Laura Anne Gilman
Page 28
“Yes!”
She stared at him, her eyes wide, until he looked away, blowing out his frustration in a huge, gusty sigh. “No. All right, I know you can’t just...forget. That was stupid. But, yes, you should go home. Stjerne had to give up claim to Tyler, she won’t try and take him back. No matter how...attached she thinks she was, they just don’t work that way. They move on. So he’s safe, and so are you.”
“But they’re still coming, still stealing people.”
“Jan, they’ve always come. They will always come.”
She was starting to get annoyed. She was the one who had won them a truce, however short. She was the one who’d maybe figured out the connection—okay, not figured it out, but put them on track to figuring it out. Her, a human. “Yeah, they’ve always come, humans don’t know what’s going on, etcetera etcetera ad nauseum. I got that. But it’s different this time. They’re not restricted, not until we find a way to keep them out, to close the doors forever. And you don’t know how to do that. You don’t understand what they’re doing, or how. You didn’t even recognize binary, and that’s the only clue we have, right now.”
She was no hacker, no tech genius, she didn’t have the kind of brain that thought in code—but she was all they had. A thought flickered...she was all they had...but she wasn’t all she had. Geeks with a puzzle.... She just hoped Glory was still unemployed—and still talking to her.
Martin was breathing heavily, like he was trying to keep his temper, and his black nails were digging into his palms.
“Even if we survive... You’ll never be able to go back, if you don’t go now. I don’t know a lot, but I know that much. Nobody who chooses this, who chooses to walk among us...ever goes back. Not really.”
Jan felt a shiver that told her he was telling the truth. “I know.”
She’d just spent the past week or more—endless hours more, in fairyland—under one glamour or another. Martin’s first, then Stjerne’s, then...everywhere she turned, magic had pushed at her, gotten under her skin, manipulated her.
When she’d faced the preter challenge, Martin had told her to remain who she was. Only who she was had changed. Like AJ said—you had to, to survive. She was Tyler’s lover. Martin’s partner. Human. Part of this.
Glamour or not, whatever had happened before: before she’d met Tyler, before she knew about kelpies and lupin and preters and portals...she couldn’t go back there. So she had to go on.
“It’s my world, too,” she said. “I’m not letting it go.”
* * * * *
The story continues in SOUL OF FIRE
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ISBN: 9781460316528
HEART OF BRIAR
Copyright © 2013 by Laura Anne Gilman
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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