"Come in, Clairy," Ria said, rising to meet her guest.
"Ria. Thanks for seeing me on such short notice. I know how busy you are."
Ria grimaced. "That never changes. But come, sit down. I hope the news is good."
Claire sighed. She was an uncompromising woman in her fifties, who made no effort to hide either her age or the fact that her figure had long since lost, if it had ever possessed it, the whippet-slenderness of youth. She resembled the Miss Marple sort of detective, gray-haired and kindly, but in spirit she was more akin to the Borderers who had made the wild lands of the Scots borders such a constant trouble to the English. Like her ancestors, Claire MacLaren never gave up.
"It all depends on your notion of `good,' I suppose. But it's all in my report," she answered, gesturing with the slim portfolio under her arm. She settled onto the couch with a sigh. "You won't like it."
"You haven't found her," Ria said, sitting down in a chair opposite the detective.
"Our Miss Campbell is either dead, or very good at disappearing. She hasn't been arrested, used a credit card, or taken her motorcycle into an authorized dealer for servicing, and there's been no activity on any of her accounts. No one matching the description I've been given has left the country in the last six months—no one who didn't check out, at least. She hasn't contacted any of her old associates among the Road Hogs. No unclaimed bodies matching her description have turned up in any morgue in the United States, nor has the gun registered to her turned up. I can keep looking, but I'm afraid it's a waste of your money. If we're to find her, she'll have to make a mistake."
"She will," Ria vowed. "She has to." If Threshold hadn't sanitized Campbell's apartment so thoroughly in its own attempt to find her, there might have been something left behind that would have let Ria find her magically, but by the time she'd been able to start looking, the trail was both cold and muddled beyond repair.
"Oh, aye," Claire answered. "Eventually. But good as I am, as well funded as I am, I can hardly match the FBI's resources. Why not leave the police to do their job?"
"You know why I can't," Ria said.
The office door opened again. Anita entered, pushing a trolley with a silver coffee service on it. She laid out the cups and saucers—fine bone china with the LlewellCo red dragon logo—on the table between the two women, and added a plate of pastries. She poured both cups full, and set the pot, creamer, and sugar down before wheeling the trolley out again.
"The service here is lovely," Claire remarked.
"I pay for service," Ria said. She rubbed her forehead again.
"But there are some things that money can't buy," Claire pointed out. She added sugar to her coffee and took a pastry. "My dear, if you'll forgive a presumptuous observation, you look as if you're worn right out. You need to take a break from all this."
"And have it fall all to pieces the moment I turn my back?" Ria demanded sharply. She sighed. The headache was making her irritable. "I'm sorry, Clairy. It's not you. It's everything. If I don't find that little bi—find Campbell, we'll never know everything that Lintel was up to. Most of the people involved in Threshold's Black Lab operations are dead. Lintel's records have been destroyed. Beirkoff wasn't involved with anything beyond the manufacturing of T-Stroke. He can't tell me what I need to know."
"You feel responsible." It wasn't a question. "But Ria, you've done as much as anyone could to repair the damage that brash young gentleman caused. The commitment LlewellCo's made to the homeless—spin-doctoring or not, it's doing real good here in the city."
" `The corporate crusader with a heart.' `The avenging angel of Wall Street,' " Ria quoted mockingly. She held up an adminatory hand. "I know, I know. No one person can do it all. But I have to do what I can. I want you to keep looking, Clairy. I know the police and the Feds will keep looking, too, but they have other things to do. They can't spend all their time looking for one woman. But I can. And I want her." Determination turned Ria's voice harsh. She pulled back from her emotions with an effort and took a sip of her coffee.
"Ah, weell," Claire said philosophically. "If you won't be told, you won't. I'll keep looking, but you're going to need a miracle."
"If you can tell me where to buy one, I'll get it," Ria said, forcing herself to smile. "If there's anything you need . . . ?"
"I'll ask for it, never fear," Claire said. She got to her feet. "Shall we say lunch next time? It'll do you good to get out from behind that desk."
"Lunch, then," Ria said, getting to her feet. "And maybe by then I'll have figured out how to broker a miracle."
After Claire left, Ria took her cup and stood looking out her window for a while. The streets below were yellow with taxi-cabs, the sidewalks filled with late-lunching pedestrians.
Claire's news was only what she'd expected, but she still wasn't happy with it. Though she'd done her best to conceal the fact, she was afraid Claire knew that Ria's hunt for Jeanette Campbell was something of a vendetta. Claire wouldn't go along with something like that. She'd made it clear from the first that any information she found about Campbell's whereabouts would be shared with the police as well as with her employer, and Ria respected her for it. But she had more reason to want Campbell found than simple vengeance.
Wherever she is, she knows how to make the drug that turns ordinary people into mages. And that's information I don't trust anybody to use wisely. Especially Lintel's former clients. They're probably looking for her as hard as I am, and if she disappears into somebody else's think tank, there will be hell to pay. Literally, in fact. Aerune's still out there, and if I know my Sidhe, he isn't even close to giving up.
And the Sidhe, as befit a near-immortal race, were accustomed to taking the long view. Aerune would be willing to wait years, even decades, for his plans to fall into place. Despite her half-Sidhe heritage, Ria was mortal. She didn't have the time to outwait him. Campbell had to be found. And neutralized.
The phone rang.
Ria glanced back at her desk. She'd told Anita to hold all calls unless it was a certified emergency, but the light for her private line was flashing. Very few people had that number.
She picked up the phone.
"Llewellyn."
"Have I called at a bad time?" a familiar voice asked.
"Eric!" Ria felt herself smile—a genuine smile this time. Her relationship with Eric was the one authentic bright spot in her life, stormy as it sometimes was. "How are you?"
"Not as busy as you seem to be. You sound tired."
"So they tell me," Ria said shortly. Eric ignored the warning note in her voice, though she knew he'd heard it. Eric was a fully-trained Bard. He was a lot smarter about people now than he'd been when she'd first met him.
"It seems like things should be quieting down, though," he went on, with that guileless note of teasing in his voice. "I haven't seen a story about you in the news for, oh . . . a week or so."
"Not so much quieting down as reaching a series of dead ends," Ria said wearily. "Look, I—"
"So I figured you could use a break," Eric said, interrupting. "So I wanted to invite you to a party."
"What kind of a party?" Ria asked, a note of suspicion in her voice. The one thing that hadn't changed about Eric Banyon in all the time she'd known him was his puckish sense of humor, and it hadn't been blunted in the least by all the time he'd spent Underhill learning his craft.
"A Naming kind of party. Maeve's been born, and Beth and Kory want me to come to Elfhame Misthold to see her Named. We can use the Everforest Gate, and be back before we've left, or almost. I even promise to talk Lady Day into turning into something with doors and a roof."
Ria stared at the phone. Maeve was Eric's daughter by Beth Kentraine, the woman whose Fender guitar had done such a thorough job of rearranging Ria's life. Eric had ceded his rights in Maeve to Kentraine and the Elven Knight Korendil, since he wasn't ready for the ties and obligations of parenthood, but apparently Kentraine intended for Eric to play some part in his daughter's life.
>
"Either you've gone mad, or I have," Ria said bluntly. "You're inviting me to come Underhill? To the Sidhe? To a Naming? To a party that Beth Kentraine is throwing?"
"Well . . . yes." Eric's voice lost its bantering note as he realized this would take some persuasion. "It'll be fun. You've never been Underhill—well, not socially anyway. And I'm allowed to bring a date."
" `Fun,' " Ria echoed. "You want to invite me to one of the Sidhe's High Holy Days—me—and you think it'll be `fun'?"
The Sidhe loved children. Though Ria was a half-breed, raised in the mortal world, even she knew how seriously the elves took anything to do with children. Though Maeve was of fully human parentage, she was the daughter of a Bard and a witch, and in some sense Korendil's daughter as well. Elven children were an exceedingly rare occurrence and cherished accordingly. The Sidhe would consider her one of their own, and would take her Naming Day very seriously.
It was hardly the sort of thing to which they'd welcome the daughter of a renegade and a traitor, let alone a half-breed, the circumstances of whose conception were, to the Seleighe Sidhe, the vilest sort of sacrilege. Children born to a Sidhe/mortal pairing were even rarer than full-blooded Sidhe children, and Perenor had used the foulest sort of blood-magic to father Ria on her mortal mother—not to mention the fact that he'd tried to use Ria to destroy the Sidhe of Elfhame Sun-Descending. For years she'd lived in fear that the Sidhe would seek revenge for what she'd done, and once upon a time she'd thought that Eric had been sent back into the World Above to lure her to their vengeance.
And while he'd said that most of them really didn't care about what she'd done—considering how high a price she'd paid to thwart her late father's plans—that didn't mean they'd be happy to see her. . . .
"Okay, maybe not fun," Eric said as the silence stretched. "But I have a right to bring anyone I want as a guest and witness, and I think it would be good for you to meet some of the Underhill folk. You can't spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. If you come to the Naming, everyone will see that the Seleighe Sidhe have no quarrel with you, and that starting up with you will be the same thing as starting up with Elfhame Misthold."
"When did you suddenly become so savvy at politics?" Ria asked, and Eric chuckled.
"Live with the elves for a while, it's the equivalent of a master class. What else do a bunch of near-immortal wizards have to do with their time? The point is, they owe you for what you did against Aerune, and they need to know that. You do, too."
"I didn't do it for them." It didn't matter to Ria what feuds the Sidhe conducted among themselves. But Aerune had been after Eric, and that mattered to her a great deal.
"Yeah, well, elves are very results-oriented. It's what you did that counts."
"So you want me to come to the party."
"Yeah. I do. Besides . . . it'd be nice to have someone from this side of the Hill to keep me company. And I think it's time you and Bethie settled things between you."
So THAT's what's behind all this!
"So you want me to come and help her bury the hatchet?" Ria asked. The notion had a certain perverse appeal—and Eric was right that it could only do her good to form relationships and alliances Underhill. She lived in the human world, but like it or not, she was part Sidhe, and that heritage couldn't be ignored. "So long as it won't be buried between my shoulder blades." She took a deep breath. "All right. When? And what shall I wear? I've never been to one of these."
"Oh, just wear whatever you'd wear to your average Royal wedding," Eric said breezily. "I'll pick you up Saturday. That'll give you a week to shop."
"In a car," Ria reminded him. "With seats. And doors. And a roof."
"I'll talk to Lady Day. And Ria? Don't worry. I won't let anything bad happen to you."
Ria made a rude noise of mock outrage, but found her smile staying with her as she hung up the phone. She and Eric made an unlikely romantic pair—not that Ria was entirely sure, sometimes, whether what they had going could be contained by any term so mundane as "romance." There'd been a bond between them from the first moment they'd met as adversaries, she as Perenor's pawn and he as the Sidhe's last hope. Both of them had cut the strings that bound them to the purposes of others, but the tie between them was not so easily broken.
A half-elven sorceress with a Fortune 500 company and a human Bard who prefers busking to playing at the courts of kings. We're a fine pair.
And if there's to be more to it than this, it's going to have to wait until neither of us is quite so busy with our own lives. Whenever that might be . . .
Still smiling faintly to herself, Ria picked up the report on her desk and began to read.
* * *
He was home. Or if not home, exactly—for it had been many years since he'd been able to call any particular place "home"—then at least he was back on Earth only a few months after he left.
No one had followed him.
Elkanah Youngblood found himself standing in the middle of a country road. It was night, and it had been raining. He could smell the summery scent of wet earth and growing things. He got to his feet, still aching and bleeding from the injuries he'd taken during his run from the Great Hunt. The antlers were gone, a kind of proof that Lord Aerune's spell didn't run here. He took that as a sign that his luck had finally changed. He was free.
He didn't waste time wondering how it had happened or worrying about what happened next. He had two items on his agenda.
Survive until morning.
And find Jeanette Campbell and wring the bitch's neck.
Survival was easy. Less than a mile away a hay barn provided shelter while he stole a nap to shake off the worst of his exhaustion. When dawn gave him enough light to see by, he followed power lines to the nearest house. It was an old farmhouse, with nothing around it but fields. He guessed he must be somewhere in the South or Midwest, and smiled grimly. Being in the wrong place with the wrong skin color was the least of his worries right now. He was pleased to see a fine cash crop of mary jane ripening in the field out back of the house: whoever lived here would be less likely to run to the cops than an honest citizen, but just to be sure, he cut the phone lines with a set of shears he'd found in the barn before venturing inside. The back door wasn't locked, but it wouldn't have slowed him down much if it had been.
The householders were still in their beds. By the time he woke them he'd found a shotgun. The sight of a naked, six-foot bronze-skinned man holding a shotgun had quieted them both down a good deal. They hadn't made much trouble when he tied them up and put them down in the cellar. If they kept their heads, they could work themselves free of the torn-up sheets in a few hours. He intended to be gone by then.
When he saw himself in a mirror, he was surprised at how normal he looked. A little thinner, a little banged up. Hair a lot longer. The beginnings of a beard. But no horns or scales or staring red eyes. He'd almost expected something like that, some kind of visible evidence of everything he'd been through. But there wasn't anything.
If I were dumb and stupid, I could convince myself it was all some kind of bad dream. But I don't have dreams like that.
Fortunately, none of his wounds was deep enough to need stitches. He washed off the dried blood, and after a shower and coffee, Elkanah made a thorough search of the house. As he'd expected, he found a small recreational stash of goodies, a lot of cash, and some very nice guns. He took the .45 and the .357, and left the shotgun and the rifles where they were. He scattered the drugs around the living room. They'd have to clean the place up before they called in the law, and that would buy him even more of a head start.
The man's clothes were all much too small for him, but he found a T-shirt and a pair of sweat pants that would stretch to fit and a gimme cap with a movie logo on it. He forced his feet into a pair of the guy's Nikes. His first stop would have to be for better clothes—if you looked like you belonged, you didn't attract attention. That was the first lesson of infiltration.
He'd found car
keys in the kitchen, so he knew there had to be a ride around somewhere. He stuffed the guns and the money into an old backpack he'd turned up and went to look for it.
Stupid, stupid, stupid . . . Elkanah shook his head. The house and the outbuildings were falling apart, and those idiots had a Lincoln Navigator stuck in the cowshed: about 50K of luxury 4x4. Just the thing for driving to the local 7-11 inconspicuously! As well they lost it then. It probably wasn't even insured. He was almost doing them a favor.
The engine started on the first try.
By the time he hit the main road, he was pretty sure he was somewhere in Pennsylvania in August. He got directions to the nearest town at the first place he stopped for gas, picked up the local paper, and got the date. It was only about six months since he'd left.
Good. The bitch wouldn't have had time to run far.
He picked up clothes, a razor, and some basic medical supplies. He changed clothes in the men's room and slipped out the back, leaving the stained sweats in the dumpster. While he was in the parking lot he took the opportunity to swap the Navigator's plates for a set on another car. The unsuspecting donor probably wouldn't even notice. The trouble with people these days was that they just weren't detail oriented. God was in the details. His pappy'd always told him that.
He still didn't have a driver's license, or any kind of ID, but he didn't think it would matter. From the shopping mall he headed east, not questioning why he chose that direction. From the interstate he switched to the local roads, where he stopped and picked up a couple of bags of groceries, then hit the back roads, driving several hours before finding the place he wanted, an old beat-up no-tell motel, the kind of place that came with hot and cold running roaches, and where the sheets were changed once a month if you were lucky.
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