“Poor Ryu,” I mused, knowing that, wherever he was, he must be pissed.

“Yes, poor Ryu,” Julian echoed, laughingly. I turned around in my seat to wink at my fellow halfling, a gesture he returned with a grin.

“Why is he here, anyway?” I finally remembered to ask.

Anyan snorted. “Ryu was my devil’s bargain,” he said. I waited for him to continue. He didn’t.

“And what does that mean?”

“Orin and Morrigan were more than a little miffed that I hadn’t told them I had contacts in the Borderlands. They didn’t try to kill me once we’d learned about the purebloods disappearing, since I was the only one who could investigate. I’d made myself valuable, but not trusted.”

I nodded, suddenly understanding his cryptic words.

“So Orin and Morrigan let you investigate, and they agreed they wouldn’t tell anyone else. But they insisted you take Ryu.”

“Exactly. They trust him. Not me.”

“That’s not true. They trust your power.”

“But not my loyalty.”

I thought about that.

“Are they right to distrust you?”

“What do you mean?”

I thought of the barghest and his quiet ways. He’d once fought and killed for his people. Then he’d hid himself in the boondocks and dropped out of politics.

“Who are you loyal to now?”

The big man drove in silence for a while, and I thought he was going to ignore me. We turned off the highway, then drove a short ways on a smaller road before turning into a neighborhood I recognized as near downtown Borealis.

The houses were small and nondescript, really rather shabbily middle-class. I figured the mansions must be up ahead.

“I’m loyal to those I care about,” Anyan eventually replied as we stopped at a stop sign. He stared out the windshield at the empty street, and when he finally spoke again his voice was dark. “I’m loyal to my friends, and the people I love. Not anyone else. Not anymore.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that admission, so I stayed quiet. I looked to my right, out the window, only to find Julian watching me in the side mirror. He raised an eyebrow at the barghest’s words, and I matched his expression with pursed lips.

“We’re almost there,” Anyan said, and his voice had an apologetic note. I think he was ashamed of his outburst.

I looked around for the place that would hold Borealis’s seat of power. The Alfar Compound, after all, was this fairy-tale creation of Escher and Disney World, melded into a massive if whimsical and haunting structure. I wasn’t expecting such grandeur, but neither was I expecting what I saw when we finally pulled into a driveway on our right.

The driveway ended in a carport attached to a small, dark brown ranch-style house. It had a chain-link fence around the small backyard, which housed a rather arthritic-looking golden retriever that panted at us with his black nose pressed through the chain-link. A purple glass globe sat on top of a cement pedestal in the middle of the front yard, and I think I even saw a garden gnome—the plastic kind, not the kind currently babysitting my dad—peeking at me from underneath a ferny-looking plant in the small garden under the front picture window.

We got out of the car, and Anyan laughed at the expression on my face. In my defense, Julian looked equally nonplussed.

“Is there… more?” I asked. “Like at the Compound?”

When I’d first pulled up to the Alfar Compound, I’d seen only a giant McMansion. It was covered in glamours so powerful, I hadn’t had the slightest inclination something was off until Ryu had cleansed my sight.

Anyan chuckled, putting a hand on my lower back and steering me toward the front door.

“Nope. This is it. Welcome to the seat of power here in Borealis, Illinois.”

CHAPTER NINE

Anyan,” said a tall, slender woman with silver hair as she pushed open the screen door. “So good to see you.”

She wrapped the barghest in an affectionate hug, then let him enter the house.

“Julian?” she asked my fellow halfling, smiling at him as he nodded, startled. “Welcome to Borealis, and to my home. It’s wonderful to have you here. Make yourself comfortable, please.”

“And you must be Jane,” she said once Julian had passed. To my surprise, she then stooped down to give me my own hug. She held me tight, telling me, “I’m Paige. It’s such a pleasure to meet you. I’m sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

I blinked over her shoulder toward where Anyan watched us, smiling. Paige and I were standing in a tiny entryway that was part of a small combination living and dining room. Anyan had moved across the short room to a doorway that appeared to lead into the kitchen/family room. Next to him stood a man who, like the woman, appeared to be in his mid-fifties. He was shorter than both Anyan and the woman, but very strong and handsome. African-American, his skin was a lovely chocolate brown made even handsomer by his salt-and-pepper hair and goatee. And yet, there was something… other about him. Like Paige, he wasn’t using any power, but I was pretty sure this had to be Capitola’s supernatural parent. His large dark eyes were much older than his apparent age.

The woman let me go, leading me toward Anyan and the other man.

“This is my husband, Carl. You’ve met our daughter, Capitola.”

I grinned as everything fell into place. “Of course,” I said, extending my hand toward Carl. “Capitola’s lovely. It’s so nice to meet you.”

Carl took my hand in a firm grip and pulled me in to give me his own hug.

“It’s shitty circumstances, no denying that. But it’s a pleasure to finally meet Jane True,” he said, grinning. “We know a certain someone who won’t stop talking about you…”

His voice trailed off and he and his wife laughed heartily. I blushed, looking between them.

Who’s been talking about me? I thought, confused. Certainly not Anyan, I wondered, peeking up at the barghest. But he looked just as lost as I did.

I had just opened my mouth to ask what they were talking about when I heard a pop. Floating in front of me was a beautiful bouquet of wildflowers.

Eyes wide, I reached forward. Then I nearly jumped out of my skin when, from the other side of the bouquet, something grabbed my fingers.

Actually, six things grabbed me. Rather than freaking me out, however, the touch of six little hands made me smile.

“Terk?” I asked, as six solid-black eyes peered around the bouquet at me. He blinked a random smattering of eyelids, and gave me a friendly wave with the three hands on his right side.

I pulled the bouquet away from him, laughing at the sight of the brownie floating in midair. Terk looked like a miniature Ewok would if he’d been spliced with Kali, the six-armed Hindu goddess of destruction, and a wolf spider. His shaggy fur was long and thick, capped by tiny fluffy ears. The little creature was adorable.

And very strong, I thought, feeling its First Magic battering at my shields.

Terk had acted as a courier ferrying information between Anyan and his contacts here in the Borderlands, and I’d met him in Boston. I’d been more than a little surprised to see the little creature, but not nearly as surprised as my supernatural cohorts. Brownies had served the purebloods, then they’d served only the Alfar, and now they were supposed to be extinct. But as it turned out, they were still very much alive, living in the Borderlands, and serving whoever was in power here.

They were from a race of creatures older than the Alfar; creatures who used something known as First Magic. It felt different, certainly, than our own, elemental power: immensely strong and not entirely… natural, in the way our elemental force did.

I laughed as the little being hovered to me, and I let it settle against my bosom. It cuddled against me like a little puppy, blinking its black eyes up at me innocently. Unable to resist, I stroked the little creature’s ears, giggling when he purred in my arms.

“Um, Jane, I don’t know if you should—” Anyan was interrupted by the door opening behind us.

“Hey, Mom! Dad!” Capitola said, pushing through the screen door. She was still lovely, despite being laden down with groceries, which she handed over to her father and to Anyan, who retreated to the kitchen behind them.

“Hey, lady,” she said, turning toward me. She stopped when she saw me cuddling Terk, her eyebrows rising. “Um, Jane…”

“It is not my fault that your backside has gotten so large that you cannot easily extricate yourself from vehicles,” Moo’s cool voice said from the doorway as she let herself in.

From behind her, a mage ball whizzed past Moo, clipping her ear as it flew into the room. Terk had perked up at Moo’s voice, and when he saw the mage ball one little hand shot forward. I felt a cold rush of power blast out of the brownie’s small form, and the mage ball fizzled out as if it had never existed.

He settled back against me, his little hands using my breasts for leverage as he made himself comfortable, cooing like a wee, hairy, six-eyed baby.

“No shooting people in the house, Shar,” Capitola’s mother chastised gently. “You two troublemakers go set the table. Julian will help; show him where everything is. Terk?” She intoned, last, to the little being in my arms. One eye glared open at her; the other five flicked open to blink sweetly at me.