The marines might be older than her in every possible way but there was something oddly innocent about them. They dealt with her and all the humans in the city with open curiosity, without a shred of suspicion. They trusted that their leaders would provide. Would make the correct choices. Lead with wisdom.
Olivia had had all her innocence systematically ground out of her since she was eleven. Her mother had dragged her away from everyone she knew and loved in Boston and taken her to an isolated Kansas ranch run by selfish misogynists who twisted the word of God to suit their own bigoted views of the world. When Olivia ran away and called her father, she found out her “parents” weren’t who she thought they were. Her “god-fearing” mother had gotten pregnant by a passing stranger and then refused to marry the man that she moved in with. Her dad was her father only in Olivia’s eyes. He wasn’t willing to face both the heavily armed religious bigots and the United States legal system to rescue her. Nor was his family — Pap-pap, Grammy, and Aunty June. When the police caught Olivia shoplifting food, they returned her to the Ranch without even checking on her claims that underaged girls were being forced into polygamous marriages to older men.
The second time she ran away, she put an entire universe between her and the man that she’d been forced to marry at fifteen. Getting to Elfhome had been only slightly harder than escaping the Ranch with enough money to reach Pennsylvania safely.
“Where to now?” Dagger asked.
Where indeed?
Since arriving in Pittsburgh, she had focused on her baby. It was the only reason she had sought out Forest Moss. She was worried about his well-being but even the mission to find seeds had been about her baby’s future.
Before she used her position to take over the Phipps, she had forced her way into the Cathedral of Learning to squat in one of its opulent Nationality Rooms. The Dean had come and tried to talk her into leaving. The woman had warned Olivia that being Forest Moss’s domi didn’t make her the equal of Tinker. Windwolf was the Viceroy and head of the Wind Clan in Pittsburgh.
Olivia heeded the warning, perhaps too well. She fled the Cathedral, taking refuge at the Phipps only because it seemed abandoned.
“The bad guys grabbed elf kids younger than you off the streets,” Tinker had said. “We don’t even know how many were killed because there’s nothing left of them but roasted cracked bones.”
Since becoming Forest Moss’s domi, Olivia hadn’t given a thought to any of the women that she’d called “friends.” Not her young and naïve Irish anthropology student neighbor, Aiofe, who helped her move into the empty house on Mt. Washington. Aiofe had been stranded on Elfhome after the gate fell, cut off from her family. Not the prostitute Peanut Butter Pie, who had helped Olivia learn how to turn tricks on Liberty Avenue. Peanut could be one of the missing whores. Not the other illegal immigrant women who worked at the bakery and treated Olivia like a little sister. They probably had been let go the same time that Olivia was.
It was one thing to be selfishly focused on her own needs when it was just her, alone on a new world with only the clothes on her back. It was another when she had a hidden fortune of elf gold and a platoon of royal marines at her beck and call. She had been aware that being Forest Moss’s domi changed her status. Hadn’t she squatted in the Cathedral? Faced down the Dean of the University? Marched up to the enclave and demanded to see the Wind Clan domi as an equal?
She had sought out Forest Moss for the power that being domi would give her. Tinker was using her power to protect everyone in the city, even the prostitutes. Olivia had a responsibility to do the same.
6: MONSTERS IN OUR MIDST
Jane Kryskill stared at her phone, willing it to be silent.
She was in the middle of a rare production meeting at WQED for her team’s new television show: Monsters in Our Midst. In June, they had put Pittsburgh Backyard and Garden on hiatus to focus on the new show. Outwardly, the two shows were nearly identicaclass="underline" Hal Rogers discussed how to safely deal with Pittsburgh’s dangerous monsters. The emphasis had been shifted from “natural” monsters like strangle weed to bioengineered weapons of war like the wargs. It was such a small change that most people didn’t pick up on it. The new format also helped to secretly organize their viewers into a trained militia willing to protect their city against the oni invasion. Every episode, Hal would sing the praises of some resident who came forward to help him eliminate the oni-borne threat, calling them “Hal’s Heroes.” He would gift them with a blue boonie hat. Jane’s family sold Hal’s Heroes merchandise as a way to scout for potential militia members, who were then set up in spy cells so that despite their loose recruiting method, a strike against the militia wouldn’t uncover all the members.
No one at WQED had been told about the show’s real agenda. Her coworkers might guess, but if asked they could honestly say that they knew nothing about the militia’s activities.
The deception had made Jane uneasy; she didn’t like lying to friends and coworkers. But then she found out that reporter Chloe Polanski had been working as an oni spy. She knew that Polanski had the morals of a snake but Jane hadn’t known how low the woman had sunk. Nor could she be sure that Chloe worked alone. Pittsburgh’s three television stations were logical targets of any convert activity. There was no way Jane could be sure that WQED didn’t have its own infestation of oni spies.
Jane’s phone had just vibrated with a call from her little brother, Duff, that she couldn’t answer. Duff ran the communication hub for their covert militia. He could be calling with anything as trivial as yet another glitch to her impending wedding or as important as a warning that heavily armed oni forces were spilling into the city.
If it was about her wedding, he wouldn’t call a second time. He would wait for her to return his call. If her phone rang a second time, it was a life-or-death emergency. Duff knew that nothing short of an oni offensive — not even her seemingly cursed wedding — was more vital than keeping the show on the air and running smoothly. The fate of Pittsburgh might balance on the militia that they were building behind the façade of Monsters in Our Midst. Her boss, Dmitri Vassiliev, was hands-off since MiOM had proved as successful as PB&G but he had a strict “no cell phones at meetings” policy. Even Jane could not break the rule; she was broadly skirting it just having her phone out.
Not that the “production meeting” was being very productive. Somebody had put “Jane’s wedding” on the conference room schedule board. Nor did it help that someone else — most likely multiple people — had decorated it. She suspected the entire art department had been involved — partly because of the quality of the work, but mostly because of the massive quantity of the art. The pictures had been printed onto paper and tacked beside the board with sticky putty until they covered the entire wall. There were wedding bells, churches, hearts, ribbons, roses, cupids, and an odd assortment of “romantic pairings.” There was a very swoon-worthy drawing of her fiancé, Keaweaheulu Ka’ihikapu Taggart, as a bare-chested Tarzan and a “Jane” with a yellow Victorian gown and a sniper rifle. Another had a scruffy “Aragorn” Taggart and Jane as a blond Arwen. There were a handful of other pairings that Jane didn’t recognize but they were obviously from some popular fantasy work. (The art department folks were all romantic-minded geeks.)