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20: BETWEEN A STONE AND A HARD PLACE


The scrape of a boot on cement warned Tristan that he had another visitor.

Tristan blinked away tears to look up.

It was one of Boo’s older brothers. Which one was it? Duff? Alton? No, it was the brother named Marc, the twenty-year-old police officer.

Lucien’s notes had said that the man’s nickname was Stone. He lived up to the name by kneeling down in front of Tristan to study him in complete silence.

Tristan had no idea what to say. He hadn’t expected any of Boo’s family to be at the radio station. He had a cover identity but no ready reason why a supposed fifteen-year-old boy would be sitting on Mount Washington, weeping. The one thing he did know was that liars often revealed themselves by giving too much information, trying to disguise their lie with a barrage of random truths. Of all Boo’s brothers, the police officer would be the one who recognized a fake story buried in extraneous facts.

Tristan’s best bet was looking like a lost child, holding off on an explanation for his presence until he was directly asked a question. He focused on calming himself. He had let the old female rattle him. Clearly that was what she set out to do. She knew who he was and what he was doing here. She’d told him the one truth that would slide through all his defenses and hit hard enough to count. She might have wanted him to go looking for the twins in order to protect them—but even more likely she simply didn’t want him to sabotage the radio station. She obviously wanted him to flip sides and fight against his father.

Marc reached out and patted Tristan on the shoulder. The man stood up and motioned for Tristan to stand. “You’ll be safer with us.”

That was debatable. The old female was most likely the hidden enemy intanyai seyosa that his sisters had been fighting against. She would not have left unless she was sure that the situation had been swayed in the direction that she wanted it to go.

Was he flipped? He didn’t know himself. Maybe she just wanted to delay him until some crucial moment had passed. The humans might have already gotten some vital message out so that whatever Tristan did—flee or stay—didn’t matter. No, there were other ways to delay him without giving out such vital information. The Eyes worked best in secrecy. Maybe there was something else, something more important than the radio station that she just derailed him from. Finding Boo?

And what of the baby chicken still cupped in his hands? What was he supposed to do with that? Give it to his niece? Which one? He had three but he didn’t know where any of them were at the moment. The changeling had managed to fall off the Eyes’ radar for a second time. She could be anywhere in the city, doing weird, impossible things. If Yves died while escorting the twins through a cavern system, then they could be trapped underground somewhere—but that didn’t match up with “charging into danger.” What classified as “danger” depended heavily on where they were. Earth? Elfhome? Pittsburgh? Easternlands? The mind boggled as to where in the multiverse the two might have ended up from his father’s mansion.

He followed Marc Kryskill through the pouring rain with “flee or stay” looping through his head. He could flee easily. Marc seemed to have bought the “little lost boy” façade. He could come up with some innocent reason that he was bawling his eyes out in the rain and then say that he lived nearby and needed to go home to his parents. Most people didn’t want to be responsible for a stray child. Should he flee?

If he stayed, he might learn if Boo had made contact with her family after disappearing from Sandcastle. Adele stranding him on Mount Washington meant that he’d missed his chance to target Boo’s mother. Marc had approached him, so the man would be less cautious of Tristan than if Tristan had sought him out. It was a golden opportunity to observe and perhaps gain trust.

The old female had rattled Tristan hard. Maybe she wanted him to flee. People were more vulnerable when they were running scared. Or maybe she was trying to keep him from following through with Adele’s directive of checking out WESA. Chloe and the others had overlooked the pirate radio station. The flurry of activity around it, though, suggested that “the cool kids” had joined sides with the changeling and her tengu followers. He should stay long enough to know if the work party was successful at getting WESA back on the air.

There was a web of wires running from the cinder-block building to the old UPS delivery truck. Up close, the hand-painted sheep on its side seemed to eye Tristan with suspicion. While the back gate was up, there were strips of thick black fabric hanging over the opening. Marc indicated that Tristan was to get out of the cold rain by climbing up into the back of the truck. No one else seemed to be paying attention to Tristan. If he got them used to his presence, he would have free run of the situation. He stepped up into the truck, ducking through the fabric panels.

At first glance, the interior matched that of a wool delivery truck. Bags of raw wool and skeins of dyed yarn festooned the ceiling and sides. There were wood storage bins marked CARDING BRUSHES, DYES, AND BAGS. The cabinets, though, stood open, revealing electronics.

A woman with headphones was fiddling with a large microphone and laptop computer and something that looked like a soundboard lifted out of a recording studio. Every few seconds, she would pause and do a sound check on a large microphone. The truck was obviously a covert mobile radio station. The wool served as soundproofing. The heavy rain had been muffled to silence.

“WESA had an emergency backup generator at one time,” the woman was saying as she changed settings on her laptop. “You can see that all the wire connections are all there. Just sometime between NPR pulling out and us taking over, someone walked off with the generator. Not surprising, considering that Pittsburgh normally spends the first few hours after Shutdown and Startup without power. It happened to the other station that shared office space with WESA back in the day.”

Tristan studied the other person in the truck. It was Boo’s cousin, William Roach, who went just by his last name. He was the business manager for Team Tinker, which might mean that the tengu presence was because of his connection to the changeling. Tinker would trust her old friends over anyone new. Did the changeling send Roach to oversee…?

Tristan’s brain froze as he realized that there was a third person in the van: Boo.

She had been curled into the driver’s seat. She leaned out to look back at the deejay. Her white hair spilled down over her shoulders in loose curls. Tengu warpaint streaked her cheeks in a blue that complemented her stunningly blue eyes. She wore an oversized jacket over a black tank top and cutoff blue jean shorts. Her skin was so white, even in the warpaint and borrowed coat, she seemed ethereal and untouchable. So fierce. So vulnerable.

“Storm One says that Storm Six is in position,” Boo told the woman.

Oh, shit, Tristan thought. Boo had rejoined her large extended family. Most likely, she’d been with them since she disappeared from Sandcastle in July. The Kryskills were a perfect storm of bootleggers crossed with career military. Of course they could and would create a covert human fighting group, armed with detailed knowledge of Lucien’s organization. Worse, they had teamed up with the tengu.

No wonder the Eyes told Lucien to get rid of Boo.

The most important question was, how large a force had her family built? Boo’s older brother and cousin were here at the radio station. One had to assume the other siblings and cousins were involved. Was it just their extended family? Or were they just the tip of the iceberg?

The deejay nodded but added, “We’re dead in the water until we get power to the tower.”

There was a sudden deep rumble of big equipment from the trailer-mounted generator. A few seconds later, an answering hum from inside the cinder-block building.

A tengu male pulled aside the fabric hanging to say, “We’re up and running!”

“Quick, close the back!” the deejay said, hitting buttons and pulling her microphone close.

The male reached up, grabbed the bottom of the gate, and pulled it down.

Tristan forgot how to breathe. He was locked in a truck with Boo and her cousin. If Boo recognized him, he would have to fight his way out. The only other exit was in the front, beside her, but so far she hadn’t even looked at him. Her focus seemed to be on the earbud in her right ear. He turned away from her, pulling the hood of his rain jacket lower.

“Storm One, this is Bullhorn,” Boo said quietly to whoever was on the other side of the link. “We’re going live.”

“This is WESA!” the deejay said. “I’m Marti Wulfow! This is an important emergency news bulletin! The oni army has attacked the city. I repeat: the oni army has attacked the city. They have taken out the city’s power and telecommunication grid. A large heavily armed force has been spotted on Liberty Avenue heading to Oakland. Hal Rogers is live in Oakland reporting on the situation. Hal, are you there?”

Wulfow moved sliders on her sound console, muting her microphone while unmuting the feed from the field reporter.

“…is Hal Rogers, the voice of freedom! Oakland is under attack! I’m calling out to you, the people of Pittsburgh! If you value all that is good, grab your rifle and get to Oakland! We need every hero that we can muster to stop them. We need your fighting spirit at the Centre Avenue Bridge!”

Was this the reason the female elf had waylaid Tristan? Was it so he couldn’t stop this broadcast? Or was something even more important than that rally call to the humans going to happen shortly? He wasn’t sure that a random reporter calling for help would have much effect.

“Run!” a female barked orders somewhere close to the reporter. “Hal! Run and talk!”

“Jane,” Boo whispered, sounding she was about to start crying.

“Hey!” Roach moved to Boo, pulling her close. “She’ll be fine. They’ve been planning for this for weeks.”

Tristan pressed his lips tight, keeping his eyes locked on his feet so that his hood shadowed his face. He hadn’t recognized the name at first but Hal Rogers was the host for the show that Jane Kryskill produced. Chloe had been dismissive of the possible dangers that Jane’s show represented. How wrong had she been?

“Homestead! Hot Metal!” Jane continued to shout in the background. “Get inside with Smithfield! Stay back from the windows. Stay low!”

The Kryskills had squads of people out on the front line, operating with code names.

Oh, this is bad. Lucien had hoped that they could keep the humans from joining the elves. It was why they triggered a communication blackout while keeping the EIA forces busy. Earth could be convinced to ignore the war as a local political conflict that had nothing to do with humans—as long as humans weren’t killed in the fighting. Of course, this wouldn’t be a problem if they couldn’t get a gate up and working, reconnecting the worlds. The knowledge of how to build a gate was out there and such things were dangerously hard to kill.

There was the noise of an explosion through the radio connection.

“What the hell is that?” Jane shouted.

“It’s Tinker domi!” someone answered.

“Tinker domi is in here and she is glorious!” Hal reported. “Our little goddess is here and she’s raining fire on our enemy!”

That was the worst piece of news of all: the changeling was using magic to fight. All the domana should have been unconscious. Her connection to the Spell Stones was intact. It meant all the domana could be unaffected. Had Lucien gotten something wrong with the spell? Their father would be furious. Dangerously furious.

Surely their father wouldn’t punish Lucien too harshly. The changeling had been doing all sorts of impossible things all summer. Lucien had scribed the spell but Yves had been the one who originated it. Their father had checked Lucien’s work. Said that it was good. Cast the spell himself.

“He’s already killed the sister you loved the best—she saw what was coming and tried to escape…Your mother is gone. Cold and unclaimed and will go a pauper’s grave because there’s no one there to claim her body.”

Bethany is dead, Tristan thought. My mother is dead. Chloe too. Danni is on the front lines against a fully powered changeling. Father might kill Lucien in a rage before the night is out. I have done horrible terrible things only to be left utterly alone.

Grief suddenly flooded through him, washing away all reasoning. He folded into a ball, struggling not to cry. The tears burned in his eyes.

I want my mother.

That it was utterly impossible only made his eyes burn more.

He was lost in utter despair.



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