Read Changeling on the Job: A Changeling Wars Novella for Free Online

disappearing behind the crowd. I reached for his bag.
    With a bit of a kick and a jump, he rose above the crowd and ran sideways across the sheer face of the hill. His bag hit a couple Fae as he passed; the place where Anwynn had bitten it caught on a minotaur’s horn and ripped.
    Something shiny fell from the bag, but the man didn’t slow. He leapt to the opposite cliff, bounced off of it, and was clear of the crowd. A flash of sunlight hit my eyes, I blinked, and he was gone.
    I slowed and Anwynn caught up to me. “What the hell,” I said, panting, “what the hell was that? ”
    “Someone skilled in the fighting arts,” she said. “Someone Talented in swordplay.”
    “Well I’m Talented—I can’t do that.”
    “Yes, but you’re also newly manifested.”
    I had a lot of raw power, but not enough refinement. Certainly not enough to run on walls. How was I going to catch this guy? If he was Talented, that meant he was one of the greater Fae, one of the Sidhe. I’d hoped he was one of the lesser Fae, because that would make things so much simpler. Now I had larger things to consider, like who I might offend by apprehending him and how it might shift the balance of power. And what had he been talking to that merchant about?
    I reached the spot where the man’s bag had ripped further. The minotaur was still there, rubbing at his horn with an irritated expression on his face. “It’s fine, Agram,” the Sidhe woman next to him said. “Honestly, you’re fussier than a cat in a puddle. You’re not hurt.”
    I knelt and brushed aside some dried leaves to find a round, dark brown stone. It hadn’t been among the items he’d bought. Reflexively, I held it out to Anwynn to sniff. She took a great big whiff.
    “Smells like death,” she said.
    I waited.
    She tilted her head, as though carefully considering. “You know,” she said, “it doesn’t have to be a very large television.”
    I choked back an exasperated sigh. “What’s next? You want a hot tub? Input into decorating decisions?”
    She gave me a curt nod. “There is a tall vase of sticks by the front door. What’s the point? Every time I hit it with my tail, you get angry, and it’s hard not to do when it’s so close by.”
    “It’s called decoration for a reason.” I ticked off a few fingers, the brown stone warm in my palm. “When you start paying rent, when you start contributing to the bills, and when you start cleaning up after yourself—then we’ll talk about household decisions.” I thrust the stone back at her. “Tell me more about the smell.”
    She didn’t bother to sniff again, her gaze fixed on mine. “It’s bad.”
    “Use it,” I said. “Follow that man’s trail.”
    The grushound did as I commanded, weaving back into the thick of the crowd. Now, with the scarf gone, I felt the gazes of the Sidhe following me once more. “Oh, get over it,” I called out. “I have legal status and I’m just trying to do my job. Yes, I was raised by mortals and my clothes are weird. Whoop-dee-doo.” I supposed, if I’d been trying to fit in, this was the wrong way to go about it. But I was never going to fit in, and I was tired of being stared at.
    They muttered amongst themselves, like cliques of gossiping high schoolers, but most turned back to whatever it was they’d been doing. I had to jog a bit to catch up to the shaggy black form of my grushound as the market thinned and the forest deepened. Very few Fae wandered the outskirts, and those that did cast furtive glances my way, and I caught two passing packages to one another from beneath their cloaks.
    A couple light globes floated in the branches of the trees, combining with the wan sunlight filtering through the leaves and providing minimal illumination. A single merchant had set up a stall here, and he was selling something that looked suspiciously like dried up pig’s feet.
    “Over here,” Anwynn said. She stopped at the trunk of an enormous oak tree. Its gnarled roots