Tithe by Holly Black

kelpie.”
    He pushed back the covers and sat up, suddenly awake. “Right. That’s right.” He slid out of bed, scratching his balls through once-whitebriefs, and sat down in front of the computer. The screensaver dispersed as he shook the mouse.
    In the hallway, Kaye could hear Janet’s voice distinctly, complaining to her mother about the fact that she wasn’t going to get her license if Corny didn’t let her borrow his car.
    “What time is it?” Kaye asked.
    Corny looked at the clock on the screen. “After five.”
    “Can I use your phone?”
    He nodded. “Do it now. You can’t use it while I’m signed on. We only have the one line.”
    Corny’s bedroom phone was a copy of the emergency bat-phone, bright red and sitting under a plastic dome on the floor. It even had a little bulb in it that she imagined might blink when a call came in. Kaye sat down cross-legged on the floor, took off the dome, and dialed her house.
    “Hello?” Kaye’s grandmother answered.
    “Grandma?” She dragged her fingers over the synthetic loops of the rug she was sitting on. Her eyes fell on her long green toes with chipped red nail polish on the jagged, untrimmed toenails.
    “Where are you?”
    “I’m at Janet’s,” Kaye said, wiggling the toes, willing herself to realize they belonged toher. It was hard talking to her grandmother now. The only reason her grandmother put up with her and Ellen was because they were family and you always took care of family. “I just wanted to tell you where I am.”
    “Where were you this morning?”
    “I got up early,” Kaye said. “I had to meet some friends before school started.” That was true enough, in a way.
    “Well, when are you coming home then? Oh, and I have two messages for you. Joe from the Amoco called about some job—I hope you’re not thinking of working at a gas station—and some boy named Kenny called twice.”
    “Twice?” Kaye couldn’t help the smile that was pushing up the corners of a mouth she was determined to keep grim.
    “Yes. Are you coming home for dinner?”
    “No, I’ll eat here,” Kaye said. “’Bye, Gram, I love you.”
    “I think your mother would like it if you came home for dinner. She wants to talk to you about New York.”
    “I’ve got to go. ’Bye, Gram.”
    Kaye hung up the phone before her grandmother could start another sentence. “You can sign on now,” she said.
    A few minutes later, Corny made a noise.
    She looked up.
    “Your plan has one little problem.”
    “Don’t they all…no, tell me, what is it?”
    “Kelpies basically like to drown people and then eat most of them—all but their guts. You’re not supposed to get on their backs, yadda, yadda, yadda, they’re fucking evil as hell, yadda, yadda, yadda, not to mention they shapeshift. Oh, yeah, you can tame them if you happen to manage to get a bridle on them. Fat chance of that.”
    “Oh.”
    “Did you ever wonder if some of these sites were designed by faeries? I wonder if I kept looking if I could find a newsgroup or a hub page or something.”
    “So, if we don’t sit on its back, are we safe?”
    “Huh? Oh…I don’t know.”
    “Well, are there instances there where it drowns people without them getting on its back?”
    “No, but then it’s not all that comprehensive.”
    “I’m going to try it. I’m going to talk to it.”
    He looked up from the computer desk. “You’re not going without me.”
    “Okay,” Kaye said. “I just thought that it might be dangerous.”
    “This is the real thing,” he said, voice dropping low, “and I don’t want to miss even one little bit of it. Don’t even think of running off.”
    She held up both hands in mock surrender. “I want you to go with me. Really, okay?”
    “I don’t want to wake up someplace with a screwed-up memory and nobody ever believing me. Do you understand?” Corny’s face was flushed.
    “C’mon, Corny, either your mom or Janet is going to hear you and come in here. I’m not