A Local Habitation

“Some food and a nice cup of coffee will clear that right up.” Elliot stopped at a blue steel door and pushed it open, letting sunshine flood into the area. From behind the wall, the woman that had been swearing earlier shouted, “Turn off that damn sun!”


“Sorry, Gordan!” Elliot called back, leading us outside. The door slammed behind Quentin, vanishing into the brick wall like it had never existed. If I squinted, I could just make out the handle. Elliot caught my expression, and smiled. “We like things tidy.”

“Right,” I said. Quentin was standing as close as he could manage, nearly touching my elbow. Shaking my head, I turned to consider the grounds—and froze.

The landscaping was better than the interior decoration, possibly because it didn’t exist in the real world. The sky was a nonoffensive shade of blue, and the lush green grass was studded with a froth of tiny white flowers that I recognized from my mother’s estate. Only the cats were the same. They were everywhere, watching us from picnic tables and the crooks of the carefully trimmed trees. At some point between entering and leaving the building, we’d crossed into the Summerlands. That did explain at least part of why the place seemed to be so deserted—someone inside the knowe would be invisible to someone outside of it, and vice versa. I doubled my estimation of the local feline population. If half of them were inside the knowe and half of them were outside . . . that was a lot of cats. They probably avoided the buildings because they didn’t want to transition between worlds again.

Why would a computer company have an unannounced gate between their mortal and fae locations and a cat population the SPCA would envy? I glanced at Elliot. He was continuing blithely, not seeming to see anything strange. Right. If he wanted to play things that way, that was how we’d play them, for now. Keeping my voice level, I asked, “Is everyone here so . . .”

“Weird?” Elliot asked. “Oh, professionally so. If you don’t mind my asking, when was your last shower?” I stared at him.

Quentin’s mouth dropped open, and he sputtered, “How . . . how can you . . .”

“Relax, relax!” Elliot laughed, holding up his hands. “You just look a bit frayed around the edges. May I clean you?”

“What . . . oh,” I said, catching on. The Bannick are bath-spirits; they’re obsessed with cleanliness, and Faerie being what it is, they can sometimes enforce their own ideas about hygiene. Nothing cleans a person like a Bannick. “Sure.”

“Toby . . .”

“Go along with it. This is interesting.”

“So I have your consent?” Elliot asked, looking between us. We both nodded. “Excellent. If you would close your eyes and hold your breath?”

Right. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and held it. Heat and moisture broke over me in a lye-scented wave. I understood why Elliot asked: it was like being scrubbed by hundreds of swift, impartial hands, and I might’ve taken it the wrong way if I hadn’t been prepared. The feeling of damp heat abated after about thirty seconds, and I opened my eyes, looking first at Quentin, then myself. We looked like we’d just received the deluxe treatment at an upscale spa; my tennis shoes were white and clean, and even a small hole in the hem of my jeans had been patched with tiny, near-invisible darns. I pointed at it, glancing curiously toward Elliot.

He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I can’t fix clothes on purpose, but if you’re wearing them when you have your ‘bath,’ they end up mended. All part of being clean.”

“Cool,” I said.

“So that’s what your hair looks like when it’s been brushed.” Quentin grinned.

“Stuff it,” I said.