Changeling Detective Agency - Shadows In The Starlight Part 3

"That's not going to get you a new car, but yeah, we could do that." Gwen leaned back in her seat. "You have a specific favor in mind?"

"Maybe. You do prenups?"

"Prenuptial investigations? Sure. Are you looking to get married?"He sent her a look. "My sister Shawna is thinking about it. She's a few years older than me, has an MBA, works in a bank. Does real well for herself, except when it comes to men. She can't pick 'em worth a d.a.m.n. This guy talks the talk, and he looks solid enough, but I get this weird feeling about him.

It's not just because he's sniffing around my sister. It's a family thing, but not your average family thing.

You see what I'm saying?"

Gwen nodded. According to Damian, his family tree included a voodoo priestess, a medium, a couple of professional psychics, and the occasional water witch. Dowsing-the ability to sense underground water with some sort of crooked stick-cropped up every generation or so. The practice of folk medicine was nearly a family-wide preoccupation. Damian was pretty open about all this, and he seemed to take it in stride. He shared Gwen's pragmatic view of such things: Like the man told Horatio, there were more things in heaven and earth, yadda yadda.

"Your sister didn't inherit any of the family talents, I take it?"

"h.e.l.l no. She doesn't believe in any of that s.h.i.+t. But a private eye, that sounds like something she could get behind. She likes this guy a lot, but you can tell she's holding back. My guess is she lost faith in her own judgment when her last fiance took out three Visa cards in her name and maxed them out. I could probably talk her into meeting you."

Before Gwen could answer, a caressing wind swept over her-a psychic breeze that raised goose b.u.mps on her arms and made the hair at the back of her neck rise. The tingling sensation swept down her body, setting nerve endings on edge and leaving her feeling as if she'd spent the past fifteen minutes engaged in innovative foreplay. She didn't need to turn around to know who was approaching.

A shadow fell across the table. Damian looked up, and his jaw dropped.

Figures, Gwen noted glumly. The young cop had known there was something weird about her the first time he set eyes on her. Naturally he'd pick up vibes from the Prince of Darkness.

CHAPTER THREE.

"Sit down, Ian," she said resignedly. "Stop staring, Damian, and for chrissake, shut your mouth. It makes you look like a goldfish. Or gay."

Damian shut his mouth with an audible click, but he continued to stare as the newcomer dropped gracefully into a chair.

Gwen had to admit that Ian Forest was worth staring at: hair that was black enough to pick up bluish highlights, eyes as large and blue as her own in a narrow, fine-boned face that brought to mind fallen angels and doomed poets.

Surprisingly, Ian was regarding Damian with equal intensity. "A magus," he murmured, not sounding entirely pleased by his conclusion.

The cop's eyes narrowed. "How's that again?"

"That's not an insult," Ian a.s.sured him. "Quite the contrary, in fact. The word refers to someone who sees more than meets the common eye. You probably know its plural form, magi.""Three wise men. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh," Gwen elaborated. "Fancy bathrobes, camels, big-a.s.s neon star overhead. Stop me when this starts sounding familiar."

Damian shot a quelling glance at her. "I know what the d.a.m.n word means. I just never heard it used to start a conversation before."

"That is not what's happening here," she said fervently. "Ian has to rush off. Right now. No time to chat."

The newcomer ignored her and extended a hand to Damian. "Let's start with a more conventional opening gambit. Ian Forest. Gwen was briefly in my employ. And you are?"

"A little freaked out, but I'm adjusting." They shook, then settled back in their chairs and continued to eye each other.

Ian was the first to break the silence. "So, Officer O'Riley, what is your theory about our Gwen?"

The cop's eyes went wary, then turned flat and cool. "Since we're asking questions, I got a couple. First: any particular reason why you should know my name? Second: I should have a 'theory' about Gellman?"

"I would hope so, yes. But I'm answering your questions out of order, aren't I? In response to the first, you came to my attention when you started investigating a collection of DNA samples taken from people who attended a certain club the night it was raided. It was suggested to you that one of those samples was not human. If you are as intelligent as your college records suggest, you have eliminated enough possibilities to suspect that this sample was taken from Gwen. a.s.suming you are correct, what is she?"

Damian glanced at Gwen. When she shrugged, he said cautiously, "We were gonna talk about that later tonight."

"Is there any particular reason to wait?"

"Privacy?" Gwen suggested pointedly.

Ian studied her for a moment. "You have no idea what you're going to tell him, do you?"

"I'll figure it out as I go along," she muttered. "Not that this is any of your business."

"I beg to differ, but that's a discussion that does require privacy. Since the topic is up for discussion, allow me to get the ball rolling."

Ian reached out and tucked a strand of Gwen's dark chestnut hair behind her ear. Instinctively she brushed it back. Her ears weren't her best feature, and her hair, although short, was always cut to hide the top half of them- Suddenly she knew what explanation Ian was going to give. Incredible as it seemed, he was going to play the Elder Races card.

"Don't do it," she warned him.

"Oh, come now," Ian chided. "Young Damian here has seen you in the shower with your hair slicked back, so he knows what your ears look like."

Damian choked on his coffee and set the mug down hard enough to slosh some of the brew onto the table. "You got a peeper, Gellman? If he's stalking, say the word and I arrest his a.s.s."

"Now, there's a thought," Gwen said wistfully. A few years back, Rhode Island's legislature hadupgraded stalking from a misdemeanor to a felony, with first-time offenders facing sentences of up to five years, a fine of up to ten grand, or both.

Her sigh held genuine regret. Five years without Ian Forest hanging around sounded pretty d.a.m.n good.

"He's not exactly a stalker. He just... knows things."

"Yeah? You don't get that kind of info off the f.u.c.king Internet. I look hard enough, how much you want to bet we find out he bent some kind of law all to h.e.l.l."

"Gwen recently turned thirty-four," Ian said, undeterred by the younger man's rant. "How old does she look to you?"

"Like there's a safe answer to that question," he sneered.

Ian smiled faintly. "I stand corrected. One final question: You fought Gwen tonight. How would you describe that experience?"

"Like trying to hold onto a hundred pounds of Siamese cat," Damian snapped. "If you got a point, make it."

"I think you know where this is going," Ian said softly. "Surely you remember a certain weekend in upstate New York during your soph.o.m.ore year of college?"

Up to this point, Gwen had been watching this odd conversation like a spectator at a tennis match. Ian's last shot went right past her, but it was pretty obvious that it'd hit Damian right between the eyes. His face fell slack with astonishment, and his gaze s.h.i.+fted from Ian to Gwen and back. In the brief moment Damian's eyes met hers, Gwen read in them a welter of emotions: surprise, disbelief, speculation, denial.

"What's this about?" she demanded.

The young cop s.h.i.+fted uneasily in his chair. "It's not a big deal-at least apart from the issue of how the h.e.l.l he knows this stuff. Thing is, back when I was in college, I was into fantasy books, online games-that sort of thing. I even went to a few fantasy conventions, but I usually ended up feeling like one dark sock in a washload of whitey-tighties. You don't meet up with a lot of brothers at the cons, I can tell you that. Shoot, there's probably more color at your basic Klan meeting, and-"

"This is fascinating," Gwen cut in. "In fact, I can hardly wait until we're both retired and have time to sit on a park bench and swap memories."

"Yeah." Damian blew out a sigh. "Short version: There was this LARP con-that's 'live action role-playing'-in upstate New York, and a friend of mine talked me into trying it out. Everybody played a character all weekend, ran around in costume."

A moment of silence pa.s.sed before Ian asked, "And what were you?"

"Seems like you the man with all the answers tonight," Damian said coldly. "You want that put on the table, you say the word."

"Very well. Our young friend here was an elf. A forest elf, to be precise-a variety that apparently comes in green and brown camouflage."

Gwen shot a venomous look at Ian, then slapped both hands down on the table and leaned over them to glare at the young cop."Step into reality, fanboy," she snapped. "Elves don't exist, and even if they did, I'm not a freaking elf!"

"Did I say you were?" demanded Damian. He tossed his head toward Ian. "That's his story."

"I'm just trying to understand your point of view," Ian said smoothly. "Given your particular set of interests, I wondered if you might make that connection."

"Back in the day, I used to watch Star Trek reruns, too. Ooh, pointy ears! How 'bout that? Gellman's ears are just a little bit pointy, so maybe I should have pegged her for a Vulcan?"

Gwen threw up her hands in exasperation and prepared to launch into a tirade. While she was still drawing breath, Ian caught her eye and asked, "An unexpected conclusion, perhaps, but I doubt it's much stranger than those she grew up hearing."

It was a surprisingly shrewd comment, and it hit the mark hard enough to deflate Gwen's ire. Her hands dropped to the table, hard, as if weighed down by her childhood memories.

The anger faded from Damian's eyes as he took in her response. "Tell it," he said softly.

"Not much to tell," she said with a shrug. "I can't remember the first time I picked up a book or toy and knew who had held it last, or walked into a room and knew what had happened there last night. When you know things you shouldn't know, people a.s.sume you're lying, crazy, or a nasty little snoop. When I was nine, a foster family added a couple of new possibilities: I was either the devil's little mouthpiece, or I was an innocent victim of evil-sort of like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, I guess."

"No good options," Damian concluded. "So how did you explain what you could do?"

"An interesting question," Ian put in. "What about it, Gwen? Any 'forest folk' in your early experiences?"

She shrugged. "Santa's helpers, Keebler cookies. Nothing that rang any bells."

"In other words, since you didn't share Officer O'Riley's interests, you were never inclined to his...

perspective."

"Hey, man, I know the difference between fantasy and real life!"

"Yet some might argue that you're unusually credulous. You accept as normal all manner of occult and psychic phenomena."

Gwen caught Damian's eye. "I didn't tell him."

"Never thought you did," the cop replied grimly. "All right, here's the thing, Mr. Forest: I don't waste time trying to convince myself that something didn't happen, just because it doesn't fit into the way things are supposed to happen."

"You accept alternative explanations," Ian suggested.

"Yeah, you could say that. We might not understand how and why something works, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work."

Ian smiled faintly. "An admirable sentiment, if somewhat difficult to pa.r.s.e."

By this point, Gwen was starting to understand what Ian was doing. Obviously he knew of Damian's slightly left-of-center childhood and the worldview that went with it, and wanted to find out just how far that credulity went. By mockingly pus.h.i.+ng the pointy-eared E-word, he established the whole ElderRaces thing as way, way outside the edges of the envelope.

Which, quite frankly, was exactly where Gwen preferred to leave it.

"So, what did I think I was?" she repeated thoughtfully. "Different, I guess. I never got much further than that, but it never occurred to me that I might not be human."

"Could be the lab tech made a mistake," Damian suggested. "Or maybe there are DNA variations among humans that we just haven't found out about yet."

His face grew more animated as he warmed to that idea. "Hey, why not? My mother keeps bird feeders out back, and the little brown birds that show up all look pretty much the same. With dogs, though, you get everything from the Saint Bernard to teacup poodles. Turns out the birds are different species, but the big-a.s.s dog is the same species as the little white rat with the 'fro."

"Interesting point," Ian said. "So in your opinion, Gwen might be an as-yet undiscovered variety of human?"

"You got a better theory, Einstein?"

"It makes sense to me," Gwen said quickly. "In fact, it makes a lot of sense. If we're determined to slap a label on me, 'changeling' works as well as any. In my case, it's literally true-I was switched with another baby. My biological parents died before they could teach me how to deal with the psychic s.h.i.+t that comes with being... whatever."

The waitress clumped over with two orders of burgers and fries, effectively halting the conversation. Ian glanced at Gwen's meal, and his eyes widened with something that looked very much like horror.

"You want to order something?" asked the waitress, sounding more than a little put out by the idea.

"Nothing, thank you," Ian murmured, still staring at Gwen's plate.

A m.u.f.fled ring came from the pocket of Damian's sweats.h.i.+rt. He fished out his cell phone and glanced at the number, then promptly pushed back his chair and rose.

"I gotta take this." He glanced from Ian to Gwen. "You'll be okay?"

"Go," she told him as she reached for a French fry.

Ian seized her wrist before she got there. "No," he said adamantly.

Her eyes narrowed. "Why not? Do changelings have problems with high blood pressure?"

"No, but there is salt on those fried potatoes," he explained. "Quite a lot of it."

"Not enough, most likely." Gwen pulled her hand free and went for the salt shaker.

Ian s.n.a.t.c.hed it away before she could reach it. "Do you eat like this frequently?"

"Constantly," she said. "I've got the metabolism of a fruit fly. I can eat anything I want and it doesn't bother me. I never get sick, never gain a pound, never had a zit in my life. In fact, the worse my diet gets, the better I feel."

His face cleared in understanding. "Better," he repeated. "By that I suppose you mean more 'normal.'"Gwen thought that over. Come to think of it, whenever "freak week" rolled around-those occasional periods of heightened psychic sensitivity-she usually went straight for the salt-and-vinegar potato chips.

"Yeah. I guess."

"And you never wondered why?"

"Not really. Now that you mention it, I can see that maybe salt takes the edge off psychic ability. I mean, too much sugar makes it hard to concentrate, right?"

"True, but you're not taking it far enough. It didn't escape my notice how eagerly you latched onto young Damian's theory of variations within the species. He's wrong, you know. You are most decidedly not human. Your metabolism is different, as you've pointed out. Not just faster-different. So is your brain and body chemistry. It's time you faced facts, Gwen: you are precisely what I spent the past ten minutes convincing your friend that you are not."