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  I’d expected Jarod to pepper me with questions, but perhaps the knowledge that Istvan was monitoring us silenced him.

  The weeds along the road verge were dying; thistles toppling over and bindweed browning from frost. Next summer we’d have a problem with the junk piled up out the front of houses. Most others had the same junkyard that we had: twenty first century graveyards. The trash heaps would become breeding places for vermin and snakes.

  At the edge of town many of the houses were vacant. People who weren’t out on farms, but chose to live in town, had moved as close as they could to the center of things. The clustering wasn’t just about security. Without electricity to power water pumps, people had to carry it. The nearer they were to the public wells—both the original former wishing well and the wind-powered well Mike had installed just before the Faerene vanished gas and all petroleum-based products—the less distance for them to cart water.

  We were lucky at the farm. Stella’s late husband had installed a wind-powered water pump years ago and our well had served the house, garden and livestock all summer without running dry.

  People had also moved into the older homes at the town center because they were built to handle life without electricity and other modern (and lost) conveniences. Fireplaces in multiple rooms kept a house warm. Newer homes, built to an open plan layout, were also much less economical to heat. You couldn’t just heat the kitchen, for instance.

  We met Dr. Fayed cycling toward us. “Amy!” He greeted me enthusiastically, and with relief. “You’re home. Are you all right?”

  He was a sweet man who’d shed some of his reserved manner since the apocalypse. In his late thirties, he was scrupulously neat, dauntingly clever, and worryingly thin. The town owed him a lot. He had worked tirelessly throughout the summer epidemics. He was sanity and kindness in the confusion. Not everyone had a new-made family like I did. There were many who were alone, afraid and dependent on the kindness of people like Doc.

  “I’m fine.” I smiled at him. “I’m only back for a short time, though.”

  “Ah?”

  Jarod had gotten Coco back under control after her pretense that she’d never seen a bicycle before and ooh weren’t they scary? “I’ll be hosting story hour at the bar so that Amy can spend the afternoon with Stella and the others.”

  “That short a visit?” Dr. Fayed frowned. “People are afraid the dragon will return.”

  Digger interrupted. “That’s why Amy’s taking the time to show herself, and why Jarod will remain long enough to repeat her story. She doesn’t owe the town reassurance.”

  My hands tightened on the belt of his coat.

  Sometimes Digger’s impatience with fools bled over into intolerance of civilian weakness. But not everyone had a military backbone.

  “No,” Dr. Fayed agreed doubtfully. He peered down the road and to the left. By the satchel attached to the back of his bike, he was on his rounds. He seemed to reach a decision and turned his bike around to ride back with us. “I would like to hear your story.” And he would pass on the parts of it that reassured panicked residents.

  “The Faerene mean us no harm,” I said, which was strangely true even if they’d initiated the events that killed six billion of us. That paradox would confound humanity for generations. The Faerene needed to share with us images of the Kstvm, the insectoid invaders they’d saved us from. And I did believe the Faerene had intervened—migrating to Earth—to save us.

  The two wells and the diner had become the core of the town. As we passed by people called out.

  “You’re back!”

  “The dragon didn’t eat you.”

  “Why were you taken?”

  Bronco halted as Maggie Weber darted into our path, empty water buckets swinging.

  Digger urged him on.

  Maggie reluctantly gave ground.

  I wondered at Digger’s insistence on continuing. We were barely any distance from the bar. I could see the red bricks of the former library building. “The dragon didn’t mean me any harm. None of the Faerene mean to harm any of you.”

  “So why did it take you?” Tim Schmidt grabbed my booted ankle, keeping pace with us. “Why let you go?”

  “She’s back on a visit,” Jarod said.

  “Let her go,” Digger growled.

  Tim released my ankle, exaggeratedly throwing up his hands. “I’m not the threat, here.”

  Looking around, I caught Dr. Fayed’s deepening frown.

  People were coming out of the houses and the town hall, drawn by the noise. They looked scruffy. Standards had changed once we lost piped water and ways of readily heating it. People bathed less often, clothes were washed far less often, and no one ironed—other than Stella who insisted on using old irons heated on the stove to press handkerchiefs, pillowcases and tea towels. For hygiene’s sake, she said.

  Jarod rode ahead of us, and jumped down from Coco’s back, tying her reins securely to a hitching post. He raised his voice. “I’ll tell you Amy’s story, but Stella wants her back for lunch. I don’t want to miss the meal, either, so if you want to hear the story, hurry in to listen.” He pushed open the bar door.

  A few people followed his directions, bumping into Scott who was hurrying out to see the commotion. But others, like Maggie and Tim, stayed staring at me.

  I got my first inkling of why Digger wanted me to stay on Bronco—and why Jarod had had me ride with Digger on the big horse.

  People were wary of Digger in a way they weren’t of Jarod who’d grown up in Apfall Hill.

  As scared as people were of the dragon who’d scooped me up at the harvest festival, some of that fear, and blame for their fear, had been transferred to me. It showed in their hard expressions. Slyness flitted over Tim’s face. The man enjoyed causing trouble.

  Maggie was close to me in age, and I’d recognized her jealousy months ago. As if the middle of an apocalypse was any time to care about appearance or whatever it was she’d envied me! Now, she seemed to feel she had a chance to settle some imaginary score. “What trouble have you brought here?”

  “A griffin and a werewolf,” I said simply. People gasped. Irene Folau shrieked. “And the griffin is expecting me home shortly, so as Jarod said, you’ll need to hear my story from him.”

  “A werewolf!”

  “What’s a griffin?”

  Digger guided Bronco around to face back the way we’d come. “Don’t be long. Stella will want that brandy for her pork chops gravy,” he said to Jarod.

  “I’ll hurry. Pork chops, yum.” Jarod’s grin was forced.

  “We went hunting yesterday,” Digger said to me. “Got a fat hog and worked into the night butchering it.” Hunting would have been a good method of working out their anger and worry for me.

  “Gonna share any?” Tim asked.

  “Not with you,” Digger said calmly. Bronco pushed through the small crowd.

  Only when we were alone did my heartrate slow back to normal. “You guessed their reaction.”

  “Idiots find it easier to blame than to find a solution. The sensible ones who hear Jarod’s story, your story, they’ll see the advantages to the town having a connection to the Faerene. They’ll come down hard on anyone causing trouble—and better they do that than us.”

  “I didn’t mean to bring trouble to the farm.”

  “You haven’t.” He lowered his voice to a bare murmur, a thread of sound. It was the way he spoke, if words were absolutely required, while on patrol. “Manhattan?”

  At home, I’d promised I’d answer him later.

  Later had arrived.

  I stared at the two elderly women standing talking on the steps of the church. Father Peter had died during the summer. Now the Episcopal church remained open, but everything was different. Traveling preachers held services in it, but mostly the building was a quiet place for individual prayer and mourning. It was forlorn. The cemetery beside it was a reminder of normal life when bodies hadn’t vanished courtesy of Faerene magic, but had b
een buried.

  “Manhattan is gone. The island is there, but the people and buildings are gone. The Faerene returned it to wilderness, making it a meeting place.”

  “Roads?” Digger asked.

  “Not that I saw. Still buildings across the river…” But the city I’d grown up in, Dad’s Manhattan, was like it never existed.

  Digger drew a resolute breath. “We will survive this.”

  I was glad he hadn’t said, “We’ll survive them.”

  “The Faerene want us to survive. We can work with them.”

  “Those few of us who have contact with them,” he qualified.

  Rory had said it would be few. Digger had listened.

  I nodded, and met his dark, serious eyes. “So what we do matters.”

  “Not more than our own survival.” He patted my thigh. “Don’t be a hero.”

  After lunch, which was pork chops and which Jarod did make it back for, I went upstairs to the room I shared—had shared—with him. I packed my clothes in my two leather satchels. The bulkiest item was my leather coat, and I’d wear that. I stuffed socks into any gaps. When existing supplies of socks ran out, we’d have to learn how to knit our own.

  I hesitated over the book on the dressing table. I’d been reading it before the harvest festival, before I’d been kidnapped by a dragon, before everything changed, again.

  “Take it with you,” Jarod said.

  It was an old girls’ manual, the sort of compendium of knowledge that a girl in 1900 might have received as a Christmas present. It included instructions on how to knit a sock, paying due attention to how to turn the heel, as well as lists of frivolous things like the meaning of flowers or how to braid one’s hair.

  I added the book to my second satchel and buckled it closed.

  We hadn’t spoken about magic or my future over lunch. Stella had led the conversation and kept it firmly on everyday matters: how many baskets of chestnuts we had; whether we should take up beekeeping in the spring; that the men needed to learn how to darn.

  Niamh had confessed she didn’t know how to darn, either.

  There were instructions in the girls’ manual that I’d just packed.

  Jarod slumped back against the wall. “I’m going to miss you. I did miss you.”

  “Me, too.”

  We weren’t lovers. Jarod was gay. We were self-selected siblings. Friends.

  I sniffed.

  “Take some of my hankies,” he said. “Third drawer, left corner.”

  I ignored his offer of extra handkerchiefs. I had four of my own. My two drawers in the dressing table were empty. I was leaving home.

  I wasn’t ready to go.

  He pushed away from the wall. “When I told people your story, they had so many questions. All of them were about being safe. But I want to know what’s out there and in our future. You get to find those answers.” His voice went soft. “And Apfall Hill was never going to be big enough for you.”

  Surprise blinked away the tears swimming in my eyes. “I love it here. It’s home.”

  “You love us.” He hugged me, rocking us side to side. “And we love you. But you never risked loving, romantically loving, anyone here. Part of you feared being tied here.”

  “No.” I rejected his analysis.

  He smiled. “Chickie-girl, it’s the same for me. And for Craig. We left here once. We might, again. Dad will stay. It’s his home and he’s part of the council leading it forward. And Stella—” He loved Stella. Jarod wouldn’t leave while his adopted grandmother lived. He cleared his throat, not saying any of that. “Digger has stayed longer than I thought he would. He and Niamh.”

  “You say that like they’re a couple,” I objected. The two weren’t.

  “Maybe they will be, one day. Maybe they’ll stay. Maybe they won’t. If the last few months taught us anything, it’s that we can’t predict the future.”

  I suspected that some of the Faerene could.

  Jarod stopped rocking us. “All I’m saying is, take this chance, Amy. You’ll always have a home wherever any of us are. Take this chance for something more. Looking at you, I can see you’ve paid a price for it.”

  I squeezed him before letting go. “You see too much sometimes.”

  “I love you.” He said it so simply, letting it explain his insight.

  “I love you, too. And I’ll make sure Istvan keeps us in touch, somehow. We’ll visit, as well.”

  He nodded and picked up one of my satchels.

  I carried the other one, and we headed downstairs into farewells and sternly repressed tears. I hugged Stella twice. “I won’t ever forget the home you gave me.”

  She swatted my arm. “You’re family. The door is always open.” She took a deep breath. “Also for your griffin, even if he has to use the barn door.”

  I smiled at her courage and humor. Of us all, she’d been the most scared of Istvan and Rory.

  “We’ll be back.” I kissed her cheek. “Soon.” It was a promise I hoped I could keep.

  Chapter 3

  Istvan faded into sight as I walked alone to the field where I’d last seen him.

  Carrying two satchels was heavy and a bit awkward. My boots sank into the wet dirt that wasn’t quite mud. Not yet.

  My magician partner didn’t say a word, but a portal opened to the side of us. The wilderness of Manhattan waited on the other side with the shadows of evening stretching out to claim it.

  I walked through beside him.

  Rory loped out from beneath the branches of a giant oak tree and took one of my satchels. He’d have taken the other one, too, but I held onto it along with my crossbow. With a faint grin and shake of the head, he let me assert my equality as a beast of burden. “This way.”

  He led us to a rough shelter open on three sides, but with the westerly wind blocked and a roof angled to shed rain and snow. There was a fire pit in the front of it, unlit. Three people skirted the pit as they came to meet us.

  Rory made introductions. “Istvan, Amy, this is Yana and Berre, newly mated werewolves. They are former Elysium Guards. Oscar was also with the Elysium Guards, as a quartermaster.”

  The four foot five goblin nodded to Istvan and bowed to me. His yellow eyes almost glowed against the blue of his skin. His amethyst-hued hair curled in short spirals close to his scalp.

  Rory looked around the clearing. “Where’s Nils? Nils!”

  A tall elf emerged from behind a spreading spruce tree. “Sorry. Just collecting some specimens.” His left hand held a bunch of twigs.

  “You want to be a guard, Nils? You?” Istvan’s comment was borderline rude.

  The elf’s green face lit with amusement. His teeth were white and slightly pointed. “I think it would suit me perfectly. A chance to wander the continent seeing new plants while contributing to the establishment of a stable society.”

  Rory shrugged at Istvan. “He has skills.”

  “If a tree doesn’t distract him,” Istvan huffed, but there was concession in his tone.

  “Honored to meet you.” Nils strode forward and shook my hand vigorously. “I’m Nils Star Tender of the Zold clan.”

  “Amy Carlton.”

  Nils’s action broke the ice. The others greeted me.

  “Yana, Packless.” The female werewolf’s handshake was brief, as was her mate’s.

  “Berre, Packless.”

  Packless? I flicked a quick glance of puzzled inquiry at Rory.

  Oscar shook my hand. The former quartermaster didn’t look old, but unlike the sense I got from Yana and Berre, and even from Nils, he didn’t seem young, either. He stared at me in a no-nonsense, assessing manner.

  I stared back, waiting.

  That seemed to suit the gnome. He stepped back.

  Rory’s four recruits stood in a line facing us. Or rather, facing Magistrate Istvan. For all that the setting struck me as casual, this was a job interview.

  “I thought we agreed on starting with you and three guards?” Istvan addressed Rory.r />
  “You’ll need a steward. Oscar. He’ll also be able to provide protection at the base if we’re all away and Amy is alone.”

  Istvan’s considering hum had a spikey, clacketty edge to it.

  I had an objection. “I’m going to be left alone?” I didn’t want to bring danger on my family and Apfall Hill, but nor did I want to be taken away from everything I knew and abandoned somewhere strange.

  Rory slung an arm around my shoulders. Touchy-feely protective wolf.

  Although the way Yana and Berre’s eyes narrowed as they watched us, perhaps the gesture had more meaning than I’d thought.

  “I’m planning for the worst,” Rory said. “It shouldn’t happen.”

  Istvan clicked his beak.

  Rory continued. “But if a magical crisis or crises pull us away suddenly, having Oscar at the base—the magistrate hall—means you’d be safe and we wouldn’t have to bring you with us into danger.”

  “Sensible,” Istvan agreed. “But I want to be clear. Rory, are you forming a new pack? Will the guard unit form the core of it?”

  Rory’s arm tightened around me. “Yes. And yes, Yana, Berre, Oscar and Nils are all aware of the pack bonds and will accept them.”

  “Nils?” Istvan, for the first time ever in my hearing, sounded shocked.

  “Even a wandering elf wants a place to belong.”

  People to belong to. I heard an echo of what Jarod had been telling me about it being the people, and not a place, that made a home.

  The black griffin rallied. “Very well. Then there will be no trial period. The pack bonds will kick in as soon as we’re agreed. I have two reservations. The first is that whilst the pack stands and can assemble at the North American Magistrate Hall, if I don’t find you suited for the roles you’re currently adopting in the guard unit and as steward for the hall, then you will have to find other work.”

  Everyone except me nodded.

  “My second reservation is that Amy is not part of the pack.”

  Rory stiffened.

  “I will be a pack ally,” Istvan continued. “I cannot be anything closer since I am a magistrate and independent. As my familiar, perhaps Amy can accommodate pack bonds as well as her connection to me, but Harold, Fae King Harold, won’t allow Amy’s and my new and unexplored familiar bond to be jeopardized. She also needs to live and learn what pack means so that she can choose freely and fully her future.”