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

victims still lay in her mud: she could feel them like a sore that she could not quite reach. She said, “We have to stop it.”
    He nodded. She went on, “You could go to the room, scare them like you used to. Curse them to die soon.”
    â€œThey have to believe.” His ears drooped. “These days they just chase me out with a broom or throw things at me.”
    Jenny belonged to the water. That was where her strength lay. Away from the core of it, the canal, she was weak. But Martin Jack didn’t do human-shaped. He was a dog, pure and simple. She shifted, sending ripples rocking into the far bank. She didn’t like where her thoughts were taking her. She said, “One of your people, the drunks …”
    â€œNo.” There was a growl to that.
    â€œWe need bait. I can’t do anything to the hunter unless he comes here. And he comes here with bodies.”
    Martin Jack snapped his teeth at her and despite herself she pushed back from the canal’s edge. The shuck’s eyes glowed wild and red. She said, “Someone has to go …”
    â€œYou go.” He rose to his full height, heavy head hanging down toward her. Backlit by the moon, his shadow stretched out over the canal, long and sinister. Jenny shivered.
    The drunks were not her problem. They were flotsam,nothing more. She tolerated them in the hope, one day, of a good meal.
    It was not for humans to hunt on her territory or deprive her of her prey. She sighed. “All right. I’ll go.”
    â€œWould you like tea?” The hunter cleared a heap of papers off a chair and offered it to Jenny. “I can fetch some from the tearoom. There are biscuits, too.” She smiled as she took a stool beside one of her flashing machines. “They should be pretty fresh.”
    Jenny did not want to take anything from her, however it was offered. Her earlier offerings had been more than enough. The taint of them was still within her, would remain until they rotted away to bone. This room reeked of that wrongness and of the tang of human fanaticism. She sat down, straight-spined and said, “No. I don’t want those.”
    She had pictured the hunter as a man, someone broad and muscular and marked by the chase, like the villagers who had lived in her marsh long centuries before, who had fought and killed one another in their wars over cattle and fresh water and cast their enemies into her embrace. She had expected a warrior, an adversary out of human legend. Instead … The hunter was an angular young woman with lank brown hair and a pinched face. The bones of her wrists stood out below the grubby cuffs of her white coat. From time to time, she rubbed at an angry-looking mark on the side of her neck. Her shoulders hunched: even on the tall stool, she did not seem menacing.
    Now, leaning forward, she said, “You know what my research is about, yes? You saw my notice in the free paper?”
    Jenny had no idea about that. But she nodded anyway. The hunter went on, “I’m exploring the nature of emotional response at a very basic level. I’m listening intently to your feelings, if you like.” She rubbed again at the cut on her neck. “It’s really very simple and very, very safe. I’ll insert a micro-chip into you, near to a major nerve clump. It’s linked to one I have myself—you see, it’s really safe, I’ve been chipped for months. And then I’ll be able to feel what you feel. Do you see?”
    It was more human talk, like the chants and mumblings of the monks. Her words thrummed through Jenny with the same disquieting rhythm as church bells. The room was full of it. Her fingers quivered, yearned toward the safe damp space within the walls. The hunter was still talking, chattering on about vital knowledge and medical breakthroughs. Jenny rubbed at her own throat, feeling the fine skin begin to heat and tingle. The hunter’s voice droned on,