Laura Anne Gilman

by Heart of Briar

  A lupin face wasn’t designed to look abashed, but Meredith tilted her head back, until her chin was practically pointing at the ceiling, and Jan understood that she was baring her throat to Martin in apology. The idea of it—a wolf showing submission to a horse—made Jan giggle, even as she knew that it was stress that made it seem funny. Stress and the sudden lack of stress, and exhaustion and worry and...

  “Go to sleep,” Martin said to her, as though he knew how close to cracking she was. Hell, he probably did. If anyone did, it would be him. “We’ll be another half hour on the road, and a nap will help.”

  “But...”

  “He knows you’re here and the preters aren’t. That should be enough, the condition he’s in.”

  And there wasn’t anything else she could do for him, anyway, if it wasn’t; she heard that, even though he didn’t say it.

  Jan closed her eyes and tried to relax enough to fall asleep, focusing on the feel and sound of Tyler, safe beside her. It didn’t work. Her body was still overstimulated from recent events, exhausted but unable to let go.

  The car rolled on, stopping and starting enough that, despite the dark-tinted windows, Jan knew that they were still in the city, and she wondered who—or what—was driving.

  There were so many species of supernatural; was there only one kind of preternatural? If so, why? Martin might not know, but AJ would.

  Then she wondered why it mattered.

  “Looks like you had an...interesting time over there. What are you going to tell AJ?” Meredith’s voice was soft, barely audible, and Jan strained to hear it almost instinctively, like a little kid trying to listen in on her parents talking below stairs.

  Martin didn’t hesitate. “The truth.”

  “All the truth and nothing but the truth?”

  “All the relevant truth.”

  “Uh-huh.” Meredith seemed amused by that but not disapproving. There was something under the surface of their words that Jan didn’t understand. “You managed not to kill her. A lot of people are going to lose money on that.”

  “There were bets?” Martin sighed. “Of course there were bets.”

  He hadn’t killed her. But he hadn’t let her on his back, either. Except she had been on his back, hadn’t she? The memory seemed foggy now, and Jan wasn’t even sure that it had happened. Too much had happened, she couldn’t remember what was real or not. She thought going to fairyland made you forget, but maybe part of it was passing through the portal? But Martin seemed to remember...and Tyler hadn’t forgotten. Maybe it was just that she was so very, very tired all of a sudden....

  There was silence as the car turned and then picked up speed. They must have left the city, heading into the suburbs, or maybe north. Jan tried to imagine where they were, but her sense of direction wasn’t good in the first place and the time spent with the preters seemed to have made it even worse; she wasn’t sure that she could have picked up from down just then, if asked. Were they going to the Center? Jan didn’t think you could reach it by car, although at this point she wasn’t sure of anything much at all.

  “What are we going to do with it?” the lupin asked.

  “With what?” Martin sounded like he had almost been falling asleep. He’d been awake as long as she had, and supernatural or no, he had to be exhausted, too.

  “It. That.”

  “His name is Tyler.”

  “All right, okay. But seriously, it—Tyler, then—has been with the preters...how long? Weeks? That’s as good as years, and you know it. That’s damage you can’t repair. Everyone knows that.”

  Jan, still exhaustion-fogged, waited for Martin to defend Tyler, to say that the lupin was overreacting, or wrong.

  “AJ wanted someone who’d been in close contact with the preters. I brought him that. He didn’t say it had to be in perfect mental health.”

  Jan tensed, shock running through her body. That hadn’t been what she’d expected to hear at all. Hot tears prickled under her lids, but she refused to let them escape.

  “And...” Martin hesitated.

  “And?”

  “We have to at least try. To help him, I mean. Humans can’t help him. Not after what the preters did, whatever they did. They’d have no idea what they’re treating, even if she told them. They wouldn’t believe her. And she doesn’t really understand, either.” He laughed, harshly. “I don’t, either. I was there, and I couldn’t tell you exactly what happened. Parts of it are sharp and clear, and others are hazy, and I don’t trust the bits that are sharp any more than the hazy. Less, even, because how do I know it was real?”

  “What happened? What’s it like, over there?”

  “Beautiful. Like the stories say it was here, once. No cities, no smog, no...no people. It was beautiful, and very quiet. I can understand why the queen left; she was probably bored out of her mind.”

  “Wait, what?” Meredith sat upright, based on the sounds, and demanded, “What did the queen do? Where did she go?”

  “No. I’m only going to tell that story once, and that’s for AJ. But you’ll understand then.”

  Meredith said something that sounded unpleasant, and then silence fell in the car.

  Jan felt Tyler’s fingers reach for hers, shifting in his sleep the way he used to when they lay in bed together. She slid her fingers against his palm and finally fell asleep, their hands clasped together, his head on her shoulder, and the sound of Martin’s breathing in her ears.

  * * *

  “Jan. Janny. Come on, we’re here.”

  The voice was calling her, enticing her out of the deep velvety darkness she’d crawled up in. She made a murmur of agreement but was too tired to wake up entirely; someone moved her body upright, out of the car, and her body protested, wanting only to snuggle back down and sleep for another week.

  “Janny, come on. You have to wake up.”

  Martin’s voice. Worried. Why was he so worried? Silly pony.

  “Why is she like this?” Meredith, sounding annoyed. “She slept the entire way here. Her leman’s awake, what’s with her?”

  “Shut up. Janny. Come on. AJ wants to talk to us.”

  She mumbled something again, trying to sink back, and the red-hot impact of a hard hand across her face jolted her forward instead. Her eyes opened, and she glared, tears finally spilling free.

  “Wake up,” Martin said, and didn’t apologize, despite his hand raised as though to deliver another blow. “We need to report in to AJ.”

  “I’m awake.” It came out more sulky than defiant. She turned her head, one hand coming up to rub at her face, avoiding the still-warm spot where he’d slapped her. “This isn’t the warehouse.” It wasn’t the Center, either. It was a farmhouse, a real farmhouse, with a wide porch and two chimneys at either end, emitting white smoke, and in the back, not too far away, an actual barn painted red. It looked...bucolic, that was the word she was looking for. She could already feel her asthma waking up, too. Why had they brought her here?

  “The warehouse isn’t an option anymore,” Meredith answered. “There was...a problem, there. We had to relocate.”

  “A problem?” Martin didn’t know anything about it, either, obviously.

  “AJ will tell you,” she said, pointedly, giving him a sideways glance Jan couldn’t read. “Come on.”

  By now, the front door to the house had opened, and there were figures on the porch, waiting for them. Jan stumbled forward, hoping against hope they would have coffee and maybe the cheeseburger she had been dreaming about. Or even just a steak. Something with a lot of protein, because she felt as if she’d been drained of every bit of energy she’d ever had.

  “No. No no no no more I can’t I won’t I can’t I won’t!”

  “Tyler!” Jan forgot everything else, swinging around to see what was wrong. He had backed up against the car, staring at the farmhouse with a look of horror...no, not at the farmhouse. At the figures, waiting.

  Jan blinked, then realized what the problem was. He’d been to
o tired, too confused to react, before. But now, to him, they were all preternatural, all dangerous.

  “It’s all right, Tyler. They’re...” Friends? No. “They’re here to help us.”

  “No!” He seemed to want to say something else, but the words got tangled and stuck in his throat. “No no no no,” and he threw himself backward, hitting his head against the car hard enough to hurt himself, until Meredith got him in a headlock and forced him down onto the ground.

  “Yeah, your boy’s going to be real useful,” she growled. “Don’t just stand there. Help me!”

  And suddenly there were figures around them, and Jan found herself gently but firmly moved out of the way.

  “But...” she protested, wanting to be the one who cared for him, needing to be the one holding him. They were supers, they were only going to scare him worse!

  “He’ll be all right.” AJ was standing beside her, watching as Tyler was half led, half carried away. “We can give him something to drink that will calm him down, ease his fears. It’s all right, Jan. We’re not going to let him hurt himself. And then, once he’s calmer, we can talk. But for now, you two, come with me.”

  Jan hesitated, her feet wanting to follow Tyler, to see what they were doing to him, to not lose track of him again, but AJ’s words made sense. Much as she wanted it to be, this wasn’t over yet.

  * * *

  The inside of the farmhouse was cozy, if crowded. Jan thought she saw Elsa in the living room, talking to someone, but AJ didn’t pause long enough for her to be sure it was her. The lupin made a gesture at someone in the oversize kitchen, then led them through the house to a small room at the end that clearly once had been the TV room.

  “Sit.”

  They sat. The sofa was battered, incredibly soft leather, and Jan’s body—still craving the sleep she had been dragged out of—wanted to sink back into it. She forced herself to sit forward, instead. “Tyler—you can help him? What’s wrong with him?”

  “I warned you,” AJ said. “They had him long enough to mess with his mind, change his loyalties.”

  “I know that—he thought he belonged to her—but when we put it to the challenge, when he had to choose, he came with me!”

  AJ looked at Martin, who nodded. Jan was too tired to be pissed that the lupin wasn’t just taking her word for it. “Is that how you managed it? I will want all the details, so we can keep complete records, not the crap and half-remembered legends we’ve been relying on. Well done, in any case—my estimations of you were dead-on.”

  Jan was pretty sure that he had meant that as a compliment. Maybe.

  “As to your leman, preternatural mind games can be ugly. I have people looking him over, trying to sort out the damage, and as I said, we’ll be keeping him calm, letting him see that we mean him no harm, that he can trust us. Odds are, the longer he’s back in this world, the more he will recover. But...”

  Jan looked sideways at Martin, his long face set, his gaze looking at something across the room. “He’s never going to be the same again, is he?” she said, not so much asking as admitting to something she had wanted to, if not deny, at least ignore.

  AJ’s face really wasn’t designed for expressions that weren’t threatening, but she had learned to ignore his face and look in his eyes. They didn’t have the flickers of gold and green that Martin’s showed, but were only a deep, red-tinged brown that made her think of velvet and down.

  “Are you?” he asked.

  She dropped her gaze and looked at her hands, instead.

  There was a knock on the door, and then it opened, and a slender young girl slipped in, carrying a tray. “Coffee, and milk, and kofta,” she said, putting the tray on the low table in front of them. “Cook put pignoli in the meat this time, but you’re not allergic, are you?”

  That was directed at Jan, who shook her head numbly. The smell of whatever the kofta was hit her nose, hot meat and spices, and her mouth watered.

  The girl flicked her gaze at AJ and then left, closing the door gently behind her.

  “Eat,” AJ said. Jan didn’t need to be told twice, reaching for the round balls of meat, discovering toothpicks left to the side for lifting. The small meatball was warm and slightly greasy, and the moment it hit her taste buds she almost cried.

  “Eat,” AJ repeated. “It will resettle you in this world.”

  She wasn’t sure what he meant, but she was too hungry to stop, anyway.

  “What happened to the warehouse?” Martin had sat on the other end of the sofa, ignoring the food and coffee, his arms crossed over his chest, watching AJ intently.

  “Turncoats. Something set them on us about the same time you crossed over.”

  “Coincidence?”

  “You know how I feel about coincidence. But it might have been, they might have been tracking Jan, and found us. Or, they might have been set on us directly. However they came there, they were determined to keep us penned up, to not let us leave—as though they didn’t realize you were already gone.”

  “So if they were sent, they were sent by someone who had incomplete information?”

  “Or, what they thought was going to happen, did not. The timing of their approach...” AJ looked thoughtful but didn’t explain further.

  “So what happened?” Jan asked.

  “They swarmed, eventually. They’re not very patient, and rather single-minded. They destroyed the warehouse. We lost a lot of people.” AJ’s lips curled back in an unnerving snarl. “We made them pay, though. We put the bastards down. They won’t come back from that any time soon.”

  Jan thought of the things that had attacked her, first on the bus and then in her apartment, and the food in her mouth suddenly tasted sour. She swallowed, then asked. “They won’t just send more?”

  “Gnomes are long-lived. They’re also slow-breeding.”

  Jan had to think about that, then nodded. They wouldn’t have the numbers to send more. “But you lost people, too.”

  “We did. But we also gained a weapon. You. Your knowledge. You went through a portal—and came back. The information you have...” He stood, pacing to the single window in the room, glancing out, and then coming back to them. “Martin, eat something. And then tell me what happened. Tell me everything.”

  Jan blinked at him, not even sure what he was asking. “From...where?”

  “From when you disappeared would be a good start, since you didn’t exactly leave a note.”

  Jan licked her lips, trying to put her thoughts in order. “I was in the coffee shop...we’d set up a date, but he didn’t show.” God, it seemed like another lifetime. Maybe it was. “And then...she walked in. Stjerne.”

  “Who?”

  “The preter who lured her leman,” Martin said, having eaten the leafy greens presented alongside the meatballs and now in the process of fixing his coffee. He took an obscene amount of sugar, Jan noted.

  “Right. And he was with her?”

  “Yes.”

  AJ’s muzzle wrinkled. “Interesting. I wouldn’t have thought that they’d allow that, bringing him back here. Too risky. Usually they keep their humans wrapped up close until they’re through with them.”

  “That must be why the consort was angry at her,” Jan said, trying to ignore the rest of his comment.

  “The consort?” AJ looked from one to the other, his nostrils flaring as though he’d picked up a new scent.

  “Skipping to the interesting part, unless you really want the details of the Snake, or troll-bridges or what the stars look like, over there?”

  “Another time, maybe. You went into the Court?” AJ sounded almost incredulous, without openly disbelieving, and not, Jan thought, a little jealous. She supposed, if you hadn’t actually been through it, it would sound like an incredible adventure. If you were a little crazy to start, anyway.

  “We were following them—following Tyler. It seemed a reasonable risk—if Jan could reclaim him, she’d—”

  “Yeah, I get it,” AJ said. “What hap
pened when you were there?”

  Martin opened his mouth, closed it again, shook his head, ran his fingers through his hair, and then tried again. “AJ, the queen is gone. She’s abandoned the Court and come here.”

  AJ’s entire body went still, and then he blinked and sat back in his chair, digesting that news. “The queen is here. In this world.”

  Martin and Jan both nodded.

  “To quote humans, Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.”

  His expression should have been funny, but it wasn’t.

  “And they want her back?”

  “They want to punish her. And us, for being more interesting, I guess.” Jan picked up a mug of the coffee and sipped at it. The last of the fog left her brain, and she did, in fact, feel grounded again. Maybe the fairy tales about food in fairyland worked for your own world, too? “That’s why they’re coming in such numbers; you’re right, this is an attempt at an invasion. Or not an invasion really. Maybe a resettlement. If we’re so damn interesting, they’re going to move in. I guess. They’ve been insulted, and I get the feeling that they’re not really the bygones-be-bygones kind of folk.”

  “No. They’re not. So if they can’t take her away from her toy, take her toy?” AJ hrmmed deep in his throat. “But how? How are they opening portals at-will? Tell me you found an answer to that, too.”

  Jan shook her head. “I don’t know. We— Tyler told us to visualize it, just think about it, and we opened one to come home, but I don’t know what we did—and I don’t even know if I was the one who did it, either. I tried to bring us to the Center, but we ended up back where we started.”

  “No technology?”

  “I didn’t see anything that looked like tech, no towers or wires or...I’d say that world hasn’t gone much beyond basic industrialization, if that: water wheels, and muscle power.”

  “But they’re connecting to your internet, somehow,” Martin said. “Luring humans that way... They wouldn’t have just stumbled onto it....”

  “But that might have come after they learned how to establish portals on their own,” Jan pointed out. “Once they were here, if they were among humans, then they were going to see people using smart-phones, computers, all that everywhere. If they’re really peeved about their queen finding this world interesting, they’d want to know everything....”