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  “So, if we destroy that, it’s over, right? We win, they can’t go home and can’t use that power? Can we even destroy it?”

  Dylan shook his head. “It’s not quite that simple. Gateways like that aren’t easy to take down; you couldn’t just set it on fire, for instance. They’re warded with devastatingly powerful magics, and it’ll fight back if it comes under assault. Even if we can take it down—and that’s a huge if—that might not stop the Blackthornes from doing whatever they’re planning on doing to the town. Being cut off from Underhill will weaken them significantly, but”— He shook his head--“unless we can get rid of them permanently, or get them back on their own side and seal them off, well, I’m not sure what they can do. They still have Silence to feed off of. They might even be able to reopen the Gate.”

  “So—what do we do?” she asked. Because this sounded like a no-win situation…

  “We need to find out what their big plan is for Silence. You’ve done great so far. If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t know that they were ramping up for something really nasty. Once we figure out what they’re planning, we can stop it by destroying the gateway. Any of them that we don’t lock behind it…” He paused. “I’ll think of something. But I won’t leave them here, to start all over again.”

  She nodded. What else could she do? It was like they said, once you know something you can’t un-know it. And now that she knew, she had to keep right on helping him. Partly, it was self-defense, because there was nowhere else for her to go. But right now, mostly it was because of Dylan. He’d convinced her this was the right thing to do.

  And maybe she had some skin in the game too—if she was partly of elven blood, well, she needed to figure out how to make this all stop.

  “Before I send you back into that viper’s nest again, we need to make sure that you’re prepared. When Sean,” he said, spitting the name out, “was trying to bespell you, it’s only luck that you were able to break free. I’m going to teach you how to do spellbreaking on your own; how to recognize casting, and what to do to stop it or negate the effects. That, and some more defensive magic; you’ve been progressing way faster than I had expected, so you’re definitely ready for this.”

  He wasn’t kidding either, as she found out for the rest of that afternoon. He worked her harder than she had ever worked before in her life. This wasn’t just learning a couple of tricks; this was learning how magic worked, and why, and how to find the weak point in something that was being done and shove a stick in there and let the thing break up under its own momentum. Because, as he kept telling her, over and over again, “A spell is a process, and not a thing.” And a process was something that kept going until it ran out of steam, or was stopped.

  He was just showing her how to make it stop.

  He also showed her how to make it stop in two ways—by just letting it break up, or by stopping it violently. Because when you did the latter, all the energy it was using snapped back in the caster’s face, like a bungee cord stretched out as far as it could be and then breaking. And at that point, spellbreaking actually became a weapon.

  He showed her several kinds of “shields” to make, like the one he used; little ones you could hide behind, like the shields that riot cops used. Big ones, like hiding behind a wall. And dome-shaped shields that you could duck under and just let things rain down on you while you were protected.

  She felt as if she was burning off energy, like running a marathon, and she actually must have been, because right after she’d gotten the hang of the little shields, her stomach growled. He looked at her as if she had suddenly turned into a Red Cap, then laughed.

  “Yeah, I guess I forgot to warn you, spellcasting burns a lot of energy.” He strolled over to his bike and came back with a plastic grocery bag. “I know this little gal, earth-mage, drinks so many Meals-In-A-Can she has to buy them by the pallet-load. Here. It’s what I’ve got.”

  The bag turned out to be full of energy bars, and she tore into them as if she hadn’t eaten in a week. So did he, actually; within fifteen minutes, there was nothing in the bag but empty wrappers. She finally looked at a wrapper when she had eaten the last bite of the last one. Gammabars? That’s not a brand I ever heard of.

  “I’ll buy you a real meal later. Right now—back to work,” he said, and began teaching her how to see magic, so she’d know when someone was trying to do something to her. Really see it, this time, and not just the effects, like the shimmer in the air she got when she put up a shield. Hard to describe, it was…like unfocusing your eyes for those weird hidden 3-D pictures that had been all the rage when she was little. When you did that, you could see the process, like colored threads weaving together, in constant motion.

  By the time she got the hang of that, and everything else he’d been teaching her, it was after six. The energy bars had completely worn off. And she was not looking forward to biking all the way down the Hill and back to her house, only to have to clean up whatever mess her mother had left, and then cook.

  Dylan laughed when he saw the hungry look in her eyes as she glanced at the empty Gammabar wrappers. “Told you, magic takes energy. Mind taking me up on that offer for some real food?”

  “Oh God, yes,” she said fervently. “Are you going to magic it up or something?”

  “Magic takes energy, remember? I’d burn off more than I would get from the food I’d make. Actually, I figured we’d sample some local cuisine. The next town over has a roadside stand that serves some mean lobster rolls. And fries made from real cut-today potatoes.”

  “That sounds amazing.” She thought for a moment, then looked over her shoulder at her bicycle.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll leave it here. I can hide it so that no one will be able to find it, save for you. So, what do you say?” He grinned at her…and she realized that all this time, when he’d smiled and grinned at her before, it hadn’t had the sort of nuances she was seeing now. We’re in this together, and you’re special, and I am going to share things with you I wouldn’t share with anyone else.

  “I say, I’m starving!” she said with enthusiasm. He turned to look at her bike; squinting a little, she could see the filaments of magic covering her bike, until it faded into the background and became invisible. They walked over to Metalhead, who revved with what sounded like happy pleasure. And at Dylan’s gesture, she climbed aboard, putting on a helmet he took out of the bike’s storage compartment.

  “Ever been on a cycle before?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “You’ll like it.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “Just hang on and enjoy the ride.”

  * * *

  Staci had expected the ride to be fast…but not this fast. Despite the helmet that Dylan had given her, the roar of the wind still filled her ears, with only Metalhead’s…engine?…cutting through the noise. The trees and other vehicles were quickly passing blurs to either side, with the road as one long black river in front and behind. She held on as tightly as she could to Dylan, who seemed utterly unconcerned as he rode bent forward in the seat.

  There was something strangely sexy about all of this: the speed, the wind, the smell of leather, the feel of Dylan’s warm body under the arms she had wrapped around him. And yet…it was a sort of dispassionate sexiness, remote. He wasn’t talking to her, he wasn’t even facing her, he probably wasn’t even thinking about her. All his attention was on his driving, or his and Metalhead’s; she realized she had no idea of who was doing what. It was like watching an intensely romantic movie all alone. Lots of feeling, but no one to share it with.

  It didn’t take long for the pair—well, trio, actually—to arrive at the next town. Staci thought it was called Greenville something or other; the sign had been almost a complete blur as they sped past it.

  They ended up on the other side, at a little white-painted shack called “Ray’s Eats” with open shutters overhanging the service counter and a long line in front of it, and within shouting distance of some docks. But th
e weathered gray picnic tables over on the side were empty; it seemed as if everyone was grabbing their food and going straight to their cars. Dylan parked Metalhead by the tables and got in line, while she picked out a place on a picnic bench that wasn’t too splintered.

  The clouds that perpetually shaded Silence were nowhere to seen here. Or rather…you could see them, but they were lumped off in the distance to the north. It was sunny, hot; the boats at the dock rolled back and forth in gently moving, sparkling waves. Were they lobster boats? They certainly weren’t pleasure boats; these were stubby, working, fishing boats and little seagoing motorboats that looked like they had crews of two to eight on them.

  Well, it would make sense to put a lobster shack where the lobsters were coming in.

  The line was moving pretty briskly, and it wasn’t long before Dylan came back with two paper boats and two soda cups balanced in a carrier stuffed with napkins and a couple of plastic forks. He put the carrier down on the table between them and took a soda. The drinks were both clear, so they were probably ginger ale.

  Each of the paper boats held a generous portion of fresh-cut french fries with little bits of skin still on them, a tiny styrofoam cup of cole slaw with a pickle on top, and two hot dog buns loaded with warm chunks of lobster meat. In one of the buns, it looked like the meat had been mixed with mayo. In the other, it was glistening with melted butter that had soaked into the bun. Dylan sat down across from her. “Got one of each for each of us; I thought that you could try both, and I know you’ve already worked off all the calories. They’re both great.”

  She’d never had lobster rolls before Sean’s beach party; they were way too expensive in New York City. “I like both kinds,” she said, picking up the one with the mayo first and biting into it. The sandwich was perfectly sweet and juicy and there was the exact right amount of slightly spicy, homemade mayo, and she remembered exactly how hungry she was, eagerly taking another bite. The two of them sat there, eating quietly save for the occasional happy sigh from Staci around a mouthful of lobster or fries.

  When she got to the second roll, she was ready to slow down a little. This seemed a good time to start asking Dylan some questions. He wasn’t going to jump up in the middle of a meal and motor off, abandoning her here, after all.

  “So, for the last couple of weeks, you’ve been teaching me all of these spells. I get it, magic exists. But…how? Where does it come from?” She picked up a couple of fries, nibbling on them as she waited expectantly for his answer.

  “Everything that’s alive makes it,” he said. “The more intelligent something is, the more magic it makes. That’s why humans are a good source. Also, the more emotional someone is, the more magic they make. I guess”— he scratched his head —“it must be a kind of by-product of intelligence. I dunno, you’d have to ask someone who does all the theoretical side. But that’s why killing someone gets you magic; it releases it all at once. And why making people miserable gets you magic. Only, the magic you get is flavored by how you get it. If it’s gotten by death and misery, it’s…nasty. At least it is to my people, the Unseleighe love it.” He ate some fries, thoughtfully. “It’s easier to use magic Underhill, but there’s a lot more competition for it, too. That’s partly why elves come here in the first place.”

  She nodded, taking in the information while sipping on her soda. “Why did you come here, in the beginning? How’d you get to be…well, you know, doing what you’re doing now?”

  Dylan sat silently for a few moments, studying her before he finally spoke. “I told you that I was a kind of ‘roving troubleshooter,’ when we first really met…the night that the Red Cap attacked you. It wasn’t always like that for me.” He sighed heavily, shaking his head. “What I’m about to tell you is something that I’ve never really told any other mortal before. I wasn’t always hunting down Unseleighe enclaves. I used to be normal, by my people’s and clan’s standards. That changed in the late ’80s—1980s, that is.”

  “Late ’80s? You couldn’t have been more than a young kid back then.”

  “Not quite. We don’t age like humans, Staci. I’m actually almost three hundred and fifty-six years old; still pretty young for an elf, all told.”

  Staci felt her eyes bugging out of her skull at this revelation. He’s over three hundred years old? How is that even possible? Why doesn’t he sound like someone in a Shakespeare play when he talks?

  Jeez, how old is Sean, then? Suddenly, that made the idea of some three-hundred-year-or-older guy hovering over her in the bedroom even creepier. Like…would that be pedophilia to…No. Not going there. They both acted like they weren’t all that much older than she was, and it just didn’t seem as if you could, like act, act that way. So—argh! This is too complicated!

  Questions swirled through her mind, about her feelings for him, what his feelings were for her, how they could even relate to each other as well as they did; it was all too much. She settled on sticking to the present.

  “Three hundred years old, don’t look a day over twenty-something. Got it.” She shook her head once. “You were talking about the ’80s. What happened then?”

  Dylan looked down to the ground, his voice becoming softer and losing that carefree lightness that it always seemed to hold. “I…well, I lost someone, Staci.”

  “Lost someone?” She gulped, suddenly regretting her question; it was obvious that whoever it was, he was still hurting over it. “Listen, Dylan, we don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to…”

  “No, no, it’s fine. It’s just not easy, sometimes.” He smiled at her sadly, then continued. “My cousin and I had come up topside for an R.E.M. concert in Savannah. I love music, or at least I did back then, and so did my cousin. Human creativity astounds my kind: the innovation, the emotion, and a lot of us flock to it. My cousin was older, and loved introducing me to new bands that he had just discovered. I used to count the days until we could both come up for another show. That was actually the last concert I’ve been to, now that I think about it.” He sighed heavily. “We were on our way back from it, heading for the Fairgrove Gate just outside of Savannah, when we were stopped on the road. Ian was challenged to a race. That’s—very traditional, although it wasn’t traditional for an Unseleighe to do the challenging. I knew there was something wrong with it, but Ian was full of magic and music and laughed it off. He and the Unseleighe took off, and even though he told me not to, to go home, I followed. He lost the race. And ran right into an ambush.”

  Dylan stopped talking, brooding, looking down at his food for a long time. Staci decided that keeping quiet was probably the best idea, and just finished her food.

  “I tried to help him; I think they must have thought I was dead, too, when they left us. The group at Fairgrove—not my clan, we’re Emerald Thorn—knew we were due to use the Gate and came looking for us when we didn’t turn up at the right time. Once I was in any state to do so, I went back to my clan and told them that I wanted revenge. They told me that Ian had lost a challenge, and that was that. They said that going after the other clan would start warfare Underhill, war we’ve been dancing around for centuries. Since it hadn’t occurred in Underhill itself, they said that it wasn’t worth pursuing the matter. I told them they could stick that where the sun didn’t shine, I came up out of the Fairgrove Gate and I’ve been hunting Unseleighe ever since.”

  “That’s…a really long time to do nothing but hunt. Have you ever gone back to Underhill, to your clan?”

  He shook his head, and took a savage bite of his food. “No. Why would I want to associate with cowards who would watch idly as their own kin are slaughtered? Sometimes I check in with Fairgrove; they, at least, know what to do about Unseleighe, although they concentrate on just keeping the area around their Gate free of infestation. I can’t fault them for that.”

  Elven politics were a lot more complicated than she could have imagined. The careful balance that prevented all-out war, the internal struggles evident in the Blackthorne fami
ly…or was it clan?

  “Couldn’t we ask for help from them? This Fairgrove bunch? They helped you before, right?” Surely he’d thought of this already, but maybe not; sometimes guys just got all stupid about asking for help.

  Dylan shrugged. “They’ve got enough on their plates. Besides, even though they know how to handle Unseleighe properly, there are other clans that don’t. A big move by Fairgrove is a lot harder to ignore than a renegade biker elf. Wars get started when players like Fairgrove get involved.”

  The way he said it though…she sensed there might be something more. Maybe these Fairgrove people had warned him off, told him that they weren’t going to get involved if he stirred something up. Or maybe he just didn’t trust them. He usually worked alone, after all. She seemed to be the first person he had let in in a long time.

  She shivered at the thought of what a fight waged with magic would look like; certainly nothing like in the movies or fantasy books. The little taste of deadly magic she had already been exposed to illustrated very clearly how horrible such a fight would be. But she saw Dylan’s point, too. How could anyone sit by, and let murderers and torturers run loose in the world, so long as they played by the rules? At first, she had decided to help him out of self-preservation, but now she was committed to see this thing through because it was the right thing to do…and also self-preservation.