LITMIR.BIZ

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me?” Jan was, weirdly, relieved to feel angry. She didn’t like anger, but it beat the hell out of being scared and confused. She put the tea down, having only taken one sip from the mug, and glared at all three of the...whatever-they-weres ranged around her. “If you knew what the hell was going on, whatever the hell is going on, why didn’t you do anything? Before I was in danger—before Tyler was in danger?”

      The jötunndotter lifted her hands, each finger a smooth length of brown stone, the palms like congealed gravel. “We couldn’t. Not without—there are ramifications and limitations to the natural world, and—”

      “Elsa, stop.” AJ stalked back from the perimeter, which he’d been pacing, and crouched in front of Jan. He’d pushed the hoodie back when they’d come in, so she couldn’t avoid seeing the strange wolfen features, or how his oddly hinged jaw moved when he spoke. “We didn’t because we can’t. It doesn’t work that way. What’s going on caught us by surprise, too.” It hurt him to admit that, she could tell. “We’re trying to play catch-up.”

      “So you’re not....” She didn’t know what she was going to ask, but AJ laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh.

      “Humans veer between thinking they’re the only ones here and assuming that there’s this malicious cabal of woo-woo, messing with their lives at every turn. Both’re crap. There’s the natural, that’s you, and the supernatural. Us. We all belong in this world together...you people just take up most of the room. Mostly, we ignore you. Occasionally, our paths cross. It doesn’t end well for us, most of the time.”

      Jan spoke without really thinking about it. “Fairy tales.”

      AJ spat on the ground, and Martin sighed.

      “Humans call ’em that,” AJ said. “Humans don’t have a clue. They revile what they don’t recognize, demonize what they fear, simplify it so they don’t have to deal with reality.” He sighed, his muzzle twitching, and then shrugged, as though deciding it didn’t matter.

      “Like I said, we try to ignore humans, the same way you ignore us. Most of the time when our people meet, it’s just...skirmishes. Awkward moments and bad relationships.”

      “But not always?”

      “Not always. Sometimes it works out—not often, but sometimes. But that’s when it’s us, natural and supernatural.”

      “There’s something else?” Jan felt her body tense, as if a fight-or-flight reaction was kicking in, although nobody’d said or done anything threatening in the past minute, and wasn’t that a nice change?

      “Yes...and no,” Elsa said.

      “Seven times that we’ve recorded,” AJ said, “something else gets added to the playground.” He held up his hand, not even trying to hide his claws now. Three fingers ticked off: “Naturals, supernaturals, and preternaturals.”

      “Preter...”

      “Humans call them elves,” Martin said. “What we call them isn’t so pretty.”

      Elves. Jan thought of Keebler elves first, baking cookies, then the slender, coolly blond archers of the Lord of the Rings movies, and suspected AJ wasn’t talking about anything like that.

      “Why two names? Aren’t you both—?”

      AJ didn’t roll his eyes, sigh, or make any other obvious sign of irritation, but he practically vibrated with it. “Supernatural, above nature. Preter, outside nature. One belongs here, the other does not. Nobody teaches Latin anymore, do they?”

      Jan had gone to school for graphic design, not dead languages.

      “Supernaturals are part of this world,” Martin said. “The preters...come from somewhere else.”

      “Fairyland?” Jan laughed. Nobody else did.

      “And they...took Tyler? Why?” If they didn’t belong here...where had they taken him? How had they found him?

      AJ settled in on his haunches, resting his elbows on his knees in a way that she would never be able to balance. Another reminder that he wasn’t human, that his body wasn’t what it looked like....

      Jan tried to focus on what he was saying, now that they were finally explaining things.

      “Preters have a history of stealing humans. Used to be, they’d slip through and steal whatever took their fancy. We didn’t know why they liked humans so much, but they do. Babies, especially.”

      “Changelings,” Martin said.

      “Right. Only sometimes they take adults, too. Males mostly, but sometimes females. And they never let ’em go.”

      “And they took Tyler.... why?” Jan knew she was repeating herself. She was trying to process all this. All right, she’d accepted—mostly—the fact that there was more than she knew, more to the world than she’d ever dreamed, after what had happened on the bus. But this? Changelings and kidnappings and elves from another world, some kind of parallel universe or something? Seriously?

      Tyler was gone. These people—supers—were here, and they were the only ones giving her any kind of explanation, no matter how insane it sounded. Unless ILM or some other Hollywood effects company was involved, there was no way this was any kind of prank.

      Then her eyes narrowed, and she looked first at Elsa, then at Martin, and then back at AJ. “But why do you care?”

      A werewolf’s laugh was, Jan discovered, a particularly atavistically terrifying thing, like a harsh howl that echoed against the roof and raised the hair on her arms. Almost instinctively she turned again to Martin for reassurance. He shook his head, his long face solemn, and looked back at AJ. So she did, too.

      “Smart, yeah. You’re smart. And quick. Good.” AJ was serious again. “You’re right. We’re not all that fond of humanity overall. Sometimes we have periods where it’s bad, sometimes when it’s hunky-dory, but mostly, we don’t care. But this isn’t about you. It’s about us. Like I said, this world is our home, too. We both belong here. The preters...don’t.”

      “They are not part of our ecosystem,” Elsa said, moving in closer. Jan shifted, uncomfortable, and the jötunndotter stopped. “They come in like invaders—”

      “They are invaders,” AJ said. “Never forget that.”

      Elsa nodded. “They cross borders that should not be crossed, and take from us. From this world. Humans, and livestock, and whatever else strikes their fancy. In the past, only a few have been able to pass, and only in force large enough to be noticed. Troops, they were called, and we could find them, and force them back.

      “That has changed, Human Jan.”

      Elsa seemed at a loss for what to say next, and Martin took up the narrative. It was almost a relief to turn to him, even though Jan knew damn well—intellectually, anyway—that he was no more human than the other two.

      “It used to be, they had to wait until the moon was right, or some other natural occurrence, um, occurred. Then they came through either one at a time, or in a troop. Even with the natural world cooperating, it was an iffy thing, unpredictable. The portals shifted, moved. The damage they could do was limited, and if they stayed too long, we found them.”

      The implication was pretty strong that, when found, they weren’t invited in for tea.

      “The past year, maybe more, that’s changed. They’re coming in during times that the portal should not be open, in places they should not have access to—cities were never their domain. Even cities that were built on old sites: over time the pressure of naturals wore the access away, broke down the ancient connection.” Martin looked over at AJ, as though waiting for permission to continue, and then said, “The preters have found some way to open the portals that we don’t understand, move them to places they should not be, and they’re raiding us like an unguarded vegetable patch.”

      “Taking

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