“He has been taken. And you are his only chance.”

That wasn’t something Jan expected to hear—especially from strangers who’d just rescued her from some mysterious and ferocious creatures. And she really hadn’t expected her rescuers to be shape-shifters....

Now it turns out her boyfriend, Tyler, hasn’t gone missing, he’s been stolen—and Jan’s the only one who might be able to get him back.

From Elfland.

Yeah, Jan’s pretty sure the entire world’s gone crazy. Even if the shifters claim that the naturals (like her) and the supernaturals (like them) belong in this world...but the preternaturals, what humans call elves, don’t. And they’ve found a portal into our world. A doorway they can use to infiltrate, to take, to conquer.

And now Jan’s not just Ty’s only hope—she’s got to rescue humanity, as well….

Praise for

“Do you believe in magic? You will when Gilman’s done with you.”

—New York Times bestselling author Dana Stabenow

“Readers will love the Mythbusters-style fun of smart, sassy people solving mysteries through experimentation, failure and blowing stuff up.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Hard Magic

“Layers of mystery, science, politics, romance, and old-fashioned investigative work mixed with high-tech spellcraft.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Pack of Lies

“Innovative world building coupled with rich characterization continues to improve as we enter the third book of this series.”

—Smexy Books Romance Reviews on Tricks of the Trade

“Gilman spends a good deal of time exploring—and subverting—the trope of the fated-to-happen relationship. Readers will find this to be an engaging and fast-paced read.”

—RT Book Reviews on Dragon Justice

“Gilman delivers an exciting, fast-paced, unpredictable story that never lets up until the very end. There’s just enough twists and turns to keep even a jaded reader guessing.”

—SF Site on Staying Dead

Heart of Briar

Laura Anne Gilman

www.mirabooks.co.uk

For Jenn. With thanks.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 1

Tyler Wash had pulled off another miracle at work today. There would be another crisis in the morning—there always was—but for this one day, good had triumphed, evil had been banished, and the world—or at least, the university’s intranet—was safe from bad coding.

His lips twitched as he imagined his girlfriend’s reaction to that stream-of-consciousness ego trip. She’d roll her eyes, even as she smiled, and ask him if he had a cape and long underwear hidden somewhere, probably. SuperTy, she’d call him, until he distracted her enough to forget....

“You’re not drinking your coffee? Do you not like it?”

His companion looked at him, her lovely face creased with worry. Even though they’d only just met, it seemed a shame to cause any wrinkles on that face, and so, to appease her, he lifted his cup and took a sip.

“That’s better,” she said, the frown easing, and she reached out to touch the back of his hand, her long fingers stroking his skin in a way that would have made even a eunuch think dirty. She wasn’t sex on a stick, exactly, but there was something about her that made him feel a little bit like a bad boy, the kind of guy mothers warned their daughters about, instead of being the one they urged the girls to catch.

He kind of liked that feeling.

That was why he’d agreed to meet her tonight, to feel that way. Not forever, just a little while, a chance to be someone other than Tyler Wash: ordinary, reliable, predictable. Not that he had a problem with his life, his life mostly rocked. But sometimes... Sometimes he looked in the mirror and all he saw was boring.

So when a woman like this offered to buy you coffee, and you had nothing else on your schedule, why the hell not?

Tyler took another sip of the coffee, and his nose twitched. The steam was still rising, and the coffee tasted thicker and heavier—more pungent—than he had been expecting. Were they trying out a new blend? If so, he wasn’t sure that he liked it: the smell was less coffee than spice, not unpleasant, but different. He liked different, but...

Her foot touched his under the table, and then he felt it slide, slowly, up his calf, a touch that couldn’t have been accidental. He managed not to startle, acting as though women did this to him all the time, no big deal. He’d tell her to cut it out in a minute, or maybe two. Or if her foot went any higher.

Her foot lingered just below his knee, a warm, pleasant weight, and his thoughts drifted off, spiraled around, the faint memory of the song he had been humming earlier tangling with the hiss-and-chunk noise of the espresso machine behind him, the low conversations of the people around them. What had they been talking about?

She was talking again, her voice a pleasant murmur, but he found it difficult to focus on the words. He put his coffee down, tried to shake off the disorientation, but his eyes were filling with the steam, his mind equally clouded, and when she touched his hand again, pulling him toward her across the table, he did not resist.

Her lips tasted like spice, cool and firm.

This was wrong. This was further than he’d planned to go—wasn’t it?

What else did you come here for? What did you think—hope—would happen?

He stared at her, unable to answer the voice in his own head, the mocking, cool tone.

“Come,” she said, and they rose from the little table, her hand still on his, leading him to the door. He followed, obedient, his coffee and coat, his wallet and phone, left behind at the table, forgotten.

Outside, the air was clearer, the smell of the coffee fading, and he blinked, shaking his head slightly to clear his thoughts. The song came back to him, the notes more clear. He had been singing it in the shower this morning, thinking about...what? About the day, the job, the night before. Her? No. Someone else. He tried to grab hold of the music, the memory, as though it would lead him out of the fog. “Where...?”

“Come,” she said again, her fingers curling around his, tugging him gently forward. The sound of her voice was honey and spice, her skin soft and cool, filled with promise and suggestion, and the song—and the memories—faded under its intrusion.

They walked through the night, heading away from downtown and the university campus, onto streets he should have recognized but did not. His skin prickled, uneasy. “I don’t...”

“Shhhhh...” Her voice had less honey and more spice now. “You came to me, joined your hand with mine. Of your own will do you come, Tyler Wash?”

He shouldn’t. He couldn’t. There was something he had left behind.... But the hint of promise and suggestion lured him on; the male ego impulse—stupid, but irresistible—pushed him over.

“I do,” he said, and she smiled, teeth too white, eyes too sharp.

Around them, the air crackled, a faint familiar smell overlaying the normal odors of the city at night. Something twisted inside him, hard enough to hurt. He managed to lift his eyes from her face, force them to clear enough to see something ahead, dim lights swirling like a corona, the static fizz of noise on the wire, and then it cleared, creating a massive oval of cold white, filling the entrance to an alley, and obscuring what was beyond.

He stared, fascinated. “What?”

“Yours. Yours and mine, together. We will make it stronger.” That too-white smile disappeared, and her face went still. “Come,” she said again, her fingers hard against his own, and together, they stepped through.

* * *

Jan was dreaming. She knew it was a dream: it wasn’t a nice dream, it was the same dream she always had when she was stressed, about not being able to breathe and nobody hearing her call for help, but she let it carry her along, anyway, unable to stop it until the alarm went off, and she woke up.

Over the years, she had perfected a basic morning routine, Monday through Friday. Roll out of bed two minutes before the alarm went off, take the litany of pills waiting on her nightstand—birth control, asthma meds, iron supplements—then stagger into the kitchen and pour herself a glass of grapefruit juice while the coffeemaker—set to go off exactly at six in the morning—started its spluttering little song. Pour that first cup of coffee, feel her neurons start to fire, and head back across the apartment to her office. Flip open the laptop, start the email download to see what fresh hell her office had sent her overnight. Sometimes she missed having a commute, an office, coworkers to gossip with. The rest of the time she thanked god for telecommuting. She could start work at seven and get a head start on whatever was going on.

And for the past three—almost four—months if she had woken up alone, she had added another early morning routine. The first words of the day, typed into the small text box in the upper left hand of the screen: Hello, lover.

Normally, her screen would show a reply almost immediately. But today, the text box on her screen remained blank, save for her words.

She waited a minute, then another. Nothing.

Well. Maybe he was in the bathroom. Or dealing with a work thing. Tyler did contract work for the university, which meant there was almost always a crisis happening—academics were worse than corporations for wanting something changed and then not understanding why it couldn’t be done. But it also meant he wasn’t away from his monitor, when he was on the clock. Not for long, anyway.

They’d met in one of those dating-site chat rooms, ironically self-conscious and, she admitted, a little desperate. She hadn’t expected anything; so many of the guys would chat, email, they might even call once or twice, and then disappear. But Tyler had suggested they meet for coffee, almost immediately. They’d both been awkward, almost shy, for about ten minutes. Then...magic.

It wasn’t because they were so alike—they weren’t. And it wasn’t because they were total opposites, either. There was just enough overlap that they didn’t run out of things to talk about that night, or after, for that matter.

Jan frowned at the screen. Maybe he had gone onto campus today, rather than working from home? He hadn’t mentioned anything about it yesterday, but something might have come up after he left.

He’d gone home the night before around eight o’clock; they both were busiest in the morning, so Monday through Thursday they tended to sleep in their own beds, work until around two in the afternoon, and then hook up again. She might have liked waking up with someone snuggled against her more often, but Jan admitted that she liked her space, too.

So, yeah. That was probably it: he was on the bus heading toward campus, and he’d check in later. Reassured, she opened her work in-box and got hit with an urgent email from a client in Ireland whose site had apparently gone FUBAR, “and she swears she didn’t touch it, didn’t do anything,” according to the email from the project manager.

“Yeah. Sure you didn’t.” Jan shook her head and got to work, digging through the code.

By the time she’d restored the site, finished her first pot of coffee and refilled it, there was still no message from Tyler in her text box. She frowned, chewing on her thumbnail, then—after glancing to make sure no new mail had come in red-flagged for an emergency—typed again.

You there?

No response. She looked at the time display: 10:40. More than enough time for him to have gotten into the office—maybe it was a really massive crisis?

She opened another browser and brought up the university’s site. It seemed to be running fine, although god knew what was going on with the intranet, which was Ty’s baby.

“Okay, then,” she said, and typed, catch up with you later, then, mmmkay? It wasn’t as if he had to check in, after all. She was just used to it. Spoiled, after three months. Odds were, the project he’d been working on yesterday had gotten more panicked, and he was head down in that. He’d resurface later, apologize, or just show up, filled with news of how he’d licked the problem. The vague sense of disappointment she felt was silly, and she pushed it aside.

The worry didn’t set in for another six hours, when he didn’t show up after work, and nobody in the campus office had seen or talked to him all day.

By twenty-four hours, the worry had become panic.

* * *

The next morning, Jan needed to talk with someone, preferably someone who could talk her down off her nerves.

“Come on, come on, pick up....” Jan drummed her fingers on the desk and stared at the monitor, where the icon was circling around, the faint, antiquated noise of a phone ringing accompanying the visual.

Finally, it stopped, and the screen cleared. “Hey, there. You rang?”

Glory’s tousled black curls suggested that she’d just gotten out of bed, and her accent was a blurred version of her usual clear tones.

Jan frowned at the screen, taking in the backdrop. “It’s lunchtime there. You should be at work now, not just waking up. Oh, Glory, did you get fired again?”

Her friend lifted her coffee mug in salute. “How’d you guess? Yeah, guess calling the boss’s pet a puss-bucket wasn’t the best thing to do.”

Jan was momentarily distracted from her own woes. “Glory...”

“Ah, don’t lecture me, Janny-girl.”

Glory worked in the UK; they had met through a “women in tech” mailing list back when those were the hot thing, and when the list died, they stayed friends. That didn’t mean they always approved of each other’s choices, though.

Jan couldn’t help herself: “Some day you’re not going to find another job.” The economy still hadn’t entirely recovered, and she knew Glory didn’t have any savings left.

“Ah, I’m too good at my job to not find work, and hiring a black woman fills two slots on their to-do list. But you, you’re not looking good, and you’re doing that keening thing again. Sweetie, stop it, it makes my stomach hurt watching you. What’s wrong?”

Saying it made it real. “Tyler’s missing.”

“What?” Glory’s coffee mug slammed down on her desk hard enough to slosh the liquid over the side, unnoticed. “Did that SOB dump you? I swear...”

“No! No, I mean, he’s missing, he’s gone. He didn’t go to work, and it’s been twenty-four hours, and I haven’t heard a thing from him.”

Jan leaned forward, and then back again, unable to stop the slow rhythmic rocking motion that bothered Glory. “He’s never not responded for this long. We talk every day, Glor, every day we’re not together. And he’s never once missed a good morning.”

“Yeah, I know. But, sweetie, you’ve only been together, what, three months? Guy’s what, thirty-two? He probably has a lot of bad habits he hasn’t shown you yet.”

Jan tried to still herself, focusing on the screen where her friend’s image was looking out at her. Miles away in distance, but Glory was still one of her best friends, the person she’d told about Tyler, punch-happy from their first date, when she’d finally thought that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t doomed to go through life alone. And then again after the third date, when he’d told her he’d felt the same way.

Glory had always given her good advice.

“Janny, listen to me. One day? That’s nothing. Boys will be boys, and Tyler-boy is probably just fine. If you spank him when he comes back, he’ll promise never to do it again. He’ll be lying, but he’ll promise, and you’ll feel better. That’s how happy relationships stay happy.”

Jan rocked back and forth again, but more slowly. “Says the woman who’s been single for how long now?”

“Thirteen years, and loving every minute of it. Look, sweetie, give him a little space, then call his mom, or something, see if he’s been in touch with her.”

“He hasn’t talked to his stepmom in two years. His dad is dead, his sister’s off somewhere on a fishing boat or something....”

Their lack of any real family had been one of the things to bind them: her mother was gone, her father was in a nursing home, didn’t even recognize her anymore, and she’d been an only child. “Us together against the storm, Jan,” Tyler had said after one of his sister’s infrequent phone calls, holding her while they’d listened to a thunderstorm rage overhead. They had fallen asleep tangled together on the sofa, her last conscious memory him humming contentedly under his breath.

Jan felt her body sway forward again and tried to halt the backward motion without success. It normally calmed her, the back and forth almost a meditation, but no matter what she did, the thready feeling of panic wouldn’t subside. It was like her dream the night before: no air, and nobody coming to the rescue.

“Jan! Sweetie, breathe. Where’s your inhaler?”

“No, I’m okay.” She held up a hand, then patted the inhaler on her desk by the keyboard to reassure Glory. “I’m just...I’m okay.”

“All right.” Glory regrouped, focusing on the problem at hand. “So he skipped work, isn’t answering his phone. You need a guy’s take on this—what did Steverino say?”

“The same thing you did,” Jan admitted, not surprised that Glory knew she’d already asked him. Steve worked out of her company’s main office down in New York and had been the one to hire her. He was somewhere between big brother and mentor, and she’d asked him last night, via email, for advice. “He said that I was suffering from early onset relationship jitters, and not to freak out for at least forty-eight hours.”

“Uh-huh. But you’re still worried. Did you call the police?”

Jan nodded. “I called last night, and they pretty much told me to chill. I’m not a relative, I’m not a long-time companion, and Tyler’s well over eighteen, so I can’t file a missing person’s report without cause.” And the local cops had more important things to worry about than one adult who hadn’t checked in with his girlfriend; that vibe had come through loud and clear. Considering the scandals that had rocked the local P.D.s in the three years since she’d moved to the New Haven area, she wasn’t surprised.

“And you’ve gone over there and hammered on his door, demanding that he come out and explain himself?” Glory said.

Jan shook her head, biting her lip.

“No? Janny...” Glory leaned forward so that her face filled the screen. “Girl, if you’re that worried, why not?”

“I called his super—I met him once, when there was a problem with the heat. I asked him to check.” She hadn’t felt comfortable going over there, not if he hadn’t called; it was too...stalkery. She could worry in private, but letting him know she was worried...

“Oh, Jan. And?”

“And Tyler wasn’t there, and there was no sign of any forced entry, so...”

“So.” Glory sat back and idly twirled a pen in her fingers. “Back where we started, then.”

Jan reached out and touched her inhaler again, the way someone might touch a good-luck charm or a worry stone. “Yeah, I know, I know. Everyone’s giving me the same advice. You don’t think his silence is worrying, you don’t think there’s anything odd in someone going off-line for an entire day without calling or texting his girlfriend. And you all think I’m overreacting.”

“Janny...”

“No. I’m not pissed. Normally—normally I’d agree with you. I’d say, oh, he had something land overnight that he needed time away to deal with, and he forgot to email me. Maybe there’s an unsent email on his laptop, that says ‘going off-line for 24, dinner when I get back.’” She forced a smile for Glory’s sake. “You’re all probably right. Once I make him properly apologize, I’ll let you do all the toljasos in the world.”

“Damn straight,” Glory agreed. “Go back to work, girl. Let me know what happens, okay?”

“Yes, Mother.”

Jan ended the vid-call, and ran her hands along the surface of the desk, noting that new email had landed while she’d talked to Glory. One was from Steve, asking if there was any update.

All right, maybe she had overreacted a bit. Clicking on that email, she typed in a response.

Not yet. He so owes me dinner for this!

She studied her response, decided that it had just the right tone of aggrieved but not-worried girlfriend, and hit Send.

The other two emails were follow-ups on projects she’d closed out last week, her name on the cc list. She didn’t have any websites going live this week, and nothing else seemed currently to be on fire, so she had room to breathe.

Except she couldn’t. Despite what she’d said to Glory and to Steve, Tyler’s continued absence—the worry about his continued absence—was almost like an asthma attack, closing up her chest and making her feel a little weird, off balance and dizzy.

“It’s silly,” she said out loud. And it was. Everyone was right: she knew that. She and Tyler had only met four months ago, and, yes, they’d pretty much fallen into each other’s lives without a hitch, like the true love neither of them had claimed to believe in, but there were always surprises, bumps and revelations along the way, and twenty-four hours wasn’t all that long for an adult to be out of touch, especially since there wasn’t any indication there was anything wrong.

Except Jan knew. Deep inside, in some skittish reptile part of her brain, she knew. Something was wrong.

* * *

The rest of the day, Jan tried to take the excellent advice she had been given. She closed the text box in the corner of her monitor and cleared her in-box down to zero, then worked on a project with an extended deadline until she was actually ahead of schedule.

And if every ping of incoming mail or text message made her heart speed up in anticipation, she didn’t let it distract her. Too much.

She even left the apartment to have dinner downtown with a friend, didn’t mention anything to her about Tyler going missing, and tried not to think about going to bed alone. But when she woke up to a second day of silence, that sense of something being wrong began to chew on her nerves.

By midmorning, her nerves had gotten so bad, it was almost impossible to focus on her work. She opened the text box, closed it, and then opened it again, afraid that she would miss him when he did check in.

“Obsessive, much?” She clicked on the text box, closing it again. “Let it go.” But she couldn’t.

When afternoon rolled around, and there was still no word, Jan couldn’t just sit and wait and try to be patient. Sending an email to let the folks at the other end of her projects know that she would be off-line for a bit, she shut down her computer, shoved her cell phone, inhaler and wallet in her daypack, and headed across town. Glory was right, and she was a wimp. If the cops wouldn’t investigate, then she would.

It was only a twenty-minute bus ride downtown from her apartment building—but it took almost that long for a bus to actually show up. Jan tried to stay calm and not over-anticipate what she might find there.

His building was older than hers, without a digital security box. If you had a key, you could go right in; if not, you had to wait for someone to buzz you through the lobby door. She had a key. He’d given it to her, two weeks after they’d met, on a little keychain with a vintage Hello Kitty on it. If she hadn’t already been pretty sure she was in love before, that would have sealed it for her. Hello Kitty wasn’t his thing, it was hers, and he’d known that.

She took the elevator up to the fifth floor and walked down the hallway to his door. Once there, though, all of her resolve fled. She’d never been here before, without him. He hadn’t called and said “get your ass over here, I miss you.” He hadn’t said anything at all, not to look after his plants—he had none, he was the original black thumb—or pick up his mail. The super might have come in at a bad time and missed him. Tyler might be inside, just not checking in, might be blowing her off, or...

If he was that much of a coward, she could hear Glory saying, then he totally deserved to be caught at it.

Jan agreed. She just didn’t want to be the one doing the catching.

“He gave you a key,” she told herself. “If anything is wrong...standing out here isn’t going to find that out, is it?

She was worried. No matter what anyone else said, this wasn’t like him. He never went offline this long. He couldn’t—he had clients and email, and even if his connection was down, he would have called and told her. If he was breaking up with her... No. He wouldn’t do it this way.

And it wasn’t as though she was breaking and entering. Okay, it was entering. But not breaking. She had a toothbrush there, and an extra emergency inhaler, and knew his super, and where he kept the spare change for when the ice cream truck came around and he had a craving for an ice cream sandwich.

So why was she standing in front of his door, key in hand, terrified to go in?

Because she wanted to find something to explain it...and was terrified of what she might find. Because maybe everyone was right, and she was a ninny. Or worse, they were wrong, and he was on the floor, dead, or dying, or...

She swallowed, trying to deal with the conflicting urges, half-ready to turn around and go home without even putting the key in the lock.

“Ma’am?”

She turned, her heart in her throat, and saw a cop standing in the hallway a few steps away from her. She had been so focused on the door, she hadn’t even heard the elevator open or anyone come out.

“You a friend of Tyler Wash?”

“I’m his girlfriend.” It still felt weird saying it out loud. Three months. What was three months?

It was forever, when you knew, she reminded herself. And they had both known, so fast, never any doubt...right?

The cop looked her up and down, as if he was trying to memorize her to pick out of a lineup, later. “Have you heard from your boyfriend recently?”

“No. I came over... I haven’t heard from him in a couple of days, and that’s not like him at all. Are you... Did someone hear something? Is he okay?” Panic swamped her, cold and hard. Why else would the cops be here? Had the super heard or seen something, and not told her?

“He resigned his position but failed to return his equipment. I’m here to get it back.”

Her eyes focused on the badge on the shoulder of his uniform: not a cop, campus security. Then the words he’d spoken registered with her.

“Resigned?”

The security guard gave a shrug, as if he didn’t really care either way. “Polite way of saying he blew a major deadline, and hasn’t responded to the boss in three days, so they terminated his contract. Didn’t tell you, huh?” The look the man gave her now was filled with pity.

Jan swallowed, hard. The panic had subsided, leaving her too drained to move. “No.”

“Well, he did. People think that working out of the office means they can do whatever they want, they get an unhappy surprise. His choice. But the school wants its equipment back.” The guy wasn’t being mean, just matter-of-fact. He stepped forward, moving around her when she didn’t get out of the way, and knocked once, hard on the door.

Jan wanted to defend Tyler—he wasn’t like that!—but she couldn’t. Because that was just what he’d done, wasn’t it? Just disappeared, dumped all his obligations, responsibilities. And that wasn’t like Ty, wasn’t like him at all. But he wasn’t sick, he wasn’t in the hospital, so where was he?

There was no response to the knock, not even the sounds of someone trying to avoid visitors.

He knocked again, and then Jan spoke up.

“He’s not there. But I have a key.”

It was as much stubborn pride, a reaction to the way he’d looked at her, that made her say anything. See? I have a key. I’m not some fly-by-night chickie he just forgot about. Plus, if she was helping someone else get their property back, it wasn’t breaking and entering. Or being stalkery. Right? It was just keeping Tyler out of trouble. Out of more trouble, anyway.

The guy stepped back and let her have at the door. Her hand trembled a little in the locks, then she heard the dead bolt snick free, and the handle turned, opening into Tyler’s apartment.

There was no body lying sprawled in the main room.

The apartment looked...exactly the way it had the last time she was there. A lot of open space, and the whitewashed furniture with denim upholstery that looked as if he’d stolen it from some WASP’s vacation home. He’d always laughed and shrugged; he liked to confound expectations, although he’d never admitted it.

If the super had poked around, he’d not disturbed anything.

The apartment was also weirdly silent. She couldn’t remember it ever being that quiet. Tyler always made noise, muttering to himself as he worked, occasionally singing under his breath, in constant movement. She would sit, her legs crossed under her, and not move for hours, while he buzzed around the space, the activity in his brain echoed in his actions.

Nothing moved. Even the two of them, once inside the threshold, seemed frozen, as though something held them back.

“All right. Where would his tech be?” The security guy’s voice was too loud; it didn’t belong in this quiet space, and Jan shuddered in reaction, as though he’d said something vile.

“In the office.” She led the way across the floor to the small room in the back that, for someone else, would have been the bedroom. Two glass-topped desks filled the space; one laden with monitors and decks, the other at a right angle to it, holding only a laptop and a three-level filing box that was stuffed to overflowing with papers.

The security guy went over to the first table and started unplugging one of the decks from the monitor. She watched him, making sure that he only was interested in the ones with the university’s name stenciled on the side, and then went over to the laptop.

The rest of the tech was for work. The laptop was where he’d done all of his personal stuff. If there was a message for her, or some clue she was supposed to follow, it would be here. She put her pack down on the floor and sat down in his chair. And then she didn’t move, staring at the fifteen-inch silvery square in front of her.

“All right, that’s it. Thanks for your help.” The guy had the deck under his arm and was having trouble meeting her gaze. “I...hope everything works out.”

She stared at him, not quite able to parse his comment, and then just nodded absently. “Yeah, thanks.”

She heard him leave, the door closing firmly behind him, while she stared at the laptop. Taking a deep breath, she lifted the lid and woke it up.

The wallpaper was the same it had been the last time she’d seen it: the two of them, heads together, trying to fit in front of the webcam while he hit the button, smiles bright and about to break into giggles. If he was going to break up with her, he would have changed his wallpaper, right?

“Dammit, Ty....” The security guy’s pity was like salt in the wound she’d been trying to ignore, and her worry ignited into anger again. “What the hell are you up to? If you’re secretly working for the CIA or something and went off on a top-duper-secret mission, I’m so going to kill you myself.”

The idea of Tyler—gawky, geeky, gentle Tyler—as a CIA anything made her close her eyes against sudden tears.

“You’ve been reading too many thrillers, Jan,” she said, trying to channel some of Glory’s tartness into the scold. “This is real life. In real life, the CIA doesn’t recruit quality assurance tech-heads who can barely handle English, much less any other languages.”

Although, yeah, he could have been hiding a facility for Arabic and French and Chinese from her...but she didn’t believe it. Tyler could strip down a webpage and rebuild it to be fabulous, and put together a gourmet three-course dinner out of whatever was in his kitchen, and he was pretty damn inventive in bed. But sneaky? Sneaky wasn’t in him.

“So, then, where is he?” He wouldn’t have gone without a word, unless he was hurt, maybe had been injured somewhere else? But he always carried his ID with him, his photo ID and emergency contact, ever since he’d gotten hit on a bike when he was a kid, he’d said, so if he were in a hospital the cops would have known....

She was dithering. Jan straightened her back, aware that she’d fallen into an uncomfortable slump over the laptop—she was five-six, he was five-ten, so his desk was the wrong height for her comfort—and opened the most obvious place to look: his personal calendar.

Typical organized Tyler: work events in blue tabs, social in green, and their dates were in red. Her finger traced the weeks, stopping when she came to the day he disappeared. Then she backtracked one. There was a yellow tab.

A doctor’s visit, maybe? Tyler didn’t like doctors, hated going to the dentist.... Maybe he’d not told her because he was trying to avoid thinking about it, and something had gone wrong....

No. If he walked away from his job, that wasn’t...

The thought stopped her again, as if someone punched her in the stomach. He’d left his job. Without a new one being offered? Another thing that wasn’t like Tyler: he worked remotely because that’s how the job was, but he liked the familiar aspects of it, the steady paycheck and security. He wouldn’t just walk away without a new job in-hand.

Had he gotten another job and not told her?

Thoughts of the CIA surfaced again, and to push them away, she clicked on the yellow tab.

Stjerne, 10pm, l’coffeehouse

She didn’t know any Stjerne. She hadn’t known he’d known any Stjerne, either. Not that that meant anything. It was an odd name—Norwegian, maybe?

“Steh-gerne,” she said out loud, and shook her head. She didn’t remember Tyler mentioning anyone like that, either.

Still, working remotely the way they both did in the tech field, they met a lot of people from around the world; maybe it was a coworker who was in town, and they’d met up for a late-night coffee when he’d gone off-shift? That would be the kind of thing he wouldn’t mention until after the fact. “Oh, met this guy, Stjerne, works for an outfit in Holland. Drinks beer for breakfast...” Yes. That made sense. And maybe...

What had happened, when he’d had coffee with this guy? What if this Stjerne was a serial killer? Had other people gone missing recently? Had the cops been alerted? Would they even notice, or care?

Even in her worried state, that was too much for Jan. “If there was a serial anything in town, the cops would have paid more attention when you called about someone going missing—and every local newsfeed would be screaming, and the university would have held a press conference, or something. Get a grip. Losing your boyfriend is no reason to become an idiot.”

Switching tabs, she went into his email program, scanning for anything from someone named Stjerne. A contact point, she needed a contact point. Who was Stjerne?

There. A dozen or so of them, all recent, the past week or so. Probably a coworker then, arranging a meeting while he was in town...she clicked on one at random, calling it onto the screen.

I want to feel your hands on my skin, gripping me, pulling me, holding me like you’ll never let me go. Your mouth on me, moving lower, until my legs open, helpless, as you lap at me, tongue and fingers making me writhe and moan, calling your name to stop, never stop, Tyler, oh Tyler, until I fall over the edge...and then come back to return the favor for you, my mouth red and wet against the darkness of your skin, taking the length of your....

Jan closed the email with a hasty jab of her finger, and closed her eyes. No. She hadn’t just seen that. It was a mistake, or someone had forwarded porn—she had nothing against porn, as a general rule, although it didn’t do much for her. That was it. He’d forwarded it to himself, maybe, or...

His name had been mentioned. Specifically, and with lurid detail.

That punched-in-the-gut feeling came again, harder this time, and Jan thought she was going to throw up. She fought it and stared at the laptop’s screen, the photo of the two of them, laughing like nothing in the world could ever be wrong. Her mouth worked, and she was finally able to voice her reaction.

“You son of a bitch.”

Chapter 2

Jan left the keys to the apartment on the desk, right next to the still-open laptop. When Tyler the son-of-a-bitch finally wandered back from whatever had kept him three days with his online porn-partner, he’d be smart enough to figure it out.

Or not. Right then, she didn’t give a damn. Rage and betrayal made her body shake, and once in the elevator she reached for her inhaler out of habit, although the pain in her chest was nothing like an asthma attack.

“Son of a bitch,” she said again. “You slimy, sneaky, no-good, two-timing son of a bitch.”

The man in the elevator with her gave her a sympathetic look but didn’t say anything, and Jan clamped her own jaw shut, determined not to let that son of a bitch get one more outburst from her.

When she left the building, the bright blue sky and crisp autumn wind felt like a betrayal. It should be darker, rain clouds scudding across the sky, thunder booming and wind swirling, people scurrying for cover, not strolling along as if they didn’t have a single trauma in their lives.

She stood on the street and thought about going to his office, demanding someone tell her something. The thought of the fuss that would make, probably getting her escorted off campus, certainly making it harder for Tyler to get his job back, if—when—he came back.... She thought briefly about going into one of the bars that lined downtown, catering to students and professionals, and tying a few on, but booze had never been her thing.

No. The only thing to do was go back home.

The bus came eventually, and she got on, paying her fare and finding a seat toward the back, where fewer people sat. The last thing she wanted right now was some wannabe Romeo in her space. Or any human being, actually. She wasn’t sure she could be civil to anyone, just then

Sitting down, she shoved the fare card into the side pocket of her pack, and her fingers touched the keys she’d put there, the cool smooth texture of the Hello Kitty key chain. She’d left the keys, but the key chain was hers, damn it.

Tyler hadn’t just run off with some cyberslut; he’d left his job, too. That still didn’t make any sense to her. It wasn’t as though he had piles of cash hanging around, that he could quit like that. Or did he? What did she really know about him, anyway?

Jan pressed her hand against her stomach, trying to calm the knot there. There was a feeling as if she wanted to throw up, even though she knew there wasn’t anything in her stomach. Nerves and anger. She had never been very good with either. Conflict wasn’t her thing.

“Let it go. He’s not your problem,” she told herself, her voice an unexpected, oddly unfamiliar noise, hard and mean. “Tyler Wash is no longer ever again your problem.”

“Problem is, you’re his only chance.”

“What?” She twisted in her seat, knocking the pack to the ground. The person who had spoken sat down next to her, way too far into her personal space, then reached down and picked up the pack, handing it to her. She took it, numbly, barely even noting what she was doing.

“He has been taken. And you are his only chance to return.”

Those words, like the security guy’s, didn’t make sense at first. Unlike earlier, they didn’t resolve into anything that did make sense.

The man—his dark blue hoodie up, but not quite enough to hide some kind of deformity around his nose, shaggy dark hair obscuring his eyes—made a strangled, frustrated sort of noise. “Listen to me. You must listen, and hear. Your leman needs your help.”

“My...what?” She just sat there and stared at the speaker, her earlier anger washed away by the certainty that she should not be talking to this man, and an equal certainty that, if she tried to move, her feet wouldn’t support her.

He growled once, as though annoyed with her denseness. “Your lover. He has been taken.”

The words were in English, and they still made no sense. She shook her head and shifted in her seat, as though that would be enough to make this crazy person go away. She’d been told, ever since she moved into the city, that crazies would come right up to you, but she’d never had it happen to her before. It wasn’t as if this was New York, or Chicago.... Of all the days, though, it seemed inevitable that it would happen today.

The next growl was definitely one of exasperation, and he raised his head to look directly at her, swiping some of the hair away from his face. His nose was too thick, almost more a muzzle than a nose, and his eyes—they were dark, but they looked almost red under the bus lights. Was he wearing contacts? A mask? It wasn’t anywhere near Halloween yet, but—

“Woman, you must listen,” he insisted, and she started to get pissed off.

“I don’t have to do anything, buddy. Back off.” She should have started carrying mace, or a whistle, or something. Not that she’d ever have the nerve to use it—she was more likely to apologize to a mugger than fight back. But still, this guy was giving her all the creeps.

“I told you that was the wrong approach,” another voice said, even as someone sat down heavily in the seat on the other side of her.

Jan swiveled around, feeling her body shrink in on itself as the frozen sensation of fear intensified. She might not have been city-raised, but she knew better than to let two strangers bracket her like that, so close.

The second stranger put his hand on her arm, gently. “It’s okay.”

What? She almost laughed. None of this was okay, not at all. Jan stared at the hand, not sure why she hadn’t knocked it off, gotten up, and found somewhere else to sit. It was a normal hand, skin smooth and scattered with fine brown hairs, the nails painted black but well-groomed, and when she looked up, his face was just as ordinary, wide-set brown eyes in a long, sort of blocky face. Easier to look at him than the other man, with his odd face and disconcerting eyes, even if it was a mask, and why was he wearing a mask?

Her heart was racing, but her brain felt like sludge, unable to understand what it was seeing, unable to react the way she knew she should, to make them leave her alone.

“Please,” the second stranger said, his voice smooth and soothing. “We want to help Tyler, too.”

They knew Tyler’s name. They knew Tyler. Somehow. She clutched at that thought. Had they followed her from his apartment? They thought something had happened to him, too. Had that bitch...

“Who are you?”

She had almost asked “what are you” but had resisted at the last instant; if she looked, she’d stare, if she stared, she’d have to acknowledge that it wasn’t a mask probably, and it wasn’t polite to stare at people with disabilities, anyway.

“Friends. If you’ll have us.”

Something about the smooth guy’s words was too smooth. Jan’s instincts jangled again, the anger and panic mixing with her natural caution, almost overwhelming her desire to not make a fuss. She slid her arm out from under his hold, thankful he didn’t resist. “I’m choosy about my friends,” she said.

“Huh. She’s smarter than she looks,” the first one said.

She turned to glare at him, and he grinned at her, that nose, yes, it looked like a muzzle, and the jaw hung open showing sharp teeth and a red tongue visible. Not a mask. She shuddered and looked away—then looked back and stared at him, politeness be damned, this once.

They locked gazes as her heart went thump-thump thump-thump a dozen times, and the bus swerved around corners, hitting one of the inevitable potholes and making everyone bounce in their plastic seats, but she refused to let herself look away from that awful red gaze until he blinked and looked away first.

“Satisfied?” The guy with the black nails wasn’t talking to her, but to his companion.

Hoodie-guy shook his head. “No. But it’s not like we’ve got any choice, is there?”

The squabble, a clear continuation of some longer debate, didn’t make Jan feel better—especially since the suggestion had been made that she somehow might not have been acceptable. Bad enough she’d just been cheated on by the love of her life. Now this crap?

She could make a bolt for it—they didn’t seem to be violent, but you couldn’t always tell, right? Only they were both bigger than she was and looked as if they were in shape; two against one, there was no way she could get away if they tried to hold her. Jan looked toward the front of the bus, to see if anyone was sitting nearby who might be willing to help her get away if things got ugly. An old man with a shopping bag on his lap looked at her uncomprehendingly, and two girls sitting farther down were too busy giggling with each other. The others were too far away; they didn’t notice anything was wrong.

The black-nailed man put his hand on her sleeve again, and she shivered a little under his intent gaze. Having a guy look at you like that, as if he wanted to carry you away somewhere... Her skin prickled in warning. Black Nails might look more normal than his companion, but he gave off seriously weird vibes, too.

No. She was not going to fall for any creepy stalker maybe-rapists, maybe-cannibal tricks or mind games. “Look, I don’t know what the hell game you’re playing, or what this has to do with Tyler, who by the way is a bastard and you can tell him that next time you see his skanky ass, but—”

Black Nails interrupted her. “Is there somewhere we can go, somewhere, private, to talk?”

“Are you kidding me? I’m not going off anywhere private with you two,” she said, her voice rising enough that people might have taken notice, if they weren’t all carefully not paying attention.

“Oh, for the love of Pete...” Hoodie-guy slapped his hands on his knees, the noise making her jump slightly. “Listen, we don’t have time for this. There’s no way we weren’t noticed, following you, and—”

The bus went over a particularly bad pothole and jolted them out of their seats. Something scraped along the bottom of the bus, making both guys flinch. Jan tried to use the distraction to get up, get away, but Black Nails grabbed her again, hauling her back, pulling her toward the back exit.

“We have to go now,” he said.

“What?” She tried to free herself, but his grip was painfully strong. Should she scream? Would the bus driver help her? There were reports of drivers who didn’t do anything, even when someone screamed, but those had to be urban legends, right? Stuff that only happened in big cities, not here, not—

“Off the bus, now!” Black Nails sounded worried suddenly, and that scared her all over again, although she couldn’t have said why. The bogeyman of my enemy is still a bogeyman?

The one with the messed-up face had already pulled the yellow cord that called for a stop, and the bus driver was jockeying through traffic to pull to the side at the end of the next block, even as she was being yanked toward the exit.

“What are you— No!” She finally pulled away, drawing breath to scream, when Hoodie-guy glanced at the back of the bus and swore. Jan couldn’t help herself; she looked, too. The bus jolted again, there was another shrieking noise underneath, as if the bus had run over something sharp and metallic. Then the metal floor buckled once, twisting weirdly, as if it was melting. The old man stared at it, then looked away, and Jan wondered if she were hallucinating...except the guys hauling her out kept looking back, worried, too, hands flat against the door, waiting for the bus to stop so they could get out.

“What is—” she started to ask, about to pull herself loose from their grip and tell the bus driver something was wrong, when the floor buckled one last time, and something shoved its way through, a long arm with small fingers, skin the gray-white of old bread streaked with mold, stretching as though to grab at whatever rested above.

Right where she would have been sitting.

Suddenly, getting off the bus seemed like a damn good idea.

The hand sank below the metal again, the fingers creeping around the opening, as though searching for something. Or someone.

“Off,” Black Nails said, and with a shove from behind, they were out, even before the bus had come to a stop, and the three of them were standing on the street. “Keep moving,” he said, and pulled her forward, away from the curb. “Don’t look back.”

Jan felt her chest clench and grabbed her inhaler out of her pack, even as they walked too quickly for her comfort. “What...what was that?”

The other one, the one with the snout, answered. “A turncoat.”

“A what?” Her fingers curled around her inhaler, and she took a hit from it, feeling her chest ease slightly.

“A—” He growled, and this time it was a definite growl, the skin on her arms pricking again with goose bumps. “There’s no time, now. They’ll figure out we’re gone in a minute: we have to get you somewhere safe.”

“But...the others on the bus...” Jan waved her free hand vaguely back at the street. “We can’t just—”

“Once you’re gone, it’ll leave, too. The damage will be blamed on metal fatigue, or something. Worry about yourself, not them!”

“Where did we leave the truck?” Black Nails asked.

“Down there, back in town, a couple—five blocks.” They switched direction, walking too fast, almost dragging Jan between them. She looked over her shoulder and saw that the bus was out of sight; was whatever had broken through still on the bus right now? Or were these guys right, had it left, was it after them?

“What the hell is a turncoat? And who the hell are you? And where is Tyler?” Jan’s usual tolerance had taken a hard blow today, and she wasn’t the most patient of people even on a good day. But this...this was beyond enough. She coughed and then, despite the inhaler, started to wheeze.

“I need to sit down,” she told them.

She must have looked as bad as she felt, because they swung around and plunked her onto a bench in the Green, away from the inevitable gaggle of teenagers hanging around the fountain. She bent over and tried to calm down, waiting for it to pass.

“You okay?” Black Nails asked.

“Stupid question,” Hoodie-guy snapped.

“No, I’ll be okay.” She was able to speak, and her chest was starting to ease, now that she’d stopped moving.

Black Nails sat down next to her while Hoodie-guy prowled back and forth, clearly looking for...something. His gaze flickered everywhere, the nervous energy pouring off him, just like it did Tyler when he was wound up by an idea.

His nerves got on her nerves, which were already ragged, and she wished that she had something heavy to throw at him, to make him stop pacing like that.

Black Nails tried to take her hand again, but she pulled away and glared at him, horrified to feel hot tears prickling in her eyes. She rubbed the heels of her hands against her jeans, hard, trying to drive the tears away.

“I swear, tell me now or I’m gone.” She didn’t care about Tyler. She didn’t. But that thing on the bus.... “What the hell was that, on the bus?” she asked again.

“Turncoats. They’re...” Black Nails hesitated. “They’re rooting for the ones who took your leman, they want to prevent you from rescuing him. They will do anything to ensure that—and the easiest way is for you to...”

“Die.” The growl was back. Hoodie-guy stood in front of them, his hands fisted on his hips, and scowled. Not at her, Jan noted, but at the other man. “If you’re too delicate to tell her, I will. They’ll catch her and tear her apart and eat her for good measure. They’ve always liked human meat.”

“AJ...”

Jan latched on to one word out of all that. “Human? What do you mean...”

“Of all the moon-washed idiocies...we don’t have time for this.” The one called AJ reached up and pushed his hoodie back. “Human. You. Not us.”

Not a monobrow. Not a misshapen nose. This close and clear there was no denying that it was a real muzzle, short but obvious, with the jaw hinged oddly, coarse dark hair overrunning what would have been a hairline to trace down to the end of his nose. Round dark eyes set too far back stared at her, waiting for her reaction. Not red, but she thought they would glow in firelight, a bright, dancing red. Like a wolf’s.

She stared, and then turned to the other man, studying him more carefully. He looked human. Face normal, if a little long to be attractive, and his hair was a neck-length tousle of black that a supermodel might have longed for. The right number of fingers and limbs, his skin tone normal for someone who was maybe Indian or South American, she thought, even as a part of her brain shrieked run, you idiot, run!

“No,” he said, his voice still silky-smooth and soothing, his hands taking hers between them, holding her still. “I’m not human, either.”

She jerked her hands away and tried to stand up, but they had her effectively trapped. She should have listened to her gut, back on the bus, she should run, she should scream...but she didn’t.

Her heart raced, but her mind was oddly clear. Or maybe she’d gone into hysteria already, and this was what being crazy felt like.

She’d stared down muzzle-boy—AJ—once already. That memory gave her just enough courage to ask again, “And that thing under the bus...it wasn’t human, either.” She had known that already. Mostly. Guessed it, at least, even if she hadn’t let herself acknowledge the insanity of it.

“Gnomes,” he said. “Nasty little bastards, all teeth and greed.”

“Gnomes.” All right, then. “And Tyler? He’s been taken, you said. By...”

“Not by us, or ours,” AJ said. He watched her carefully, not the staring contest of before, but cautious, judging. “Our enemies. Yours now, too.”

“This is a joke, right? Tyler set this whole thing up. That’s some kind of costume—a good one, you got me, but the joke’s over.” She looked between them, shaking her head. “Is this being filmed? ’Cause it’s not funny anymore and there’s no way in hell I’m going to sign any kind of release form for you to use the footage. And Ty’s still a shit for pulling this.”

AJ growled again. “For pity’s sake, Martin, you show her.”

“Me?” Black Nails sounded...worried?

AJ had pulled his hoodie back up and looked up at the sky, as if that was supposed to mean something. “I can’t, you idiot.”

“And you want me to—” He—Martin, Jan reminded herself—waved his hands, the black-painted fingernails catching light and sparkling slightly.

“We’re running out of time. And so is her Tyler. Come on, you swish-tailed wuss. I know damn well you can control yourself when you want to.”

Martin sighed and heaved himself off the bench and— There wasn’t any warning, just a drawn-out groan and the sound of things crackling, the sound you’d hear when you stretched after sitting for too long, bones protesting and muscles stretching and the urge to close her eyes as though water was pressing against them, swimming underwater, and when she opened them again, Martin was gone.

And a solidly muscled pony, russet-coated with a black mane cropped short, was regarding her with deep brown eyes that were disturbingly familiar.

Jan had been the normal horse-mad kid, but that stage had worn off years ago. Still, she couldn’t help but reach up to touch that nose, then slide her hand along the side of its neck. The pony lowered its head and turned slightly, as though inviting her to continue. Without meaning to, she found herself standing by its side, contemplating how difficult it would be to tangle her fingers in that stiff brush of a mane and haul herself onto its back.

AJ let out a harsh, rude growl. “Martin, stop that. I swear, we should have left you behind, if that’s how you’re going to behave.”

The pony shook its head and whickered, and Jan stepped back, the spell broken.

She stared at it, and then at AJ, who was suddenly, bizarrely, the lesser of two weirdnesses. “That’s...oh, my god.”

“No, just Martin.” AJ still sounded disgusted. “Don’t get on his back. He really can’t help himself then, and we need you intact.”

“What?”

“We’re— Oh, so help me, swish-tail, if you relieve yourself here, I’m going to pretend I don’t know you. Go do your business elsewhere if you can’t wait.”

The pony—Martin—gave an offended snort, and the crunchy-snapping noise made her close her eyes, and when she was able to open them again, he looked human again.

Looked. Wasn’t.

Jan thought she might pass out.

* * *

The next thing she knew, she was sitting on the bench again, with Martin on her left and AJ pacing again, looking up and down the street and occasionally stopping to scowl into the gutters. Keeping guard against those...things from the bus, she guessed. Or whatever else was about to come bursting through the sidewalk, or popping out of a mailbox. As insane as it all had to be, as insane as she had to be, somehow Jan couldn’t doubt it, not any of it. Not after Martin had done...what he had done, and not with the memory of those moldy-looking fingers reaching up to where she had been sitting, forcing their way through metal to get to her....

“They’ve always liked human meat.”

Neither of her two rescuers were exactly knights in shining armor, but they had to be better than that.

“No knight, but the steed,” she said, and a slightly hysterical giggle escaped her. Shock. She was in shock.

“What? Oh. No.” Martin smiled, picking up the joke. “A sense of humor, that’s good. You’re going to need it.”

As unnerving as the transformation had been, she still felt herself lean toward him, moving like a flower to follow the sun. AJ was unnerving and dangerous. He...AJ said Martin was dangerous, but instead she felt comforted. Protected. Safe.

That was insane. Not human. Hello, not human!

A were-pony? Jan closed her eyes, shook herself slightly, opened her eyes again. Martin was still there, watching her.

Jan had always been a practical sort: she worked with what she could see. There was no way to believe— no way to convince herself to believe that this was a hoax or a prank, not anymore. She had seen Martin change form. She had seen AJ’s face, heard him growl, a noise that couldn’t have come from a human throat. She had seen...something tear through the bottom of a city bus as if it was cardboard.

God, she hoped everyone on the bus was okay. There hadn’t been any sirens or screaming, so she had to believe her two rescuers—captors—were right, that it had abandoned the uptown bus the moment they left....except that meant that thing was looking for them.

Why? What had she been yanked into?

“Okay.” She breathed in and out once evenly, the way her doctor had taught her, calming her body, telling it to relax and stand down, and sat straight-backed on the bench, watching a squirrel balancing on the bike rack opposite them, nibbling at something. “Not human.”

Martin nodded once, approvingly, and she heard a muffled snort coming from AJ, that they both ignored.

“You know Tyler. You said something had taken him.... Something like those turncoats?” The thought made her cringe inside—maybe they were hurting him, maybe... Oh, god.

“No.” Martin shook his head this time, the thick black hair falling over his eyes exactly the same way it had done in his other form. Somehow, that small detail made it make more sense in her brain. “Not them. We could have stopped them, if that were it. Or, we could have tried to stop them, anyway. They’re just...turncoats.” The way he said the word made it sound like a curse. “They’ve sold out their own kind.”

“You...your kind...?” She made a gesture that was meant to indicate him and AJ, who was pacing again, but instead came out as a wimpy hand-circle.

“Us, and you.” AJ’s muzzle twitched. “Look, there’s natural folk, you humans, and us, the supernaturals. That’s...there are different species, all scattered around the world. Some you’ve heard of, some you haven’t, some don’t come out much anymore. Mostly we get along because we ignore each other. And humans like to pretend we don’t exist, at all. It’s better that way. Safer.”

Safer. Jan wondered if he used the word the same way she did. None of it mattered; she only wanted to know one thing. “What happened to Ty?”

“Your leman...he’s....” Martin stopped and considered her, as though gauging how much more she could take. “Not much” was the answer, she suspected, but she’d do it, she’d deal with it. Her hand slipped down to touch her inhaler, reassurance, even though she didn’t need it just them.

“We didn’t know about him specifically,” AJ said, his pacing taking him away and then back to stand in front of Jan. “We were tracking the preter, found her in time to see your leman being taken, two nights ago. We were too late to interfere, but we backtracked from there, found his wallet, and waited outside his apartment, to see who would show up. Three days, we waited!” He sounded annoyed. “We were just about to give up when—”

Jan wouldn’t let herself be distracted. “Who. Took. Him?”

Martin sighed. “For lack of a more useful term... Elves.”

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.

Chapter 4

“Hey you. Sleepyhead.” His breath was warm on her bare shoulder. “Wanna go for a run?”

“Are you kidding me?” She didn’t run. She walked at a nice steady pace and did all her exercising at home, on a yoga mat. The only time she wanted to run was if something was chasing her, and even then she though she might let that something catch her, rather than die in a gory coughing-up mess. “I’ll keep the bed warm, how’s that?”

“Yeah, that’s good,” Tyler said, leaning over her, and she turned slightly so she could see that familiar, slow, so-sexy smile on his face, until she realized his lips, usually so soft and full, had narrowed to hard lines, pointed like a beak, and then his face changed, eyes glowing gold, the beak opening to reveal double rows of sharp teeth as though he was going to bite her entire face off—

And Jan sat up in bed, not really awake yet but shocked out of the dream, her eyes wide-open and her heart racing.

“Holy shit on a shamrock.”

Just a dream. It was just a dream, you idiot, and what did you eat yesterday that gave you a dream like that?

Operating on routine, she rolled out of bed, took her pills, and headed for the coffeemaker, where her sleep-dazed awareness took another jolt at the sight of Martin, wearing only a pair of low-slung jeans, standing in front of the coffee machine, already adding coffee to the filter.

“Hey,” he said over his shoulder. “Good, you’re up. I didn’t know if you liked it strong or not.”

She looked at him, not quite certain what he was talking about, and he blinked back at her. “What? Coffee? We like it, too.”

It took a minute before her brain caught up with the rest of her. Yesterday. Tyler’s apartment, the bus, the warehouse, coming home with two men who weren’t actually men, who wanted her help to save the world....

No wonder she’d had bad dreams.

Unable to deal with the realization that it had all been real—or at least true—just yet, Jan looked down at her feet. The polish on her toes was starting to flake off. Her gaze flicked away, like her brain, unable to settle on anything for too long, and caught sight of Martin’s feet, instead. He was barefoot, which wasn’t surprising, and his feet ended, not in five toes, but a single wedge with one dark nail, like...like the tip of a hoof.

That alone should have sent her screaming out into the hallway, or at least back to bed. Instead, she simply said, “I like it strong,” and went past him to the refrigerator, pulling out the carton of orange juice. Out of deference to her houseguests, she poured it into a glass, rather than taking a swig from the carton the way she usually did.

The thought struck her, then, that she was only wearing her nightshirt, which barely covered her ass. It struck her immediately after that she didn’t feel the slightest bit of embarrassment, standing there in front of Martin, both of them half-dressed.

“Shock,” she diagnosed. “Yesterday was... This will all hit me later, and then I can have a nervous breakdown.”

Martin either didn’t hear her or decided to ignore her. “Did you sleep well?”

Jan put the juice back and closed the door. She had to stop and think about the question. “Yeah. Weirdly enough, I did.” Despite the dream waking her up in a cold sweat, she felt rested, as if she’d had a full eight hours of sleep.

He went back to measuring coffee into the coffeemaker. “Good. You had a busy day yesterday.”

“Yeah. You could say that.” Hysteria would be appropriate but useless, she decided. “You? I mean, how’d you sleep?” She had been so tired by the time they got back last night, she’d barely had time to throw extra pillows and blankets at them before retreating to her bedroom and closing the door. She didn’t even know where they’d bunked down: there had been no trace of pillows or blankets in the main room when she’d wandered across. She would have noticed that. Probably.

“I did. Toba doesn’t sleep much. And we had... There was... A third...” Martin floundered a bit, then pushed the start button on the coffeemaker, and turned to face her. “AJ sent someone else to join us, to help set up the protections. He doesn’t think what we set up last night was enough, especially if we’re here, too. Just... Ignore it. The...the other, I mean.”

“Ignore it. Uh-huh.” Considering what she’d already seen, that wasn’t particularly comforting. Nor was the fact that Martin looked a little uncomfortable even talking about it.

She decided to change the subject. “So, what exactly are these protections? Spells?”

He seemed just as happy with the change of subject. “No. Or, not really. A kind of glamour, sort of, to make it seem as though you’re not here. It’s hard to explain. Toba’s better at it than I am. I tend to make a splash.”

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