A Local Habitation

by Seanan McGuire

  The labels said “contracting bonus.” They were almost as common as the payday deposits, and each was easily three times bigger. I may not know much about the computer industry, but I understand logic. If Barbara was making that much as an independent, she wouldn’t have needed ALH; the contracting payments alone covered her withdrawals and expenses. Whatever those payments were for, it wasn’t contract work.

  Tucking the checkbook into my jacket pocket, I started going through the drawer again. The remaining contents were nothing remarkable, and I quickly found myself at the bottom, with a heap of papers and office supplies on the floor beside me. I frowned, glancing from the debris to the empty drawer. When I broke into the desk, the top drawer was so full it was in danger of overflowing. Now, with the contents even less organized, I had a pile three inches shorter than the drawer was. Something was missing.

  Reaching into the drawer, I slid my fingers around the edges until I hit a dip in the back left corner. Jackpot. It only took a few minutes to pry the false bottom loose, leaving me free to study the rest of the drawer’s contents. I looked inside and stopped, eyes widening. At the top of the tidy pile of paper I’d just revealed was an envelope watermarked with the stars and poppies crest of Dreamer’s Glass.

  The envelope was unsealed. Careful to touch the paper as little as possible, I shook the contents into my hand: an uncashed check for an amount that matched the “contracting bonuses” listed in Barbara’s checkbook and a note that read “Enclosed please find payment for May’s activities. June’s report will be expected at the same time and place.” It was signed with the vast, looping squiggle of Duchess Riordan’s signature. If the crest hadn’t already told me what was going on, that would have cinched it.

  “Guess you won’t be making June’s report,” I said, and picked up the drawer, leaving the unnecessary pieces scattered on the floor. I needed to go through what I’d found more thoroughly, after I’d spoken to Jan and gotten back to Quentin. Tucking the drawer under my arm, I walked onward toward the sound of typing. I briefly considered the fact that stalking the sound of typing through a computer company just because I assumed it was someone I knew might not be my best idea ever—after all, if I were trying to attract computer programmers, I’d probably do it with an innocuous sound. Like typing.

  That disturbing train of thought pulled into the station as I turned the corner and found myself at Gordan’s cubicle. It was more devoid of personality than the others I’d passed, but I could tell who it belonged to: the fact that she was still sitting there was a pretty big clue. She raised her head and scowled as I approached, hitting a key at the top of her keyboard. Before the screen went dark, I caught a glimpse of a diagram as complex and snarled as one of Luna’s knitting projects. “What do you want?”

  The evidence I had under my arm was enough to prove that her best friend had been working for the opposition before she died. Feeling oddly exposed, I said, “April told me you were here. You know you shouldn’t be alone.”

  “You don’t know who the killer is. What makes me safer staying with them?”

  Touché. “I’m trying to do my job.” I was going to be nice if it killed me. She was probably as scared as I was, if not more. After her, it was her company under siege.

  “And it’s doing so much good.” She snorted. “I can see the improvements since you got here. What was I thinking?”

  My good nature only goes so far. “That’s not fair. We’re doing our best.”

  “It’s not? Gee, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize. I guess it’s perfectly fair for you to suck face with Alex while my friends die?” I flinched. Gordan answered with a mocking smile, saying, “Honey, it’s obvious what you’ve been up to. Doesn’t it get cold out there on that hillside?”

  If the sarcasm got any thicker, I was going to need a shovel. “Maybe if you’d try to help instead of attacking me all the time, we’d get better results. What’s this about a hill?”

  “Maybe if you knew what you were doing, you wouldn’t need my help!” She glared at me. I glared back. Maybe she’d just lost her best friend, but that didn’t excuse her behavior; trauma only works as an excuse for so long. There’s a point when you have to take back the responsibility for your own actions.

  “You’re riding us pretty hard for someone that doesn’t have any answers. It’s a little suspicious that the things that keep going wrong are all Coblynau technology.”

  “You got a reason I shouldn’t ride you hard? You come here with your little pretty boy, sucking up to Jan, acting like it’s going to be okay now that your precious liege is involved—weren’t we good enough to save before he cared?”

  “We didn’t know you were in trouble. No one told us what was happening here.”

  “That’s not good enough!”

  “It’s going to have to be good enough, because it’s the truth. I’m sick of you treating me like crap, and Quentin even worse, just because you’re scared.”

  “You should have known something was wrong. Your precious purebloods should have figured it out.” Her eyes were bright with past hurts and anger. “Isn’t that what they’re for?”

  “You don’t like the purebloods much, do you?”

  “What was your first clue?” She turned her face away. “I’m just returning the favor.”

  It’s not unusual for changelings to be resentful. Hell, I’m resentful. Our immortal parents get the best of Faerie and take what they want from the mortal world, and we get the things they let us have. Even so, the level of her resentment was unusual. She almost burned with it. “Mind if I ask why?”

  “Yes,” she said, curtly. Then, in a quieter voice, she said, “Mom was pureblooded Coblynau. Dad was a changeling, and I was an accident. I’m just mortal enough that the mines won’t have me, and I’m not mortal enough for the mongrel workshops. You want to spend your life getting screwed? Try mine on for size.”

  I winced. “You’re right. That sucks.”

  The Coblynau make their homes in deep mines, deeper even than the Dwarves and the Gremlins. Being a changeling made Gordan unsuited for a life lived entirely at those depths. Being more fae than human, on the other hand, would make her too sensitive to iron to deal with the changeling workshops, and get her eyed with suspicion in the border communities. It was a tough break, no matter how you wanted to slice it.

  “You have no idea.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” I felt sorry for her. That wasn’t stopping me from getting annoyed. “I’m Amandine’s daughter. You knew that, didn’t you?” When she nodded, I continued, “Well, everyone knows that. I’m just a changeling. I’m not even as fae as you are. But her reputation precedes me everywhere I go, and I spend every damn day failing to live up to it. So don’t tell me I don’t know how hard it is to deal with the hand your parents dealt you. My cards may be different, but they’re just as bad.”

  Gordan glared at me. I glared back, and she was the first one to look away.

  I relaxed marginally. Victories, even small ones, are good things. I’m petty enough that they matter to me, and as long as that’s the case, I’m still human enough to stand a chance. “It’s okay to be mad,” I said, as gently as I could.

  She shrugged. “Is it?” she asked. I took that to be her way of getting choked up. The Coblynau have never been very visual with their feelings.

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “I’ve been mad since I got here. People don’t help when they say they will, they keep wandering around on their own . . . I’m pissed.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “Why?” I shrugged, settling on the truth. “Sylvester asked me to come, and you need me.”

  “You don’t care if we die,” she said, tone turning bitter. She looked back at me, eyes narrowed. “You’re just here because your liege ordered you to be.”

  “He didn’t order, he asked. And you’re wrong.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I do care if you all die, because Faerie cares. I care be
cause no one needs to die, and,” I raised one hand in mock melodrama, “Sylvester will kick my ass if I don’t care.”

  It worked. She bit back a smile, half-turning to keep me from noticing. Ha; too late. I can be pretentious sometimes, but I know it, and knowing your flaws means you can exploit them. “This would work better if we weren’t fighting,” I said.

  She looked back. “You’re right,” she conceded, “it probably would.”

  “You don’t have to like me. I mean, April doesn’t.”

  Gordan grinned. “April doesn’t like a lot of things.”

  “I noticed. Why is that?”

  “She’s distanced.”

  “Distanced?” I asked. I wanted Gordan to relax, but I had a job to do, and part of it was learning everything I could about the remaining inhabitants of Tamed Lightning. Most of them were probably nice folks, but one of them was a killer.

  “She used to be a tree. She did tree things—she drank water, absorbed nutrients from the soil, photosynthesized—the good stuff.” She leaned back in her chair, now on familiar ground. “You want to talk ‘cycle of nature,’ trees have it down. Everything nature does is in a tree.”

  “True enough.”

  “So she’s a tree. Only suddenly she’s not a tree, she’s a network server. It’s cold there. It does server things, not living things. Instead of sunlight, she has electricity. Instead of roots, she has cables. It’s stuff she didn’t need before. So she starts to learn these new things—how to be a good machine—and she forgets about sunlight, and water in her roots, and photosynthesis.”

  “Oh,” I said, realization dawning. “The Dryad is the tree.”

  “Right. The more she knows about being a machine, the less she knows about being anything else.”

  “But she still likes some people.”

  “No, she likes Jan. The rest of us are tolerated as functions her ‘mother’ needs to remain operational.” Gordan shrugged. “It’s no big deal. We’re used to her.”

  “Doesn’t it seem a bit . . . strange?”

  “Have you ever met anyone with a cat they’d adopted from the pound?”

  I blinked, a little thrown by the conversational shift. “Yes.”

  “Let me guess: the cat was devoted to them and hated everyone else. Am I close?”

  “Yeah,” I said, thoughtfully. Mitch and Stacy adopted a kitten from the SPCA once. It was a little ball of fluffy feline evil, set permanently on “kill.” Every time Shadow saw me—or Cliff, or even Kerry—he launched himself for whatever tender bits were closest to hand and started trying to remove them. But he never stopped purring when Stacy was around.

  He died of old age two years before I came home. According to Mitch, he never mellowed: even when he was toothless and half-blind, he kept trying to savage anyone who came to visit. Good for him.

  “It’s like that for April and Jan. April was the lost kitten at the pound, and Jan was the one who brought her home. It makes sense for April to be totally devoted. Personally, I’m amazed you can ever get her to stop following Jan around.”

  “So they’re always together?”

  “Not always. But if Jan snaps her fingers and says ‘jump,’ you can bet April will be right there to make sure you’re asking ‘how high.’ ”

  “I see.”

  “Do you?” Gordan fixed me with a stare. “I may not be big on the purebloods as a whole, but there’s a lot of loyalty around here. You might want to watch who you’re pointing the finger at.”

  There’s no arguing with a statement like that. “I need to be getting back. You shouldn’t be here on your own.”

  “I’m a big girl.” She held up a small black box. “This is my panic button. Anything comes for me, I push this, and the server failure alarm goes off. Don’t worry about me.”

  I frowned. “Why doesn’t everyone have one of those?”

  “We’ve never needed them before.”

  “We need them now.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” She looked at me impassively, adding, “I’m not moving.”

  “I got that.” I sighed, rising. “Don’t die.”

  “Not intending to.”

  I walked away into the darkness, feeling her eyes on my back until I turned the corner back onto the main pathway. I wasn’t comfortable leaving her alone, but I was even less comfortable staying, and I wasn’t going to fight with her. Not until I’d had the chance to go over Barbara’s papers and figure out what, exactly, they meant.

  Thanks to the air-conditioning being off while we were on generator power, it was actually cooler outside the building. I squinted up at the moon, and then glanced to my watch. Almost four o’clock; the sun would be up soon. Just one more complication for the list.

  Walking from the open spaces outside into the enclosed halls was like walking into a science- fiction ghost town; I was just waiting for the aliens to attack. The windows showed conflicting views of the landscaping outside, seeming even more disparate than they had earlier. A window on the third floor—if you could judge by the apparent distance to the ground—showed a perfect nighttime view of the lawn, complete with cats sprawled on the moonlit path.

  Jan’s office was two rooms over at the end of a long hallway. The door, which had been propped open before, was closed. Frowning, I put a hand on the knife at my belt as I walked up and knocked. “Jan? Are you in there?”

  “Coming!” There was a series of bumps and clatters as Jan made her way across the office and swung the door open. I glanced past her. Elliot was gone.

  “Where’s Elliot?”

  “He had to go get something. But I haven’t left this office—I’m totally safe, I was working on . . . actually, never mind what I was working on. I can’t explain it, and you wouldn’t understand it.” There was no insult in her tone—she was almost certainly right. Tilting her head to the side, her expression turned concerned. “Are you okay? I mean, you’re all pale. Have you eaten? Or slept?”

  “That isn’t important,” I said, cursing inwardly. Why had she picked now to start paying attention? I felt like hell, but that didn’t mean I wanted it pointed out. “How do you know the killer won’t come to you? And if you’re ‘totally safe,’ how do you know Elliot isn’t in trouble?”

  “I . . .” She paused, looking at me sharply. “Are you trying to scare me?”

  “Yeah, I am. If you get killed, your uncle will have my skin for a throw rug.”

  “You’re probably right. It’s just weird to think anyone would want to hurt me.”

  “You realize that if this is politically motivated, you’re in more danger than anyone else here?” I held up the drawer from Barbara’s desk. “I have information. Can I come in?”

  Jan eyed the drawer. “What is that?”

  “Evidence that Barbara was screwing you.” I brushed past her into the office. She closed the door, following me to her desk, where I put the drawer down atop a pile of papers. “That’s not the most important thing. I know why you can’t reach your uncle.”

  “What?” Her eyes went wide. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s the phones.” I outlined my conclusions, including the fact that calls placed from outside the knowe, or to phone numbers ALH hadn’t installed, worked just fine. I left out my discussion with Tybalt. It didn’t seem like something she’d need to know.

  At first, Jan just stared. Then her eyes narrowed, expression going cold. “It really was one of us,” she said, in a soft, dangerous voice. I’d heard that tone from her uncle. It generally meant it was time to look for cover.

  “I think so,” I said, and handed her the envelope I’d found in Barbara’s desk, with the seal of Dreamer’s Glass turned upward. “It looks like Barbara had a second job.”

  She stared. “She was working for Riordan?”

  “She was taking bribes. I don’t know any more than that—not yet, anyway. I will. There was a secret compartment in her desk. I also found her checkbook; if the dates are accurate, she’s been receiving p
ayments from them for at least a year.”

  “Barbara was a spy?” She hoisted herself onto the edge of the desk and crossed her legs, reaching for her laptop. “If Elliot ever calls me paranoid again, I’m going to spank him.” Flipping the screen open, she started to type.

  “Uh, Jan?” I tucked my hair back behind one ear, bemused. “What are you doing?”

  “Here at ALH, we pride ourselves on respecting the privacy of our employees’ personal lives,” she said, briskly. Then her tone changed, becoming more cynical as she added, “But if we have reason to believe they’ve been spying for the skank next door, I get to crack their computers like eggs and play with the gooey goodness inside.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s called ‘hacking.’ Well, it would be if I didn’t own her computer. But I do, so it’s called ‘taking an interest in network security.’ ” Jan continued to type, fingers moving in sharp, vicious jabs.

  “The computer was off,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as lost as I felt.

  Jan looked up, and actually grinned. At least one of us was enjoying this. “That might matter if we were, y’know, in the mortal world. But getting electricity in the Summerlands is hard enough that it never works quite right, so we have to deal with kludges. Generators instead of ground power, lights on timers . . . computers that don’t realize they’re supposed to forbid network access when they’re turned off.” The laptop made a sharp pinging sound. “We’re in.”

  “In what?”

  “Barbara’s computer. I have full access.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. “Can you do some sort of search for things that might have to do with Dreamer’s Glass?”

  She looked at me, amused. “I can make this computer dance the polka if I want it to.” Her typing picked up speed, only to stop when the laptop pinged again. “And . . . whoa.”

  “Whoa? What whoa?” I craned my neck to see the screen. “What did you find?”

  “Only everything,” she said, mouth compressing into a thin, hard line. She tilted the laptop so that I could see the screen; it was covered by a list of file names so long that it scrolled off the bottom. “This is what I get when I search for files with the words ‘Dreamer’s Glass,’ ‘report’ and ‘confidential.’ ” She tapped the screen with the tip of one finger, and the first title lit up for a moment before a word processing program took over the screen, opening the file. “She was a busy little girl.”