Laura Anne Gilman (22 page)

Silence, an angry, nasty silence, and Jan felt her skin prickle again. Danger. A shifting anger, rising from the crowd, directed at...them? No. If it had been aimed at them, she knew, they’d be dead already, it was that intense, that hard.

“Gone.”

The voice came not from the dais, but the crowd below. A slender, jean-clad figure—and Jan couldn’t tell if it was male or female, its long red hair caught in a simple braid, its features bloodless and severe—stepped forward.

“The Queen is gone. Into your world.”

“Silence.” The prince, or king, or whatever he was, snapped the word out so sharp it bled the air.

“The shame of it will not be silenced. She is gone, and will not return,” the redhead said, undaunted. “She refuses her duty, rejects her obligations, for fascination. What is your world, that we should be so enamored of it?”

“Gone for a while, for them to be so angry, and so resigned,” Martin said softly, meant only for her ears. “For one of their own, their queen to reject them? So very angry. The consort holds on with his fingernails.”

“So that’s what all this is about?” The pieces were starting to move under her hands, the colors and shapes finally creating something she could understand. “She abandoned you, so you want revenge?”

The crowd muttered, and the consort settled back in his chair as though Jan were no longer a threat, she hadn’t proven herself worthy. Another shape shifted, and she shook her head, letting it fall into place. “No. That’s not enough for you. Not as angry as you are.”

She understood the anger, the mix of frustration and disbelief, the self-doubt and the fear, for yourself and for him, that something terrible must have happened....

“You want whatever captivated her, what took her. That’s what this is all about. Not greed: anger. Fear. You can’t stand that she wanted what was in our world, so you’re going to claim it for yourself, all of it this time, so nobody can ever leave again.” The entire world, and all the people in it.

If they were as rigid, as tied to rules and traditions as Martin said, a queen’s abandonment must have thrown them for a whopper.

“Why did she leave in the first place?” Jan picked up what Martin had started; she couldn’t manage that kind of arrogance, but disbelief worked almost as well. “What did you do to drive her away?”

She knew that making them angry probably wasn’t smart, but she understood Martin’s plan now, she thought: this was what AJ had sent them to find out. The reason for the change, why the preters were making such an almighty push now. But what were they pushing
for?

There was an unhappy rumble from the crowd, silenced only by a raised hand from the figure in the seat next to the consort, a tall, hard-faced female who hadn’t spoken or moved, until then.

“She felt something new in the wind,” the redhead said, refusing to be cowed. “Some new twist in the worlds. She slipped away to follow it, and would not return.”

“She must be brought home. And punished. We know how, now.” The consort stood up then, glowering down at Jan—and, she presumed, at Martin, as well.

Elves, Jan decided, didn’t glower well. Then he raised his hand again, and two others stepped forward with ugly, sharp swords in their hands, and Jan decided they glowered well enough.

They didn’t like having their secret exposed—or having humans question them. Jan studied the blades, considerably more lethal than her own useless, pocketed knife, and tried to calculate the odds of her bolting, getting through the crowd, past the guards and the greensleeves...

Nope. She was dead.

“You agreed to a contest,” Martin said, and suddenly he was between her and the swords, his body turned and his shoulders set. The two preters looked at each other, a sideways glance, as though trying to decide what to do, but stood fast.

“No matter that she is impertinent—she is human. Humans do that. You agreed that she might have the chance to win back her leman, to return with him through the portal, unmolested, undetained.”

That was more than they had promised, actually. Jan clenched her jaw; now was not the time to be nitpicking. Three goals: win back Tyler, find a way to stop the preters from kidnapping in wholesale numbers, stop whatever they had planned. Get home safe.

“I made no such promise.” The consort looked to the figure next to him, as though for confirmation, and it—she—nodded.

Martin kept talking, faster than she’d ever heard him go. “And yet, you will. Because the challenge is a good one, the contest fair but impossible for a human who had already lost once to win again, here, Under the Hill. You will agree, and agree to the terms, and let the challenge go forth. Because to do otherwise—” Martin let the silence draw out just a second longer than was comfortable, and then finished “—would imply that you were afraid.”

They
were
afraid. Martin was right. They were terrified—of something. Had the queen leaving thrown their world that much off balance? Like a clay pot on a wheel, maybe, and when one of the hands guiding it slipped, the entire thing went misshapen?

Jan licked her lips, willing her lungs to stay calm, to not let her cough. Thankfully, the cavern was cleaner than she would have expected, as though magic kept dust away. She wondered if that, finally, was a spell, or if fairyland was just naturally dust-free. If so, it was the first positive point she’d seen about it.

She should have been terrified; she should have been shaking like a leaf, convinced she was going to fail, convinced she was going to die. Instead, she was wondering about the preter’s housekeeping habits. Jan was pretty sure that everyone in this place was insane, including herself.

“No second challenge,” Stjerne protested, her voice whip-sharp. “He stays here. He is mine!”

The consort did not even bother looking at her, but the figure in the chair next to him, the one who had quelled the crowd before, did, and she subsided. Jan averted her own gaze, not wanting to look someone that scary directly in the eye.

“Is this your word?” Martin asked. “Is this your word, to agree to one term, and then offer another? Can the bargains of the preternaturals be that degraded?”

He was goading them again, trying to push them into something. But what, and why? They’d already found out why the preters were acting this way—did Martin have an actual plan, or was he tap-dancing, trying to buy time? If so—time to do what? No cavalry was going to ride over—under—this hill.

Jan wished to hell that they’d had time to discuss this more, before being hauled into the Court. While she was at it, a handbook would have been nice, too.

“Nothing is as it was,” the consort said. “All is askew.” He smiled at them, and his smile was scarier than his glower, all thin lips and menace. “But we will right it, balance the sides and claim it all. We know the secret now. One human, less or more, will not change the inevitable result. We will prevail.”

“The hell you will,” Jan said to herself, stung. And then, louder, “The hell you will. You will return what is mine, and you will get the hell out of my world.”

The consort’s smile broadened into a grin, displaying unnervingly white and sharp teeth that reminded Jan of the gnomes. They weren’t omnivores, and she suddenly wondered what happened to the changelings and bespelled humans who didn’t become greensleeves or stay useful....

“The challenge,” Martin said, reminding them both to stay on track.

“You accept the terms?” the consort asked Jan

Even if she ignored anything and everything AJ and Martin—and the others—had told her, Jan knew that preters—elves—lied. They were tricky by their very nature. She had learned that much in her web surfing. You couldn’t trust their word, and you most definitely could not trust a contract with them, because there was always a loophole, always an exit clause. She had absolutely no idea what she was getting into if she agreed to this.

But she’d known, from that moment in the street, with Martin calling on her promise, that it would come down to this. Maybe even before, when Tyler had first disappeared, when she had learned what had happened to him and to others...

She touched her pocket, making sure that the inhaler was still there, felt the hard shape of the knife in her other pocket pressing against her hip, and nodded.

“I accept.”

* * *

Meredith paced down the length of the side street, irritated and hyper-alert. Even days old, the scent led her here; there was no way to mistake the musky river smell of the kelpie. And there had been a muddle of something else, too. Dark and violent, still and cool like a night wind. She had never smelled it before, but she knew from the very fact that she did not recognize it what it must be. Preter.

The alley also smelled of over-ripe garbage, sweat and something that had died a long time ago, so long it was only dry bones now, but she could ignore all that. The two smells that were important lay on top, most recent. The kelpie—and, one presumed, his human—had come here. Had encountered a preter. Magic had been worked, not the clean, clear magic of her own kind, but something more complicated, smelling of meat and bone and blood and pain, until some part of her was uncomfortably excited by it.

They’re evil. But that evil is part of their seduction,
AJ had warned them back when this all began.
They speak to the darker sides, the selfish desires. You may be tempted. You may not see the harm. But they will use you, and give you only dirt in return.

AJ was her pack leader; even if she hadn’t agreed with him, she would have obeyed. But he was right; this was not a thing she should choose. So she looked at the excitement, accepted it, and then put it down.

She was
lupin;
instinct did not rule her, she ruled it. Her orders were to find the kelpie and report back on his progress. She would do that. She would not fail.

Sometimes, though, duty and responsibility were so
boring.

Meredith looked around, sniffed the information again, and sighed. Whatever had happened here, it was over. Even the most recent smells of magic were going stale.

The old portals were tied to place, to season.
AJ had briefed them, over and over again until they could repeat it in their sleep.
These have no such restrictions that we can find, but the preters we have hunted always return to a specific place; they do not simply disappear when we find them. Something draws them back to where they came.

So if the kelpie and his human had gone through here, it seemed likely that this was where they had to come back.

That could take a while, though. Remembering the street vendor around the corner, she went back to buy a kebob and a soda, found a spot with a clear line of sight, and settled down to wait. Eventually, either the kelpie or a preter would come through, and she would have something to do.

Chapter 16

A
ll the panic that Jan hadn’t felt before flooded into her the moment she agreed to the challenge, and the chamber erupted into quiet but excited murmurs. Martin took her by the elbow, and she jumped, startled, even though she’d known he was there.

“What did I just get myself into? I can’t fight, you know that. I’m—”

He stroked her arm, the way she might have touched his neck in his other form, and some of her panic ebbed away. He was here. She wasn’t alone.

“You did what we came here to do. What needs to be done. We know why they’re doing this, even if we don’t know how. If we can get your leman home, then we can see what he remembers, what he knows.”

“I’m crap at fighting,” she said, her entire body trembling now. “You know that. I’m fast, but I’m not strong, I don’t know how to use this damn knife, and the last time I hit someone, I think I was eleven. And the moment I get an asthma attack—and you know I will, that’s the kind of luck I have—it’s all over.”

“It’s not a fight. Not like that, anyway.”

He drew her off into a corner, the preters who had been standing there moving away to give them the illusion of privacy. Apparently they were very polite, once you agreed to die.

“It’s a fight like what, then? Because now I’ve got, like, Survivor-style matches in my head, and I’m not going to be any good at that, either. In fact, I’ll be worse.”

“Jan.” He turned her, his hands on both arms now, gripping her around the biceps, his long, lovely face close to hers. He had very thin lips, she noticed. Nicely formed, but thin, just like the preter’s. But he had good teeth, square and strong, and his breath was sweet; if his body smelled like green water and moss, his breath smelled warm and dry, and just a little sweet, like cocoa. She wanted to inhale him, all her senses wildly alert and hyper-focused.

“Jan. AJ chose you for a reason.”

“Yeah, because my boyfriend was dumb enough to get abducted by elves.”

“Listen to me.” He cupped his hands around her chin, forced her to look at him. “We didn’t tell you everything.”

“Of course not.” She couldn’t even be bitter; nobody ever told her everything, not clients, not boyfriends, not werewolves. And they expected her to play catch-up all the way down.

“The preters, they’ve taken a dozen or more since we’ve been watching,” Martin said. “None of their lemans would do anything, with or without us. Tyler wasn’t special.
You
were.”

“Me.” She stared into his eyes, seeing for the first time the flecks of gold and green deep within the dark brown depths.

“You. Smart, and quick, and clear-hearted. Stubborn when you knew you were right, but willing to listen, willing to hear. Brave. So very brave—Jan, do you realize how brave you are?”

Jan blinked at him. She had never felt brave.

“You refused to believe your lover had abandoned you. You listened to strangers—and we know how strange we are, to you—and followed us into impossible places. You fought—”

“I ran,” she said. “I left Toba there, and I ran.”

“You allowed Toba to do his job, and leaped out of a window, trusting us to protect you. You got on my back and trusted me to keep you safe. You walked into fairyland, because you had made a promise. To save not only your leman, but all the others who have been taken. Jan, if that is not brave, then what is it?”

“Suicidal,” she said. “All right, all right. I’m brave. Or incredibly dumb. So, what do I have to do?”

He released her, but the feel of his fingers against her skin remained.

“You need to withstand.”

“Withstand?” Already, it didn’t sound good. In fact, it sounded worse than before. “Withstand what? I’m really not good with pain, Martin. I once avoided the dentist for four years because I can’t handle getting my teeth cleaned.”

The kelpie didn’t take her bait, the seriousness in his expression making her attempt at humor even worse. “You have given permission for magic to be worked upon you. You must withstand. You need to resist what is done to you, and remain true to yourself.”

Jan absorbed that, thought about it, and felt a chill grow in her bones, rising outward. Magic. “You mean...like what she did to Tyler, changing his form?” She had convinced herself that was just an illusion, glamour. “Can they do that? I mean, for real? I thought you said they didn’t cast spells, or anything like that?”

Preters and supers both, they seduced, they didn’t tell the truth...but did the supers instinctively, intrinsically lie, too? Or did they just misdirect and avoid? Jan wasn’t good with words, not that way, but she thought there was a real difference between not telling the truth and lying. She looked at Martin with narrowed eyes, waiting for him to respond.

“Maybe. Maybe other things. I don’t know.” He lowered his head until their foreheads touched. “Their magic...we don’t have it. Supernaturals just
are.
We don’t mess with the universe, we exist within in. Preternaturals—”

“Mess with the universe. Yeah, I got that already. Holding open a doorway between worlds just to cause trouble was kinda a clue.”

“Portal, not doorway. A doorway is a simple set, a portal—”

“Now is no time to get pedantic on me,” she muttered. “So I just have to, what, be stoic?”

A crease appeared between his eyes, and the flickers of gold and green disappeared into the brown again. “You can’t forget. Remember who you are, why you’re here.”

“Right.” It seemed too easy, which made her suspicious. “Will it...will it hurt?”

Martin might not always tell all the truth, but he never lied to her.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, joy.”

Jan bit her lower lip and pulled away from Martin, needing space between them, away from his concern and his utter uselessness. He had never claimed to be the hero, never said he had the answers; she had no right to be angry with him.

Anger didn’t do her any good, but it was all she had just then. She couldn’t bear looking across the chamber, either, where Tyler was surrounded by other figures, their capes and dresses flowing and moving around him, flashes of bright color against the otherwise drab stone walls, and so found herself staring at her feet, her sneakers oddly implausible in this setting.

She shivered, crossing her arms around herself, wishing this were all over with, already. “I would have thought that the fairy kingdom would be, I don’t know, prettier. They don’t believe in paintings? Or rugs?”

“Preters aren’t very creative,” Martin said, falling in with her attempt at distraction. “I think that’s another reason why they take humans. You create—we don’t, either, really. I couldn’t even imagine how to make something, visualize it and make it real.”

Jan tried to imagine not being able to take an idea and translate it into a new site, a specialized design, and shivered again. She didn’t think of herself as being particularly creative, but to not have even that?

“What do supernaturals do, then? I mean, other than steal cars and rescue kidnapped humans?”

“Mostly, we cause trouble too,” Martin admitted. “We’re not big on what humans consider morality, or honor. Sometimes we pick sides and help humans who amuse or interest us, but we—”

“Can’t be trusted. Yeah. I got that.”

There was a rise in the sound level from across the room, and his hands tightened on her shoulders, almost to the point of pain. She lifted her arms, putting her hands on his shoulders, letting them slide down his arms until their hands were clasped, as close to an embrace as they could allow themselves here, with an audience. In front of Tyler.

“It’s time,” Martin said.

She took a deep breath to reassure herself that she still could, and let it out slowly, the way her yoga DVD said to. “Be here for me, when I’m done?”

The shades of gold and green were back in his eyes, hot and sharp. “I’ll be here.”

To carry her home in victory—or bring her body home in defeat. Jan squeezed his hands once, then stepped away, his hands letting her go without resistance.

The space in the middle of the room where she had stood before was now larger, the crowd pushed back, the stone floor cleared of anything that might impede movement—or interfere with the sight lines of the audience, Jan thought grimly. All that was missing was the popcorn, and this could be a Saturday afternoon matinee. Or a day at the Roman Colosseum.

Stjerne was already there, waiting. The preter had taken off the cape and looked almost ordinary in her brown skirt and cream-colored blouse, brown leather boots rising to her knee, just a few inches under the hem of the skirt. As ordinary as anyone that striking could ever manage, anyway. She’d had time to change; those weren’t the clothes she’d been wearing in the coffee shop, back home. In her mud-dried jeans and long-sleeved shirt, knowing her hair was a tangle and her eyes probably red-rimmed, her skin blotchy, Jan suspected she looked like a joke in comparison.

Tyler had been taken back into the crowd, half hidden by other bodies, but Jan looked over the bitch’s shoulder and found him. His eyes were wide and his face was ashen, but she could not tell who he feared for.

Glamour could make you believe things. Could make you feel things. Were they real? Were they true?

Did it matter? You could love more than one person, and sex and the heart didn’t always go together. Tyler loved her, and she loved him, and she was taking him home, where he belonged.

“And thus, now or never, do or die,” Jan muttered under her breath, and stepped forward into the cleared circle. She found a spot that seemed comfortable, although it was no different from any other spot, set her feet the way she’d been taught in self-defense classes back in college, touched the inhaler in her pocket for reassurance, and lifted her chin. “Bring it, bitch.”

There was no warning, no lifted hands or willow wand pointing, no incantation or sparkles, just a malicious twist to the bitch’s mouth and Jan’s body caught fire, agony whipping through every vein. Her eyes dried out, and the lining of her nose turned to sand, the moisture in her body evaporating as though she were in the center of a blast fire.

And inside that fire, the curling heart of it, the whisper
“Give in. let go. All this will end, if you only let go.”

“Bitch,” Jan pushed out through gritted teeth, her fingers curling into her palms, giving her a real pain to focus on. “I don’t think so.”

The pain intensified, although she would have sworn that was impossible. Like lava chewing at her bones, destroying and renewing so that she could never actually die, never be at peace. She tried not to believe it, tried to reject it as illusion, but the pain was too much.

In agony, Jan thought of Martin, but the strange half guilt she’d been carrying turned on her then, lashing her with accusations and insinuations.

I wasn’t. I didn’t....

Her heart ached, so badly she thought it would crack, and she lifted her hands to her chest, as though to force it back in.

Her fingers touched the silver of her bracelet, slid against the cool metal, seemingly untouched by anything else, smooth and supple, like Martin’s skin, splashed wet with sweat...

And she remembered being carried on his back through his riverine home, of cool water splashing over her, encasing her, and waking up wet but sound. Wet and safe.

She could trust him, even when he didn’t trust himself.

Slowly, too slowly, the fire sizzled and went out, her sinuses dry and burning, but her skin soaked with sweat.

Jan wanted to say or do something to show her defiance, but here was barely enough time to breathe in relief before the next attack hit, twisting her arms and torso, bending her knees and sending her to the floor.

She looked up and saw the bitch staring at her, that cruel quirk of the lip now a full-blown snarl, like the one she had shown in the alley, before the portal. Jan had time for a fleeting thought—
she’s not underestimating me anymore—
before something broke her spine and sent her facedown on the cold stone floor.

The pain was different this time, coming not from the inside, but out. Her body cramped and changed, fur sprouting from underneath her skin, her hands resting on the floor, her entire sense of self and gravity shifting until she had the urge to howl, to grovel to her pack master for release, to accept her role and let go....

A dog cowers,
the pain whispered to her.
A dog heels. A dog—

A dog was cousin to the wolf. Jan thought of AJ. Proud, fierce. Determined to do what needed to be done, no matter the cost.

“You are not my pack leader,” she managed to force through jaws that felt odd and heavy, the wrong shape for speaking. “I do not give in...to you.”

Pain flared again, forcing her eyes wide and her mouth open, gasping for air. The shape changed, twisting her around again, throwing her onto her back and making her legs spasm. Her spine arched in ways it shouldn’t be able to, and her head hit the stone floor hard enough to make everything go silent.

Her arms sealed to her sides, her legs useless, Jan felt herself go cold as doubts sifted their way in. She was useless. Abandoned. Alone all day in a room, moving digits around for things no one would ever notice. Pale and too soft, too gentle, too needy. No wonder Tyler went elsewhere, found someone more exotic, more fascinating, more experienced.

Someone better suited to him,
the doubts whispered, poison dripping sweetly.
You were never enough for him; let go, let him go his way, and you be on yours....

Jan stretched, her muscles still working even in this new form, and lifted her head along the huge serpent’s body, turning to stare at her opponent, lidless eyes unflinching. Her tongue flicked out once, twice, and caught the taste of fear. Her own... And her opponent’s... And more.

The entire room was filled with fear.

It was a revelation for the bit of Jan still aware within that massive form. All this, all their magic, their glamour, and they were afraid...of her.

They were afraid of humans. Of what humans could do.

The icy fog in her brain lifted, faded and melted, just enough. All right, Tyler had wandered. The lure of something different, something out of reach or forbidden, had been too much to resist. Maybe it was magic, maybe it was his own weakness, maybe she wouldn’t be enough for him in the long run. But. Her tongue flicked out again and tasted memories of Tyler. She remembered his sleepy arms around her early in the morning, the way his legs tangled with hers while he slept, the look in his eyes when she glanced up and saw him studying her, intense and hot.