He forced himself to smile. “Nonsense,” he said as he turned back to his closet. “Human’s haven’t killed them all. They’re in hiding. Not every pixy buck likes the challenge of living among humans as close as you do.” He could leave most of his clothes, but shoes he liked were hard to find, and he put four pairs on the bed, then a fifth. “We’ll go through the wild places if you like. Set out honey and leave a notice at every rest stop. I bet by the time we get to the Pacific, you’ll have a bevy of bucks trailing you, wanting to make your acquaintance.”
She slipped a pale pink dust, her mood brightening. “You think?”
“Absolutely.” There wasn’t much more he wanted other than his toiletries and the rack of genetically modified orchids currently taking sun on the screened patio. He wasn’t going to scrap eight years of tissue grafts and DNA splices. Leaving his work to arrange permanent funding for it was one thing, abandoning his plants to die of drought another.
Suddenly it felt more like an adventure and less like an exile. “You finished stockpiling for winter, right? Bring it all, and you’ll have enough until you’re settled and growing more. Sacramento has a twelve-month growing season.”
Hovering before him, Orchid looked to the garden, her face glowing. Her land was her life, but she’d been here for two years creating a place to raise a family and had yet to find even one prospective mate. Perhaps Florida had none. He’d found her in the back of a truck full of heat-dead plants someone had left on the interstate. Even now she was too embarrassed to tell him how she’d gotten there.
“Unless you want to stay,” Kal said, wondering if she was having second thoughts. It was more than risky traveling with a pixy. It was damn stupid if they were seen. “I won’t sublet it out. It is yours.” But he knew she’d suffer if he left her. Pixies weren’t naturally loners. Neither were elves.
“I want to go,” she said again, her flash of worry vanishing behind a quick smile. “When do we leave?”
Anticipation filled him, unexpected and heady. He’d have to work at a human-run facility with a woman he could hardly stand, but with Orchid coming with him, he felt whole. He could do this with his head high, not down in shame for failure.
“Is morning too soon?” he asked, willing to give her all the time she needed. “I’d like to get some miles behind us right away. The sooner we leave, the slower we can go.”
She took to the air, her dust a bright, happy silver. “Morning is fine. It won’t take me but a few hours to move my winter stores. Can I stash them in one of your orchid pots? You’re taking them, right?”
He nodded, sure he had a cardboard box in the carport. “Of course. I can move your entire flowerpot if you like.”
She clapped her hands, spinning where she hovered to make her dress and hair fling out. “I’m going to find a husband!” she cried, then darted out and up the flue and into the garden.
Kal couldn’t help his smile of prideful happiness that he could do this for her. He had long since seen his own people’s faltering mirrored in hers, and knowing she was happy, even if she found a mate and left him, would be a calm spot in his fractured moods.
Unlike his species’ decline, the pixies’ was a direct result of human activity. There were simply not enough wild places left for a small Inderland species forced into hiding and unable to mimic humans. It was a shaky balance, but the more humans there were, the happier the vampires were and the easier it was for the population of witches and Weres to integrate seamlessly. They’d had enough practice, having walked hand in hand with humanity through the ages since before Jesus, and yes, rumor had it he’d been an Inderlander. Never before, though, had any species had the ability to end not just its own people, but all of them.
Kal reached under his bed for his largest suitcase. It was dusty, and he brushed it clean before filling it to find he had room to spare. Pleased, he put in two more pairs of shoes and zipped it shut. No one would thank him for letting the humans die out from a virus of their own making. He’d go to Sacramento and make sure Trisk’s virus was everything she said it was. Fixing what she missed would put his name on her research. He’d make sure of it. Ulbrine had given him a chance to earn a career that would increase his opportunity to find a productive wife, or at the very least, the higher salary that would pay for fertility treatments or the gene therapies just now being developed.
What could go wrong?
5
Trisk rose from the fertilizer-stained cement walk, wiping the growth substrate from her fingers onto a rag tucked into her lab coat. A stiff, artificial wind blew dry air over the sturdy tomato plants as she stretched her back in satisfaction. The leafy, tart-smelling greenery spread nearly a quarter acre under artificial light, healthy and strong. It would be cheaper to have her largest testing field aboveground, but after the Cuban bioweapon crisis, legislation forced all true-breeding GMO research into facilities that could withstand a 747 hitting them.
This would be the last year her Angel tomato would reside in Global Genetics’ largest quarantine field, and in actuality, what was here was the seed holding the final tweaks that Saladan had demanded. Her project was making money, and it felt more than good.
It did, though, beg the question of what would fill the perfect rows between the dirt and the raised irrigation system next year. Perhaps after she had proved herself with Daniel’s virus, an elven lab would offer her a job.