Laura Gilman - Soul of Fire

Martin was probably her best friend now, even more than Glory.

There were seven other supers listening to him talk, and she couldn’t identify any of their species, other than absolutely not human. “They will try to establish their superiority over you, because they have none of their own in that land,” the kelpie went on. “Don’t assume that means they’re harmless. They’re anything but—they have nothing to lose.”

Greensleeves were humans who had been taken by the preters and then abandoned, left to fend for themselves in that cruel, unfamiliar realm.

She and Martin were the only ones on the Farm who had ever gone through a portal—at least, the only ones still living who had done so and come back to talk about it. With her expertise needed on the tech side, he had been tasked with telling the others what to expect, not so much from the portals themselves as the preternaturals on the other side.

“Why don’t they rebel?” one of the supers asked. “Humans are supposed to be the wild card, the ones who aren’t bound by tradition. Why aren’t any of them—”

“What? Charging in and biting off the head of the preter queen? Leading the thralls and changelings in revolt?”

“Yes?”

“You’re an idiot,” Martin said, neither kindly nor with any venom, simply stating an obvious fact.

Jan listened to him talking and felt an odd disconnect. She had told so many people, so many times, every detail she could remember of their time in the other realm, their experiences didn’t quite feel real anymore. It was more as if she’d read it somewhere, read it so many times that she’d internalized it somehow.

But in her nightmares, it was all very real. That was probably why she wasn’t sleeping.

She caught the kelpie’s eye, and he nodded slightly; they were almost finished. Jan kept walking; he’d catch up with her when he was done.

She finally sat—and then lay down—on the grassy slope by the retaining pond, a green-slicked pool that was home to a dozen or so ducks and a handful of cranky water-sprites. They stayed on their side, and Jan was careful to keep at least a dozen yards away from the edge of the pond. Water-based supernaturals were just as likely to lie, cheat, and otherwise mess with humans as their land-based cousins, but their games were often more lethal. Jan remembered their near-deadly encounter with the troll-bridge in the preter’s world and shuddered.

The irony that she was waiting for a water-sprite was not lost on her. Martin was a kelpie, and kelpies lured humans into riding them, then drowned them. It was, as Martin said, “a thing.”

Jan couldn’t help it—she laughed. Her best friend was not only not human but a borderline sociopath serial killer. Somewhere, her life had gotten seriously off track.

“I don’t even know who’s in the play-offs,” she said to the squirrel that had paused, midscurry, to stare at her. “We spent all that money on the tech, and I didn’t even get a TV.” Or a new laptop, for that matter. Fairy gold was a myth, and AJ held his checkbook tighter than her worst client.

Not that she had any clients right now. Or a job. Or anything in the way of a future if they didn’t figure a solution out, or find some weapon, or do something.

The squirrel’s beady black eyes held her gaze and then it scurried off without giving her any advice.

“And at this point, I’m just sad enough that I’d take it.”

“Take what?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

Martin dropped to the ground next to her, heedless of the dirt he’d get on his jeans, and groaned as if he’d been hauling bricks all morning rather than lecturing. There was a splash from the pond as someone raised their head to see who had arrived, then disappeared again.

With nothing new to update him on, they lay there in silence for a few minutes, just breathing. If she were going to “get some” as Glory suggested, Martin made the most sense. He had certainly flirted enough to suggest he’d be open to it if she asked. But every time she thought about asking, something stopped her. Jan didn’t love him, not in that way, and some days she wasn’t even sure that she liked him—Martin was amoral in the real sense of the word, and how could you call someone like that a friend?—but they’d been through enough together, seen each other clearly, and that had created a bond that was somehow more than love or friendship.

Some days, Jan thought that bond was all that got her through each new bit of insanity. She wasn’t willing to risk it just for sex.

And besides, a small, smart voice in her head reminded her Martin was a hopeless flirt, yes, but one who tended to drown his partners. He’d warned her often enough.

Without anything new to talk about from the briefing and not wanting to talk about Tyler, Jan said the first thing that came into her head. “All your lectures, the lessons...does AJ really think they’re needed? I mean, that anyone is going to have to go back there?” The thought sent a cold tremor down her spine. The preters’ home was beautiful in a terrifying way. Massive trees and sunless skies, dragon-sized snakes, and endlessly rolling plains that had led them to the vaguely familiar mountain that housed the preternatural court. No human, no mortal supernatural should ever have to see it, not in real time and not in their dreams.

“No.” Martin plucked a strand of grass and let it flutter out of his fingers, falling to the ground, as he studied the pond where the ripples were slowly fading. “Not unless we have some crazy-brave leman who wants to rescue her lover.”

“Or some crazy-dumb kelpie who thinks he can just march into the preter court and demand answers.”

He looked away from the pond long enough to give her a wry, self-mocking little grin.

“No, AJ doesn’t want to send anyone back there,” he said. “But he doesn’t want what we learned to be forgotten, either. You know that. They’ve been quiet for so long, trapped by the old restrictions, the difficulties in luring people into their grasp, that all we had were folk songs and legends. We need actual information to protect ourselves. Ourselves and humans. Firsthand reporting should last us another couple of generations before it’s out-of-date again,” Jan couldn’t argue with that. Humans only knew preternaturals and supernaturals as fairy tales, children’s stories, not real. They hadn’t been prepared, weren’t prepared for the truth. The weight of knowing kept her from sleeping, filling her dreams with worst-case scenarios and crushing guilt.

He rolled onto his side and studied her. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. It’s just... This morning I woke up, and it was the same as it had been every morning since we got back. That first rush of energy, when everything seemed like it was finally making sense, that we knew what to do, do you remember? It’s gone. I can hear the clock ticking in my head, and we’re getting nowhere.”

Martin started to say something, a faint noise of protest, and let it trail off, unable to muster an argument, because she was right.

“No matter what we do to warn people, there are still going to be idiots who say sure, let’s run off with a stranger, give over our free will—” and she hated the bitterness, the anger that was in her voice but she didn’t have to pretend here “—there will always be enough idiots that they’ll be able to keep opening portals. And we don’t know how they’re doing it or how to close them. I don’t think we can figure it out.”

“Your team...”

“Good people. Smart people.” And never mind that most of them weren’t people at all, not in the human sense, but she’d gotten past that weeks ago. “But this is so far beyond us, it’s like...” Her hands waved in the air, signifying her frustration. “We’ve got theories, but that’s all. And AJ’s plan to find the runaway queen, use her to force them to leave us alone...it was a good idea, but they’ve gotten nowhere, too. AJ said the most recent tip didn’t pan out. We’re out of time, Martin.”