“Hola, Orfeo,” Theo called, splashing in towards shore in their direction, water trickling from her long sodden blue hair and streaming down off her skin and blue sarong as though they were oiled. “Gracias! Ça va bien? ¿Estás bien?”

Zach understood virtually none of the exchange that followed, partly in the French he remembered poorly from school but he thought it was slowed down and textbook-precise, partly in Spanish that he knew only from Theo over the past few days, and partly apparently a kind of charades or sign language or both.

“Thanks, Zach,” Theo said. “I would've felt terrible if he'd run into them alone.”

“Why?”

Theo shrugged and smiled. “You've only been here once. I was worried you might not find it.”

“You asked him to find me?”

“He and Paz know every inch of the island, I swear. And they like having people to interact with who are friendly. He offered. They're out and about all night every night anyway.”

Zach considered that, then looked at Orfeo. “Gracias.”

Orfeo grinned at him. “De nada. Amigos.”

“Des and Jace and Ali? Erica and Suze?”

“Not here yet,” Theo said. “They have farther to go.”

Orfeo waved cheerfully, and walked away.

“What's directly that way?” Zach asked Theo.

“Hm... it's too much of a slant to be directly towards the centre. My guess would be that he's headed towards Suze and Erica.”

“Alone?” He wasn't at all sure his warning would be effective, especially if Orfeo encountered the other three immediately.

“Trust him. They've survived here a while.”

“How long?”

“Before Isabel spotted us, anyway. That's months, local time.”

That was a valid point, but it still made Zach want to growl and go with him, just in case.

It was probably something like Theo's compulsive need for dominating human men into sex, JC's compulsive need to find things to clean and cook, and whatever less-glaring instincts were currently driving Des and Erica and Suzi and Alison. He hoped that it would be less intense in time, but only in the sense of being better able to pick his own battles. Wanting to protect felt too natural and too right for him to see any reason to resist or resent that. And having strength and speed and armour to allow him to back it up, he was starting to like that bit.

“I could go with him. Just in case.”

“Or you could just stay here with me,” Theo said. “He can stay out of sight long enough to reach them, and Erica can stand off at least two of those bullies you described from yesterday, I'm sure. I get seriously lonely out here in my glorified aquarium, since I can't go wandering around to visit anyone else. Don't I even get a hug? Or are you allergic to getting a bit wet?”

Zach surrendered, and stepped into the water up to ankle-depth to give Theo a fierce hug. They'd all gotten so accustomed to frequent contact for the couple of weeks they'd been in midway phase that he didn't even really feel odd hugging a curvy aquatic white-and-blue siren that he'd grown up knowing as a mildly-geeky and intensely sociable male DJ who straddled the line between high school cliques, accepted by all but owned by none.

If he got more than a little wet, mostly due to Theo's hair and its tendency to hold quite a lot of water combined with those tentacles that didn't like to stay still, well, scales dried pretty readily.

Theo perched comfortably on a large rock near the shore, where she could keep her feet in the water, and Zach settled down on dry land next to her. It was a bit warmer here than it was at his cage, which felt good.

If they ever got things sorted out somehow, heating bills in winter were going to be inconvenient, unless he wanted to be sleepy and slow for several months.

But that might not matter. Heather wasn't all that fond of snakes, he knew that, although it wasn't an outright phobia. Not only was her husband currently female—anatomically, more or less—he was also distinctly serpentine. Even if JC's research was correct and faelings could mostly find ways to at least look like their previous human selves, that was going to be, in one sense, an illusion. And he hated lies.

Des' well-meant suggestion, that cross-dressing wasn't a lie, just another aspect of the truth, didn't really help.

“Your whole body-language just changed,” Theo said. “Thinking about home?”

“Heather. Mom. Kids. Complications.”

“One step at a time. We'll figure it out. A lot of people find ways to cope with some pretty major revelations about people they love.”

“Not always.”

“No. Not always. But I'm actually more worried about Wade than Heather. They haven't had as long together. And I don't know many people with a relationship as solid as yours.”

Zach shrugged. “Maybe.” And maybe Heather would try, and it would end up making her miserable. “Whatever. Bad fae are complicated.”

“They are? How?”

“Talked instead of fighting. They're messed up.”

“I suppose we all are.”

Zach shook his head. *Ali? Bad time?*

*Not really, just walking. Reminding myself not to run. Why?*

*Had a conversation with one of the bullies. Well, sort of three, but mostly one. Everyone should hear.*

*You had a chat with three of the bully fae? Did anyone get thumped?*

*No. I'm not sure they're scared of me exactly but they're cautious.*

*Well, they have good reason to be cautious, but being scared would've been sensible too, from what I heard. Anyone not want to hear about this conversation?* A pause. *Erica and Suze say okay, they can stay alert and still listen. Theo's not moving, and we've got three sets of eyes and ears even if anything is stupid enough to hassle us. Erica, Suze, Theo says Orfeo is probably headed in your direction. So, Zach, go for it.*

Zach recounted the discussion as thoroughly as he could recall it.

*Ooh,* Alison said. *That does make it a bit less binary. I know, Theo, I don't think anyone likes it that they feel that way. Maybe we can help them too, somehow. I mean, if this place is running fairly consistently at even sixteen times normal speed, then unless there are fae around who have been here literally for decades and Isabel has a way of making herself look a whole lot younger than she is, then probably they've only been missing in the real world for, what, a year or so?* She paused, then switched to relaying for the others.

*Isabel's journal,* JC said, *numbers days since there's no other way to tell time here, and it's in the seven thousands. Call it about three years to a thousand, and that would be about twenty years local time, give or take.*

Des picked it up from there. *At sixteen times normal speed, that would mean less than a year and a half realtime, and at thirty-two, it would be less than nine months. If we assume they fluctuate between at need and generally don't go below sixteen because they might get noticed, then in the real world, probably no one's been missing more than a year and a half and maybe a lot less.*

Alison sighed. *And Erica just pointed out the obvious flaw, that unless people remember exactly the right details, it's not going to matter. First priority hasn't changed. They never do this to anyone else, and we do everything we can to get home. Then we look at whether we can do anything to help anyone who remembers. Beyond, y'know, just trying to make sure that there's no mass murder to make room for more, but oh dear lord let it not come to that.*

*I'm praying pretty hard,* Suzi said. *I know you guys don't, but... well...*

*Suze, no one's going to turn down any kind of help or complain about you doing whatever you need to do. If there is a god, he's going to listen better to you than to the rest of us, and I'm cool with you speaking for all of us, 'kay? Anybody have a problem with that? No? Okay, you're officially our rep.*

*Just be a bit careful who you trust,* Zach said. *There's no telling who might seem sane and friendly and helpful but actually is about to crack. Or already has in a non-obvious way.*

*Well, yes.* A pause. *Des says we're nearly there and could probably hear you if you were talking.*

Theo flashed Zach a grin, sat up straight, and started to sing.

Considering how spectacularly beautiful her voice was, her choice of material didn't detract all that much.

“Land of the silver birch, home of the beaver...”

*Des hears you,* Alison said. *Jace and I don't yet.*

A Canadian folk song about being homesick had an odd sort of poignancy, under the circumstances. Zach wasn't sure he'd heard it since elementary school music class, which would have meant they were all present for it.

“Blue lake and rocky shore, I will return once more... oh, hi, guys.”

Theo barely stood up in time for Suzi to push off from Erica and pounce for a hug. Even with Theo calf-deep in the water and Suzi at the surface, there was still a height difference.

“Man, you did get small,” Theo teased. “And all sparkly. We can put you on a trapeze and use you for a disco ball.”

“Only if you want everyone to ignore your music and just stand and look at me,” Suzi retorted. “Humans, anyway.”

“Hm, true, that would be a problem.”

“You're not lying in ponds and distributing magic swords or anything, are you?”

“Sadly, I haven't been able to find any swords to hand out. Or would-be kings to throw them at. But I think I count as a watery tart, so if we find any...”

Suzi giggled.

Zach rolled his eyes. He expected the geekier types to quote movies and books, but these two, not so much. Still, whatever cheered them up.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Erica knelt next to Zach, grinned at him, and shook her head indulgently.

*Oh, good,* Alison said. *That's four, and the three of us won't be long.*

“Orfeo,” Theo said, holding out a webbed hand, one arm and at least one tentacle wrapped around Suzi to keep her anchored. “Está bien. No vayas. Mes amies sont à venir... mis amigas. Des et JC et Alison.”

Zach hadn't even seen Orfeo, hanging back a bit to watch the greeting with a faintly wistful smile. The green fae shrugged and climbed up an oak tree, agile as a squirrel, to sit on a branch where he could see them—and also the immediate area. He liked oak trees, Zach had noticed. Maybe that was what he felt a connection to.

“Let him be,” Theo said. “I'm honestly amazed that we've managed as much communication as we have in just a few days. Most things are still too complicated, and it's hard to imagine it being comfortable in the middle of a conversation you can't understand. But I would like to make sure JC and Ali meet him. I know they met Paz at the house. Wish I could meet Dulce, but the distance between lakes might as well be a hundred miles.”

“Paz is nice,” Suzi said, and Erica nodded. “Kinda shy.”

Zach turned his head to track the sounds of motion not too far off. It took a moment longer for three heat images to register between the trees.

“Sing,” he told Theo.

Theo shrugged and began a new song. “Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong...”

*We all hear you now,* Alison said. *Did you stop for a bit?*

*We were distracting,* Erica said. *Sorry.*

*No worries,* JC said. *It sounds gorgeous, by the way.*

*Not sure humans even notice that,* Theo said. *Wanting to listen more and to do what I say seems to be pretty much independent of what I sing or how well.*

*It's a useful ability. Between you and Suze, you could probably slow a lot of humans down. Although better if you don't need to.*

*Be there in a minute,* Des said. *Keep singing.*

*I can do that,* Theo said. When that song ended, she started with, “There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza...”

She didn't have time to finish that one before Des and JC and Alison arrived.

“Nothing wrong with your song memory,” Zach muttered, as Theo fell silent.

Theo grinned at him. “It would get boring singing the same thing. You're better off if I sing this kind of thing, not a mix of show-tunes and pop songs and whatever-odd else, some of which I know a lot better than others. I did Rocky Horror on-stage in university, I probably remember a lot of that.”

Zach rolled his eyes. “Stick with kid songs.”

“Oh good lord. No wonder Jace is struggling.” That was said much more quietly, and Zach saw her catch her lower lip between her teeth, watching the approaching trio.

“True.” He hadn't actually seen JC either, reluctant to risk visiting the house itself. That was... well, not any more extreme than the rest of them, in ways less alien than tails or hooves or tentacles, but nonetheless a bit unsettling.

Erica, who got around pretty freely since the humans were so used to green fae they tended to just accept their presence, shrugged and nodded, but she didn't look all that concerned. Then again, the drastic alteration in her metabolism and physiology probably put some things in a different perspective for her.

“Oh well. Still Jace. Makes a weird kind of sense, if you know Jace, and shouldn't be any bigger problem than the rest of us.” Theo shrugged and stood up. “Party time! Who brought the snacks?”

“Knew we forgot something,” JC said, carefully setting down a thick dark blue binder, high enough that no wave would touch it.

“Oops,” Alison added.

Des waved. “Hola, Orfeo.”

Orfeo waved back, still in his tree.

“JC. Alison,” Des said, pointing to each. She glanced at JC and Alison. “Orfeo.”

“Hi,” Alison said. “Paz' friend?”

“Ami de Paz,” Theo said.

“Si,” Orfeo said. “Hola.”

“Mis amigas,” Theo said.

It was, Zach thought, an insane conversation, bridging three languages, but despite that, all intentions were so clearly amicable that even he couldn't find it in him to doubt Orfeo's sincere goodwill.

Orfeo smiled at them, though there was a shy edge to it.

“Don't push,” Theo said. “Large groups are pretty uncommon around here. Get over here and let me hug you. Hey, for that, I'll even come on dry land.”

In fact, lots of hugs were traded all around, pretty much impartially.

If Suzi held onto one or another at all times to stay stable, if textures varied as wildly as size and proportions, if Des purred and Erica made no sound, it didn't really matter. In every single case, what they were now was simply an intensified version of who they'd always been, and they were still together, and they were not going to be stuck on this island forever.

Eventually, they settled down in a close circle, incorporating Theo's rocky perch. Suzi hovered over the surface next to Theo, one of Theo's tentacles wrapping itself around her to keep her from drifting. Erica knelt again at the very edge of the water on Theo's other side, allowing the others to stay on dry land. Zach saw some of the viny tendrils that made up Erica's living skirt land in the water, in fact, which might have been deliberate. JC picked up the binder first, holding it against her in both arms, and sat above the waterline. Or rather, knelt, which seemed to be easy enough. She stayed upright, back straight, where most would have just let their weight shift sideways.

*Orfeo's gone,* Des observed, via Alison. Talking was less stressful that way, and couldn't be overheard.

Theo shrugged. *I'd be a little overwhelmed too.* She sighed. *We used to think we were the only ones. Then we saw a few outside at night and picked up the odd reference. Now we know there are dozens of fae living in a very strained and complex balance under conditions a lot more crowded than they look at first glance, and I'm a lot less sure how that works for research.*

*Well, let's find out,* Erica said. *Being together is wonderful, but it's not like we need to catch up on news. Ali's been making sure of that all along, and I hate to think what this would be like without her. I bet we all badly want to know what's in that binder.*

The response was clear enough that Zach could feel it.

*We won't get through all of this tonight,* JC said, opening the binder with the spine balanced on one hand. *I'll do what I usually do and skim it fast for the stuff we want, that okay? It's broken into sections with tabs, that might help.*

*Jace,* Zach said. *This is the kind of thing you're good at. Just do it.*

JC nodded, already flipping pages. *Location is much less interesting right now than the active parties. I don't think we care about Isabel's HR records on the henchmen...*

*To say the least,* Zach said. *I don't care whether they grew up poor and abused or rich and neglected. They have all the qualifications for the title of Worthless Bigoted Scum, which is probably the main thing.* He really did not want JC reading that section, if what he suspected was true.

*Okay, this is the bit I got a very quick look at before. There is... really, an awfully long list of previous staff, with the same kind of number dates Isabel has in her journal, and that looks like her handwriting. There are... this is just on normal note paper, one per line, and it runs well onto a third page. Each name has a number after it, looks like the highest ones in the two hundreds, and I'm pretty sure that's the number of days they were here. Because the only other thing on each line is a short code, and the next page explains those.* She flipped the page. *Drowned by water fae. Irreversible severe mental damage by water fae. Other death by water fae. Poisoned by house fae. Sabotage by house fae. Other death by house fae, with a sort of added-in note to specify whether fire was involved or not. Suicide under fae mind control. Severe lifeforce drain by energy-vampiric fae. Crushed or smothered by green fae. Other death by green fae. Crushed or smothered by rock fae. Savaged by hooved animal fae, by carnivore animal fae, by bird fae, rodent fae, reptilian fae, and it keeps going. Actually, this whole list keeps going. And it all sounds like that. There is no code for 'went back to the real world.' There is one for 'natural causes' but I'm not seeing it very often on the list of staff. Everyone they hire, within a matter of months, ends up dead, and it's always by fae.*

*They're bait,* Zach said. *Good god, they even treat other humans that way. Admittedly, humans that I doubt the rest of the world is missing very much, but still. They're bringing them here knowing that they're going to die.*

*Wasn't Isabel supposed to be giving them charms that would protect them?* Suzi asked. *You heard her say that, right, Jace?*

*Yes,* JC said.

*They don't protect them from me,* Theo said. *And I was supposed to be the reason for them, if I recall correctly. I realize they're pretty eager to get their rocks off, but presumably they believed her that they were protected before they were willing to come in range.*

*Of course they did,* Erica said acidly. *How do you get results if the bait is cowering at the house and refusing to go out and interact with the fae at all? Felix and Lloyd probably have the best life expectancy, but Barry's and Gord's, that's another matter.*

*Are you going to feel particularly bad if either or both die?* Alison asked.

*Fuck no. But I'd like to know what happens to the fae that actually kill them. Are they the ones that disappear? Or at least does that get them on the list to disappear?*

*That's a very good question,* Zach said. *Because if there's no consequences, I'll volunteer to add Barry to the stats the first chance I get.*

*Hold that thought,* JC said, flipping pages again. *I'll keep an eye out for that.*

*They just don't care about anyone except themselves,* Suzi said. *Humans are social animals, like dogs. We aren't supposed to just not care.*

Theo wrapped an arm around her, carefully. *A psychiatrist would have a field day just trying to diagnose this bunch, and I mean the henchmen just as much as their bosses. Compared to them, our relatively normal accumulated secrets and scars and culturally-disapproved-but-harmless traits are nothing, no matter who is still thinking there's something wrong with them.*

JC looked up at Theo, and said, “Bite me,” out loud, sparing Alison from relaying it. Then her attention went back to the binder. *Zach, I think you'd better hold off on Barry. They already think you're dangerous, they're probably going to assume immediately that it was you, and this does not look like a happy kind of fate for the fae who broke enough to actually kill. Good lord, I'd never organize game notes like this, I'd be forever trying to find what I needed. There's a section on staff bios before they came here, there's a section that has incidents with fae, and a section that appears to be what happened to the fae that killed them, maybe others, it's hard to tell this fast.*

Des made a dismissive huffing sound. *Should be in a proper database. This is what you get when you do everything on paper.*

*And kill trees,* Erica said disapprovingly.

*Do things that run on electricity actually work here?* Alison wondered.

*The fridge and the stove could fit into a commercial kitchen,* JC said absently. *A TV and DVD player in the lounge. And there are electrical appliances, Felix just gets off on having someone else do the prep work by hand. Um... I think any fae that did kill got a trip to the boom-room. And became the subject of Phrixos in particular experimenting with which kinds of magic will work on that particular fae. Testing them until they died.*

Silence, briefly.

*That is probably not really a shock,* Alison said, with an audible sigh. *Did anyone really think that the missing fae died kindly and mercifully? But that is disgusting.*

*I don't even like animal testing,* Des said. *Let alone... that.*

More silence.

JC broke it. *That, kids, is just more reason to make sure that we have a solid Plan B. Hope and pray all you want that Kayla or Niko gets here before we have to use it. I am. But we are not letting this happen.*

Zach closed his eyes, everything inside twisting into knots.

Of the seven of them, he'd already been tagged as dangerous. He was by far the most likely to lose control and attack, given the opportunity. And he had no doubt that if that happened, his friends would immediately and hastily adapt Plan X around his role and implement it, at any cost, to protect him—even if that meant that no one would ever arrive or leave again until, without wizardly maintenance to prevent decay, this pocket world finally ended.

He wanted to tell them that, even if he drew the wrong attention, they shouldn't do it, that he would rather die if it meant that the chance remained that they could still get home and tell Heather the truth.

But at the same time... their odds of getting home, and for that matter of all surviving long enough to get the opening, would drop dramatically without him. Even Plan X would be more likely to succeed with his help.

Where was his loyalty?

For more than three decades, behind every plan of action had been the underlying conviction that the right choice was always the one that made him the least like his biological father. It had served him well: he preferred to be the knight in shining armour, not the jock who treated women as trophies and bullied the vulnerable.

But that went far deeper, didn't it? It had started off as “What would my father not do?” but resolutions failed every day. People frequently turned into whatever they were running from. He saw it at work, in the teenagers who spat venom about a parent but unconsciously did the same things. Some of his own actions had mirrored his father's at moments, but he'd always had it absolutely clear in his own head: the motivation couldn't be more different.

Maybe it had started off as a dogged attempt to be unlike his father, but the exact form that had taken, that was up to him. Maybe that had been some dragon nature creeping through. Maybe not. He wasn't much up on the subject, but he was pretty sure dragons were at least sometimes seen as destructive—wasn't that the whole virgin sacrifice thing?

“Zach?” Theo said out loud, and she sounded concerned. “What's wrong? You're not paying attention anymore.”

“Fuck personal revelations anyway,” Zach said with a sigh. Right here and now, he knew who needed him, with no possible substitute available.

“What?” Suzi said, perplexed.

“It's not like Heather would really believe I abandoned her anyway. Especially not with you missing too.” He shrugged and shifted his position on the hard ground, making sure his tail wasn't caught uncomfortably under him. His friends continued to watch him in a mixture of worry and confusion. “Nevermind. I'll tell you later. I do seriously want to hear this. What did I miss?”