Soul of Fire

“I don’t suppose you did this for a living?” she asked, her body starting to relax a little.

“What, back rubs? No.”

He didn’t say anything more, and Jan felt her curiosity pique a little. Most of the other supers she had met were perfectly happy to talk about their jobs, the things they did to make a living, just like humans. Martin never did. But she was afraid if she prodded, he might stop, and the quiet was actually kind of nice, so she just leaned into his hands and tried to relax.

They were still sitting on the grassy bank when an air-sprite buzzed them, flying low and fast over the grass until it pulled up in front of Jan’s face.

“Come!” it demanded, its voice way too imperious for something the size of a hummingbird. “Come now!”

Anyone could ask a sprite to do something; getting them to do it and right away? That meant AJ.

“We’re summoned,” she said to Martin, feeling the headache start to creep back. “Good news or bad?”

“Bad,” he said morosely, standing up and then reaching down a hand to help her up, as well. “Probably very bad.”

“More searchers back,” the air-sprite said. “Come!”

That got them moving, if not as fast as the winged supernatural, who zoomed off well ahead of them. As far as either one of them knew, none of the search teams had been expected back today.

This might be good news, the news they had all been hoping for—that Operation Queen Search had finally found them the location of the AWOL preter or even, better yet, already taken her into custody. There had been rumors and hints and at least one close call when they’d been pretty sure they’d found where the queen had been staying, but she’d fled by the time they’d arrived. So maybe this time... But on top of the morning’s non-news, she suspected that Martin was right.

Inside the main building, AJ was pacing across the braided rug, while other supers scurried about, trying to keep working while still trying to eavesdrop. Not that anyone was saying anything just then.

“We’re here,” Martin said, practically flinging himself into the room and landing almost by chance in an empty armchair. “What?”

“Go on,” AJ said to a thin, red-skinned creature Jan didn’t recognize and nobody introduced. “Report.”

The super had obviously been waiting for that order, because he picked up smoothly. “Remember when we caught the scent of something in a little town in North Carolina? We stuck around to see if we could sweet-talk someone into telling us what had been going on there.”

“And?”

“And it took a while, had to let them calm the fuck down, but the local humans finally started to talk. Seemed the most recent resident had been a tall, somewhat odd woman who, in the words of the only neighbor willing to talk to us, had her some weird-ass eyes. Nobody liked to look into them if they could help it.”

Jan, who had remained by the door, shivered when she heard that, remembering the eyes of the preter she had challenged here, the ones she had faced to win Tyler’s freedom. She knew what the woman had been talking about.

Supernaturals like AJ had unnerving eyes, too—the lupin’s pupils reflected red even when he wore his human shape, while Martin’s golden flicker came and went—but even the unease you felt looking at an apex predator couldn’t match looking into a preternatural’s eyes and knowing that this was nothing you should ever be seeing, nothing that should exist here. The fact that the form was attractive made it no less wrong.

“I hadn’t expected humans to be much help,” AJ said. “What about the supers?”

The leader of the search team shook his head. “The local supers in that location were no help, mainly because there were no local supers to ask.”

“In the Carolinas?”

“Not every region of the Carolinas has an enclave, AJ,” Martin said, but Jan thought that he looked a little worried, while Elsa, AJ’s right-hand woman, shuffled through papers as though an answer was hiding in an older report. Jötunndotters didn’t have much expression on their craggy faces, but Elsa didn’t look happy at the news, either.

“Show me a single county down there that doesn’t have an enclave,” AJ shot back. “More, one that’s been there at least a hundred years.”

“Well, if they had one ever, they’re gone now,” the team’s leader said flatly. “Every super in a ten-mile radius up and went, either months before or just before our team arrived. We found where they’d been, but none of them remained.”

“Dead?” AJ’s muzzle twitched, and Jan saw his hand clench in his lap, as though he had the urge to switch form and sink his claws into something. The thought occurred to her that she had never seen AJ’s four-legged form, never seen any lupin change, but she put that thought aside when the team leader answered.

“No. No bodies, no stink of death, no stories. They merely left.” He shook his head again and rested one long-fingered hand palm-down on the table, as though only that kept it upright. “They sensed the coming fire and took cover.”

Not a storm metaphor, she noted absently, but fire. Supers seemed perfectly ordinary once you got past the shapes and colors, but every now and again she was reminded that there were deep cultural differences, both small and huge.

AJ stopped his pacing and stared at the ceiling, thinking. “And none of them came to us. Are we not reaching them, or do they not understand what’s at stake?”

“They’re scared, AJ.” She hadn’t meant to speak up, aware still that although they had needed her to deal with the portals, most of the supers here didn’t like or trust humans much, either. “They don’t care about what’s at stake, only that they don’t end up on the stake.”

The team leader chuckled, a sound like rain against leaves, and nodded. “The human is right. They remember what has happened other times when the preters look at us, and they run to hide. But at least if they hide, they are not joining her.”

Jan nodded, seeing his logic. Supers that were afraid would stay out of the battle and could be left out of the equation.

“Is she soliciting them?” AJ said, although it wasn’t clear—to Jan at least—if he was asking or merely thinking out loud. “We had been going on the theory that supers were going to her on their own, but if she’s actively building a new court...”

The tension in the room increased until Jan could practically feel it, pressing against her the way the sense of time passing pressed from within. If this odd-eyed stranger was the preter queen and she was building her own court, then their theory was right. This wasn’t a visit; she was digging in and planning to stay. Worst-case scenario.

“Boss?” The air-sprite—Jan thought it was the one that had summoned them, but she wasn’t sure—buzzed down from the ceiling where it had been hovering. “I don’t want to play Tinker Bell, but maybe that’s not all bad?”

“Are you insane, feather-brain?” Martin asked, but AJ raised a hand, silencing them both.

“You think she could she be used as a possible ally—or weapon—to fend the preters off? That she wouldn’t let them poach what she considers her territory?”

The air-sprite shrugged, wings fluttering. “Maybe?”

“Pointless,” AJ decided. “Even if she were willing, or manageable, she’s still as much of a danger. But... keep it in mind, yeah? Work that angle just in case.”

And that seemed to be that as Jan watched the others begin to talk among themselves, picking up threads that had been abandoned when the team leader had returned, when Martin and Jan had joined them.

“All right, people,” Elsa said. “Let’s take five, get some coffee, and come back to look at the inventory reports.”

Martin turned to AJ, speaking in low tones, and a few of the other supers gathered in to listen. Jan, not involved in the day-to-day running of the Farm, took the chance to slip out, but not before someone handed her a slim notebook from a pile, “For later reading, when you have some time.” Time. She felt it pulse in her veins again, the words of the preter consort, giving them only so long and no longer before they would be on the move again.

She flipped open the cover and thumbed through a few pages as she walked: it was an agenda of the meeting, complete with index and footnotes. Jan wasn’t sure if she should laugh or cry. Who knew partisan movements had perfect-bound agendas?

Elsa, she decided. Elsa was probably someone’s P.A., when she wasn’t trying to save the world. Someone who didn’t care that she looked like a rock, only that she rocked on the details.

Carrying the notebook, Jan made a quick pit stop in the bathroom—like at a concert, you went when you saw it empty in a place this crowded—and then paused in the middle of the main room, not sure what she was going to do now. Maybe go back to her desk and stare at the report, doodle useless notes on it. Or go over the notes her own team had made about how the preter court could be connecting to the internet from their realm, land, world, whatever. Maybe she could remember something else from going through the portal, not once but twice. That was the key to figuring out how the portals were being opened, and they just didn’t have enough information.

Martin had given them everything he could, but Tyler...Tyler’s memory of the portal, going through not twice but six times, was too jumbled to be useful, too tied up in his need for and his fears of Stjerne, the preter bitch who had taken him, screwed with him.

So that left her as the useful human viewpoint, trying to connect the magic with the science; only, she didn’t know how.

Jan looked at AJ’s report again and closed her eyes, rubbing the bridge of her nose. The headache was back with a vengeance.

Science and magic. That was why Laurie had joined their group. Kit and Glory were programmers, and good ones, but Laurie had a background in science, although it was chemistry, not physics. And that was what it had to be: some kind of weird physics thing, because the one thing that Jan knew, without a doubt beyond the fact that shape-shifters and elves and gnomes and everything else were real, was that the place they had been, the preter’s realm, was nowhere in this universe.

Every time she lay down, in the instant before sleep claimed her, she could see the massive trees bearing an even more massive serpent, the troll-bridge trying to kill them, the bright, sunless sky overhead, and she knew.

“Jan.” A soft voice called to her. Jan opened her eyes and turned, heading not for her desk but the small square of hassocks set in front of the fireplace at the far end of the main room. For once, there was only one person seated there, tech diagrams fanned out under one hand and a red marker in the other. The jiniri raised a hand without the marker and curled her fingers to indicate that, yes, she did want the human to join her.

Galilia was part of her team, not well-versed in tech or science but the only one who kept up with actual developments, who had friends in the scientific world. More, she was able to make intuitive leaps that made them feel maybe they were getting somewhere. Plus, she had a wicked sense of humor, Jan had discovered, and no hesitation about including a human in the conversation. Nobody here had been rude to her—they wouldn’t dare—but Gali was one of the few Jan could consider an actual friend.

“Look what I found,” the jiniri said, indicating the wide-mouthed bowl on the hassock next to her.

“Found? No, I don’t even want to know where,” Jan said, sinking onto the upholstered stool and reaching over with a sigh. Not even the world’s most amazing handcrafted truffles could make things right, could stop the pressing of time, but M&M’s never hurt.

“You were in AJ’s meeting?” the super asked, going back to studying her work, but her head tilted in such a way as to indicate that she was still listening.

“Called in for the news, yeah. Not that it helps any, really. Knowing where she was doesn’t tell us where she is. And unless one of you suddenly manifests some ability to track...?”

Gali looked up, smirking. “With some of the oversize shnozzes around here, you’d think someone could, right? But no. And if there was ever magic that could do it, we lost it long ago.” She took another handful of M&M’s and sorted through them with a double-jointed thumb, dropping the brown ones back into the bowl.

“We’ve lost a lot of magic over time. Maybe we can still do it and we just don’t know how, or...I wonder if that’s part of the problem, that we dropped a barrier, some kind of protective shield, and they’re coming in because of that.”

“Huh.” Jan considered that, the report resting on her lap while she took another handful of M&M’s as well, crunching them between her teeth more for the satisfaction of hearing things crunch than for the sugar rush. “Any way to know?”

“No. Not unless the Huntsman or someone who’s been around forever knows, and if they did, they’d have said something already, right?”

“I guess.” She’d heard about the Huntsman from Martin, one of the stories he’d told while they were hunting for Tyler. He was a human who had gotten tangled in supernatural affairs so long ago he was practically one of them now.

She wondered briefly if she’d end up like that, she and Tyler. Probably not. She hoped not.

“So, I’ve been wondering. If they’re the Unseelie over there, does this make the one here the Seelie Court, then? Or are they both Unseelie and we’re the Seelie? You, I mean, not me.”

Gali put down her marker and gave her an arch look. “Defaulting to Celtic mythology, are you? Tsk. Lazy human.”

“All right, then, tell me what to call them, and I will. We’re in the middle of deepest, whitest Connecticut with, what, twenty different species, including my own, fighting off one invader, and you’re worried about me being politically incorrect?” Jan normally tried to be more sensitive to cultural appropriation and assumptions, but there was a time and a place, and four days before all hell broke through was not the time or the place, in her opinion.

Gali acknowledged the point, her delicate face scrunching in mock hard thought. “Exiled? Except that usually implies involuntary, and this crazy came here on purpose.... Immigrant Court? The Melting Pot? I have no idea. Crazy Court.” The jiniri quickly bored of the topic, once she’d yanked Jan’s chain. “Since it has no bearing at all on what we’re doing, can we—”

“Queen’s Court,” Jan decided. “Because it’s all about her.”

“Great. Glad that’s decided.” The jiniri put her pen down again and stared at the human, long enough that Jan started to get slightly...not nervous, exactly, but apprehensive. Supers were like cats: if they were staring at you, they were either going to attack or piss on your pillow. Whatever Gali was about to say, this was the reason—not candy—she had called Jan over.

“What?”

“Jan, listen to me. You know we think the world of you—” Jan snorted at that, knowing full well that most supers had a dismal opinion of humans, herself not excepted, but Galilia talked right over her. “All right, I do. I consider you a teammate, and a good one. But it’s obvious to everyone here that you’re wasted, stuck babysitting us. Gloriana and the others are who we need, and you brought them to us, and now you should—”

“Go away?” Jan tried not to be bitter. For all that Martin had impossible faith in her cleverness, she knew as well as anyone—better, probably—that she was outclassed by the brains on her team, her skills barely keeping up with what was needed to figure out how the preters were accessing the internet, despite her own experiences on the other side. She had been Quality Assurance, mostly, on her job. She could test the hell out of things and fix what she broke, but the intuitive leaps that Glory and Galilia and Beth were making, the technical know-how that Kit and Laurie brought... She didn’t need someone else telling her she was useless.

“No! Or yes, but I meant you should go somewhere you can be more useful,” Galilia said, frowning.

“Yeah? And where’s that?” Now the bitterness did come through. “Because I already volunteered to go out on the search teams, and AJ shot that idea down. And going back to my life like nothing ever happened? Not so much.”

The memory of AJ trying to dismiss her still burned: Go home, he had said when they’d come back from the preternatural realm, staggered and stunned by what they’d seen. Reassure your friends and family, your employer, that everything’s under control, let them know that you’re okay. The world isn’t going to end tomorrow—not even next week. You need to pick up the pieces and go on.

She had fought that, fought the idea that she could just go home, pretend none of it had ever happened. Martin had tried to send her away, too, his voice filled with sorrow and worry. You’ll never be able to go back if you don’t go now. I don’t know a lot, but I know that much. Nobody who chooses this, who chooses to walk among us...ever goes back. Not really.

I know, she had told him. She had understood that she would be changed, had already been changed. Had known that she couldn’t go back to what had been, even if Tyler suddenly completely recovered. But she hadn’t thought that every way she tried to help, someone was already doing it better.

And never mind that she had brought those better people in because she knew they’d be better at it....

“Jan...” Gali’s frown had turned into something else, something almost painful to look at. She’d thought at first that supernaturals were crap at the emotion thing—the human emotion thing, she’d thought. But that wasn’t fair; they did care, and they did hurt, and they did...all the human things. They just did it differently. You had to learn the body language, listen for it differently for each species, and she was so tired of having to work so hard every day and—

And Galilia was right. Hadn’t that been exactly what she had been saying to Martin earlier? They weren’t needed here.

“No, it’s all right. I get it. You’re right.” Jan was, first and foremost, a problem solver. She’d been trying to do that within the parameters of this gig, trying to think, work, like a supernatural. But she wasn’t. She was a human. It might not be an advantage, as such, but it meant she had other options.

She needed to talk to Martin again.

“You’re right,” she repeated. “I need to...utilize my skill set better.” It was straight out of an HR handbook and made the jiniri laugh, if ruefully. “If you do need me, though?” she said, even as she was standing up, grabbing a handful of M&M’s to go. “To interpret, or break up a fight, or...”

“We’ll howl your name loud enough to be heard over in Boston,” Galilia promised.

* * *

Jan had spoken casually, as though she only had to think about what to do and a solution would appear. Figuring out what she was doing wrong was one thing. Finding the right thing to do? Harder.

Be clever, her brain whispered. Be human, be stubborn, be clever. They brought you in because you had Tyler’s heart, because only the heart could save him. So be the clever heart, damn it.

What did a clever heart do?

Martin was still in the meeting with AJ, so Jan wandered through the farmhouse, acutely aware that everyone else had a place to be, a thing to do, either working on assignments or taking part in the chores that kept the farmhouse humming along, despite so many beings living there. Cleaning, cooking, managing the garden nestled under makeshift greenhouse walls, digging latrine trenches and covering them up again...

Jan had never thought about what it might be like to live in a military encampment until, suddenly, she was.

Trying to escape the buzz of people who had a clue and a purpose, Jan wandered outside, shivering a little in the afternoon air. Her feet kept her moving, until she found herself standing outside the shed, her toes practically touching the lower riser of the stairs. Suddenly, her throat was tight and her heart pounding, as though she was about to have another asthma attack.

She reached down to touch the inhaler in her jeans pocket, like a magical talisman. She had braved Under the Hill, had faced down the preter court. She could do this.

Jan took the steps before she could talk herself out of it, and with her free hand she knocked once on the wooden door.

It swung open immediately, almost as though they’d been expecting her. “Jan.” Zan had been working with Tyler, pretty much 24/7 since they’d returned. A healer—combination medic and therapist—Zan looked almost human, with a narrow face and sharp features, but a birthmark the size and shape of a sooty quarter on the pale-skinned forehead drew the eye before anything else. “We haven’t seen you for a while.”

“Yeah.” And now Jan felt like even more useless shit. “I’m sorry, I just...” Excuses weren’t going to cut it; they both knew why she had been avoiding the shed. “How is he doing?”

“Come in.”

That wasn’t an answer, and they both knew it. Jan stepped into the shed, her hand still touching the inhaler, and saw her lover seated at the desk at the far end of the common space.

The supernaturals were taking good care of Tyler; she knew that. Seeing the space he was kept in reminded her of that fact. Shed was a misnomer; it was more of a cottage on the inside, with a kitchenette and enough room for the work area, and a living room space with a sofa and armchair, and there was a door off to the side, to a small bedroom addition. Tyler slept there, while Zan had the pullout sofa, able to respond at a moment’s notice if the human needed care.

“Hi,” she said when Ty turned to look at her. That so-familiar face, the dark skin and elegant fingers that were wrapped around a paintbrush now... She supposed it was therapy of a sort, the kind they had veterans and stroke victims do. She would have had him singing, not painting; Tyler didn’t have the best voice, but he’d always loved to sing. There was a stereo in the shed, but she’d never actually heard music coming... Maybe she should suggest that.

“Hi,” he said, and Jan’s chest hurt. That wasn’t Ty, not the tone he used with her, not the sharp, funny one or the sweeter, softer one when he was feeling playful or romantic. But it wasn’t the cold “I don’t know you” voice he’d used in the preter’s world, either, so that was something, right? He wasn’t as lost, as confused as he’d been when they’d come back.

She had visited enough before to know that there were good days and bad ones. And sometimes there were worse ones.

“I know you,” he said now. “You...”

“This is Jan,” the healer said. “You remember Jan.”

Something familiar moved in his face, a tilt of his head, the way his gaze slid over her, face to body, and then back up to her face, and for a moment Jan thought that this would be the day he broke the last of the preter’s bonds, came back to the man she loved.

“She’s human. Like me.”

“Yes,” Zan said encouragingly, even as Jan tried not to feel too much disappointment.

“She was from my before.” He’d split his awareness into before, there, and now, compartmentalizing to deal with the damage. “She took me away from there.”

They’d been through this exchange before. Sometimes it was a good thing; sometimes it sent him into a muted fury. Jan couldn’t tell from his voice if today it was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Yes,” Zan said again, and Jan tried to keep her face neutral but positive, the way they’d showed her.

“Oh. I guess I should thank you, then.” Tyler tilted his head the other way and stared at her, as though waiting for his next cue. That was the hardest thing to watch, how a man who’d once been socially adept, able to interact with anyone effortlessly, with charm and humor, now seemed lost in even the most basic of exchanges, always waiting for someone to tell him what to do or how to react. She could have dealt with a relationship ending, but not the loss of person Ty had been once.

“It was...” She couldn’t say a pleasure. She couldn’t say that. “I’m glad you’re home,” she finished, aware that he wasn’t home, she wasn’t home, this wasn’t home. They’d never go back “home” again, not that way.