Usagi took a deep breath, eyes closed. “God, sorry, it’s been twelve years and it still pisses me off. I finally applied to the University of Pittsburgh and moved an entire planet away from him. I had plans of doing this—” She waved her hand to take in the kitchen and the hundreds of canning jars. “But at the other end of it, I’d be the one living on Earth, calling the shots. In my senior year, he’d gotten my address and started to send me letters. He had plans. Plans that included me. And I just snapped—I was pregnant within a month.”
“Wow,” Widget breathed. “That sucks.”
Law nodded to acknowledge the unfairness of it. Most people were good, wonderful people that would give you anything you needed—time, money, patience. There were, however, one or two people who should be just taken out and shot.
Usagi was probably right for the wrong reasons. If the male that drove Bare Snow truly was an elf pretending to be a human, then neither the police nor the EIA could do anything about it. Even if he was a human (and Bare Snow was mistaken about the accent) he actually hadn’t broken any laws. Yet. The man definitely planned something hinky but the police would have their hands tied until someone was hurt or dead.
Someone like Bare Snow.
Law had built, packed, sealed, and stacked thirty boxes when Widget blew out a loud raspberry.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Law said.
“BAA to BAZ was assigned to the EIA!” Widget cried.
“What the hell?” Law said. “The EIA doesn’t have that many vehicles.”
“The range numbers are reserved.” Widget tapped on her tablet and shook her head. “Basically it lets the EIA generate random plates to put on their cars instead having to go to the city for plates. Kind of independent but cooperative.”
Law nodded. “Same old. Same old.” The city and the EIA were two huge cog-turning mechanisms, dependent on each other while trying to stay totally separate. The city was a territory of the United States with elected officials and a nonmilitary police force. It maintained the infrastructure of Pittsburgh: the roads, the water, the sewage and the like. The EIA was a United Nations entity created to oversee humanity’s presence on an alien world at the edge of Queen Soulful Ember’s domain. It controlled access entering and leaving Elfhome and had the final word on everything related to the elves.
Widget frowned at her tablet. “It seems as if the license plate BAD-0001 is on a white Ford Explorer. It’s labeled UPU. What the hell is that?”
“Unmarked, private use,” Usagi said. “Most of the ‘official’ EIA vehicles are white with ‘U.N.’ painted on the hood and sides. But the staff is from all over the world and they occasionally need access to cars for personal activities like shopping. The EIA has a motor pool of unmarked cars for private use. UPU. I could have used one while I interned with the EIA but I never had the need for a car.”
“So anyone that works for the EIA has access to them?” Law asked.
“Yes,” Usagi said. “You’re looking at about five hundred possible males. He would have had to sign for the car, so there’s a paper trail.”
“Can you find out who used that car?” Law asked Widget.
Widget blew another raspberry. “The city of Pittsburgh has an ancient system. It’s easy as pie to get in—actually it’s easier than making pie, if you ask me. Rolling pastry is hard! EIA’s systems were just updated two years ago with more firewalls than God. I can’t get into their system.”
“Oh my God, who is she?” Usagi pointed at the doorway. “She’s gorgeous!”
Bare Snow peered into the kitchen with curious eyes. A collection of little hands and the tops of heads gathered on the sill of the closed half-door.
“Tell her! Tell her!” the children whispered in Elvish.
Clearly uncertain about her mission, Bare Snow spilled out a long discussion in High Elvish, sprinkled with rote-learned English phrases of “peanut butter” and “chocolate milk” and “I’m not asking. I’m telling.”
Usagi covered her mouth to keep in a surprised laugh. “That is not funny,” she finally said loudly to the children. She glanced at the kitchen clock. “Oh! I didn’t realize how late it was.” With her back to the door, she grinned hugely. “I didn’t feed them dinner but they know not to get underfoot when I’m working on a deadline.”
With practiced ease, Usagi smeared scoops of peanut butter and jam onto slices of homemade bread, squishing them together, and poured glasses of milk, stirring in chocolate syrup, and then lowered each plate and glass down over the other side of the door to a child. “Bring me your dirty plates. Blade and Thunder, you’ll have to take sandwiches up to your mothers when you’re done eating.”
While the children were given their dinner, Bare Snow continued to ask questions. A blush started to creep up Usagi’s face even as she tried to control giggles.
“Poor thing. She wants to know where we got all the baby elves—did we steal them or just find them? Why do we have weasels running loose? Why is there a woman upstairs in a bucket of water, screaming? And why doesn’t anyone seem worried about that?”
“Bucket of water?”
The giggles won. “It’s a birthing pool! Only it’s tiny compared to what elves consider a proper tub.” Usagi put plates and glasses in front of Law and Bare Snow. “Here, you probably haven’t eaten either.”
The fire berry jam was like sweet fireworks against the rich creaminess of the peanut butter.
Bare Snow took a tentative bite of the sandwich and her eyes went wide. “Mmmm!” She took another bite, much bigger, swaying back and forth. “Mmmmm.”
Usagi explained that Clover was having a baby. She added that all the children were half-elf and had been born to human mothers in the same way. This triggered dozens of questions that Law never had the courage to ask. It amazed her that Usagi actually answered them all.
The father of both Moon Rabbit and Shield was a laedin-caste warrior who belonged to the viceroy’s household and only visited Pittsburgh occasionally. Usagi had deliberately chosen a male that wouldn’t be able to keep close watch on her. After having Moon Rabbit, Usagi decided that her daughter should have a sibling, so she’d never be alone. Usagi also wanted her children to be full siblings, so she’d sought the same male out a second time. She’d been afraid that he’d only been with her the first time out of curiosity and wouldn’t want a reunion. The male, however, seemed eager to be with her again.
Bare Snow didn’t seem surprised. “I’d heard that humans are like peanut butter, but I didn’t understand until now.”
Law had always wondered what the male elves saw in human females. Not to knock Usagi and her housemates, but none of them came close to Bare Snow’s beauty. The elf was stunningly beautiful, the way that the sky was always perfect even when filled with rolling storm clouds. Humans, like Law, were like thistles. She supposed some people could like scruffy, but why roll in the weeds when you could have the sky?
Then again, Law did have a pet porcupine.
“I am Ground Bare in Winter as Killing Snow Falls in Wind. Please, call me Bare Snow.” She used the English words instead of the Elvish. “I like that name better. I came to Pittsburgh hoping to find a place to belong. I thought that I would be happy with anyone that offered to take a pale shadow of myself. The wind. The ground bare in winter. Now I know that I would be miserable unless I was wanted for all of me.”