A Local Habitation

“All right,” said Quentin. And we were off.

The halls of ALH were snarled like M?bius strips, bending back on themselves in strange and implausible ways. Some rooms were brightly lit, while others were illuminated only by the dim light lancing in from outside. We searched room by room, hunting through closets and cubbyholes and finding more secret routes than I wanted to believe. Tracking anyone would have been a nightmare, but tracking a native—and that was what we had to be looking for—was going to be all but impossible. Thanks to the recent personnel losses, I couldn’t even be sure that the person we were looking for was one of our known suspects.

We found nothing. And I kept thinking of Terrie’s exaggerated mourning and Gordan’s too-clean hands.

Elliot and I had just stepped into the reception room when Quentin and Jan came around the corner. They stopped when they saw us.

“Anything?” I asked.

“Nothing,” said Quentin.

“Right.” Whoever killed Peter was cocky, and the cocky are frequently good; that’s how they live long enough to get that way. Unless our killer could walk through walls, we were finished. “Come on, Quentin. We’re going back to the hotel.”

Elliot stared at me, eyes shell-shocked and pleading. “Can’t you stay?”

“Stay in groups. No one’s been attacked when they weren’t alone. Quentin and I need to go back to the hotel and get our things.” Mainly, we needed to get my weapons. “We’ll be back before dawn.”

“Be careful,” said Jan.

“We will,” I said. Somehow, I couldn’t be angry with them anymore. Their world was falling apart, and they knew it. “Quentin, come on.”

We walked into the cool night air together, letting the door slide closed behind us. We were halfway to the car when Quentin said, “Toby?”

“Yeah?”

“Are we coming back?”

“Yes, we are. We have a job to do. Are you holding up okay?”

“I’m scared.” He said it like he expected me to yell at him.

I shook my head. “So am I, Quentin. Believe me, so am I.”





TWELVE



THE DESK CLERK CRINGED when we stormed through the lobby. Quentin had crafted his human disguise during the drive from ALH, and I’d slammed mine into place in the parking lot. It wasn’t very well sealed, but I didn’t care. It was just there to keep us out of the tabloids until we’d reached our rooms and taken what we needed. Colin’s sealskin was slung over my arm, disguised to look like a slightly dingy towel; I wanted to keep it out of harm’s way, so that it could be returned to his family when everything was finished—if we survived.

We could probably have done without the disguises; the desk clerk was the only one in sight, and he was a pale, worried man who’d never have recognized what we really were; a child of the modern world, raised to think of faeries as pastel creatures dressed in flower petals and bathing in moonbeams. If he saw us undisguised, he’d think he was looking at a kid playing Star Trek games and a giant Tinker Bell knockoff with PMS, and he wouldn’t understand why he wanted to run away. I glanced at him as we passed, and he flinched. Looking away, I shook my head. It never gets better. I don’t think it ever will.