“This is Bingo’s little brother,” Tommy said to make clear how the boy was related to him. “Spot.”
Roach blinked, obviously still thrown off-balance.
Roach’s little brother, Andy was a simpler man. “We’ve got a puppy named Spot.” He came to pet Spot’s head as if the boy was a dog. “He’s a good boy!”
Tommy curled his fist, controlling the urge to punch the teenager. It might be better for Andy to see Spot as a dog instead of a human being as Andy wouldn’t hurt a dog.
Roach squinted, “So Bingo and him aren’t…are?”
“Our mothers are human.” Tommy didn’t want to be having this conversation but it had to take place sooner or later if Spot and the others were going to be free to leave the warren. “Our mothers weren’t given a choice in cooperating with the oni. We’ve thrown in with Oilcan — now that he’s an elf. My family — all of it — are Oilcan’s Beholden.”
Tommy hated the word but it was a needed shield for Spot — especially if Tommy was going to be leaving the boy alone at the enclave. Maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe he should just take Spot with him.
“This has been a weird summer.” Roach indicated the tall stranger beside him. “We’re helping out my cousin.”
His cousin looked like an elf. Tall. Powerfully built. Long blond hair. Decked out in elf-made clothes. He had large bandage on his left temple and a vivid bruise on his cheek.
“Geoffrey Kryskill.” Roach’s cousin offered his name along with his hand. “I’ve heard how you went out and found Jewel Tear and then saved Oilcan’s life. Good work.”
It was a firm shake with a steady look that said, “I respect you.” It was an odd, unfamiliar feeling, although not completely hateful. The question was: how the hell did Kryskill know when Roach was looking startled at the news? Tommy would have expected Team Tinker to be up to date on the latest news regarding their best riders.
“Geoffrey owns Gryffin Doors,” Roach motioned to two big slabs of ironwood on the back of his truck. “Oilcan paid Geoff to do front and back gates for his enclave. Oilcan needed something out of wood because of…” Roach waved his hand toward the stone walls enclosing the enclave. The walls weren’t there when lesser bloods disguised as humans squatted in the building. “…magic or whatever that his Grandpa Forge is doing.”
“The enclaves have a defensive barrier much like the sekasha personal shields,” Geoffrey said. “Forge is building the walls with the spells between the layers of stone. I’m going to hang out after we get the gates up and see what I can learn.”
Ironwood needed spells and magically sharpened tools to work with. Some of the true-blood oni were carpenters who knew how to do it but Tommy hadn’t realized that any of the humans had learned the trick. It meant that Geoffrey was trusted by the elves, which would explain the clothes and the long hair.
Blue Sky Montana came roaring up on a hoverbike. He slid to a stop beside Tommy’s bike. Spot brightened and waved to the half-elf.
“Hey, Spot!” Blue Sky bounded off his bike. He picked the smaller boy up and swung him around, making Spot laugh.
Blue Sky might ride for Team Big Sky but Team Tinker welcomed him as if he was their rider. There was full minute as the various people greeted the half-elf.
There was a younger brother to Geoffrey by the name of Guy, who seemed to be around Blue Sky’s and Andy’s age. The three seemed to be fast friends. Thus it wasn’t surprising that the boy knew Geoffrey too.
“What happened?” Blue Sky pointed to the bandage on Geoffrey’s temple.
“Oh, some idiots showed up at my place. They’d heard that I knew some magic. For some insane reason, they thought if I just put my mind to it, I could make a gate for them.”
“A gate?” Blue Sky pointed at the massive piece of wood on Roach’s truck and then spread his arms to indicate something bigger. “Or a gate?”
Geoffrey waved toward the sky where the orbital hyperphase gate used to be. “A world gate, only on the ground. I told them that I only know a handful of spells related to working with wood. That didn’t seem to register. They seemed like they weren’t going to take no for an answer. One of them tried to coldcock me.”
“Are you okay?” Blue Sky asked.
Geoffrey waved off the concern. “Yeah, I’m fine. He punched like a five-year-old. My sister hits harder. He had a ring on, though, and did a number on my face. My mom is pissed. We’ve got a wedding next weekend and I’m still going to be healing.”
“Who were they?” Tommy asked. “Disguised oni?”
“No. At least, I don’t think so. They sounded like they were from Stateside. I pulled a gun, which they weren’t expecting, scared them off. I was bleeding like a stuck pig, so Rebecca stayed with me instead of going after them.”
“Rebecca?” Roach asked.
“That’s me!” a young tengu girl chirped, waving her hand. “Rebecca Brotman.”
Tommy eyed the girl, who looked all of eighteen. Her effortlessly fashionable-looking clothes, the cut of her hair, and the fact that her purple fingernail polish matched her lipstick shade indicated that she was a new arrival to Elfhome. He hadn’t dealt much with the tengu but he knew enough to recognize what his father failed to: Rebecca was one of the special scary tengu warriors — the yamabushi—carefully disguised to be a normal American from Stateside where the most Asian thing about her was her eyes.
The money question was: Why was the yamabushi babysitting Geoffrey Kryskill?
Then Jewel Tear drifted into their midst and all questions vanished out of Tommy’s brain.
Tinker had blasted Ginger Wine’s enclave into smoldering bits. One of her flame strikes had taken out all of Jewel Tear’s gowns made in the Easternlands. Her household fled Pittsburgh, apparently considering Jewel Tear “as good as dead.” They took with them all that they had brought to Pittsburgh, apparently considering it jointly owned and theirs by being survivors of the oni attack.
Tommy had rescued Jewel Tear from the oni, but when he delivered her to Prince True Flame, she learned that she had nothing but virgin forest left to her name. The Wind Clan enclaves were overflowing with the incoming Harbingers. They directed her to Sacred Heart, which had been standing empty. She picked out a room on the top floor, settled in, and waited for Oilcan’s return. Tommy wasn’t sure what terms the two had agreed on. One of Oilcan’s kids had made clothes for Jewel Tear to replace her lost wardrobe. Today, she wore a yellow sundress that made the most of her dark skin, long legs, and full breasts. The thin straps made Tommy want to slide them down off her shoulders.
The female was made of steel. She barely glanced at Tommy or Spot, focusing instead on Blue Sky. One would never know by looking at her that, in the privacy of her room, she was like a cat in heat. “Are these the gates that we are waiting on?”
While she talked, Jewel Tear petted Spot on the head in a seemingly absentminded manner. The boy leaned into the attention the way Tommy wished he could. One of the Stone Clan sekasha, though, was standing nearby with “on duty” attention on the domana female. Jewel Tear had made it clear that it would be dangerous to be anything but cold to each other in public.
Tommy struggled not to stare at her. He pretended to be looking at Spot who leaned into her softness. During her capture, the oni had caught hold of Jewel Tear’s braid and trapped her even as they killed her people. After Tommy rescued her, in a fit of grief and rage she had hacked off her long dark-brown hair. The haphazard haircut, the countless small cuts, and the dark bruises that covered her body had given her a broken, manic look. Someone had neatened her butchered locks since Tommy had seen her last; she sported a cute pixie haircut that looked intentional. The bruises were fading to shades of yellow. She looked less broken and that made him happy.