Laura Anne Gilman (8 page)

“That’s what we’re all motivated by,” Martin said.

The blue thing didn’t say anything.

Jan thought of Tyler. She thought of all the others who might have gone missing. She thought about creatures that would do that, steal people away and suck them dry, and thought about them having access to everyone, without any barriers or hesitations.

“All right. Let’s get started, which means figuring out how they’re finding their targets. If this Stjerne is one of them, then she probably met him the same way I did, through a dating site. That’s where we’re going to look first.” She paused, frowning. “Men, or women?”

“What?”

“Do they prefer men or women? That’s going to influence what we’re looking for.”

Toba blinked, his yellow eyes going even wider, and looked over his shoulder—his head swinging too easily to even pass for human—at the blue thing lurking by a window before turning back to her. “I don’t know. Men, usually—they’re easier to lead by their dicks.”

She tried to ignore the head-turning-owl-thing, because thinking about it made her queasy. “No argument there. But dating sites aren’t just about sex. They’re about making contact, about not being alone, or lonely.”

“Manipulating emotions, coaxing those in need onto...into their grasp.” Martin’s smooth tones sounded a little hoarse, she thought, and then winced at the unintentional pun.

“Yes.”

“Much easier than wandering the countryside looking for someone randy enough to fall for their glamour, hey, Martin?” Toba said. “Technology must be like candy to them, if that is what it does.”

“Still, more likely men,” Martin said, glaring at Toba. “They are shallow things and have never spent overmuch time with their wooing; they use glamour to entrap, and a man is more prone to react without thinking of danger. But we cannot overlook a female, no.” He frowned, his annoyance fading as he thought. “Preters are matriarchal, always led by a queen. I wonder if that is why they usually take men. She may object to women being brought into her realm.”

“Great. So we need to sort through the profiles on both sides— Oh, hell. What about gay sites?”

Martin snorted, and for an instant Jan saw his pony-shape superimposed over the two-legged form, but when she blinked, it was gone. “The preters like the pretty on either side, but most are narrow in their preference, by all accounts.”

“Unlike you, who’ll do anything that moves,” Toba said, almost but not quite under his breath.

Jan decided that she was just going to ignore whatever was going on between the two of them. “Fine. That makes it a little easier, for really relative values of easier. We set up accounts, figure out what’s a tip-off, and then go trolling for someone who might be a...preter. And then?”

“And then we bait the hook,” Toba said.

Jan—being the human bait, was pretty sure she did not like that particular metaphor.

* * *

Setting up a dating profile was a torturous process when doing it for yourself. Doing it as bait, to lure someone—or something—specific, Jan discovered, was considerably easier: she could make things up without hesitation or guilt.

While she developed a quick portfolio of online personas, Toba and Martin drew up a list of key words they thought might be indicative of a preter looking for a human servant—Jan shied away from using the word slave, even in her own head.

“If you’re boosting cars for a living, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that the stories about fairies and the like having pot-loads of gold aren’t entirely accurate?”

“That would be a good guess,” Toba agreed.

“Great. Then we’re only going to do the free sites, or the ones that let you sign up for a trial membership, ’cause I don’t have the cash to pony up, either. Let’s hope, lacking fairy gold, the elves are doing the same.” If they’d been human, she would have assumed they had phished credit card numbers, but that took a bit more know-how than, allegedly, the preters had.

Allegedly. As far as they knew. There were holes in what they knew large enough to drive a Zamboni through.

Martin got up, stretching his arms over his head, and wandered to where Jan was sitting, reading over her shoulder. His hand kept touching her shoulder, stroking, and every time he did it she shuddered, as though something cold had touched her—but she didn’t tell him to stop.

Seduction. But she got the feeling he wasn’t even aware that he was doing it. Somehow, that made it easier to ignore.

“Say they’re lonely,” he said.

“That’s so clichéd.”

“For humans, maybe. I told you, the preter’re shallow. They don’t feel the way we do. They’re cold, calculating....”

“Speak for yourself, kelpie,” Toba said. “I’m plenty cold.”

“Compared to a preter? You’re an outpouring of warmth and compassion,” Martin said.

“Never having met one, can’t compare. And neither have you.”

“Wait—you guys have never... You don’t...?” Jan got a grip on her thoughts. “You’ve never actually run into a preter?”

Martin tilted his head back, thinking. “AJ did, once, during the last invasion. He’s older than we are.”

“How much older?” She thought about that question for a second, and then shook her head. “Not important. If none of you have ever met one of them, then how do you know they’re so bad?”

Toba clicked his beak once. “How do you know Nazis are bad?”

Jan shook her head. “I can’t believe you just went there...never mind. Point taken. They steal people and want to overrun our world, and generally are not nice and do not play well with others. That’s enough for me.”

They had taken Tyler. That was enough for her. Even if the supernaturals weren’t telling her everything—and they had admitted they weren’t—they had saved her from the things on the bus and...

How did she know the things on the bus would have hurt her? Maybe they were trying to save her from AJ, and...

“No. Brain, stop it. Shut up.”

“What?” Martin’s hand stilled on her shoulder, and he was looking down at her again, his shaggy hair falling over his eyes exactly like a pony’s mane, enough to make her want to giggle.

“Nothing. Never mind. I talk to myself a lot.” She looked at the on-screen form she had filled out, and sighed. “Now, we need photos. I don’t want to use people I know, that’s seriously rude and could get me into a lot of trouble if they complain. You guys do appear on film, yes?”

“You’re going to use our pictures?” Toba seemed dubious.

Jan looked at Toba, then looked back at the computer screen. “Not for you, no, sorry. My Photoshop skills are not up to the task. I have a few old pictures of my dad when he was younger that should work.” Even if he’d still been around, she doubted he would be roaming the internet to notice.

Toba snorted. “That’ll do.”

The slender blue thing by the window shifted, and she shook her head. “Not using you, either, sorry.”

It was impossible to tell if it was disappointed, or if it even noticed. It was difficult to focus on, which—now—perversely made her more determined to actually look at it. Manners seemed less important than knowing what she was dealing with. It was tall, taller than Martin, taller than Tyler, who was almost six feet, and skinny, and she had originally thought that it was draped in a pale blue cape of some kind. Now, with coffee in her, and more awake, she realized that it was actually skin, that the creature’s arms were actually wings wrapped around itself, and what she had taken for a hood was...

“Don’t.” Martin’s voice in her ear, soft and cool, his fingers gripping her shoulder tightly enough to leave indentations through her shirt. “Don’t look. You’ll make it uncomfortable.”

And that, she gathered, would be a very bad idea. Nobody seemed to be giving a damn about her comfort, but whatever.... She pulled her gaze back to the computer screen and sighed. “All right, that leaves you as poster boy for the other profile, I guess.”

* * *

Taking Martin’s photo was more difficult than she’d expected: he kept trying to look at his own image, rather than into the camera, and trying to strike a pose.

She attempted to catch him not mugging it up, and failed again. “No, dammit, just look into the camera—the little red dot there, right. No, don’t look at the screen... Jesus, Martin!”

He looked at her, his dark eyes wide with utterly manufactured hurt, and she lowered the digital camera in disgust. Maybe she would use an old photo of a college buddy, anyway. It wasn’t as though she were using their names, too, and she could claim plausible deniability if anyone caught it, because really, why would she be setting up male dating profiles?

“Once more,” she said. “Try to just...look natural, okay?”

Martin’s idea of “natural” apparently involved channeling Rudolph Valentino, or maybe Burt Reynolds, so over the top he went from sexy to, well, stupid.

“Oh, god. Martin...” She was trying not to crack up. “No.”

“Kelpies,” Toba said in disgust, turning away from the interrupted would-be camera shoot. “Yes, you’re gorgeous. Now, can you get this done so we can start the hunt, already?”

“Huh.” Martin was sobered for a moment, remembering that they were there for a serious matter, and then turned his head to look slyly sideways at Jan. “Do you think I’m gorgeous?”

“I think you know damn well what you look like,” she said tartly, resisting the urge to smile back at him. He oozed charm too easily. She might not know much about kelpies specifically—and she hadn’t had time or breath yet to look anything up—but she knew enough to be suspicious of any male that charming, human or otherwise. “Look, just look straight ahead and smile for the camera, and let’s get on with this, okay? Or are your looks more important than saving the world?”

“And do you want us to have to tell AJ your screwing around cost us time?” Toba added.

That got Martin to behave, and he managed a few shots that Jan was able to crop into usefulness.

“Some of the sites like to match you up with people based on their own algorithms. We’re not going to worry about those—it would take too long and I’m guessing the preters figured that out, too.”

Also, they tended to be the ones that cost. She thought again about adding them, for fear of missing where the preters might be hunting, and then thought about how quickly that could add up. Somehow, she didn’t think they were going to fly as business deductions, and “saving humanity from preternatural slavery” didn’t have a check box on the tax forms, last she’d looked.

The scattershot approach across the free sites would be enough to start. She hoped.

Jan finished up the accounts and hit Send for each of them. Three accounts male, three female, one each to three different sites. This way, they could each run two, and split the work. She was assuming that skinny, silent Blue wasn’t going to be much help. Then again if he—it—was working the protections they were talking about...

Yeah. Leave it alone, let it do its damn job.

“Now what?” Martin looked over her shoulder again, fascinated. “Do we have to wait?”

“Oh, no, you get to play right away.” The thought of turning Martin loose on a dating site was both horrifying, and hysterical. “First, though, I want to check something.”

Bracing herself, she opened the male-based IDs and went searching for “Stjerne.”

Some of the sites didn’t let you search for someone specifically, but the freebies were less discriminating. Stjerne apparently got around: she, or someone with a similar name and email—was on all three sites, with the same profile.

She read the profile out loud. “Am tired of sitting here alone, looking at everyone else having fun. Looking for a guy who is ready to take a risk and live dangerously.... I’ll make it worth your while.”

“No, seriously?” Jan shook her head, even as she studied the picture on the site. Redheaded and glamorous, like a human Jessica Rabbit. “That’s not real. I mean, even more than airbrushing or enhancing, that’s so obviously not real. Not that any guy is going to stop and think about it. Not the kind of guy she’s trolling for, anyway.”

Her Tyler had fallen for that. She supposed that if she, with her green eyes, had been exotic to Tyler, a redhead would have been even more so.

“She’s got her prey,” Martin said, his hand resting on her shoulder. “She’s not hunting right now. There’s no point in baiting the hook for her.”

Jan tried to imagine Tyler’s reaction. Had she approached him? Had he contacted her? “How faked is this? What do the preters look like?”

“Human, mostly,” Toba answered. “Most of us do, like Martin, here. There’s a theory that we’re all from the same clump of genetic goo, all the supernatural species, and humans, too, and just evolved differently.”

“You believe in evolution.”

“You don’t?” He mimicked her surprised tone perfectly, to the point of mockery.

They stared at each other, and she let out a little surprised laugh, and then Toba followed suit. Martin rolled his eyes.

The creature standing in the corner, seemingly staring through the walls at what might lurk outside, ignored all three of them.

* * *

He was starting to lose track. Of time, of self, of everything. When Stjerne was with him, that didn’t matter. There was nowhere else to be, no one else to be with, nothing else to think of; she filled his senses, awake and dreaming. But she left, occasionally. Not for long, never without a sweet-whispered promise to return, draping a thin, heavy chain of silver around his neck, the length of it resting against his heart, to remind him of that promise.

But then she would be gone, and he would be alone in their rooms, the lack of her like an abscess, or a sudden lack of pain where it had filled him to satiation, the aloneness weighing against his skin like humidity, thick and wet, making it impossible to find comfort. Then he would note how quiet their rooms were, the wind muted outside the windows, not a single voice lifted in either a shout or laughter, even the birds perched on stands outside brightly colored but silent.

She was gone now, had left while he slept, and the silver itched against his skin, leaving a pale bruise. He held it in his hand, away from his skin, and while the itching faded, other thoughts tried to slip through, cold slivers under his skin, into his nerves, into his brain.