by Rhys Ford
Which explained his dismay. One of the rules that repatriated changelings agreed to when they got back was that they didn’t go to the Otherworld without oversight from Iron Door.
“Is that a problem?” Bell asked quietly. He reached for his sap on his belt and then remembered he’d dropped it sometime between when the car hit him and he hit the road. That left the gun.
The Changeling glanced up and met his eyes for a second. One of his mismatched eyes was a bright electric blue and the other soulful amber. Neither had any white visible.
“You tell me,” he said.
His body language was relaxed, hands loose and shoulders down. It was a deliberately unthreatening stance, assumed to look harmless, but Bell couldn’t blame him for that.
“Open the trunk,” Bell said.
The Changeling looked… tired… but walked back to the car and leaned in to do as he was told. Bell kept an eye on him as he edged around the car. He’d popped the trunk open, and Bell lifted it up cautiously to check inside.
There was a dirty sock wedged between the back of the seats and half a bag of trail mix spilled over the carpet. It smelled of old clothes and Axe body spray. Not exactly how Bell would imagine the changeling smelled—grass, lemons, and clean sweat apparently, so he could thank his brain for that—but not illegal.
“Stand at the side of the road,” he said. “Where I can see you.”
“Maybe not a great idea to hang out here,” the Changeling pointed out as he backed up to the side of the road. He leaned against a tree and crossed his arms, all long legs and patience. It should have looked relaxed, but he looked alert instead. “It’s a weak spot.”
“I know,” Bell said. “Why do you think I headed this way?”
He checked the inside of the car. It was a quick and dirty search—under the seats, in the glove box, behind the shades—instead of the forensic exam he should have ordered. Instinct told Bell that it was clean, though. It didn’t… prickle… at his ears the way active magic did.
“Why’d you break the rules?” he asked.
The changeling shrugged without pushing himself off the tree. “Shortcut.”
“You risked prison to cut a few hours off your trip?” Bell leaned against the side of the car and reached around to press his hand over his bicep where the hound’s teeth had dug in. Blood welled between his fingers, and he resisted the urge to take a proper look. It was always easier if you didn’t look at it. “Hot date?”
The changeling blinked and then grimaced wryly, as if he’d remembered something. “No, that was actually later on. I should call and let him know I won’t make it.”
He. Bell tried to pretend he hadn’t filed that away for later. It didn’t work. He could feel it as his interest went from cute to possible. He clenched his teeth and snorted to himself. His arm had been used for dog chew, and he still had an eye out for a date? With someone who was possibly a criminal, if an unusually easygoing one.
Not to mention the other issues. It wasn’t exactly forbidden to fraternize with changelings, but it wasn’t encouraged either. Conflict of interest and all that.
None of that would fit with his reputation.
“What was so important?”
“Probably the same thing that took you over the border,” the changeling said after a second. He pushed himself off the tree and waited expectantly until a nod from Bell gave him permission to walk back to the car. “My son’s at camp. He called me earlier.”
Bell scowled in irritation. “He’s not supposed to have a phone.”
“He’s fourteen.” Apparently that was enough explanation. “Do you want a ride or not? We’re going to the same place, I’d guess, and I’ve already hit you with my car. How much worse can it get?”
The laugh caught Bell off guard. It felt rusty in his throat, but it had been a while. He glanced down at his arm, blood bright on his fingers, and felt the dull pressure of vertigo throb against his inner ear. It wasn’t the worst injury he’d ever had, but something about the loose, crumpled strips of skin turned his stomach. He looked away again.
“Good point. You know where the camp is?” Bell asked as he swallowed the nausea and limped around to the passenger side. The seat was a bit too far forward. It pushed his knees against the dashboard, but he wasn’t going to move it with his jacked-up arm.
“I found it last time. Eventually.” The changeling climbed into the car and closed the door. He glanced sidelong at Bell from under the tangle of Collie dog hair as he started the engine. “And it’s Conri.”
“Drive, Mr. Conri,” Bell said flatly.
“Just Conri,” he said and then hit the gas.
THE SKINNY, red-haired kid shuffled resentfully through the door, all straggly hair and bones that he didn’t have quite enough meat for. His long thin face was pinched in sullen lines, and he looked like a troublemaker. Not a ringleader, but the sort of kid who started fires and stole wallets to buy beer.
Then he saw Conri, and all the tension bled out of him. He was still a goblin-looking kid, but a desperately relieved one, all of a sudden.
“Da,” he blurted and threw himself across the room into Conri’s arms. He buried his face in Conri’s broad shoulder and wrapped skinny arms around him. “I don’t know what happened. I swear.”
The head of the camp—Dr. Gwen Cordwainer, who’d been at Langley before she transferred to Iron Door after the Return—cleared her throat.
“That’s what everyone is saying, Finn,” she said in a smooth, modulated voice that meant it was “on.” “But someone must have seen something.”
Conri rubbed a big hand over Finn’s skinny back and lifted his head to give Cordwainer a long, steady look. It made the hair on the back of Bell’s neck raise, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw his SSA shift his weight slightly so he’d have a good shot if something went wrong.
“Someone ain’t him,” Conri said flatly. “He doesn’t know what you want. So move on.”
“With all due respect,” SSA Felix Donnelly said. “You don’t know what’s happened yet. So how can you know what we need?”
“People say that,” Conri said. “All due respect, I mean, when they don’t think you’re due any.”
“That’s not what he meant,” Cordwainer interrupted. “Mr. Conri—”
“Just Conri.”
It had left Bell off-balance earlier. He was gratified to see it threw Cordwainer, briefly, off script as well.
“Please,” she said. “Sit.”
Conri cocked his head to the side. “Are you being funny?” he asked.
When Cordwainer realized what she’d said, color flooded her face, hot and dark under her makeup, and she spluttered for a second. She was excellent at what she did, but she rarely dealt with changelings one-on-one. It didn’t help that Conri made no apparent effort to make himself look more human.
“I certainly didn’t—”
Felix snorted. “Sit or stand, it’s your call,” he told Conri and then glanced at Cordwainer. “And we have bigger problems than the fact your staff can’t outwit teenagers, Doctor. So drop it.”
Cordwainer glared at him. Scuttlebutt had it she didn’t like Felix. But few people did. He’d got as far as he was because he was very good at his job, and he stalled there for the same reason.
“What is the problem?” Conri asked. He peeled Finn off him and nudged the boy into one of the chairs while he stayed on his feet. “I know that Finn and some other kids snuck out—”
“It wasn’t my idea,” Finn objected. Under Conri’s quick glare, he slouched down in the seat and fiddled with the ragged hem of his T-shirt. He muttered under his breath, “Well, you made it sound like my idea, and it wasn’t.”
“We know that,” Felix said. “It was Robin Mell’s idea, but unfortunately we can’t find him to ask him anything. Or… Thistle Graves, Shanko Deeds, and Annie Boot either. So that leaves us you and the others who made it back to camp. Only apparently none of you saw anything.”
Finn hunched in on himself, more angle and points than seemed natural under his black clothes. He looked up at Conri pleadingly. “I swear, Da, I don’t remember. It was a party, that’s all, nothing bad happened. I had a couple of drinks of punch, and it made me feel sick, so I went to sleep in the back of the van. Next thing I know we were back here, and the FOBs all had sticks up their asses all of a sudden.”
It sounded true, but Bell had missed the first round of interviews. As soon as they reached the camp, Felix had sent him out on recon. The other kids’ stories could be just as believable and paint Finn as the bad guy.
Bell glanced at Conri’s hand on Finn’s shoulder, the scarred knuckles and steady reassurance, and hoped not. Stupid, but it would be nice to see someone’s faith turn out to be justified.
“I thought the fey could hold their liquor,” Felix said.
Conri snorted. “No, you didn’t. Now, is anyone going to tell me what actually happened?”
They didn’t have to. Any crimes that touched the Otherworld came under Iron Door’s jurisdiction. Eventually they might have to explain themselves, but no one could interfere in the middle of their investigation.
Felix studied Conri and Finn for a moment, his expression set and hard to read.
“The problem is that, right now, you know pretty much everything we do,” he said eventually in a hard voice. “Robin Mell and a group of kids from camp snuck out to go to this party. Now four of them are missing, and no one seems to have seen anything out of the ordinary.”
“And what don’t I know?”
Bell rubbed his bandaged arm as he spoke up. It had been his job to make this bit of information outdated, but he hadn’t pulled it off.
“A local girl has gone missing too,” he said. “Stolen away to faerie. The first in twenty years, since the Accord was signed.”
Finn was too ginger to have much color, but he still managed to lose what he had. He was gray as he looked around the room.
“I didn’t know anything about that.” He reached up and clutched at Conri’s hand. “Da, I swear nobody said anything about—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Conri said grimly. “Whether you all knew or not, if the girl is in the Otherworld by anything other than chance….”
“Then the Accord has been violated,” Felix finished. “With everything that entails.”
THE GIRL.
Nora Kessel, seventeen years old and inexplicably nondescript. The details made her sound like she had it all going for her—tall, blond, blue-eyed, and slim. In the photos her dad and the school provided, it was obvious she was too tall, too thin, and her eyes weren’t blue enough, while her hair was too blond.
She wasn’t ugly, but she wasn’t pretty either. Instead she was just there in photos, with a challenging expression on her face as if she dared whoever was behind the lens to take a good shot.
Bell didn’t know why, but he had the strong feeling he’d like her. He laid the photo back down on the desk.
“Is there any reason to think she was targeted?” he asked.
The fey took who they wanted—a midwife to nurse their newborns, a drunk who’d staggered through a fairy ring, or a lawyer who’d slighted them. They sought out—or had, before the long conflict had finally ground to a brutal, exhausted halt—the exceptional. Beauty, talent, wisdom, or wealth—the fey liked to pluck them up and put them in pride of place.
Conri had probably stumbled into the Otherworld by chance, Bell mused absently. He was handsome enough, but the fey tended to prefer pretty to rugged. They kept their pets human too, in appearance, at least. Alterations as extensive as Conri’s suggested that he hadn’t been a prize.
“I doubt it,” Felix said as he unfastened his bulletproof vest and squirmed out of it. His T-shirt rode up as he did it, revealing the weft of old scar tissue that clotted on his stomach. The official party line was that humanity had won, and the fey had been brought to heel. Most people believed it, but it didn’t take long on the front lines to realize it hadn’t been nearly that clean… or that clean-cut. “Proficient and hard-working is how people describe her, and nice if you press them.”
“Nothing wrong with nice.”
“Not to us maybe,” Felix said as he propped his hip up on the windowsill, his booted foot dangling off the ground. “But it’s not a trait the fey admire. Did you find any trace of the missing kids on the other side?”
Bell gingerly lowered himself into the chair. It had hurt when he hit the road, but as the kick of adrenaline faded, he picked up new aches and pains. They’d fade once the faerie salve soaked through his skin, but until then, he’d ache and smell of aniseed and lunary.
“Nothing. No dropped beads, torn clothes, or bits of hair,” he said as he stretched his legs out in front of him. His left knee popped, but that was nothing new. Bell had joined Iron Door a decade after the Accord was signed, so he’d never had to face down elf knights with nothing but bad attitude, a mouthful of blood, and a crowbar. But even without the fey to deal with, the Otherworld had plenty to throw at them. “Do schools not teach kids to pull a Hansel the minute they’re grabbed anymore?”
It was a facetious question. Bell was surprised when Felix twisted his mouth and shook his head.
“Irrelevant to a curriculum in dire need of modernization,” he quoted dryly as he crossed his arms. “I believe most places replaced it with sex ed, which will come in handy if this does break the Accord.”
Bell shifted uncomfortably. He could feel his torn skin as it knit back together under his bandages, and it had the same prickly discomfort/satisfaction as a picked scab.
“Will it come to that?” he asked. “After all this time, all the blood shed to get that thing signed, would we really go back to war over one girl? Who might not even have been taken by the fey.”
“It was always over one girl, or one boy,” Felix said. “It was about every single child that was taken. So yes, if we don’t find Nora, it could mean war. Or worse. There are people—plenty of people—who think we gave too many concessions in the Accord. Who think we were the ones who set the terms. This would give them the opportunity to roll a lot of them back.”
The sound of children as they shrieked in laughter and kicked a ball around the yard filtered in through the window. Bell watched them. They weren’t human children. That was obvious at a glance—too skinny, too fast, too fey. Still children.
“What about them?” he asked. “The changelings.”
Felix ignored the question. They both already knew the answer. Bell could remember the Return. Parents had been elated to get their children back, grown grandchildren had been awkwardly awed to grip their grandmother’s unlined hands, and then there were the rest—the ones whose families were long dead, who didn’t know how to drive cars or use the internet, who hadn’t wanted to come back. People were a lot less elated then.
“We need to find the missing children,” Felix told him as he levered himself up out of the window. “Then none of us will have to deal with what-ifs. But it needs to be done quickly. Once people catch wind this has happened, it won’t take long before both sides are setting fires.”
Of course, the changelings had missing children too. Bell had seen the way Conri gripped his son’s shoulder. He supposed the others also had people who loved them. Their situation was less dire—the Otherworld already had its stamp on them—but they still needed to come home.
“What about extra manpower?” Bell asked as he sat forward. They had men here, but just because you were Iron Door didn’t mean you were a Templar. The fey could take anyone, or anything they wanted, but humans could only cross at certain times or when they met certain random criteria. The seventh son of a seventh son, the descendants of someone the fey had blessed—or cursed—the caul-born, and anyone who’d died of hanging or drowning. Iron Door aggressively recruited anyone who qualified, but there were still only a handful of them in each state. “The Other Side here is a slough, cut off and left to go fallow. There’s only one ford i
n and out, so it’s a killing ground there for anything smart enough.”
Felix raised his eyebrows. “You think that’s why you ran into the hounds? Because it’s good hunting. Or were they on guard?”
“I don’t know,” Bell said. He scratched his arm and felt the dull bruise of nearly healed pain. “It doesn’t really matter. I can fend for myself, but if I have a half-dozen kids in tow, it’s not going to be so easy.”
“Then stick to one,” Felix said flatly. “Once we stop this from escalating, we can go back for the rest.”
Bell grimaced and tilted his head back against the seat. “So no backup?”
“Not everyone wants to stop this escalating,” Felix pointed out. “They can’t stop me getting my own men here, but they can slow it down. I’ll cover you when you get back, but I can’t cross over.”
That had been written into the Accord by the fey themselves, in a neat, scratchy script at the end of the document. Bell figured that was evidence enough that all the stories about Felix were actually only half of the legend. If Felix went across the border, the Accord would go up in flames.
Bell ran his fingers through his hair and found burrs from his last trip worked deep into the unruly waves. He picked them out and stuck them in his pocket to get rid of properly later.
“So, I’m on my own,” he said. “Well, why change the habit of a lifetime?”
Chapter Three
HE’D BE informed if anything else changed, Cordwainer had told him as two Iron Door guards politely waited to escort him out of the camp. Until then he was welcome to stay in town, with the unsaid rider that he had to find somewhere to stay in town.
Conri had hugged Finn and let them give him the bum’s rush. He’d be of more use doing something out here than locked up behind the camp’s walls, and—let’s be honest—if things did kick off, Finn would be safer under Templar guard.
For now.
It didn’t take him long to find some of the local kids who’d been at the party when it was crashed. Elwood might not be a particularly tolerant town, but backwoods teenagers still watched TV and dreamed of going to LA or New York. The more their parents told them to stay away from the kids at the camp, the more intrigued they were about changelings and magic and what it had been like to be stolen away by the fey.
