A Local Habitation od-2

by Seanan McGuire

  “Terrie was telling me about computer programming,” said Quentin, in a dopey, adoring voice. I looked back as he added, “She’s really good.”

  “I’m not that good,” Terrie said, with a laugh.

  “Right,” I said. “Quentin, get your things and come on. We’re getting out of here.”

  “But, Toby—”

  “Don’t argue. Terrie, it was nice meeting you. Quentin, we’re leaving.” I started to turn.

  Behind me, Terrie said, “I bet you got lost in the knowe.”

  “What?” I stopped, looking back.

  “I bet you got lost in the knowe. Everyone does, at first.”

  “I got a little turned around, yes,” I admitted.

  “It happens to everyone, honest. Want me to show the two of you out?”

  This woman had set me on edge faster and more skillfully than anyone I’d met in years, Jan included; I was afraid that if we spent too much time with her, Quentin was going to propose, just before I decked her. At the same time, my migraine was back with reinforcements, and I just wanted to get out and find the hotel before I killed someone.

  “I would love to be shown out of the building,” I said.

  “No problem. Terrie to the rescue!” She winked at Quentin and stepped into the hallway with no further fanfare, motioning for us to follow. Quentin started after her, and I followed, watching them speculatively.

  Quentin can be a lot of things, but I’d never seen him be fickle. Not that long ago he’d been blushing over his mortal girlfriend, and now he was panting after some strange changeling like a puppy in heat. It didn’t make sense, and it was irritating me. I was sure I was overreacting—Terrie was probably a perfectly nice person who wasn’t trying to toy with my underage assistant—but it was weird. Really weird.

  After about ten minutes, Terrie pushed open an unmarked door, exposing the lawn outside. “Ta-da!”

  The outside lights were on, and cats lounged in the lit areas, watching us with detached interest. The only flowers in sight were normal, mortal clover. We had left the knowe. I stepped past Terrie and Quentin, taking a deep breath of the cool air and relaxing as I felt my headache loosen. “This is wonderful.” It was dangerously close to saying “thank you,” but I was too absorbed in my speculations to care.

  “Don’t mention it,” Terrie said, shrugging off my near-slip. “Are you guys sure you’ve got to get going so soon? The night shift has hours to go.”

  “Well—” Quentin began.

  “We’re sure,” I said. “Quentin, come on.”

  He started to protest, but stopped, catching my expression. Sighing, he turned to face Terrie and executed a deep, formal bow. “Open roads and kind fires to you.”

  That was the last straw. Whatever this was, it was moving a bit too fast for me to be even remotely happy about it. “Right. Good night, Miss Olsen.”

  I grabbed Quentin’s shoulder and hauled him off. Terrie watched, hiding a smile behind her hand. I did my best to ignore her. Quentin craned his neck for one last look, protesting only when we were out of earshot. “What did you do that for?”

  “ ‘What did you do that for?’ ” I mimicked. “Did you see yourself back there?”

  “I was being nice!”

  “You were being a creepy little ball of hormones! She’s twice your age!”

  “You’re like four times my age.”

  “But I, at least, am not hitting on you.” I let go of his shoulder, letting him try to smooth his wounded dignity as I stalked toward the car. “We’re here to work, remember?”

  “You left me alone. I was gathering information.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Yeah! Did you know that ALH only employs faeries? They hire changelings and purebloods, and that’s it—no humans of any kind. Not even in service capacities.”

  “Since most of the company is in the Summerlands, that makes sense. What else?”

  “Most of the management staff has been with the company since the beginning. January and her daughter basically run the place, only Elliot does all the staffing. And—”

  “Hang on. Daughter?” Sylvester hadn’t mentioned a daughter.

  “That’s what Terrie said.” I motioned for him to keep going, and he said, “The daughter’s name is April.”

  “Interesting. Any mention of a father?”

  “No.”

  “Huh. Did you notice how empty the place was? I wonder where everyone is.”

  “Maybe it’s just a small company?” Quentin suggested, brow furrowing. We had reached the car, and I dug in my pocket for my keys, shooing cats off the hood and roof.

  “Or maybe something’s going on,” I said, and unlocked the driver’s side door. “Those weren’t unused cubicles, just empty ones. There were papers on the desks, and most of them had computers. There were more people working here not all that long ago. Go check your door.”

  “So something changed,” he said, as he circled the car to peer through the windows. I did the same on my side. Last time I got into a car without checking whether I was alone, there was a man with a gun waiting for me. There are some lessons you only have to learn once.

  “Exactly,” I replied. “Did you find anything else?”

  “Not that you’d want to hear.”

  So the rest was flirting: got it. “Well, maybe you weren’t just screwing around,” I said, sliding into the car and leaning over to open the passenger door. Once Quentin was in the car and buckled up I handed him the folder with the directions. “Here. See if you can get us to the hotel.”

  He sighed. “Yes, O Great One.”

  “O Great One? I like that. You can stick with that.” I started the car and drove back up the path from the parking lot to the entrance. The gate was apparently equipped with motion sensors on the inside, because it creaked upward as we approached.

  Something flashed gold in the underbrush. I hit the brakes, peering into the darkness. Whatever it was, it was gone; there were no further signs of motion or light.

  “Did you see that?”

  “Huh?” He looked up from the directions. “See what?”

  “Nothing.” I shook my head, restarting the car. “It was probably just a raccoon.”

  We drove through the gate and out onto the street with no further delays. The business parks on either side were dark—the sensible people had gone home, leaving the night shift for the lunatics and the fae. That’s how the world has always worked. The night is ours.

  “Head for the freeway,” Quentin said.

  “Got it.” I turned toward the nearest onramp.

  “So did you meet her?” Quentin asked.

  “Meet who?”

  “January.”

  “Yes, I did. So did you; she was the brunette with the clipboard when we first got here.”

  “That was her?” His nose wrinkled. Quentin was young enough to be very aware of his own dignity, and his dignity wasn’t the sort of thing that allowed for judging swearing contests.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What was she like?”

  “Distracted. But a little bitchy at the same time—I don’t think she wants us here.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Not very. She seems pretty comfy with all this tech, so she was probably born no later than the eighteen eighties.” For a pureblood, anything less than two hundred years is basically adolescence. One of the more ironic things about immortality; the immature period lasts a lot longer. “Tamed Lightning is probably her first ‘real’ regency.”

  Quentin frowned. “Do you think something’s really wrong?”

  “I think it’s too early to say, but it’s possible,” I said. “Which exit?”

  “Next one.”

  “Got it.”

  Fact: Sylvester was worried about something “going wrong” at ALH. Whatever it was, it was real enough to spook Jan. She wasn’t happy to have us there. So what was she trying to hide? Fact: ALH Computing wasn’t anything I was used to. It’s not
that I don’t approve of modern technology; I just don’t understand it, and that makes it hard to appreciate it. What were Jan and her associates hoping to achieve?

  Quentin was saying something. I glanced toward him. “What?”

  “So are we staying for a while?” he repeated.

  “It looks like we may be, yes.”

  “Oh,” he said. He didn’t sound disappointed; in fact, he sounded pleased. Not a good sign.

  The hotel was coming into view up ahead, and I turned toward it, angling toward the promise of material comfort. The idea of a bed—any bed—was suddenly compelling.

  “I am so ready for bed,” I muttered.

  Quentin glanced at me. “The Duchess asked me to pass you a message.”

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “She says, ‘try to get some sleep, and have anything you want off the room service menu if it means you’ll actually eat.’ ”

  That was Luna, all right. I grinned. Sometimes having a collection of surrogate mothers can come in handy—between Luna, Lily, and Stacy, I was almost starting to eat regularly.

  “Cool,” I said. “You need anything before bed?”

  “No. Wait—what time is it? I promised Katie I’d call.”

  “Almost nine. Calling Katie, huh? You sure you’re not going to call Terrie instead?”

  Even in the dim light of the car, I saw him redden. “Katie’s my girlfriend.”

  “So you were flirting with Terrie, why?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. She was cute, and I was bored.” His blush got worse. “It didn’t mean anything.”

  “Uh-huh.” I busied myself with pulling into the hotel parking lot and looking for a space.

  Unbidden, another fact rose to my mind: Alex was definitely cute. I paused. That wasn’t a thought I needed to have, especially not when I’d just been scolding Quentin for thinking the same about Alex’s sister. But it was also a thought that didn’t involve Connor, or Cliff, and I needed to move on to someone who was neither married nor mortal. Really, who was it hurting? I scolded Quentin because of the age difference. Alex and I didn’t have that problem, unless he was a lot older than he looked.

  I don’t usually move that fast. Devin was my first lover, and I was with him for years before I left him for Cliff. The only person I’d so much as looked at since then was Connor, and he and I started flirting when I was still living under Amandine’s roof. I don’t get crushes. It’s not my style. Still, it could be time for a change—and something was telling me Alex would be the perfect change of pace. So what if it was unexpected? That made it more appropriate. Out with the old, in with the new.

  Quentin was silent, lost in his own thoughts. Probably thinking about how he was going to explain his sudden absence to Katie. Maybe we’d get lucky, and the only thing wrong at ALH would turn out to be some sort of computer error . . . but somehow, I didn’t think so.

  Whatever it was, I had to hope it was something we could handle on our own. Sylvester would never have sent me with nothing but a half-grown fosterling for reinforcements if he thought we’d be in any real danger. Right?

  SEVEN

  MELLY ANSWERED ON THE THIRD RING. “Shadowed Hills, how can I help you?” Her voice was broad, accented with the sort of jolly American drawl that thrived in the middle of the country about two hundred years ago. I’ve known Melly since I was a kid—she’s Kerry’s mother, and she used to sneak us sweets from the kitchen at Shadowed Hills—and just the sound of her was enough to relax me.

  “Hey, Melly. Sylvester around?”

  “Toby! How are you, darling? Did Himself really ship you off to Tamed Lightning with naught but a foster to keep you company?”

  “Quentin’s not so bad.” Quentin was presently being “not so bad” in his own room, where he was hopefully going to get some sleep. ALH seemed to operate on a diurnal schedule, and we were going to be clocking a lot of daylight hours before we went home. “Put the boss on? I’ve got an update for him.”

  “You’ll visit soon?”

  “I will.”

  “All right, then. Hold on a second.”

  Sylvester must have been waiting for my call, because I was on hold less than a minute before he picked up, breathless. “Toby?”

  “Here,” I confirmed. There were a few cold fries left on my room service tray. I picked one up, swirling it in a puddle of ketchup. “We’ve arrived safely, and I met your niece. You should’ve told me she was twitchy and paranoid.”

  “I would have, if she normally were. Did she say why she stopped calling?”

  “That’s the funny thing. She says she’s been calling, and that you haven’t been answering her messages.”

  “Wait . . . what? But that’s ridiculous. Why would she say something like that?”

  “You say she’s not paranoid. She says she’s been calling. You say she hasn’t been. This sounds to me like something’s up.” I popped the fry into my mouth, chewing quickly. “Is there any chance you can send reinforcements without causing some sort of diplomatic incident?”

  “Not without more to go on, no. Did you talk to her?”

  “Yeah. It was about as productive as talking to Spike. Maybe less. I mean, at least Spike makes an effort. It could be because she’s not sure I am who I say I am, and she’s trying to be careful. Has she been having a lot of issues with Dreamer’s Glass recently?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.” Sylvester hesitated. “Are you comfortable continuing?”

  “To be honest, no, but if she’s not getting messages somehow, I don’t think swapping me for somebody else is really going to make her less twitchy.” I sighed. “I’ll go back tomorrow and see what I can find. If you need to pull me out of here, we’ll reassess the situation from there. All right?”

  “All right. Just keep me informed.”

  “Of course.”

  We chatted for a few minutes about inconsequential things—Luna’s latest gardening projects, my cats, Quentin’s performance so far—before I hung up with another promise to let him know if we needed anything. I was out as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  My dreams were fuzzy, tangled things that faded when the sun came up. I rolled over, wrinkling my nose at the smell of ashes, and peered at the alarm clock. The first digit was a five, which was all I needed to see; groaning, I buried my head under the pillow and went back to sleep.

  The sound of knocking hauled me back to consciousness about six hours later. I pulled my head out from under the pillow and glared at the door. The knocking continued. Knowing hotels, the knocking would probably be followed by someone from the housekeeping staff deciding to come in and start dealing with the sheets. I was too bleary to remember whether I’d thought to put up the “Do Not Disturb” sign.

  Some people like to sleep naked; me, I like to sleep in a knee-length T-shirt. Nudity wasn’t the issue. The issue was that my human disguise had dissolved at sunrise, and I didn’t have time to weave a new one.

  “Come back later!” I shouted, sitting upright and trying to finger-comb my hair over my ears. I could pass for human long enough to slam the door, if I could get my hair to behave. “I’m not decent!”

  The sound of muffled laughter drifted through the door. “I didn’t know decency was a requirement for breakfast.”

  “Alex?” I lowered my hands, scooting out of the bed and reaching for the hotel robe. “What are you doing here?”

  “Currently? Shouting through your hotel room door. I brought breakfast.”

  “Yes, but what are you doing here?” I shrugged into the robe, tying it shut as I moved to open the door. “I don’t remember ordering room service.”

  Alex smiled, holding up a paper bag that smelled of eggs and melting cheese. He had a tray in the other hand, with two large paper coffee cups prominently displayed. My stomach rumbled. “Ordering, no, but needing to? Definitely yes. I told you I’d see you at breakfast.”

  “I guess you did,” I said, and held the door wider. “Come on in.” I was
taking a chance by asking a man I barely knew into my hotel room, but somehow I doubted that anyone who could be incapacitated with a cafeteria door was going to be much of a threat. If he’d been a pureblood, I might have thought differently. I’d take my chances against another changeling, even one whose bloodline I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  “Nice digs,” said Alex, walking past me. I watched him as I closed the door. He was clearly one of Faerie’s rare morning people, making a tidy contrast to my own bedraggled and half-awake self. I was in robe, oversized T-shirt, and socks, with my uncombed hair raked unevenly over my ears. Suddenly, I found myself wishing desperately for some excuse to sneak off for a shower and a change of clothes.

  “Luna booked our rooms,” I said, giving my hair another swipe with my fingers. “I probably wouldn’t have asked for anything this nice.”

  “Well, then, my compliments to the Duchess.” Alex put the tray down on the desk, opening the bag. “Egg and ham croissant, or egg and sausage croissant? Please don’t tell me you’re a vegetarian. I’d die of embarrassment.”

  “I am definitely not a vegetarian. Can I get the egg and ham?”

  “Egg and ham it is.” He tossed a waxed paper-wrapped breakfast sandwich toward me, and I caught it easily, sitting down on the edge of the bed as I did. Alex beamed. “Nice reflexes. How do you take your coffee?”

  “Black is fine.”

  He walked over to offer me one of the cups. “Sleep well?”

  “Fairly,” I said, sipping the coffee. It was hot, strong, and about the most wonderful thing I could have wished for. I let my shoulders relax. “You?”

  “It was a good night.” He walked back to the desk, picking up the second cup.

  Sipping at my coffee again, I watched him. He looked perfectly comfortable. Whatever was bothering Jan, it didn’t seem to have touched him at all. “So how’re things back at ALH?”

  “Oh, the usual. Mornings are essentially downtime—once the graveyard shift goes home, things slow down. I probably won’t get paged to fix anything for a few hours.”

  “What is it that you do, exactly?”

  “System maintenance. I’m a code monkey.” Seeing my blank expression, Alex explained, “I tell the computers what to do, and when they do something they’re not supposed to, I correct their instructions.”