“It’s fine.” My teeth chattered violently and my sinuses sloshed like half the river had hitched a ride in them. “What is this place?”
“The Göta älv river. It’s a lock system, with gates that change the level of the water. It has a rich history of trade and aided Trollhättan’s industrial revolution.”
“Let me guess: Raquel’s got you in tutoring, too?”
“Only when she can catch me. You want me to take you back? We can try again tomorrow.”
I shook my head. I was sure if I stopped to think about things, I’d have a meltdown, but I didn’t want to have to come back tomorrow. Or ever, really, with Jack as a guide. Besides, tomorrow I’d be with Lend, and I’d make things okay. I just needed to finish the job and go home. I could lose it then.
“It’s only a little way to the city,” he said. “I can try another door, if you want.”
“No! No, I’m good with walking, thank you very much.”
We were quiet for a bit, picking our way through the evergreens and gray rocks. It was beautiful. Or it would have been, were I not soaked to the bone and freezing.
“What were you saying about making a new friend?” Jack asked.
A rush of cold swirled through my heart and veins, like an injection of river water. Maybe it would extinguish the tingling in my fingertips.
“Umm, yeah, if by friend I mean someone who tries to drown me. Ever heard of a fossegrim?”
He shook his head.
“Kelpie? Nix? No? All variations of the same lovely type of paranormal who hangs out in the water and drowns people for kicks.” I’d learned about them from Lish. Different areas of the world had different breeds, varying from horselike creatures to dragonish things. Judging by the beautiful-man appearance and music, I’d run into a fosse-grim. Supposedly you could kill them by saying their name but a) how would you find it out in the first place, and b) it’s a little hard to talk when your lungs are slowly filling up with water. Still, legend had it they were occasionally benign, giving music lessons and even marrying mortals every now and again.
I didn’t get the impression this one had any intentions of taking vows.
“So you aren’t going to be best friends.”
“I dunno—he could be fun at a pool party. Assuming you hated everyone you invited.”
We walked in silence for a while, both of us hunched against the evening’s chill, until we entered the outskirts of a city that was far too beautiful and charming to be mistaken for anywhere in America. The buildings were red brick and wood, with a classical feel that made the cars parked out on cobblestone streets look ridiculously out of place. I half expected a horse-drawn cart to come prancing down the street, followed by villagers in braids, singing and dancing. Or maybe I watched too many musicals.
“The neighborhood is a few blocks this way,” Jack said, after reading some street signs to get his bearings. Lamps flickered on and I added Trollhättan to the list of places I’d like to visit for fun someday. I could totally see myself in a traditional Swedish outfit, my hair in ribbons, walking hand in hand through the streets with Lend.
How would he look in lederhosen?
Come to think of it, no one here was wearing lederhosen. That didn’t mean Lend couldn’t, though. . . . Of course, first he’d have to forgive me for sneaking around behind his back. A celebratory trip to Sweden would be a nice way to make up, right? Tucking that idea away for a later date, I started looking—really looking—at the people we passed on the street as we got closer to the potential troll district. For once I blended in well, a much better fit in Scandinavia than most other countries.
“Anything?” Jack whined after we had been wandering for close to half an hour. It was nearly dark now, and we were both shivering. Blisters already claimed every available surface of my wet-socks-and-shoes-clad feet. If I didn’t see something soon, this whole trip was a bust. I hated to think that the poor people kidnapped and forced into slavery by the trolls would have to wait until next week to be rescued, but there wasn’t anything more I could do tonight.
“Nope. Not a—”
A young girl darted across the street in front of me. Cute thing with a pug nose, ruddy cheeks, blond hair, and . . . a little tail sticking out from under her skirt.
Tourist Friendly
I grabbed Jack’s arm and pointed to the girl. He looked at her, then shrugged. “Does that mean we’re done?”
“Come on. Let’s check to be sure we know which house.” We trailed her down the streets, winding through shopping areas and into a residential district. The brick-and-wood homes were neat and well tended, the streets clean under warm lights. The window boxes were empty now, but I imagined how charming this place would be in the spring and summer, lined with flowers.
I tried to keep a discreet distance from the girl. My only job was to figure out where she was staying and report back. No contact of any kind, which I was more than fine with. I hadn’t even brought Tasey along—a fact I was now grateful for, since my little swim wouldn’t have been good for her.
We passed a few people sitting on porches. When I made eye contact, I smiled, and they nodded back hesitantly. If they only knew what was in the midst of them. One woman in a pretty red wool coat stood next to a lamppost, dialing her phone. She glanced up, a small look of surprise on her face as she met my eyes, probably because my hair was still dripping wet. She winked at me and I gave a small wave. The Swedes totally deserved their friendly reputation.
Another corner and the little girl bounced up steps and into a nondescript house. “Bingo.” I was about to tell Jack we could finally go when a throat clearing sound behind us made me turn.
Every single person we’d passed on the way here, including the woman in the red coat, stood behind us, forming a semicircle. A distinctly menacing semicircle.
“Umm, Jack?” I tugged on his arm.
He glanced over his shoulder, then looked back at the house, pulling a communicator out of his pants pocket. “What?”
The crowd moved in closer.
“Jack!”
He turned around, shooting me an annoyed look. “Let me call it in already. I’m cold.”
He couldn’t see them. Which meant they were invisible. Which meant they were trolls.
Trolls who knew I could see them.
“Oh, bleep,” I muttered. How had I forgotten about their invisibility glamours? Now that I looked I could see a hint of distortion around their faces—my stupid sight piercing straight through the invisibility. They’d known something was up the second I saw them on the streets. I waved to the trolls. “Umm, we were just leaving.” I grabbed Jack’s arm, startling him into dropping the communicator, and started to back up—bumping into a particularly large guy, whom I now noticed had an unusually flat nose. And a tail. We were surrounded. He clamped one huge hand onto my shoulder. I bit his thumb, twisting out from under his hand.
“Run!” I darted through the growing crowd, but Jack, unable to see them, stood there like a big oaf. I stopped, torn. They had him surrounded. There was a slight shimmer, as though a wave of heat had come up from the cold streets, and by the look on Jack’s face I knew they were visible to him, now, too.
They closed in, backing Jack up to the wall. The woman in the red coat glared at me. I wanted to scream in frustration. After everything I’d already been through today, now I had to go face a horde of angry trolls to save Jack.
Jack. Stupid, crazy Jack.
I walked back, my feet feeling like they weighed a ton. Jack darted a look at me to say—what?—and I shook my head. Of course I wasn’t going to leave him.
I reached the edge of the circle and the big troll grabbed my arm, carefully staying out of reach of my mouth.
“Evie, you idiot,” Jack said.
“I had to come back for you!”
“No, you really didn’t.” It was then that I noticed his hand on the wall, which opened into blackness. Jack grimaced at me, then slipped through and was gone, much to t
he trolls’ surprise.
“You little fink!” I shouted at the now solid wall. Here I’d come back so he wouldn’t die alone, and he abandoned me. After dropping me into a river and nearly getting me killed.
If I ever saw him again, he was going to get a proper introduction to Tasey.
The trolls whispered a conversation in a guttural, harsh-sounding language. I squirmed, but Big Troll Guy’s hand wasn’t going anywhere. After a moment they pulled me into the nearest house and shoved me onto a floral couch.
There were at least twenty of them now, and they blocked all the escapes. The room wasn’t exactly what I expected of a troll den. Instead of gnawed-on bones and trash, it was spotlessly clean with warm paint tones and tasteful prints. I wondered where the family that really owned it was, how long they’d been held prisoner. And whether or not I was about to join them.
I’d be okay, though. Jack knew where I was. He’d get help and bring it back . . . just like when he’d disappeared and left me stranded in the Center for two days.
I was so screwed.
I watched the trolls warily. Many of them were making phone calls—since when did trolls use cells?—but the others were glaring at me. Now that I looked closer, there were the obvious differences between them and humans, other than the tails. Flatter, wider noses, close-set, small eyes, all of which were slate gray. Most of them had one patch of hair that was wild and uncombed, at odds with their downright professional dress. I should have recognized the look before, invisible or not, but I hadn’t dealt with trolls since I was twelve.
Finally, the woman in the red coat, hair bundled into braids like spun gold, stood in front of me with hands on her wide hips as her tail twitched rapidly from side to side.
“We know who you are.” Her English was heavily accented but clear.
I raised my eyebrows. Apparently even after several months out of the IPCA game my fame had spread. “Then you know you should let me go.” Bluffing was my only option at this point, so I sat up straight and maintained eye contact.
She let out a bitter laugh. “So you can slaughter more of our children?” My jaw dropped, then I sighed, exhausted.
When would paranormals stop accusing me of murder?
A Teeth-Gnashing Good Time
The trolls glared at me, waiting for a response. A strange creaking, scraping noise came from my left; I couldn’t place it until I realized the large male troll next to me was grinding his teeth, every muscle in his considerably muscled body tense.
Not good.
I held my hands up. “First of all, I don’t kill kids. Or anyone for that matter. Who do you think I am?”
The woman in the red coat narrowed her eyes. “If you aren’t the foul creature, how did you see us?”
“What kind of foul creature are we talking about here?” I asked, swiftly changing the subject. My abilities weren’t something I wanted this crowd to know about.
“Vampire,” an ancient troll near the door spat, his lips quivering with rage.
“I am so totally not a vampire.” My chest lightened considerably. This would be easy enough to prove—and to solve.
“Give me a mirror. Or holy water. I’ll drink it, even!” I gasped as someone threw water on the side of my face. “A little warning next time would be nice.” I wiped my cheek with the sleeve of Jack’s coat and watched the faces around me shift from murderous to confused.
“Who are you?” Red Coat asked.
I didn’t know whether or not to lie, so I opted for a combination. “I’m with IPCA.”
The old troll spat again. Charming, that one.
Red Coat shot him a look, then turned back to me. “How could you see us?”
I shrugged. “I’m talented. I’ve been trained to pick out most paranormals.”
“And what interest does IPCA have with us?”
“All IPCA wants is to free whatever humans live here.”
She shook her head, then gestured to the door and said something in the guttural language. Most of the trolls except Hulking Teeth Gnasher and Old Man Saliva left. Red Coat sat down in an armchair across from me, folding her hands in her lap.
“What is your name, child?”
“Evie.”
“I am called Birgitta. And now that we have shared names, let us be honest with each other. This IPCA of yours does not only want whatever precious humans we nasty, murderous trolls have taken.”
I squirmed under her unwavering gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The lie tasted heavy and acrid on my tongue. I knew all about the forced relocation and monitoring. When I’d helped IPCA identify a troll colony before, Lish was processing them for weeks afterward. I wasn’t sure where they removed the trolls to, but they definitely wouldn’t let them stay in the stolen houses. “I was only supposed to find you.”
“And what if I told you there were no humans?”
My eyes widened in horror. “What did you do with them?”
She looked up at the ceiling, her face a picture of exhaustion. “There never were any. We bought all these houses. We have lived by your rules, in your world. And now we are to be removed for doing so?”
“Wait, you didn’t push people out and take their stuff?” That was kind of what trolls did. They took over homes—sometimes whole villages—secreting the people away to their underground lairs as servants. And they were notorious thieves: food, gold, cattle, even babies. Very sticky fingers along with the tails.
“It is not always trolls that thrust humans out of homes. Over a century ago we lived on islands in and under the river. We had our . . . disagreements . . . with the local humans, but were separate and happy to be so. Then they dammed the river with their locks and gates, and drowned the colony we had spent centuries building. Our homes flooded, some called for vengeance. But most of us were tired of working against the tireless onslaught of humans. We decided to stop fighting. We took our gold and bought our way into human society.”
“You own all this stuff?”
She raised her chin proudly. “Why do you think this city flourished after building the locks? By increased trade with us. We do not have the same mechanical skill as you humans, but we manage nearly every business here.”
“So you aren’t hurting anyone at all.” Well, crud. This made things more complicated. A lot more complicated. If she was telling the truth—and she had no reason to lie to me—then IPCA didn’t have any business with them. The whole point of IPCA was to keep paranormals from harming humans, and these weren’t doing any harm. But I didn’t think IPCA would see it that way. Trolls were trolls to them.
I rubbed my face, tired and cold and wishing the world were black-and-white again. “Okay. I can—I don’t know. Let’s pretend like none of this ever happened.”
Old Man Saliva grunted something at Birgitta and she nodded. “You work for IPCA. Your job is to find but also protect paranormals, is it not?”
“Yeah, I guess it could be interpreted that way.” If you thought monitoring, detaining, and controlling were the same as protecting, which IPCA did.
“Then you must help us.” She stated it as fact. “You see things no one else can. You will find the vampire plaguing us.”
“I didn’t—”
“Find a paranormal to take back to IPCA and protect those of us doing no harm. This is your job.” Her slate eyes bored into mine, softening around the edges. “Please—our children, the little trollbaerns. We have so very few and they are more precious than any life we have built here. Help us.”
How could I say no? I stood. “Alrighty. Let’s go bag a vamp.”
Thirty minutes later I was wandering the evening streets with Hulking Teeth Gnasher by my side. Birgitta had told me about the vampire stalking them. Trolls only have children once or twice a century, and the trollbaerns don’t learn how to use invisibility glamours for several decades, leaving them vulnerable. Already two had been killed and another seriously hurt.
The whole thing made me sick to my s
tomach. These were the vamps I knew. This was why IPCA still needed to be in the world, no matter what Lend thought.
The trolls had set a trap for the vamp, which I unwittingly triggered by following the little troll girl bait. Now it was my job to freeze my butt off and find their sleazy stalker. I didn’t know how I’d find anyone under these circumstances, though. Gnasher’s breathing was so loud I could barely hear my own footsteps. It was cramping my style.
“I think I’ll have more luck by myself.” I smiled so he wouldn’t take it the wrong way.
He frowned, his brow almost covering his close-set eyes. “Not safe.”
“Trust me, I’ve been around the block a few times. I can handle a vampire.”
“Invisible.” He gestured to himself. I shook my head. A vampire would still smell him, which was no doubt why they hadn’t had any luck trapping it.
Glaring dubiously, he hesitated, then turned around and went back the direction we had come. I let out a relieved breath. The trolls in this town might be innocuous, but that didn’t make them any less intimidating.
Hands jammed into my pockets and thighs already chafing from too much time walking in damp jeans, I wandered the streets, picking directions at random. There was a lot to think about. The strange liquid sensation that kept drifting over me, for one. The way the breeze seemed to follow me like a little lost puppy. The English test I was going to be way, way too tired for in the morning. What I was going to say to Lend to make everything better. How I was going to find a ride home with no communicator. How hard I was going to hit Jack for abandoning me.
That last one warmed me up a bit.
I kept thinking I heard footsteps shadowing mine, but no matter how many times I whipped around, no one was there. When I’d gotten myself completely lost, a soft voice with a hint of an accent drifted from a dark stoop next to me. “I think you’re in the wrong part of town.” I could hear the smile through the dark.
I stopped, facing him. “No, I’m pretty sure I’m in the right part.”
He stepped forward into the light, white eyes gleaming dully beneath his glamour and fangs bared in a pleasant smile. Yup, exactly where I needed to be. Bring it on, dead guy.
Supernaturally (Paranormalcy) Page 11
