staring morosely into the fireplace, and I hadn’t really noticed. The only light was provided by the gas flames licking fitfully around the fake logs.
I forced my thoughts back to the Alfar. They hadn’t been deeply involved in human affairs prior to 1963. Oh, they occasionally stole a human child or led an unwary human away into the Fey, but after the Powers went public they began spending more and more time on our side of the reality divide. So far their deep involvement had been just in the entertainment industry, but what if they decided to move into the political arena? If they could use their preternatural charisma to win parts, why not to win a seat in Congress? Or the White House?
There was something in my last thought that had me straightening and considering, but before I could quite grasp it there was a knock on my door. I jumped because I wasn’t expecting anyone. I stood, hesitated, staring at the door. The knock came again. I stood on tiptoes and looked through the peep hole. It was Qwendar. I removed the chain and opened the door.
“Pardon me for calling so late. I was hesitant to disturb you, but I wondered how your inquiries were proceeding?” He stood, holding his hat.
For a moment I just stood and blinked at him. How had he gotten my home address? And even though he wasn’t an actual party to the arbitration, this was pretty irregular. Then the slump in his shoulders and the deepened lines in his face penetrated. He looked exhausted, and I felt bad for my suspicions and rudeness. I stepped back and opened the door wider.
“Please come in. And you’re not disturbing me. I won’t go to bed for hours yet. Can I get you anything?”
“If you are going to have something.”
“I thought I’d make hot chocolate.”
“That sounds lovely.” I busied myself in the kitchen with a box of cocoa, sugar, and milk.
“You don’t use a mix?” he asked, taking a seat at the small bar that divided the kitchen area from the rest of the apartment.
“No, they’re too sweet.”
“That would never be a problem for my kind. We love all manner of confection.”
“The Alfar have a sweet tooth. Who knew?” I began to stir the milk to keep it from scorching. “I visited Human First.”
“And?”
“And … nothing. I don’t think they’re behind it. Oh, they’ll make hay over what happened with Kerrinan and Jondin, but I can’t see how they could have caused it.” I frowned.
“You seem perturbed.”
“I thought I had a train of thought that was going someplace, but…” I shrugged and mixed the chocolate and sugar paste into the milk.
“And then I disturbed you, and you lost it,” he said rather ruefully.
“It was probably just smoke.”
“Why don’t you talk about it. It might help you pursue it to a conclusion.” I started to shake my head. “Linnet, our goals are the same. We joined this arbitration so I could try to protect my people. You think my people are being targeted and you’re trying to help them. Wouldn’t it make more sense if we pooled our information? Worked together?”
I blew out a breath, pushed back my hair with my forearm. “Okay. I was just reflecting how the other Powers—vampires and werewolves—had been affecting human events from behind the scenes, and now that they’re public they’re still doing it, just making no bones about it.” I filled two mugs with the bubbling chocolate. “But the Alfar haven’t really done that, and when you did decide to enter human society your people ended up in entertainment.”
“Meaning?” he probed.
“That’s the problem, I don’t really see where this is taking me. Other than the fact that vampires and werewolves have enormous influence over law and commerce, and the Alfar are actors or singers, and yeah, art and culture have a powerful impact on society, but it takes time. Vampires and werewolves are having a lot more immediate impact. So why target you guys?” I shrugged and sipped my hot chocolate. “And werewolves marry human woman too, and Human First isn’t going ape-shit about that. Wish I’d thought to say that to Belinda Cartwright.” I shook my head. “See, I’m just nattering, and it’s going nowhere.”
Qwendar drained his mug and set it aside. “Perhaps we are both simply, what do you humans say … paranoid? Perhaps there’s nothing more here than simple jealousy.”
“Doesn’t feel right. What makes two people go suddenly nuts within weeks of each other? Can you do the Alfar whammy on each other?”
“The glamour works much better on humans. And we use it to make people like us … or love us.” He slid off the bar stool. “And vampires can mesmerize too, and blood is certainly an essential component in their existence.”
“Interesting. I just can’t see why they’d want to make the Alfar look bad.”
“It’s puzzling, yes. Well, thank you for the chocolate. I’ll leave you to your evening now.”
I walked him to the door. He took my hand. “There is something here, I just can’t quite bring it into focus.” I gave his hand a squeeze. “We’ll figure this out.”
“I believe you will.”
The arbitration resumed the next day. LeBlanc, realizing that Campos, the director, hadn’t actually helped her all that much, had a new expert witness. Unfortunately he was in New York City, which meant an AV expert had joined us in the conference room to handle the linkup. Computers had been placed strategically to create the illusion that Ashley Schultz was seated at the front of the room near to David and me, and our seats had been moved since we couldn’t look sideways at a computer screen. LeBlanc moved along the table handing out a sheaf of papers. They were emblazoned with a heading that read “Q Squared” in a logo that had overtones of an Escher drawing.
The big thirty-six-inch screen went from black to gray, then stabilized, and I saw a man in his thirties with slicked-back black hair, a pair of coolly appraising gray eyes, and an understated but very good suit. He was fiddling with a tiny microphone, trying to clip it onto his shirt collar. One of the assistants in our Park Avenue office in New York was trying to help him. I recognized one of the conference rooms.
Chuck, our AV guy, said, “Mr. Schultz, can you hear me?”
“Yes, I can hear, but I can’t see you.”
Chuck made grumbling noises that almost became words and fiddled with the console. “Yes, that’s got it,” Schultz called. Like many people using a video link he seemed to think he had to speak louder than normal and enunciate very carefully.
I looked down and referred to the witness profile that LeBlanc had provided. Ashley Schultz owned Q Squared, a marketing and research company that specialized in taking the temperature of the public about everything from television shows to computers.
“Are we ready to begin,” David asked, his tone huffy. I wondered if it was because of the intrusion of the computer equipment, never a vampire’s favorite thing. Chuck gave him a thumbs-up and adjusted his headphones. David nodded at LeBlanc. “You may begin.”
“The pages I’ve just handed out are last month’s Q scores for every Alfar actor currently working. The second section is the Q score for every human actor currently working. If you’ll take a moment to glance over the figures, my point will become immediately apparent.”
David and I looked at each other and started flipping through the pages. From the corner of my eye I could see Gabaldon doing the same. I didn’t need to be a statistician or a marketing analyst. The numbers were boldly clear. The human actors consistently scored twice as high as the Alfar actors. I remembered Campos’s words:
After having allowed us all to fully digest the numbers, LeBlanc turned back to Schultz’s image on the screen. “I hired you to run a Q rating for me, didn’t I?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And whom did you test?”
“Casting directors, producers, and directors, but only those who have actually used Alfar actors,” the
