Soul of Fire

by Laura Anne Gilman

  A lupin smile was unnerving as hell, even when you knew what it was.

  “But the thing is, I’ve been on his back, in his other form, a bunch of times now. Not-drowned.”

  Martin had refused to change form when they’d been in the preter realm, warning her that the magic there might overwhelm his control. She wasn’t going to think about that right now.

  “You thought he might be able to control himself because of the mission. I get that.” Her life, personally—anyone’s life—meant less to AJ than the success of the mission. She got that, too. He’d do it again if he had to. “But why is he still hanging around me? Waiting for another try? Or because he’s actually managed to overcome enough of his basic nature to be friends with a human?”

  “Or both,” Martin threw in over her shoulder. “Let’s not overlook that possibility.”

  Jan thought Martin might have been trying to help. From the look on AJ’s face—and when had she learned how to read lupin body language so easily?—he wasn’t helping. Definite hint of guilt on that muzzle, yeah, and the way his eyes tracked on her, almost sorrowfully, as if he regretted even seeing her there.

  That just made Jan more certain she was on the right track.

  “My point is, you—supernaturals—can change when there’s a...an environmental change. Something big enough to shove against your inbred and innate whatevers. So, why are we assuming that the preters can’t? I mean—” and she flailed her hands a little in exasperation “—we already know they’ve moved from a seven-year plan to dealing in binary terms of ten after being exposed to computers!”

  Her team’s conjecture, based on the fact that the preter consort had given her a binary deadline rather than one in a base of seven that preternaturals had adhered to for centuries, but it felt right to her.

  “We don’t know that for certain,” AJ said. “It’s a theory, based on one piece of evidence. And basing anything off what one preter does is insanity.”

  “It’s a pretty damned good theory, thank you muchly,” Jan retorted. “But the thing is, they did change their magic. They changed their entire mode of hunting, from wait-and-watch to active predation. That’s adaptation!”

  It wasn’t enough; she could see that.

  “Fine, let’s look at another piece of evidence—the queen came here not because she hated this world but because she was fascinated by it. The court confirmed this, and believe me, they were grumpy enough about that fact that it’s got to be true.”

  “Is there a point here, human?” AJ asked, but his voice was actually curious, not annoyed. She was getting to him, finally.

  “The queen came here. She stayed here. Something in this world fascinated her enough that she abandoned everything she knew, everything she had. Does that sound like a creature that can’t change its nature?”

  “She might simply be insane,” AJ pointed out. “And what does this have to do with our plan to use her as a bargaining piece?”

  “You mean other than the fact that you haven’t been able to lay paw on her?

  “Think about it. She came here. And her people are having a serious mad-on about her leaving—as in not taking any of them with her. And none of you have been able to find her, going by what used to be true. Might she, as insane as it sounds, and I know that to you it’s going to sound seriously crazy, but might she be setting up a court of humans?”

  There was a long pause, and Jan held her breath, waiting for AJ to respond so she could go on to the second part of her pitch.

  “A court is a gathering of...of peers,” AJ said. “Ranked peers, and none of them her equal, but peers nonetheless. You said it yourself in your report—the consort was above the others, even those on the dais with him. The queen would be even more so. Supernaturals, at least, are...lesser but of the same stuff. Humans? They think of humans as toys and pets, sometimes as tools, but never peers. I’m not sure they’re even capable of that sort of a break.”

  His muzzle wrinkled, and Jan waited, hoping that he might be willing to consider her proposal anyway.

  “You think we should be looking for more human disappearances and that those will lead us to her?” He shook his head. “You know as well as I do how difficult it was to find humans who’d been preter-napped. It’s not as though the police are willing to share their records, and chasing after a maybe—”

  “Not chase,” Jan interrupted. “Bait. You already used me that way once before, so it’s not like you can claim it’s a bad idea.” She wasn’t going to use that as a club over him, because no matter what he might or might not regret doing, AJ didn’t do guilt that way. But he would do what was needed, no matter who got used. She was counting on that. “And not to look for disappearances, no. Bait to see if she wants humans who understand that she is the queen and who don’t need, I don’t know, training or indoctrination.”

  Brainwashing. They’d tortured Tyler, played mind games on him, until he broke. But if a mortal came to her willingly, knowing what she was and wanting that, without glamour or coercion...

  “You know, that would appeal to her ego,” Martin said, finally joining in on the conversation usefully. “Jan’s right about that. When we were over there, when she challenged them, the consort wanted Jan to give in to him, without having any claim on her obedience. They consider human servants their right, and the more interesting the human, the better. The queen is going to be worse, ego-wise. If she is building a court, having someone looking for her, wanting to serve, would be irresistible.”

  “No.” AJ shook his head, dismissing the idea entirely.

  “What?” Jan was annoyed; she’d given him a perfectly logical buildup, and he was still saying no?

  “You two know too much,” AJ said. “I’m willing to send you out on one of the teams, Jan, because you’re right, you’ve proven yourself useful there. You think quickly and without the prejudices we carry, and having a human viewpoint is useful, much as our more stubborn members still want to mutter about it. But sending you out as bait like that, practically hanging a sign over you—Tasty Treat, Come and Get It? No. You have interesting theories—work on them here. Liaise with the search teams, and help us direct them.”

  Martin snickered. “You seriously just said liaise?”

  Jan pivoted and hit Martin on the chest once, hard. Even she knew better than to argue—or sass—when the lupin used that voice. AJ was pack leader, for however a mangy pack they might be, and he had made his decision. She would have to settle for being part of a scouting team.

  “Jan?” His voice was soft, but there was still a hint of a growl underneath, waiting for her to agree. Her mouth twisting in disappointment, Jan dropped her chin and let the tension leave her shoulders, as close to the “throat baring” move she’d seen other supernaturals give him when they lost an argument as she was willing to get.

  AJ might be on the side of angels, so to speak, but she still wasn’t going to bare her throat to a werewolf.

  Chapter 5

  Martin had more experience than AJ with humans, overall. And he knew this human particularly well. He knew, despite the fact that she’d accepted AJ’s decision, that this wasn’t over. After Jan turned with an almost military flair and left the room, he gave one last look at AJ, despairing of his friend’s stubbornness as a match to Jan’s own, and followed her out to the porch. There were a few supers already there, talking quietly, but they took one look at her and Martin, hard on her heels, and left.

  “Jan. No.”

  She turned and looked out across the yard—away from the shed, and Tyler, and into the trees that lined the far edge of the clearing.

  “Jan, I can hear you thinking.” He moved around so that he could see her face, not letting her avoid him. “No.”

  “Your ears aren’t that good, swishtail,” she said, using AJ’s nickname for the kelpie.

&nb
sp; He ran his hands through his hair, pushing it away from his face and then shaking it loose again, echoing his horse-form enough that he knew she could practically see it ghosting over him. “You’re thinking that AJ is too blind or too stubborn to see straight and that you’re right—and to prove it, you’re going to try to infiltrate the court yourself.”

  She made a face at him, not willing to admit that maybe his ears were that good, after all.

  “AJ isn’t blind,” the kelpie went on. “He’s being practical. You’re an asset, same as the rest of us, and he doesn’t waste his assets on golden-goose hunts. And anyway, you’re assuming that you’d be able to find the court to begin with, and since nobody else has, that’s not exactly a reasonable assumption.”

  “Wait, you’re lecturing me on logic? That’s funny.”

  His answering snort was entirely equine. “I’m not entirely a creature of instinct,” Martin said. “Not only, anyway. So when I bring logic and rational thought into it, you should listen.”

  Jan crossed her arms across her chest and stared at him. “Fine. I’m listening. This is my listening face.”

  She was listening, but then suddenly Martin seemed incapable of talking.

  “Hello?”

  He sighed and stared over her shoulder, finding it easier to speak if he didn’t have to look her in the eye. “You’re not wrong in that staying here is a waste of both of us. I’ve already told everyone everything I know, over and again, and yeah, your team outclasses you in the technical side. Even I know that.”

  He risked a glance back at her, in time to see satisfaction that Martin agreed with her flickering in her eyes, tempered only by the implication of “us” that he should be going with her. He was hurt at first that she’d be surprised by that. He’d saved her from the turncoats not once but twice. He’d had her back, literally, in the preter court. He had told her how to reclaim Tyler from the preter bitch who’d enslaved him. “What, you thought you were going to go out there alone?”

  Jan stared at him, then blinked, emotions flickering across her face too quickly for him to identify any of them. “Actually, yes. I’m human. Whatever AJ thinks, he has no control over me. Are you ready to go against his express orders?”

  Martin made a rude noise through his nose, deep, wide-set brown eyes widened in surprise and hurt. “You make me sound like a lupin, bound to the word of my alpha. I choose to follow AJ because I think he is the best leader, and the cause is...necessary. But I’m no herd creature, whatever you might think of my conduct.”

  Jan tightened her arms across her chest as though they could deflect his obvious disappointment in her. Martin waited, and finally she exhaled through her own nose, as though echoing him, and let her arms drop to her sides.

  “Right.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and resisted the urge to pace. “Sorry. But no, you’re not doing this alone. So, maybe neither of us is being practical, or reasonable, or even smart. At least we’ll have each other’s backs.”

  “We blow off the boss, go against pretty much direct orders, and put the weirdly dynamic duo back on the road.” Jan laughed, and he didn’t hear any humor in it. “Okay. What’s the but?” she asked, since he was clearly not finished.

  “But we’re out of time. We’ve got, what, three days left?”

  She nodded.

  “So, once they start coming back through the portals, the bastards won’t stop until they’ve reached saturation, or terminal velocity, or whatever it is that will allow them to keep the portals open indefinitely—or bring enough of them here that they aren’t worried about this realm being a threat anymore.” The sentence came out in a rush, and he stopped to gulp air. “So if we’re going to do this, we have to do it right, and fast. And that means not screwing around with one of the search teams but going right to where the queen is hiding.”

  She frowned at him, the one serious flaw in their plan practically floating in the air in front of them, sparking with obvious-dust. “And how the hell do we do that, since as you pointed out, none of the search teams have actually reported anything useful?”

  Martin stepped closer, and she leaned forward a bit, their voices lowering, even though nobody was around to overhear them or likely to think either of them worth eavesdropping on to begin with.

  “If you’re right about what you said to AJ, and I think you are, then the queen came here for something that didn’t exist where she was. If so, if she’s not only breaking patterns, she’d be building something new, not just a repeat of what she knew. Or trying to, anyway. Something human, or at least heavily human influenced. And there may be a way to track that....”

  * * *

  Something was happening. He could feel it. They didn’t tell him anything, and he didn’t ask, he didn’t want to know, but he knew, anyway.

  He paced, pulling his arms around himself as though he were cold. The room they had given him to sleep in was too warm, even though he couldn’t find a thermostat or radiator where the heat was coming from. So he had gotten in the habit of opening the window and pulling a chair over to sleep in, rather than using the bed. He’d muss up the covers and throw the pillow back each morning. He didn’t know if they were fooled, but they never said anything.

  Then again, why would they? Zan kept telling him that this was his space, that he controlled it.

  So he could just tell them to turn the heat down. But he didn’t.

  Maybe when he did, they’d tell him he was all better now.

  He wasn’t better yet. He’d gotten upset this morning, when Jan came to visit. He could remember her name now, when she wasn’t in front of him. Jan. She liked her coffee with too much milk and sugar, and she snored when she had a cold, and her birthday fell when there was snow on the ground. He knew all those things and more, like the sound of her laugh, even though she had never laughed around him.

  She was part of Before, too. Before, and Then, and Now.

  Before had been...better. Everyone wanted him to go back to Before. If he did that, he would hear her laugh again.

  So, why was it so hard? Why couldn’t he get better?

  He paced, unable to let go of his thoughts, unable to speak them, unwilling to leave the security of his bedchamber, even as it felt like a cage. If it was a cage, it was one that kept him safe, not them.

  And then he heard it, recognized it, even as his body turned, his elbows leaning on the open windowsill.

  Not her old laugh. This one was low, quiet, not joyful the way he remembered, but it was still amused and still filled with a sense of Jan-ness that he would recognize anywhere, anytime, no matter what else he forgot.

  He found her easily. She was across the wide lawn, standing on the porch of the larger house, the building all the others went and came from all day. Her back was to him, but he recognized her, the way her hair looked, the set of her shoulders. Someone was with her: a man, square shouldered and horse faced, and he was shaking his head, raising his hands like someone giving in, but with amusement, not anger.

  He recognized the man, too. He was the other one who had been with them There. Who had brought him to Now. A not-human. There were a lot of not-humans here, but they were all different. And none of them were like...

  His mind shied away from remembering, but Zan said it was all right, that memory couldn’t hurt him here. Like Stjerne. Stjerne had hurt him.

  That was Then. Before was gone, and Then was gone. Zan said so. He was supposed to focus on Now.

  Stjerne was gone, locked on the other side. She couldn’t go through the portal without him. He was safe so long as he stayed here. No one here would hurt him.

  His breathing calmed. This was Now. Now was Jan laughing. Having seen them, heard them, he wanted to know what she was laughing about. So, he leaned in a little more and listened. It wasn’t easy, but he tuned out everything else and pick
ed out the voices, both familiar, carried in the crisp air.

  “I’m sorry, what was that you just said, again?”

  “There is a spell.” The non-human sounded as if he was trying not to laugh again.

  “A spell. Excuse me, mister ‘we don’t use magic like that,’ what the hell? A spell that would find a preter would have made everything a hell of a lot easier—you guys were keeping shit from me again. What the hell is with that?”

  She sounded mad but not-mad. Teasing-mad. He knew that sound, too.

  “We aren’t. We don’t. That’s something humans do. Some humans. Maybe.”

  “Maybe? Yes or no, there’s a spell? Spill it, Martin, before I braid your mane and tail with pink ribbons and start calling you My Pretty Pony.”

  “We don’t do magic like that. But some humans can. Or they could, once.”

  “So, what you’re saying is, we need a wizard?”

  “A witch, not a wizard. Wizards are fantasy. Witches are real.”

  There was another choke of laughter. “Oh, yeah, I’m glad you drew that line. And you never thought to tell me about these witches, why?”

  “Because I didn’t think of it until now.”

  “And nobody else would think about asking a human for help, theoretical witch or not, right? Yeah. You guys, I swear... So, a witch should be able to find where a preter is hiding?”

  “Should. Maybe. If she’s willing to. But...”

  “But?”

  “But part of why nobody thought of it is because witches, historically, don’t like us. They don’t trust us.”

  “They’ve met you, in other words.”

  “There’s history. And...we’d still have to find one, anyway. I don’t even know where to begin.”

  Tyler watched, hidden, while Jan ran her fingers through her hair, digging into her scalp, and his own fingers flexed, remembering the feel of those soft curls under his own skin.