Night, not the perpetual velvet blackness of the space between the worlds.
Home.
He sagged with relief, hugging the small woman who had just dragged him headlong through the caves of hell. She shivered in his arms.
"Jo, you may be the sexiest woman alive, but sometimes you scare the shit out of me. I swear you'd teach a kid to swim by throwing him off the dock."
She stepped back half a pace in his arms, enough room to wipe her sleeve across her forehead. "No. But I never did have training wheels on my bike."
"What took so long?"
He felt her head shake in the gloom. "So long? It was three steps, just like Brian said."
"Next time, try shorter steps. I feel like I just chased you for half a mile." He paused and took a deep breath, calming his heart. "Cancel that. Ain't gonna be any 'next time.' I'll take the rest of my fairy tales out of books."
She seemed to be looking at him funny, as if she was having second thoughts about getting tied up with a pureblood human coward. But he'd never claimed to be anything else. He wasn't a natural warrior like Brian, handling weapons like they'd been forged to fit his hands, his eyes always weighing every scene for attack or defense, his body rock-hard from running ten miles around the walls of Maureen's castle each morning without breaking a sweat. Guitar players don't need that kind of training.
She shook her head, sniffed, and started looking around. The Old Blood had sensitive noses. Then David noticed it, as well -- something thoroughly dead.
"Oh, shit. The garbage." And dishes petrified in the sink, milk curdled in the fridge, last night's lasagna two or three weeks gone and furry. He'd walked over to Maureen's place to check with Brian, because Jo hadn't come home that night. And they'd stepped out of the world without coming back here. God only knew what mutated life-forms now lurked in the potato salad.
Jo groped for the light switch and flipped it on. David blinked like an owl at the sudden glare, catching flashes of the room as his eyes adjusted. Something didn't look right, but he couldn't pin it down.
Dishes waited in the drainer, clean. The garbage pail was empty, with a fresh liner. Jo stepped over to the refrigerator and swung it open. No milk, no meat, no fresh vegetables or cheese, just a few unopened cans of soda and the like. Jo shut the door and stood staring at the answering machine. The lid was up and the tape cassette gone. She pulled out the drawer underneath the phone, fumbled for her emergency cash envelope, and checked it. It looked full.
"Damnedest burglars I've ever seen, washing dishes and leaving the money."
She stared at the phone for a moment and stood like a statue, plotting her next move. That girl could be ice if she wanted to, just like the Sidhe, no reaction or a flip comment where a sane person would dash around in panic. David headed for the apartment door, to check with the Mendozas and use their phone.
Yellow plastic streamers barred the door, "Police Line" in reversed letters in the hall light. "Jo . . ."
He felt her behind his shoulder, tallying up the evidence like a cyborg. "How long have we been gone?"
Brigadoon. Rip Van Winkle. Spend a night in Faerie and find a lifetime has passed when you return.
David clenched his fist and gnawed on a knuckle, staring at the door. A glued paper seal had joined the frame to the metal door, someone's signature now split by a rip through the middle. Proof the door had been opened, tampering with evidence. Jo studied it, calmly adding another tick-mark to her checklist.
She's inhuman. He shuddered, realizing that the phrase meant just what it said.
She nodded, computer run complete. "Okay, we need some excuse for opening the door, some way to toss off a few weeks without a story."
She glanced up. The stairwell light flashed blue and went dark, filament burned out. She flipped the kitchen light off, plunging them back into night. Enough light filtered up from the second floor so that David could see her climbing through the tape, leaving it in place. He followed her, numb, and pulled the door closed behind him.
She ticked off one finger on her right hand. "First thing we do, we buy a pint of booze and split it. We're drunk. Dark hall, drunk, we didn't notice the tape and seal in time. No criminal intent, no crime."
Second finger. "We've been drunk or stoned for weeks, no idea how long. Off on a trip with Brian and Mo, celebrating. They're engaged, we're engaged, big party, got crazy and took it on the road -- out west, down south, Canada, don't have a clue where and when, you and I tell different stories, no problem."
Third finger. "They've just dropped us off, Brian drove away, no idea where they're going. I've got to get back to my job, you've got gigs to play. Gonna be a hell of a hangover."
* * *
The chairs hurt. David couldn't recall anyone mentioning that in the detective movies, but his ass said that the chair had been designed to be uncomfortable. And they weren't even "under interrogation," just sitting in a cluttered detective's office across the government-issue gray steel desk from a polite cop. Everyone had been polite, and he and Jo were still together rather than split apart to see if their stories matched. He wondered how long that would last.
He blinked and forced his eyes to focus. "Hey, what's this about, anyway?"
The man in blue wrinkled his nose with disgust. The collar tabs called him a sergeant, square body with a bit of a donut belly and buzz-cut brown hair and medium-dark skin, maybe Naskeag or Black genes in there somewhere.
David blinked again and focused on the nametag, working his way through half a
