I swiped at my face, scrubbing at the drying tears before wiping my gross nose on the bottom of the t-shirt. It was obviously something from my world, some sort of band tee with a logo of a snarling mountain lion shot full of arrows. Maybe they'd put me in it so that I would feel more comfortable; I was wearing a new pair of underwear, too, a pair of teal boxer briefs cut for a woman's body that fit me well. The not-at-all sexy clothing did actually make me feel a little better; whatever bizarre situation I was in, I at least wasn't going to be expected to immediately play the role of paramour to... Dain.

With a deep breath, I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the wall. I was either currently vividly hallucinating while dying on the shore of an alpine lake, or I had been kidnapped by honest-to-God magic people. If it was the latter situation, I didn't think I was still on Earth; despite all the "sightings" of Bigfoot and ivory-billed woodpeckers, humans had done a pretty good job of figuring out what was out there on the land. The ocean was still freaky and unknown, but land?

We had satellites that could see people's faces, a video camera in everyone's pockets, and more population than we knew what to do with. Places like Yosemite had to restrict the number of people that could go into the backcountry to keep it wild. There wasn't anywhere for men with wolf eyes to hide, not where sunlight could stream through windows. It didn't matter how good the glamor was; there were too many chances to slip up. The idea of a shadow society of magical creatures living cheek-by-jowl with humans was the stuff of fantasy novels.

Men with wolf eyes, other worlds, and magical healing were also the stuff of fantasy novels, but I gave a little more leeway for things happening across the veil rather than right in everybody's faces. People wanted to believe. All it would take would be one high-quality video of Bigfoot, one crime scene with DNA from something nonhuman, one AI face recognition program finding a thousand-year-old face walking through the streets of Chicago, and the jig would be up.

Pain made me realize I'd clenched my hands so tightly that I was digging deep grooves into my palms with my fingernails. With a force of will, I uncurled them, and wrapped them around my shins instead. I needed to not panic, and I needed to not do anything stupid. The three people had come from wherever here was into Yosemite, and they'd come back. That meant there was at least one way to get from one to the other, and that meant there was a way home.