“A little help, if you don’t mind?”

Terk sighed, then poofed out of my arms. A second later, I heard another poof in the kitchen.

“Beer?” Anyan asked me as everyone walked next door into the living room. I nodded, pulling a few brown strands of hair off my black T-shirt.

After Anyan, Cappie, Carl, and I were settled with drinks, we got down to business.

“First of all, Jane, welcome to Borealis,” Carl said. “I know that after what happened to your mother, you probably won’t ever want to return. But Borealis is, and always has been, a safe place for halflings, and those purebloods who, like me, want to live more… democratically.”

I knew Capitola was a halfling, according to Anyan, but except for that sense of age around Carl, I wouldn’t have been able to guess who her supernatural parent was. They both appeared entirely human, and they were both aged in a way that humans aged. Supes didn’t grow old like humans; rather, they looked young but worn out. And although Carl was admitting he was both supernatural and a pureblood, I still couldn’t feel any power coming off him. Now that I thought about it, in fact, while I could feel power throughout the house, I recognized that power as Terk’s.

Capitola was watching her father with a resigned expression that brightened when she realized I was peering at her. She smiled at me, raising her beer in a salute that I returned.

“Are all the Borderlands so friendly?” I asked curiously after sipping my beer.

Carl frowned. “In a word, no. The northern suburbs are ruled by powerful halflings who do things Mafia-style. Chicago is a free-for-all of competing gangs. Borealis, however, has a powerful patron who likes to keep his surroundings peaceful.”

“Patron?” I asked.

“The Grim,” Capitola said, waving her fingers and making an “ooooooh” noise as if she were telling a ghost story.

Carl made a face at his daughter. “Not the Grim, just Grim. His name is Grimauld. He’s… a force.”

Anyan grunted next to me. It was the grunt that meant, “You’re telling me.”

“He doesn’t interfere with things, ever. But if anyone comes in, trying to make an interference, they get the Grim,” Cappie explained.

“What is he?” I asked, my mind filled with images of a killer fog, like in Stephen King’s novel. I am from Maine, after all.

“Nobody knows, except for Anyan,” Cappie answered. “And he won’t squeal.”

I looked at the barghest and he shrugged. “Grim keeps to himself,” was all he said, meaning that if that’s how Grim wanted it, Anyan wasn’t going to ruin things for him.

“Why didn’t he stop the laboratory if he’s so strong?”

“I don’t know,” Carl replied. “I don’t think he knew about it. Like I said, he doesn’t interfere with things. But something like that… I can’t believe he’d ignore it.”

“Could he have been running the labs?” I asked. It seemed an obvious question.

“Not Grim. No way,” was Anyan’s only response. I didn’t bother to ask Anyan if he was sure. He only ever said something if he was sure.

“But I’m sure you’d have put together what I have,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “If purebloods can’t enter Borealis without you knowing, then whoever was running those labs had to be other halflings. Even if Jarl was paying them, there had to be halflings on the ground.”

Carl sighed and took a swig of his beer. Capitola nodded sadly.

“That’s why they asked me to help, Jane. And why, when we found the bodies of the purebloods, they allowed me to contact Orin and Morrigan.” Anyan’s voice was gentle and I realized he was afraid I’d tar his friends with our enemy’s dirty brush. He obviously cared for Capitola and her family a great deal, and he hated the idea that I would associate them, and their city, with my mother’s death.

“This is big, and people are dying,” Carl confirmed. “We can’t let our feelings for the Alfar get in the way of the facts. Or we’re monsters just like they are.”

“True dat!” Shar yelled from the kitchen area, where she was folding napkins into complicated shapes. Moo, slicing cucumbers at the counter, shook her head at her fellow halfling as if wondering when Shar had killed her last brain cell. Julian stood grating a carrot next to Moo, looking as at-home and comfortable as I’d ever seen him.

“Anyway,” Carl said, giving his daughter’s friends an indulgent smile. “We have more mysteries here than we can handle. Who’s running these labs? How were they recruited? Who do they work for? And it was bad enough when halflings were the victims, but how are they getting purebloods into the Territory? The only way for that to happen is to completely knock out their powers. There hasn’t been an Alfar with that kind of ability in thousands of years, and he was killed by his own people when they realized what he could do.

“So we need help. These people need to be shut down, and we can’t do it alone. And, as much as we hate bringing anyone associated with the Alfar into our lands, we’ll do what needs to be done.”

I set my beer down, blinking back tears. For the first time since I’d gotten to Borealis, I stopped thinking only of myself and thought about everything these people had done for me and for my mother, neither of whom they’d ever known.

“Thank you so much for letting us in,” I said. “You’re taking so many risks, when you don’t have to. Thank you.”

Anyan’s hand was warm and large on the small of my back, and a box of tissues apparated with a poof next to my elbow. I blew my nose as Carl made soothing noises.

“No, hon, our women are dying, too. We had to do something. These murders should never have happened. But we’re going to find out who did it.”

Capitola nodded fiercely at her father’s words, then nodded at me. Again, I felt a wave of confidence shoot through me. We would find out who did this and we would bring them to justice.

Now if only they would fucking feed me, my stomach piped up, just as Terk popped in, right in front of us. He was wearing a tiny chef’s hat and apron, and he was carrying a little wooden rolling pin. I giggled at the sight.

Terk offered me one of his six little hands, while prodding at the barghest’s knee with his rolling pin. I laughed, taking the tiny hand in mine. Just like that, I heard a tremendous cracking noise, everything went black, then we popped the short distance into the kitchen. My head swam as I reeled, only to be caught by cool, dark hands.

“Little brownie,” Moo chastised, “stop apparating people without warning. Are you all right, Jane?”

Moo’s beautiful dark eyes met mine, and I saw concern behind her Alfar calm. I thought of her long life and wondered.

What an incredible, dreadful story she must have, I thought as my world slowly stopped spinning.

“Yes, thanks,” I said after another few seconds. “That was… intense.”

“The first time he apparated Moo she puked all over herself. It was so gross,” Shar said as she plopped down at the round kitchen table that had been extended to fit us all.

I took a seat beside the succubus-halfling, and Moo sat to my right, with Julian next to the Alfar-halfling. Cappie sat next to Julian, scrunching his shoulders affectionately in her hands before sitting down, with Anyan next to her. Carl placed a lovely-looking salad and a cutting board that held two warmed loaves of soda bread in the middle of the table, and was about to sit down next to Anyan when he snapped his fingers and headed back into the kitchen.

Please tell me there’s butter and honey, my stomach prayed as I eyed the soda bread covetously, just as Carl appeared with a dish of butter and a plastic teddy bear full of honey.

Score!

A moment later, Paige walked over and placed a bubbling Pyrex dish full of shepherd’s pie on the trivet that sat in the center of the table.

She took a seat next to her husband, placing her napkin in her lap. She touched his hand gently with her own and gave him a look of such tender affection, I felt my own heart flutter in response.

I thought of my own father and mother, and everything they’d had for such a brief moment in time. And I thought about how any chance for their reunion was over now.

My mother was dead.

But I was alive, and these kind people had invited me into their home. They’d comforted me and prepared a delicious meal.

So I forced down my emotions, and when Shar nudged me with the salad bowl I held it while she filled her own plate, then passed it to to my right so Moo could do the same.

I’d get through dinner. I could figure out how to get through the rest of my life sometime after dessert.

“Will you be totally offended if I undo my pants?”

Anyan laughed. “Nope, have at it, Jane. With the way you ate, I’m surprised you didn’t just bust out of them at the table.”

We were driving back to the hotel, just the barghest and me. Julian had stayed behind with the girls. If I hadn’t known his sexual preferences, I’d have high-fived him. As it was, I didn’t know what scheme he was cooking up, but I sincerely hoped it was a good one. In the meantime, I might have felt a bit squishy on the inside about being alone with Anyan, but my insides were too full of shepherd’s pie to go squishy at anything, unfortunately.