Again and again, that demand. You could not refuse a dragon, could not resist. But he had none, no more to spare. No gold, no cash, no worldly possessions: he had offered them all, hours ago, and the dragon would not be sated. Even his core had been drained, the current sucked away so swiftly he had gone from full to empty in a heartbeat. Who knew dragons could do such a thing? Who knew they would?
Another slash of its claws, agony burning through his abdomen, and he was too tired to scream again. There was nothing left. No hope of rescue, no hope of survival. No hope of explanations: Why me? What did I do?
Please, his lips formed, but no sound emerged.
When the next blow came, he fell into it, the only escape he had. The last thing he heard, echoing down into oblivion, was the dragon’s howl of rage.
Chapter 4
“Ow! Damn it, I just wanted to talk to you!”
The brownie didn’t let go of my wrist, its blunt teeth digging in more firmly. The little bastard was about the size of a French bulldog and just as solid, so this was really beginning to hurt, not to mention being annoying as hell. If I tried to shake him off, I’d probably snap my wrist.
“Og, let the lady go.”
Og rolled his eyes up at me, the whites yellowed and sick-looking, and I hoped to hell I wasn’t going to need a tetanus shot after all this. Or rabies.
“You heard the man, Og,” I said, sugar-sweet. “Lemme go. Or I will zap you with enough current to make your whiskers curl around your ears.”
Brownies don’t actually have ears, just little pinholes like dolphins, but the threat sounded scary enough that he unhinged his jaw and let go. I refused to step back or check the skin to see if it was broken, but stared down at the little bastard until it cast that yellowed gaze to the wooden floor, sulky but cowed.
Most fatae breeds I treat with cautious respect. Brownies were the exception: I hated them, and they seemed to return the favor. Long story, going back to me, age five, and a stray kitten. Brownies love cats, too—but not quite the same way.
I’d never been able to look at Girl Scouts without shuddering, after that.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Only my feelings.”
The fatae who had ordered Og to loose the teeth was a da-esh, a close-related breed. They tended to pal around together. Same basic shape and coloring—imagine if the stereotypical alien silhouette had put on twenty pounds and filed its head to a smooth, round shape—but about a foot taller and with better social skills.
“You’ll survive,” he diagnosed. “What did you come down here to ask about?”
“Down here” was more figurative than literal: we were in a tiny café on the Upper West Side, dimly lit, with an old TV muted in the corner and a waitress who looked like she’d escaped from a high school for the permanently don’t-give-a-damn doing her nails at the only other occupied table. I’d only just sat at their table when Og decided I’d make a good appetizer.
“You know we make good on useful data,” I said, not quite answering. It paid to remind informants about that: PSI appreciated free info, especially when solving the case benefited everyone, but we didn’t expect our informants to put themselves on the line without some kind of compensation. It was also a reminder to my companions that I wasn’t a private citizen, as it were: if they screwed with me, it wouldn’t be just me pissed off with them. Stosser and Venec had reputations both independently and together that would make anyone seriously reconsider trying to scam their people.
“I can’t tell you shit until you ask a question, puppy.” The da-esh looked me up and down, while Og climbed back into his chair and glared at me from across the table, brave again now that its pack leader had taken control. “You’re Torres, right?”
“Right.” There were enough of us in the office now that it could get confusing to fatae, I supposed. Not like when we started, and there were only five of us, and nobody ever mistook me for Sharon, more’s the pity.
“Huh.”
I had absolutely no idea how to decode that, so I just waited.
It took three sips of whatever the da-esh was drinking for him to decide. “You pups have done fair by us so far. If I know anything useful, and it don’t get me killed to tell, I’ll share.”
That was a better offer than most I got. I nodded agreement of the terms. Unlike the others I’d spoken to today, he only got the driest of details. “Missing-persons case. Three persons. Child, teenager, and a young adult—all female, all missing from the city in the past month. Null, or at least non-declared.” Sometimes Talent popped up out of nowhere, and the two youngest were young enough to be uncertain. “I’m looking for trace of any of them.” I reached—carefully, with an eye on Og—into my bag and pulled out three photographs. Spread out on the table in the dim light, I could barely see the details, but brownies and their kin make up for their lack of external ears by having rather spectacular night vision.
“Human. Two overtly Caucasian, one with a definite Asian parent. No similarity in coloring or in face shape. They are all coddled little brats, but no meanness in them.”
My jaw might have dropped open just a little bit, because Og chuckled, a nasty little sound.
“We are not, how do they call it, apex predators,” my informant said, ignoring his companion. “Survival often involves being able to read information quickly, off limited data. That is why you came to me, isn’t it?”
It was. I just hadn’t expected it to be quite so detailed.
“Have you heard anything about missing females, human, or anyone who might have an interest in them?” I was choosing my words carefully, something you had to do when dealing even with the most friendly of fatae. “Interest either in having them, having them harmed, or having harm come to them.” The last two weren’t the same thing, and you could hide a lot of malice in the space between.
“You mean other than the usual steal, molest, eat, and otherwise do evil with?”
I sighed. “Yeah, other than that.”
The da-esh showed his teeth in a grin, and I really wished he hadn’t. Their kind were carrion-eaters, when they couldn’t get fresh cat, and not much on hygiene. “There was a case a while back, of gnomes dusting teenage girls. I guess they couldn’t get dates for the prom. But nothing else. Mostly when someone’s little girl goes missing, she does it of her own free will. My pretty unicorn or elf-prince of something.” The scorn practically dropped off his words. I really couldn’t blame him.
“Now, if it were boys gone missing, that would be unusual. Unless an elf-wench’s gone hunting, they tend to be safe.”
Elf-wench. That was even worse than “trooping fairies.” I was so never going to use that in a Lady’s hearing. In fact, I was never even going to think it.
“And nobody’s been talking trash about humans again?”
The da-esh paused, then looked over at Og. I guessed he would be more likely to hear—and maybe partake of—any such trash-talking.
Og looked sulky, his mouth drawn in a tight little frown. “Nobody dare trash-talk,” he said, and his tone was that of a ten-year-old grounded for the first time. “Not since The Wren do what she did.”
What had The Wren done? Was this tied into… No, didn’t know, didn’t want to know, didn’t want to have to take any notice, official or otherwise. If Wren had won us goodwill among the fatae—or at least put the fear of Talent into them—then I’d use it and be glad.
“But,” Og went on, and it was like the words were getting pulled with pliers from his throat, “there is a thing.”
“A thing?” I was prepared to bribe, if needed—we