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“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.
