Read A Local Habitation online

Interior dingbat created by Tara O’Shea.

DAW Book Collectors No. 1503.

DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

eISBN : 978-1-101-17173-8

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly
coincidental.

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Nearly all the designs and trade names in this book are registered trademarks. All that are still in commercial use are protected by United States and international trademark law.

First Printing, March 2010

S.A.

http://us.penguingroup.com

For Amanda and Merav, who helped me find the map when it was missing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

Writing a book is a solitary exercise; actually finishing a book is not. Large portions of this book were written while traveling abroad, and my thanks go to Rika Koerte, Mike and Anne Whitacker, Talis Kimberley, and Simon Fairborne, for providing me with space while I was working in their kitchens and spare rooms (and who failed to complain about the crazy American who came to England to work on her novel). Forensic help, medical advice, and some serious logic discussion were provided by Melissa Glasser, Meredith Schwartz, and Amanda Weinstein, while my entire crack team of machete-wielding proofreaders provided merciless feedback and a lot of textual baby-sitting. This wouldn’t be the book it is without them, or without Chris Mangum, who listened patiently as I complained about plot during multi-hour telephone calls.

My agent, Diana Fox, was tolerant of my endless need to whine about punctuation, and provided many excellent suggestions that helped to make the staff of ALH Computing come alive, at least for me, and my fabulous editor, Sheila Gilbert, once again cut straight to the heart of what needed to be done. Finally, thanks are due to Kate Secor, Michelle Dockrey, Rebecca New-man, and Brooke Lunderville, who put up with sharing my time with fictional people while still hitting this book with as many sticks as they could swing. (In Kate’s case, thanks also for letting me use the TiVo. It did a lot to preserve my sanity.)

My personal soundtrack while writing A Local Habitation consisted mostly of August and Everything After, by the Counting Crows, Engine, by We’re About 9, and Tanglewood Tree, by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer. Any errors in this book are entirely my own. The errors that aren’t here are the ones that all these people helped me fix.

Thank you for reading.

PRONUNCIATION GUIDE:

Bannick: ban-nick. Plural is Bannicks.

Banshee: ban-shee. Plural is Banshees.

Barrow Wight: bar-row white. Plural is Barrow Wights. Cait Sidhe: kay-th shee. Plural is Cait Sidhe.