Changeling on the Job: A Changeling Wars Novella

by A. G. Stewart

  Anwynn looked away. “They look tasty, is all.” She cleared her throat. “So what’s next? Back to the house where I most assuredly do not have my own television?”

  I pulled my cellphone from my back pocket. “No. It’s time to use one of my lifelines. It’s time to call a friend.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MAYBE “FRIEND” WAS A BIT GENEROUS. Officer Gomez didn’t sound pleased to hear from me. “You again,” she said. “What?”

  I supposed I couldn’t blame her. The last time we’d had contact was back when Grian had decided to lay siege to the jail. “Listen, I just need a little information. Don’t get annoyed—I need to know if anyone’s called in any reports of small flying…um…people, lately?”

  “Goddammit, Nicole!” Gomez shouted into the phone. I held it a little ways out from my ear. “I thought you were supposed to keep a lid on all that stuff?”

  “Think about it. Most of the doorways are in Portland, and that’s a hundred forty-five square miles. Your bureau employs about a thousand police officers. A thousand police officers for a hundred forty-five square miles, and one little, itty-bitty me for the Fae side of things.”

  The phone was silent for a moment. “You memorized how many square miles Portland is?”

  “Well, how else am I supposed to keep track of what’s where, how much land I need to patrol, and how many days that takes?” I said, exasperated.

  “Fine,” Gomez said. “I’ll check.”

  For a moment, all I heard was the crackle of her breath, rustling papers, and the tapping of keys. “Yeah, there’s been something recent. Past hour—someone called in a sighting up in Kenton.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and hung up.

  “That’s sort of a large area,” Anwynn so helpfully pointed out.

  “And I didn’t almost become lead sales representative at Frank Gibbons Inc. by being stupid or disorganized.” I strode to my car, opened the door, and popped open the glove box. I didn’t need to look to know that Anwynn was rolling her eyes. That starts to happen once you live with someone for a little while.

  A paper map of Portland sat nestled inside the glove box. I pulled it out and unfolded it on the car hood. I had a bigger, brighter, more color-coded one at home. This was my travel size.

  People had been reporting the souring milk debacles on neighborhood message boards, on consumer complaint websites, and even just on various blogs. Anywhere I could get a location or even a vague one, I’d marked it on my map.

  I checked Kenton. There were several hits there, all concentrated on the same block. “Reconnaissance,” I said, pointing out the spots to Anwynn. “If Mr. Cloaky is looking for another victim, he’s going to nab him or her from this spot.”

  Anwynn only yawned. “Are we leaving, then, or what?”

  “Nicole.” Kailen emerged from the bushes next to Chris’s house. Normally, that should have made anyone look creepy, but Kailen looked like he’d stepped from a cologne advertisement. “Can I speak to you for a moment?”

  I should have told him I was in a rush, or that we could talk later, or both. Instead, I crossed the street to meet him. I couldn’t keep ignoring him just because I didn’t know how to describe the state of our relationship. If we were friends, avoiding him was sort of a dick move. “Yes?”

  He looked at me for a long moment. “You’re tapping your foot.”

  I stilled my foot. So I was. “And?”

  “You’re eager to leave.”

  Somewhere, in my city, that cloaked man was stalking another victim for his blood rite, and I was fresh out of unicorn juice. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve got a lead, and I’ve got to catch this guy before he does any more damage.”

  “You always rush into things,” Kailen said.

  I was tapping my foot again. With a supreme effort of will, I stopped. “That’s how I get things done, okay?”

  “That’s how you get yourself killed. This isn’t your job. Well, it is, but you know what I mean. This isn’t your mortal job. What do you know about who you’re chasing?”

  I shoved my hands into my pockets, one hand curling around the butter knife, the other curving around the petrified kelpie heart. “I saw him at the market.”

  “Tell me about it,” Kailen said.

  I gestured to the dark and empty street. It must have been getting into early morning. “What, here? Now?”

  “I’ve lived a lot of years,” he said, his voice low and soothing. I felt like a horse he was trying to tame. “Sometimes telling someone else what you saw can help unveil clues you missed the first time.”

  I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. He was right. I was itching to go, to act, but I didn’t know anything about this cloaked guy except that he was one of the Sidhe and was Talented in swordplay. I had my Talents too, but I was going to run into this blind, with no idea of who was on this guy’s side or even how many sprites he had with him at any given time. “Okay. I’ll try.”

  I told Kailen about spotting the man in the marketplace, about the chase, the way the man ran up the side of the cliff and evaded us, the underhill passage.

  Kailen absorbed these details, his expression intent. “A daemon geas, are you sure?”

  “Yes. It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “The user of a daemon geas is essentially inviting a daemon into his body. Some Sidhe can control it, but most can’t. It can give you great destructive power—think dissolving things into rot and smoke by mere touch—but it eventually drives the bearer mad.”

  “Lovely,” I said. “It sounds like a regular barrel of fun.”

  “What did the man look like? Did you catch a glimpse of his face?”

  I shook my head. “No, he—” I stopped. He’d had his face covered with a scarf.

  I hadn’t stopped to think about why. For some reason I’d just assumed he had his face covered so he could hide from me. But he hadn’t known I’d followed him to the marketplace, and the sprites wouldn’t have had the chance to report back to him by then.

  He’d covered his face for other reasons.

  “Kailen, are there any Sidhe who have facial disfigurements? Any Sidhe men?”

  He thought for a moment. “Well, there’s Maarten of the Daelus family, Iothe of the Muirgheal family, and Panolo of the Rustannars.”

  I blinked. That many had facial disfigurements? That was…two more than I’d expected. “Okaaay, well, which of those families have sprites beholden to them?”

  “All of them,” Kailen said. He paused. “But from what you’ve said, I think you’re after air sprites, not water or fire. In that case, of the three, only the Daelus family has air sprites beholden to them.”

  “Maarten of the Daelus family,” I said. “That’s it. I’ve got my man.” I turned to go.

  Kailen grabbed my elbow. “And what do you actually know about Maarten?” he said softly.

  I paused. I was doing it again. I didn’t know anything about the Daelus family, or how Maarten had come to be disfigured, or even why he wanted to enact a daemon geas in the first place.

  I turned back around. Kailen hadn’t let go of my arm. I was struck, suddenly, by the soft concern on his face, the way his brow furrowed just so, the intensity of his gaze.

  He cleared his throat and let go. “The Daelus family is ruled by both a king and a queen. The last I heard, they worked together as one, but that was years ago, and relationships are constantly altering.”

  “Another mad queen,” I muttered. “Great.” I dipped my hand into my pocket again, gripping the kelpie heart between my fingertips. “I’ll wait for him at home. All the Sidhe know where the only legal Changeling lives, and he’ll need the heart to complete the blood rite. He might take another mortal, but I’ll just have to somehow find another vial of unicorn-purified water. If I ask around more or just talk to the Oranthil family—”

  Kailen coughed, interrupting me. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled forth a dimly glowing vial.

  “Kailen,” I chok
ed out, “you didn’t.” My gaze went to his face, raking over it for any signs. There didn’t seem to be any new streaks of gray in his hair, any new or deeper wrinkles. “Your exile—did you…?”

  “I didn’t go back to the Fae world,” he said. “I didn’t spend any more of my life. You forget that, despite my exile, I still have connections with the Fae world, mostly unsavory, but connections nonetheless. And, as you may have discovered, many of the Fae still jaunt over to the mortal world once in a while, for one reason or another.”

  I took the vial, a little uncertain, a little suspicious. “What did you have to do for this?” I’d had to implicate myself in a heist and the subsequent transformation of a priceless heirloom, potentially setting myself up with more enemies. As if I needed any more. What was it he had to do?

  “I traded something for it.” He hesitated. “A Le Fay heirloom. A crown.”

  I forgot sometimes that, with the imprisonment of Grian, Kailen was next in line for his family’s rule. And he’d traded the symbol of his rule for this little vial of unicorn-purified water. I clutched the vial to my chest, suddenly afraid I might drop it.

  “I’ve killed a lot of people,” he said. “Lesser Fae, Sidhe—it didn’t matter to me, not when I was seeking my mother’s favor. I may think you’re stubborn and a bit ridiculous for it, but I admire your reluctance to take lives. You might not be able to refrain from killing forever, but I want to help you for as long as you’re able.”

  I closed my eyes, and for a moment, all I could smell was his scent—sweet and faintly spicy. “This doesn’t change anything between us.”

  “I know,” he said quickly.

  I opened my eyes and backed away, putting some distance between us. “I’ve got to go. If I get back to my place before Mr. Cloaky decides to come for the kelpie heart, then I’ll have time to set up traps and figure out the most defensible position.”

  “I can help,” Kailen said, taking a step to follow.

  “No,” I said. “You’ve done enough.” He’d done more than enough. I could feel the balance shifting between us, into a relationship where I expected things of him, and he kept giving, saying he wanted nothing in return, but hoping for it. I didn’t want that from him. I wasn’t sure what I wanted from him, but this wasn’t helping.

  “But I—”

  I held up a hand to forestall him. “If you respect me at all, you’ll let me do this on my own.” I rejoined Anwynn by my car.

  “Well, that was very lone-wolf, spaghetti Western of you,” she said.

  “You were listening?”

  She nodded. “You were right over there. I have plenty good hearing. What did you want me to do? Start singing to myself to drown you out?”

  I couldn’t imagine what Anwynn’s singing would sound like—probably an avalanche of boulders down a rocky slope. “Well, I can’t keep expecting Kailen to step in and save me. He can’t travel between the Fae and mortal worlds freely. I can. He isn’t a Changeling. I am. I’ll never reach my potential and I’ll never grow strong if I don’t push myself.”

  “Or you could die,” my hound said as I folded up the map.

  “Come on.” I opened the door and she jumped inside. “We’re heading back to the house.”

  Her tail began to thump against the seat cushions. “Where you will promptly order me a television.”

  “No,” I said slowly. “Where we are going to set traps, hunker down, and wait for Maarten Daelus to come after us.”

  Her tail stilled. “My ideas tend to be better than yours,” she said.

  I ducked inside and shut the door behind me. The windows began to fog immediately. “If by ‘better’ you mean ‘leading to my quick and painful death,’ then yes.”

  She gave a small shrug but said nothing else.

  It was a quick drive back to my cozy, two-bedroom townhome, and Anwynn stayed wonderfully silent through the whole ride. But as soon as we parked in the driveway and I opened the door, she pushed past me, her tail thumping against the vase of sticks, knocking it over and scattering the contents across the tile entryway.

  “There,” she said, “I fixed it for you. You said you wanted to set traps.” She sat in the entryway as I closed the door.

  I picked my way across the fallen reeds and set the vase back upright. “You know,” I said, “that’s actually not a bad idea.” It might slow Maarten down, at the very least.

  “What did I say about my ideas?” Anwynn said, her tail beginning to swish against the tile. “Something about them being better than yours, as I recall.”

  I stepped onto the carpet, knelt, and pressed a hand to it. I transformed the carpet surrounding the entryway into a number of knee-high spikes. Anwynn, her ears against her head, leapt over them and made her way to the living room.

  She was on the couch, whirling in a circle, by the time I followed. I went to the windows, transforming them to metal. “I thought we’d agreed you’d use the blanket in the corner to sit on,” I grumped. My couch was beige, and Anwynn was black with an undercoat the same color and texture as steel wool.

  She was not a non-shedding, hypoallergenic sort of creature.

  “You told me, when I moved in, to make myself at home,” Anwynn said. “I’ve taken that directive to supersede any directive that followed. Besides, you seem to have things well in hand. What could I possibly do to help?”

  “Well, you could offer.”

  Anwynn barked out a laugh and pressed a paw to the television remote. “You clearly have no idea how the relationship between a Sidhe and her bonded follower works.”

  I hadn’t lived with a roommate since freshman year of college. As I recall, we’d finally decided to just draw a line down the middle of our tiny room, marking the border like two feuding countries. And then there’d been my ex-husband, Owen. That hadn’t ended well, either. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out for this living-with-someone-else thing.

  Not that I had a choice. I needed Anwynn, and she needed me. For now, anyways.

  The television flickered on. “…and this just in: a Melanie Baker has just been abducted from her home in Kenton. Police say the criminal is driving a green ’89 Honda Accord. Consider the suspect armed and dangerous. If you should see the vehicle, please call the police to report it. Passers-by say they saw someone placing an unconscious Ms. Baker into the back of the car.”

  I whirled toward the television, reaching into my pocket to check for the vial of unicorn water. “He’s got another victim. Now all he needs is the kelpie heart.”

  The anchor on the television glanced at his papers. “Ms. Baker is an employee of the Multnomah County Jail. There is some speculation that this abduction may be related to her job.”

  I blinked. A connection began to form in my mind.

  Something thudded against the garage door.

  In an instant, Anwynn went from relaxed on the couch to standing in the middle of the living room, her hackles raised, a growl in her throat.

  I pulled the butter knife from my pocket, transforming it into a sword. The kelpie heart shifted in my pocket, and it felt heavier than it had a moment before.

  “Are you going to ask me not to eat the sprites?” Anwynn said.

  Before I could answer, the door to the garage blew inward, shattering into tiny bits of wood. So much for metallic windows. There just hadn’t been enough time. The cloaked man stepped inside, the scarf still covering the lower half of his face; six sprites hovered around his head, needle swords drawn. Sweat gathered in my palms. I’d not fought someone yet who was also Talented in swordplay, who could use magic to move the way that I did.

  Maarten drew a sword from the scabbard strapped to his back. “The problem with sprites,” he said, “is that you cannot stop them from doing mischief, no matter how hard you try. The souring milk led you to me, did it not?”

  I didn’t bother answering. “And to think,” I said to Anwynn, “I used to like bringing work home.”

  “Your work probably didn’t include sharp
, pointy edges,” Anwynn said.

  “I got a paper cut or two.”

  “Be quiet,” barked Maarten. “Give me the kelpie heart and I’ll leave you in peace.”

  I took a deep breath, trying to calm my fast-beating heart. “You know I can’t do that. I know what you have planned for that woman. It’s my job to protect the mortal world and its inhabitants from Fae like you.”

  He took a step toward me, his scarf shifting with his breath. “This is your fault to begin with, you know.”

  Before I could form any sort of response, or even consider what the hell he meant, he attacked. I barely got my sword up to block him in time. Maarten moved with the swiftness of a striking snake, each step a blur. “Find the kelpie heart,” he called to his sprites. They scattered.

  Anwynn leapt after them, snapping at the air.

  I didn’t have time to pay attention to her battle. I set my feet, turned my body to the side to present a smaller target, as I’d been taught. Maarten’s blade was broader than mine, but he lifted it as though it weighed nothing. He thrust at me, and I slipped to the side, but not before his sword caught the edge of my coat. I spun to disengage it and faced him only in time to block another attack.

  I leapt back and onto the television console, trying to put some space between me and Maarten, trying to gain some higher ground. I teetered on the edge as he followed, slicing.

  A shower of sparks, and the top half of my television crashed to the ground. The sparks obscured my vision. I ducked to the side, too late. The blade caught my left shoulder, cutting through cloth and biting into the muscle.

  I couldn’t help the cry that eked out of my lips. The cuts from the sprites still stung. This wound was worse. Warm blood trickled from the gash, wetting my coat sleeve, making it stick to my skin.

  “You can’t win this fight,” Maarten said. He slashed at me again, even as he spoke. His voice didn’t sound the least bit winded.

  I batted his blade to the side and thrust at his chest. He slid to the side, as easily as a cat sidestepping an outstretched hand. I could do better than this. My shoulder ached—the sort of bone-deep hurt that told me this was more than a scratch.