Soul of Fire

Save the world—early and often

Three months ago Jan learned that elves were real, our world wasn’t safe and it was up to her to save her boyfriend—and the world—from being englamoured into slavery. Now Jan has a new deadline—ten weeks, ten days and ten hours. That’s when the truce she arranged between our world and the elves’ realm ends, and the invasion starts.

While supernatural creatures work to defend humanity, Jan and the kelpie Martin have to find the preter queen, and use her to force the portals closed. But when magic mixes with technology, shutting it down isn’t as simple as closing a door or pulling a plug….

Jan’s geek-girl know-how might have gotten her this far, but they’re going to need technical skills and magic to shut the portals for good….

And their time’s nearly up.

Praise for

“Do you believe in magic?

You will when Gilman’s done with you.” —New York Times bestselling author Dana Stabenow

“Readers will love the Mythbusters-style fun of smart, sassy people solving mysteries through experimentation, failure and blowing stuff up.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Hard Magic

“Layers of mystery, science, politics, romance, and old-fashioned investigative work mixed with high-tech spellcraft.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Pack of Lies

“Innovative world building coupled with rich characterization

continues to improve as we enter the third book of this series.” —Smexy Books Romance Reviews on Tricks of the Trade

“Gilman spends a good deal of time exploring—

and subverting—the trope of the fated-to-happen relationship. Readers will find this to be an engaging and fast-paced read.” —RT Book Reviews on Dragon Justice

“Gilman delivers an exciting, fast-paced, unpredictable story

that never lets up until the very end. There’s just enough twists and turns to keep even a jaded reader guessing.” —SF Site on Staying Dead

Soul of Fire

Laura Anne Gilman

For Josepha. For Danny. For Big Pete.

I hope you knew how much you meant to me.

“You may go, human, and take your beast with you. Safe across our borders and safe for...” He pretended to contemplate, but she knew he had planned what he would say before he opened his mouth. “Ten weeks and ten days and ten hours, you may have, for your audacity and your honor.”

Jan frowned. Something wasn’t right. “Ten weeks and ten days...and ten hours,” she repeated slowly.

“You wish it shorter, human?”

She had thought—She didn’t know much, but everything she had read told her that seven was the magical number. But as odd as that seemed, that wasn’t what...

They said she could go and take her beast. That meant Martin. But...

“And Ty,” she said. “I fought to bring Tyler home. Those were our terms.”

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 1

In the middle of the chaos, the constant hum of conversation, the noise of chairs and feet, Jan could hear the clock.

“Shut up,” she told it. “Shut up.”

Lisbet, at the other side of the desk, looked at her with sympathy and then—clearly deciding against saying anything—went back to work.

Jan should do the same. But this morning, her thoughts wouldn’t settle.

It had been ten weeks, five days, and seven hours since she had made her desperate bargain with the preternaturals of the Court Under the Hill, forced them to hold off on their raids, to stop whatever plans they had to invade the natural world. Ten weeks, five days, and a few hours less since she, boyfriend and kelpie in tow, had come back through the portal, battered and exhausted.

The supernatural defense had gathered—regathered—here in this off-the-track property to begin their race against time. And in the main room, a grandfather clock that had probably been installed when the farmhouse had first been built back in the eighteenth century ticked off those moments, as if any of them might forget.

Jan looked around the room, crowded with half a dozen battered metal desks similar to her own, and was painfully aware that she was the only human there, the only one who probably didn’t have some sort of supernatural time-of-day awareness hard-coded into her wetware. She didn’t need it; she could feel the hours passing like her own heartbeat. Every morning, she watched the sun rise into the sky, so different from the ever-present gloom of the preternatural realm, and felt time slipping away from them.

Being the only human didn’t make her special, though. None of them could forget. Everyone here lived and breathed with the knowledge that every moment pushed against them, straining the atmosphere, making even the most patient of the them—and few of them were patient to begin with—snap at each other over the smallest of things.

Ten weeks, five days, and seven hours had gone by. They had four days and, what, seventeen hours left before the truce ended, and the preternaturals—the elves of lore, lovely and deadly—were free once again to open portals between the worlds. And once that happened...