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it. Not after Martin had done...what he had done, and not with the memory of those moldy-looking fingers reaching up to where she had been sitting, forcing their way through metal to get to her....
    “They’ve always liked human meat.”
    Neither of her two rescuers were exactly knights in shining armor, but they had to be better than that.
    “No knight, but the steed,” she said, and a slightly hysterical giggle escaped her. Shock. She was in shock.
    “What? Oh. No.” Martin smiled, picking up the joke. “A sense of humor, that’s good. You’re going to need it.”
    As unnerving as the transformation had been, she still felt herself lean toward him, moving like a flower to follow the sun. AJ was unnerving and dangerous. He...AJ said Martin was dangerous, but instead she felt comforted. Protected. Safe.
    That was insane. Not human. Hello, not human!
    A were-pony? Jan closed her eyes, shook herself slightly, opened her eyes again. Martin was still there, watching her.
    Jan had always been a practical sort: she worked with what she could see. There was no way to believe— no way to convince herself to believe that this was a hoax or a prank, not anymore. She had seen Martin change form. She had seen AJ’s face, heard him growl, a noise that couldn’t have come from a human throat. She had seen... something tear through the bottom of a city bus as if it was cardboard.
    God, she hoped everyone on the bus was okay. There hadn’t been any sirens or screaming, so she had to believe her two rescuers—captors—were right, that it had abandoned the uptown bus the moment they left....except that meant that thing was looking for them.
    Why? What had she been yanked into?
    “Okay.” She breathed in and out once evenly, the way her doctor had taught her, calming her body, telling it to relax and stand down, and sat straight-backed on the bench, watching a squirrel balancing on the bike rack opposite them, nibbling at something. “Not human.”
    Martin nodded once, approvingly, and she heard a muffled snort coming from AJ, that they both ignored.
    “You know Tyler. You said something had taken him.... Something like those turncoats?” The thought made her cringe inside—maybe they were hurting him, maybe... Oh, god.
    “No.” Martin shook his head this time, the thick black hair falling over his eyes exactly the same way it had done in his other form. Somehow, that small detail made it make more sense in her brain. “Not them. We could have stopped them, if that were it. Or, we could have tried to stop them, anyway. They’re just...turncoats.” The way he said the word made it sound like a curse. “They’ve sold out their own kind.”
    “You...your kind...?” She made a gesture that was meant to indicate him and AJ, who was pacing again, but instead came out as a wimpy hand-circle.
    “Us, and you.” AJ’s muzzle twitched. “Look, there’s natural folk, you humans, and us, the supernaturals. That’s...there are different species, all scattered around the world. Some you’ve heard of, some you haven’t, some don’t come out much anymore. Mostly we get along because we ignore each other. And humans like to pretend we don’t exist, at all. It’s better that way. Safer.”
    Safer. Jan wondered if he used the word the same way she did. None of it mattered; she only wanted to know one thing. “What happened to Ty?”
    “Your leman...he’s....” Martin stopped and considered her, as though gauging how much more she could take. “Not much” was the answer, she suspected, but she’d do it, she’d deal with it. Her hand slipped down to touch her inhaler, reassurance, even though she didn’t need it just them.
    “We didn’t know about him specifically,” AJ said, his pacing taking him away and then back to stand in front of Jan. “We were tracking the preter, found her in time to see your leman being taken, two nights ago. We were too late to interfere, but we backtracked from there, found his wallet,