Mad, Bad & Dangerous

continued to emit a low, rolling growl. “Can you shut him up?”

“It’s a kelf.”

“Yes, well done.” She turned back to the owner. “Look, you got big guys like that coming in here, straight off the river, ain’t seen a woman for weeks, of course they’re gonna cause trouble. You need to start standing up for your staff.”

The kelf watched her with a smile. “Giving legal advice, Kett?”

“Hardly. I’ve just had it with stupid men attacking stupid women. Do you need to be here?”

“You’re causing a breach of the peace.”

“Kett is a breach of the peace,” Bael muttered, and the kelf gave him a sharp look. He’d forgotten how acute their hearing was.

“And you are?”

“I am,” he replied.

“Bael, stop pissing around,” Kett snapped.

“It’s a kelf,” Bael said. “What the hell is it doing dressed as a garda?”

For the second time that day, the cafe went totally silent.

“She is a garda,” Kett said. “Moreover, she’s a sergeant.”

“And I could put you in the cells for that,” said the kelf.

“Just you fucking try,” Bael snarled, and Kett threw out her arm to hold him back.

The kelf continued to regard him calmly, its huge eyes unblinking. Bael swore at it and Kett’s expression grew stonier.

They avoided being arrested, mostly because the kelf seemed to be a friend of hers. Bael vaguely remembered Kett saying her father was a great friend of the kelfs, so maybe that was why.

But even after the traders had been sent on their way, the gardai had dispersed and he and Kett released, he still couldn’t get an answer out of her about the kelf. Halfway up the hill toward Nuala’s, she snapped, “Look, you’ll have to ask Lya, all right?”

“Lya?”

“Detective Sergeant Lya. The kelf.”

“But how is it-”

“She.”

“All right, she. How is she here?”

“Ask her.”

“You know I hate kelfs.”

“Yeah, but why? And don’t give me that crap about them not liking Nasc. That’s no excuse to not like them back.”

“Bloody is.”

“Bloody isn’t, Bael.” She stopped to glare at him in the middle of the street. “Look, I’ve had enough of this. I knew you were going to react like this when she turned up. This morning you told me you’re a Nasc Mage. Well, you don’t fucking act like a Mage, you act like a child. And you wonder why I don’t want to be your mate. I don’t do children.”

With that, she spun on her heel and stalked off, leaving Bael slightly bewildered, not to mention a little turned on, because Kett stalking was a damn sexy sight.

But self-preservation kicked in and he realized that saying so would probably earn him a kick somewhere sensitive, so he walked after her at a slower pace, thinking.

***

He found her in her room, packing a kitbag with a few clothes and a lot of weapons. “Going somewhere?”

“Home.”

Okay. He sat down on the bed and watched. “Kett,” he said after a while. “Listen. I know you like kelfs, and your father is this great friend of theirs, but they just don’t like Nasc. Ask your cousin. They hate us.”

“What, every kelf hates every Nasc?”

“As far as I can tell, yes. They think we’re unnatural, that we mess with the natural order of things.”

“You mess with any kind of order,” Kett grumbled.

“You know what I mean. They serve humans, but they consider themselves better than animals. And we’re halfway between the two.”

“Shouldn’t that make you their equals?”

“You wanna sit down with a kelf and debate this? They cross the street to avoid us. They deliberately ignore our requests. And you saw that kelf in Nihon, it shot me-”

“You tried to pounce on it!”

“Yeah, but tell me this, if you or your friend Miho had pounced on it, would it have shot you?”

Kett just glared at him.

“They might not be violent toward humans-”

“A kelf would never hurt a human,” Kett said, as simply as if she was stating that grass was green.

“But they’d hurt a Nasc.”

“Only if provoked. Severely provoked.”

“One of them killed my mother,” Bael said-and Kett went very still for a moment.

“Impossible,” she said. “They don’t hurt-”

“Humans, yes, I know. But my mother wasn’t human, was she? She was Nasc.”

Kett folded a shirt, unfolded and refolded it, and then threw it down on the bed and stared at him.

Of course, Albhar had come up with a new theory, but Bael was having trouble believing him. Albhar wanted the shapeshifter for his own ends; if it really had killed Bael’s mother, he’d have said so years ago.

No, it had been the kelf. Bael was sure of it.

“It was serving my parents,” he said. “I never met it. I rarely spent much time with them when they were away-and they spent a lot of time away. All I knew was that my father sent word my mother had been killed in an accident. When he came home, he told me it had been their serving kelf. I believed him-hell, I’m a Nasc, kelfs have never been exactly kind to me-but no one else did.”

Kett sat down on the bed beside him and Bael reached for her hand. How could he explain this to her? She thought he had the emotional maturity of a child. Well, maybe he did, because he’d only been a child when his father had confided this bombshell news to him. And Bael had accepted, had believed, and a bond had been forged between them. The only bond they’d ever really had.

“My father and I were never close. I told you my parents were brilliant, always haring off all over the Realm, all over all the Realms, to investigate some phenomenon or other. They were both Magi, but since I didn’t demonstrate much talent they weren’t all that interested in me. When I told my father I believed him, it was the first thing we’d ever had in common. The first time he’d taken an interest in me. He used to sit there and go on about this treacherous kelf, and how stupid humans were to believe their innocent, friendly act. And I was just a kid, I didn’t even know any kelfs, so I agreed with him because…”

“Because you were a kid who wanted his father’s approval,” Kett said dully, and Bael shrugged.

“The thing was, I didn’t even like my father all that much. I barely knew him. Or my mother. But then…I don’t know, then I started to show some magical power and then he got really interested in me and…well, it was nice to have someone pay some attention to me, you know?”

“Bael, everyone pays attention to you. You’re like an inferno.”

“Thank you,” he said, choosing to believe this meant she thought he was extremely hot, not extremely unpredictable and destructive. “I think. But listen. I know everyone else thinks kelfs are great and friendly and helpful and everything, but you go and ask my king. They just don’t like us. And if you’ve spent your life being told that kelfs don’t like you, to the extent that one of them murdered your mother, then it’s hard to see them as nice, sweet little helpmates. Especially when they don’t do anything to persuade you otherwise.”

Kett sighed.

“Look,” he said. “I’m sorry I behaved like a child. I’ll try, all right? I’ll try to be nice to them.”