Keeping It Real (3 page)

was too late now. No, it was too faint. It couldn't be anything more than her imagination.

Zal had stopped singing as she noticed him standing there in plain view. He was exactly her height
so

they stood eye to eye as her anger stung her. She thought he looked slightly surprised but Lila couldn't

think straight
.
She was dismayed at
how unprepared she was
.
It
wasn't
his looks or his rock star status that
made her feel sick with nervous tension. It was the sense of his otherness, the combination of how

nearly human he appeared and how inhuman he really was.

He'd made no effort to hide, but she hadn't seen him. His natural magical aura had concealed him from

her attention and now her technologically-assisted senses could feel the slight charge of it as he stepped

closer. This elvish aetherial body, larger than his physical body and moving independently of it, reached

out ahead of him and touched her with slippery, invisible coils. His
andalune,
after which the great
bridge

of Bay City was named, was as natural to him as her own skin was to her. Its curious touch was another

kind of glance, nothing more, but
the unwanted investigation made her back away one step even under

her tightest control and she had to look away. Lila remembered other
andalune
touches like this one that

were neither kind nor merely indifferent
.
And then, almost before it was there, it had gone away,

satisfied that
it
knew everything it wanted to know about her. She could still taste a snap of lime in the air

and some half-remembered warning tried to rise in her mind, though she was so slugged on adrenal

suppressants it had nowhere to go. Her body wanted to run. Her mind was frozen. She gave him a

casual nod of recognition with a dip of her chin, as though she couldn't be more comfortable.

For a second she thought
he looked surprised. She saw a moment
of curiosity burning in the slight

widening of his large, slanted eyes.

'Hello, Lila,' Zal said. He didn't have an ordinary elf voice. Their normal speaking tones were very like

human voices with subtle harmonies buried inside but this one was smoky rather than bell-like. He didn't

exactly fit the mould of serene snottiness she had been braced for either, although his long ash-blond hair

and attenuated, pointy ears were exactly on theme. Lila had never seen an elf with dark eyes before.

Zal's were chestnut
brown with darker rings around the iris. She was staring into them like any fool for a

good half a second before she composed herself. She turned aside and felt her face heat. The feeling she

was experiencing was startling, and nothing like loathing.

Zal arched one dark eyebrow at her in a laconic expression of amusement at her clear efforts to repel

all his natural glamour and Lila seethed with annoyance.

'I don't
require your services,' he informed her. He took his coat
up and put
it on with insouciant
ease,

then tilted his head, waiting for her to do something.

They always wait, Lila recalled, all trace of blush gone. They have the time. They like to watch and

see what silly things humans will do, given the opportunity. He could stand there till Christmas with that

false pretend-polite expression on his face.

Lila picked up the ring. It was a stupid thing to have given him in the first
place, but
Doublesafe hadn't

thought
past
their human security procedures with any imagination. There was no way he would wear it.

'Yeah well, you're not paying the bill,' she said calmly. She wished she could take the ring and stuff it

down his throat, but that would be only a short-term solution. Instead she put it in her jacket
pocket and

hoped she'd think of something. 'It won't make any difference
.
Until Jelly is happy that all threats on your

life are gone, then where you go, I go.'

'Until you die?' he asked, both brows up for a second, taunting.

'Or until you do.'

Lila saw the ghost of a smile cross his face as he walked past her. His

gait
was deceptively slow to look at, but he was fast. It was all she could do not to trot in order to keep

up.

At the bike he didn't pause, put his hands on the beautiful sunrise paintwork of the gas tank and swung

his leg over into the riding position
.
So much for the legendary elf aversion to machinery.

Lila knew that
this was the moment when she had to take some control if she were ever going to stand

a chance. She didn't hesitate: walked up, put her hands on his waist and lifted him off her place and onto

the pillion seat. Then she kicked her leg high over the handlebars without waiting to see if her strength

had caused any surprises and sat
down very hard and towards the back of her seat, rather hoping to do

him some minor damage
.

The bike reacted immediately to her touch, reading her intent from the tension in her body, the speed

of her movements and its trace readings from her Al-self. As she took hold of the grips it was already

moving forward, and as soon as her feet
were off the ground it
accelerated rapidly, bending them low as

it curved around the tight
turns into the woodland
.

She felt Zal adjust to the movements easily
.
He did not
grab her, as she'd hoped he might
have to

because he was off balance
.
He waited until they were stopped at the gates and then slid up against her

and put his hands on her hips.

'Don't be mad, honey,' he said, so close to her ear that
she could feel his breath warm the long curls of

her hair. T thought
you wanted me where you could see me.'

'I can see you all I want from here,' she said and took them down the last slope at speed, necessitating

a heavy sideslide into the road which almost
took both their knees out
on the hardtop
.
She was almost

certain that
he would be able to feel where her real body and the intelligent metal prosthetics grew into

one another and that was horrible, more than she expected, but, much more than that, what
most

concerned her was that despite all her training it
had taken barely seconds before she was playing a

Game with him when the first
rule of engagement with elves, like dragons, is that you never play Games

with them. The smart one-liners were a dead giveaway. That lime and lemon zap - had he started it

deliberately? No doubt. . . but her brooding was cut short.

As she straightened them into line she saw shadows shifting on her right, where the trees clung to a

steep bank. She glanced there and saw

the uncertain, stag-like form of a large wood elemental looking at them from the shade, branches its

bones and leaves its flesh
.
Such creatures were incredibly rare in Otopia,

The bike was too fast. She caught no more than that
glimpse.

Zal didn't say or do any more but he didn't move away either. All the way into town she could feel his

body and the almost-skin contact of his
andalune,
warm against her back. She found herself mentally

reviewing a still shot
of the first
moment
she'd walked into the room with the ocean view. He'd been

watching her, the whole time she'd been in the room, long before she saw him. Looking at
what
her

Al-self could analyse from the images now she thought
his look at her was disturbingly acute.

I will no
t
be
a
tt
rac
t
ed
t
o him, i
t
's only a ridiculous magical
t
rick,
t
his Game, she told herself
sternly. The entire thing is just one big easy weapon they use to get whatever they want out of

humans. Most can't do anything about it, can't even feel it when it takes hold, but I can, and I'm

not falling for that old trick. Magical bonds do not count as reality and they don't stand up in

court. Anyway, all elves stare acutely. It's a species-trait, like the ears and the supercharged

nervous system. My job is to find out all about him, to guard him and to find out who's after him,

and that's all.

Which was all true. But it felt truer when they arrived in the studio parking lot and he got off and

ignored her completely. This time she had to stride at
her fastest to catch up as he vanished into the dim,

air-conditioned interior.

Lila ignored the ride and her various disquiets by forcing them into temporary storage in her Al-memory

system. She concentrated as she met the rest
of the band, the support crew, the studio execs, the sound

engineers and the various hangers-on who had accumulated to listen to the recording. As she shook their

hands she took readings and com-pared them with the files she had on them already. Data ran like water

in her mind, showing her their names and every other known statistic under the sun.

The three backing singers were faery; two of Emerald Nation with beautiful green skins, and one

Chalcedonite who was striped like a tiger in tones of dusk and gold.

'He's a Mojave Blue,' one of the Emerald girls, the ultra-dark Viridia, told Lila proudly, because he

was her boyfriend. He introduced himself as Sand, Sandy for long.

The other faery woman was even more lovely than Viridia, with spiky natural lime hair in a punk style

and a slender, willowy shape. Her face was all delicate features, boosted with extraordinary silver and

turquoise makeup in the faery equivalent of Goth. 'I'm Poppy,' she said, with a dazzling smile. 'Hey, how

are ya? Nice to see more girls around. This place is strictly over-testosteroned, if ya know what I mean.

Did you see Zal's letters? They're utterly hideoso. Hey Zal,' and she took his arm as he passed her and

air-kissed him in the direction of his lips - a gesture he matched with an elegant mwa, millimetres from

contact. 'Catch ya later.'

Lila watched Poppy glide just above the floor in that floaty faery way, as though she was as light as

thistledown
.
Viridia and Sand made slightly more effort to stay floorbound, but not much. Their wings

were not visible in Otopia, but Lila found that they created a slight buzz of

interference with her internal comms, as certain kinds of faery often did. She'd have to be careful around

them because they'd made her slow to react.

Zal did some complicated gang-like Hi-Five greeting with the others in the band. From letting Lila

make her own way with the guileless bonhomie of the faeries he actually reached back and drew her

forward into the studio proper to meet the humans
.

'Guys, this is my new shadow, Lila
.
Lila doesn't
like rock, and she doesn't
like elves.'

'Hey,' said the bass player, dark and fresh-faced Luke who was, Lila judged, twenty-five going on

fifteen. His rap sheet included two counts of Class B alchemical possession. He gave her a grin and a

heavy squeeze on her hand. 'Is she like, going
everywhere
with us?'

'What
does she like?' asked the girl DJ, giving Lila a competitive and warning-off stare from under the

brim of her battered top hat.

'Violence,' Lila said sweetly in her best Swiss-finishing-school voice. She withdrew her hand from

Luke's hold. He winked at her.

Zal laughed
.

The DJ relaxed and nodded, her stiff-faced initial reaction softening into a smile. 'Whatever.'

Luke said, 'Don't like elves? Are you what, some kind of racist?'

'I love elves,' Lila said in exactly the same tone as before, her smile fixed. 'And I love rock.'

Jelly's voice broke in over the intercom. 'Can we get on with business before the rental of these fine

additional musicians destroys all potential of my third house purchase in New Malibu? Stations people.

Instruments. Connections.'

Lila retreated to Jelly's side of the glass wall and sat down beside him at the mixing desk. She

detected no hidden enmities in the band. Far from it, they were all perfectly easy with one another. A

quick surveil-lance of the rest
of the people here gave her no more evidence of any internal rivalries at

work. She settled down to watch them do their stuff. They were going to record a Mode-X cover of

"The Ace of Spades'
.

Lila, like Jelly, had no faith that Zal could ever convincingly sing tracks like that
.
She'd never heard an

elf sing anything other than chant or a peculiarly prissy version of 'Silent Night'
.
She didn't want to wait

around either
.
Now that she was satisfied that the studio was secure, and with two other guards on duty

at
the doors, she made an

excuse of visiting the Ladies Room and took her chance to slip out in order to investigate the rest
of the