of different reasons,” Jan said, almost apologetically. “Colin . . . well, we needed a Selkie for some of our integration testing. It’s difficult to explain, but race really mattered. Peter was a history teacher with a specialization in folklore—that wasn’t just human folklore.”
“Faerie historian?”
“Genealogist.”
“Why did you need a genealogist?”
“Market research.” Jan shrugged. “You can’t use the same sales pitch with a Daoine Sidhe and a Centaur. It’s not going to work. Yui was our team alchemist. She could make just about anything compatible with anything else, if you gave her time.”
“What about Barbara?”
“Friend of Gordan’s, hired in a nonsecure position. She was from San Jose. That probably explains why . . .” Jan stopped.
“Why she betrayed you? Yes, it probably does.”
“Don’t the bodies tell you anything?”
“Nothing. They died of some internal trauma; I have no idea what it was, but the external wounds can’t have killed them. Maybe I’d know if I were more of a forensics expert, but I don’t, and I’m not.” The fae have never needed forensics training; that’s what the Daoine Sidhe are for. Unfortunately, that means we don’t have many options when the blood fails us.
“Maybe you’re too weak to ride their blood,” Jan said, slowly. “Changelings are weaker a lot of the time, aren’t they?”
“Quentin tried, too. Nothing.”
“We can’t get you a forensics expert. We can’t get the police involved.”
“I know,” I said. “Unfortunately, the dead aren’t talking.”
“But why are they like that?” she asked. “Why didn’t the night-haunts come?”
“I have no idea.” I raked my hair back with both hands, trying to hide my exasperation. “You’d have to ask the night-haunts.”
“Well, can you do that?”
I paused. “Can I . . . ?”
Could I ask the night- haunts? Were they something you could ask? I’d never seen them, and neither had anyone I knew; they came in the darkness, took the bodies of our dead and were gone. They weren’t something you saw . . . but could I see them? Was there a way to summon them—and more importantly, could they tell me what I needed to know? The Daoine Sidhe know death, but the night-haunts are death. They might have the answer. I owed it to Jan to try.
Jan was watching me. I nodded, saying, “It may be possible; I don’t know. I’ve never heard of it being done. Maybe they can be summoned without a body.” I paused. If there was anyone who would know how to call the night-haunts . . . “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
“Please.”
“I’m going to head back to the office, go through these files, and try to figure out whether it’s possible. And get coffee. I really need coffee. Will you be okay until Elliot gets back?”
“I’ll be fine.” She pushed her glasses up with one finger. “I’ll lock the door and check in with April every few minutes.”
“Okay.” I inclined my head in the bare outline of a bow, tucked the drawer up under my arm, and walked back out into the hall. I had a lot to think about.
SEVENTEEN
VOICES RAISED IN faint argument were drifting through the door of Colin’s office. I sped up. Quentin’s safety was the one thing I wasn’t willing to risk. That’s why I wanted him to stay in the office in the first place: better paranoid with a locked door between him and the rest of the knowe than following me when I wasn’t sure I could protect him.
“—and I’m telling you that if they focused more on telling a good story, the graphics wouldn’t matter! How many explosions do you need in the first ten minutes of a movie?” That was Quentin. He sounded annoyed, but not like he was being threatened.
“Your argument is specious,” countered the second voice. April, who sounded like, well, herself. Not quite bland enough to be a machine, but close. “You are a teenage male. Teenage males like explosions.”
“Generalize much?”
I relaxed before leaning forward and knocking, noting impassively that my brief terror seemed to have helped my exhaustion. The voices went quiet. Then Quentin called, “What’s the password?”
“Do your homework. Now let me in.”
He unlocked and opened the door, revealing April in my abandoned seat. The Hippocampi were clustered at the end of the tank, apparently as unhappy with the Dryad’s presence as they’d been with mine. I looked between them and raised an eyebrow.
“I tested that ‘pager’ thing,” Quentin said. “I just said her name and she showed up. And then we started talking about movies.”