by Wen Spencer
"Mostly works. The little problem of Pittsburgh swapped to Elfhome is because the plans were flawed, but the Chinese haven't been able to fix the problem."
Maynard turned his focus on Tinker. "NSA thinks that you can build a gate from scratch, without the design flaws of your father's."
"It's a possibility that they're seriously entertaining."
"Can you?"
It would be safer to say no. Straight-out lie. There was the matter of the placement-test questions, but there were levels to understanding. One has to know enough to answer rote questions. The higher level was understanding to the point of creation. It was an invisible barrier that divided the likes of Newton and Einstein from the rest of the scientific world. Could a test question expose that level of understanding? Did she even have it? She thought she understood her father's theories, but she could be wrong. Certainly she'd never played with them, attempting to create or correct.
"You can," Maynard said while she wavered.
"I might." She tempered it. "There's a profound lack of parts for such items in Pittsburgh."
"And there's the matter of getting into space," Maynard quipped.
"It doesn't have to be in space. My family's stories are filled with foreboding as to what might have caused the gates to fail. My father thought that space was just the safest place to put a doorway between worlds."
"So he wasn't predicting the veil effect?"
Tinker looked out the side window, past the river to the elfin forest. "No. To be quite frank, I think he would be horrified."
* * *
She had Maynard take her to the yard, and as she hoped, Oilcan was there. Her cousin hugged her and held on—he had heard about her kidnapping. His obvious source of information, Nathan, was there, glaring at Maynard as if he were responsible for dragging her away instead of returning her.
Tinker kicked him. "Act nice. He's one of the good guys. This is Nathan Czernowski. He's a close friend of the family. Nathan, this is Derek Maynard."
"I recognize him," Nathan stated, barely civil, but extended his hand.
"Officer Czernowski." Maynard shook hands.
It struck Tinker that they were the same height and coloring. Nathan, though, was nearly twice the width, all muscle, and had a steady plainness to him, like a piece of stone.
"What the hell happened?" Nathan asked. "Your front door was wide open, your tripwire was activated, but your home system was shut down."
Tinker sighed and tried to explain, keeping the facts bare. She didn't bother to mention the NSA misgivings that her life was in danger. Maynard, however, added them in.
"I need to get back and deal with the NSA agents," Maynard finished. "There's a slim chance they'll be freed by morning, but I'll let you know before they are."
"Thanks."
After Maynard left, Nathan hugged her, lifting her off the ground.
"Hey!" she complained, tired of being manhandled for the day.
"I was worried about you." He put her down.
"I can take care of myself," she said, more for Oilcan's sake than Nathan's.
"What's this?" Nathan rubbed the mark between her eyes.
"Oh, that." She sighed. "Windwolf has elevated me to elf status or something like that. Maynard says it's kind of like he adopted me into his family."
Nathan frowned and rubbed the mark harder. "You let him tattoo you?"
"No!" She jerked her head back. "He had the spell initialized and coded to a word and a kiss. Apparently the mark is a big deal, so it could have some authorization coding in it so someone with a temporary tattoo kit can't duplicate it."
"He kissed you?"
She had never seen jealousy on Nathan before, but still she recognized it on his face. "Oh, cut it out. It was a little peck on the forehead." She turned away from him as she recalled cuddling with Windwolf at the hospice. Had that actually happened, or was it some drug dream? "Look, it's a good thing. The NSA tried to kidnap me, and Windwolf's mark kept them from doing it."
It was hard to tell what annoyed Nathan more—that the NSA had grabbed her or that Windwolf had permanently marked her. She hadn't suspected that Nathan would react with such primal male chest beating. "He's the viceroy, Nathan, get over it!"
And even Nathan could see the unlikelihood that an elf noble would be interested in a little junkyard dog. "I'm sorry, Tink."
He turned her toward him and leaned down to kiss her, cautiously at first, and then hungrily. She was too tired and annoyed with life to enjoy it completely.
When he broke the kiss, he leaned his forehead against hers and asked huskily, "Do you want me to take you home?"
That put a thrill through her. Nathan. Her place. Her big bed. No. That was too scary a thought, despite the sudden wanting throb inside of her. The couch? Yes, she could deal with the couch, but still, the bed was frighteningly close by.
"No," she said once she swallowed down her heart. "I've got some things I want to do here," she lied. Then, because she knew Nathan wouldn't allow her to go home alone, not after today, she said, "Oilcan can take me home."
Oilcan looked struck dumb. When he realized that they were talking about him, he nodded. "Yeah! Sure!"
"Okay." Nathan stepped away reluctantly. "If you need anything, just call me."
"I will," she promised.
"See you tomorrow night." Nathan went to his squad car and drove away.
It wasn't until after he left that she realized he meant for their date.
"What the hell was that all about?" Oilcan broke the silence. "What's tomorrow night?"
"We're going to the Faire tomorrow night."
"You're dating Nathan? Since when?"
"Friday! You've got a problem with that?"
"I don't know. It just seems weird. You two kissing?" He squirmed. "It's like you're dating me."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Well, you know Nathan's like family."
"So?" She kicked a dead headlight sitting on the ground. It sailed off to smash with crystal clarity. "You want me to date a complete stranger like… like" — she couldn't say Windwolf because that would hurt—"Maynard?"
"No! Well, maybe." Oilcan rubbed at the back of his neck. "I don't know. Nathan knows you're smart, but I don't think he knows how smart."
"What does that have to do with anything?" She didn't want to point out that she and Oilcan got along fine, even though they both knew she was smarter than he was.
"You're only going to get smarter. You're not happy unless you're learning something. Nathan, he's at the top of his game right now. He sees you and thinks he can handle it, but he doesn't realize things aren't going to stay the same."
"Could you at least let us get one date in before you doom the whole relationship?"
"As long as you keep in mind that it's probably not going to work out."
"Why not? You said yourself that Nathan already knows what I am."
"I don't know if Nathan has ever really listened to you. I mean, when you're talking about racing, or bowling, or horseshoes, he's listening to you. But when you talk about what's really in your soul, the real you, he's tuning you out. His eyes glaze over, and he does all sorts of fiddly things, and if you go on too long, he tries to shut you up."
He does? Embarrassingly enough, she had never noticed. She shrugged it away. If she didn't notice, it couldn't be something hugely important. "I'm going to have to date someone, sometime."
"Have you told Nathan about CMU?"
"Actually, Lain released me from that. She said I only had to go to college if I really wanted to."
"And?" Oilcan asked, as if it was still a possibility.
She opened her mouth to say no, but for some reason it came out, "I don't know!"
* * *
Nor did she know later as Oilcan dropped her off at her loft. She cleaned up the mess that the NSA agents had made of her place, trying to wrap her mind around the sudden changes in her life. Too much had hit at once. If it had just been Wi
ndwolf, or the EIA, or CMU, or the NSA, or Nathan, maybe she could have dealt with any one. She finally drew decision trees to map out her possible actions.
Windwolf yielded no branches; there was nothing for her to actually do, so she tried to delete him from her mind. Unfortunately, sometimes a mind wasn't as obedient as a piece of hardware.
Nor did the NSA tree provide actions; they were dealt with for the time being. EIA worked out to be a simple "help Maynard or annoy Maynard." While Windwolf's adoption obviously provided her with protection from the EIA, it seemed wiser to help the EIA.
Nathan broke down to the simple "go on the date or cancel." Because of her age and Nathan's reticence, neither would lead to massive changes in her life.
The tree for going to college, however, disturbed her greatly. The branch for attending splintered into multitudes of possibilities. Staying in Pittsburgh yielded unending sameness. For the first time she wondered if Lain was right; was she in danger of stagnating if she stayed in Pittsburgh?
She glanced at Nathan's tree. If she dated him, at least that was some change. She circled the "go on the date." She had promised him to try to look older. That required better clothes and makeup, of which she had neither. She made a note to get both in the morning.
* * *
Maynard called and told her that the NSA agents would be released in the morning. "Unfortunately the elves don't deal with gray very well. We either had to execute Durrack and Briggs or let them go. While killing them would keep them safely out of our hair, it was a little excessive."
Tinker made sure the door was triple bolted, and she armed her security system before going to bed. The events of the last few days combined oddly in her mind until she was dreaming of Foo dogs, crows, Riki, the NSA agents, and Windwolf all jumping through magic hula hoops. Despite the teleporting abilities of the hula hoops, the dream played out entirely at the EIA warehouse. At some point, the Foo dogs ran off with the magical toys, reducing her to tears.
"Do not cry." Windwolf produced a ring. "This works just as well. The gates can be quite small, if you understand the quantum effect of magic."
"What about the veil effect?" Tinker breathed as he slid the ring onto her oil-stained finger.
"Here it is." He placed a bridal veil on her head. The shimmering fabric was at once invisible and a glistening black caught full of stars.
Proving that she had paid attention to the handful of weddings she'd attended, Maynard married them in what seemed a fairly accurate though amazingly short ceremony.
"Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?"
"She is already mine." Windwolf parted the veil to touch the spell mark on Tinker's forehead.
"Do you take this man to be your husband?" Maynard asked.
"I really just want to mess around," Tinker said.
"Oh, okay." Maynard stepped back out of the room, saying, "You can kiss the bride."
Windwolf did more than kiss her. She was riding a wave of orgasm when her doorbell woke her. She opened her eyes, the morning sun spilling across her bed, an echo of the pleasure still washing through her. The doorbell rang again, and she stirred in her nest of rumpled white linens to find her bedside clock.
It was seven in the morning.
Who the hell was ringing her doorbell at seven in the freaking morning?
She fumbled with her spyhole display and discovered the NSA agents actually standing on her doorstep and ringing the doorbell like real people instead of breaking in.
She thumbed the display to two-way sound. "What do you want?"
Briggs located the camera and microphone first and pointed it out to Durrack while saying, "We want to talk to you, Ms. Bell."
Corg ducked slightly to look earnestly into the camera, as if trying to make eye-to-eye contact with her. In an apologetic mood, he actually had a boyish face with dark eyes and thick eyelashes. "We're sorry about yesterday; we let our concern for your safety carry us away. We really crossed the line, and we're very, very sorry. We promise it won't happen again."
"You sound like you get a lot of practice at groveling, Durrack."
Hannah laughed at her partner while he rubbed an embarrassed look off his face.
"Well, actually, being a federal agent is hard on relationships," Durrack confessed. "Chicks really dig the spy thing, but they really get pissed off when you miss their birthday because you were off saving the world."
Tinker laughed despite being annoyed at the NSA agents. "So you save the world a lot?"
"Small American slices of it, yes."
Briggs pushed Durrack impatiently aside and leaned close to the camera. "Ms. Bell, we believe you're in a great deal of danger."
Tinker sighed, resting her forehead on her nightstand. Let them in or chase them away? Neither seemed like a good idea.
"We promise to behave," Durrack added.
Yeah, right. She didn't believe them totally, but she suspected they weren't going away—at least not without talking to her face-to-face. She crawled out of bed, pulled on some clean clothes, and padded out to her front door, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. She supposed it was a good sign that they didn't rush her when she unbolted the door and swung it open.
Why was everyone suddenly coming in jumbo sizes? Both NSA agents towered over Tinker. Corg Durrack was broad-shouldered with deep chest and lean waist, giving him the proportions of a comic book hero. He fairly bristled with weapons and carried a white wax paper bag that he held out as a peace offering. "We brought donuts."
Briggs scoffed quietly at this. The female agent wore a long-sleeve shirt and pants that looked like black wet paint. Apparently the shirt doubled as a sports bra, and if she wore panties, they were thong. Still, Briggs was a stunning example of what strength training could do to the female body. As she stalked through the loft like a caged cat, the outfit showed off muscles on her long legs that Tinker didn't know women could develop.
"Do you want to start over from the top?" Tinker accepted the bag and swung up onto her countertop in an effort to keep a level playing field. "My life is in danger, oh ah, and you want to drag me back to Earth in order to lock me up in protective custody."
"Well, I'm glad you're taking this seriously." Briggs matched Tinker's sarcastic tone.
"I know all about protective custody." Tinker peered cautiously into the wax paper bag. Inside were four large coffee rolls of pure decadence. "My grandfather did some time in it, and he had choice stories to tell of the victim, rather than the criminal, being the prisoner."
Durrack sighed. "The sad truth is that we can't arrest all the bad guys."
"'Sorry, madam, I couldn't get your rapist, but I did lock up the baby girl next door just in case. " Oops, judging by the look Durrack gave Briggs, there was only so far Tinker could push the NSA agents—or at least Briggs—and she had just hit it. "Come on; let's do a history update. Twenty-five years ago, a quarter of a century, someone killed my father. They've got their gate. They don't know that I exist, unless someone leaked the CMU information, but even then, there's no proof I can build a gate. Hell, even I don't know if I can build one. There's a big jump between knowing something well enough to answer elementary questions and being able to create a working prototype. Oilcan does as well as I do on just about any test, and can understand what I create, but he can't develop things on his own. The spark isn't there."
"But you have the spark, and anyone who puts Alexander Bell together with Tinker is going to know it too."
Tinker picked up a dog-eared copy of Scientific American off the counter. "In the last quarter century, scientists have been working feverishly to understand what Leo did. This magazine is two years old, but there's an article in here from some Norwegian who's doing field manipulation using quantum particles."
"Torbjörn Pettersen," Durrack said.
"Pardon?" Tinker said.
Durrack tapped the magazine. "The Norwegian was Torbjörn Pettersen, and he's been missing since that article hit the streets."
"Dead," Briggs said simply.
Durrack expanded the single word: "Satterlund was killed during a kidnapping attempt in December."
"Marcus Shipman? Harry Russell?" Tinker named the two scientists she could remember who had published important advances in gate theory.
"Missing," Briggs said.
Durrack sighed. "Harry Russell had a GPS chip on him after a DWI arrest. We found the chip in the stomach of a catfish in St. Louis. The forensic scientists are trying to determine when he died. The thing is that, for at least four months, the chip wasn't in North America."
"You think he was here in Pittsburgh?"
"Yes."
"It's a possibility," Durrack allowed. "It's possible that the kidnappers just managed to block the signal while holding him in the United States. It seems more likely that they brought him to Elfhome."
"To kill him and dump his body into the river?"
"These people use excessive force," Briggs snapped. "His death was probably accidental."
"How he died isn't as important as the fact that you're still in peril," Durrack said. "At the moment, we have an advantage. You're a complete blank: no fingerprints, no retina scans. The other side is going to be looking for a guy about to hit middle age. With just a name change, you could vanish into the general populace. Hell, you could go to MIT or Caltech and live in the dorms. That's assuming you want to attend college. If you don't, we could set you up with a lab."
"Like I want to turn my life over to you." Tinker shook her head as her stomach growled. "I have a life here. There's my cousin, and all my friends. Besides, I thought you couldn't take me off Elfhome since technically I'm an elf now."
"We can't take you off, but you can request permission to leave," Briggs said. "Elves have traveled to Earth in the past, but they usually only stay thirty days, until the next transfer. They don't like living without magic."
