Soul of Fire

Chapter 3

They had been out by the pond for an hour at least. Maybe more. Jan knew that she should go back to the farmhouse, should check in with someone, should see if there was anything that she could do, anything she should do. Instead, she lay back on the grass, stared up at the pale blue sky, and tried to remember when life had been normal.

She couldn’t.

“You all right?”

She smiled, a slight turn of her lips, less humor than appreciation. Martin had learned to ask that. Had learned that Jan’s silences sometimes meant something wasn’t all right.

Had it only been that morning she’d been on the porch with AJ, had talked with Glory? It felt as if it had happened the day before, or even weeks ago, the sense of urgency pounding in her veins muddling with the lack of sleep and the stress. Adding injury to insult, Jan was developing a headache that was settling in for the long haul. She probably needed to cut down on the coffee. Yeah, good luck with that.

“Another day, another lack of a dollar,” she said now in response to his question, not an answer but as much of one she could give him.

“Are you still stressing over not having a job?”

Jan laughed; she couldn’t help it. He sounded so puzzled. “No. I’m stressing over the fact that I’m not stressing over a job because we have so many other things to stress about.”

Martin watched the way she was rubbing at her forehead, and sat up, turning so that he faced her. “Turn around,” he ordered, his hands already positioning her so that she was now facing away from him, her legs crossed, her butt up against his own crossed legs. She obeyed, knowing what was coming even before his blunt-fingered hands started working on her neck and shoulders. His hands were strong but sure, moving over muscles like a trained masseuse.

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

“What, back rubs? No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And?”

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

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

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

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

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

“In the Carolinas?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She needed to talk to Martin again.

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

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

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

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

What did a clever heart do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Come in.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I know you,” he said now. “You...”

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

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

“She’s human. Like me.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her distress seemed to communicate itself to Tyler, because he pulled back physically. His face seemed to almost crumple, his arms drawing around his torso, and he rocked back and forth in his chair.

“Ty?” She couldn’t help it; she stepped forward, her hand outstretched. His pain and confusion hurt her almost as badly, guilt for being the cause warring with exasperation that he seemed to blame her.

“Home. Home. Stjerne will punish me. Need to go home.”

“Damn,” Zan said quietly, moving across the room with a silent grace, cutting Jan’s own approach off and placing gentle hands on Tyler’s shoulder. “Tyler, it’s all right. You’re safe. You’re here. Stjerne is gone. You control this space. Nothing can come here that hurts you.”

“Make her go away. Go away.”

The healer kept speaking, even-toned and calm. “You control this space, Tyler. If you don’t want something or someone here, you can make them go away.”

“Go away,” he said.

Jan went, closing the door gently behind her.

It wasn’t personal, not like that. Jan understood. Tyler had been badly abused by the preters, some kind of brainwashing that she didn’t quite understand. That was why he was here, rather than getting help in the human world—the moment he started talking about what had happened, who had done this to him, they’d assume he was insane and put him away forever.

The same way they’d try to put her away if she tried to tell anyone. She had already lost her job over it, with no chance of getting a referral from her boss, who now thought she was insane, and she had probably ruined any chance of getting a new job back in her industry, as well.

Maybe she could go to work with AJ’s car thieves. Or whatever it was that Martin did for a living when he wasn’t fighting off preternatural invasions.

She thought about what the kelpie might possibly do for a living and shook her head. Or maybe not.

“Jobs are kind of a worry for after you save the world,” she said, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. The tears had receded and, miraculously, so had the headache; Jan wouldn’t have put it past Zan to have slipped a whammy on her, or whatever healing magic it was a unicorn did.

Thanking someone, though, seemed to be bad manners here. And Jan was avoiding the issue, trying to take on other people’s problems instead of her own. She needed somewhere to think, somewhere nobody would bother her or summon her while she thought.

The problem with the Farm was that it was too crowded. Even the attic floor, nominally her bedroom space, had a meeting going on in the stairwell, three supers, who looked too much like praying mantises for Jan’s comfort, hunched together, trying to put together a report. No matter where she turned, in the House or any of the outbuildings, things were happening, people were being useful. Everyone except her.

“Shut up,” she told herself. “Stubborn and clever, remember?” So she didn’t know what to do yet. She would. It was like the time immediately after Tyler had disappeared all over again, but then she’d had the insanity of suddenly discovering about supernaturals and the fact that Tyler had been elf-napped. Now she knew what she was facing. And she wasn’t facing it alone.

“Hey.” She accosted one of the kitchen workers, a dryad whose long green hair was tied up in a scarf, her long arms coated with flour. “When Martin gets out of his meeting, tell him to meet me back at the pond?”

“After meeting, human by the pond. Got it.”

Sitting cross-legged on the grass once again, Jan ignored the occasional splashes from the pond and concentrated on breathing in and out slowly. Her asthma was triggered more by dust and stress, but stress and grass could do the trick, too. Jan didn’t know why she kept coming out here, unless maybe it was because she knew that anyone out here would ignore her, let her mope in peace. For a bunch of alleged nature-friendly beings, few of them ever came out this far.

Maybe it was because they were all too busy, AJ’s orders snapping them into action, focused and intent. She was the only one without a purpose, without a plan. But she was going to come up with one.

“We’ve been focusing on the portals,” she said, thinking out loud. “On the portals, how they’re controlling them and where the queen might be hiding. Turn it around. Why here? Never mind how or why the magic changed. What do we have that they want?”

It wasn’t a new question, but they’d been thinking like supers or trying to think like preters. Maybe it was time to think like a human. A stubborn, heart-driven human.

Someone was walking toward her across the grass. She knew it was Martin without looking, recognizing the weirdly heavy sound, as though his four-hooved form walked with him. She’d noticed it first when they were walking through the preternatural realm, but only identified it as being his specifically once they were on the Farm. She’d idly compared his steps to other supernaturals: some walked heavily, some barely touched the ground, but none of the others had that four-beat cadence to a two-footed walk.

“You left the meeting,” he said. It wasn’t an accusation, just a statement, with a hint of a question.

She kept her breathing still, her eyes closed. “Did anything useful happen?”

“Not really,” he admitted. Then he paused. “You’re upset.”

“I’m not. I’m...” She was upset. But not the way Martin meant it. She thought. She still wasn’t entirely sure she had a bead on what the kelpie meant when he said something.

Another memory: Toba looking at her with those golden owl eyes, warning her: Do not fall into the trap of thinking that you can understand us—or that we can understand you.

“Your leman hurt you.” Martin sat next to her, and she could smell the now-familiar scent of green water and smoky moss, almost like but entirely unlike the scent of the pond in front of them, and completely unlike, say, the iron-rock-solder smell Elsa had. Jan was learning the supers by their smell now, not just their sight or sound. The thought was either really disturbing or weirdly satisfying. Maybe both. Maybe she could understand them, at least a little bit.

Maybe they could understand her.

“It’s not Ty’s fault,” she said, not even asking how Martin knew it had been Tyler. Maybe he could smell it on her, too. “He can’t help it. I know that. He’s all sorts of fucked up and I’m the only thing that was consistent throughout.” She had read up on all the syndromes and symptoms, the treatments and the stories from family members. She knew that Zan was doing the best job possible, that if they took him to a human doctor, they wouldn’t understand what he’d been through, and the moment he started saying anything about the preters or... Well, she couldn’t blame any human hospital for thinking he needed more than outpatient therapy if that happened. “But it hurts.”

“Of course it does. Because you blame yourself.”

Jan laughed, a rough exhalation that held only a little humor. “Stay away from the pop-psych websites,” she told him, opening her eyes and plucking a long blade of grass, holding it between her thumb and foreginger and studying it with far more care than it deserved. “Even humans have trouble with that stuff. You’ll just screw it up”

That much she did understand. Kelpies—or at least, Martin—were sweet, and funny, and affectionate...and cold-blooded killers who didn’t really understand that killing people, because they suddenly felt like it, was a bad thing. He had empathy in his own way but no morality, no connection to anyone he had not learned to care about. What he might make of the five stages of grieving or some other mental-health site...

She let the blade of grass drop, watching as it fell. Emotions. Entanglement. Need. “You told me to go home. When we came back, you told me to go home and put all this behind me, both you and AJ.”

Martin lay on the grass next to where she was sitting, his arms crossed behind his head, staring up at the sky. He never went closer to the water than they were sitting, never really looked at it. Kelpies were river-horses; she wondered if he had something against ponds or if it was just this pond that he didn’t like. And why, if he didn’t like the pond, he kept following her out there.

“We were wrong,” he admitted. “AJ knew it then. He just didn’t know what else to tell you. You can’t go back to what and who you were. It doesn’t work that way.”

She held up a hand, stopping his apology in its tracks. None of them could go back. Not Tyler, not her—not even Martin. You couldn’t simply walk into the preter realm, you couldn’t go Under the Hill, and expect to come back the same.

“Yeah. It changes. Everything changes. So...we go forward.” She wrapped her arms around her knees and thought about that, trying to weave it into what she had been thinking before.

Martin waited, maybe to see if she was going to say anything more, maybe thinking thoughts of his own. Something in the middle of the pond splashed to the surface and then disappeared. “You’re thinking,” he said finally, somewhere between an accusation and a hope.

“Yeah.” Thinking about what they’d talked about that morning, about what Galilia had said, about what she was seeing around them. About what they had seen in the preter court. About three days left now before the truce was up.

“I have an idea,” she said finally. “AJ isn’t going to like it.”

Martin grinned at her, his teeth blunt but the smile disturbingly sharp. “Those are my favorite kind of ideas.”