Soul of Fire

Chapter 9

Twenty-four hours was both no time at all and an incredibly long time. Long enough to get from London to what Galilia referred to half-affectionately as “deepest, whitest Connecticut.” Time enough to work and sleep and wake again surrounded by an entirely different world.

Glory drank her coffee and ate the food she was given that first morning—scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and surprisingly good jam—packed herself up, and went to work. And tried not to think about what she was working on.

Patently impossible, of course.

Without Jan—and nobody seemed to know where she had gone exactly, or if they did they weren’t telling, and only the fact that both Tyler and that horse-faced boy, Martin, had gone with her was keeping Glory from freaking out about that—Glory had to figure things out on her own. Galilia and the others on the team did their best, but they didn’t understand.

Magic, fine. If there was science, why not magic? But it wasn’t like jam and toast; they were supposed to stay separate, weren’t they?

But it wasn’t. Separate, she meant. It was all mixed up and jumbled, and hearing about it had been one thing, one kind of manageable crazy. Living in it...Glory understood now, maybe, what had kept Jan here, rather than running when she’d had the chance. Not the glamour, in any sense of the word, or even the fascination of, oh, dear god, fairies—or jiniri, or werewolves, or trolls, dear god, utterly polite trolls asking if she wanted tea, no. It was the quicksilver flashes of a different way of thinking, a different way of being, that every now and again would rip through Glory’s awareness, triggered by something one of the others would say, making her look at something she thought she had seen a hundred times before and see it in an utterly new way.

You always got that with new coworkers; that was part of why she liked changing jobs as often as she did. But this was a whole new level of seeing. No, not a level. A whole new set of eyes.

Glory never wanted to go back to her old life, and that scared the hell out of her.

It wasn’t until the day after, time spent either in the workroom going over every bit of data they had on the most recent preternatural incursions, talking over every bit of data they had, or, for a few hours, sleeping in a narrow bed in the attic room that had been Jan’s and dreaming about the data they had, that everything came together in Glory’s head. She stopped halfway through her sandwich and changed the topic of conversation entirely.

“So, magic is actually a thing.”

Galilia put down her own lunch and looked at the human, waiting for more context. “Yes.”

“But it’s a thing you can’t manipulate directly. No supernatural can?”

“It depends on how you define manipulate. Or directly.”

“Or is?”

“What?” The jiniri looked at her in confusion, while Alon, a squat, lizardish super, coughed into his hand, grinning.

“Never mind. Go on. Magic is an actual thing, but...”

“Less a thing than a force. No, not a force. You can manipulate a force, influence it. This is...”

“Like maths,” Glory said. “We assign a value to things, and we manipulate them, but we’re not really changing it, just how we perceive it. Like time.”

“Time?”

“Time isn’t real.”

“What do you mean, time isn’t real?”

Glory shifted in her chair, aware that messing with the perceptions of human coworkers might be a safer game than doing the same with supernaturals. Jan had warned her that the preters, at least, didn’t like having to see things a new way.

It’s not so much that they’re hidebound, she had said early one morning over the crackling vid-connection. It’s...they don’t think the same way we do, I think. They can see the forest and the trees, but they can’t make a new path through them when one already exists. That’s why them suddenly changing how they did things, how they could do things, is such a big scary deal.

“Okay, time is real,” Glory said now. “But it’s real because we’re putting labels on something so that our brains can comprehend it. There’s a theory, and never mind the theory because that’s way off track, but my point was—” and she’d had a point, she knew that “—magic is like time. It is, but we can only label it, not manipulate it. Not really. But there are things that can, maybe, mess with time. Real time and our perception of it.”

Glory’s brain hurt. She was good at practical things, solid things like maths and coding, not theoretical physics.

“Except some humans can,” the jiniri said.

“What?” Glory’s head came up, and she stared at the other woman.

“Some humans can manipulate it. Witches.”

“That’s what the Huntsman said,” Glory recalled suddenly. “It was all pre-coffee hazy and then jet lag, but he said that witches were calling or something. That’s why he got me, why he went off doing god knows what. There are witches?”

“Maybe?” Alon looked uncertain, which already Glory knew was unusual. “I’ve never actually met one. Stories say they don’t like us.”

“Huh. Witches. Actual witches? Well, why the hell not. Bet I’ve met one. More than one.” Glory frowned, another thought occurring to her. “And I bet Jan has, too. Or knows someone who has. That’s where she’s gone, both of them. Lay odds on it.”

The jiniri considered that and then dismissed it as not being relevant to the current discussion. Glory could tell AJ later, if she thought there was need. “So, what does that have to do with us figuring out how the preters are using technology?”

“Because suddenly I’m not sure they are,” Glory said. “Using it, I mean. Not the way I use it, and not the way you use glamour, as an active thing. I think magic is like time.” She looked at her companion and shook her head, exasperated. “A construct, a...a force that is variable, undefinable until we force a structure on it. We’ve been trying to figure out how they’re using it, when we should be asking how they see it.”

“Because what we see changes how we act. And the structure they put on magic changed them in turn.” Galilia got it.

Alon was a little slower to catch up. “But why...why restructure it, after so many centuries?” he asked, not quite accepting her theory yet.

“Two thousand and eight. That’s when it started, back then?”

All three of them turned to look at the whiteboard propped against the wall, covered in colored marks of a time line.

“Yes,” Alon said. “Or at least, there weren’t any reports of anything unusual happening before then.”

“So what changed, then? What could have changed the way they saw magic?”

Alon’s eyes went wide, and the scales along his arms went from a cool green to a dark, intense crimson. “Oh. Oh, fuck.”

“What?” Galilia looked at him, expectant.

“I just... Oh, fuck.”

“Al, if you don’t get something coherent out of your mouth in the next ten seconds...” The jiniri stood up and looked surprisingly imposing for something so slight.

The lizardlike super waved its clawed hands in tight circles, as if he was getting ready to lecture them. “We’ve been looking at the preters and not the humans, because hey, magic, right? And witches aside, humans don’t use magic. But what you said about time?”

“Al...”

“The LHC.”

“The what?” Galilia turned to look at Glory, hoping the human would be able to translate.

“The Large Hadron Collider,” Alon clarified. Gali still looked confused, but Glory nodded for him to continue. “Back in 2008, that’s when the LHC went online,” Alon said. “They were trying to— I don’t even know what they were trying to do, but it involved particles and the basic laws of physics and—”

“And string theory,” Glory said. “I remember reading about it. They’re... Yeah. If magic’s world stuff, all around us, then it’s going to interact, and if scientists are shoving particles at really high speeds...Jesus, you think that someone got their physics in the preters’ magic? I don’t suppose we’ve got a pet physicist around?”

Both supernaturals shook their heads.

“Didn’t think so. Doesn’t matter. Not like we can go ask them to turn it off, and the damage’s already done, obviously, if the preters have changed how they work their mojo. Once shit like this goes down, you gotta deal, not denial. Jesus,” she said again. “Fucking string theory, seriously?”

Alon was practically bouncing up and down in suppressed excitement. Glory almost laughed; she might not know its species, but she knew geek when she saw it.

Galilia brought them back around to the original question. “So, how do we stop them? How do we—in, like, twenty-four hours?—prevent the preters from opening more portals?”

Glory sighed and rested her chin on her folded hands. “That’s the problem. We can’t.”

Time. Time is up. Jan woke with that thought thrumming in her head, fight-or-flight instinct firmly tuned to flight before she remembered where she was and what she needed to be doing.

The urge to flee still lingered, and she had to force herself to stay still, to keep her head on the pillow and her breathing calm until she could trust herself to stand up and not do anything stupid.

More stupid than they’d already done, anyway.

Either stupid or brilliant. Yesterday, they’d managed the first goal—infiltration—and only the first, and Jan still wasn’t sure quite how they’d managed that, even.

My lady. Humans, to see you.

The supernatural who’d greeted them at the door had barely come up to Jan’s knee, but his eyes had been cold, and his voice had held a sneer, as though humans couldn’t possibly be of any use whatsoever. Tyler had shivered slightly as they’d walked inside, her arm tucked into his to keep him from bolting, but when they’d been ushered into the queen’s...throne room, for lack of a better term, he’d straightened up and dropped her arm as if he’d never met her before.

Humans? I will see them.

Jan had seen preters before. She was prepared for the lean, elegant beauty, cool exoticism, a dangerous veneer hiding more danger underneath.

She had not been prepared for a woman—a preter, clearly, with the same narrow, elegant, almost too-sharp face, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail—with sleeves rolled to her elbows, fingers covered with chalk dust, blues and greens to match the canvas in front of her. A woman who’d been more interested in what was on the canvas than the humans being brought in for her attention.

“That’s not it,” the preter had muttered, her lips pulled back in an expression of distaste. “That’s not it at all.”

It was a particularly bland and amateurish canvas, Jan had decided, catching a quick look at it as they were brought around to face the queen. Like someone who’d caught half a glance of Monet’s work and decided they could imitate it...and couldn’t. At all.

“You need to draw the lines up more,” she’d said without thinking, stepping past Tyler, past their startled guards, past the man—another human—standing at the preter’s side like a butler, waiting for her next comment. “The browns need to balance all the green and blue. Otherwise it just turns muddy.”

The queen had turned those eerie pale blue eyes on her, the narrow mouth with too-sharp teeth lifting in what seemed an almost welcoming smile.

“You know art?”

There’d been an almost predatory hunger in those words, not a casual inquiry at all. Jan had swallowed but—remembering the lessons of her encounter in the preter court before—had held that unnerving gaze without blinking. “Some.” Her work was technical, but she had drawn a lot on graphic-arts theory. “And I know design and color.”

Somehow, impossibly, that had been the right answer. The preter had dismissed the human next to her, sending him off to sit on a cushion at the far end of the room like a pet, and spent the next few hours making Jan recite everything she knew, every detail she could remember from her college courses.

Keep yourself useful, Martin had told them before they’d split up. Become as essential as you can. That will protect you.

Now she slipped out of bed, the sheets slithering around her as she moved. Still trying to adjust to the new surroundings, she had to pause a moment and remember where everything was before she reached to the nightstand for her morning routine of pills. Birth control was less of an issue these days, sadly, but her asthma medication—Jan had gone without a few times since her life had been turned around and shaken in a can of crazy, and she wasn’t going to do that again. You never knew when you’d have to run, or fight, or panic. Breathing wasn’t optional.

The floor was polished wood, cool and smooth under her bare feet. She pulled the robe—thick cotton, basic but comfortable, like all the clothing she had been given—off the back of her chair and wrapped the belt securely before going to the door and looking out into the hallway.

The house was three levels; they had been settled on the second floor. Upstairs, in the attic, or what might have been the servants’ quarters, was where the brownies stayed. A pack, they were called, and that had made her wonder which had come first, the term for them or the Girl Scouts’ usage. The other supers lived outside, she guessed; she had seen them coming and going, and there was a small campsite set up at the far end of the lot, by the trees. Maybe they had tree houses in the copse or something.

This hallway had four doors, two bedrooms to the front of the house, two to the back. They had the left-hand back room. The other rooms had been given to the three humans the queen had taken already: an older man who seemed to handle the jungle of media stuff crammed into the main room; Patrick, a tall, long-haired man who didn’t talk much; and the painter, Kerry, who was trying to teach Nalith how to draw.

Trying and failing. Nalith understood the mechanics clearly enough, but nothing seemed to stick, no matter how many times Jan and Kerry explained that it wasn’t about replicating the flower exactly but re-creating it in a different medium.

Nalith. The queen was not what she had expected at all. She was...

Jan leaned against the door frame and reached up to touch the silver chain around her neck, her fingers running along it nervously. It itched where it touched her skin, but Nalith had warned her not to remove it, that it would allow her access to the court and protect her within its boundaries.

Tyler had almost bolted when Nalith had dropped a similar chain over his head, and the queen had paused, placing her delicate, elongated hand flat on his chest.

You have been touched by our metal before, she’d said, not quite a purr. You have been the thrall of that world...you were a portal-maker. Those blue eyes had looked him up and down, and Jan had tensed, not sure what they could do, two humans surrounded. And then Nalith had looked at her and then back to Tyler and laughed.

It hadn’t been a cold laugh.

You took him, she’d said to Jan. Took him from them and came to me. Wise human. Wise.

And that had been that. No questions, no mind games, no anything. They’d been accepted in the queen’s court, given food and clothing and a role to play. They were waiting only for Martin to arrive and work his way in, as well.

And then...

There was a sound, and Jan turned to look over her shoulder. Tyler was curled on his side, on the far edge of the mattress. They shared a bed now, but not comfortably. Not the way they used to, curled around each other, sharing a pillow, her head against his shoulder.

Still. He remembered her, who she was, if not what they had been to each other. He didn’t shy away from her company or her touch. He was here with her, on this adventure, alert and aware and fighting to take back what had been stolen from him. It was enough.

She would protect him from everything else. Even the queen, if it came to that.

Nalith. Jan frowned, something prickling at her, making her rub her arms as though she were cold. The preter was alien, strange, disturbing—but she was something else, too. Not like the others Jan had encountered, here and Under the Hill. Something burned behind those eyes, in her voice, and that heat made Jan more nervous than before. Cold appraisal, disdain; those were things she had braced herself against. Not this.

The plan was already off-kilter. She wished Martin were here so she could talk to him, figure out what to do....

“Human.”

The voice floated along the hall, although it was so soft it should not have been heard a foot from the speaker, much less a full flight above. Nalith could have been calling any one of the four of them, but Jan knew it was meant for her. Knew that Nalith was aware she was awake and desired her presence.

“I come, my lady,” she said into the air. If her throat was tight and her words thin, the preter queen did not seem to notice—or deemed it unworthy of remark.

Jan took a few minutes to dress, pulling out her jeans and a loose-necked sweater of the same cotton as her robe, and brushed out her hair. A shower would have been nice, but there was no time; already she knew that you did not delay when the queen summoned you. She touched the inhaler in one pocket, the sachet and the small horse the witch had given her in the other, gathering courage, and then went down the stairs, through the kitchen, and into the front of the house, where the court gathered.

Jan paused in the doorway, her feet still bare against the wooden floor, and studied the creature who had instructed them to call her not “queen,” but “my lady.” No, the preter was nothing like what they had been expecting.

They had expected, readied themselves for, a preter queen: cold and harsh, selfish and calculating. Nalith was selfish, true. Every thing and every living being in this house moved around her, acted and reacted according to her whim. Within hours of their arrival, that had been made clear to them both. The queen was calculating and harsh and utterly, undeniably alien. Simply standing in the same room, Jan could feel the prickling unease that came from nothing else.

Jan had expected that, prepared herself for that. She had not prepared herself for Nalith.

They had theorized that she would be drawn to humans, that her purpose in coming to this world centered on that need. And although the majority of the court were supers, her reaction to them seemed to support that theory. But the humans she was gathering to her were not warriors, not wealthy or particularly good-looking, the way all the humans Under the Hill—or even the Greensleeves, the abandoned ones—had been. They were artists mostly. Creators. Patrick, who turned bits of wood into abstract shapes and spirals that caught the eye and invited contemplation. Kerry, who, when he wasn’t waiting attendance on the preter, could dab the back of a spoon into paint and create the shadow of a cat, lounging along a ledge. And now Tyler, who had been tasked to sit at Nalith’s feet and sing to her. His voice wasn’t professional quality, but it was pleasing, and he’d always been able to carry a tune well.

And his brain remembered a hundred or more songs that Nalith had never heard, from traditional folk songs to pop ditties.

And there was the older man, who had not yet been introduced or spoken to them, who seemed to know about opera and ballet and made sure all of Nalith’s programs were recorded properly on the media system he had set up.

It didn’t take a genius to realize that the preter queen was fascinated by beauty, by art, by the act of creating art, both decorative and performance. That was her criteria for humans, for membership in her court.

Jan couldn’t draw, couldn’t paint, couldn’t do anything artistic, but she hadn’t lied about her design skills. She understood how things fit together, could see the patterns. She had a suspicion that Nalith wanted Jan with her during her drawing lessons, to give her feedback on a shape, a color, a choice, a placement. Like a pet decorator, some kind of Tim Gunn to elves?

There was no way they could have predicted this. No way to have expected it. And even as it gave them entrée to the court, Jan wondered what it all meant. How did you take over the world with artists? What was Nalith’s plan?

It didn’t matter, Jan reminded herself. Whatever the preter queen had wanted when she’d come here, it didn’t matter. She’d woken up this morning because the tick-tick-tick inside her bones had stilled. The ten weeks and ten days and ten hours they’d been given were up. The preters would no longer be barred by their word from opening portals and coming into this world. AJ and the others would have their hands full if the consort kept his threat, and she had no reason to believe otherwise. They—she, and Martin, and Ty—were the only ones on scene. They had to find a way to use the queen, to turn her into a tool to force the court back, once and for all.

She must have made some noise, disturbed some waft of air, because the preter queen looked up then and saw her there.

“Ah. Human Jan.” Nalith motioned, one elegant hand curling less in invitation than command. “Come to me.”

Jan went.

Today they weren’t, apparently, going to discuss colors. Nalith was sitting on an antique love seat upholstered in gold velvet, the woodwork gleaming of polish. She wore dark blue, a long skirt and sweater, with her long legs stretched out in front of her and an expression that, on a human, Jan would have described as pensive. Her elegant hands were now resting in her lap, still. Jan had already learned that boded ill.

“My lady?”

“Why does the light change?”

“My lady?” she asked again, less cautiously.

Nalith repeated her question. “The light. Each day, it changes. You have been to both realms. Why does it do that here?”

Jan thought back to the preter world, the continuous overcast that seemed to last forever, broken only by odd intervals of night. She followed the queen’s gaze to the side window, where a patch of early-morning sunlight crept along the floor.

“I...” Jan closed her mouth and tilted her head, considering how to answer. “There is a scientific explanation that I would have to look up,” she said finally. “Perhaps we should recruit a meteorologist, who could answer your questions more effectively?”

“Perhaps,” Nalith said in the tone that meant not really. She wanted an answer now, not to wait. “It vexes me, this changing.”

She was taking it personally. Why? Jan cast her gaze around the room and saw the easel, shoved off to one side, the pastels sketch she had been trying to do the night before now abandoned.

Ah. The queen had been trying to draw in the morning light, and it had been different from the afternoon light. Jan tried to think of something useful to say, something that might interest the preter enough to distract her from her potentially deadly vexation.

“The morning light is cooler because it has not had so long to warm in the sky,” Jan ad-libbed. “In the afternoon, the light is warmer, it has a deeper glow to it. And at night, the moon and stars give us the coolest light of all, because they have no fire.”

For utter bullshit, it sounded pretty good. Jan held her breath, waiting to see if Nalith would buy it.

The rattlesnake-quick slap across the face answered that. Jan didn’t bother picking herself up off the floor, staying on her knees, her head down, staring at her hands held loosely in front of her, trying to project not a threat not a threat not a threat as clearly as she knew how.

“Do not think me a fool because I am indulgent with you,” the queen said, and the cool disinterest was more terrifying than anger might have been. “I am your lady, and you will be respectful.”

“My lady, yes, my lady. It is true, however, that the morning sun will bring forth cool tones, and the evening warmer ones. This is what you discovered, yes? That the colors look different in the morning than afternoon?”

“Yes.” Nalith raised her chin and looked at the half-finished picture propped against the opposite wall. She was considering Jan’s words, distracted from further violence. “And so, I should work on the piece only in the same light, to make sure the view is consistent. That is the trick to it?”

Jan stayed down on the floor, keeping her breathing steady, even though she was shaking with anger and fear. “I believe so, my lady. And...” She tried to remember the tricks she had learned when she was first putting together websites for clients, years ago. “There is a thing, a Pantone color chart. It might be helpful. I do not think there are stores here that would carry one, but I may order one for you, online?”

Jan didn’t know if there was a computer in the house or not, but surely with all this media setup there had to be, or someone knew where there was an internet café somewhere, or maybe in the little library/post office in town. First, though, she needed permission to leave. Her phone had lost data and voice signal the moment they’d gotten into town, although she didn’t know if that was merely the crap signal out here or if the preter had magic’d the area somehow. Yeah, AJ and Martin both claimed that supers and preters couldn’t actually use magic, but they hadn’t told her about witches before, either, and witches apparently could use magic, so she wasn’t discounting anything.

But if she could get access to the internet, without someone or something looking over her shoulder, then she could send a message to the team back at the Farm, let AJ know where they were, what was going on, telling them to bring the cavalry. She had asked Martin to find enough signal to send emails from her phone before he joined them, but—

“Perhaps,” Nalith said, interrupting Jan’s thoughts. “Perhaps another time. My mood is not suited for such pursuits now. I wish to be entertained.”

Jan had assumed that the queen would have her turn on the wide-screen television on the wall—the preter had developed eclectic tastes, from Sesame Street to opera to crime dramas, and the only thing she seemed uninterested in were reality shows and QVC-like channels, although she occasionally paused her restless channel-surfing to watch some reality TV. Instead, the preter stood and gestured with her hand. “Come.”

The queen’s mood swings were already becoming familiar. Jan did not trust them enough to raise her head but got to her feet and tamely followed the preter through the house, skirting the kitchen, and out into the back yard.

It wasn’t so much a yard as a field, extending an acre or more to where trees lined the property, hiding the neighbors from sight. Not that any neighbor had shown any interest at all in what went on there, from what Jan had been able to determine. So much for small-town curiosity. Or maybe they had been curious and learned better of it.

While there was a porch that wrapped around the front of the house, in the back some previous homeowner had built a two-tiered deck that was completely out of character for the style of the house but made a great lounging area, with steps that led to a narrow, flagstone patio.

Several of the brownies who seemed to run the house proper were lounging around, but they jumped to their feet when Nalith came outside. Jan stayed back a step; brownies might be helpful homebodies according to legend, but she didn’t like these ones at all. They looked at her as if they’d just as soon lock her in the basement and throw away the key. It was small consolation to discover that they looked at all the humans like that. Weren’t brownies supposed to be friendly?

“My lady,” the one who seemed to be their leader said, making a bow that almost scraped his nose on the porch floor.

“The kelpie who came in last night. Fetch it.”

Jan stiffened but managed not to react otherwise. Martin had arrived, and she hadn’t known? Why the hell had he come in at night? Was he all right?

One of the brownies ran off to do her bidding, short, bowed legs carrying him away, and the queen moved to one of the chairs, settling herself regally. She might be wearing simple clothing, not much different from Jan’s own, but when she moved, the sensation of a gown seemed to flow around her.

Without a direct order, Jan moved to the preter’s right-hand side, leaning against the wall in case she was called for but staying out of the way until then. She looked around cautiously; she was the only human visible. The others were still asleep or otherwise occupied. None of them were allowed to leave the house, either, all tied by the silver around their necks.

And then suddenly, Martin was there, striding across the yard from out of the tree line. Had he slept out there the night before? Was that why she hadn’t known, because he wasn’t in the house? There really were tree houses out there, weren’t there? Jan almost felt jealous. She’d always wanted a tree house as a kid.

“Ah. My kelpie.”

The instinctive rush of fury that hit Jan at the preter’s use of a possessive came as an utter surprise. The queen wasn’t looking at her, but others might be, so she struggled to control herself before daring to look up again.

Martin had come up onto the deck and gone down on one knee, making a clear obeisance before lifting his head to gaze directly on Nalith’s face. “The brownies said you wished to see me. How may I serve you?”

“You asked for a chance to prove yourself,” Nalith said, and Jan mistrusted the purr in her voice. It was too close to the sound of the consort’s voice back in the court, when he’d tried to finagle their deal. From the way Martin’s cheek twitched, just a tick at the left corner, she thought he remembered that, too.

“I did,” he agreed, and if you didn’t know better, the expression on his face was one of a happy idiot, just waiting for the command to do something gallantly stupid. Jan was too worried to be amused. He hadn’t taken any notice of her yet, and she wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

“Are any of the gnomes still in residence?” Nalith asked the lead brownie, the way someone might ask if there was still any cake left after a party. Jan started, unable to help herself. Gnomes?

Turncoats, the creatures that had tried to kill her, twice. Kill and—according to AJ—eat her, trying to prevent her from rescuing Tyler, from stopping the preters from invading. Nalith had gnomes here? The sense of betrayal Jan felt warned her: she was falling under the preter’s spell. This creature was not to be trusted, any more than others of her kind. Her hand touched the pocket holding the sachet and carved horse. Elizabeth had said they’d be protection, right?

She hoped to hell that Martin and Tyler were still carrying theirs.

“No, my lady,” the brownie said, answering Nalith. “You sent them all out earlier to...take care of matters.”

“Did I? Ah. Then find others among your group who will do. I wish to see how kelpies fight.”

Martin’s expression didn’t change. He bowed once and then stepped off the deck into the yard itself. To anyone else, he might have looked almost bored, but Jan had seen Martin bored, and this wasn’t it. He was tense, worried. Because of gnomes being here? Or about whatever the preter was up to? Jan cast a glance at the brownies, who were gathered together, clearly choosing up who would be the ones to fight.

Finally, their huddle broke up, and two figures came forward. Like all brownies, they were barely knee-high and scrawny, but Jan was guessing that the scrawniness was over some seriously wiry muscles, and the way they were standing reminded her of wrestlers she’d seen in high school. You might not match them up against a football player, but they could do damage, too. Their tasseled ears twitched, then folded flat against their bald heads the way a cat’s did when it was angry or scared. They removed their shoes and stretched their toes, then moved down the stairs to stand across from Martin.

Three feet, max, separated them as they stared at each other. There was no anger, no posturing; they weren’t doing this because they wanted to hurt each other, but because the queen had commanded it, to amuse her.

The hatred Jan felt was like champagne in her veins, making her feel light and slightly off-kilter. The preter craved art, desired beauty, and thought that violence was entertainment? She kept gnomes at her beck and call, sent them out to hunt and kill people? She was the same as the others, after all. Not that Jan had doubted it, ever, but...

But for a moment, for a few days, Jan had almost allowed herself to forget and not even realized it.

She’d remember, now.

Jan felt something at her side, a presence, a comforting shadow, and looked sideways to find Tyler next to her. His hair had been trimmed close to the scalp again while they were at the Farm, but he still managed to look sleep tousled. She looked back at Martin, her heart beating too fast for calm, and Tyler’s fingers slid into her own, a brief touch against her hand, pressing lightly against the sachet in her pocket, before he was gone.

Jan’s fingers clenched against the fabric, but she couldn’t look around to see where he’d disappeared to, her gaze as tightly focused on the fight about to happen as anyone else, if for different reasons.

There was no sign, no warning. One instant all three of them were standing there, looking at each other, and the next the two smaller figures launched themselves at Martin, one going for his knees, the other for his shoulders—no, his face, fingers trying to gouge out his eyes. Jan gasped, the faintest noise, and the preter queen turned her head and looked up at the human, a peculiar smile on her face. Jan’s heart stopped—had she given away her connection to Martin?

“There is nothing about my courtiers I will not know,” the preter queen said, turning back to watch the fight. “And how one fights tells me much.”

She couldn’t read human emotions, not yet, not well, anyway. Or she was too selfish to even try to learn. Whatever, it didn’t matter; she had no idea what Jan was thinking, so her secret was safe.

“They might kill each other,” Jan said, feeling as if someone was grasping at her throat. It felt like an asthma attack, but it wasn’t; her inhaler wouldn’t help this. “What good is he, are they, to you if they’re dead?”

The preter queen shrugged; clearly, she did not care.

The two brownies were giving it everything they had, biting and scratching, hissing and throwing themselves at their opponent, putting Martin on the defensive. He moved back, and they followed, tripping him so that he fell backward heavily, coming up smeared with mud and grass.

But he got up, and one of his hands palmed the nearest brownie, getting hold of its ears and yanking like a little boy pulling pigtails. The brownie shrieked, a high-pitched and painful noise, and twisted its neck at an impossible angle, sinking teeth into Martin’s hand.

The preter queen was breathing harder, her fingers clenched, and Jan realized with disgust that the bitch was turned on by the violence.

Martin, on his feet again, knocked one of the brownies away, but not before its teeth had torn his pants leg. The other, having escaped his hand, was now trying to do a face-hugger impersonation, clawing at Martin’s ears while its legs wrapped around his neck.

His human form could barely keep even with the two supernaturals, giving him no chance to go on the offensive.

“Change,” Jan breathed, and it became a chant. “Change change change...”

There was no way he heard her, not over the hooting and cheering of the brownies, who didn’t seem to care who won, so long as there was bloodshed, but he tore the second brownie off and stepped back, a shudder running through his body that, even without the sudden intense need to close her eyes, made Jan know he was about to do just that.

The kelpie Jan remembered was a sturdy pony, its hooves glittering black, its coat the red-brown of riverbank mud, its eyes deep brown and mild, with a flicker of mischief.

The beast that appeared before her had the same shape, but beyond that she could not identify it. The coat now gleamed with a sick green sheen, the mane, still thick, was tangled, knotted, and muddy, and the eyes were not golden-brown but a deep, ugly yellow that shone even at this distance.

The hooves were the same sparkling black, until he cracked open one of the brownies’ heads, and then they were coated in red.

The creature still tried to attack, grabbing at Martin’s mane as though to pull itself onto his back, but let go as soon as it grabbed, crying out and clutching its hand with its other as blood dripped down.

“Saw-grass sharp, that mane, and likely the tail, as well,” the preter murmured, sounding pleased. “All of it designed for one purpose and yet handsome in execution.” She raised her hand and flicked the fingers as though scattering water away. “Two more, aid your kind.”

Martin had no more warning than that before two more of the brownies threw themselves into the fight. He backed up, hindquarters bunching as though he were about to run away, then—rather than rearing or screaming the way a normal horse might—he lunged directly into the fight.

And seconds later, there were four small bodies laid out on the grass, one still, the other three moving faintly, either shocked into submission or too injured to get up again.

Jan’s eyes forced themselves closed—and did that happen to the preter, too? Impossible to tell, and the bitch would never admit it, if so—and when they opened again, Martin was standing in front of them. His pants leg was ripped to shreds up to his thigh, both of his arms were covered with scratches, his face was bruised, and he looked as though he had at least one black eye.

But the grin on his face was not only triumphant but a little scornful, and the look in his eyes was brilliantly cold, like an icicle on a cold winter morning. There was nothing of the Martin she knew in those eyes. Jan shivered a little, even as the queen leaned forward in her chair.

“I had thought your kind only good for drowning little girls in shallow streams,” she said.

“You may find this world surprises you,” he replied and then added, almost as an afterthought, “my lady.”

Nalith practically purred at his presumption, or how he yoked that presumption into obedience, more likely. Jan choked back her own anger and nausea, remembering their reason for being here. Get into her graces. Find a way to hold her here, see if they could identify a weakness or find a way to use her against the other preters, alert AJ, and let the teams descend.

Nothing else mattered.