Free Elite: A Hunter novel by Mercedes Lackey

take electricity to run guitars and other instruments, and winter nights up on the Mountain get pretty long.
    “Our mother’s a folklorist,” said Steel. I nodded; that pretty much meant nothing like what it used to mean back before the Diseray. Now it means someone who’s going through all the pre-Diseray records, looking for folktales and myths and cataloging the magic and the monsters found in them. Even pre-Diseray fantasy fiction is fair game because a lot of it was based on obscure myth we haven’t found the records for. “And our father’s a musician. He collects folk songs for mother, goes out to places like that Anston’s Well of yours, when he’s not performing. He’s brought back some interesting stuff….” He shivered. “I just hope the song he brought back about the Hide-behind isn’t true. Makes me glad we don’t work the night.” I nodded. I knew that song. It was about someone in the remote hills who is walking home one night from meeting his girl and hears something behind him. It’s like a Diseray Othersider story before the Diseray. It doesn’t end well.
    “Well…there are those I’d like to see meet one. I wouldn’t mind it a bit if Ace met up with a Hide-behind,” Hammer growled, his brows furrowed into a solid line of anger. “The sooner, the better.”
    That seemed to come out of nowhere. “Not that I’m arguing with you, but what brought that on?” I asked.
    Steel tried to calm his brother down with a gesture, but Hammer wasn’t having any. “Word is, he’s been spending time outside the lockup. Too much, if you ask me.”
    That made all the hair on my head stand up because I had not for one second forgotten about Ace, and it sounded like the brothers knew things I didn’t. Well…thanks to the storm, all the Hunters were here in HQ together at once and perfectly able to call up old friends outside HQ and chat, like I’d chatted with Josh. And nothing spreads like gossip. “He’s dangerous,” I said flatly. “He’s still dangerous. Not just to me, either. He’s probably decided all the Hunters are against him, and I don’t think there’s any chance he’s suddenly come to understand the error of his ways.”
    “Well, if he thinks all the Hunters are against him, he’s right,” Steel agreed. “He’s already put up a good front of being all repentant and cooperative. He’s probably betting that they’ll let him completely off the leash.”
    So, that just put all my alarms on full. “You know stuff I don’t.” I said. “Tell!”
    “I have friends in the army; I know they’ve already let him mix with the other Mages,” Hammer said flatly. “Ace isn’t dumb. He has to make himself real useful to the army, so I bet he’s picking up new tricks as fast as he can cram them into his skull.” The look in Hammer’s eyes told me if he ever got a shot at Ace…the result would not be pretty. Now, pretty much nobody here liked Ace anymore, but this sounded kind of personal to me. I wondered what Ace had done to Hammer. I glanced over at his brother; Steel was just shaking his head. Steel gave me a sidelong glance and sort of shrugged, like I can’t do anything with him when he’s like this.
    Finally, Hammer let out his breath in an angry puff, and seemed to cool off a little.
    Steel tapped his finger against his glass thoughtfully. “Here’s the thing, Joy. We’ve worked with army Mages, and they’re not like the APD Mages your uncle has under him. Being with other army Mages is only going to give him a bigger ego than he had before. Army Mages think Hunters are some sort of second-class magic users. By now they’ll have him convinced that having his Hounds ditch him was a sign he was destined for greater things.”
    “Wait, what?” I replied, bewildered, because while we have Mages up at the Monastery (quite a few of the Masters are Mages rather than Hunters, and each one of them has an apprentice), that didn’t sound like the Mages I knew.
    “The