Loose Changeling: A Changeling Wars Novel

by A. G. Stewart

  I slipped past him and found my cubicle. Brent, our accountant, had his good days and his bad days. Clearly I'd walked in on one of his bad days.

  I wanted to sigh in relief as soon as I entered my workspace. Everything on my desk had its place. Pens and pencils point-down in the mug next to my monitor. My own Frank Gibbons planner sat on the other side, next to the stapler, white out, and my bin of paperclips. I’d pinned a large calendar against one wall of my cubicle, my business trips written in green sharpie.

  I sat and powered up my computer. Just as my background popped up—a grassy field at noon—Anne's voice whispered from behind me.

  “Nicole, sorry to bother you so soon, but Landon wants to talk to you in his office. Right away.”

  So far, this was not turning out to be the relaxing venture I'd thought it would be. “Thank you, Anne,” I told her, though I felt no gratitude to speak of. I rose from my chair, moved my stapler a little to the right, just to have something to do, and brushed past her. Her footsteps sounded behind me. No doubt she would sit quietly at her computer trying to overhear what Landon had to say. She'd once had the impertinence to hush me mid-conversation when my boss had called in another of my coworkers. I suppressed my irritation. He probably wanted to talk about my absence and scold me for leaving those contracts undone. I straightened my shoulders before walking into his office. Well, I'd faced down hobgoblins earlier in the day. My boss couldn't be much more difficult.

  Landon sat behind his desk, one hand on his mouse, his monitor reflected in his black-framed glasses. Gray hair curled around his ears, giving him the vague look of a Roman statue, but with saggy jowls and a bit of a pudge instead of a firmly defined jaw and an even firmer body. “Come in, Nicole. Shut the door behind you, please.”

  I did as he asked, taking my place in one of the two chairs opposite his desk. He clicked his mouse a few more times, typed something, and clicked again. A tiny giggle reached my ears.

  I cleared my throat. "Did you say something?"

  Landon glanced at me. "Just a moment." As he turned back to his computer, the screen flickered and then cut to black. "Damn it!" He leaned down and picked up a plug. "Must have kicked it this time," he muttered.

  I cleared my throat again and Landon finally faced me. He plugged the computer back in, pushed his glasses up, then clasped his hands on the desk in front of him. “Sorry about that. Now you know you’re one of my best workers. I can always count on you to be here on time, to participate in meetings, and to bring home the sales.”

  “If this is about my recent absences, I’m willing to make up the time,” I said. Two small creatures appeared in the corner of the room, climbing the blinds over Landon's window. Fae—brown, with matted hair and wide noses. This time, they stayed put in my vision, and I knew enough folklore to identify them. Brownies. I wasn’t crazy. My attention snapped back to my boss as he spoke again.

  “Hold on,” Landon said. “I have a point, and I’m getting to it. The thing is, I’ve wanted to promote you to the lead salesperson position for a while. But every time I go to pull the trigger, something stops me.”

  “What?” I said. If he had finally decided to promote me, my day was about to get a whole lot better. I leaned forward, my hands at the edge of my seat. Behind Landon, the brownies tied knots in the cord for the blinds.

  “I need someone who can build rapport with the other salespeople, someone who can lead and yet be approachable at the same time. You’re, well, a little intimidating to the others.”

  “Brent isn’t intimidated by me.”

  “Brent isn’t intimidated by anyone,” Landon said. “I heard what you said to Anne today. I’m not happy that you called in when you weren't sick, but I’m willing to overlook it in light of your prior spotless record. What really gets me is that you admitted your mistake—to Anne, of all people—and you’ve tried to set things right. I respect that. I’ve never really heard you admit to mistakes before. And you’ve made them. We all do.”

  I tried to wipe the grin off my face and failed. “So all this means…?”

  A knock sounded at the door. Anne peeked her head inside. I could have killed her in that moment, I really could have. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said, though her expression didn’t match her words. “There’s a man here to see Nicole. I would have asked him to wait, but he’s very insistent.”

  My anger redirected from Anne to a new target. Kailen. “Tell him to wait a few minutes,” I told Anne.

  The computer screen flicked to black again.

  “No, it’s okay,” Landon said. He picked up his phone and dialed a number. “You can see what he wants. Just make it quick. I need to get maintenance up here, anyways. Damn thing has been doing this all day.”

  Kailen had told me two hours. He couldn’t even give me twenty minutes? I went to the door.

  It wasn’t Kailen. It was Owen.

  He stood by the secretary’s desk, dressed in his best suit, a dozen red roses in his hand. I’d helped him pick out the suit when we’d graduated—a plain black, cut to a body that had once been a little more trim. He hadn’t buttoned the jacket and wore a gray tie over a crisp white shirt. “Nicole,” he said when he saw me, his voice strangled. He straightened, took a deep breath, and thrust the roses in my direction. “These are for you.”

  I didn’t take them. “Owen, what are you doing here?” I’d never brought him to my workplace before. Some people held separation of church and state sacred. I held separation of work and home sacred. Except, sometimes the work did tend to creep a little into the home. But the other way around? Never.

  “I wanted to apologize,” he said, arm still outstretched. “I don’t want a divorce.”

  I became aware of Anne standing behind my right shoulder, hovering like a fly over an aromatic dish. I wanted very much to swat at her, so I crossed my arms, tucking my hands securely beneath my armpits. “An apology is warranted,” I spoke slowly, keeping my voice low, “when you’re thirty minutes late, when you forget our anniversary, or when you fail to clean up after yourself. Having an affair goes beyond the bounds of apology to rectify!” Despite my efforts, I’d raised my voice to a shout by the end of the sentence. In my peripheral vision, I saw a couple of my coworkers’ heads, peeking over their cubicle partitions. God, this was going to make Anne intolerable for weeks.

  “I know, I know,” Owen said, putting up a hand, as if he were soothing the air between us. “I just think we should talk more. We’ve been together for seven years. I made a reservation at Le Pigeon for tonight at six. I thought we could meet there and discuss things.”

  “Discuss things?” Owen, the catalyst for my world falling apart. How could I explain everything that had happened between then and now? Should I even bother? “I don't know, okay?” I pressed a palm to my forehead, trying to calm the headache before it started.

  Anne stepped around me. “So this is your husband?”

  I nodded, hand still to my head.

  “Well, that's funny,” she said, her tone ingenuous. “Then who was it that called me this morning? His voice sounded different.”

  I dropped my hand, and for a moment Owen and I just stared at one another. “Nicole, what does she mean?” His gaze dropped to my arm. “And what the hell happened to your sleeve?”

  The door to the office burst open. Kailen strode in, hand on the tube hooked onto his belt. He walked with the confidence of a person who is exactly where they're supposed to be. “We have to go,” he said, eyes on me, sparing not a glance for Anne or Owen. A whirring sound came from his watch, the hum of gears in motion. “The grushound is coming here.”

  I stepped to the left, so I had a clear line of sight. “Well, why did you say I could have two hours?”

  “The grushound goes first to where your smell is the strongest. I thought it would go to your house.” Kailen waved his hand around the office—the gesture taking in the cubicles, the secretary's desk, even the “FG” logo on the wall. “I didn't think it would come h
ere.”

  “Now?”

  “Now,” Kailen said. He strode up to us and slung an arm around my shoulder, guiding me toward the exit.

  “Wait just a minute,” Owen cried out indignantly from behind us. “You were cheating on me? With him?” Of all the things he could have picked up in our conversation, Owen chose instead to focus on Kailen's arm around my shoulders. “And here I was, coming to apologize.”

  Heat rose to the very tips of my ears. I broke away from Kailen's grasp and whirled to face Owen. “A guy puts his arm around my shoulders and you think I've been cheating on you? Guess what? I caught you in bed with Jane. And you know what? This isn't my boyfriend; this is my divorce lawyer. But maybe I should just sleep with him. I might as well, after what you did.”

  “Um, Nicole,” Kailen said, “this isn't exactly the time...” His voice was high and strained, but I didn't divert attention to him.

  “God, you are so pigheaded,” Owen said. “Maybe if you stopped yelling at me, we could actually talk.”

  “You were the one who started yelling,” I retorted.

  “No, I was the one who brought you flowers.”

  “After you cheated on me. When's the last time you bought flowers for me? Oh, that's right. When you came home telling me you'd been placed on administrative leave! Maybe if you bought me flowers for something nice, like my birthday or for our anniversary, I wouldn't be so upset. You know what I think when I see flowers? I think, ‘Owen's messed up again.’”

  “That's sweet of you. Maybe you should think for a second why I'd be tempted to have an affair. You were never there. And when you were, you just loved to criticize. The way I dressed, how much I drank, the way I did things.”

  I snorted. “You mean the way you didn't do things.”

  Owen raised a finger. “Now that's not fair. You only noticed the things I didn't do, not the things I did. I may not be as goddamned organized as you, but I'm not a slouch, either.”

  Not a slouch? “How else would you describe someone who doesn't have a job, drinks to pass the time, and can't even be bothered to clean up after himself?” The roses in his hands trembled. One of them pulled a little higher than the others. “What did you accomplish while I was at work other than sleeping with that woman? Did you even try looking for another job?”

  “I did!” Owen said.

  “For only one month!” The rose lifted free from the bouquet, turned blossom-down, and made a kamikaze dive at Owen's face. He raised his free arm to protect himself as the eleven remaining flowers followed suit, leaving him holding nothing but a cellophane wrapper tied with a red ribbon, rose petals whirling about him like snow in a blizzard.

  For a moment, no one did anything but look at one another. “On second thought,” Kailen said into the silence, “he should probably come with us.”

  Owen looked at him as though he'd grown a second head. “Why the hell would I want to do that?”

  Kailen shook his head and then, in one quick movement, had his sword out and at Owen's throat. “Because it’s in your best interests. And Nicole's. Now let's go, before the grushound gets here and kills all of us.”

  Anne backed away at the sight of the blade, her normally rosy-cheeked face gone pale. No more heads peeked over the partitions. Doubtless my coworkers all huddled on the floors of their cubicles, fingers frantically dialing 9-1-1.

  Owen put his hands up and backed away from the sword. Kailen kept it at his throat, directing him to the door. I followed, unsure of what I could say or do to dissuade Kailen, mystified at why he would now wish Owen to join us.

  We got into the elevator, Kailen still holding his sword to Owen's neck, Owen with his hands held in the air, cellophane crackling in one hand. He cleared his throat. “So what's a grushound?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Neither Kailen nor I bothered to answer Owen's question. I was upset at his appearance at my workplace, his lame attempt to apologize, and the fact that a voice in the back of my head kept telling me he might be right about sitting down some place and talking things out. Now, however, just wasn't the time.

  Kailen hurried us across the parking lot as fast as he could manage, his sword attracting the stares of passersby. “You have to put away the sword,” I said to him through clenched teeth.

  “I will,” he replied, all calm and nonchalance, “as soon as Owen gets in the car. That grushound is going to show up any moment.”

  “Well, good,” Owen said, annoyance in his tone. “It'd be nice to know what you two are talking about. Unless that's secret-lover code for something else.”

  “Yes, Owen,” I said, lacing my voice thick with sarcasm. “It's secret-lover code. Kailen's just getting ready to whip out his junk, right here in the parking lot.”

  Owen stopped his forward march. “Now wait, if this is some sort of kinky fantasy you have, I'm not into other dudes.”

  Kailen pressed the tip of his blade into Owen's neck, until it drew a drop of blood. “Get. In. The. Car.”

  It might have been my imagination, or the roar of a motorcycle's engine, but I thought I heard a growl from somewhere in the not-too-far distance. “Get in the car!” I repeated.

  Owen glared at both of us, wiped the drop of blood from his neck, and opened the door. He ducked inside, closed it, and crossed his arms. Kailen and I exchanged glances. “Where will we go?” I asked.

  “Move now, talk later,” Kailen said. He folded his sword back up, clipped it to his belt, and strode around to the other side of the car. As last time, he somehow had his seatbelt on and the engine running before I brought both feet inside. He squealed out of the parking lot. I glanced in the rearview mirror and thought I saw the shadow of a hound lurking in the bushes by the office.

  “Now what?” I asked. “Why bring Owen along?”

  Jane, on the dashboard, squeaked, her paws together, head tilted to the side.

  “First things first.” Kailen reached into the back seat and felt around until his fingers met his jacket. He grabbed it and tossed it into my lap. “Wear this.”

  Owen uncrossed his arms and put a hand on the door. “You can't be serious. If this isn't some sort of kinky fantasy, then what is it?”

  “Stay put,” Kailen said.

  “Why?”

  “How do I explain,” Kailen muttered to himself. He raised his voice over the engine’s hum. “There is a very big, very angry dog after your wife right now. It can track scents that are over a year old and has claws like a mountain lion. That's what I've been talking about. It's called a grushound.”

  “Never heard of it,” Owen said, though he took his hand off of the door.

  “You wouldn't have,” Kailen said.

  I put my hands out to steady myself as Kailen turned the car around another corner. “Enough of this,” I said. “There are hobgoblins and grushounds after me, and I want to know why.”

  Kailen jerked his head toward the back of the car. “Even with him in here?” I nodded. He sighed. “Well, I suppose I've put it off for long enough. We won't be going back to the Aranhods until we can shake off the grushound, preferably after you've turned Jane back into a person.”

  “If it’s so important, why don’t you do it?” I snapped.

  “Because I can’t! The reason Changelings are outlawed is because the only one who can undo a Changeling's magic is another Changeling.”

  The only one who could turn Jane back into a woman was me? I struggled to take my next breath. This wasn't fair. I didn't ask for this. Faintly, I realized Kailen still spoke.

  “Not that normal Fae are useless against Changelings. There are workarounds, ways you can divert magic instead of trying to unravel it. It's difficult, though. Used to be pretty common for the Fae to place Changelings in the mortal world. The Fae world is our home; the mortal world was sort of like our sandbox. Things got kind of out of hand at one point. Two of the Sidhe families placed Changelings at the same time. The Sidhe aren’t like the rest of the Fae—they’re the heavy hitters in ou
r world. The two Changelings, Morgan and Merlin, fought one another. They had different philosophies, reflected by their biological families. Morgan thought that the mortals should submit to the Fae and be ruled by them. Merlin felt that the mortals should rule themselves, and chose a champion: Arthur. Morgan and Merlin tore the land of that time asunder and brought about the ending of an age. After that, the Fae withdrew from the mortal world and have left it mostly alone.”

  “Why do I get the feeling there's more to the story?” I said, my voice higher-pitched than normal.

  Kailen turned into the parking lot of a gas station, pulling behind it and stopping at the kiosk for the car wash. “Because there is. That's the short, Cliff notes version. The thing is, the hobgoblins and the grushound—they're from another Fae family, probably from one that doesn't like the Aranhods. The Guardians will figure out what’s happened with your manifestation, and then they'll be after us too.”

  “Fae police?” I guessed.

  “Something like that. There are some good ones, but a lot of corrupt ones. They may have just been hanging back, waiting to see what the most powerful families would do.” He rolled down the window, pulled out his wallet, and slipped his credit card into the slot. He pulled it back out and punched a few numbers into the kiosk. “First things first. We shake the grushound. Can't shake it off forever, but we can delay it in two ways. Cover your scent, and eliminate it.”

  “Well, this all makes sense,” Owen grumbled from the backseat. “Maybe you can drop me off at my brother's apartment when you're done being incomprehensible?”

  I ignored him. “Well, why was I created if it's illegal? Everything you say about the Aranhods makes them sound like a respectable family.”

  “Respectable by Fae standards,” Kailen said. “I don't really know. I'm just doing my job.”

  I sat back as he pulled into the wash, watching the nozzles descend and spray the car with soapy water. The steady thrumming of water against glass did nothing to soothe me. I'd forgotten for a moment that I was just a job to Kailen. Presumably he'd hand me off to the Aranhods, get paid, and I'd have someone else to guide me through this madness. But Kailen had become familiar to me—not a friend, but not a stranger, either. I didn't want someone else. I mean, I hated his abruptness, his confidence that bordered on arrogance, and he seemed to know how to get under my skin almost as well as Owen did. But he gave me some measure of security in my newly upended world.