"Well, it's about time you got back," Hollis said in mock-gruff tones as I set my bag down by the door and slipped out of my coat, shaking off the water that still clung to it. "I told you to take a couple of days off. If you wanted a couple more, you didn't need to get arrested and have to spend a week there. You could've just asked." He smiled to soften the joke. "Are you all right?"

Athena closed up the umbrella we'd been huddled under as we'd dashed from the cab to the house through the rain. Artemis shook herself off outside the door before she came inside, took a grumpy look around, and padded over to Elsie. Hollis's familiar/housekeeper had just arrived with a towel, and knelt down to make a big deal out of drying Artemis off.

"We're fine," I said, helping Athena out of her coat. "A bit damp, but none the worse for wear. I didn't realize Briton had a monsoon season in late April."

"It's quite a storm you arrived in, and no mistake," Hollis agreed. "Elsie has a pot of tea on and some soup waiting for you in the kitchen. Come and warm up. Did the airship have any trouble docking?"

Elsie rose from drying Artemis and beckoned for her to follow. Artemis's fur was sticking out in every direction, and she still looked grumpy as she headed for the kitchen - and the kitchen's oversized fireplace - in Elsie's wake.

Athena and I kicked our boots off as I replied, "Just a bit. There was a strong cross-wind, so it was kind of a rough landing."

We followed him into the kitchen, where Artemis was already basking in front of the fire, and sat at the little breakfast table as Elsie arrived with bowls of chicken soup. "Eat up while it's hot," she said with a smile. "I'll have tea for you in a moment." Then she was gone again.

She's too efficient sometimes. It makes me feel lazy.

"So," Hollis said as he sat down across the table from me, "A little test for you, in the wake of your frustration. What is your first step?"

I swallowed a spoon of Elsie's (really amazing) soup and considered. "How much do you know already?"

"Jonathan kept me up to date on everything." His eyes twinkled. "Including your new contact in Scotland Yard. Very clever of you to foster that."

I frowned at him over another spoonful of soup. "That's not why I did it."

He smiled. "I know that, dear girl. Jonathan speaks very highly of the young man, in terms of both personality and integrity. However, don't overlook the possibility of using his resources as well as your own."

In point of fact, Ben had offered two days ago, during our second date. He'd picked us up for lunch, and we'd spent the whole afternoon and evening together roaming around Dublin. When we stopped for tea mid-afternoon, we had quietly discussed the case, which sounded like it was going nowhere fast.

"I know you're going to start looking into it as soon as you get back to London," Ben had said. "I don't blame you, and I won't tell you not to…although as a Scotland Yard detective I should probably warn you off having anything more to do with the case. But you certainly seem to have a personal stake in what happened, and I doubt someone crazy enough to destroy a whole town will let it go at that. If you need anything at all, don't hesitate to Send me."

"I won't," I had answered him then, as I answered Hollis now. "It would be foolish to overlook Ben's value as a resource," I added, then shrugged and took another spoonful of soup. "But I don't want to use him either."

Athena coughed politely.

I kicked her shin lightly under the table, and she giggled. "You know what I meant."

She smiled innocently. "I have no idea at all, Mistress."

Hollis cleared his throat. "I don't blame you for not wanting to take advantage of his goodwill towards you," he said. "So what is your first step? I believe you said to Jonathan that you felt it was time to find out who your real father is."

I nodded. "I guess my first step would be to hit the Albion Central Library of the Arcane. I remember reading somewhere that they keep records of all reported encounters with the Sidhe. Perhaps one of them will give me a place to start."

His lips thinned into a line and, for a moment, I thought it was going to say something. Then he nodded. "That's a reasonable place to start. What about Brenna?"

"I don't really have anything to go on with her, and finding him will inevitably lead me to her," I said. Then added, "If she's truly my cousin."

"Eminently logical," he agreed. "So if you have no leads on one..."

"I'll get to work on the other," I finished for him, then finished my soup and cupped my hands around the mug of tea Elsie had made for me.

"Well, since you have the beginnings of a plan, I'll leave you to it," he rose from his chair. "I may have some work for you to do as well, especially if you're going to the Central Library."

I smiled and nodded. "I must earn my keep," I agreed.

The next three days were gruelingly dull, even by the standards of research into Hermetic wizardry. The Albion Central Library of the Arcane was an enormous complex that sprawled over about thirty acres of land not far from Stonehenge. The main building resembled a medieval castle - and in many ways it was one, since the first sections of it had been built nearly four hundred years before - constructed around a moderately sized central amphitheater that could be opened to the sky.

The Central Library often hosted lectures and classes there, amongst other things. And in addition to seemingly endless rows of books, the building housed the High Council of Hermetic Wizardry's offices, which was the workplace of some of the finest minds in the modern Hermetic community.

In lieu of a card catalog (which would have probably taken up an entire floor by itself and been impossible to find anything in), the Central Library had a friendly and extremely helpful staff of Intellect Spirits, which were spiritual entities that had been summoned up and given form of some sort. In this case, each one took the form of a large tome. All you had to do was ask for help, and one of the spirits would immediately fly over to join you, pages flapping.

The sight of so many Mages and Wizards being led around by flying books was occasionally comical. Sometimes I think the Wizards who created the system did it on purpose, to remind us not to take ourselves too seriously.

Not that it always worked. Or even usually.

Anyway, to my surprise, Athena and I learned on the first day that the Central Library didn't just record verified Sidhe encounters. It recorded every last report of an encounter with the Sidhe, verified or not. Since 1960, which was as far back as I felt I needed to go (having been born in 1962), there had literally been thousands of reported encounters.

Quite a lot of them could be discounted immediately, for a variety of reasons. In many cases, witnesses were reported to have been severely intoxicated at the time of the sighting. Some were known to suffer from psychological disorders that could cause delusions or hallucinations. In other cases, it was obvious that the supposed Sidhe had actually been another entity entirely, either mistaken for a Sidhe or intentionally posing as one for its own purposes.

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None of which made the task of sorting through twenty-six years worth of such reports any less onerous. It just made it easier to eliminate a large number of them relatively quickly.

There were endless reports of Fairy Circles found in cornfields turning out to have been man-made hoaxes, and a few people had even confessed to having made some of them. One man's claim of having witnessed luminous dancers on a moonless night in Dartmoor was proved to have been caused by phosphorescent gasses.

Athena and I were flabbergasted by how many reports there were from rural areas of Greater Britannia and Vinland of people being abducted and sexually abused by the Sidhe, most of whom were discredited almost immediately. And don't even get me started on the reams of material written about the “Sidhe airship” that supposedly crashed in the deserts of southwestern Vinland in the 1940s. Thousands of pages of absolute rubbish.

Elfin autopsy indeed. It staggers me how gullible some people can be.

Both Athena and I were somewhat disheartened when we returned home on the evening of the third day of research, Artemis trailing behind us.

Hollis met us in the foyer. "Well?"

I shook my head. "In the last twenty-six years, there were only five encounters with the Sidhe that could be confirmed as real. And in all five cases, the beings that were encountered, male and female alike, were either golden or black-haired, golden-eyed, and had pointy ears."

He smiled faintly. "Indeed. And the rest?"

"Were either cases of mistaken identity, hoaxes, misunderstandings of natural phenomena, or just plain drunk and crazy." I looked up at him, narrowing my eyes a little. "But you already knew all of this."

"I looked it up while you were away," He replied with a nod.

"Then why...?" I started to ask, trailing off. Athena sidled away a little.

He smiled gently. "You didn't ask."

I blinked, thought about it, then blinked again. "Oh."

He nodded. "Lesson learned?"

I smiled wryly. "Never overlook a resource," I replied. "Especially one that's right in front of you."

"As long as you remember that and live by it, I will not consider the last three days wasted. So don't hesitate to ask Detective Inspector Donovan for his help," Hollis said gently. "Especially if he offered it. I hate to say it, but I honestly don't believe that chasing after your father will get any results. The vast majority of real Sidhe encounters - and I doubt there were more than fifteen or twenty in the last fifty years - go unreported for a variety of perfectly valid reasons. Not of the least of which is the Sidhe are able to exert tremendous control over mortal minds, to make us forget or simply have no urge to speak of encounters with them."

"Then it's back to Brenna," I said tiredly.

He nodded. "Indeed. But not tonight - you look just about done in - and probably not tomorrow. Come to my study, I have a job for you."

Athena and I rose to follow him, and after a moment - with a hefty sigh - Artemis rose and joined us. As we walked down the hallway, I very quietly said, "There's two other things I could do to track down my father. There's Blood Tracing..."

Hollis stopped and half turned, a thoughtful look on his face. "Yes, that crossed my mind as well. I have a few feelers out to colleagues who might have tried doing Blood Traces on Sidhe before. I mean, we know they have blood. I just don't know if it would work with a Blood Trace ritual, or if their inherent magic would scramble the spell. Not to mention the fact that the maternal bond is much stronger than the paternal one."

"You could try tracing my blood to me first," I offered. "If I'm actually half-Sidhe..."

"Of which there is little doubt," Hollis interrupted gently. He knew very well how much the thought bothered me, if not precisely why.

Heck, I wasn’t sure I knew precisely why it bothered me.

"Right," I said, "Anyway, if I'm actually half-Sidhe, then my blood might have some of the same properties."

He considered it for a long moment, then nodded slowly. "Yes. Even if it bears no fruit, it might be a useful experiment to run anyway. Perhaps tomorrow or in a day or two. What's the other option."

I braced myself. "Speaking to contacts within the Spirit World..."

"No!" He turned towards me, the rejection coming so emphatically and coldly that Athena actually backed up a step in surprise. I had been ready for it, so I didn't budge. "Absolutely not," he continued, "I forbid it. I think very highly of you and you're a very skilled and talented young woman. But you're far too young and inexperienced to be trying something that foolish and dangerous. I didn't try it for the first time until I was in my late thirties, and I still paid for it dearly."

"Then you could..."

"No," he said again, still firmly but more gently this time. He rested his hands on my shoulders. "Alys, that is very much a method of last resort. Beyond last resort and into life-threatening desperation. It's true that there are many kind and even helpful spirits you might summon, but even the kindest of them demand a high price for their information and services."

I knew from my lessons that summoning any non-human spirits was a potentially troublesome proposition, even under ideal conditions. What I was suggesting was probably outright dangerous...summoning, for the purpose of communication, specific denizens (not necessarily spirits) of the Spirit World, the completely paranormal dimension that resides alongside our own.

That might not sound like a big deal, but think about it for a minute. All residents of the Spirit World have some knowledge of the Mortal World (that's our world). Many of them are positively fascinated by us, since they are effectively immortal and find the frantic pace at which we live our lives intriguing. But which ones will have the really useful, really obscure information?

Knowledge, as the saying goes, is power, and that's literally true for denizens of the Spirit World. So the ones with really useful information tend to be the most powerful, and therefore potentially the most dangerous to deal with.

Also, they don't like to be bothered. They like to watch, to spy and lurk and gather. But not to interact. As such, the cost of information from them tends to be high - and not necessarily in material goods. They aren't all like the Loa...tobacco and whiskey don't usually cut it when you need really obscure information. Like who a Sidhe Lord had relations with twenty-four years ago.

So if Hollis said I wasn't ready, he was probably right, and I should probably listen.

"All right," I said, holding up my hands in a gesture of peace. "I had to float the idea."

Hollis cooled a little, but his eyes narrowed. "I don't want you going behind my back and doing it without supervision. I'll have your word on it."

"You have it," I replied without hesitation. He was serious, so I'd take him seriously. "I promise, no spirit summoning without proper supervision."

He cooled the rest of the way, nodding. I believe I saw relief on his face, too. "Thank you, Alys. Now that I've had my heart attack for the day, come in." He opened the door to his study and led us inside.

Where Jonathan's house is a study in eccentricity, Hollis favored controlled, quiet, staid pseudo-Victorian decor. Dark woods, rich carvings, area rugs, paintings, and lots of bookshelves. His study felt like a real office.

Jonathan's felt like an interior decorator's shop exploded in it. A shop that belonged to a slightly insane interior decorator.

Hollis settled into the overstuffed chair behind his desk while Athena and I took our seats across from him. His huge desk was (as usual) covered in papers, books, and magical tools of every description. Some I didn't even recognize.

"You remember the Fishers," he said without preamble.

I nodded. "Of course." I'd saved their son Billy from a spiritual predator several months earlier, set up defensive wards around their house for them, and helped them find a master for Billy when he decided he wanted to become a wizard too. Cute kid, really bright and very funny. I made a mental note to go and see how he was doing soon.

"Something set off their wards last night," Hollis said.

My attention immediately rallied and focused on that single statement. "What?"

"It wasn't a normal burglar, and the wards didn't record what set them off," he replied. "It might not have been a physical entity like the last one. Whatever set them off didn't get past them, but did make enough of an impact to set off the alarms you wove into them. They let me know immediately, and I promised to send you to take a look as soon as you got back from the Central Library."

I rose from my chair. "I'll go right now..."

"You'll go in the morning," Hollis said firmly. "I was out at their house first thing this morning to check things over. Your wards did their work and kept out whatever it was, and I'm sure they can do it again tonight. Their integrity is still secure. Incidentally, nice work there. Your notion of engraving the ward runes directly into stones you placed around the house worked like a charm. You should be proud of the idea...frankly, I'm surprised nobody tried it before now."

"Norden Runecasters do it all the time," I said. "I got the idea from them."

"Hmm. Good point," he nodded. "A blind spot in Hermetic training, not that the average Hermetic spellcaster would admit it. Be that as it may, the Fishers will be safe tonight if something tries again. You, on the other hand, are tired and obviously muddled. You'll do your best work if you're well rested. So, shoo." He gestured dismissively with both hands. "Go get some sleep."