A Local Habitation

“Uh, Jan?” I tucked my hair back behind one ear, bemused. “What are you doing?”


“Here at ALH, we pride ourselves on respecting the privacy of our employees’ personal lives,” she said, briskly. Then her tone changed, becoming more cynical as she added, “But if we have reason to believe they’ve been spying for the skank next door, I get to crack their computers like eggs and play with the gooey goodness inside.”

“Huh?”

“It’s called ‘hacking.’ Well, it would be if I didn’t own her computer. But I do, so it’s called ‘taking an interest in network security.’ ” Jan continued to type, fingers moving in sharp, vicious jabs.

“The computer was off,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as lost as I felt.

Jan looked up, and actually grinned. At least one of us was enjoying this. “That might matter if we were, y’know, in the mortal world. But getting electricity in the Summerlands is hard enough that it never works quite right, so we have to deal with kludges. Generators instead of ground power, lights on timers . . . computers that don’t realize they’re supposed to forbid network access when they’re turned off.” The laptop made a sharp pinging sound. “We’re in.”

“In what?”

“Barbara’s computer. I have full access.”

Now we were getting somewhere. “Can you do some sort of search for things that might have to do with Dreamer’s Glass?”

She looked at me, amused. “I can make this computer dance the polka if I want it to.” Her typing picked up speed, only to stop when the laptop pinged again. “And . . . whoa.”

“Whoa? What whoa?” I craned my neck to see the screen. “What did you find?”

“Only everything,” she said, mouth compressing into a thin, hard line. She tilted the laptop so that I could see the screen; it was covered by a list of file names so long that it scrolled off the bottom. “This is what I get when I search for files with the words ‘Dreamer’s Glass,’ ‘report’ and ‘confidential.’ ” She tapped the screen with the tip of one finger, and the first title lit up for a moment before a word processing program took over the screen, opening the file. “She was a busy little girl.”

“Yes,” I said. “It looks like she was.”

The file Jan had opened was a financial overview of the company, the County, and their performance over the last few years. It was annotated, showing where Barbara had interfered with the County to the advantage of Dreamer’s Glass. I glanced to Jan.

“We couldn’t figure out where the money was going,” she said. “Another two years and she’d have closed us down.”

“Would someone have killed her over this?”

“Possibly,” she admitted. “I might have strangled her myself. But . . .”

“But you wouldn’t have killed the others. Can you print Barbara’s records for me?”

“Of course.” She shook her head, frowning. “This is so . . . wow. Babs was our friend.”

“She was a cat. The Cait Sidhe have never followed the rules.” I shoved my hair back again. “Would Dreamer’s Glass have anything to gain by killing you all?”

“Just the land.”

“There’s nothing special about the knowe?”

“Not a thing. We dug the Shallowing ourselves.”

“Great.” Another dead end. “Make those printouts, and we’ll keep working. Just be careful. Getting yourself killed won’t bring anyone back.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t storm over to Dreamer’s Glass and confront the Duchess.” Her smile was mirthless. “Although when this is over, I’m kicking her ass.”

“Totally fair.” I paused. “Is there any chance Gordan was working with Barbara?”

“No, not really,” Jan said. “She got Barbara hired on, and she was always worried about her doing something stupid. They were working on a project together, and they’d been fighting for months.”

“What about?”