Chapter 1
I didn't realize he was a werewolf at first. My nose
isn't at its best when surrounded by axle grease and burnt
oil -- and it's not like there are a lot of stray werewolves
running around Eastern Washington. So when someone made a
polite noise near my feet to get my attention I thought he
was a customer.
I was burrowed under the engine compartment of a Jetta
settling a rebuilt transmission into its new home. One of
the drawbacks in running a one-woman garage was that I had
to stop and start every time the phone rang or a customer
stopped by. It made me grumpy -- which isn't a good way to
deal with customers. My faithful office boy and tool rustler
had gone off to college, and I hadn't replaced him yet --
it's hard to find someone who will do all the jobs I don't
want to.
"Be with you in a sec," I said, trying not to sound
snappish. I do my best not to scare off my customers if I
can help it.
Transmission jacks be damned, the only way to get a
transmission into an old Jetta is with muscle. Sometimes
being a female is useful in my line of work -- my hands are
smaller so I can get them places a man can't. However, even
weightlifting and karate can't make me as strong as a strong
man. Usually leverage can compensate, but sometimes there's
no substitute for muscle and I had just barely enough to get
the job done.
Grunting with effort, I held the transmission where it
belonged with one hand and with the other I slipped the
first bolt in and tightened it. I wasn't finished, but the
transmission would stay where it was while I dealt with my
customer.
I took a deep breath and smiled once brightly for
practice before I rolled out from under the car. I snagged a
rag to wipe the oil off my hands, and said, "Can I help
you?" before I got a good enough look at the boy to see he
wasn't a customer -- though he certainly looked as though
someone ought to help him.
The knees of his jeans were ripped out and stained with
old blood and dirt. Over a dirty tee, he wore a too-small
flannel shirt -- inadequate clothing for November.
He looked gaunt, as though he'd been a while without
food. My nose told me, even over the smell of gasoline, oil,
and antifreeze permeating the garage, that it had been an
equally long time since he'd seen a shower. And, under the
dirt, sweat, and old fear, was the distinctive scent of
werewolf.
"I was wondering if you had some work I could do?" he
asked hesitantly. "Not a real job, ma'am. Just a few hours
work."
I could smell his anxiety before it was drowned out by a
rush of adrenaline when I didn't immediately refuse. His
words sped up until they crashed into one another. "A job
would be okay, too. But I don't have a social security card
so it would have to be cash under the table."
Most of the people who came around looking for cash work
were illegals trying to tide themselves over between harvest
and planting season. This boy was whitebread American --
except the part about being a werewolf -- with chestnut hair
and brown eyes. He was tall enough to be eighteen, I
supposed, but my instincts, which are pretty good, pinned
his age closer to fifteen. His shoulders were wide but
boney, and his hands were a little large as if he still had
some growing to do before he grew into the man he would be.
"I'm strong," he said. "I don't know a lot about fixing
cars, but I used to help my uncle keep his bug running."
I believed he was strong: werewolves are. As soon as I
had picked up the distinctive musk-and-mint scent, I'd had a
nervous urge to drive him out of my territory. However, not
being a werewolf, I control my instincts -- I'm not
controlled by them. Then too, the boy, shivering slightly in
the damp November weather, roused other, stronger,
instincts.
It was my own private policy not to break the law. I
drove the speed limit, kept my cars insured, paid a little
more tax to the feds than I had to. I'd given away a twenty
or two to people who'd asked, but never hired someone who
couldn't appear on my payroll. There was also the problem of
his being a werewolf, and a new one at that, if I was any
judge. The young ones had less control of their wolf than
others.
He hadn't commented on how odd it was to see a woman
mechanic, and that bought him some points. Sure, he'd
probably been watching me for a while, long enough to get
used to the idea -- but, still, he hadn't said anything, and
that won him points. But not enough points for what I was
about to do. He rubbed his hands together and blew on them
to warm up his fingers which were red with chill.
"All right," I said, slowly. It was not the wisest
answer, but, watching his slow shivers, it was the only one
I could give. "We'll see how it works."
"There's a laundry room and a shower back through that
door," I pointed to the door at the back of the shop. "My
last assistant left some of his old work coveralls. You'll
find them hanging on the hooks in the laundry room. If you
want to shower and put those on, you can run the clothes
you're wearing through the washer. There's a fridge in the
laundry room with a ham sandwich and some pop. Eat and then
come back out when you're ready."
I put a little force behind the "eat", but I wasn't going
to work with a hungry werewolf, not even almost two weeks
from full moon. Some people will tell you werewolves can
only shapechange under a full moon, but people also say
there's no such thing as ghosts. He heard the command and
stiffened, raising his eyes to meet mine.
After a moment he mumbled a "thank you" and walked
through the door, shutting it gently behind him. I let out
the breath I'd been holding. I knew better than to give
orders to a werewolf -- it's that whole dominance reflex
thing.
Werewolves' instincts are inconvenient -- that's why they
don't tend to live long. Those same instincts are the reason
their wild brothers lost to civilization while the coyotes
were thriving, even in urban areas like Los Angeles.
The coyotes are my brothers. Oh, I'm not a werecoyote --
if there even is such a thing. I am a walker.
The term is derived from 'skinwalker', a witch of the
southwest Indian tribes who uses a skin to turn into a
coyote or some other animal and goes around causing disease
and death. The white settlers incorrectly used the term for
all the native shapechangers and the name stuck. We are
hardly in a position to object -- even if we came out in
public like the lesser of the fae did a decade or so ago:
there aren't enough of us to be worth a fuss.
I didn't think the boy had known what I was, or he'd
never have been able to turn his back on me, another
predator, and go through the door to shower and change.
Wolves may have a very good sense of smell; but the garage
was full of odd odors, and I doubt he'd ever smelled someone
like me in his life.
"You just hire a replacement for Tad?"
I turned and watched Tony come in from outside through
the open bay doors where he'd evidently been lurking and
watching the byplay between the boy and I. Tony was good at
that -- it was his job.
Today his black hair was slicked back and tied into a
short ponytail and he was clean-shaven. His right ear, I
noticed, was pierced four times and held three small hoops
and a diamond stud. He'd added two since last time I'd seen
him. In a hooded sweat shirt unzipped to display a thin tee
that showed the results of all the hours he spent in a gym,
he looked like a recruit poster for one of the local
Hispanic gangs.
"We're negotiating," I said. "Just temporary so far. Are
you working?"
"Nope. They gave me the day off for good behavior." He
was still focused on my new employee though, because he
said, "I've seen him around the past few days. He seems okay
-- runaway maybe." Okay meant no drugs or violence, the last
was reassuring.
When I started working at the garage about nine years
ago, Tony had been running a little pawn shop around the
corner. Since it had the nearest soft drink machine I saw
him fairly often. After a while the pawn shop passed on to
different hands. I didn't think much of it until I smelled
him standing on a street corner with a sign that said, "Will
Work for Food".
I say smelled him, because the hollow-eyed kid holding
the sign didn't look much like the low-key, cheerful
middle-aged man who had run the pawn shop. Startled, I'd
greeted him by the name I'd known him by. The kid just
looked at me like I was crazy, but the next morning Tony was
waiting at my shop. That's when he told me what he did for a
living -- I hadn't even known a place the size of the
Tri-Cities would have undercover cops.
He'd started dropping by the shop every once in a while,
after that. At first he'd come in a new guise each time. The
Tri-Cities aren't that big and my garage is on the edge of
an area that's about as close as Kennewick comes to having a
high- crime district. So it was possible he just came by
when he was assigned here, but I soon decided the real
reason was he was bothered I'd recognized him. I could
hardly tell him I'd just smelled him, could I?
His mother was Italian and his father Venezuelan, and the
genetic mix had given him features and skin tone that
allowed him to pass as anything from Mexican to African
American. He could still pass for eighteen when he needed
to, though he must be several years older than me --
thirty-three or so. He spoke Spanish fluently and could use
a half dozen different accents to flavor his English.
All of those attributes had led him to undercover work,
but what really made him good was his body language. He
could stride with the hip swaggering walk common to handsome
young Hispanic males, or with shuffle around with the
nervous energy of a drug addict.
After a while, he accepted I could see through disguises
that fooled his boss and, he claimed, his own mother, but by
then we were friends. He continued to drop in for a cup of
coffee or hot chocolate and a friendly chat when he was
around. He didn't much undercover work around here anymore,
though, too many people know his face so his visits had
become more rare.
"You look very young and macho," I said. "Are the
earrings a new look for KPD? Pasco police have two earrings
so Kennewick cops must have four?"
He grinned at me and it made him look both older and more
innocent. "I've been working in Seattle for the past few
months," he said. "I've got a new tattoo, too. Fortunately
for me it is somewhere my mother will never see it."
Jimmy claimed to live in terror of his mother. I'd never
met her myself, but he smelled of happiness not fear when he
talked of her, so I knew she couldn't be the harridan he
described.
"What brings you to darken my door?" I asked.
"I came to see if you'd look at a car for a friend of
mine," he said.
"Vee-Dub?"
"Buick."
My eyebrows climbed in surprise. "I'll take a look, but
I'm not set up for American cars -- I don't have the
computers. He should take it somewhere they know Buicks."
"She's taken it to three different mechanics; replaced
the oxygen sensor, spark plugs and who knows what else. It's
still not right. The last guy told her she needed a new
engine which he could do for twice what the car's worth. She
doesn't have much money, but she needs the car."
"I won't charge her for looking, and if I can't fix it,
I'll tell her so." I had a sudden thought, brought on by the
edge of anger I heard in his voice when he talked about her
problems. "Is this your lady?"
"She's not my lady," he protested unconvincingly.
For the past three years he'd had his eye on one of the
police dispatchers, a widow with a slew of kids. He'd never
done anything about it because he loved his job -- and his
job, he'd said wistfully, was not conducive to dating,
marriage, and kids.
"Tell her to bring it by. If she can leave it for a day
or two, I'll see if Zee will come by and take a look at it."
Zee, my former boss, had retired when he sold me the place,
but he'd come out once in a while to "keep his hands in". He
knew more about cars and what made them run than a team of
Detroit engineers.
"Thanks, Mercy. You're aces." He checked his watch. "I've
got to go."
I waved him off, then went back to the transmission. The
car cooperated, as they seldom do, so it didn't take me
long. By the time my new help emerged clean and garbed in an
old pair of Tad's coveralls, I was starting to put the rest
of the car back together. Even the coveralls wouldn't be
warm enough outside, but in the shop, with my big space
heater going, he should be all right.
He was quick and efficient -- he'd obviously spent a few
hours under the hood of a car. He didn't stand around
watching, but handed me parts before I asked, playing the
part of a tool monkey as though it was an accustomed role.
Either he was naturally reticent or had learned how to keep
his mouth shut, but we worked together for a couple of hours
mostly in silence. We finished the first car and starting on
another one before I decided to coax him into talking to me.
"I'm Mercedes," I said, loosening an alternator bolt.
"What do you want me to call you?"
His eyes lit for a minute. "Mercedes the Volkswagen
mechanic?" His face closed down quickly and he mumbled,
"Sorry. Bet you've heard that a lot."
I grinned at him and handed him the bolt I'd taken out
and started on the next. "Yep. But I work on Mercedes, too
-- anything German-made. Porsche, Audi, BMW and even the odd
Opel or two. Mostly old stuff, already out of dealer
warranty, though I have the computers for most of the newer
ones when they come in."
I turned my head away from him so I could get a better
look at the stubborn second bolt. "You can call me Mercedes
or Mercy, whichever you like. What do you want me to call
you?"
I don't like forcing people into a corner where they have
to lie to you. If he was a runaway, he probably wouldn't
give me a real name, but I need something better to call him
than "boy" or "hey, you" if I was going to work with him.
"Call me Mac," he said after a pause.
It was different enough, I was pretty sure it was part of
his name, last or first. The pause was a dead giveaway that
it wasn't the name he usually went by, though. It would do
for now.
"Well then, Mac," I said. "Would you give the Jetta's
owner a call and tell him his car is ready?" I nodded my
head at the first car we finished. "There's an invoice on
the printer. His number is on the invoice along with the
final cost of the transmission swap. When I get this belt
replaced I'll take you to lunch -- part of the wages."
"All right," he said sounding a little lost. He started
for the door to the showers but I stopped him. The laundry
and shower were in the back of the shop, but the office was
on the side of the garage, next to a parking lot customers
used.
"The office is straight through the gray door," I told
him. "There's a cloth next to the phone you can use to hold
the receiver so it doesn't get covered with grease."
I drove
home that night and fretted about Mac. I'd paid him for his
work in cash and told him he was welcome back. He'd given me
a faint smile, tucked the money in a back pocket and left.
I'd let him go, knowing that he had nowhere to stay the
night because I had no other good options.
I'd have asked him home, but that would have been
dangerous for both of us. As little as he seemed to use his
nose eventually he'd figure out what I was -- and
werewolves, even in human form, do have the strength they're
credited with in the old movies. I'm in good shape and I
have a purple belt from the dojo just over the railroad
track from my garage, but I'm no match for a werewolf. This
boy was too young to have the kind of control he'd have to
have to keep from killing someone his beast would see as a
competing predator in his territory.
And then there was my neighbor.
I live in Finley, a rural area about ten minutes from my
garage which is in the older industrial area of Kennewick.
My home is a single-wide trailer almost as old as I am that
sits in the middle of a couple of fenced acres. There are a
lot of small acreage properties in Finley with trailers or
manufactured homes, but along the river there are also
mansions like the one my neighbor lives in.
I turned into my drive with a crunch of gravel and
stopped the old diesel Rabbit in front of my home. I noticed
the cat- carrier sitting on my porch as soon as I got out of
the car.
My cat, Medea, gave me a plaintive yowl, but I picked up
the note taped to the top of the carrier and read it before
I let her out.
Ms Thompson, it said in heavy block letters, Please keep
your feline off my property. If I see it again, I will eat
it.
The note was unsigned.
I undid the latch and lifted the cat up and rubbed my
face in her rabbit-like fur.
"Did the mean-old werewolf stick the poor kitty in the
box and leave her?" I asked.
She smelled like my neighbor, which told me that Adam had
spent some time with her on his lap before he brought her
over here. Most cats don't like werewolves -- or walkers
like me either. Medea likes everyone, poor old cat, even my
grumpy neighbor. Which is why she often ended up in the cat
carrier on my porch.
Adam Hauptman, my neighbor, was the alpha of the local
werewolf pack. That there was a werewolf pack in the
Tri-Cities was something of an anomaly because packs usually
settle in bigger places where they can hide better, or,
rarely, in smaller places they can take over. But werewolves
have a tendency to do well in the military and secret
government agencies whose names are all acronyms: the
nuclear power plant complex of the Hanford site had a lot of
alphabet agencies involved in it, one way or another.
Why the Alpha werewolf had chosen to buy land right next
to me, I suspect, had as much to do with the werewolf's urge
to dominate those they see as lesser beings, as it did the
superb river front view he had out his front window.
He didn't like having my old single-wide bringing down
the value of his sprawling adobe edifice -- though, as I
sometimes pointed out to him, my trailer was already here
when he bought his property and built on it. He also took
every opportunity to remind me I was only here on his
sufferance: a walker being no real match for a werewolf.
In response to these complaints, I bowed my head, spoke
respectfully to his face -- usually -- and pulled the
dilapidated old Rabbit I kept for parts out into my back
field where it was clearly visible from Adam's bedroom
window.
I was almost certain he wouldn't eat my cat, but I'd
leave her inside for the next week or so to give the
impression I was cowed by his threat. The trick with
werewolves is never to confront them straight on.
Medea mewed, purred, and wagged her stub tail when I set
her down and filled her food dish. She'd come to me as a
stray, and I'd thought for a while that some abusive person
had chopped her tail off, but my vet said she was a Manx and
born that way. I gave her one last stroke then went to my
fridge to scrounge something for dinner.
"I'd have brought Mac home if I thought Adam would leave
him be," I told her, "but werewolves don't take to strangers
very well. There's all sorts of protocols they insist upon
when a new wolf comes into someone else's territory, and
something tells me that Mac hasn't petitioned the pack. A
werewolf won't freeze to death sleeping outside, however bad
the weather. He'll be all right for a little while."
"Still," I said, as I got out some leftover spaghetti to
nuke, "if Mac's in trouble, Adam might help him." It would
be better to introduce the subject gently when I knew what
the boy's story was.
I ate standing up and rinsed out the dish before curling
up on the couch and turning on the TV. Medea yowled and
jumped on my lap before the first commercial.
Mac didn't
come in the next day. It was a Saturday and he might not
know I worked most every Saturday if there were cars to fix.
Maybe he'd moved on.
I hoped Adam or one of his wolves hadn't found him before
I'd had a chance to break the news of his presence more
gently. The rules that allowed werewolves to live undetected
among humankind for centuries tended to have fatal
consequences for those who broke them.
I worked until noon, then called to tell the nice young
couple that their car was a lost cause. Replacing the engine
in it would cost them more than the car was worth. Bad news
calls are my least favorite job. When Tad, my old assistant,
had been here, I made him do them. I hung up almost as
depressed as the hapless owners of the shiny, decked-out,
well-loved car now destined for a boneyard.
I scrubbed up and got as much of the gunk out from under
my nails as was going to come and started in on the
never-ending paperwork that had also fallen to Tad. I was
glad he'd gotten the scholarship that allowed him to head to
the ivy-league college of his choice, but I really missed
him. After ten minutes, I decided there was nothing that
couldn't be put off until Monday. Hopefully Monday I'd have
an urgent repair and I'd be able to put off the paperwork
until Tuesday.
I changed into clean jeans and a t-shirt, grabbed my
jacket and headed for O'Leary's for lunch. After lunch I did
some desultory grocery shopping and bought a small turkey to
share with Medea.
My mother called on the cell as I was getting into the
car and tried to guilt me into driving up to Portland for
Thanksgiving or Christmas. I weaseled my way out of both
invitations -- I'd had enough of family gatherings in the
two years I'd lived with her to last a lifetime.
Its not that they are bad, just the opposite. Curt, my
stepfather, is a soft-spoken, no nonsense sort of person --
just the man to balance my mother. I later found out he
hadn't known about me until I showed up on his doorstep when
I was sixteen. Even so, he opened his house to me without
question and treated me as if I were his own.
My mother, Margi, is vivacious and cheerfully flaky. It's
not difficult at all envisioning her getting involved with a
rodeo rider (like my father) any more than it would be
difficult imagining her running off to join the circus. That
she is president of her local PTA is far more surprising.
I like both of my parents. I even like all of my half-
siblings, who had greeted my sudden appearance in their
lives with enthusiasm. They all live together in one of
those close- knit families that television likes to pretend
is normal. I'm very happy to know people like that exist --
I just don't belong there.
I visit twice a year so they don't invade my home, and I
make certain that it isn't a holiday. Most of my visits are
very short. I love them, but I love them better at a
distance.
By the time I hung up, I felt guilty and blue. I drove
home, put the turkey in the fridge to thaw, and fed the cat.
When cleaning the fridge didn't help my mood, though I'm not
sure why I expected it to, I got back in the car and I drove
out to the Hanford Reach.
I don't go out to the Reach often. There are closer
places to run, or, if I feel like driving, the Blue
Mountains weren't too far away. But sometimes my soul craves
the arid, desolate space of the preserve -- especially after
I get through talking with my mother.
I parked the car, then walked for a while until I was
reasonably certain there was no one around. Then I took off
my clothes and put them in the small daypack and shifted.
Werewolves can take as much as fifteen minutes to shift
shape -- and shifting is painful for them, which is
something to keep in mind. Werewolves aren't the most
friendly animals anyway, but if they've just shifted, it's a
good policy to leave them alone for a while.
Walkers' shifting -- at least my shifting, because I
don't know any other walkers -- is quick and painless. One
moment I'm a person and the next a coyote: pure magic. I
just step from one form into the next.
I rubbed my nose against my foreleg to take away the last
tingle of the change. It always takes a moment to adjust to
four feet instead of two. I know, because I looked it up,
that coyotes have different eyesight than humans, but mine
is pretty much the same in either form. My hearing picks up
a little and so does my sense of smell, though even in human
form I've got better senses than most.
I picked up the backpack, now stuffed with my clothes,
and left it under a bunch of scrub. Then I shed the ephemera
of my human existence and ran into the desert.
By the time I had chased three rabbits and teased a
couple in a boat with a close-up glimpse of my lovely,
furred self on the shore of the river, I felt much better. I
don't have to change with the moon, but if I go too long on
two feet, then I get restless and moody.
Happily-tired, in human shape, and newly-clothed, I got
into my car and said my usual prayer as I turned the key.
This time the diesel engine caught and purred. I never know
from day to day if the Rabbit will run. I drive it because
it is cheap, not because it is a good car. There's a lot of
truth in the adage that all cars named after animals are
lemons.
On Sunday
I went to church. My church is so small that it shares its
pastor with three other churches. It is one of those
non-denominational churches so busy not condemning anyone
that it has little power to attract a steady congregation.
There are relatively few regulars, like me, and we leave
each other mostly alone. Being in a unique position to
understand what the world would be like without God and his
churches to keep the worst of the evil at bay, I am a
faithful attendee.
It's not because of the werewolves. Werewolves can be
dangerous if you get in their way; but they'll leave you
alone if you are careful. They are no more evil than a
grizzly bear or great white shark.
There are other things, though, things that hide in the
dark, that are much, much worse -- and vampires are only the
tip of the iceberg. They are very good at hiding their
natures from the human population, but I'm not human. I know
them when I encounter them, and they know me, too: So I go
to church every week.
This Sunday, our pastor was sick and the man who replaced
him chose to give a sermon based upon the scripture in
Exodus 22: "Thou shall not suffer a witch to live." He
extended the meaning to encompass the fae, and from him rose
a miasma of fear and rage I could sense from my seat. It was
people like him, who kept the rest of the preternatural
community in hiding almost two decades after the lesser fae
were forced into the public.
About fifteen years ago, the Gray Lords, the powerful
mages who rule the fae, began to be concerned about advances
in science -- particularly forensic science. They foresaw
that the Time of Hiding was coming to an end (the capital
letters are the Gray Lords' idea, not mine). They decided to
do damage control, and see to it that the human's
realization of the world's magic was as gentle as possible.
They awaited the proper opportunity.
When Harlan Kincaid, the elderly billionaire real estate
magnate, was found dead in his garden with a pair of garden
shears in his neck, suspicion fell upon his gardener Kieran
McBride, a quiet-spoken, pleasant-faced man who had worked
for Kincaid, a prize-winning gardener himself, for a number
of years.
I saw bits of the trial, as most Americans did. The
sensational murder of one of the countries most wealthy men
who happened to be married to a beloved, young actress,
ensured the highest ratings for the networks.
For several weeks the murder occupied the news channels.
The world got to see Carin Kincaid, with tears flowing down
her porcelain cheeks, as she described her reaction to
finding her dead husband lying next to his favorite rose
bush -- which had been hacked to pieces. Her testimony was
Oscar-quality, but she was upstaged by what happened next.
Kieran McBride was defended by an expensive team of
lawyers who had, amid much publicity, agreed to work
pro-bono. They called Kieran McBride to the stand and
skillfully baited the prosecuting attorney into asking
McBride to hold the garden shears in his hand.
He tried. But after only an instant his hands began to
smoke before dropping them. At his attorney's request he
showed the blistered palms to the jury. He couldn't have
been the murderer; the lawyer told the judge, jury, and the
rest of the world; because Kieran McBride was fae, a garden
sprite, and he couldn't hold cold iron, not even through
thick leather gloves.
In a dramatic moment, McBride dropped his glamour, the
spell that kept him appearing human. He wasn't beautiful,
just the opposite, but anyone who has seen a Shar-pei knows
there is great charisma in a certain sort of ugliness. One
of the reasons McBride had been chosen by the Gray Lords was
because garden sprites are gentle folk and easy to look at.
His sorrowful, overly-large brown eyes made the covers of
magazines for weeks opposite less than flattering pictures
of the enraged face of Kincaid's wife who was later
convicted of her husband's death.
And so the lesser fae, the weak and attractive, revealed
themselves at the command of the Gray Lords. The great and
terrible, the powerful or powerfully ugly stayed hidden,
awaiting the reaction of the world to the more palatable
among them. Here, said the Gray Lord's spin doctors who had
been McBride's lawyers, here are a hidden people: the gentle
brownie who taught kindergarten because she loved children;
the young man, a Selkie, who risked his life to save the
victims of a boating accident.
At first it looked as though the Gray Lords' strategy
would pay off for all of us preternaturals, fae or not.
There were Hollywood restaurants where the rich and famous
could be waited on by wood sprites or muryans. Hollywood
moguls remade Peter Pan using a boy who could actually fly
and a real pixie for Tinkerbell -- the resulting film made
box office records.
But even at the beginning there was trouble. A number of
televangelists seized upon fear of the fae to increase their
hold over their flocks. Conservative legislators began
making noise about a registration policy. The government
agencies began quietly making lists of fae they thought they
could use -- or who might be used against them, because
throughout Europe and parts of Russia, the lesser fae were
being forced out of hiding by the Gray Lords.
When the Gray Lords told Zee, my old boss, that he had to
come out several years after the Kincaid trial, Zee sold the
garage to me and retired for a few months first. He'd seen
what happened to some of the fae who tried to continue in
the work as if nothing had happened.
It was all right for a fae to be an entertainer or a
tourist attraction, but the brownie kindergarten teacher was
quietly pensioned off. No one wanted a fae for a teacher, a
mechanic, or a neighbor.
Fae who lived in up-scale suburbs had windows broken and
rude graffiti painted on their homes. Those who lived in
less law-abiding places were mugged and beaten. They
couldn't defend themselves because whatever the humans did
to them, the Gray Lords would do worse.
The wave of violence prompted the government into
creating four large reservations for fae. Zee told me that
there were fae in the government who saw the reservations as
damage control and used fair means and foul to convince the
rest of congress.
If a fae agreed to live on a reservation, he was given a
small house and a monthly stipend. Their children (like
Zee's son Tad) were given scholarships to good universities
where they might become useful members of society . . . if
they could find jobs.
The reservations sparked a lot of controversy on both
sides. Personally, I thought the Gray Lords and the
government might have paid more attention to the innumerable
problems of the Native American reservations -- but Zee was
convinced the reservations were only a first step in the
Gray Lords' plans. I knew just enough about them myself, to
admit he might be right -- but I worried anyway. Whatever
ills it created, the reservation system had lessened the
growing problems between the human and fae in the US, at
least.
People like the visiting pastor, though, were proof that
prejudice and hatred were alive and well. Someone behind me
muttered that he hoped Pastor Julio recovered before next
week, and a round of agreeing noises followed his remark.
I've heard of people who've seen angels or felt their
presence. I don't know if it is God or one of his angels I
sense, but I do know that there is a welcoming presence who
greets me in most churches. That spirit was saddened by the
pastor's fear and hatred.
The pastor shook my hand as I left the building.
I am not fae, broad though that term is, my magic comes
from North America not Europe, and I have no glamour (or
need of it) to allow me to blend with the human population.
Even so, this man would have hated me had he known what I
was.
I smiled at him, thanked him for the service, and wished
him well. Love thy enemies, it says in the scriptures. My
foster mother always added, "At the very least you will be
polite to them."