fingernails flicking at the air. Even now, Gloriana was as flamboyant as her name, thick black curls glossy as a raven’s feathers, and makeup perfectly applied. Jan envied her the bright red lipstick she wore. Glory’s skin was darker than Tyler’s; if Jan tried to wear that shade, she’d look like a clown.
Jan rubbed at her own face, aware that exhaustion made her look even more sallow, and wished she could end this conversation.
“And I don’t suppose you’re getting any, either, to help rock you to sleep or make you not care,” Glory went on.
Jan’s headache took a sudden right turn to migraine. That did it. Glory might think getting her itch scratched was the solution to most stress, but talking about her nonexistent sex life—especially given that there were no other humans on the Farm except for Ty—was below pretty much every other topic of conversation on Jan’s to-do list. She just smiled at her friend, making sure to show as many teeth as possible, said “Talk to you tomorrow,” and hit the disconnect tab.
“Ixnay on the sexnay,” she muttered. “That’s the least of my problems right now.”
There was a cough, and she looked up to see a slender, scaled figure lounging in the doorway, a reminder that space was at a premium and other people needed to use the room, too.
“Sorry,” she said and left.
Midday, the farmhouse was humming with activity. Not all the supers were diurnal, but the nocturnal ones also tended to be more solitary and, therefore, quieter. Plus, Jan noted as she worked her way through the kitchen, grabbing a sandwich off a platter as she went, it looked as if a lot of them were working double shifts, making the main floor even more crowded than usual.
The urge to go to the shed and check on Tyler hit her again, and she pushed it down. He had a routine, a routine that was helping him heal, and she had other things to do.
“Has anyone seen—” she started to ask, and a handful of voices called out “At the gazebo.”
“Thanks.” She shook her head as she left the house; apparently she was predictable.
She found Martin where she’d been told to look, out in the gazebo—really just a wooden platform with a canvas tarp stretched overhead to make a roof—lecturing to another group of supers.
“Greensleeves are arrogant but desperate,” he was saying, leaning against the railing and letting his voice project over the space. Broad chested, with shaggy brown hair framing a long, squared-off face, and wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, he looked as ordinary as any guy on the street. Even his black nails could be a goth affectation, except she knew that it wasn’t polish, that the wide-set brown eyes flickered with gold fire if you stared into them too long, and his other form was a cold-blooded murderer.
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