The Gaespora were a group of scientists who had pushed human experimentation to the point of becoming a new (superior) species. They were invaders from another dimension. They were people born naturally with psychic powers. They were a hoax perpetrated by the American oligarchs. They could have sprung from radioactive dog shit for all Saru cared—the fact that mattered was they had her clit in a vice and were predisposed to squeeze.

The office was nice, she had to admit, top floor of the Vericast building, open air, with an ungodly expensive cloud shear to cut through the smog and bring real, honest-to-God daylight down around her. She had seen the light from the ground of course—the bright, golden beam that swiveled around the big, funky skyscraper in the city center—but she hadn’t realized it was the sun. It felt good, the light; it was warm, and gazing up she saw blue. There were birds up here, and not just pigeons and crows—little blue birds and red birds and birds with big funny tufts and brightly colored feathers. They sang and flew from tree to tree, more trees than she had ever seen. She couldn’t even believe there were that many kinds of trees in the world—short and fat and tall and with wrinkly bark and smooth bark and apples and long limbs that drooped down; there must have been hundreds. There was a pond too, and the water was clear and reflected the blue of the sky. It was so perfect and beautiful it made her angry. She felt like crying and she didn’t know why.

“We had planned to shear the whole city,” ElilE said, making his third attempt at pleasantries. “But the city council would not partner with us. Imagine: sun and sky for all of Philadelphia.”

“Then why didn’t you just go ahead and do it yourselves?” she said, taking the bait, even angrier now that she’d spoken. “Who would stop you?”

“We are guests in this world. We act only in partnership with humans.”

“Bullshit,” she laughed (but why did she still want to cry?) The man, ElilE, was definitely human, even if he had a fairy-ass name. Human face: check. Human body: check. He was barefoot like all the other Gaesporans—they had winced as she stomped through the grass in her steel-toed boots—ten human toes: check. He even wore a high-fashion black and silver pinstripe caji suit like any other dickhole bizman…and yet there were things that were odd about him. His eyes, green, normal, but so steady—yes, steady, that was the word. She wasn’t a psychologist by any stretch, but she’d talked to a fair spectrum of humanity and could identify some cause-and-effect emotions: I whack your knee with a bludgeon; you scream. I accuse you of fucking your sister; you look shocked—or at least feign it. I drop hints and clues and suppositions—subtle and not—and your eyes twitch or your tongue licks your lips, or you blush or redden or sweat or gasp.

There was none of that with ElilE. He sat cross-legged on a smooth, moss-covered bolder—they’d brought her a chair, hard wood that made her sit too straight—hands on his knees, staring and sometimes giving words. He was still, perfectly still. His breathing never varied, his eyes blinked but it was strangely regular. She decided to risk a scan, a quick visual—camera based—that wouldn’t trigger any alarms. He might notice the dilation of her pupils and the processing power might cause her to slur a word or skip a beat, but for all he knew she was drunk and high.

Amazing. Eight breaths a minute in even intervals. Six blinks per minute, again in even intervals. Pulse: forty. He was controlled for sure, but that didn’t signify anything inhuman. Good dopple training could get you the same result, or psycho yoga, and of course there were drugs you could take to make your body do anything you wanted—drugs manufactured by the Gaespora.

“Okay, what do you want? Why did you bring me here?”

It was time to get this over with. The chair was starting to hurt her back and the sun was in her eyes—damn it was bright, and it felt like it was burning her skin. She wanted to get back into the cool shade of the city below, away from this wind and bright and the goddamn loud-ass birds chirping everywhere. Also, she was fairly certain that something had crawled up her pants and was biting its way to the money spot.

“You are a private investigator,” ElilE said.

“Obviously you know that already.”

“We want you to find a girl.”

“Kidnapping?”

“We don’t know. She is in danger. There are others looking for her. If they find her they will kill her.”

“What kind of ‘others’ are we talking about? I don’t do riv jobs. I play nice with my fellow PIs.”

“We believe she is hunted by feasters.”

She stopped scratching her thigh. Well that was interesting.

“Sorry, I’m not the one you want. You need to talk to Morgan Friar—he deals with that mumbo jumbo.”

“We have already contacted Dr. Friar. He has refused. You are our second choice.”

If this was a ploy to grab her attention it had worked. Friar refusing a case? Doctor Friar? He’d never mentioned he was a doctor. Did he think it was a goose chase? Or was it real, too real, too dangerous? She thought again of the pudgy little man hunting down feasters—creatures, if rumor was to be believed, that made vampires look like fairies.

“Why didn’t he take the case?”

“He would not say.”

“Why do you think he turned it down?”

“We do not speculate.”

“Honey, this whole case is speculation so far. You believe she’s in danger? You believe there are feasters involved? The only fact you’ve managed to produce is that the best man for the job doesn’t want it.”

Seven blinks—an extra half-blink at the end. Did that signal annoyance? Frustration? Persuasion? She took it as a victory she’d managed to stick a pinhole in his poker face. He said nothing. He closed his eyes. The vast, glassy, sail-like wind shear suddenly stopped—she hadn’t even noticed the sheen of energy across it until it stopped. The wind picked up, the birds chirped more frantically, the black clouds of smog spiraled overhead.