Soul of Fire

Chapter 6

Martin was waiting just inside the barn when Jan got there, the massive doors pushed open just enough to let her slip inside, but not so much that anyone walking by might notice.

“That was fast,” he said, giving her and her bags a once-over.

Jan shrugged. “It’s not like I had much to pack.” A week’s worth of clothing, the secondhand tablet she’d picked up when they were on the run, after her apartment had been attacked—they had bought new tech for the Farm, specific to the needs of her team, but she wasn’t going to take any of that. This tablet was battered, but it would do the job if she had to log in anywhere.

Abducted by supernaturals? Facing down a preternatural court to reclaim your boyfriend? Spending way too much time hanging out with a psychotic killer kelpie? Lost your job because your boss thought you’d lost your mind? Didn’t matter—the email still came, and you either kept up, or you got trampled. Besides, she had her own job site to maintain, just in case someone actually stopped by to offer her work.

At least she had her meds and her inhaler and a backup prescription this time. Asthma sucked, especially when you were trying to escape from things that wanted to eat you.

Not that that was going to happen this time, she thought, rapping her knuckle once against the wooden door to avert any bad luck. This was just a reconnaissance mission, if unauthorized. The moment they found the queen, got into her good graces, and found out what her plan was, they’d alert AJ and he could set his own plan in motion for the actual capture. She would totally not-be-eaten.

“I don’t suppose you—” he started to ask.

She offered him the second bag, a battered drab olive knapsack. “Underwear, socks, a pair of jeans, and two shirts, before someone else came in and I had to scoot.” He had been sharing a bunkhouse with a dozen others, and she’d had absolutely no excuse to be going through his stuff. If he wanted toiletries, he’d have to stop at a CVS or something and buy them. Assuming supers needed any of that—though at the tree-shower, when they’d taken her to the Center, after her apartment had been attacked, there had been soap. No toothpaste or deodorant, though.

Live with someone for months, and you still didn’t know them at all.

This was her first time actually inside the barn. She took a minute to look around. The old stalls had been broken down to make more room, obviously. There were four cars and one truck parked on the ground floor, the smell of metal and exhaust mingling weirdly with old straw and a lingering odor of horse. Jan’s nose twitched, but it seemed that stable dust wasn’t the sort to trigger her asthma. Or she hadn’t been there long enough for it to, and hopefully they’d be gone before that changed.

Something moved overhead, where the loft had been adapted for more dorm space, but it was late afternoon, which meant that the diurnal residents were out doing their thing and the nocturnal ones were still sleeping, and the totally normal sounds of a car pulling out of the garage wouldn’t rouse any suspicions.

And even if someone were to see them, Martin was always going in and out on AJ’s orders, and Jan was...well, Jan guessed that she was problematic. She didn’t think there was any word that she had to stay on the Farm or that anyone would think it odd if she went somewhere with Martin, since everyone there knew the story of how the two of them had gone through a portal—and back out—together. Everyone knew they were friends. Nobody would think twice about the two of them taking one of the cars for a drive somewhere, probably—maybe on AJ’s orders. Right?

“Not that one.” Martin gestured her away from the Toyota sedan and to the battered pickup truck. Jan frowned at it. That had been the truck that they’d kidnapped—okay, escorted—her out of the city in back when this all started. She knew firsthand that the seats were uncomfortable and the radio was crap.

“What if they need to, I don’t know, haul something around?” she asked, making an argument for the vehicles with better suspension.

“There’s another truck out back, if they need that. I don’t like driving those other cars. They’re...small.”

The fact that she was discussing the relative merits and head space of cars with a creature who could change into a water-breathing horse at will was surreal enough to make Jan raise her hands in surrender. “All right, fine. Bump-o-truck it is.”

She tossed her backpack into the front cab and slid onto the seat next to it. It was, in fact, just as uncomfortable as she remembered. Maybe even more so, because now she wasn’t distracted by the weirdness her life had become or the fact that her boyfriend was missing. Her boyfriend was found, if still lost in his own way, and the weird...the weird had become normal.

“Get in and drive, swishtail,” she said. “I need to get somewhere with actual 4G if this plan is going to work.”

Even if they’d been willing to hang around any longer and risk AJ figuring out what they were up to, she couldn’t send the email from the Farm’s network—she knew that everything was monitored, because she’d been the one to set it up. If someone was paying attention and told AJ, there’d be a fight, at best, and at worst...well, better to get forgiveness later. Assuming there was a later at all.

Best-case bad scenario, if they couldn’t actually find a witch who was willing to help them, was that they’d have little choice but to come slinking back with their tails between their legs, metaphorically at least for her.

“We’ll find someone,” she said. “We have to.”

Martin gave her a look but pushed open the sliding doors, then got behind the wheel and started the engine. The truck pulled out of the garage without anyone coming down the ladder to stop them, and Jan hopped out to close the doors behind them, hopefully buying a little more time before anyone noticed the truck was gone.

Once she got back into the truck and Martin maneuvered it along the driveway to the main road, Jan pulled out her cell phone and started to tap at the keyboard, occasionally swearing as autocorrect and the bumpy ride turned her words into something else. She looked up when they approached the gate, but the guards barely even looked into the cab to see who it was before they waved the truck on.

Martin exhaled, his hands easing slightly on the wheel, and Jan just shook her head. What was there to question, after all? The guards were there to keep people out, not to lock them in. Someone would remember they had left and would tell AJ when he asked...but not until then.

So far, so good.

They’d gone about twenty minutes down the road, leaving the Farm—and farmlands—behind and were entering a more suburban area, with large houses set on gently sloping and well-tended lawns, before Jan finally got a signal back on her phone. It disturbed her a little that the moment the display appeared, she felt some tension slide away, as though merely being connected with the modern world, being back on the grid, would make things better. It wasn’t as though they’d been cut off, after all, just had...limited bandwidth.

She had to admit, though, that seeing the emails go out one after another as her phone connected was a nice feeling.

Martin looked over briefly and saw her smiling.

“You got a signal?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. So what are you doing?”

“I told you. Contacting people who might know an actual practicing witch,” she said.

“You know people like that?” Martin took his eyes off the road long enough to look at her with surprise.

“I maybe know people who know people. There are a lot of science-fiction folk in the tech community, and a lot of them are also pagans or, you know, otherly religious, alternate-lifestyle types. I figured some of them might know someone who was actually what we were looking for. Venn diagrams would suggest it works, anyway.”

“What diagrams?”

Jan shook her head and sent another email off. “Never mind. Oh, look, there’s a gas station. Hurrah. Pull over. I need a soda.”

While Martin topped off the truck’s tank, Jan went into the little convenience store and grabbed two bottles of Diet Pepsi, a package of licorice, and a bag of chips, because they seemed like things to have on a road trip.

The moment she got outside, she opened one of the bottles and took a long hit. There had been gallons of iced tea and fresh-made coffee at the Farm pretty much 24/7, but the only soda they seemed to stock was the ultra-high-sugar-and-caffeine crap that only hard-core programmers and speed junkies could run on. Jan had never considered herself an addict before, but the first rush of diet soda into her system was a revelation. Suddenly, she felt as if she could take on the world. Maybe even both worlds. She capped the soda reluctantly and went to use the bathroom around the corner, under the theory that you used one when you had it.

The bathroom was dingy but reasonably clean. She did her business quickly, washed her hands, then made the mistake of looking at herself in the mirror. The face that looked back at her was only partially familiar. The shadows under her eyes she recognized, but not the ones in her eyes or the faint but noticeable drop of her mouth. She tried to turn it up into a smile, and it came out as a grimace. And she needed a haircut, badly; the blond curls were almost down to her shoulders and would require more than gel and a brush to make them look presentable. Maybe she’d go back into the store and buy a baseball cap or something.

“Hey, Martin, do you need to—” Jan’s words dried up as she came around the pumps toward the truck and saw the cover drawn tight over the bed of the truck...vibrate.

She blinked, and it stopped.

Maybe it was nothing. Probably it was nothing. The past few months of her life, though, “probably nothing” had usually turned out to be a steaming pile of something. She looked around for Martin, but he had gone inside to pay the cashier for the gas he’d put into the truck. She waited, and when he came out again, she waved her free hand to get his attention, then pointed at the truck.

He clearly had no idea what she was going on about.

Jan shook her head and started moving to intercept him before he could get within earshot of whatever was in the truck. “There’s something in the flatbed,” she said quietly. “Under the tarp. I saw it move. Well, not move but—” She used her free hand again to waggle it sideways, trying to imitate the wiggle of the cover. Her voice was low, but she still felt as if it was carrying directly into whatever was under there, alerting it.

What if it was a gnome, one of the supernaturals everyone just called turncoats? She still had nightmares sometimes about the things that had come after her twice. Gnomes weren’t shape-shifters the way Martin was, but their bones and skin were malleable, and her nightmares still featured their arms extending and grasping, reaching for her, tearing her apart the way they’d killed Toba, the owl-eyed supernatural who had volunteered to protect her.

Jan’s chest hurt and her lungs felt squeezed, imagining one or maybe more underneath the cover, waiting, and if she went too close, they would ooze out, grabbing her, ripping her apart and eating her flesh. AJ had warned her back when this all started that gnomes liked to eat human flesh.

“Jan.” Martin’s hand was warm against her lower back, pressing just enough that her spine straightened automatically, and her chin rose in response. The small movement was enough; she shoved the panic away and forced herself to focus again on the truck, not her memories.

Her phone vibrated and buzzed softly in her pocket, indicating she had an email, but she didn’t look down, not willing to take her attention off the truck. “Do you think...?”

“There’s no way a gnome could have gotten onto the Farm, much less into the garage,” he said, knowing what she was going to ask. “We have perimeter guards. You know that.”

She did; in addition to the gate guards who weren’t as useless as they seemed, there were supernaturals who moved around the boundaries of the property night and day, alert to anything out of the ordinary. The bansidhe that had saved her when Toba died was among them. The creature freaked her the hell out—she had learned that it freaked most of the others out, too—but the membranes under its arms were, apparently, the best intruder-sensors magic could make. And it hated gnomes.

“There’s no way it could have crawled in while we were driving, once we were outside the Farm’s borders?” The ride had been bumpy enough; something might have taken advantage...

“I would have noticed.”

She took his word for that; she’d been too busy writing emails. “So, what is it?”

“Someone who decided to take a joyride off the Farm with us,” he said. His forehead was creased and his mouth drawn down, the closest thing to a scowl she’d ever seen on him. Normally, he met even the worst setbacks or disasters with a calm, moderately amused facade, as though even facing death wasn’t more than an inconvenience for the kelpie.

Before she could ask him what was wrong—beyond the obvious, naturally—he strode toward the back of the truck and unhooked the cover, throwing the tarp back with aggressive speed and then stepping away.

Jan jumped back, yelping in surprise when Tyler’s dark head appeared over the edge, his hands reaching over to pull himself up.

“What the hell?”

“Don’t send me back. Please, don’t send me back.”

His hands were gripping the side of the truck bed too tightly, until those slender fingers looked ready to shatter. He had never put on the weight he’d lost while the preter bitch was holding him, and his face was drawn tight, staring first at Martin, then her as though he really did think they were going to haul him back to the Farm.

The tightness in Jan’s chest returned as she stared at him. They should. They totally should send him back. He shouldn’t be out here, not the way he still forgot, still shied away from anything strange or too loud. Tyler needed more time, he needed to heal, and he sure as hell did not need to be chasing right into the court of a preter queen, not after what those monsters had done to him.

She was about to say that, too, when he cut her off.

“Please,” he said. “I need... I heard what you were talking about. About finding a witch—” and his voice stumbled a little on the word “—and finding the preter queen here... I know them even better than you do. Whatever happens, I’m supposed to be with you. I can feel it.”

Jan was about to refuse, when Martin cut her off. “All right.”

Jan turned to Martin, slapping a hand against his chest and pushing him back a step. “What do you mean, all right? This is not all right!”

“Why not?” Martin removed her hand from his chest but kept hold of it, his fingers curling around her own, cradling the back of her hand against his palm. It was a habit of his, from the first time they’d met, to hold her hand that way. “Why shouldn’t he?”

She stared at the kelpie and was suddenly, crashingly aware that he really didn’t understand all the ways that this was a horrible, terrible, no good and very bad idea. Supers, she thought to herself and then, more scathingly, men.

“Preters?” she said, not bothering to keep her voice down, since there wasn’t anyone else in the pump bay other than them. “Bad mojo, brainwashing, capture, any of that sounding familiar?” And Tyler was still fragile, she didn’t say out loud, fragile enough that even she was too much to remember, too much to deal with.

“She’s not here,” he said quietly, still holding her hand, keeping her from turning away. “Stjerne’s not here, Jan.” And then, louder, he said, “Tyler came of his own free will, Jan. He obviously wants to do this. We’re not going to send him back like a...like something that can’t make up his own mind. And maybe he can help, maybe he’s exactly the help we need, even if we find a witch willing to cast the spell. Like he said, he knows them better than we do.”

That was exactly what Jan was afraid of.

“Thank you,” Tyler said after he had climbed out of the truck and Jan had offered him her opened bottle of soda. He drank half of it in one gulp. Jan watched, not saying anything. Certainly not saying anything about how he used to despise diet sodas. It was wet, carbonated, and had caffeine; everything else was probably unimportant just then.

Jan took the bottle back, capped it, and put the bag of food and sodas into the car. Her jaw hurt slightly from all the things that she wasn’t saying, so she exhaled, trying to let the tension go. It didn’t work. “Do either of you need to use the bathroom?”

“No,” Tyler said, and Martin shook his head. “Let’s just get going, okay?”

“Yeah. Fine. I should make you ride in the back the rest of the way,” Jan said to Tyler, even as she was opening the door to the cab and waiting for him to get in first. She would be damned if she’d be stuck in the middle just because she was the girl.

“We’ll get a ticket if we do that and a cop sees us,” Martin said, getting in on the driver’s side. “And since I technically don’t have a driver’s license, let’s not, okay?”

“Technically?” Jan closed the door and pulled her seat belt on, having to adjust it slightly with Tyler next to her now. He turned to watch her, then looked for a seat belt, but there wasn’t one for the middle passenger. She was actually surprised there was one on her seat; the truck was that old.

“At all.” Martin shrugged as he started the ignition and pulled out of the gas station. “What? You need legal ID to get legal ID, and damned few of us are what you’d consider ‘in the system.’”

Jan was caught between amusement and annoyance. The laughter won but only by a slim margin. “And you’re driving instead of me because...why?”

“Because if you were driving I’d be stressing and being a pain in the neck. According to AJ.”

“AJ is a control freak who couldn’t be in any car he wasn’t driving.”

“Point not debated. But short of him being in the car, I drive.”

“Chauvinist.”

“Not even. I won’t let him—” and the kelpie gestured with his left hand to the man between them “—drive, either. And it’s not because you’re human. Don’t even go there.”

Tyler shook his head. “I don’t drive. Never learned how.” Having said that, he lapsed back into silence, letting them banter past him. His gaze was focused somewhere beyond the road ahead, his hands folded in his lap as though he were afraid to touch anything. Jan noted, too, that unlike previous trips together in a car, when he would slouch and fill every available space, his legs were squared in front him, even on the crowded bench seat, leaving an inch or more between their thighs.

Whatever reason he had for coming with them, human contact didn’t seem to be part of it. Jan couldn’t see over him to the other side, but she was betting the same distance was between his other leg and Martin, too.

She let the matter of who got to drive drop and looked out the window. It all looked the same, just the paved road and trees and the occasional signs by the side of the road. Cars passed them going the other way occasionally, and there were cars far ahead and behind them, but it felt...lonely, somehow. “Where are we going, anyway? I mean, lacking an actual destination yet.”

Martin shrugged faintly and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I figured we might as well do a sweep for preters while we were out and about, waiting for you to get a lead. We shouldn’t bother with anywhere a team has already swept and reported in, but that’s mostly south and west, far as I know. So, north?”

It made as much sense as anything. They’d tried going in a logical manner, with AJ’s predictive sweeps, and that hadn’t turned up anything. So, why not whim? “I still don’t see why you get to drive and pick the radio station,” she was saying when her phone vibrated—she’d gotten a message, either an email or a text. Breaking off her complaint, she pulled the phone out of her pocket and checked the display. Three emails, actually—right, she’d forgotten to check at the gas station.

“Anything?” Martin asked.

“Shush,” she said, reading. “Huh. That was fast.”

“What?” Martin was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel more rapidly now, and she decided now was not the time to draw things out, no matter how his attitude about driving annoyed her.

“Two noes and one maybe. We’ve got a possibility in Albany. A friend knows a friend who says they have a friend who might be who we’re looking for.”

“Well, that’s nicely vague,” Martin said drily.

Tyler spoke over Martin’s snark, his voice filled with an incredulity that was familiar enough that Jan felt her throat close up with emotion. “In Albany?”

Jan swallowed hard and nodded. “Yeah. That’s where Katie— You remember Katie? With the poodle named, oh, god, what was it?”

“Archie,” he said. “She named the dog Archie.”

“Right.” She had remembered that but wondered if he had. The dog had crawled into his lap and gone to sleep, and Ty had sat still all night, rather than wake it. “She says there’s a witch there, one who might talk to us. A real, practicing witch.”

Jan hadn’t given specific details in her email, just asked if anyone knew of a real, serious practicing witch who was willing to advise them on a real, serious problem. Between that, and whatever her ex-boss was saying about her, Jan’s reputation was either shot or made, depending on who was listening. She’d worry about that, along with everything else, later.

Assuming there was a later. If not, then, hey, drink up! as her old college roommate used to say.

“Albany. Huh.” Martin shook his head and switched lanes, aiming the truck for the next exit, she presumed, to pick up a route that would take them into New York State. “Who knew that Albany was witchcraft central...?”

“What do you mean, they’re gone?” Even as AJ said it, he realized how stupid that sounded. Meredith meant that Jan and Martin weren’t on the Farm, which meant that they had left the Farm, which meant that they were about to get into trouble.

The bustle and hustle of the main room halted, not obviously, but enough that it was clear that everyone within ears-range—which went far for a building full of supers—was waiting to hear what had happened.

Meredith stared back at him, refusing to bare her throat in submission to his anger. She hadn’t done anything wrong; she was just the messenger.

“All right,” he said. “Fine. Go back to work. Everyone, go back to work.”

After the first flush of irritation, he was more annoyed at himself, that he hadn’t expected this. He had seen the expression on Jan’s face, heard the frustration in her voice when she’d tried to talk him into her plan earlier. Some others of his kind might be able to claim they couldn’t read humans or didn’t understand their cues, but AJ had always prided himself on that very ability—it was part of how he earned a living, selling the parts from the cars his pack stole. If you couldn’t read a criminal’s face, you became a victim, not a trading partner.

Jan was uncertain, cautious, still a little lost among the supernaturals, but she wasn’t a coward, and she wasn’t a fool.

And Martin... AJ knew Martin by now. The kelpie was an odd and irritating mix of cold-blooded pragmatist and gooey sentimentalist. Normally, that wasn’t a problem; when you invariably kill the ones you get gooey over, the problem self-solves. But the bond between Jan and Martin was real enough that he would go along with whatever she decided.

So, they had a human who needed to feel useful, a kelpie who wanted to help the human feel useful, and a truck, all missing. And since he’d nixed their ideas on how they wanted to help, he had to assume that they had gone ahead with it anyway.

“Idiots,” he muttered. But they were idiots beyond his protection now.

Martin would keep her safe. AJ trusted that, after everything the two of them had been through. He’d keep his instincts under control, for her. And that was good. Beyond the fact that the human was useful—despite her own feelings on that topic—AJ liked her. He hoped they managed not to get killed.

“Boss?”

A yōkai stuck his head in through the window, his elongated neck reaching in easily. “Um, boss?”

“What now?”

“The other human’s gone, too.”

Huh. That he hadn’t expected. AJ rubbed at his muzzle, trying to keep his teeth from showing in a snarl that would only unnerve the others in the room, and hrmmed at the back of his throat in a noise that was not a growl, damn it.

“All right. That’s...not a bad thing.” He hoped. “Get Zan in here. I want to ask a few questions of the damned ’corn, but we can use this.”

Somehow.

“And send a message to the Huntsman,” he added, throwing it out for someone to pick up and run with. “If our humans are getting involved, I think this just became his fight, too.”

The Huntsman was old, but he was canny, and he still cared about his species, as much as he might deny it. AJ’s missing threesome was going to need help eventually, and he couldn’t spare anyone else.

“And what the hell is going on with the California team?” he barked at the rest of the room, aware that they were all still paying more attention to him than their own assignments. “It’s like every one of you loses the common sense you were hatched with—not that there was much to begin with—the moment you leave this house. Someone get me a report on California, before I have to eat someone!”

Around him, the hustle resumed.

The morning light filled the bay window of the council room, catching on the polished brass figures and making the polished wooden floor gleam with red highlights. The small table had been placed directly in the sun’s path, a simple blue vase with a single daisy stuck in it resting on the surface. Nalith studied the flower, then picked up her pencil and added a line to her work, frowning as she did so.

A human male stood to the side of the easel, just far enough to be outside her space but close enough that she could summon him with a gesture. He watched her, but his blue eyes were clouded, his expression vacant.

“You drew this so easily,” she said. “You made it more than it was.”

She had found him in town, working on this easel by the creek, sketching a simple clump of flowers that had somehow survived the first early frost. When he had looked up, smiling at the woman who had paused to watch him work, she had decided to keep him. Like the first human, he brought art to her. Unlike that first, he created it. He was the fecund soil, the remembered song, the missing spark. He would show her how it was done.

“Let the pencil rest lightly in your hand,” he said now. She looked at the pencil and opened her fingers slightly, so that she barely held it. “Like this?”

“Yes.”

He was a handsome man, well formed and graceful, if carrying more weight in his middle than she found attractive, but she cared not for his physical presence, only what was inside his head. Nalith lifted the pencil to paper once again and added another line, then another, attempting to re-create the shadow she could see under the petals.

There was a movement in the hallway outside, the faintest suggestion of someone awaiting an audience. Nalith, not looking up from what she was doing, made the faintest nod, and the creature crept into her presence.

“The houses you approved of are cleared, my lady.”

At that, Nalith did look up from the sketch pad, both slightly irritated by and, she admitted only to herself, pleased for the interruption. No matter how many times she attempted the simple sketch, no matter what advice her new pet gave, the results did not satisfy her. Having something else to focus on, especially something already completed, was a good thing.

“Houses?” She could not recall what the creature spoke of.

“The locations you had chosen to house the expansion of your court, my lady. Two houses, ready for your filling.”

She knew quite well that she had chosen no such thing; the brownie had suggested it and, after her nod of approval, had organized the acquisition for reasons of its own. But it was a good idea, and the creature had proven willing to credit her all the success and shoulder all the responsibility—and, if needed, the blame. Nalith could not fault it on its performance.

In fact, it deserved a reward, of sorts.

“Two houses,” she said, as though only now considering the ramifications of such things. “They are not within this enclave, but some distance?”

“Yes, my lady. In surrounding townships, to better extend your reach and yet cement your hold on this territory.”

“Indeed. Well done. The court will well-fill such distances, but I find that when out of sight, some courtiers tend to...unregulate their behaviors.” Not here, but back there, if she did not cast an eye on the court, they would ferment gossip and disquiet. She expected no such ill behavior here, but best to be prepared rather than face an unpleasant surprise later. Back there, a single word would strike down any who annoyed her. Here...she had fewer weapons to her command, but that did not mean she could not shape new ones.

Yes. She had not planned this, but it suited her needs to do it now. She would use these houses. And that led to an excellent, and useful, reward for her little supernatural.

“Tell me, brownie. Would you oversee these Extended Courts in my name and under my word? Ensure that all within adhere to my pleasure and my whim?”

The brownie should have looked staggered at the level of trust she granted him, but instead a crafty expression crept into its eyes, calculating the offer against its own plans. Nalith had once thought these supernaturals were placid, ambitionless creatures, but every day in this realm taught her otherwise. The creature thought to use her? She was amused and saw no reason to not let it continue, for a while at least. Ambition could be molded into useful things, after all.

“My lady, it would be my honor and my privilege to serve you in such a fashion,” the creature said now, finally coming to a decision.

“Then all we need are courtiers to fill these houses, West and East.” Nalith smiled, catching sight of herself reflected in the window, her lips pale and her cheeks blushed high under dark blue eyes. Beauty, as humans saw it. Danger and power to the supernaturals. A weapon to bring her what she most desired. “Courtiers suited to my whim. And that shall be my pleasure....”

Placing the pencil on the ledge of the easel, she strode past the artist, still waiting on her command, and went through the front of the house, stepping through the door and onto the porch that wrapped around the structure. The brownies had painted the house white on her orders, a glamour of her own making stirred into the paint, and it glistened in the sun with a faintly metallic aspect, enough to draw glances but not so much that any would know why they could not look away.

Nalith rested her hands on the railing and considered the lands around her domain. She had chosen well, for all that the area surrounding was not so well served with amenities as she might have wished. The road in front of the house was wide and well repaired, the trees rising in front of her tall for this area, if nothing at all like the great trees of the other realm, whose leaves chimed in the breeze and whispered in the night air.

Still, the leaves here, while silent, had turned from green to gold and scarlet since she had taken residence, and that, too, pleased her. Soon enough the cold season would take hold when, her court had told her, the leaves disappeared and white rain limned their branches. She had never seen such a thing herself, but this, too, pleased her: a new experience to anticipate.

Not barren, this place. She could feel it within the elements, carried on the breeze, stirred in the water, growing in the soil. Warmth—not the painful glare of the sun but the sudden crack of lightning, the molten flow of lava—filling her with promise.

The only things that did not please her were the other structures on this street. Her lip lifted in an elegant sneer. Beings not of her choosing lived in those structures, filling them with their noisy, useless selves. She would have only the finest near her, those who filled their days with performance and creation, not slovenly behavior and consumption.

But if they were to avoid a repeat of the last attempt to build a court, where she had moved too swiftly and drawn attention before she’d been ready, then slow steps were the best. In this, the old ways were still the best, to lure rather than take. Slower but safer. Start outward and bring her grasp in, clearing the way steadily but without notice. Capture them all without a shout. Humans and supernaturals alike.

Then, when she was ready, when the fire within her was ready, they would all know who ruled in their midst.