Eye of the Tempest (Jane True)

by Nicole Peeler

  I shook my head. “I wouldn’t forget Jason and what happened just because we moved. And everything worked out for the best—”

  “You sorted yourself out, yes,” he interrupted. “But at what price? I let you suffer because I wanted to be here if Mari came home. But she didn’t, and now we know she won’t…”

  With that, my father’s face fell and his eyes glazed with tears. He was putting a brave face on things, but he wasn’t going to forget my mother, or deal with her loss, overnight. So I leaned forward in his hug in order to tuck my head under his chin, and I let my own tears join his.

  We cried then, together, for my mom, for our family, for each other and our loss. As painful as it was to know she was gone, at that moment of sharing with my father, it felt like some very small part of my grief eased. Not all of it, but even that little bit felt like a lot.

  I hoped he felt the same.

  “How long have I been out?” I asked when we’d stopped snuffling. It had obviously been long enough for my dad to get over the shock of the supernatural world, have someone tell him about my mom’s death, and grow a beard.

  A week? Maybe two?

  “A month,” he replied, to my horror.

  “Good lord,” I whispered. “A month?” No wonder my limbs felt all tingly and weird still. Feeling was coming back, but slowly.

  “Yep. And we thought we were going to lose you quite a few times. Your power kept draining. Dr. Sam says that if”—and here my dad again made that same series of bizarre sounds he’d made earlier.

  “Gesundheit,” I interrupted.

  “Sorry?”

  “You sneezed.”

  My dad laughed. “No, that’s your friend’s name. With the tattoos.”

  I blinked at him, and then it hit me. “You mean Blondie? With the Mohawk?”

  “Yes, that’s not a sneeze. It’s her name.”

  “Hmmm,” I said, trying to figure out what he’d said and how he’d said it. “I think I’ll stick with Blondie.”

  Especially since, although everyone keeps telling me she’s my friend, I have yet to determine her status for myself.

  For, while I’d once told the barghest I got a good vibe from the Original, that was before she showed up right before we were attacked in Anyan’s driveway. Yeah, she’d saved me, but was it all just a clever trick to gain our trust?

  Chuckling again, my dad shook his head ruefully. “I had some time to practice while you were sleeping. Anyway, yeah, if she hadn’t been here, you would be dead. It was her power that kept you going.”

  “Hmm,” I said, wondering what the Original’s motives were in keeping me alive. Not to mention, when had everyone become such chums? Last thing I’d known, Blondie was a stranger. And that’s what she was to me, until I could talk to her myself.

  In other words, Blondie and I needed to have a little chat.

  “And Dr. Sam is the…” My voice trailed off, still not able to say the word in front of my dad.

  “The goblin?” he asked, his grin infectious. “Yep. A friend of Anyan’s. Both of them have been wonderful.” My dad started to make that funny combination of sounds, and then he stopped himself. “Er, Blondie did most of the healing, but you needed to be kept fed and everything. Dr. Sam also did things to keep your muscles from atrophying. You’ll still be a little weak for a few days, but he said that if you woke up and had a swim, you’d be almost as good as new.”

  My dad said “if you woke up” so casually that my heart broke. After everything he’d been through, he must have really thought I might die. He didn’t deserve to worry like that; he didn’t deserve that fear and pain.

  I nearly started crying again, but he stopped me with what he said next.

  “He healed me, Jane.”

  “What?” I asked, confused. When had he gotten hurt?

  If those motherfuckers hurt my dad…

  “My heart. It’s as good as new. Like I was never sick a day in my life.”

  My breath caught in my throat. My dad’s condition had been a part of our lives for so long that I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have him heart-whole and healthy.

  “Really? Really healed?”

  “Completely. And Anyan went with me to my doctor, so that he could… What do you call it? Glamour?”

  I nodded.

  “So he could glamour everyone, and he found someone to change everything in the system. Even followed me around so that all of Rockabill knows me as ‘Calvin True, that guy who has always been healthy.’ ”

  “Oh, Dad. That’s marvelous…”

  “It’s been strange,” he interrupted, as if he didn’t really want to discuss the issue. “Such a blessing at such a terrible time.”

  I nodded, knowing he would need a while to think through what had happened over the past month. I was, after all, something of an expert on getting over pretty big shocks to the system.

  Before we could talk more about how he felt about his sudden return to health, the door to my room burst open as a girl with pearl-gray skin and hair the color and texture of seaweed entered.

  “Jane!” Trill shouted, her voice as dark and eerie as an oil slick. But the smile that took up her strange, flat-featured face was so joyful that she was beautiful.

  And just as instantaneously she was crowding past my father to wrap her arms around me—arms that smelled of brine. My sea, I thought, desire swamping over me as irresistibly as thirst or hunger.

  “Don’t smother her, kelpie,” came a gentle, grandmotherly voice from the other side of Anyan’s massive bed. When I managed to extricate myself from Trill’s grasp, I moved to greet the little woman I knew was waiting.

  Nell Gnome’s enormous gray bun floated above the mattress, the rest of her plump, two-foot-tall little form revealing itself as I leaned over to the other side of the bed. When our eyes met, she smiled at me, illuminating her fairy godmother features. Features that all but disappeared in a thousand kindly crinkles.

  “We thought we’d lost you, little halfling,” she said, as she levitated herself onto the bed to give me her own hug.

  “I’m apparently not all that easy to kill,” I said to her, laughing as she patted me on the cheek as if to convince herself I was really there.

  “No. You Trues are made of tough stuff. Calvin,” she said, nodding cordially toward my father.

  “Nurse Ratched,” he intoned drily, twitching an eyebrow at me that caused me to blush. I’d left my father in Nell’s care a few times, under a glamour that convinced him she was a nurse, rather than a gnome. A nurse I’d named Ratched, in a moment of pure insanity.

  I made an I’m sorry face at him before turning to Nell.

  “Okay. I need to know what happened.” Then I made a face as my bladder suddenly made itself known.

  “Gottapeegottapeegottapee!” I chanted, moving over to the edge of the bed. Trill helped me stand on shaky legs, and then she practically carried me to Anyan’s bathroom. Once she’d propped me up on the toilet, I shooed her away, but when I was finished, I only just managed to haul myself up by using the sink as leverage.

  Staring at myself in the mirror as I washed my hands, I was greeted with quite a shock. My hair, first of all, was insane. For some reason it had grown exponentially, hanging down to my hips in undulating black waves.

  Undulating is polite for greasy, I thought, making a face at my grubby self.

  The hair was going to need to be cut stat, not least because my bangs were halfway down my face. And I was very thin, far thinner than I’d ever been in my life. The sweatpants and T-shirt I was dressed in draped off my frame like I was some jankie old hanger. As someone who enjoyed being curvy, I didn’t like what I saw. Plus, I figured I lived enough of a knock-around life that I needed some padding.

  I pulled down the sweatpants a little bit to poke at one of my hip bones in disbelief, unsure if I’d ever even known I had hip bones till that moment. Raising up my T-shirt, I realized I also had ribs! Sticking out from my middle!
r />   Running my hands down my sides under the shirt, I decided I was not a fan of ribs on girls. At least, not on this girl.

  When I returned to the bedroom, someone had rustled me up chips and a sandwich, which waited for me on a really cute breakfast tray table. Anyan must be a fan of breakfast in bed, I thought, an idea that pleased me on about four hundred levels.

  Pausing before getting back into bed, I eyed the tray.

  “Are you sure I can eat this?” I asked. I felt hungry, and my tummy was rumbling like an irate bear cub, but if I’d been asleep for a month…

  “Doc Sam says you’re good to go. If you feel like eating, you probably can. Just try to take it slow.”

  I got back into bed and Trill laid the tray on my lap before sitting down next to it facing me. Nell echoed her position, her little legs kicking in the air. My father and Dr. Sam must have gone downstairs, as I heard them talking about what I’d need, care-wise, in the coming weeks.

  But what I need right now is this sandwich, I thought, as I proceeded to shove it into my face as if emulating a foie gras goose. So much for taking it slow.

  At some point during tearing apart my meal like a rabid wolf, I’d mumbled at Nell that I still wanted catching up. The gnome had backed away a step—probably nervous I’d finish my sandwich and then start in on her—before filling me in.

  “You were attacked by humans—mercenaries. They were very, very professional and very, very expensive. And whoever hired them was smart. I would have detected anything magical coming into my Territory, unless they were ridiculously strong, like your friend the Original, or one of the handful of factions with powerful camouflaging powers, like the nagas.”

  I was too busy shoving food into my face to remind Nell that Blondie was no friend of mine. Not yet, at least.

  “And there aren’t many nagas left,” Trill said, with a nasty little grin.

  “As I was saying,” Nell said, clearly admonishing her seaweedy friend. “Whoever hired the humans was smart. Even if a race can camouflage, the second they use magic I’d know it. And it’s hard for powerful beings not to use magic, especially in an attack. We can do it for a short time, like I know you did when Anyan took you on that raid, but that was only no-magic for about ten minutes. Most supes accidentally break and do a little magic after a little while, and from what we were able to determine, those soldiers were kicking around Rockabill for at least a full day to enact that ambush. Not to mention, if you have strong magical offensive skills, why on earth would you practice such extensive, physical offensive skills?”

  “And to surprise someone like Anyan with any type of offense, you have to be really good,” Trill added, as her black-nailed fingers crept across my lap toward the potato chips on my plate. She got a quick slap on the hand for her pains as I finished the last of my sandwich.

  I’ve got ribs to cover, I thought, unrepentant of my greed.

  “ ’Kay, but what about nagas and camouflaging?” I asked, before starting in on my chips. If I were honest, I was already pretty full. But that had never stopped me before.

  “Nagas and at least two other factions have abilities to camouflage their powers. They have to be very strong for it to be really effective, and they use up most of their power maintaining their camouflage. But it makes them effective spies, if they’re successful.”

  “How do you think Jimmu got into Nell’s Territory?” Trill asked me, in a duh voice, as she eyed my ever-disappearing pile of Ruffles.

  In return, I gave the kelpie my own patented fuck-off face. “I was too stuck on the whole man-who-turns-into-a-snake-and-wants-to-kill-me thing to wonder much about the how-he-got-into-the-gnome’s-Territory thing.” To conclude, I shoved about five chips into my mouth and then licked my fingers at her in revenge.

  “So whoever hired the humans,” Nell said in a loud voice, obviously wanting our attention back on her, “was smart, well connected, and wealthy. We do not use human servants. Ever.”

  Just like you don’t use human science, I thought sarcastically, remembering what everyone kept saying about Conleth and, later, Jarl’s laboratories. And speaking of my favorite evil Alfar…

  “Jarl?” I mumbled through my very full mouth, spitting out crumbs.

  Nell shook her little head. “How? His assets were frozen when he killed Orin. And yes, I’m sure he had money squirreled away,” she said in response to the face I pulled. “And Jarl certainly had the contacts. But how could he have organized the attack?”

  I frowned as I swallowed.

  “Maybe he had it planned from a while ago?”

  “How? You hadn’t been in Rockabill for weeks. That team, according to what Anyan’s been able to find out, entered the area the day you left the Compound, and they were hired just before that. In other words, before Jarl needed to kill you, and shortly before he began fleeing for his life.”

  “He could have set it up beforehand and then just made a single phone call,” I grumbled, completely convinced that Jarl was responsible for everything nasty, up to and including the flu, pigeons, and the relative inaccessibility of the G-spot.

  “He could have,” Nell intoned gently. “And I’m not saying he wouldn’t have, or that he’s not somehow involved. But what we’re thinking is that this goes even deeper than Jarl.”

  My eyes widened, my chips forgotten despite my sudden influx of ribs.

  “Deeper? How?”

  “This isn’t the only Territory, Jane. There are Territories all over the world, all of which are experiencing the same population crises we are, and most of which have the same tensions betweens halflings and purebloods. Some are more forward thinking than our Territory, but there are a lot that are even less so.”

  “So you think what?”

  “Jarl can’t be alone in this. Someone had to have informed about your leaving—someone who was there to watch you in the first place, since I know Anyan snuck you two out of that Compound. Which is worrying enough, but we also have to stop thinking just in terms of Jarl. Morrigan’s obviously been involved up to her eyeballs this whole time.”

  “And she was the queen,” I said with a groan, beginning to realize what Nell had already figured out.

  “Yep. With lots of contact with other monarchs in other Territories.”

  Even Trill looked glum at that thought.

  “Good lord. Do you think this is an international conspiracy?” I asked.

  “Who knows? But I wouldn’t rule it out,” Nell said, her normally relaxed features serious.

  “Well, fuckerdoodles to that,” I said, my mind, at that moment, only capable of nibbling at the very edges of such a huge idea.

  Trill giggled. “Yes, fuckerdoodles to that. No more grim talk. Yay for Jane being awake! We need to celebrate! And I bet I know what you need.”

  I looked at the kelpie, my eyes huge with longing.

  “A swim,” Trill finished just as I’d hoped she would, causing Nell to nod sharply.

  “It’s still early in the evening, so a swim it is,” said the gnome. “And since you’re still shaky on your feet…”

  And with that Nell grabbed my hand, along with Trill’s. I felt my world spin as Nell used her borrowed Old Magic to apparate us both.

  I would have protested the lack of warning, but all complaints dried up as I found myself right where I wanted to be:

  Plopped, naked as a jaybird, directly into my ocean.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Letting myself float in midwater, my long hair swirling around me as black as squid’s ink, I opened myself to the Atlantic. As her power flooded through me, I trembled, but not as violently as I had initially. At first, the force of my element had hurt. Rusty from a combination of abuse and disuse, my magical channels balked against the encroaching power. It felt a little like alcohol over abraded flesh, or something forcing its way into too tight a space. But eventually, the power began to soothe until finally it just felt good.

  Trill watched me, in pony form, from a short distance away. He
r little black hooves were planted firmly in the sand, but her seaweed mane and tail tossed as she waited impatiently. I didn’t let her rush me, however. Instead, I slowly—painfully—stretched my magical muscles, feeling them twinge and balk but finally accede to use. Eventually, when I was ready, I opened my eyes and grinned at her. Then I used my magic to dart away, looking back at the kelpie in a clear declaration of “catch me if you can.”

  I was moving slower than I ever had in the water, and sometimes my whole system would stutter like an old car’s engine, but the more I used my mojo the easier it got and the better I felt. Trill followed at a short distance, allowing me to feel like we were really chasing one another even if she was clearly humoring me.

  Swimming close to shore at first, to get the old sea legs back, I went through the sort of basic magical exercises with which I’d started out my training. Trill obliged me by sitting still when I worked up to lobbing mage balls (albeit underwater mage balls), but eventually she turned the tables. Giving chase, she pushed me to pull more on my power, limbering me up even further.

  In the meantime, it felt like heaven to be back in the Atlantic. It was frigid, of course, but either magic or genetics, or a combination of both, kept me from really feeling how cold. All I knew was the water felt delicious against my skin

  Like the caress of a mother’s soothing touch, I thought, poetically, until just a moment later that same soothing water smacked me down to the seabed.

  In our play, Trill and I had wandered too close to the Old Sow. Her piglets were famous for springing up out of nowhere, whenever and wherever they felt like it, and one had caught me unawares. It didn’t hurt when I landed, but it did knock my breath from me—a tricky situation when I was underwater. I had to calm my natural human reaction to suck in a breath and switch to my instinctual selkie brain to filter my oxygen through my magical connection with the water.

  Not that I was in a hurry to pick myself up off the ocean floor anyway. The piglet whirled for a few more minutes nearby, rucking up water and sand and seaweed that rubbed against me in a pleasant exfoliation.