Free The Modern Fae's Guide to Surviving Humanity by Joshua Palmatier, Patricia Bray

underneath it a bin was filled with blood-staineddressings. She sniffed, started back, choking. Blood, yes, blood that conjured for her the shapes of Other Tom and the first victim. The blood of another, also, young and strong and not quite right. A syringe lay beside a small vial. When she reached out for it, heat swirled from it. Not cold iron, nor yet a thing blessed by some human holy man, and yet it held something of the quality of both. Whatever that vial held, someone had imbued it with a vital faith. She pulled her hand back. The whole room was wrong, filled with a hunger that she did not understand.
    Notes were everywhere, scribbled onto the piles of paper, scrawled across the walls in thick black lines. Jenny had absorbed human script long ago, from the early days of votive tablets to the sodden pages of old newspapers thrown into the canal. But these words made no sense.
… initial results suggests payments to test subjects would be better made after the conclusion of the experiment, to cut down on interference by alcohol… . Effects of drunkenness may be transferable: more data desirable… . Preliminary research indicates disturbed vision may be due to poor positioning of the chips as subject seems not to be suffering such effects despite alcohol intake… . Excessive bleeding on insertion still proving a problem in some cases. Subjects’ memories cloudy. Cleaner and healthier subjects might be preferable to further research, but as yet can see no way to avoid inconvenient questions. Materials still unstable: unsafe to test on students… . Query: should seek further training on insertion work?
Jenny shook her head. None of it made any sense to her. What kind of creature hunted with words and needles and strange uncanny faith? It was nothing of her world, of that she was certain. And if it was human,it was of a kind she had never known before. She had grown insular since the concrete walls had pinned her waters back into the bed of the canal. She needed to know more about how humans had changed.
    She needed to talk to Martin Jack.
    â€œThey’re trying to explain the world.” Martin Jack sprawled on the edge of the towpath, the remains of a fish supper that he had dragged out of some litter bin spread out on the gravel beside him. “They want to know how everything works.”
    Head and shoulders out of the canal, Jenny propped her elbows on the top of the cement surround and let herself float. She said, “That’s what the monks did and the priests with their churches.”
    â€œYes… .” Martin Jack sounded unsure. “This is different. They call it science. They make things, measure things. It’s called experimentation. I hear about it from students, sometimes. The girls talk to me when I walk them home.”
    Jenny shook her head. He did not change. For all his fearsome reputation as a harbinger of doom, the black shuck still felt the need from time to time to accompany lone women through the streets until they reached their homes, trotting beside them like the meekest pet dog and wagging his tail in delight at the attention. She had suggested once that he lead them to her instead. She could use the nourishment. He hadn’t spoken to her for seven years. She had never understood his affection for humans. It served no purpose.
    Now, however, was no time to twit him about it. She needed what he had learnt from his regular contacts with humans. He said, “There are all sorts of different kinds of experiment. Sometimes they explode.”
    â€œThis isn’t about explosions. This is about memory and needles and blood.”
    â€œAh. That’s called psychology.” Martin Jack’s jaw dropped in a grin. “The porter at the big gray round building told me about it. He said they study how people go mad till they go mad themselves.”
    The hunter might well be mad, if Jenny was any judge of human insanity. The bodies of the two