her an odd look. “But how? In the past, their victims have stumbled upon their portal-circles, or been caught at transition times.”

“The dark of the moon,” Martin said, coaching Jan. “Fairy rings. The change of seasons. Times and places a human might come in contact with them, intentionally or otherwise.”

Jan tried to remember what he was saying while still focusing on Elsa’s questions. He was too close, and she was noticing things like the way he smelled, a green, musky scent, instead of what was happening around her.

“But they no longer need such things, if they reach directly into homes and draw their prey to them, or go directly to where their prey already waits. If they have found a way around the old, physical, temporal limitations...how? That is what we need to know, to lure and trap them in kind.”

Jan stared at her, completely out of her comfort zone, or any zone she recognized. Her daypack rested at her feet, and she clutched at it now, the only remnant of reality left. Her wallet, her cell phone—but there was no one she could call. Nobody who could get her out of this, or throw her a lifeline. “I... How am I supposed to know?”

“Think, human. If this man was in your life, you know his habits. You know where he went and what he did, yes?”

“Yes.” Her response was immediate. Of all the things they had asked, this she had no doubts about. “But he didn’t go anywhere. I was the one who had to drag him out and be social. The only thing he did was...”

She stopped, and Elsa leaned forward.

“Yes?”

Jan dug her fingers into her hair, trying to massage some of the stress out of her scalp, but all that did was remind her of the times Tyler had done the same thing, the fingers that danced so quickly over the keyboard going slow and steady through her curls.

“We...we do a lot of socializing online. Digital networking, vid-conferencing, that sort of thing. But that’s people you already know. Tyler wasn’t much for chat rooms, said they were overrun with noobs and trolls— Oh, sorry. It’s a Net term, it’s not—”

Elsa stared at her, not taking offense, waiting for her to get to the point.

“The thing is, we met on a dating site. It’s a...a place where people go, when they want to meet someone else, outside their usual social group. You put your profile into the system, and you look at other profiles, and you decide who you want to talk to after you check them out, see if you share interests....”

Jan swallowed hard, remembering the email she had found in Tyler’s in-box. “It can get pretty racy there, if you want.”

Elsa’s eyes didn’t widen—Jan wasn’t sure her expression could change, at all—but it was obvious that she understood. “This site, it allows others to find sexual partners?”

“Yeah. Some of them are looking for marriage, some of ’em are just wanting a hookup...the one we used was more casual.” Saying it made the tips of her ears flush, as if she was some kind of slut, but that was silly: so she didn’t want to get married, that didn’t mean she had wanted a bunch of one-night hookups. And neither had Tyler—she thought. But if he had stayed on the site, kept his account active after she closed hers... The bitterness stuck in her throat, like heartburn.

“If you were using sex, seduction to lure someone—” wasn’t that how they said a lot of serial killers found their prey? “—then a dating site like that would make sense. People are open to it, not suspicious, or wary. We want to be seduced.”

She had to laugh, had to say it. “On the internet, nobody knows you’re an elf.”

The others looked at her, clueless, and she sighed. “Trust me this time. It’s a breeding ground of desperation and hope.”

“So that is where we will start.” Elsa nodded, satisfied with her pronouncement, and then tilted her stone-gray head curiously. “How do we do that?”

* * *

Jan would have been happy to set them up and leave them to it, but AJ hadn’t been exaggerating when he said supernaturals didn’t use much modern technology—despite the machinery scattered throughout the warehouse, not a one of them there had a laptop, not even a netbook. Worse, Jan couldn’t get a signal with her phone, even outside the warehouse—wherever they were, there wasn’t a tower within clear range.

“You couldn’t have found somewhere actually on the grid?” Jan said in disgust, sinking back down into the sofa, interrupting a group of supers who were apparently on their coffee break. They all gave her moderate hairy eyeballs and she—having tossed good manners out the window by now—gave it right back. She’d just spent half an hour walking around the perimeter of the warehouse—followed by AJ and Martin acting as bodyguards, or to make sure that she didn’t bolt—trying to get a signal. Not even a single bar flickered, much less enough to load data.

“It was large enough, defensible enough, and cheap enough. You want some coffee?” The offer came from a man who barely came up to her waist, dressed in black jeans and a black button-down shirt, black sneakers on his feet. His shoulders were too large for the rest of his body, but otherwise he could have been any height-challenged human, even if you noticed that his ears were slightly pointed, unless you looked into his eyes. Jan did and had to resist the urge to back away. There was nothing human about those eyes.

“No. Thank you.” She desperately wanted some, actually. It had been a long time since lunch, which had been a yogurt on the bus over to Tyler’s place. But the thought of letting one of them make it...wasn’t there some story about eating the food of fairyland? Did that apply here?

“There’s soda, too.” Those yellow-ringed eyes didn’t blink. “Still factory-sealed.”

“What, she doesn’t trust us?” A voice came from above them. Jan didn’t look up, pretty sure that she didn’t want to know where that snarky, snide voice came from.

“Would you?” Yellow-eyes responded, not looking up, either. “Come on, girlie, it’s just a soda.”

She was thirsty—extended bouts of fear and panic did that to her. “What kind?”

“We got Coke, Diet Coke, Dr Pepper and Jolt.”

She realized suddenly that he had a small, sharp beak rather than lips, giving him a faint, sharp lisp. That...was weird. Weirder than a werewolf, or a woman made of rock, or a guy who turned into a horse? Yes, she decided, it was.

“Gotta love that stuff,” he coaxed. “Twice the caffeine, all the sugar.”

“Do I look like a programmer?” she muttered. “Diet Coke. Please.”

Something swooped over their heads, a shadow of wings, and Jan ducked instinctively.

The owl-faced being chuckled at her reaction. “Ignore it, and it’ll leave you alone. Don’t take that as a general rule, though; sometimes ignoring things can get you eaten. My name’s Toba. I’m the closest thing to a geek we have, so I guess that makes me your aide-de-camp.”

He had a nice laugh. “How much of a geek are you?”

Toba shrugged. “I use a cell phone, and I know how to send email.”

“Oh, god.” Not that she had been expecting much more, at this point. “All right, that’ll have to do. If I’m going to get online to anything, I need my laptop, and a signal. That means I can’t work here.” She didn’t want to work here, more to the point. “I need to go back to my apartment.”

Where it was safe. Familiar. Not filled with...things swooping overhead, changing shapes, or looking at her with wide, golden eyes.

Toba shook his head solemnly. “Can’t do that. The turncoats’ve marked you. Ten minutes outside, out of our territories, and they’d track you down.”

The matter-of-factness finally got to Jan, where everything else hadn’t. “The hell I can’t go back to my apartment! My gear is there, my clothes—my medication!” Her inhaler would only last so long, especially if they kept throwing stress like this at her. And the dust—god, between the dust and noise, warehouses were not high on her list of places to be. “If I stay here much longer, I’m going to get sick again,” she said. “Maybe bad enough to need the hospital.”

“You don’t want to lead the turncoats back to your apartment,” Martin said, coming to join the conversation, obviously having overheard everything. She wondered, a little wildly, how good their hearing was, could they all listen in, even from across the warehouse floor? Did she have no privacy at all?

“They’re slow thinkers, but determined, and vicious; if they figure out where you are... You have to stay here, where we can protect you.”

“No. Oh, no.” Jan shook her head, determined on this. “I can’t stay here. I can’t work here.” The warehouse was large, but at that moment she would have sworn that the walls were closing in on her. “If I’m going to do anything at all—”

“We will send someone for whatever you need. Elsa is finding somewhere you can work, somewhere safe. And then—”

“No.” It was his voice, that calm, soothing voice, that made her snap, suddenly.

“What?”

“Look, you don’t get it at all, do you? I have a life! I have a job, and friends, and a family. I took the day off, that’s all. I can’t just disappear, the way Tyler did. No.”

They stared at each other, and Jan willed herself not to back down. After all of the crap that had already happened, this shouldn’t have been so important to her, but it was.

“Fine.” Toba broke the stalemate. “She’s right: to do anything online, she needs to be connected, and reception’s shit out here. So we’ll move in with you, set up protections there. Don’t give me that look, kelpie. You don’t have to come. Not like you’re good for much, anyway.”

Martin drew himself upright, making the most of the full foot of height he had on the other supernatural. “I swore I would keep her safe.”

Toba seemed to find that hysterical. “You? Right.”

Jan looked back and forth between the two of them, confused. If anything, Martin—twice the height and stronger—would be able to protect her better than Toba, slight and hunched over, whose sole weapon seemed to be his wit.

“Look, I—” Martin took the shorter being by the shoulder and led him away, not gently. They started to argue, their voices lowered so that she could not hear them, no matter how she tried. After a minute and some emphatic gestures from Martin, Toba looked over his shoulder once at her, then shrugged. Whatever Martin was saying, it seemed to not impress the owl-faced being much.

Finally, they called AJ over, and the whole argument started again.

Jan curled up on the sofa and closed her eyes, weary beyond belief. Standing up for herself always took so much energy, even when people didn’t get mad.

Where was Tyler? What was he thinking just then? Were they...were they hurting him? Or was the seduction that had stolen him continuing? The thought burned, but she forced herself to face it. He might not want to come back....

And then, suddenly, the argument in the corner was over, and she was being bundled back into the SUV. Martin drove this time, with Toba perched on the other side of her. They drove back into the city, following her directions, headlights picking out landmarks, the streets slowly becoming familiar again, until they pulled up outside of her building.

By then, night had fallen with a definite thud, and there was a chill in the air that made her wish she’d been wearing a sweater that morning, instead of a long-sleeved T-shirt.

Had it really only been that morning that she’d left her apartment, intent on finding out what was really happening with Tyler? Since then...the world had turned upside down and inside out. She was worn down and exhausted, and wanted only to stagger up the stairs, check her email, and pass out facedown on her bed. Maybe when she woke up, this would all be a terrible dream.