Heart of Briar. Laura Anne Gilman

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СКАЧАТЬ bouts of fear and panic did that to her. “What kind?”

      “We got Coke, Diet Coke, Dr Pepper and Jolt.”

      She realized suddenly that he had a small, sharp beak rather than lips, giving him a faint, sharp lisp. That...was weird. Weirder than a werewolf, or a woman made of rock, or a guy who turned into a horse? Yes, she decided, it was.

      “Gotta love that stuff,” he coaxed. “Twice the caffeine, all the sugar.”

      “Do I look like a programmer?” she muttered. “Diet Coke. Please.”

      Something swooped over their heads, a shadow of wings, and Jan ducked instinctively.

      The owl-faced being chuckled at her reaction. “Ignore it, and it’ll leave you alone. Don’t take that as a general rule, though; sometimes ignoring things can get you eaten. My name’s Toba. I’m the closest thing to a geek we have, so I guess that makes me your aide-de-camp.”

      He had a nice laugh. “How much of a geek are you?”

      Toba shrugged. “I use a cell phone, and I know how to send email.”

      “Oh, god.” Not that she had been expecting much more, at this point. “All right, that’ll have to do. If I’m going to get online to anything, I need my laptop, and a signal. That means I can’t work here.” She didn’t want to work here, more to the point. “I need to go back to my apartment.”

      Where it was safe. Familiar. Not filled with...things swooping overhead, changing shapes, or looking at her with wide, golden eyes.

      Toba shook his head solemnly. “Can’t do that. The turncoats’ve marked you. Ten minutes outside, out of our territories, and they’d track you down.”

      The matter-of-factness finally got to Jan, where everything else hadn’t. “The hell I can’t go back to my apartment! My gear is there, my clothes—my medication!” Her inhaler would only last so long, especially if they kept throwing stress like this at her. And the dust—god, between the dust and noise, warehouses were not high on her list of places to be. “If I stay here much longer, I’m going to get sick again,” she said. “Maybe bad enough to need the hospital.”

      “You don’t want to lead the turncoats back to your apartment,” Martin said, coming to join the conversation, obviously having overheard everything. She wondered, a little wildly, how good their hearing was, could they all listen in, even from across the warehouse floor? Did she have no privacy at all?

      “They’re slow thinkers, but determined, and vicious; if they figure out where you are... You have to stay here, where we can protect you.”

      “No. Oh, no.” Jan shook her head, determined on this. “I can’t stay here. I can’t work here.” The warehouse was large, but at that moment she would have sworn that the walls were closing in on her. “If I’m going to do anything at all—”

      “We will send someone for whatever you need. Elsa is finding somewhere you can work, somewhere safe. And then—”

      “No.” It was his voice, that calm, soothing voice, that made her snap, suddenly.

      “What?”

      “Look, you don’t get it at all, do you? I have a life! I have a job, and friends, and a family. I took the day off, that’s all. I can’t just disappear, the way Tyler did. No.”

      They stared at each other, and Jan willed herself not to back down. After all of the crap that had already happened, this shouldn’t have been so important to her, but it was.

      “Fine.” Toba broke the stalemate. “She’s right: to do anything online, she needs to be connected, and reception’s shit out here. So we’ll move in with you, set up protections there. Don’t give me that look, kelpie. You don’t have to come. Not like you’re good for much, anyway.”

      Martin drew himself upright, making the most of the full foot of height he had on the other supernatural. “I swore I would keep her safe.”

      Toba seemed to find that hysterical. “You? Right.”

      Jan looked back and forth between the two of them, confused. If anything, Martin—twice the height and stronger—would be able to protect her better than Toba, slight and hunched over, whose sole weapon seemed to be his wit.

      “Look, I—” Martin took the shorter being by the shoulder and led him away, not gently. They started to argue, their voices lowered so that she could not hear them, no matter how she tried. After a minute and some emphatic gestures from Martin, Toba looked over his shoulder once at her, then shrugged. Whatever Martin was saying, it seemed to not impress the owl-faced being much.

      Finally, they called AJ over, and the whole argument started again.

      Jan curled up on the sofa and closed her eyes, weary beyond belief. Standing up for herself always took so much energy, even when people didn’t get mad.

      Where was Tyler? What was he thinking just then? Were they...were they hurting him? Or was the seduction that had stolen him continuing? The thought burned, but she forced herself to face it. He might not want to come back....

      And then, suddenly, the argument in the corner was over, and she was being bundled back into the SUV. Martin drove this time, with Toba perched on the other side of her. They drove back into the city, following her directions, headlights picking out landmarks, the streets slowly becoming familiar again, until they pulled up outside of her building.

      By then, night had fallen with a definite thud, and there was a chill in the air that made her wish she’d been wearing a sweater that morning, instead of a long-sleeved T-shirt.

      Had it really only been that morning that she’d left her apartment, intent on finding out what was really happening with Tyler? Since then...the world had turned upside down and inside out. She was worn down and exhausted, and wanted only to stagger up the stairs, check her email, and pass out facedown on her bed. Maybe when she woke up, this would all be a terrible dream.

      Chapter 4

      “Hey you. Sleepyhead.” His breath was warm on her bare shoulder. “Wanna go for a run?”

      “Are you kidding me?” She didn’t run. She walked at a nice steady pace and did all her exercising at home, on a yoga mat. The only time she wanted to run was if something was chasing her, and even then she though she might let that something catch her, rather than die in a gory coughing-up mess. “I’ll keep the bed warm, how’s that?”

      “Yeah, that’s good,” Tyler said, leaning over her, and she turned slightly so she could see that familiar, slow, so-sexy smile on his face, until she realized his lips, usually so soft and full, had narrowed to hard lines, pointed like a beak, and then his face changed, eyes glowing gold, the beak opening to reveal double rows of sharp teeth as though he was going to bite her entire face off—

      And Jan sat up in bed, not really awake yet but shocked out of the dream, her eyes wide-open and her heart racing.

      “Holy shit on a shamrock.”

      Just a dream. It was just a dream, you idiot, and what did you eat yesterday that gave you a dream like that?

      Operating СКАЧАТЬ