Primal Bonds (Shifters Unbound #2)(27)
Author: Jennifer Ashley

The day was full of clouds and wind and rain, which matched Andrea’s mood. Andrea’s ley line maps weren’t helping—she had traced the line through the river valley that wound through Austin but not the offshoots of that line. Since she didn’t have the transportation to do it herself, the next best thing would be to see whether someone else had mapped them, but she’d need a computer to find that out. Though Glory had an old PC, not all Shifters were approved for Internet access, and then they were only allowed dial-up. But if Andrea used Sean’s computer, she’d have to tell him why she wanted to and get into explanations that made her uncomfortable.

Then again, Sean wasn’t home. Liam had ridden off to do whatever Shiftertown leaders did, and Connor was at school. Andrea put everything back into her folder and went next door.

Kim was home by herself, working in the kitchen. She’d started a law firm to represent Shifters and also to study human-Shifter law and try to change some of the inequities Shifters had gotten stuck with. It was a slow process, but Kim and her friends were trying. Kim had an office, but some days Kim found it easier to work from home.

Kim was happy to lead Andrea upstairs to Sean’s bedroom and his computer. Sean’s room was small, compact, and neat, except for a pile of clothes crumpled near the bed. Andrea felt a tingle of Fae magic from the polished wooden sword case on his dresser, but she knew without looking that the sword wasn’t in it. Sean had taken it with him wherever he’d gone.

The computer was old, and Andrea expected it to be of limited use, but the connection went through quickly and the Internet was open for business. Andrea blinked in surprise at the speed. Shifters were only allowed dial-up connections, no cable, no DSL.

Kim smiled at her confusion. “Last year I helped out a Shifter who is very good at computers. He and Sean ‘enhanced’ this one.”

“That’s Shifters for you,” Andrea said, typing in her search strings. “They won’t break laws, but they’ll bend them into all kinds of weird shapes.”

Kim laughed. “A good way of putting it.” She patted Andrea’s shoulders and left her to it.

Some local Wiccans had mapped ley lines in the Austin area. The lines veined out from the riverbed, one running straight down Lamar, one snaking under the university’s main campus. Long ago, another had followed what was now Mopac, but that one had withered and died when the railroad with its iron rails that had been laid there.

Andrea enlarged and printed out maps, tucking them into her file folder.

“Don’t forget to delete your search history,” Kim said from the door, as Andrea finished up.

“Sorry?” Andrea stared at the computer. She’d used the Internet before, but her access to computers had been limited to the two at the community center in her Shiftertown, a place she hadn’t visited often.

“If you don’t, Sean will know what you were looking up. I take it you don’t want him to?”

“I can erase that?”

“Yes, but if you simply erase the whole thing, he’ll know you were looking for stuff you don’t want him to know about. And then he’ll bug you to tell him.”

“No kidding.” Andrea glared at the plastic box. “Where is Sean, anyway?”

Kim looked surprised as she slid into the chair and started clicking things. “He left early this morning, I supposed on Shifter business. He didn’t tell you?”

“He sleeps with me, but he’s not exactly verbose. He expects full disclosure from me but doesn’t return the favor.”

“That’s a Shifter for you. Liam talks and talks and talks, and tells you nothing at all. The gift of Blarney, he calls it.” Kim smiled at the computer, her eyes filled with love for her talkative mate. “This will be fun. I’ll delete your trail and load it with legal questions. Sean’s eyes glaze over when I talk about legal issues. Or I can fill in with searches for shoes. Or baby furniture.”

“You’re a treasure, Kim.”

“So they tell me. I won’t ask you what you’re trying to keep from Sean, but take some advice.” Kim looked up at Andrea with dark blue eyes that had seen and accepted much. “Trust Sean. He’s an amazing man, and there’s much more to him than he lets anyone see. He feels things, deeply.”

Andrea had seen that already. “I know his brother’s death hit him hard and that Sean blames himself for it.”

“It didn’t so much hit him hard as change his life. Sean was close to Kenny, and having to watch him die makes Sean doubly protective of everyone he cares about. Sean’s never said all this to me; but you live in the same house with someone a while, and you notice things.”

And now Sean was trying to move in with Andrea. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

Kim and Andrea shared a hug, and Andrea departed with her maps.

The most interesting thing she’d found, she thought as she descended, was that a ley line streaked right through the heart of Shiftertown.

Not surprising, really. This entire area had fallen into disuse and urban decay long before it had become a Shiftertown. The Shifters had been put here precisely because no one wanted the real estate. In the twenty years since then, real estate a mile away had shot sky high, then dived again when the market crashed. But Shiftertown remained unchanged.

A half-Fae human had worked with human governments to devise the Collars that kept Shifters tamed. Had he also advised humans where to put the Shiftertowns? Maybe he thought a bit of Fae magic running through it would keep Shifters quiet?

It also could open a gate to Faerie.

Andrea stashed her file in her room and then went back out to the place where she’d seen the Fae.

The ley line, according to the maps, ran in a more or less straight line behind the houses on this street. Walnut trees, which caught the mists on still, wet days, towered overhead.

Gates to Faerie were rare. There were places in the world, Andrea had learned, where the gates could always be found—in stone circles in northern Europe, near temples and other sacred places in South America, in deep canyons of the American Southwest, in the soaring mountains of Asia. Fae who knew the spells could cross between standing stones and other thin places in the fabric of the universe, but this ley line wasn’t that strong.

But gates could be created with a burst of very strong magic along a ley line, or possibly through the dreams of someone loaded with Fae magic. The link to this Fae was Andrea and her nightmares.