Traveler by Melanie Jackson Page B

changed his view of her. A few brief words with his contacts on the force and, mere hours after meeting her, he had received and read her entire file.
    There wasn’t much about the fey herself in the papers—she lived a very low-profile sort of life—but there was rather a lot in the archive on the girl’s mother. Everything was very circumspect, since Tigre Cyphre had worked for the State Department, but the French police’s attitude about her killing had been summed up by the penciled-in comment: Ne sei s’esteit lutin ou non.
    We cannot say if he was a goblin…
    Jack shook his head. Leave it to the French to deny all knowledge that Drakkar was a goblin.
    But even with the official obfuscation, reading between the lines it was easy enough to see that TigreCyphre had been in love with—or at least enchanted by—the French goblin warlord. And she’d been willing to do anything to please him, including using her political contacts to further his business interests.
    Unfortunately, European gangland wars had been especially messy that year because of turf battles over the fruit farms in Grasse, and there had been a lot of collateral damage when Drakkar’s empire went down. Tigre Cyphre; the H.U.G. agent Zayn’s twin brother, Syrin; and several other H.U.G. activists had been among the roadkill left by Harkel-Barend’s thugs.
    Harkel himself had died two weeks after taking out Drakkar. The files said it was an accident—a freak explosion caused by a faulty water-heater had boiled him in his bath—but the suggestion lurking between the lines of Io’s file was that it was a retaliation slaying, by either Drakkar’s goblins or H.U.G..
    The slaying was a nasty bit of work, Jack admitted, but not beyond H.U.G., who were growing increasingly more militant and creative in their fight against goblins. And the story explained Io’s involvement in an organization not usually tolerant of magical beings because of their official stance on the supernatural.
    The circumstances surrounding her mother’s life and death also explained Io’s revulsion for drugs and her fear of Jack’s magic: It had probably beensome combination of deadly goblin fruit and magical coercion that enslaved Tigre.
    What remained unknown was whether Io herself had had any hand in the dirty business of offing Harkel. She had been in France at the time, arranging to have her mother’s body transported back to the States, so it was possible.
    Jack paused at the factory’s side door and waited for Io to catch up.
    Should he ask her about this? If she answered tonight, it would be the truth.
    He was still wondering about how to phrase his question when Io arrived. He looked down into her concerned face, added to it her compassion for the unknown addict in the street, and decided he didn’t need to upset the applecart by asking.
    Io Cyphre was brave and resourceful—and reckless—but she didn’t have a natural killer’s instincts. It was perhaps regrettable, given their present circumstances, but it made her more likable as a person.
    Also, fortunately, he had enough killer instinct for both of them.
    They stepped outside, Jack being careful to go first in case there were any magic trip lines waiting to snare them. Even with the sun up it was cold. Soot blew along the deserted street, making everything at ground level appear shadowed and adding to the perceived chill of the autumn morning. The whorls of grime also had the disconcerting effect of makingthe imagination see things at the periphery of one’s vision. Shade became something warped and sly. It could turn your own shadow into a sinister stalker, and sometimes nervous people ended up with gooseflesh of the brain. Jack had learned to ignore the optical weirdness of Goblin Town, but he could see that Io was bothered. He didn’t say anything. The little fey seemed touchy about admitting to nerves.
    At street level, Neveling’s factory looked like an old-style movie theater. This was partly