Authors: Heart of Briar
Getting off the bed was an effort; nothing seemed broken or torn, but she was wobbly-legged, and her stomach told her it had been a while since she’d eaten. It took a moment to remember her last meal: the plate of probably-rabbit and salad, by the campfire.
Her clothing was draped over the back of the chair. She reached for them and then stopped. They were clean. Laundry-clean, smelling not of the soap she’d used in the forest-shower, but of ordinary detergent.
Someone had washed them while she slept.
It was hard to put a sinister interpretation on that—what was she supposed to do, demand her sweaty, muddy clothes back?
Standing naked in the middle of the room, Jan reached overhead and stretched, then tried to touch her toes. Her lower back hurt more than her shoulders, she determined. Flexing slightly, Jan decided that her thighs were achy, but there was no actual pain.
Wherever Martin had taken her, she hadn’t been on his back for very long.
“Or, magic,” she said out loud, trying to be reasonable about it. “You were under water, after all.”
Underwater and not dead. The sensation of not being able to leave his back, legs and butt like they’d been glued there, Martin refusing to let her go. Magic, she thought. Yay. Now to figure out where they were and what the plan was.
“Which you’re not going to find standing around here,” she told herself, reaching for the clothing again. The clothes were not only clean, they still had the lingering warmth that said they’d been in a dryer not so long ago. So they hadn’t been here long?
Dressed, she found her silver bracelet resting under the clothing—the metal had been polished, so bright it looked brand-new. So that answered the question about silver and supernaturals, anyway. She slipped it onto her wrist, considered her still-muddy sneakers, then shook her head and left them there.
Her bladder was insisting—loudly—that she find a bathroom before anything else, even worry.
Thankfully, the door farthest down the narrow hallway was open, revealing familiar ceramic shapes. So far, it was all ordinary, in a way that should have been reassuring, but wasn’t. She used the toilet with relief and then borrowed the single toothbrush without guilt, scrubbing her teeth and tongue until her sinuses tingled from the spearmint in the toothpaste. The reflection that greeted her in the mirror looked bedraggled and slightly frantic, but clean. She touched her hair, running fingers through it without hitting any tangles.
Her hair always tangled when she washed it. Always. And the wind that had whipped through the damp strands when Martin started running...
“Magic,” she said again, finding that somewhat easier to deal with than the idea that someone had carefully brushed out her hair while she’d been unconscious. Clean clothes were okay, but that was...creepy.
“Still. Nothing broken, nothing too bent.” She looked at herself in the mirror again. “If there’s coffee and Wi-Fi somewhere, I might make it.” Tyler used to say that, when he woke up at her place. Every time. Her throat tightened, and she bit down on her tongue to stop the tears.
“No. None of that. Find Martin, figure out what you’re going to do, then do it. No crying. No stopping.”
AJ didn’t think they had a chance. Maybe supers could do that, keep going even when they knew they were doomed. She had to believe they had a chance. Otherwise, she’d give up now, curl up and not move again.
She looked for mouthwash in the medicine cabinet but found only a half-empty box of adhesive bandages, some off-label aspirin and a sticky, half-f bottle of cherry-red cough syrup. The cabinet below the sink had a plunger, a six-pack of toilet paper and a bottle of cheap gin. Or at least, she assumed it was cheap; it was in a plastic bottle, and the name on the label was one she didn’t recognize.
“Nice place you brought us to, Martin,” she muttered, and went in search of her companion. The hallway led to two other bedrooms, as bare of furniture as the one she’d woken up in, with small windows that looked out onto another house, with its shades drawn, and then to a large living room, which at least had the basics of a sofa, a wooden rocking chair and a television.
The TV was on but muted, and Martin was nowhere to be seen. There were larger windows here, but before she could examine the view, she was interrupted.
“You’re awake. Good. I made breakfast.”
Apparently, he had been in the kitchen. She crossed the living room, trying not to notice the pale blue—
bansidhe-
colored—carpeting underfoot, and followed him into the kitchen. Like the rest of the house, it was bare-bones and distinctly un-lived-in. Unlike the others, it smelled good. Bacon and eggs and coffee.
She sat down at the small kitchen table, careful with her weight until she was certain the rickety wooden chair would hold her. “Where are we?”
“Shannsburgh,” he said. “Little town in the middle of nowhere you want to be. A friend of mine owns this place, lets me use it when I need to. Between tenants right now, so we don’t have to worry about anyone showing up.”
“You have human friends?” The question slipped out before she could think about how it sounded.
Martin served up the bacon and eggs on a plate and put it in front of her. “Some. Not many.” He didn’t seem to have taken offense.
Jan picked up the bacon, looking at it curiously, surprised that a vegetarian would cook meat. Not that she was complaining, at all. She took a bite before he could change his mind, and the morning got better immediately. The savory crispness overwhelmed the freshness from the toothpaste, but she didn’t mind.
She was pretty sure it was fake bacon, though.
He sat down opposite her, a mug of coffee in his hands. “It’s difficult. I like people. I really do. And not just in that way, despite what everyone thinks. And people like me. But...” He shrugged, sipped his coffee. “I’m a kelpie.”
That word again. A water-dwelling, horse-shaped supernatural; she’d gotten that much from observing, even without the unhelpful and now aborted internet search. “And that means what, exactly? AJ warned me about getting on your back—” she thought admitting that was safe enough “—but I did okay.... I mean, other than passing out.” She thought about asking now how long they’d been in the water, how long she’d been
under
water, but suspected it would just make her hyperventilate.
“I’m a kelpie,” he repeated, as though that should be enough explanation.
It wasn’t. She picked up her fork and started eating while she waited.
“It’s... I like people,” he repeated, then his entire face lit in a faint smile. “Some people, anyway. I want to keep them with me.” The smile faded. “That...doesn’t end well.”
“Because...?” AJ’s warning and the feeling she’d had when Martin had first shifted, being drawn to get on his back, and the smell of water, and the memory of water filling her lungs, it all stirred and swirled and she put down her fork and stared at him. “Because you go underwater. And they can’t get off your back. And you drown them.”
“It’s a thing.”
“A
thing?
” Her voice rose in disbelief.
“A thing. Yeah.” He shifted, clearly uncomfortable with the direction the conversation had taken. “Look, I don’t pick on you for your habits, do I?”
Picking up women and killing them was only a habit if you were a sociopath. “I...” Jan decided that if she followed this particular discussion any further, she’d definitely start to hyperventilate, and since she’d left her spare inhaler in her bag, that—
“Oh, god, my bag.” It was easier to focus on that than what Martin had just admitted to. “My computer. Where’s my laptop?”
“The water ruined it. I’m sorry. I have someone bringing another laptop. You can work on another laptop, right?”
“Yeah. It should be fine.” She’d used the same password on all of the accounts, since she didn’t care if someone hacked them. “Someone?” She took another bite of her breakfast, and her stomach rumbled, urging her to eat more, faster, now.
“I said I have friends. Human ones.”
Friends who knew better than to get on his back. Maybe the friends could get her a new inhaler. Or go to her apartment and get her meds. Shit. Oh, shit. She forced herself to calm down. If she stayed calm and stayed still, she’d be okay. The last attack had been set off by the dust in the warehouse; this place was empty but clean. She’d be okay. She’d get his friends to refill her prescription, and she’d be fine.
She’d been on his back. And not drowned. Had that been why the blindfold...? Or was that just so she wouldn’t panic when they went into the water?
“Your friends...they know what you are?”
He shook his head and reached out to touch her hand, the one holding the fork, and stilled while she talked. “No. Only you.”
Jan felt a shift of something inside her, weirdly warming. She’d never had anyone’s secret before. Not like this. Never mind that he’d told her under duress, that she was here only to save Tyler; she had a secret of his, something his other friends didn’t know.
Yeah, that he was a murderer. A serial murderer, probably, if...
She started eating again, focusing on the food rather than what she was feeling.
“When Craig gets here with the new computer, we can get started again,” he said, all businesslike. “See if anyone replied to the accounts, and follow up on them. Um.” His voice flattened. “How do we follow up?”
She finished the eggs and picked up the second slice of bacon, crunching it with satisfaction.
“Some people like to go back and forth in email first, or phone calls. But you can cut to the chase and meet them right off. You suggest somewhere local, and public, not in your own neighborhood, just in case they’re skeevy...” She stopped. “But they’re going to be skeevy, aren’t they? That’s the point? But they’re also going to want to meet up fast, too. Oh. What if they’re not local? How—”
“They’re coming from another plane,” he said, his voice still smooth, not showing any exasperation at what was a particularly dumb question. “However they’re opening portals, they’re able to go to specific areas, directly to the person they’re seducing. We didn’t understand why or how, but you just explained that: they get the person to choose a place to meet specifically.” Martin shook his head, a clump of hair falling over his forehead, exactly the way it did in his other form. “Oh, that must have made them gleeful, to know that their prey would be sitting there waiting for them....”
“But how? I mean, okay, they’re using the internet, I get that, and, yeah, it would make it damn easy for them to focus on targets, the same way scammers do; whoever’s dumb enough to bite.” Like Tyler. She shut that thought off and focused on the puzzle part of it. “But if they’re in another...world? A parallel universe? Whatever. The question is, then how are they connecting? I mean, some kind of spell, hooking them up...” They’d said they didn’t work spells, but maybe preters were different. “How did they even find out about the internet, much less dating sites?”
Martin looked at her, and his face went utterly blank. “That’s part of what we need to know now, how they’re doing it and how to shut it down.”
“Oh. Right.” Kelpies, at least, didn’t seem to have much use for theoretical tech discussions. She felt congestion build, either from the thought of what they were doing, or some dust they’d disturbed in the house, and took a sip of the coffee, letting the hot liquid settle her lungs back down again. Maybe her bag was around here somewhere, maybe her inhaler hadn’t been too badly damaged, maybe it would dry out and she’d be able to use it, after all.
Too many maybes.
Then she asked the question that had been hiding behind her thoughts all the time. “And if nobody bites on our bait?”
He sighed, leaned back in his chair, which creaked alarmingly, making her brace for its inevitable crash, and stared at the ceiling. “Then we try again. And again.”
“Uh-huh.” She decided that his chair was more sturdy than it sounded, and leaned forward, waving her fork at him. “Look, Martin, I have a life, you know. A job. People are going to notice if I disappear, too.” Unlike Tyler, she wasn’t the sort to suddenly give notice, or disappear. Her friends would worry...wouldn’t they? Or would they think she’d run off to join him?
He looked at her, those dark eyes and long face mournful. “We thought you wanted to help your leman?”
“I do. Of course I do. I...”
She shoved the rest of the bacon in her mouth, no longer enjoying the taste. That wasn’t fair.
And it didn’t matter. The truth was, even if she wanted to leave, she didn’t know where Shannsburgh was, and if her laptop was ruined, then so was her phone, and god knows if her credit card or ATM would work, so how would she get home? She could go into a police station and announce she’d been kidnapped, she supposed. But something inside her flinched from that. She’d have to tell them about Martin and AJ then, or risk giving a description of someone who might be innocent, and both options made her feel as if she’d swallowed a lead weight.
She knew she wasn’t crazy. She was pretty sure that she wasn’t crazy. But trying to explain this to anyone else... She had a lot of friends, casual and otherwise, but none of them would believe any of this. They’d just think that her worry about Tyler had led to a terminal crack-up.
“Huh. You said, AJ said, this has been going on for months, or maybe longer, but months since you’ve been paying attention.”
Martin nodded.
“Is there anyone else doing this, like me, the trying to catch a preter thing? Or...just us?”
He didn’t want to tell her, she could read him that well at least.
“Martin.”
“You’re the third human I know about, who poked around when someone went missing, who was willing to do something. There might’ve been others. I didn’t know them.”
He was using the past tense. “The turncoats got them.” They had told her that. Got them...ate them. That was why Martin had taken her here, to be safe. She almost laughed. Be safe, so she could be used as bait.
“The turncoats, they were told where to find those humans, right? Someone betrayed them, the same way we were betrayed, only earlier, before you could even get there. That’s what AJ thinks. Right? One of your people.”