Seanan McGuire - A Local Habitation

“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 payments 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.”