Free Laura Anne Gilman by Heart of Briar

found a way around the old, physical, temporal
limitations...how? That is what we need to know, to lure and trap them in
kind.”
    Jan stared at her, completely out of her comfort zone, or any
zone she recognized. Her daypack rested at her feet, and she clutched at it now,
the only remnant of reality left. Her wallet, her cell phone—but there was no
one she could call. Nobody who could get her out of this, or throw her a
lifeline. “I... How am I supposed to know?”
    “Think, human. If this man was in your life, you know his
habits. You know where he went and what he did, yes?”
    “Yes.” Her response was immediate. Of all the things they had
asked, this she had no doubts about. “But he didn’t go anywhere. I was the one
who had to drag him out and be social. The only thing he did was...”
    She stopped, and Elsa leaned forward.
    “Yes?”
    Jan dug her fingers into her hair, trying to massage some of
the stress out of her scalp, but all that did was remind her of the times Tyler
had done the same thing, the fingers that danced so quickly over the keyboard
going slow and steady through her curls.
    “We...we do a lot of socializing online. Digital networking,
vid-conferencing, that sort of thing. But that’s people you already know. Tyler
wasn’t much for chat rooms, said they were overrun with noobs and trolls— Oh,
sorry. It’s a Net term, it’s not—”
    Elsa stared at her, not taking offense, waiting for her to get
to the point.
    “The thing is, we met on a dating site. It’s a...a place where
people go, when they want to meet someone else, outside their usual social
group. You put your profile into the system, and you look at other profiles, and
you decide who you want to talk to after you check them out, see if you share
interests....”
    Jan swallowed hard, remembering the email she had found in
Tyler’s in-box. “It can get pretty racy there, if you want.”
    Elsa’s eyes didn’t widen—Jan wasn’t sure her expression could
change, at all—but it was obvious that she understood. “This site, it allows
others to find sexual partners?”
    “Yeah. Some of them are looking for marriage, some of ’em are
just wanting a hookup...the one we used was more casual.” Saying it made the
tips of her ears flush, as if she was some kind of slut, but that was silly: so
she didn’t want to get married, that didn’t mean she had wanted a bunch of
one-night hookups. And neither had Tyler—she thought. But if he had stayed on
the site, kept his account active after she closed hers... The bitterness stuck
in her throat, like heartburn.
    “If you were using sex, seduction to lure someone—” wasn’t that
how they said a lot of serial killers found their prey? “—then a dating site
like that would make sense. People are open to it, not suspicious, or wary. We want to be seduced.”
    She had to laugh, had to say it. “On the internet, nobody knows
you’re an elf.”
    The others looked at her, clueless, and she sighed. “Trust me
this time. It’s a breeding ground of desperation and hope.”
    “So that is where we will start.” Elsa nodded, satisfied with
her pronouncement, and then tilted her stone-gray head curiously. “How do we do
that?”
    * * *
    Jan would have been happy to set them up and leave them
to it, but AJ hadn’t been exaggerating when he said supernaturals didn’t use
much modern technology—despite the machinery scattered throughout the warehouse,
not a one of them there had a laptop, not even a netbook. Worse, Jan couldn’t
get a signal with her phone, even outside the warehouse—wherever they were,
there wasn’t a tower within clear range.
    “You couldn’t have found somewhere actually on the grid?” Jan
said in disgust, sinking back down into the sofa, interrupting a group of supers
who were apparently on their coffee break. They all gave her moderate hairy
eyeballs and she—having tossed good manners out the window by now—gave it right
back. She’d just spent