Tempest’s Legacy (13 page)

The driveway ended in a carport attached to a small, dark brown ranch-style house. It had a chain-link fence around the small backyard, which housed a rather arthritic-looking golden retriever that panted at us with his black nose pressed through the chain-link. A purple glass globe sat on top of a cement pedestal in the middle of the front yard, and I think I even saw a garden gnome—the plastic kind, not the kind currently babysitting my dad—peeking at me from underneath a ferny-looking plant in the small garden under the front picture window.

We got out of the car, and Anyan laughed at the expression on my face. In my defense, Julian looked equally nonplussed.

“Is there… more?” I asked. “Like at the Compound?”

When I’d first pulled up to the Alfar Compound, I’d seen only a giant McMansion. It was covered in glamours
so powerful, I hadn’t had the slightest inclination something was off until Ryu had cleansed my sight.

Anyan chuckled, putting a hand on my lower back and steering me toward the front door.

“Nope. This is it. Welcome to the seat of power here in Borealis, Illinois.”

A
nyan,” said a tall, slender woman with silver hair as she pushed open the screen door. “So good to see you.”

She wrapped the barghest in an affectionate hug, then let him enter the house.

“Julian?” she asked my fellow halfling, smiling at him as he nodded, startled. “Welcome to Borealis, and to my home. It’s wonderful to have you here. Make yourself comfortable, please.”

“And you must be Jane,” she said once Julian had passed. To my surprise, she then stooped down to give me my own hug. She held me tight, telling me, “I’m Paige. It’s such a pleasure to meet you. I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

I blinked over her shoulder toward where Anyan watched us, smiling. Paige and I were standing in a tiny entryway that was part of a small combination living and dining room. Anyan had moved across the short room to a doorway that appeared to lead into the kitchen/family
room. Next to him stood a man who, like the woman, appeared to be in his mid-fifties. He was shorter than both Anyan and the woman, but very strong and handsome. African-American, his skin was a lovely chocolate brown made even handsomer by his salt-and-pepper hair and goatee. And yet, there was something… other about him. Like Paige, he wasn’t using any power, but I was pretty sure this had to be Capitola’s supernatural parent. His large dark eyes were much older than his apparent age.

The woman let me go, leading me toward Anyan and the other man.

“This is my husband, Carl. You’ve met our daughter, Capitola.”

I grinned as everything fell into place. “Of course,” I said, extending my hand toward Carl. “Capitola’s lovely. It’s so nice to meet you.”

Carl took my hand in a firm grip and pulled me in to give me his own hug.

“It’s shitty circumstances, no denying that. But it’s a pleasure to finally meet Jane True,” he said, grinning. “We know a certain someone who won’t stop talking about you…”

His voice trailed off and he and his wife laughed heartily. I blushed, looking between them.

Who’s been talking about me?
I thought, confused.
Certainly not Anyan
, I wondered, peeking up at the barghest. But he looked just as lost as I did.

I had just opened my mouth to ask what they were talking about when I heard a
pop
. Floating in front of me was a beautiful bouquet of wildflowers.

Eyes wide, I reached forward. Then I nearly jumped
out of my skin when, from the other side of the bouquet, something grabbed my fingers.

Actually, six things grabbed me. Rather than freaking me out, however, the touch of six little hands made me smile.

“Terk?” I asked, as six solid-black eyes peered around the bouquet at me. He blinked a random smattering of eyelids, and gave me a friendly wave with the three hands on his right side.

I pulled the bouquet away from him, laughing at the sight of the brownie floating in midair. Terk looked like a miniature Ewok would if he’d been spliced with Kali, the six-armed Hindu goddess of destruction, and a wolf spider. His shaggy fur was long and thick, capped by tiny fluffy ears. The little creature was adorable.

And very strong
, I thought, feeling its First Magic battering at my shields.

Terk had acted as a courier ferrying information between Anyan and his contacts here in the Borderlands, and I’d met him in Boston. I’d been more than a little surprised to see the little creature, but not nearly as surprised as my supernatural cohorts. Brownies had served the purebloods, then they’d served only the Alfar, and now they were supposed to be extinct. But as it turned out, they were still very much alive, living in the Borderlands, and serving whoever was in power here.

They were from a race of creatures older than the Alfar; creatures who used something known as First Magic. It felt different, certainly, than our own, elemental power: immensely strong and not entirely… natural, in the way our elemental force did.

I laughed as the little being hovered to me, and I let
it settle against my bosom. It cuddled against me like a little puppy, blinking its black eyes up at me innocently. Unable to resist, I stroked the little creature’s ears, giggling when he purred in my arms.

“Um, Jane, I don’t know if you should—” Anyan was interrupted by the door opening behind us.

“Hey, Mom! Dad!” Capitola said, pushing through the screen door. She was still lovely, despite being laden down with groceries, which she handed over to her father and to Anyan, who retreated to the kitchen behind them.

“Hey, lady,” she said, turning toward me. She stopped when she saw me cuddling Terk, her eyebrows rising. “Um, Jane…”

“It is not my fault that your backside has gotten so large that you cannot easily extricate yourself from vehicles,” Moo’s cool voice said from the doorway as she let herself in.

From behind her, a mage ball whizzed past Moo, clipping her ear as it flew into the room. Terk had perked up at Moo’s voice, and when he saw the mage ball one little hand shot forward. I felt a cold rush of power blast out of the brownie’s small form, and the mage ball fizzled out as if it had never existed.

He settled back against me, his little hands using my breasts for leverage as he made himself comfortable, cooing like a wee, hairy, six-eyed baby.

“No shooting people in the house, Shar,” Capitola’s mother chastised gently. “You two troublemakers go set the table. Julian will help; show him where everything is. Terk?” She intoned, last, to the little being in my arms. One eye glared open at her; the other five flicked open to blink sweetly at me.

“A little help, if you don’t mind?”

Terk sighed, then
poofed
out of my arms. A second later, I heard another
poof
in the kitchen.

“Beer?” Anyan asked me as everyone walked next door into the living room. I nodded, pulling a few brown strands of hair off my black T-shirt.

After Anyan, Cappie, Carl, and I were settled with drinks, we got down to business.

“First of all, Jane, welcome to Borealis,” Carl said. “I know that after what happened to your mother, you probably won’t ever want to return. But Borealis is, and always has been, a safe place for halflings, and those purebloods who, like me, want to live more… democratically.”

I knew Capitola was a halfling, according to Anyan, but except for that sense of age around Carl, I wouldn’t have been able to guess who her supernatural parent was. They both appeared entirely human, and they were both aged in a way that humans aged. Supes didn’t grow old like humans; rather, they looked young but worn out. And although Carl was admitting he was both supernatural and a pureblood, I still couldn’t feel any power coming off him. Now that I thought about it, in fact, while I could feel power throughout the house, I recognized that power as Terk’s.

Capitola was watching her father with a resigned expression that brightened when she realized I was peering at her. She smiled at me, raising her beer in a salute that I returned.

“Are all the Borderlands so friendly?” I asked curiously after sipping my beer.

Carl frowned. “In a word, no. The northern suburbs are ruled by powerful halflings who do things Mafia-style.
Chicago is a free-for-all of competing gangs. Borealis, however, has a powerful patron who likes to keep his surroundings peaceful.”

“Patron?” I asked.

“The Grim,” Capitola said, waving her fingers and making an “ooooooh” noise as if she were telling a ghost story.

Carl made a face at his daughter. “Not
the
Grim, just Grim. His name is Grimauld. He’s… a force.”

Anyan grunted next to me. It was the grunt that meant, “You’re telling me.”

“He doesn’t interfere with things, ever. But if anyone comes in, trying to
make
an interference, they get the Grim,” Cappie explained.

“What is he?” I asked, my mind filled with images of a killer fog, like in Stephen King’s novel. I am from Maine, after all.

“Nobody knows, except for Anyan,” Cappie answered. “And he won’t squeal.”

I looked at the barghest and he shrugged. “Grim keeps to himself,” was all he said, meaning that if that’s how Grim wanted it, Anyan wasn’t going to ruin things for him.

“Why didn’t he stop the laboratory if he’s so strong?”

“I don’t know,” Carl replied. “I don’t think he knew about it. Like I said, he doesn’t interfere with things. But something like that… I can’t believe he’d ignore it.”

“Could he have been running the labs?” I asked. It seemed an obvious question.

“Not Grim. No way,” was Anyan’s only response. I didn’t bother to ask Anyan if he was sure. He only ever said something if he was sure.

“But I’m sure you’d have put together what I have,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “If purebloods can’t enter Borealis without you knowing, then whoever was running those labs had to be other halflings. Even if Jarl was paying them, there had to be halflings on the ground.”

Carl sighed and took a swig of his beer. Capitola nodded sadly.

“That’s why they asked me to help, Jane. And why, when we found the bodies of the purebloods, they allowed me to contact Orin and Morrigan.” Anyan’s voice was gentle and I realized he was afraid I’d tar his friends with our enemy’s dirty brush. He obviously cared for Capitola and her family a great deal, and he hated the idea that I would associate them, and their city, with my mother’s death.

“This is big, and people are dying,” Carl confirmed. “We can’t let our feelings for the Alfar get in the way of the facts. Or we’re monsters just like they are.”

“True dat!” Shar yelled from the kitchen area, where she was folding napkins into complicated shapes. Moo, slicing cucumbers at the counter, shook her head at her fellow halfling as if wondering when Shar had killed her last brain cell. Julian stood grating a carrot next to Moo, looking as at-home and comfortable as I’d ever seen him.

“Anyway,” Carl said, giving his daughter’s friends an indulgent smile. “We have more mysteries here than we can handle. Who’s running these labs? How were they recruited? Who do they work for? And it was bad enough when halflings were the victims, but how are they getting purebloods into the Territory? The only way for that to happen is to completely knock out their powers. There
hasn’t been an Alfar with that kind of ability in thousands of years, and he was killed by his own people when they realized what he could do.

“So we need help. These people need to be shut down, and we can’t do it alone. And, as much as we hate bringing anyone associated with the Alfar into our lands, we’ll do what needs to be done.”

I set my beer down, blinking back tears. For the first time since I’d gotten to Borealis, I stopped thinking only of myself and thought about everything these people had done for me and for my mother, neither of whom they’d ever known.

“Thank you so much for letting us in,” I said. “You’re taking so many risks, when you don’t have to. Thank you.”

Anyan’s hand was warm and large on the small of my back, and a box of tissues apparated with a
poof
next to my elbow. I blew my nose as Carl made soothing noises.

“No, hon, our women are dying, too. We had to do something. These murders should never have happened. But we’re going to find out who did it.”