My mother passed on when I was nineteen, before I’d discovered what I was. On my twenty-first birthday, some jackasses made a comment about her, and I was too young and too drunk to take it.
Next thing I knew, I’d laid out four of the biggest bruisers in the bar and set the last on fire with my mind for good measure. For about a week, I thought I might be some kind of superhero.
Further encounters with people like my “welcoming committee”, not to mention other fae, proved me very sharply wrong. This, again, leads us to me freezing in a Canadian winter, waiting in line for the indicated transit bus outside the Calgary Greyhound depot.
As fae go—hell, even as changelings go—I’m a pushover. I’m an Olympic-level athlete who never exercises, and I can conjure faerie fire—if I’m really angry, I can hurt someone with it. Most of the time, I’m lucky if I can light a cigarette.
Of course, even little changeling me could create a lot of havoc if I acted out in public, so everywhere we go, all changeling and fae check in at a Manor like the one the shifter had directed me to—neutral ground, a meeting place for fae. I assume other supernaturals have similar rules, and if they’re looking for one of us, they come to the Manor and speak to the Keeper.
My bus finally arrived and I got on, passing the driver some coins from the sparse collection of Canadian currency I had on me. My collection of currency was sparse in general—dropping out of college to dodge assault charges left me without much means of making ends meet, and the old fae are not generous.
The Seelie Court—the good guys, as much as any of the fae are such a thing—had helped me bury my old past and forge some kind of new identity. I was too weak a changeling to be much use to them though, so I ended up drifting from town to town, Manor to Manor, bouncing off rule after rule, true fae after changeling.
I got sick of being the bottom rung in a highly formalized ladder, so when someone mentioned that Calgary, way up north, had a tiny and informal Court, I bid my home states an unfond farewell and started catching buses.
Ending with this white-and-blue Calgary Transit vehicle whose heating could not possibly be working. There was no way it could be that cold in a vehicle with working heat.
When the bus finally disgorged me by the bar, surrounded by hotels, that my welcoming committee pointed me toward and the surrounding fae-sign told me was the Manor, I couldn’t feel my fingers, despite the heavy gloves I’d stolen somewhere in Montana.
A faded blinking neon sign announced VLTs and karaoke. Under that, a recently updated sign, barely lit by the streetlights, announced cheap draft of some beer I’d never heard of.
The wall behind that sign told me what I was looking for. Fae-sign, invisible to those without our blood, declared that this was a Manor, neutral ground, and that swift death awaited those who broke the neutrality of the Manor.
Walking in, I was almost stopped by a sudden blast of hot air. The inside was so warm, it took a minute for the noise to sink in. It was late on a Thursday evening, and the volume had been cranked on the bar’s sound system.
A blonde girl dressed in a uniform that would have meant swift death in the winter night outside flowed her way around the handful of patrons in the bar to me.
“Can I get you something?” she asked, her voice helpful. My system still in shock from the sudden blast of heat; it took me a moment to realize she was true fae—a water nymph with a bewitchingly delicate beauty to break the hearts and minds of mortal men.
Being a changeling made the effect much less bewitching, though she was still very cute.
“I am a wayfarer in need of succor,” I said softly, the ancient words sounding strange in my slow Southern drawl. “I must announce myself before the Keeper of the Manor and Lords of the Courts.”
I’d spoken quietly enough that I was sure no one other than the girl had heard me, but she quickly glanced around anyway, and then grinned at me in a way that made me regret my immunity to her kind’s power over men.
“Everyone here tonight is one of us,” she told me quietly. “I’m Tarva; have a seat and I’ll grab you a drink and Eric.”
“I don’t know if I can afford the drink,” I admitted ruefully.
“You’re on succor,” she answered. Which meant that for the first three days I was in town, all my food and lodgings would be covered by the Manor—it was a tradition I’d abused to survive down in the South. Normally, however, I’d get nothing until I’d announced myself.
“Then can you grab me a coffee, please?” I asked. After six days of bouncing from one bus to another, I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet the Keeper and Lords without some caffeine in me.
“Sure thing!” she answered with another smile. She disappeared for a moment and then returned with a steaming cup of black coffee. “Eric will be right out,” she told me.
The coffee was shit. I’d been spoiled by my three-day-long stopover in Seattle, where the Manor was an old independent coffee house that survived in the era of Starbucks by brewing fantastic coffee. Even realizing my bias, this was pretty bad coffee.
The bar was badly lit, so it took me a moment to realize just how short the man who came in from the kitchen was. In thick platform shoes, Eric
