Niko caught JC’s eye, and nodded towards the empty space next to him on his blanket.
JC wasn’t at all sure how she felt about it, but couldn’t think of a good reason to decline, so she strode across the pasture to him and knelt there, feeling joints simply lock in that position.
“I’m extremely glad that the lot of you managed to rescue yourselves and everyone else,” Niko said. “Aside from the whole thing being appalling, life just wouldn’t be the same without you around.”
“Life isn’t going to be the same with me around,” JC pointed out.
“Why? Change how you look and suddenly you forget all the wildly eclectic knowledge and ideas in your brain?”
“Well. No.” She thought of the morning she’d come to accept that gender was non-absolute and didn’t matter to who she was. “Still me. Do you want me hanging around the shop looking like this?”
“Oh, I don’t know—could actually get me some new customers once word spread.” JC recognized that look in his eyes: despite the deadpan tone, he was teasing her. “Chill out. As I understand it, house fae are often very good at various forms of hiding from humans, including passing for human. It is extremely probable that, given time, you’ll gain full control over which form to be in. Although it would be a shame, to say nothing of deeply unhealthy on all levels, to then go back to your original form and hold on for dear life.”
“Unhealthy?”
“Fae nature does not go quietly back to sleep. It will make itself felt, one way or another. I’m sure Riley can tell you horror stories her family has collected, about faelings who tried. I have less experience in that area, but from what I do know, it isn’t all that common for faelings to try, and it generally involves external factors.”
“Hm.” She let her gaze rest on her loose deep-red skirt with its white ruffle, not quite long enough to completely cover her knees in this position. The smooth, seamless dress stretched easily, despite the red looking as satiny as the white trim and red-laced underbust corset, and it was surprisingly comfortable—the corset didn’t even really restrict her flexibility, which she’d ascertained was every bit as good as it had been in her midway form. It just all fit close except the skirt, creating what she had to admit was quite a neat trim look, and it wasn’t so emphatically French-maid that it could only be that. She was even starting to like the extra height the boots gave her. As for the body beneath it all, the curves and cherry-red hair and latex-like skin... she wasn’t sure she remembered how anything else felt.
“You okay?”
“I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about how I feel about that.”
“How do you feel about talking about that nonsense earlier? That so-startled ‘I matter?’ Did you honestly think I wouldn’t care if you disappeared?”
JC sighed. “Can we go back to how I feel about fae sides not going away?”
“Jace. I started worrying at the blackout. I felt like I had failed when I came up literally only hours short of cornering you alone, explaining, and asking you to help me with the other six, so you’d all have a place to go—not as large and beautiful as this, but it would have been a safe place to deal with midway with time working in your favour, and by the time you reached final phase, I would have had the resources to adapt as necessary around different kinds of fae.”
“I thought you weren’t that powerful.”
“I’m not. I’m a collector. I have a number of items that some wizards and others would quite like me to sell them, that I’ve been holding onto for various reasons. I was negotiating with a few individuals I’ve done business with before. The tricky bit was choosing people who could do what I needed but who would not immediately go looking for the newly-awakened faelings I was trying to protect. I told them as little as possible but still had to say more than I really wanted to.”
“You were trading objects that probably cost you something to get, in order to make a safe place for us?”
“They usually don’t cost me that much. A favour here, right place at the right time there, an ongoing customer who wants to clean out the attic, someone dies and the next-of-kin or heir wants to clear out their things. Now and then it’s an opportunity to buy something but those are usually not the high-demand items, more just niche curiosities. It doesn’t matter what it cost anyway. There was no better solution I could think of, and I wasn’t about to just abandon you. You in the collective sense, and you singular in particular.” He heaved a sigh. “I obviously felt terrible that I hadn’t moved fast enough, but then, I had no reason to think that anyone outside the area would pay any attention or would have any interest. I got much, much more worried when I discovered that Phrixos was involved.”
“You’ve mentioned knowing him. Hard to imagine that not being a bad experience for anyone.”
“He approached me some years ago because he had heard I’d acquired a rare, but not unique, item. He offered me, honestly, an insultingly low price for it, but the reason I refused to sell it was because one of my regular customers had asked me to keep an eye out for anything like it and give him the first opportunity to buy it. When I refused, Phrixos suddenly offered me an insanely high price for it that set off every warning bell—even if I hadn’t already promised, I would have refused over that alone. I wrapped up negotiations fast with the other buyer, and the next time Phrixos contacted me, I told him it was already gone. He was, to say the least, unhappy. Apparently that particular item was something he had concluded he needed for his current research project, and he accused me of deliberate sabotage—I pointed out that I had no reason to care about his research either way, and he accused me of taking a bribe from someone else to sabotage him and demanded to know who it was. It got messy, and he refused to let it go. When the threats started, I figured the best thing I could do was disappear and create an entirely new identity. Most of my regular customers got new contact info—for various reasons, ones I felt would respect a request to not share it in relation to my previous identity. It still damaged my business for a while, but there are other collectors and I eventually developed a reputation all over again. If Phrixos had bothered, he could have tracked me down, but that made it too much hassle and too much time away from his research.”
“Heaven forbid that anything interrupt his research,” JC said. She aimed for sardonic but it sounded bitter to her.
“I know, right?”
“Did the thing he wanted have anything to do with faelings?”
“No. It was practically a toy. They’re valued for novelty and nostalgia, primarily, since no one has really bothered creating new ones over the past, eh, call it a couple of centuries—time gets difficult with wizards and islands. If you just leave it somewhere, it looks something like a lava lamp that keeps changing colours. The particles inside are attracted to each other more than the purified water they’re in, and they’ll completely ignore temperature or motion or magnets, because it’s literally crystallized aether held in a suspended state within the globe or egg or whatever shape it happens to be. With some effort, it is possible to influence the way it moves, if you have any experience with...” Niko stopped, eyes unfocusing. “Crystallized aether. Could he have been looking into... no, with those toys, it’s held inside a container that creates specific conditions. On the other hand, he’s insane but he’s damned good, could he have been using something along those lines?”
None of that was actually said to JC, and she knew it. She waited patiently for Niko to finish chasing down whatever thought had just struck him.
“Oh, I so want to know whether anyone else sold Phrixos either one of those toys or one of the few surviving manuals on making one. No one’s going to violate confidentiality by telling me, but I wonder whether Arctos could get answers. He’s only, quite literally, among the most powerful twenty-five or so wizards on the planet, and he gets a lot of respect for that and these little humanitarian side-projects he does now and then. I need to talk to him about this when he gets back.”
“You think Phrixos used the same techniques that go into making a toy to make the cuffs we’re wearing?”
“I think it might be one of the elements, at least, and if so, then that’s one direction to start looking in for ways to break them.”
“Good. Because I, for one, am sick of them and I would like to not be wearing them anymore. However, I realize that they are not an immediate danger and we have more than enough to deal with that needs to be prioritized higher than that.”
“I know. We’ll figure it out. My money is on Arctos being wrapped up with the hunt for Phrixos, digging into this Lloyd person’s story, and negotiating with fae and other wizards. A lot right here on this island is unfortunately going to fall into my lap, and I’m not really much of a wizard.” He laughed suddenly. “Even less since I met you. The badass types sometimes have to go for periods with very specific minimalist diets, among other things. No way could I stand that as long as you’re around to make even occasional meals.”
“Probably wouldn’t have met me anyway.”
“Probably. As much as I hate and, honestly, fear Phrixos, I’m still glad that the new identity thing happened to lead to setting up a shop where you’d wander in the door. No matter what you think, and you can absolutely be a prize idiot sometimes about this stuff, you are my friend and you matter to me and you are not interchangeable with anyone else I have ever met. I did not see the fae thing coming, but it really makes zero difference to me. ‘Kay?”
“Okay.” That did feel good, although she wasn’t entirely sure she deep-down believed it.
But he’d started trading off things of value in a high-speed attempt to protect JC and the others. And he was here now.
“So how do you feel about not just going back to human and staying that way?”
“Um...”
Alison interrupted, pausing a few feet away. “Jace? Sorry. Wade is exhausted. Can we scrounge up some clean blankets so he, and maybe the others if they want, can grab a nap here where it’s safe? Things might make more sense after a bit of sleep. They’ve all been up for a really long time. Now at least they know we’re safe.”
“Sure,” JC said, getting carefully to her feet. “The ones they’ve been sitting on will be fine for underneath but we can find more for over them and maybe a pillow or two. Come help me carry them. Enough for four? Or five? I’m pretty sure you haven’t rested, Niko.”
“I’m okay for the moment,” Niko said. “I do want to start setting up cottages as quickly as I can, and I’d like to get at least one or two done before I crash. I just want to make sure I’m right here in case of questions or anything.”
“Do one for Max first,” JC said. “Theo’s only going to be able to keep her sex drive on a leash for a limited amount of time, and once it wins, she’ll almost certainly toss him right into the pasture stream or the fountain with absolutely no regard for who might be watching.”
“Um, probably,” Alison agreed. “That sounds like a good idea.”
Niko’s eyebrows rose, but he nodded and reached into his backpack, where he’d stowed the island interface mirror. “Are there any streams within the central walls?”
“I’m not sure,” JC said. “Des would know. Why?”
“Safer in the centre, I bet—more consistent weather, at least—so I’d like to keep cottages within the walls. I might be able to actually set one up right across water for Theo, if I can find or invoke a stream. I’ll look. The back-end interface is fairly standard overall but very thorough, with a lot of options.”
“Not a surprise, knowing this island. Back in a few.” She honestly didn’t mind escaping this conversation anyway. Parts of it were uncomfortable. Not the first thing she’d had to deal with lately that was, but she didn’t particularly want to do so right now. Later would be soon enough.
