Tempest’s Legacy (11 page)

“We’ve also got a few leads we’re working on now. I don’t want to say too much”—at this, Cap glanced at Ryu—“but one looks really promising. We want to find a working lab, not only so that we can liberate the subjects but also because we really want to capture some of the staff.”

As she said the last bit, her smile became distinctly predatory and I shivered. Despite her size and strength, Capitola had been as warm and fuzzy as a teddy bear up until that moment. Then I saw her mettle, and I went back to being in awe.

I wondered if it would be inappropriate to start up a Capitola fan club.

Just as Anyan started to ask Cap a question, there was an enormous bang from the other room. Suddenly, Shar came flying—and I mean flying—through the doorway from the lab. She whacked against the wall opposite us, her shields absorbing most of the impact, but she still collapsed with an audible groan.

Capitola shook her head as the succubus drew in a few ragged breaths. Finally, Shar peered up at us. Giving Ryu a bawdy wink, which he instinctively returned with his own side of sauce, she smiled sweetly at Cap.

“I’m fucking killing her this time, Cappie. I don’t care what you say. I’m killing her. After I shave off her eyebrows…”

The “her” in question strode through the doorway at that moment. Moo looked elegant and unruffled, although
I saw her lips twitch at the sight of Shar still sitting, propped against the wall.

“Capitola, you
did
instruct me to take out the trash,” the halfling’s chilly Alfar voice said as Shar began sputtering in rage.

Capitola hung her head, visibly gathering her patience. “For the love of Pete, can’t you two stop fighting for fifteen seconds? Seriously?”

“I can stop fighting,” Shar said, standing up. “As long as I have the proper motivation.” She took a long, lascivious look at me, then Ryu, and finally the barghest.

“Can
I
call you Uncle Anyan?” the succubus-halfling queried as she did a little shimmy that was supposed to be about brushing herself off, but was really about feeling herself up.

Anyan laughed. “Nope. Sorry, Shar.”

“Damn.” With that she strode forward and put an affectionate arm around Moo, who, moments before, Shar had genuinely appeared to want to murder.

“C’mon, Moo-Cow. You get the fire hose, I’ll get the bleach. Julian, you gonna help us?”

For the first time, I realized that Julian was, once again, watching from the doorway. I was beginning to think we needed to put a bell on him to know where he was at all times.

He nodded, breaking into that sweet smile I adored, as Shar slung an arm around his waist and pulled him back into the other room. He peered down at her, his face glowing, like he’d just been asked to the birthday party of the coolest girl in school.

Moo followed, her Alfar-calm expression betraying just a hint of pleasure at the sight of Shar with their newest
halfling friend. When they were gone, Capitola shook her head, smiling at us ruefully.

“I love them, but they’re nuts. Sorry about that,” she said, checking her watch and rising from her chair. “It’s nearly three-thirty. You guys go get some rest and you can check out the other labs tomorrow. And Anyan, see you, Julian, and Jane at the house tomorrow night, around eight?”

We all stood as Anyan nodded, Ryu grumbled, and I waved good-bye at Capitola. She came over to give Anyan an affectionate hug. I enviously watched their ease with each other, before Capitola suddenly turned to sweep me up in her arms. Her hug was hard and generous and warm.

“You’ll find who did it, Jane. I promise,” she whispered fiercely in my ear before letting me go. For the first time since arriving at the place my mother had died, I blinked back tears.

“Thank you,” I told her as Anyan put a hand on my shoulder to steer me toward the door.

Hearing Capitola say those words made me believe it. We
were
going to find my mother’s killer. And this time, Jarl wasn’t going to worm his way out of the justice he was due.

Y
ou all right?” Anyan asked. He must have seen me shiver.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s just…”

When I trailed off he let me be for a minute, then cocked his head.

“It’s nothing,” I finished finally.

We were in Plano, a little town outside Borealis. It was home to a big plastics factory and little else. Except for the small fertility lab, tucked into the corner of an abandoned strip mall. Behind the tiny waiting room, it had once held five halfling women in plastic cages. Those women were now dead, their bodies returned to their families if there was family; or burned, and their ashes scattered, if there wasn’t. The people responsible for their deaths had murdered them and disappeared, leaving the local halfling community to clean up the mess.

But that’s not why I’d shivered. Off and on all day, I’d had this feeling that I was being watched. I knew I was
being paranoid, not least because the two men I was with made “paranoid” into a competitive sport. They’d been sending out so many competing probes and shields and glamours that only very old and very purebred Alfar could have kept themselves concealed.

“You sure?” Anyan asked, his deep voice concerned. Right at that moment, the feeling of being watched suddenly ceased. It had to be my imagination.

So I smiled, nodding. “Yeah, really. I’m fine.”

And I should have been fine, knowing—from what Anyan had told us the night before about the Sensors—that there was
supposed
to be no chance such a very old, very powerful purebred Alfar could ever be in Borealis.

That said, Anyan’s words had raised more concerns than they answered, and Julian and I had stayed up late the night before talking everything through. On the one hand, everything Anyan had said explained why the Alfar hadn’t succeeded in spying here; why the Borderlands were invisible to them. And why they
should
be relatively safe for our team.

In reality, however, we were now left with a whole slew of unsettling issues. After all, if unregistered, visiting purebloods were sure to give themselves away, then serious questions had to be asked about how my mother had been brought here to be killed. And about who was running these labs and doing the actual killing.

As soon as we were alone last night, Julian and I had started asking such questions, turning to good old Sherlock Holmes for help. Holmes, after all, was famous for using Occam’s razor to help him solve crime. It was a theory urging that the simplest, most sufficient explanation of a particular problem was usually the correct one.
If I applied Occam’s razor to the problem that was my mother, a strange pureblood dying in a territory that was supposed to be guarded against unregistered pureblood or halfling entry, there was only one obvious explanation: Some of the registered halflings in the Borderlands couldn’t be trusted.

There had to be people on the ground working as guards, or some of the Sensors had to be covering up for unregistered power signatures, or both.

We knew better than to ask Anyan whether or not that person was one of his friends and contacts here. Anyan wasn’t a man who trusted easily, nor was he stupid or naive. The man was a warrior, through and through, and the fact that he genuinely appeared to believe in Capitola and whomever she worked for spoke volumes.

But Julian and I both knew something didn’t add up about my mother dying in Borealis, and Anyan, earlier, had admitted as much. Before saying good night to Julian and me the previous evening, Anyan had told us to sleep tight, that we should be safe here in Borealis. I’d started to understand that Anyan communicated more through what he didn’t say than what he did. And the barghest never said we
were
safe here, just that we
should
be safe.

So neither Julian nor I had slept very well, and I watched Anyan and Ryu interact with the local team processing the crime scene through bleary eyes. Being an official Alfar employee, Ryu was undoubtedly unwelcome, and he’d been treated with distrust when we first arrived. But he was also damned good at his job, and he’d quickly ingratiated himself with the other investigators.

Meanwhile, Anyan was wandering around sniffing
things, in what I assumed was his own barghestian style of detective work.

So Julian and I tucked ourselves away in a corner. I knew I wasn’t of any use in this place, and I think my fellow halfling was just trying to be supportive. That said, I was glad I was here. Being part of this investigation, in whatever way I could, felt right. The safety of my father and all my other loved ones rested on this investigation.

I can’t let Jarl run around trying to get back at me through my friends and family
, I thought, just as Julian interrupted my dark reverie.

“How’re you holding up?” he asked, his tone careful. “How was the lab this morning?”

“Just like Anyan said,” I replied. “There was nothing there. But I did call home while he poked around.”

That morning, Anyan and I had driven south to Kankakee and the other abandoned laboratory while Ryu and Julian slept through their weird vampire comas. Ryu had been pissed when he found out we’d gone without him, but Kankakee was about two and a half hours away from Borealis, and if we ever wanted to wrap things up here, we couldn’t wait for sleeping beauties.

Plus, that lab had been the long-abandoned one, and it had already been cleaned out. Anyan had sniffed around while I used the opportunity to make phone calls.

“That’s good. How’s your dad?” Julian asked.

“Oh, fine. Nell must’ve glamoured him. He’s convinced I’m on a Caribbean cruise.”

“Well, that’s okay, I guess?”

“Yeah, I guess. I’m rather annoyed Nell’s futzing with my father’s brains again. But I also know I made a total
shambles of my leaving, so at least my dad isn’t worried about me the way he would be otherwise.”

“How’s everyone else?”

“Fine. Rockabill never changes, thank the gods.”

After I’d spoken with my dad and Nell, I’d called Grizzie and Tracy. Things at the store were slow and I wasn’t needed, although I still felt guilty for abandoning them. But I didn’t detail that for Julian, knowing that Julian didn’t need to know every facet of my oh-so-exciting life in Maine. And I also left out the part where, after my phone calls were made, I had almost eagerly gone back to watching the barghest sniff around. Indeed, when I’d walked back into the abandoned lab, I’d found Anyan sniffing at the corner I’d just abandoned. Walking toward him, I had indulged in a wild fantasy of him taking a moment to sniff
me
.

I didn’t think Julian wanted to know
that
information any more than he did the boring facts of my day-to-day life.
Although
, I figured,
this is as good a time as any…

“So how are
you
doing?” I asked, turning the tables on my fellow halfling.

Julian blinked. “Me? I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be fine?”

“Well, I think this must be a lot for you. Going from the Territory, where halflings are treated pretty shitty, to here, where they rule.”

Julian looked away from me, then took off his glasses, nervously cleaning them with the bottom of his T-shirt.

“It’s interesting, that’s certain.”

“Interesting?” I asked incredulously, giving him my best gimlet eye.

“All right,” he acceded very quietly. “It’s fucking
awesome
.”

I giggled. “I know.”

“I mean, those women last night…”

“So foxy!”

“Huh?”

“They’re
so
foxy!”

Julian blinked at me. “I meant how strong they were. And confident.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yes. They are strong and confident. For sure. And they’re so
foxy
!”

“I suppose,” he said, frowning at me.

“You’re not much into the females, are you?” I asked, grinning up at him.

“No, not so much,” he replied with a laugh. “What gave it away?”

“Julian, those women last night were seriously hot. Even
I
was a little turned on. You? Couldn’t care less. But I’ve noticed that when a hot male is around…” I waggled my eyebrows as Julian blushed shyly. “Especially one male in particular,” I teased, letting my eyes slide across the room to where Anyan stood talking with a local technician. I’d already noticed that the barghest was filling out his jeans particularly well that day. I’d also noticed Julian noticing earlier.