Chapter 1
Bo could see that Dyson was restless. Hale had been unreachable all this Monday from mid-morning onwards and he'd had to cover for him at work. Something must be going on with the Ash to keep a member of his personal guard incommunicado like this. Dyson never liked being out of the loop. Fidgeting, he bumped against Bo's leg. She squeezed his arm in comfort before he could apologize. Almost reflexively her hand drifted towards her phone before she remembered exactly who the only other person she might call to ask about Hale's absence was. She flinched, the movement bringing her hand back to the table top.
A small group of Light fae came into the Dal, looking agitated, and he cocked an ear to eavesdrop.
"They work at the Light compound. Something's got them stirred up." he murmured. "That's probably what Hale's involved with. People there are being questioned."
An hour later, Hale trudged in, his shoulders drooping, face grim. He ignored them, making his way instead to the people from the compound. He must have said something to them in a very low voice, because they were all nodding quickly and Dyson was shaking his head at Kenzi's questioning look: he hadn't been able to catch what was said. One by one the people at that table started to leave, looking nervous. Hale stood back to let them pass. He was following the last of them to the door when Dyson intercepted him.
As Bo watched, Hale shook his head firmly to whatever Dyson was saying. The Siren's usual good humour was totally absent and his posture tight with tension.
At length Hale turned and left and Dyson came back, a line between his brows.
"He says he can't talk," he reported briefly, on a frustrated exhale.
"I'll call Lauren," Bo offered reluctantly. She could keep the conversation to the questions she had, surely. They wouldn't have to talk about anything else.
Dyson shook his head. "You don't have to do that, Bo. I'll find out what's going on sooner or later."
"It's OK. The worst that'll happen is that she can't or won't tell us anything. We won't be any worse off."
Dyson opened his mouth, presumably to protest, but Bo had already pressed the call button and had the phone to her ear.
She got a canned voice telling her the number was out of service and her stomach dropped.
...
Bo stared down at the Yale sweatshirt in her hands numbly. It was the day after her abortive call. She'd found out why Lauren's number was not in service and she didn't want to believe it.
On Monday morning, carbonized human remains had been found in a restricted room in the Light labs. Fragments of bone and teeth. Fragments which matched Lauren's genetic profile and dental records.
Hale had finally been cleared to talk to them about it this morning. Bo had felt the numbness begin as he spoke. She must have looked ill or faint because she vaguely remembered Dyson putting an arm round her.
The numbness had stayed through her surprisingly calm petition to Ash to be given Lauren's personal effects and her ashes. The Ash had surveyed her pale set face expressionlessly for a long time, then simply nodded at her and deputed Hale to assist her.
The numbness had stayed as she'd followed Hale through the compound to the labs. He'd led her not to Lauren's lab but down to a small windowless room in the basement. When he switched the light on, Bo blinked.
"What is that, Hale?" she'd asked hoarsely.
"It's a stasis pod," Hale said tersely. "There was a human female in it. She was in a coma. The Ash told me yesterday that Lauren had been trying to find a remedy for her condition."
"How ... how long for? And what's ... happened to her?" Bo was hit with a sense of vertigo.
"The Ash didn't say but the pod's instrument panel shows it's been continuously active for five years. It was only switched off after we found ... after investigations commenced. But the woman was gone. We're looking for her." He paused for moment. "Anyway, you've been given Lauren's personal effects. They include these," he indicated a small box on the table. Bo opened it. Books. Not scientific texts. Nothing about fae. Listlessly Bo sifted through a couple of them. Terry Pratchett, Mary Renault, David Brin. Bo wasn't a reader. She didn't recognise them.
Hale said quietly, "I think she read them aloud to the patient. ... The rest of her personal effects are in her apartment. I'll take you there now. Want me to carry the box?"
Bo clutched it to her. "No need, it isn't heavy."
And now she was here, in Lauren's apartment for the first and last time.
Hale had let her in and said, "The furniture, appliances, utensils and lab equipment belong to the Ash. The crime scene techs have come and gone so you're free to take everything else. I'll leave you to look through the place. I'm going to see to having packing cartons sent up."
And now here she was, cartons all around her, lingering over every article that told her poignantly of too many things she hadn't known about the doctor. Degree certificates, DVDs of movies and TV shows Lauren must have liked, a box containing a padded case of medals, books with Lauren's handwriting in the margins, clothes she remembered or imagined Lauren wearing, all had been tenderly stowed. The sweatshirt she was holding had been on the bed. It must have been one of the last things Lauren had worn. It still smelled like her.
Bo tucked it against her chest and zipped her jacket up over it. There was a rap on the front door and Bo went down to find Hale standing there looking sadly at the cartons.
After the last of them had been squeezed into Bo's car, she said, "Hale, the woman in the pod, what was her name?"
Hale took out an old fashioned honest-to-god paper notebook and flipped through it. "Nadia Andreou."
"What else can you tell me, Hale?"
He put the notebook away, took of his hat and rubbed his head. "We don't know a lot, Bo. One of the nurses found the ... heap of ashes next to the stasis pod on Monday morning because the door to Nadia's room was open, which wasn't normal for a restricted access room. That's when we were called in to investigate. We found that the lab security cameras were fed a loop sequence starting on Sunday afternoon. On Sundays, security has a skeleton staff and they're mainly around the Ash's offices, not the lab. Lauren's key card swiped into the lab at about 11 in the morning. There are signs of forced entry through one of the basement windows that stretches up to ground level but the guards on duty weren't anywhere near it. None of them saw or heard anything untoward all day. We found nothing unusual in Lauren's apartment. The door guard on duty there on Sunday saw her leave the building mid-morning wearing sweats and showing no sign that she was under duress. But we've found an incursion into the Ash's database, possibly but not necessarily from the mainframe."
"What's your theory?"
"It looks like intruders broke into the lab on Sunday afternoon through the basement window and ran into Lauren reading to Nadia or working on a cure for her. One of them must have been a fire fae like Serena. She was actually on duty herself at the Ash's offices so she's accounted for. But there are others and not all of them are Light. The intruders must either have gone to the mainframe or used one of the terminals of the senior administrators to get access to the database. We're checking those terminals now."
"What was the database for?"
"Financial information. The lab computers don't have access to it." He heaved a sigh. "We can't explain why Nadia's gone, though, so our theory could be completely wrong. Maybe Lauren assisted the intruders because they promised to get Nadia away and was silenced to stymie the investigation. Maybe she was completely innocent and the intruders wanted Nadia for some reason. We don't know enough yet to say."
Bo frowned. "Why isn't Dyson involved in the investigation?"
Hale shook his head. "Too much fae business to involve human law enforcement. Dyson can't take off from his job for however long this investigation will take. Neither can I. A team from the Ash's personal guard has been assigned and the investigation's classified. Even I won't have access to the file now."
Chapter 2
When Bo thought of the wasted weeks during which she had refused to see or speak to Lauren, she wanted to scream. A huge ball of guilt settled in her stomach when she thought of how she had never in any way repaid the Light doctor for the risks she had taken again and again to help an unaligned succubus acquire control over her feeding. Gratitude alone should have granted Lauren the chance to defend her actions, not to mention common decency and justice. Bo ought not to have ignored Lauren's attempts to explain herself. She had been too indulgent of herself and her natural stubbornness. Now, unable to make reparations, regret tasted like bile in her throat.
She put the boxes with Lauren's things carefully in her room. She started poring jealously over their contents again. When she got to the box of medals, the numbness stopped and the tears started. She cried alone in her room almost violently for a long time. Hours later, when Kenzi attempted to speak to her, she said she needed to be alone for a while and wouldn't talk. She fell asleep, exhausted, among the boxes, Lauren's sweatshirt crushed against her chest.
For several days the tears were never far away and Bo stayed home, emerging only at night to drive downtown to feed from strangers for a hour or so.. She received from the Ash's messenger a ceramic urn with the pitiful tiny pile of Lauren's ashes and installed it in a padded case under her bed. She never fed in her room again.
Even Dyson was not invited to her bedroom any more. When she fed from him, she went to his apartment.
He tried to be supportive, but the strength of her distress made him uneasy and her refusal to be comforted made him resentful. After all, Lauren had not been what Kenzi was, virtually family. In fact, Bo had not seen or talked to Lauren for weeks before that night at the Dal, too hurt and resentful after their single intimate encounter. Yet Bo was mourning more like a bereft spouse than just a friend. It could not possibly have escaped Dyson's notice that he was insufficient consolation for this loss.
...
Eventually Bo apologized handsomely to Kenzi for having been so difficult to live with and started working again. She was as brave, principled and persistent as before. If she lacked the joie de vivre that characterized her previous self, no one commented. But Kenzi knew that Bo's pillowcases were still occasionally damp on laundry day, and never dared to mention Lauren's name until one day, when she tentatively asked Bo if she would go over Lauren's things with her and talk about what she'd discovered from them about the lost doctor. They spent a long, tearful, cathartic afternoon doing this and Bo seemed better after that.
Chapter 3
Not long afterwards Bo found her mother and discovered that Trick and Dyson had known who she was all along and kept it from her. It was to protect her, they said.
How did it constitute protection for Bo not to know the identity of someone they thought was dangerous when she might otherwise have met her forewarned and prepared? Bo felt utterly betrayed and disillusioned and her heart was filled with resentment and indignation towards them.
She took the night to think things through so she might not make the same mistake as she had with Lauren. In the end she decided that Dyson had obtained sexual gratification from her with such continuous and longterm duplicity that it put that one single instance with Lauren in the shade. She found it no longer mattered to her whether he had real feelings for her. The opportunity to develop those feelings had after all been obtained at least in part by the same duplicity.
She broke up with him the next day with one short sharp sentence. If that caused him pain ... well, the engineer hoist on his own petard: she could not bring herself to care. His apologies and attempt to explain that he had wanted to tell her but had been forbidden by Trick only increased her bitterness, carrying as they did the implication of more secrets being kept from her: Trick had a hold over Dyson that neither were willing to explain.
Her mother disappeared after sending a suicide bomber to the Light elders. The resulting explosion put the Ash into a coma, necessitating the appointment of a new Ash.
Bo resumed a grudgingly civil interaction with Trick and Dyson but, reeling from her disappointment in them and no longer able to trust their judgement, she started taking more human cases to avoid working with Dyson. These also had the benefit of being safer for Kenzi. Their success with these cases, assisted as they were by Bo's powers of persuasion, brought them more work, which even took them out of town to different cities in Canada.
It was therefore with an unwelcoming attitude that Bo received a little girl who called herself the Nain Rouge and who foretold that Bo would be front and centre in the next great danger that would threaten the fae.
Trick had shadows in his eyes these days which only deepened when Bo told him of this visitation, and he showed Bo a map on which he had been marking the incidence of inexplicable violence among fae all over the colony recently. Eventually he gathered together Dyson, Hale, Bo, Kenzi and, surprisingly, the new Ash and confided his belief that the danger was the last surviving Garuda, a terrible creature which fed on rage and fear. The pattern of violence was how Garudas had signaled their presence in the days of constant war among the fae, before peace had destroyed them.
The Ash, an annoyingly suave man named Lachlan, confirmed this independently. He was the last of the Naga, who were specialized defenders against Garuda. He said that the Nain Rouge had appeared to him as well and confirmed that Bo would lead the fae against the Garuda.
She was very young and new to the fae world. She was a succubus, made for pleasure, not war. She had no stomach to be a leader, particularly in battle. She had also been suffering from general lassitude and depression for weeks now and was less inclined than ever before to involve herself in the political machinations necessary to recruit support for the fight, activities from which her unaligned status had hitherto preserved her.
No, Bo was definitely Not Pleased with the Nain Rouge's message.