1 Chapter 1

1

Aidan Callahan sat on the scratchy low fence by the apple orchard, letting one leg swing idly, and waited for the pooka.

The pooka was, in fact, late. At least according to the ritual timeline.

Aidan knocked a boot against wood in irritation. Supernatural creatures who’d been gleefully munching on someone else’s crops ought to have the decency to arrive on time, he decided.

His phone buzzed. He checked it, sighed, texted back, Nothing yet, I’d tell you, and you’re supposed to be on bed rest. After a second Len sent back a gif of a flickering pumpkin with a middle finger carved into it, because Elena Ruiz hated being sidelined even with a leg nearly bitten in half, and consequently at the moment also hated selkies and their teeth. Aidan, who preferred his Magical Enforcement Division partner alive, answered with a row of kisses, and got a very nasty curse—not a magical one, fortunately—in Spanish in reply.

At least Len was okay. He shifted position on the fence. Tried not to think about selkies and aggressive territorial disputes gone bad, or the healing bite on his own shoulder, or how much worse that assignment could’ve gone.

He knew it might’ve been easier if he’d been someone else. Somethingelse.

He didn’t especially want to think about that, either. He’d joined the MED for all sorts of reasons; if he felt like being honest with himself, which he generally was, those reasons spanned the selfish and the less so. He’d wanted to protect other magical beings. He’d wanted to be a part of making the world at least somewhat better, or safer, in some ways. He’d wanted to run from his family. He’d wanted to avoid the disappointment in his mother’s voice, his father’s eyes, when regarding their only son. He’d wanted to do some good.

He thought he had. He kept trying. He hoped he was doing enough.

It’d be a lot easier with more backup. But that wasn’t anyone’s fault. The MED had always been shorthanded, given the rarity of magical talents among the population, given the previous—before Joanne’s new directorial policies—insistence on primarily human agents. They were even more depleted at the moment, after that string of bad luck and injured agents. And Aidan himself had always been both a magical weapon anda magical liability, given his very specific and very complicated gifts—

No. Notthinking about that. This mission, here and now. Simple enough. A faerie-horse. Stealing apples from humans.

Moonlight hit bark and tree-leaves and slid down in a flood of silver: turning the orchard mysterious, uncanny, luminous. The moonlight got into Aidan’s hair too, mother-of-pearl through a stray wisp of white-blond across his gaze; he blinked, brushed it away, made a face at the night.

He did not need reminders of his hair. Of his heritage.

He should’ve brought a hat. Would’ve also helped with ice-spiked autumn air.

He glared at determinedly pooka-less groves. He did not whistle, because that’d be a spectacularly bad idea. Giving away not only his presence, but who and what he was. Admissions, and admissions.

He tried to huddle further into his jacket for warmth, failed because his jacket wasn’t really all that warm, and sulked about this for a minute or two.

He watched the apples left on the trees. The pooka’s share, said the legend. The share left out on November first, to placate the faerie-horse for the coming year. Or, in this case, as a response to the previous year; the human-owned farms in this area had all been suffering depredations, nibbled fruit, thefts in the dark. The incidents formed a pattern, moving westward. Aidan had seen last year’s records, and the notes from farmers in the neighboring town who’d followed the advice of a local hedge-witch and left an offering and been left alone since. The pooka had wandered on. It had found more farms, out here in California inland desert, in the lazy rounded foothills of the local mountains

It’d be nice if said pooka would bother to show up. The first of November had just about ended. Five minutes left.

He wondered why it didn’t have a herd. Most pookas did, with clearly defined territories. They kept to themselves, usually. Skittish with regard to strangers, though most purely faerie-creatures were. Mischievous if in the right mood. Sometimes helpful—they were magical, after all, and could bestow blessings and encouragements of growth, with regard to the natural world—and sometimes not.

Sometimes, apparently, they wandered around stealing apples. Or at least this one did. Which was a small problem on the scale of possible problems.

But apple-theft did technically violate several of the agreements about faerie-human interactions, both the legal and the time-honored customary. Hence the MED involvement. Hence the assignment, passed on to them from the governmental higher-ups.