- Chapter 20

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# CHAPTER SEVEN

Andrew Kendrick heard the first sounds from the barn just as he was locking up the house for the night. He ran to the window and stared out at the hellish red glow in the dark that held the stable area. It was clearly coming from the pony barn. At first his mind couldn't recognize the disaster for what it was—but then he shook himself out of his paralysis and reacted.

"Fire!" he shouted to Merryl. "There's a fire down in the pony barn! Call the fire department, now!"

He pulled on boots and sprinted out the back door. If anything, it looked and sounded worse now that he was outside. He could barely hear the terrified whinnies of the pony above the roar that came from within the shed.

He goaded himself into a run, heading down to the barn, wondering if he would be able to get into the secret storeroom and thinking of the money that was going up in smoke in there. Thinking of all the—special things—that were going to be destroyed, and that were going to be even more difficult to procure the second time than they had been when he'd first obtained them.

Merryl passed him on the path, flew to the right and to her own barn, full of pedigreed mares and foals, her prize stud, her champion filly—the objects of her real passion and her love. Andrew heard her throwing open her barn doors, chasing the horses out into the pasture and away from the impending disaster. He clenched his fingers into tight fists, outraged at her care for the animals and her indifference toward him.

He watched her working frantically, momentarily distracted from his goal. She has a lot of nerve, ignoring me. Amanda's mother learned what happens to people who ignore me. I've been too easy on Merryl. He fumed with smoldering rage as he raced towards the pony barn, wondering if he could save anything without Merryl seeing it. He wasn't really thinking about the barn, nor about the fire—not, at least, until was he nearly at the structure.

Realization that there was something very strange going on stopped him like a stone wall. I don't smell any smoke, he thought. It sounded like there was a war going on down there, and it certainly looked as if the place was being overrun by the fires of hell—wind that screamed like a damned and tortured thing, the crash and thud of heavy objects hitting against the walls, the screech of nails ripping loose from beams—and the terrible red light still gleamed through cracks, but there were no tongues of flame visible and no smoke to smell.

What the hell—? he wondered.

A piece of board blew past him, and some unidentifiable bit of shrapnel grazed his cheek—and Andrew watched dumbfounded as gaps appeared, as if something or someone from inside battered away at the barn. The night air was thick with a sense of rage, of hatred so dense and palpable he could feel it brushing against his chilled skin like damp, drowned hands. His heart pounded with fear that was not even his own, and his mouth went dry and his breath came fast in spite of his struggles to control his emotions. He found himself backing away from the barn, and found that he could not stop himself, could not make himself walk back toward it.

From behind him, he heard the wail of sirens and the squeal of tires turning into the lane. The fire engines' flashing red lights joined the peculiar illumination that came from the barn—the night pulsed red. Blood, he thought, clutching his arms around himself. The world is bleeding.

The firemen were unrolling their hoses, shouting to each other, pointing out their target. Merryl was still loosing horses out into the field.

Andrew saw none of it; instead, he had been inadvertently thrown back to his own childhood.

He saw the little beagle puppy he'd "bought" when he was eleven from the kid down the road—bought with marbles and a brand-new baseball glove and a brand-new football. The puppy he'd smuggled home and made a wonderful soft bed for and hidden under the house because his father had said, "No dogs," but he'd wanted it so bad—

His puppy, laid out on a board, belly up; its little muzzle wired shut, its eyes wide and staring, its paws nailed into place. And his dad, furious, shouting at him, "Now you'll know to listen to me, won't you, you little bastard! Next time you disobey me, this will be you!" And the knife, in his father's hand, slitting the little beagle's white belly open, and the pup's eyes rolling in terror and pain—

And the blood pulsing red and redder around his father's fine doctor hands, pulsing like the lights from the fire engines—and again he tasted the anguish and the fear—

And the red glow in the barn just—went away.

Thick, suffocating silence crowded in to fill the void and darkness. The firemen paused, and stared. The horrible noises that had been coming from inside had stopped, abruptly, almost as if a switch had been flipped. The terrible feeling of rage and fear made the same abrupt departure.

Then sounds rushed back and revived the night: the chirping of crickets and the whinnies and stompings of the horses out in pasture, the stamp and crunch of one fireman's boots as he walked, flashlight in hand, down to the barn, and pulled the battered and sagging door open.

And his voice, awestruck as he aimed his flashlight into the dark recesses of the structure—"Je-e-e-e-ZUS, Johnnie, get a load of this!"

* * *

The rippling motion of the border had lulled her into a near-trance. Felouen sat, her back pressed against the smooth rock base of the Oracular Pool, staring into the nothingness, and she worried. Maclyn might come around. He might help against whatever was coming. Then again, enchanted by his other interests, he might leave her to fight and die alone.

There had been more to the visions of the Oracular Pool than the one brief glimpse it had shown Maclyn. War was coming—a long and savage battle with the outnumbered elvish forces lined up against hordes of Unseleighe unlike anything the Kin had ever seen before. Her friends would fall, and she would fight on, uselessly, would herself be gravely wounded, would flee and be captured, would suffer at the hands of the unstoppable things from the Unformed. And only then would she die. She had seen her own death. It was not a good one.

She had seen another vision as well, an alternate future in the inscrutable reflections in the Pool. Maclyn would stand at her side, with the battle raging as before—but the enemy would be fewer and weaker, the tide of battle would turn in the Kin's favor, and she would live. So she sat and pondered, staring out into the non-place on the other side of the border with loathing.

Felouen sensed the change before she saw it.

A presence born of fear and rage and hatred swirled into being in the Void, reached out and clawed at her from that nothing-world. It sent her to her feet, recoiling from the tentacles that reached with sudden intent directly for her.

From the Nothing, flickers of blood-red light began to glow.

* * *

". . . so you see, she was human, and I loved her, and when she died, I thought that everything about me that had mattered had died, too," Mac said. He sat on one side of Lianne's couch, again wearing his human seeming. "Everything about her was so brief and so painfully fleeting, and the harder I tried to stop time, to hold her life in my hands and keep her with me, the faster I saw the years tear her into shreds. She died nearly two hundred years ago, but there are still times when the thought crosses my mind that if I went back to Tellekirk, I'd find her there."

He locked his hands together, and he stared at his shoes. "In you, I see that same frightening beauty, that same—life—that burns so hot and so fast. I cannot stay away from you. And I find myself longing for your brief, blazing beauty, and wondering how you can burn your life so fast."

Lianne pursed her lips and blew a soft sigh through them. She got up and walked over to one of the bookcases that lined the walls of her bedroom, and perused the shelves. Finally, with a nod, she pulled down a deep green leather volume and flipped through the pages.

"We've done some thinking about that ourselves," she said, and looked down at the page she'd chosen. "Here—" she pointed, and read aloud.

"For a man cannot lose either the past or the future: for what a man has not, how can anyone take from him? These two things then thou must bear in mind: the one, that all things from eternity are of like forms and come round in a circle, and that it makes no difference whether a man shall see the same things during a hundred years or two hundred, or an infinite time; and the second, that the longest liver and he who die soonest lose just the same."

She paused to let the quote sink it. "Marcus Aurelius—a Roman philosopher and leader from way before your time—said that, and I suspect he's right. Even though I'll live—at most—a hundred years, and you'll live God-only-knows how long, we were both born, we will both live the span of our days, and we will both die. I mean, you will die eventually, won't you?"

"It's been rumored," Mac said, a faint hint of the beginning of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

She gave him a real smile. "Don't pity us humans, then. Time runs at a different pace for you and me, but my life will be as full as yours. It will just happen faster. It won't seem to me that I got cheated—I'm doing things with my life that matter to me and to other people. I'm teaching children, and to me, that is an important and meaningful job. I have friends who care about me, and a family that loves me, and I'm doing what I can to make the world a better place. And as for your long-gone love, I guarantee you that if she lived her life, and could see where her presence made a difference, she didn't feel cheated either."

Lianne sat back on the bed, put the book down beside her, and pulled her knees up to her chest so she could wrap her arms around them. Now was the time for a little noble self-sacrifice, and it made the smile she had given him fade away entirely. "I think you're doing yourself an injustice hanging around humans, though, Maclyn." She did her best to hide the tears that brimmed in her eyes; she didn't want to give him up. She really didn't. But it was for his own good. "Look for someone who exists in your own timeframe—who won't get old and die between two blinks of those gorgeous eyes of yours."

She did her best to look brave and happy—but all she could manage was a smile as transparent and empty as a soap bubble on the wind.

* * *

Maclyn listened to her words and tried to find some hope or comfort in them. She looked so beautiful. Mac's gaze roamed from the curve of her ankle to the full swell of her breast, to the plainly-written pain in her eyes, and words surged from his lips before he could stop them. "You don't have to get old so fast. I could take you into Elfhame Outremer, Lianne. There, you would live at the pace of my years." He faltered, and further brilliant suggestions died in his throat.

What in all the hells of the Unformed Planes had he said that for? Did he love her? Really, truly love her—as an equal and a companion with whom he could sustain interest for some significant span of his own long life? Was he infatuated with her humanness? Or was he—even less noble—burning with desire to fix the long-dead past?

An unbidden memory of Allison—fair, dainty, dark-eyed Allison, two hundred years dust—choked his throat and stopped his tongue. To Allison he had said those same words, had begged her to let him stop time for her. Allison had refused him, had told him about her God and her Church and her Bible, about God's demand that only he had the right to count the measure of a man's life. At first he had argued with her—fruitlessly, and then he had stayed at her side, using what time she let him have, while she grew old quickly. Allison had not lived her life fully. She had spent her days railing at an unjust Deity who gave life unequally. He had watched her turn bitter, as she wrinkled and fattened and her tongue went acid. Suffered, as she studied him secretly from beneath her lashes, hoping some sign of age would scar him. Mourned, as eventually she hated him because it never did. Yet, often enough, even in the old woman, the young girl who loved an elven prince could be found. And in those moments, Maclyn had felt his heart ripped to tatters.

He remembered Allison while he stared at Lianne, wondering at his motives, trying to guess what she hid inside her shielded thoughts.

"That's a hell of an offer," the young teacher finally breathed. "What's the catch?"

He shook his head. "I'm not certain. For Allison, it was her religion. She didn't think God would forgive her for thwarting death."

Lianne grinned, a devilish, teeth-bared grimace that was half humor and half wry self-deprecation. "Not my problem." The strange smile vanished, and the woman rested both hands on his thigh and stared into his eyes. "Let me think about ramifications—especially what this would mean to the two of us. And give me a while, okay? I've got a kid in school who's in trouble, and that's left me with a lot on my mind."

Mac heard only the first part of what she said and nodded. Then her last statement she'd made caught his attention. "What do you mean, `a kid in trouble'? You haven't said anything about it to me before, have you?"

She frowned a moment. "Sort of. Do you remember Amanda—the little girl from the racetrack who wouldn't get out of the way of the explosion?" She looked at him, her eyes uncertain.

Only too well. "I remember her."

She grimaced. "Yeah. Probably you do. That was pretty bad. Well, I went to talk to her parents today. Something is very wrong there—I suspect abuse. I called Social Services and reported it, but the guy I talked to said that, since I don't have any hard evidence, he can't go out there to check on her."

Chills ran along Maclyn's spine. "Abuse?" he asked in a voice gone ominously flat.

Lianne must have heard the change in his tone and laughed without any humor. "That's how I feel, too. Every time I see something like this, I want to kill the people responsible. God, I wish I could prove she was being abused, to get that guy out there—but I'm on such thin ice. I've never seen any bruises, she's never said anything to me about it—although that's normal for abuse cases, actually—she doesn't miss a lot of school. It's just, her personality isn't right. Not right at all."

What would happen, Mac wondered, if he told Lianne everything he knew about Amanda? Would she be able to believe in Amanda's magic?

Why the hell not? he decided. She believed I was an elf easily enough.

"I'm willing to bet Amanda is the reason everything in your classroom came to life on you the other day," he told her. "I know for a fact she is the reason nobody got seriously hurt at the racetrack."

Lianne gave him a long, clinical look. "What—exactly—do you mean by that?"

He licked his lips. "She does magic—controls inanimate objects. Makes them move."

"Tele—um—telekinesis?" Lianne asked. "Moving things with her mind?"

He nodded. "I think that's the term."

Lianne's expression grew harried. "Aw, c'mon," she snarled. "I bought you as an elf. You don't want me to believe in that, too! Next you'll be insisting on the validity of Bigfoot, flying saucers, and the effectiveness of the two-party political system."

Mac snorted. "No, I won't. I'll just want you to believe in your student. She's special—but she is hiding something. She wouldn't admit she could do magic."

"Mac," Lianne replied as if she were talking to one of her students, ". . . maybe that's because she can't."

"Sensible, logical theory—except that I saw her," he persisted stubbornly. "I watched—and sensed—her work her magic."

"Ergo sum ergo," Lianne muttered. "It is, therefore it is."

"Don't get grouchy. While she was looking at Keith's car, she kept it from exploding. As soon as you pulled her out of the way, it blew—but she was able to see it again at that point, and she controlled almost all of the shrapnel. I saw her. More than that, I sensed the flow of power."

Lianne still looked skeptical, but Mac sensed she was weakening. "So what you're saying is that if I had left her alone, the car wouldn't have blown up at all?"

Mac shrugged. "Who knows? I am saying that the SERRA drivers were lucky she was watching the race that day. Keith owes his life to her."

"Great. Fine. She's a helpful little brownie. So why did she send everything in my classroom flying?" Lianne set her jaw stubbornly.

Mac sighed. "I don't know. There are a lot of things about her that I don't know. But I think we can find some answers. Tomorrow—well, I'm racing tomorrow—why don't you come out and watch me? You can keep my mom company in the pits—"

Lianne forgot about the child entirely. "Your mom?" she said, her jaw dropping.

"Oh . . ." He smiled weakly. "I forgot to mention that, didn't I? Uh—D.D.'s my mother."

Silence for a moment, while Lianne absorbed the information. Then—"She looks five years younger than me," Lianne wailed.

Mac deemed it time to get the discussion back to more serious subjects—or, at least, subjects he could do something about. Getting D.D. to change her apparent age was not one of them. "Don't let it bother you. She looks at least that much younger than me. Anyway, after the race, we can all three go out to Amanda's house and poke around a little. We'll see if we can find out anything. D.D.'s been concerned, too, ever since the day of the accident."

Lianne flung herself backward and down onto the bed and slapped herself dramatically on the forehead. "Gosh, what a brilliant idea! It becomes obvious why elves rule the world. Why didn't I think of that? I mean, why would Andrew or Merryl Kendrick ever notice two racecar-driving elves and their daughter's schoolteacher tromping around on their posted, private property, looking for magical mystery clues like something out of Scooby Doo—on a Saturday, no less, when they're probably home all day?" She scrunched her eyes closed in mock-agony.

Mac formed his will into a familiar shape and draped that shape around himself. "I don't see the problem," he said.

"You're kidding." Lianne opened her eyes to stare at him, then looked all around the room. She sat up, and her expression became more and more puzzled. "Mac?"

"I'm right here," he said from the spot he'd occupied since the moment they both sat down.

"I don't see you."

He took the little "I'm not here" spell—pirated from a human mage named Tannim—off of himself, and smiled at her as her eyes went round. "And I don't see the problem."

She sighed and flopped back again. "Maybe there isn't one."

* * *

Mel Tanbridge waited three hours beyond his absolute cut-off time, and still neither of the two calls he was expecting came. With growing disbelief, he acknowledged that they might never come.

He was more than willing to accept the fact that either Stevens or Peterkin could be bought off, if enough sweeteners were added. He was not willing to admit that Belinda could buy them both off—not on the money he was paying her, and certainly not at the same time. He knew they weren't the brightest guys in the world, but he couldn't imagine them making the sort of world-class bumble that would alert her that they were both reporting to him on her activities, even if she realized that one of them was.

And they didn't realize that he was paying each of them the same bonus to report on the other.

So why hadn't at least one of them called in?

The answer was fairly obvious.

The three of them had captured Belinda's race-driver TK, and he was even better than anyone had hoped for. Belinda had seen dollar signs and had convinced Stevens and Peterkin that they could make a lot more money if they joined forces with her and kept their catch to sell to the highest bidder, instead of handing him over to the man who rightfully owned him.

Mel considered that scenario from all angles. It was the only one that made sense. Considering the healthy mix of bribes, threats and terrorism he'd used on Belinda's two assistants, they should have stayed loyal under almost any circumstances. Therefore, Belinda must have convinced them she was coming into an unbelievable fortune to get them to double-cross him. For that matter, knowing what he had on her, she had to have convinced herself of the same thing, in order to forget how important it was for her to remain loyal.

None of them had stayed loyal. Therefore, Mac Lynn was the biggest telekinetic find ever—and Mel was more determined than ever to own him.

Belinda had only had two days to hide her trail and her booty. However, with both Peterkin and Stevens in her camp, all three of them knew how many bases he'd had covered, and how little he'd trusted any of them. They would be more than careful, they'd be paranoid.

He glared out his smoked glass window at the night and watched the ghost breakers run up the beach, the white of sea-foam all that was visible in the clouded dark. He planned for ten minutes, and when he was satisfied, he dialed a number from memory. Moments later came a drowsy hello.

"This is Tanbridge. Set things up to fly to North Carolina tonight. I'm going to Fayetteville. I'll meet you on the strip in two hours."

He hung up, then glanced around the office. Not much lying around that he'd need to take with him. As a matter of fact, there were only two things in the office that he was going to need. The TK meter.

And the gun.

* * *

Andrew forced himself to walk to the barn. He stood next to the fireman with the flashlight and stared in at the devastation. It was all-encompassing and complete—but his first feeling, on looking in at the destruction, was one of relief. Nothing inside of the barn was recognizable anymore—including his large collection of special items. The pony's stall was ripped to shreds, and the pony had evidently kicked through the back doors to escape; he was out at the far side of the pasture cropping grass. Lucky for him, Andrew reflected. He wouldn't have survived whatever did that.

Whatever it was, it hadn't been a fire. Vandals? Only if they had come equipped with a log chipper and managed to run every item in the barn, including tack, feed barrels and hardware, through it in a matter of minutes.

The presence of other people around him, talking to him, gradually seeped into his awareness. He turned and found that while he'd been lost in his shocked reverie, two sheriff's deputies and the sheriff himself had arrived.

"Can you think of anyone who would want to do this to you, Mr. Kendrick?" the sheriff asked.

Andrew thought for a moment. "Dozens of them," he said. "Merryl won't sell her horses to just anyone—maybe someone who didn't measure up to her standards wanted to see if he could force her to lower them. For that matter, I've helped my clients acquire a number of profitable enterprises through hostile takeovers in past years. I've made enemies on the way. However, I can't think of any of them who would be able to do . . . that." He nodded back toward the barn.

One of the deputies said, "We've seen it, sir. It's pretty unbelievable. I don't know how they could have been so destructive."

The other deputy said, "The firemen said they saw red light coming from inside the building, but that it went out suddenly."

Merryl spoke up. "We all saw it. Apparently, whoever did this wanted us to think it was a fire. It looked like one."

Andrew agreed. "It was a very convincing special effect. The whole setup was very realistic, and very frightening—I'm not ashamed to admit I was terrified. However," he yawned "it's over now, and it's late, and we all will have plenty of time in the morning to hash over the details of this. I don't think there is anything more we can do tonight. So if you don't mind, I'd rather deal with it tomorrow."

"That's reasonable, sir," the sheriff said, "It's a clear night. Any tire tracks or other evidence will still be available in the morning. We'll be out first thing. Until then, I'll be glad to leave someone here overnight to keep an eye on things."

"Not necessary," Andrew said dryly. "There's an old line about horses and unlocked barn doors that seems appropriate right now—"

The sheriff shrugged. "That's up to you. If you see or hear anything out of place, though, let us know right away."

Andrew nodded shortly. "I'll do that."

Watching them leave, Merryl said, "I think you should have let them post a guard."

He sneered. "Do me a favor and don't waste your time on thinking. It isn't what you're best at. I had reasons for not wanting them here."

The knowing look she turned on him made him suddenly uneasy. "I'll bet. What were you hiding in there?"

He reacted to his unease by issuing threats. "Don't push your luck, Merryl. Don't ever forget, you can be replaced."

* * *

From her bedroom window, Amanda-Anne watched the police cars leave, and watched the Father and the Step-Mother trudge slowly toward the house. She smiled. The Father's secret place was gone. Now he couldn't hurt her anymore. He would never hurt her again.

She felt the power of her own dark magic coursing through her and savored the sweet taste of revenge. No one, no one, would ever hurt her again.

* * *

Under the covers, Lianne tossed and turned. Mac's warmth next to her was, at the moment, more disturbing than comforting. She almost wished that he hadn't spent the night. She would have liked to sit up, to drink hot tea and stare off into space knowing that she wouldn't have to try to explain to him why she wanted to. She would have liked to pace—but stalking around the apartment would wake him up. She listened to him breathe, slow and steady, deep in sleep, and tried not to resent his presence.

He's not human, she thought. He's very wonderful, but he's not human. No matter how well we get along, there are things we can never see in the same way. His mother is hundreds of years old, he says. She's still young—he says she'll live until she gets tired of it. My mom and dad are nearing sixty, and might have another twenty.

What about children? Could we have them? What would they be? She winced, rolled over and buried her head under her pillow. That's unpleasant, thinking of your own possible children as "what," not "who." More than likely, from my understanding of genetics, there could be no children.

He loved children—he said the elvenkind intervened in the lives of battered and abused human children because they rarely had children of their own, and they valued them so. He would want to have them someday, wouldn't he?

He said that time in Underhill was changeable, that a day there could be a minute here, or a day, or a year, or a hundred years. Lianne tried to imagine dropping into Elfhame Outremer for a quick visit with the in-laws, and returning to find everyone she'd ever known dead a hundred years ago. Like the old fairy tales. She shuddered and tried to think of something else.

When I divorced Jim, I thought I could save myself from stupid mistakes. I promised myself, "I'll never fall for someone who's wrong for me again—I'll never let myself get hurt like this again." I was so goddamned sure that I knew something finally, dammit! I thought I'd learned my lesson, that I was only going to go out with men who wouldn't lie to me, who could be trusted. Now look at me. I'm in love with the wrong person again.

That was the worst of it—never mind that he wasn't human, never mind that he would live damn near forever and she would be gone in no time, never mind all her doubts and her confusion. The cold, bare fact that scared her the most was that one: she really did love him.

She burrowed deeper into the covers and pressed her back against his. It was going to be a very long night.

* * *

Mel Tanbridge surveyed his hotel room with distaste. At four-thirty a.m., anything should have looked good, but the fact was, he expected quality. No, dammit, he expected the best. The best he could do on no notice wasn't good enough—he hadn't been able to get the penthouse in Fayetteville's Prince Charles hotel, just a suite—and while it was a nice old hotel, it wasn't a nice old five-star hotel. He hadn't stooped to anything below five-star accommodations in years. The service was good and the suite was clean and spacious, with furniture of excellent taste, but the room didn't have a private jacuzzi—and there wasn't a sauna in the entire hotel. He hadn't had time to check out the amenities in the gym—or even if there was a gym—but he doubted that they would be of the technical level or variety he was used to. After all, this was a military town. He doubted that a military town would have accommodations anywhere that he would find acceptable. That was just the way they were.

There would be a gym somewhere, he decided. And he would find it in the next day or two. After all, he needed to stay in shape. A healthy body equaled a healthy mind—and he had the healthiest. It was his competitive edge.

That edge was important, especially in light of his subordinates' betrayal. Their trail was probably a full two days cold. All the more reason, he decided, not to start down it without sufficient sleep. A healthy body, and all that. . . . He left a wake-up call at the front desk for noon, climbed into bed, and was instantly asleep.

* * *

Belinda checked herself out of the Cape Fear Emergency Department and slipped into the waiting cab. She gave the driver the address to the school teacher's apartment complex, then sank into the back seat, thinking ugly thoughts. The stitches in her scalp throbbed, and knowledge of what the wound looked like hurt her just as much. She'd borrowed a mirror from one of the nurses to check out the damage to her hair, and had been appalled. A patch the size of a monk's tonsure had been shaved around the slash that guy in the miniskirt and fishnet hose had made when he brained her with a handy beer bottle. She wore a huge bandage of white gauze and bulky pads that covered the shaved spot for the time being, but when it came off, she was going to be left with an awful mess. She'd been eight the last time she'd had short hair.

Mac Lynn and Mac Lynn's girlfriend, and Mac Lynn's car crew, and anyone else Belinda could think of were going to pay for her hair.

Soon.

However, the anesthetic was wearing off, and she felt dizzy and sick and tense. She needed to find a drugstore to get her pain medicine and her antibiotic prescriptions filled, and then, she had to admit, it would be really nice to take a day off. Maybe even two. The idea of lying in a soft bed taking drugs and not getting kidnapped by horse-cars, beaned by drag-queens, or scalped by bored young doctors was an idea she found appealing right now.

Maybe she could consider her time off the clock as workman's comp. Mel could basically go screw himself if he didn't agree. After all, he was taking it easy out in his beach complex in California. What was he going to do about it?

Her immediate future more or less settled, she closed her eyes and tried her best to ignore the breaking day. The motel and bed, she thought. And no more stinking adventures, not for a while.

A few drops of rain spattered on the cab's windshield, mixing the fine coating of dust into thoroughly opaque mud. Belinda looked at the sky, startled. It had been clear the last time she'd seen the sky. The clouds must have moved in really fast.

She smiled. Rain was a good omen for her. People didn't look around when it rained. They ran to their cars and got straight in. They didn't sightsee. She considered revising her morning plans. She'd take a free ally any day.

Mac's car was parked where she remembered it. The cabbie pulled up where she directed him, but suddenly Belinda found that she didn't want to get out of the cab. I'm almost convinced that damned Chevy is watching for me. Which is ridiculous, except that I don't have any other way to explain what happened last night.

I have to pick up my car, though. I need it.

The cabbie gave her an impatient look. "You're on the clock, ya' know," he drawled. "No big deal for me—but you're gonna find it right expensive. I ain't gonna sit here all mornin' for free."

"Yeah, right," she answered. The rain was no longer just a few splashes on the windshield. Now it slashed down in sheets, whipped across the front of the car by gusts of wind. "Drive closer to that brown Thunderbird." She prayed that nothing had happened to the latest of her rental cars. She couldn't afford to experience too much more of Mac Lynn's version of fun and excitement.

The cabbie rolled his eyes, but moved his vehicle so that it formed a screen in front of the T-Bird's driver-side door.

Belinda paid him off, then jumped out of the cab. Once in the T-Bird, she locked the doors. She ignored the cabbie's raised eyebrow. He hadn't had her night. He wouldn't understand.

Belinda sat in the dark safety of her car, watched the raindrops sheeting down her windshield, and listened to their soothing thrumming on the roof. Outside, the world lightened in tiny increments, gray on gray on black, revealing shrubs heavy with water and pines swaying in the driving rain.

The monotonous brick-box apartments were laid out in a grid, with parking lots with separate entries at each square. She moved to the last parking slot three rows away from the teacher's place, cut off the motor, and watched. She was comfortably hidden behind cars parked in the lines ahead of her, and scattered tall Carolina pines—trees that reminded her of the California palms with their trunks that soared thirty feet before the first limb sprouted. Her position gave her a clear view of anyone leaving the apartment.

It couldn't have been more than fifteen or twenty minutes before Mac and his little teacher came flying out of the apartment and dove into the Chevy.

A good, hard rain will never fail you. I knew it. Belinda smiled and, when they pulled out, followed them at a discreet distance.

* * *

At the Fayetteville International Speedway, the first fat drops of rain hissed onto the tarmac. More followed, faster and faster, and the patterns made by the first drops were obliterated by water that fell in steady streams, and then sheets, and then in waterfalls that whipped sideways in the steadily increasing wind.

Dierdre, already at the track and doing final pre-race work on the Victor, sighed with resignation at the roaring deluge outside of the garage. The weather station had hinted at this—but torrential rains weren't supposed to be part of the picture until Sunday. She closed her eyes and concentrated on feeling the shifts of air currents and pressure cells. After an extended time, she opened her eyes again, and surveyed the rich red Victor with dismay. Surprise, she thought. We're going to have a whole weekend off, whilst the be-damned weather craps on our heads. Oh, joy. 'Tis not a natural rain, either. This has been pulled in by heavy magic somewhere nearby.

Time to call her son, the slug, and tell him he wasn't going to have to get out of bed.

She headed to the phone, then stopped. She could have sworn that she'd just heard Rhellen's familiar rumble from the parking lot—even over the rain. She queried her own elvensteed, who was leaning against the back wall keeping dry.

Afallonn rumbled her surprised affirmation.

D.D. looked up at the wall clock, just to make sure time hadn't slipped past without her noticing. It was six-oh-four in the morning, a good three hours before Mac's earliest voluntary wake-up hour. Will miracles never cease? she wondered.

Maclyn swung into the garage, a sheepish grin on his face. Behind him was his schoolteacher girlfriend, and the expression on her face was patently unreadable.

"Well, Mac, shouldn't surprise me that the first day you show up early for a race is the day they're sure to cancel the whole show."

"Hi, Mom," he said.

:Mom?: D.D. was sure her jaw had hit the floor. :What the bloody hell—?: she asked for his ears only.

He sighed. "Rule number one, Mom—never date a pragmatist. Slips of logic and technique convince them that the impossible isn't, whereas girls who operate on blind faith never will believe you're anything but what you appear to be. She figured the whole thing out."

Well. The cat was out of the bag—for now. It wouldn't take but a wee spell to put it back in, but she doubted Maclyn had told his girlfriend that. No harm in waiting to see if she might be a useful addition to the SERRA folk. "In other words, you dated somebody smarter than you for a change." D.D. snorted. "I keep telling you you've not the brains to keep company with any but the dim girls—but you won't listen to me, will you?" She grinned at Lianne. "Sons know everything, whether they're elven or human, I imagine."

"My mom made a few similar remarks concerning my brother," she said.

"All this came as a shock to you, no doubt," D.D. added.

"Oh," Lianne agreed. "Rest assured."

D.D. gave Lianne a wary look and braced herself for what she felt sure was the impending "big news." "Well, if you're here with my brilliant son, and you know our wee bit of a secret, I expect there's something the two of you will be wanting to tell me."

Surprise flashed in Lianne's eyes. "Uh—not really—ah, D.D. Nothing like that, in any case. Actually, Mac mentioned that you were interested in a student of mine. Amanda Kendrick. He said you wanted to find her because she was, um, telekinetic."

Dierdre tried not to make her relief too obvious. "Quite," she said. I sense the need for a spell of forgetfulness, once we have the wee bairn.

But Lianne's next words drove all that out of her head. "I have reason to believe her father is abusing her. Mac is going out with me today to her house. He thought you might like to come along."

D.D.'s face had flushed at the mention of abuse. She swore softly in Gaelic, then said slowly, "That explains a great deal, my dear. This—wouldna be the first time I've seen something like this. It breaks my heart, lass, that humans who do not appreciate children have them and hurt them because they don't want them, while we, who would give anything to be able to have more, cannot. Aye, I'll go with you. Do you plan to take the child, Maclyn?"

Maclyn frowned. :Not now, Mother. She doesn't know about the changelings yet.: "No. Lianne has the Social Service people taking care of that. She simply wants to get information that will hurry them out to Amanda's house faster. I showed her Tannim's spell-gift, so we can stay unseen."

:Well, we'll see,: Dierdre told him. :If the situation's bad enough, we'll take the child and befuddle your light-of-love.:

He winced.

"This rain won't stop today, nor tomorrow either, most likely," D.D. said. "There won't be a race. So we might as well leave."

* * *

Belinda pressed the button on her little black box as Mac hurried by, and the needle waggled to around nine-point-five and stopped. That was only what she expected. She couldn't get excited about Mac anymore. He was too-fucking-much trouble. She pressed it again at the teacher, and nothing happened. No surprises there, either. But when she tried a third time on Mac's little blond mechanic, the needle danced like a fish on a line and dove across to ten.

"I'll be damned," she muttered. It couldn't be any harder to get hold of the mechanic than it had been to abduct that son-of-a-bitch Lynn. Granted, she hadn't seen the mechanic do anything—but after the demonstrations she'd gotten from the driver, she was willing to trust the meter, skip the dog-and-pony show, and just collect the warm body and go home.

She waited as the three pulled out of the speedway's parking lot, then followed them again.

Visions of herself as Marlin Perkins on safari danced in her imagination, and she wondered momentarily if it would be possible to get Mel to send her one of those hypodermic dart guns and a big supply of knock-out dope. Probably not. Mel was starting to get cranky about finances the last time I talked to him.

She wasn't worried about that, either, though. The FedEx people would be trotting in with her next cash payment, as well as Stevens' and Peterkin's money, on Monday. Since she didn't have to pay either Stevens or Peterkin this time—and since I haven't mentioned their unfortunate demise to Mel yet—she could just hang on to the whole thing. Their cash would make a nice addition to her finances.

That reminded her that she really needed to call Mel and assure him that things were progressing nicely. It would be a shame if she didn't keep this job long enough to collect her bonus—especially after all she'd suffered through to get it.

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Framed

Title: | The Otherworld
Author: | Mercedes Lackey, Larry Dixon, Mark Shepherd & Holly Lisle
ISBN: | 0-671-57852-9
Copyright: | © 1992 by Mercedes Lackey
Publisher: | Baen Books