Laura Anne Gilman (5 page)

“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?”