Dark Ascension: A Generation V Novel (25 page)

This man had that. His neck was just slightly too long for his body, his features cut at angles that no human would possess, but that weird fey beauty was there, making it hard to look away from him. His hair was pure black, but with a silkiness and a texture that reminded me of Suzume’s fur when she was a fox rather than a human. His skin was pale, not in the translucent way that showed veins and blushes, but pale and glittering like morning frost, almost like a hard exterior. His eyes were the color of plums taken right from the tree, and his pupil was vertical, like a lizard’s. It took me a long second to pull myself away from a stunned perusal of his face to take in what he was wearing—he had expensive black slacks, black shoes that had been polished almost to a mirror finish, and a black-and-gray-striped button-down that fit him sleekly and perfectly—the kind of button-down that was sold for clubbing, not actually wearing for business purposes, and didn’t even have a useful breast pocket for sticking notes or cash, and was cut in a way that you weren’t even supposed to wear an undershirt under it. In my experience, it was the kind of shirt most often worn by a complete douche bag.

Lilah touched my arm carefully, nudging me out of my thoughts. “Fort, this is Cole.”

“Cole . . . I think Lilah mentioned you once or twice,” I said, striving for politeness. After all, the way he’d positioned himself for surprise wasn’t enough for me to dislike him—he had to know what he looked like, and I couldn’t blame him for that. As for his shirt, well, there was no such thing as a perfect system.

“Only in the most positive context, I hope,” Cole said, and there was no hiding either the silkiness of his tone or the way that he flicked a very warning look at Lilah.

I immediately hated him. Clearly the shirt remained a proven system for identifying douches. Because I was irritated, I asked, “Didn’t you show up to a date wasted and have to sleep it off on Lilah’s couch?”

Beside me, Lilah had to smother a small laugh, and I could see the sudden, gleeful amusement in her golden-brown eyes as Cole was momentarily thrown off balance. Apparently she wasn’t a big fan of his either.

“Ah, that context,” Cole said through gritted teeth. “I admit that I might not have been on my best behavior, though I’m sure that Lilah remembered to mention that it was an arranged date from the older Neighbors in the hopes that it would result in a pregnancy, which neither of us had any interest at all in partaking in.” He paused and shot a glare at Lilah. “And I cleaned up the sofa the next morning.”

“You
puked
? Lilah leaves all the fun stuff out of these stories.”

I was starting to enjoy myself, but Cole suddenly leaped on my statement, with a sudden smoothness, a finesse. “That’s true—sometimes Lilah leaves things out. Not intentionally, of course. We’ve known each other from childhood, after all, and I don’t think that Lilah has a mean bone in her body. But sometimes, if one wants to make sure that all the information is being conveyed, it’s important to be present. Make sure that nothing has been sugarcoated, or pieces of the story dropped out.”

I’d surprised Cole for a moment, but I could almost feel him pulling together his equilibrium, planning his next move, shifting and muddying the conversational waters.

“So, naturally, I just wanted the chance to be here when Lilah talked with you about Neighbor issues, just to make sure that everything was conveyed correctly.”

“Lilah is the appointed liaison to my family,” I pointed out. Lilah had told me that there had been problems within the younger Neighbor community, factions emerging. It looked like I was now getting to meet one of Lilah’s biggest problems, and I realized how crucial it might be to reinforce Lilah’s position, and her authority. “If the Scotts need to know it, then Lilah is the person we trust to tell it to us.”

“Of course. But it would make so many of us more comfortable to get a second opinion about these . . . consultations . . . that Lilah has with you. After all, so many crucial decisions rest in the hands of the Scotts, yet so few of us have even had the pleasure of meeting you.” There was no mistaking his undertone.

Lilah stepped forward, putting herself just off to the side, forming almost a triangle between the three of us. Very carefully, watching Cole the way that someone would watch a rattlesnake, she said, “Fort, Cole and I have been working together on a lot of the recent issues that our community has faced.”

“Yes, you’ve told me.” I wanted to push him back a little, to not just let his earlier statement lie without some kind of reprisal. “So, Cole, how many of the Neighbors have died since October? My family likes to keep our records accurate—I’m sure that you understand.”

I could see Cole recognize my implicit threat, and a sliver of caution flickered briefly over his face, disappearing all too quickly. “The Scotts have nothing to fear—tithes will still be delivered on time, and to the amounts specified. As for those who are dead, well . . . I don’t think you and your siblings will be missing any of them. Troublemakers, rule-breakers, all of them, who flouted the rules that the Scotts have given us to live by.” He gave a very small, controlled smile, and I realized just how dangerous that certain something he’d inherited from the Ad-hene was—it was charisma, incredibly potent, and he knew how to use it. “We just saved you the trouble of their executions.”

“How thoughtful of you. But in the future, do let us know beforehand. I’m sure an execution is no bother at all to my sister. I don’t think you’ve had the pleasure of meeting Prudence, have you?” I deliberately looked him up and down. “You’re all in one piece, so I guess you haven’t.” I turned entirely to face only Lilah. “Lilah, why don’t we all sit down if we’re going to talk business.”

Lilah had been watching the interplay closely, and now she nodded slowly, a strand of her brilliant copper-gold hair sliding forward to lie against the freckled skin of her neck. We all settled around the small breakfast table that was bunched against the far wall of Lilah’s galley kitchen, positioning our chairs awkwardly, with Lilah sitting between us, and Cole pushing his chair as far back as the cabinets behind him would allow, watching me without seeming to blink.

Lilah cleared her throat carefully and began. “Fort, you’ve met a few of our changelings, like Jacoby and Felix, the ones who were born to human mothers and didn’t know about their heritage until the community reclaimed them when they were teenagers.”

I nodded, wondering how much of this was for Cole’s benefit, and how much was to make sure that I fully remembered my interactions with the weirdness of the Neighbor community from the previous autumn. “Yeah, I have.”

“Jacoby’s substance-abuse issues aren’t unusual. The changelings are pretty much uniformly traumatized by what happens to them. One minute they’re living with the only family they’ve ever known, with probably the biggest problem being puberty and acne, and the next minute they’re being kidnapped by strangers, with their deaths faked, and told that they can never see their family members again, or a bunch of fairy-tale monsters will kill them. Oh, and that they’re only fifty percent human.”

Talk about a terrible facts-of-life talk. “I can see how that would cause some pretty substantial and long-term issues,” I agreed.

“Exactly. So what we’ve been talking about is the idea of removing the changelings from their human families early—very early. Because of how aggressive Lavinia Leamaro was with her obstetrics program, we have almost sixty changelings living with human families right now—some are getting close to the age that we’d be automatically taking them, but the ages range right down to infancy, and a few possible pregnancies that we’re monitoring.”

I didn’t bother to hide my surprise. “You want to take sixty kids at once?”

“Spaced out just for logistics, but ideally we’d like to have them all in our hands, and fostered in with Neighbor households, by the end of the year.”

“That’s a pretty big influx—can the community handle it?”

Lilah nodded firmly. “It will be a strain, but it would be worth it for the long-term health benefits. And in the future we would prefer to take the babies when they were born, to try to minimize the pain for everyone involved.”

“You’re taking the baby away from its mother,” I pointed out. “A mother who, given her involvement with Lavinia Leamaro’s clinic, would probably never be able to have another child, even if she was able to recover from losing her baby enough to even attempt it.”

“We know the cost of what we’re doing, Fort,” Lilah said, her voice gentle, but also firm. “None of us are undertaking these issues lightly, and we’ve had a lot of conversations and discussion about this. But the changelings are our only source of fresh genetics, and while we aren’t as dependent on them as we were a generation ago, we can’t ignore that we need them.”

I considered what she was suggesting, but I saw a lot of potential problems. “How are you going to get the changelings away from their parents? I know that before you were faking accidents—that’s a lot of accidents to fake in one calendar year.”

“You’re right. It is a lot. We’ve accepted that we’d probably have to employ the kitsune for many of them.”

“I’ve seen the kitsune prices—that’s a lot of money you’d be putting in.” Even if they could somehow convince Chiyo Hollis to accept a bulk rate, the kitsune put top dollar on their use of fox magic for other races—for good reason. The kitsune could fool not only the eyes, but all the senses. They could fool not just casual bystanders, but those trained to look and examine, like police and doctors. They could fool security cameras and print cameras, even instrument readouts. Fox magic could set illusions that most of the mixed-blood Neighbors could only dream about as they spent all their energy just hiding their own faces. If you wanted a body covered up in a way that ensured no awkward questions and no elaborate and convenient fires, you went to the kitsune. And they set those price tags accordingly.

“We have the money,” Lilah said stiffly, clearly not wanting me to ask her to elaborate on the how of it.

From his seat across from me, Cole spoke, quietly and silkily. “The assets of those we executed, after all, are being held in a trust, to be used for the good of the whole community that was damaged by their reckless actions.”

I could see Lilah wince—that was definitely not a happy memory for her, and probably suggested a previous disagreement between them—one that Cole had evidently won.

I deliberately ignored Cole and kept my focus on my friend. “Apart from being very careful that no one starts noticing any patterns here, or realizes that the thing that all these children have in common is that their mothers got their infertility treatments at one place, I don’t really disagree with you on any fundamental parts. I can’t think of a way to let these kids know about their heritage and still let them stay with their own families, for example, not without taking a huge risk to too many people’s safety. But is there any particular reason why the system was set up like this in the first place?”

“Tradition, I guess.” Lilah gave a small shrug. “The Ad-hene always left their changelings with the mothers at first. They didn’t have much interest in raising babies—they only valued the physically mature changelings, since they could be bred with or hunted for sport.” Her voice was grim—after recent events, Lilah had no illusions left about the full-blood elves.

“Yes, dear old Dad and his buddies,” Cole said icily. “And Madeline agreed with it, since she felt that adolescent deaths or disappearances were more easily explained than those of small children.”

I couldn’t ignore Cole anymore, particularly when he was actually making decent points, so I just sighed a little. “Yes, that does sound rather like my mother. Well, I can definitely promise to bring this up with my siblings. To me, at least, it sounds pretty straightforward and like a reasonable idea, but I can’t make any promises about how my siblings will react.” No promises at all, given the way that our meetings had been going lately.

Lilah gave me a warm smile, the kind that lit up her whole face. “I really appreciate you coming over, Fort, especially given the complete lack of warning.” She pushed her chair back and got to her feet. “Can I offer you something for the ride home? I know I’ve got half a pie left in the fridge. Not that I baked it, of course, since I like my pie to be actually edible—”

Cole cut her off. “There was another issue that we’d discussed, Lilah.”

She gave him an irritated look and snapped back, “Fort has already agreed to talk with his family about our petition—can’t we wait to see how that one goes before we ask for something else?”

I glanced back and forth between them, and realized very clearly that this was the power shift within the Neighbors. Lilah was trying to slow things down, but it was all too clear that Cole was speaking for a majority, and that Lilah was on the defensive. I tried to weigh my words very carefully, looking for something that would satisfy Cole but wouldn’t undermine Lilah. “If I don’t think that my siblings will react well to multiple requests, then I’ll only tell them about the first, for now. But why don’t you tell me what you need, since then you can tell the rest of the Neighbors that you did pass everything along.”

Cole paused, weighing my offer. “I suppose,” he said carefully, clearly wanting more of a promise, but also considering whether that was enough for now. Then, with a quick nod of decision, he shifted forward, taking the reins of the conversation firmly from Lilah, and she knew it. She and I shared a look, but it was clear that neither of us could really do anything. “You know of course that the younger Neighbors, those who identify more with me, and Lilah”—though I heard the pause in his voice before he added her name—“have taken control of the breeding program away from those who were the creatures of our forefathers, the Ad-hene.”

“Yes, by killing them,” I pointed out.

Cole was completely unruffled. “Yes,” he agreed. “Given the punishments handed down by your mother before she died”—I had to wince at the pun, unintentional or not, because part of the punishment of the Ad-hene was that Chivalry had cut off their hands, as well as other, more sensitive parts—“the Ad-hene are currently licking their wounds in Underhill, and haven’t emerged from their hole since the last of their lapdogs were dispatched. But Lavinia had a great deal of their semen stored and frozen at her practice.”