A Local Habitation

ham croissant, or egg and sausage croissant? Please don’t tell me you’re a vegetarian. I’d die of embarrassment.”

“I am definitely not a vegetarian. Can I get the egg and ham?”

“Egg and ham it is.” He tossed a waxed paper-wrapped breakfast sandwich toward me, and I caught it easily, sitting down on the edge of the bed as I did. Alex beamed. “Nice reflexes. How do you take your coffee?”

“Black is fine.”

He walked over to offer me one of the cups. “Sleep well?”

“Fairly,” I said, sipping the coffee. It was hot, strong, and about the most wonderful thing I could have wished for. I let my shoulders relax. “You?”

“It was a good night.” He walked back to the desk, picking up the second cup.

Sipping at my coffee again, I watched him. He looked perfectly comfortable. Whatever was bothering Jan, it didn’t seem to have touched him at all. “So how’re things back at ALH?”

“Oh, the usual. Mornings are essentially downtime—once the graveyard shift goes home, things slow down. I probably won’t get paged to fix anything for a few hours.”

“What is it that you do, exactly?”

“System maintenance. I’m a code monkey.” Seeing my blank expression, Alex explained, “I tell the computers what to do, and when they do something they’re not supposed to, I correct their instructions.”

“And Terrie? She does the same thing?”

“Pretty much. She works nights and I work days, but our jobs are essentially the same.” Alex quirked a smile, one eyebrow raising. “Just so we’re clear, has breakfast suddenly turned into a game of twenty questions? Because if it has, I think it’s only fair that we both play.”

“Meaning?”

“I’ll answer yours if you’ll answer mine.”

“Fair enough.” I put my coffee down next to the clock, unwrapping my sandwich. “Start from the top. January O’Leary. What do you know about her?”

“A lot, considering I’ve been working for her for about twelve years. She’s focused. I mean, scary- focused. Once she starts a project, she sticks with it until it’s finished or until she’s managed to beat every possible solution into the ground. She can get a little twitchy when she doesn’t have a handle on things, but she means well. Do you have a boyfriend?”

I nearly choked on my sandwich. Swallowing, I managed, “What?”

“I answered one for you, now you get to answer one for me. Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Not right now,” I said, cheeks starting to burn. I coughed to clear my throat and said, “Elliot. He does what around here, exactly?”

“He’s the County seneschal. He does administrative stuff, like the bills and talking Riordan’s people out of challenging us to single combat in the middle of the local computer store. He’s been with Jan for like thirty years. What’s the deal with your sidekick?”

“Quentin’s a foster from Shadowed Hills. Duke Torquill asked me to bring him along, since this is a pretty straightforward diplomatic job.”

A shadow crossed his face, there and gone before I could identify it. “Straightforward,” he said. “Right.”

“Is it going to do me any good to ask what that look was for?”

His grin was only a little bit forced. “Nope. Your question.”

“All right: April.”

Alex blinked. “April?”

“Sylvester didn’t say anything about Jan having a daughter. What’s the situation there?”

“April is . . . a special case. She’s adopted. Sort of.” Seeing my blank expression, he shrugged, and said, “She’s a Dryad.”

This time, there was no “nearly”; I literally choked on my coffee, coughing for several minutes before I managed to croak out a startled, “What?”

“She’s a Dryad.”

“How does that even work?” Most Dryads are sweet, reclusive bimbos who avoid people whenever possible, preferring the company of woodland fauna and other Dryads. They’re not the sharpest crayons in the box. Most of them probably don’t even realize the box exists.

“It’s a long story, and it happened before I got here, so it’s sort of secondhand . . .” Alex looked at my expression and continued without missing a beat, “But I guess I can try. April was an oak Dryad. She lived in a proper Grove and everything, with about a dozen others. Then some developers bulldozed the place—including her tree—to put up condos.”

“That’s horrible.”

“The Dryads thought so, too. Most of them sealed themselves away and waited to die, but not April.” Alex shook his head. “She grabbed the biggest branch she could carry and ran like hell.”

“So what happened?”

“She got lucky. She found Jan.” Alex picked up his own coffee, turning the cup in his hands. “Jan loaded her into the car and drove home. From what I understand, she paged Elliot while she was en route—they’ve been friends forever—and sent him to look for survivors. All he found was kindling. He cursed the land and came back to see what was going on.”

“And?”

“Jan was up with her all night. No one knows exactly what she did, but April lives in an information ‘tree’ inside one of the Sun servers now, and she’s doing fine.”

I paused. “You’re telling me you have a Dryad living in your computers.”

“She’s happy there. She doesn’t get sluggish in winter like most Dryads do, she doesn’t need clean water or fresh air, she’s pretty much indestructible—she’s happy.”

Jan moved a Dryad from her home tree into an inanimate object all by herself? I shook my head. “How does that work?”

“I’m not sure. You’d have to ask Jan.”

These people kept managing to get weirder. “What does April do in there?”

“She acts as the interoffice paging system.”

This time, I wasn’t trying to swallow anything. I gaped at him. “What?”

“Have you ever been on one side of a building and needed to talk to someone on the other side?”

“Yes.” That was why Shadowed Hills had a small army of pages on continuous duty.

“That’s what April does. She finds you, relays the message, and goes back to whatever she was doing before you called. She doesn’t seem to mind, and Jan doesn’t stop us, so we use her to make sure people are where they need to be.”

“You’re using the Dryad who lives in your computers as an intercom.”

“Basically, yes.”

“You’re all nuts.”

“Yes, and we’re cute, too.” Alex winked. My cheeks burned red. Now clearly amused, he walked over to sit down beside me on the bed. “I believe that makes it my question.”

“I believe you’re right.”

“Why don’t you have a boyfriend?”

“Ask the insulting questions, why don’t you?” I took a large gulp of coffee, ignoring the way it burned my throat, and shook my head. “It’s complicated. There just hasn’t been time.”

“So that means you’re available?”

I gave him a sidelong look. “I think that’s two questions.”

“Maybe.” Alex grinned. “Is that a complaint?”

“Three questions.” I could feel the heat coming off his skin. He hadn’t dropped his human disguise, and this close, I could smell the clover and coffee of his magic beneath the brisk cleanness of his shampoo. “No, I’m not seeing anyone, and yes, I might be available. After I’m off duty.”

“Good.” Leaning over, he plucked the coffee cup from my hand, set it on the floor, and kissed me.

Privacy and familiarity make a big difference where I’m concerned. I pressed myself against his chest, returning the kiss without hesitation. The state of my hair and clothing was forgotten in favor of the much more