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  Still, Mike swore under his breath at the sight of Rory in his meld between man and wolf.

  In this form, Rory neared eight feet tall. He gave us a bare glimpse of that scariest of his three forms before ducking behind the partition to re-emerge human and clothed once more. He looked at me. For him, it wasn’t my family’s response that mattered, but how I coped with it.

  I touched his arm briefly before resuming my seat beside Stella.

  She stared at Rory wide-eyed.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered to her.

  She transferred her shocked gaze to me. “Yes?” She wasn’t sure, and that was natural, even healthy.

  I clasped her hands.

  She looked at me searchingly. The scarf tucked into the top of her coat fluttered with her rapid breathing. “Are you really all right with…this?”

  I wouldn’t lie to her. Very little of our new reality was acceptable by pre-apocalyptic standards. But in this new world, in our new world of blended human and Faerene that we had to build, then Istvan and Rory had at least shown me kindness. “I trust them, Stella. I trust their honor.” I thought of how Istvan had sheltered me beneath his wing after the existential horror of the vigil that I’d endured at the trials. “They can be kind.” I needed Istvan to be kind to my family.

  Rory stayed back, giving everyone time to come to terms with the full story of who he was: not simply a magician, nor even human for all that he resembled us, but werewolf.

  Not a monster. There was caution in his eyes and movements. This situation was difficult for my family, but also for Rory. I remembered how our lessons at the trials had emphasized werewolves’ pack nature. Did Rory have a pack? How would he juggle his commitment to them with his new, self-chosen commitment to guard Istvan, and by extension, me? Were we his new pack?

  When Rory had encouraged Istvan to meet my family had Rory also wanted a chance to be accepted by them?

  Stella was too shocked and scared to offer Rory her usual kindness. I looked at Jarod, hoping that he’d be cool with Rory’s revelation of his other forms.

  Jarod’s gaze bounced between Rory and Istvan.

  With Rory back in human form, the dogs resumed their customary slumbers. Lazy things.

  Digger stepped over Tabby as she lay at his feet. He approached Rory. “This testing that Amy’s carefully not describing, I can see the strain in her. It’s marked her. Like war does. But she gives you her trust, not just in words, but with her body language, which means you protected her when I couldn’t. Thank you.” He held out his hand.

  The two men shook, and it was a handshake of equals. There were no signs of either attempting to prove anything to the other. Respect.

  I breathed out shakily, proud of my adopted “dad”, and relieved.

  Digger approached Istvan.

  The black griffin stayed very still, perhaps aware of how intimidating he looked even when crouched down to human eyelevel.

  “Thank you for bringing Amy back to us. We’ll work out a way for her to be safe to visit us regularly.” Digger’s promise held an equally firm demand that Istvan allow me, his familiar, to see my family in the future. “And you are always welcome here,” he added.

  None of the others protested, although Stella’s hands tensed in mine.

  “Thank you,” Istvan said. “I am responsible for Amy’s welfare. I will not separate her from her family. In fact, I will take advantage of your hospitality to remain here for the day. Amy, you’ll want to talk freely. I shall be out in the fields, but keeping watch. Rory, if you wish to begin your recruitment for the guard unit—”

  “Are you recruiting humans?” Jarod asked.

  Mike took a step in his son’s direction before halting himself.

  “No,” Istvan said. “A magistrate is responsible for adjudicating magical disputes and neutralizing magical threats. A human, someone without magic or magical defenses, cannot provide the requisite support.”

  “All Faerene have magic.” I recalled Tutor Melinda’s teaching. “Some have more, some have less, and some specialize in magic, becoming magicians like Istvan and Rory.”

  “Most humans will go their whole lives without meeting one of us,” Rory said.

  Jarod’s shoulders straightened from their disappointed sag.

  Rory provided more information. There was a base level of knowledge, of understanding, that people needed to form healthy relationships. “The Migration from Elysium included just under half a million Faerene. The Rift is closed and we’ll keep it sealed. No one ever willingly risks the Kstvm swarms. So there will be no more Faerene arriving. A few, like goblins, will probably integrate with human settlements, but slowly. First, we have to establish ourselves. Some groups have made a start on that, but many of us have been fully occupied with sealing the Rift and—” He broke off abruptly. “Getting settled isn’t easy.”

  I could guess what Rory had decided against sharing, and I agreed. For now.

  Sealing the Rift had required returning much of our twenty first century’s technological world to the earth, including the bodies of six seventh’s of humanity. That figure came courtesy of the Faerene. Humanity had lost the capability for global communication. Even the postal network had broken down. We’d lost billions of people to disease, starvation, natural disasters and violence.

  My family was on overload from the arrival of two Faerene at the farm. Now wasn’t the time for them to learn about the Reclamation Team.

  Life, death and rebirth. With the Faerene’s arrival, Earth now operated under a new paradigm: one of circular time, a rhythm of return and balance.

  I rubbed at my eyes. With the time difference between the Pontic Mountains in Turkey where the trials had been held and Pennsylvania, I’d find today tiring. I might need to nap. Apart from the time difference, the trials themselves had been exhausting.

  “A guard unit of four to start with?” Rory asked Istvan.

  The magistrate nodded. “I’ll have a location selected by the time you return. For now, have everyone gather on Manhattan Island.”

  I winced.

  Digger noticed my reaction. The others were focused on the exchange between the two magicians. He raised an eyebrow at me.

  Later, I mouthed.

  He gave a faint nod of acknowledgement and turned to collecting our mugs.

  “The barn is nice and all, but let’s go to the house and be comfortable,” I said to Stella.

  “Craig and Niamh will return from patrol soon,” Mike said. “They’ll check in here, first.” He eyed Istvan uncertainly.

  Rory answered. “I’ll be gone.” He looked at me.

  I’d learned that werewolves, and Rory in particular, liked to touch. But he didn’t cross the barn to me. Instead, he sketched a casual salute and walked out.

  “How is he going to…?” Jarod began.

  “He’ll travel by portal,” Istvan said.

  “Cool.” Jarod was awestruck.

  Istvan straightened from his crouch, once more blocking the large barn door. “I’ll be in the field. Call me if you require anything, Amy. I’ll be there, but invisibly.”

  “Huh,” Mike grunted.

  Rather than attempt to turn around in the barn, Istvan walked backward.

  Jarod waited a couple of seconds before tiptoeing to the door. “He’s done it! He’s turned invisible.”

  Invisible Istvan didn’t reply.

  Mike added wood to the stove. “I’ll stay here to brief Craig and Niamh on their return.” The barn was where we organized our patrols. Mike was part of the town’s leadership, and patrols for the western half of town sometimes met here.

  We were lucky no one had turned up, either to chat with Mike or to place an order for some of his blacksmith work.

  Or perhaps it wasn’t luck, and either Istvan or Rory had cast a spell that kept people away.

  Chapter 2

  The living room in the old farmhouse had changed since the first time I’d entered it six months ago. When the Faeren
e’s magic removed plastic from the world, breaking it down and returning it to the earth, among the things we lost was foam. Now furniture had to be stuffed with natural fibers. We’d prioritized re-padding Stella’s leather recliner. It was stuffed with straw and cotton rags with an old quilt folded over it. She sank into the hollows that had formed to perfectly accommodate her gaunt body. The rest of us sat either on hard chairs, on rugs on the floor or on old furniture rescued from the attic. A year ago I’d never have believed that I’d come to think of horsehair-stuffed chairs as the height of luxury.

  Jarod added more wood to the fire and replaced the fireguard.

  Usually, Digger would be outside this time of day. Without electricity and other modern conveniences there was always work to be done. Just maintaining what we had was a full time job. However, today, he stayed close.

  No one spoke.

  I didn’t know how long Istvan would allow me to stay, and I felt a strange, churning, almost resentful gratitude that he’d brought me here at all.

  For the last half year, I’d followed Digger, Stella and Mike’s orders, along with Dr. Fayed’s; accepting their experienced judgement over my own. Commonsense dictated that I do the same with Istvan concerning Faerene matters. But doing so meant heading into the unknown.

  Not that I had a choice. Rory’s warning that my presence here could bring danger to my family once it became known that I was a magistrate’s human familiar meant I couldn’t stay, even if Istvan permitted it.

  I stared at the oak floorboards, worn from two centuries of use, and tried to direct my mind away from emotional thoughts to practical matters. While I was here, I should pack my clothes; my crossbow and arrows, too. Other belongings could stay at the farm, where they’d find use. I had no doubt that Istvan and Rory would see to my needs in terms of food, shelter and other necessities.

  “Amy.” Niamh ran in from the kitchen. Her vintage black rubber raincoat flapped around her. She’d found it while out scavenging two months ago. In an apocalypse, a house that lost its inhabitants to death couldn’t be respected, but had to be ransacked for materials to help survivors go on. The rubber was shiny from the rain, and smelled.

  I didn’t care. I hugged Niamh, coat and all.

  “You look normal, magic girl.” And that was Craig.

  While Niamh sniffed and fished in a pocket for a handkerchief, I hugged Jarod’s brother.

  Like their dad, Craig tended to hide his emotions. But his quick, hard hug welcomed me home. “Although I don’t know if your news makes things better or worse.”

  “What things?” I dropped back down onto the mushroom-pink loveseat beside Jarod.

  “The dragon frightened people,” Stella said quietly. Being back inside, in the familiar security of her house, and without Rory or Istvan’s presence, she’d recovered her color and confidence. She hadn’t picked up her knitting, yet, but her voice was stronger.

  “I’m dripping everywhere,” Niamh muttered. She walked back out, presumably to the laundry room to shed her raincoat to drip over the grate. “Craig, you could have hung up your coat,” she called back exasperatedly.

  He ignored her. He stood by the fire, warming his hands, then his backside. “We didn’t know why the dragon came for you, Amy, or what was happening to you.”

  Jarod wrapped an arm around me, pulling me into a tight snuggle; although whether for my benefit or his was unclear. Maybe mutual reassurance.

  Over the last few days I’d been scared but distracted by the human familiar trials the Faerene conducted. My family, left behind in suspense and mystery, had just been scared.

  “People are trying to work out how to fight dragons,” Craig said. “Or what we can fight them with if they return.”

  Niamh returned. “Some idiot men even suggested you were taken because you’re a virgin.” She snorted. “As if you not wanting one of them means you’re a virgin. You just have standards.”

  “People are scared,” Stella said.

  Digger hadn’t sat down. Instead, he stood where he could observe the road out the front of the house, as well as us inside. “Scared people, people frightened of their powerlessness, can turn vicious. Doing stupid things is a natural human talent.”

  I considered his warning. I also thought about how tired I was, physically and emotionally. Prudence told me I ought to save a little bit of energy to cope with whatever Istvan came up with in his secret planning in the field, but my family had to live in this town, and I wanted to be able to come home, at least to visit. “People need to see that I’m safe and well. But I don’t want to tell my story again, not today. And I really don’t want to answer questions.”

  “We can ride into town to pick up a bottle of apple brandy,” Jarod said.

  Craig objected. “It’ll be obvious what you’re doing, showing off Amy’s return.”

  Jarod shrugged. “Sometimes obvious is fine. I’ll stay and talk to anyone in the bar. You know how Scott is at spreading the news.”

  “He’s a gossip,” Stella said.

  Scott was the daytime bartender at the bar Brian had opened in the former library building. Hard cider and moonshine were very much available in our new world which lacked old standbys for pain relief like opiates and aspirin.

  “Digger can return with Amy,” Jarod continued planning. “Bronco can carry them both a few miles.”

  Bronco was the inappropriate name for the world’s most placid gelding. Part draft horse, he could easily carry Digger and I. He’d also readily pull a cart, but why bother harnessing him to it?

  “I’ll need to tell Istvan.”

  “Go on then.” Jarod shooed me out.

  I picked up my oiled leather full-length coat on the way out. It seemed to have stopped raining, but the clouds remained low and gloomy, indicating that the break in the weather was temporary. “Istvan?”

  He appeared in the field where we’d grown oats.

  I walked across to him, shoving my hands into the pockets of my coat and finding the pocketknife I kept there. My fingers traced the smooth, metallic lines of it, feeling the ridges of the different attachments folded into it.

  Istvan watched me approach. His feathers were as glossy as those of the crows we’d chased from the field before harvest.

  The stick that had propped up a scarecrow lay abandoned at the fence line. Jarod and I had dressed the scarecrow as a clown with a hideous pair of green and orange checked trousers and a moth-eaten wig of hennaed curls.

  It had been Jarod’s idea, a means of distracting me for a couple of hours from the horrors of the epidemics and the lives I hadn’t been able to save.

  “Istvan, I need to show myself in town. The appearance of Dorotta at the harvest festival freaked people. It would help if they saw that I’m safe—that the scary dragon didn’t eat me.” I’d liked Dorotta, who’d been kind to me, and given me the useful advice to demonstrate goodwill at the familiar trials. I’d survived. Forty six of the original one hundred humans hadn’t. Although thirty of them might recover.

  “I’ll ride in with Jarod and Digger on the excuse of picking up a bottle of apple brandy at the bar. Jarod will stay to tell my story to anyone who’ll listen. I doubt he’ll stay long. I’ll return with Digger. I’m safe with him.” I’d take my crossbow. He’d have his throwing knives.

  Istvan stood tall in the empty field. Wind blew through the oak trees behind me, scattering the raindrops that had collected on the few remaining leaves. They pattered to the ground. “If you feel this is necessary, I’ll monitor you. We’ll leave at four o’clock this afternoon to meet Rory and his recruits.” He was telling me of the time I had available to spend with my family. If I chose to waste some of it on the townsfolk, that was my loss. My sacrifice.

  “I’ll be home well before then. Stella expects us back for a late lunch. Thank you.”

  “Be safe.”

  I nodded, but felt compelled to add. “Istvan, do you need anything? A meal?” I didn’t know how often griffins ate, or what th
ey ate.

  “I am not a fledgling. I can hunt my own meal, Amy. Go, be with your humans.” He sounded more impatient than amused, but the humor was there.

  I guess it was funny, me thinking that a centuries-old griffin magician required my help. Even when it came to magic, Istvan didn’t really want me. He didn’t want to train a familiar.

  Ugh. I didn’t want to be “trained” like a pet, either.

  Shaking off the thought, and all things inhuman, I headed for the barn. We’d partitioned it and kept the animals in the rear where the red door led out to a fenced field.

  “Good to go?” Jarod asked as soon as he saw me.

  “Yes. Istvan will keep watch. We’ll be safe.” We’d worked hard so that the town was a sanctuary, but with the wildcard of me being a human familiar maybe there were new dangers.

  “Or you’ll be safe.” Jarod swung up onto the back of Coco, a bay mare.

  “Istvan knows you’re my family.” Whatever the complications and secrets between us, I didn’t believe the griffin would leave my family unprotected if he was close by.

  “He’s bigger than the griffin I saw in Baltimore.” Jarod was cycling through various emotions: excited, afraid, relieved, resentful. He needed to process everything he’d learned this morning.

  I’d unloaded a heap of new information on them, and brought along—or been brought by—a griffin and a werewolf.

  Seeming unfazed by any of it, Digger led Bronco to the two-step wooden mounting block. The gelding was tall. Also, unsaddled. He wore a bridle and a blanket.

  Once Digger was settled, I took his hand and swung up behind him. I appreciated his pragmatism. Whatever doubts and questions he had, he didn’t burden me with them.

  We clip-clopped around the barn, past Mike’s forge—which was cold, today, with him occupied in the barn—and down the driveway. Bronco ambled along, content with the slow pace.

  Coco played up. She spooked at a mailbox she’d seen a hundred times and tossed her head, fidgeting and urging Jarod that they needed to go faster.

  To what extent was she expressing her rider’s agitation?