Read Online A Local Habitation by Seanan McGuire - Free Book Online

lot of folks don’t recognize it at all.
    That’s why I was surprised when Alex turned, shaking his finger. “Uh-uh. If you figure it out on your own, fine, but no tricks.”
    I shut my mouth, blinking. It’s not considered rude to taste the balance of the blood, but that’s because so few of us can do it that it’s never had the chance to become socially unacceptable. “You could always just tell me, you know.”
    “Now where would be the fun in that?” Alex stopped walking. His hair had fallen back over one eye, making him look slightly off-balance. “I bet we could find more entertaining ways for you to try working it out.”
    “Could we, now? Got any suggestions?”
    He smirked. “How do you feel about breakfast?” “Most men start with dinner.”
    “I can dare to be different.”
    “So far, I’m not seeing much difference.”
    “Is that a challenge?”
    “Maybe.”
    Still smirking, Alex leaned down and kissed me.
    His lips tasted like coffee and clover. I blinked, startled, before leaning in and kissing him back. He put a hand on my shoulder, pulling me into a slightly better angle, and deepened the kiss, drawing it out until my head started to spin. Then he let me go, stepping backward, and asked, “Different?”
    “Different,” I agreed. I could feel a blush running all the way to the tips of my ears.
    “See you at breakfast.” He winked, turning to open the door behind him. “Ladies first.”
    Laughing as I tried to sort through the spin of my emotions, I brushed past him into the most architecturally impossible hallway I’d ever seen. Real angles don’t bend that way. I looked back to Alex, who was barely managing to contain his look of anticipatory amusement.
    So we were going to play it that way, were we? Putting on my best innocent expression, I asked, “So when were you going to tell us that we were inside the knowe?”
    Alex’s amusement faded into surprise. “You knew?”
    “Newsflash: you don’t usually find lace-o’-dreams flowers growing on mortal lawns. Plus? The sky was the wrong kind of blue.” I shrugged. “I’m guessing we crossed worlds when we came through the front door.”
    He stopped, folding his arms. “Okay, how did you figure that out?”
    “Air-conditioning’s turned too high. The first thing you notice is the cold, and that keeps you from noticing the shift. Estate?”
    “Shallowing.”
    “Thought so. I’m assuming the mortal buildings overlay the knowe?”
    “Pretty much.”
    There are two types of knowe. Some, like Shadowed Hills, are literally Summerlands estates connected to the mortal world by doors punched through the walls of reality. Nothing forces them to conform to mortal geography, and for the most part, they don’t bother. The Summerlands-side of the Torquill estate is all virgin forest and cultivated farmland, and it looks nothing at all like the land surrounding the city of Pleasant Hill. Shallowings, on the other hand, are little pockets carved from the space between worlds, not entirely existing in either one. Because they aren’t anchored entirely in Faerie, they rely a lot more on the actual geography of both realities. We’ve been banned from all the lands of Faerie but the Summerlands since Oberon disappeared, and Shallowings are getting more common as real estate gets scarcer.
    “So what happens when you have human visitors?” In a way, it was a slightly more adult version of the question I’d asked Quentin earlier. Are you being careful?
    “Well, we keep them to a minimum, but when we have to let them in, we buzz them through the gate under a different code and someone meets them at the parking lot. They’re led to the human-side cafeteria or server rooms. That’s why the buildings aren’t connected; as long as you don’t come in through the front door, you don’t get into the knowe, and you can’t see anyone or anything that’s inside it.”
    There was a certain twisted logic to that idea. It was certainly no worse