B R Kingsolver - [Rosie O'Grady's Paranormal Bar and Grill 02] - Night Stalker

by Kingsolver

  I noted the half-dozen names that Trevor and I hadn’t discovered. Of the thirty-two names listed, eight had asterisks next to them.

  “The Columbia Club roster,” I said.

  “Yes. The names with the asterisks next to them are people we think may be offering bounties on vamps and shifters.”

  I glanced at the table where the bounty hunters were sitting.

  “Don’t be too obvious about it,” I said, “but there’s a party going on at a table behind your left shoulder. All new in town, and one of them asked me once about bounties.”

  Mackle immediately jumped off her barstool and headed to the ladies’ room, but I could tell she was surveying the room. Frankie turned to watch her go, letting her gaze rest on the table with the celebrants.

  “They look like they’re celebrating something,” Frankie said.

  “Yeah. I noticed. They’re ordering fancy liquor tonight, which isn’t their usual.” I glanced down at her list, then said, “Word is that vamp heads are bringing two grand, with five hundred for shifter heads. Sounds to me as though we didn’t get rid of everyone who was stirring the pot.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Yeah, but I’ve got someone on the inside now. My dad really took what Nava did personally.”

  I would hope a father would take a threat to his daughter’s life personally, but then again, I didn’t have much experience with normal families. I had a rather jaundiced view of families after my parents sold me to the Illuminati.

  “How are the bounties being paid?” I asked.

  “Cash, through a dhampir who recently came to town. It seems as though she is the one who organized the scheme and recruited the money men. The actual payouts to her are three thousand for vamps and a thousand for shifters. She’s making bank.”

  “Dhampir? Are you certain?”

  “Oh, yeah. We’re sure. We inserted an undercover cop as a bounty hunter. As you might imagine, we have quite a collection of vampire heads down at the morgue.”

  “So, you’re on your way to solving this thing,” I said, although the tone in her voice didn’t indicate any such thing.

  Frankie shook her head. “Our guy turned up dead this morning. He’d been drained.” She shrugged. “He wasn’t a paranormal. We didn’t think it would make a difference. A lot of the people who we think are involved in the trade are norms. No idea what went wrong.”

  I saw Mackle threading her way between tables, and she stopped to talk to a couple of witches who were regulars. Their table happened to be fairly close to the celebrating bounty hunters. She spoke to the witches for a few minutes, then made her way back to the bar.

  “Find out anything interesting?” I asked.

  She grinned. “Just saying hello to my cousin. Of course, I couldn’t help but overhear the assholes in the corner. They think they’re smart, talking in a sort of code, but anyone with a brain can figure it out. That’s why no one is sitting at the tables next to them. Their conversation is a little too bloodthirsty.”

  “Nothing you can do about them?” I asked.

  “No proof. Any idiot can talk big, but how do you make a charge stick?” Cindy asked.

  “We have to catch them in the act,” Frankie said. “Unfortunately, we need to bust them in the middle of murder or transporting heads.”

  I suddenly didn’t care for the way Frankie and Mackle were looking at me.

  “I’m not volunteering my head,” I said, and went to take Jenny’s order at the other end of the bar. While I made her drinks and took care of some other customers, I occasionally glanced at the two law enforcement officers. They sat with their heads together, intently discussing something.

  When I came back to them about twenty minutes later, Frankie said, “It’s not your head we need. It’s your smarts and your magic.”

  “I know people with a lot better magic.”

  “Erin, my father and some of his friends have set up a reward fund to help solve this thing. Get me enough evidence to haul these bastards off to jail, and you can make ten grand.”

  I backed away from her until my butt hit the back bar, then I folded my arms across my chest and studied her. First, a vampire lord offers me a million dollars to take his side in the war, then the cops offered me ten thousand dollars to work for them. My poverty must have been more obvious than I thought. Of course, Frankie had seen my apartment when the only furniture I had was a bed.

  “Do I really look that stupid?” I blurted out. Everyone I knew—from Lizzy’s mom, to Sam, to Trevor—would kick my butt if I agreed to what she was suggesting.

  “You have the strongest shields I’ve ever seen,” Frankie said, leaning across the bar with an earnest expression on her face. “All we need is some pictures, faces, names, times. Where this dhampir is located.”

  As if I didn’t have enough to worry about with Barclay gunning for me. I started trying to count how many different sides had their fingers in the chaotic pot that was Westport, and my head spun. Barclay, Flynn, Montgomery, Michaela and her sisters, the cops, the Columbia Club—and who knew how many factions were involved there? Then another dhampir, the bounty hunters, the shifters, and probably a bunch of other people I didn’t know about. Possibly the Illuminati, though I didn’t think so, but there were other shadow organizations—the Rosicrucians, the Knights Magica, and others. The Illuminati had infiltrated the Columbia Club. Were they the only ones?

  “No,” I said. “Find yourself another sacrificial lamb. I’m just a bartender.” I turned and walked away.

  In the time I’d been in Westport, I had spent most of it at Rosie’s, and even on my days off, I hadn’t seen very much. Part of that was due to not having a car, but part was also due to the fact that it was hard to motivate myself to go do things alone. Even when I was on Illuminati missions, I usually just sat in my hotel and either read or watched TV when I wasn’t working.

  But I was always ready if Lizzy or Jolene asked me to go someplace, and since my kiss with Trevor, I suddenly had someone else to do things with. Before we parted the previous day, we had agreed to go out to lunch. He came by and picked me up at eight o’clock in the morning—the crack of dawn for me—and we drove east.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, sipping my take-out coffee and trying to wake up.

  “Just a drive in the country, and then we’ve been invited to lunch in Killarney Village,” he replied.

  “Really?” Killarney Village was where Lizzy lived—a Fae suburb of Westport, east of the city, near the fairy mound that no one knew about. “Lizzy never invited me out there.”

  “She didn’t this time, either,” he said with a wink. “Her mother did.” He chuckled. “I got a call out of the blue, and she said that she wanted to treat us to lunch.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. Right after I got home.”

  He took the freeway going east, through the suburbs, and then into the forest. The road climbed, and occasionally, I could see the tops of peaks in the distance in front of us. We drove along like that for fifteen or twenty minutes, then he took an exit. At the bottom of the off-ramp, he took a right at the stop sign, and we immediately began to climb into the hills on a two-lane road.

  “I’ll bet this is pretty in the summer,” I said. The evergreen forest reminded me of home—the area around where the City of the Illuminati had been.

  “This is where we come cross-country skiing,” Trevor said. “There’s no snow this low yet, so we’ll be able to drive.” He winked. “There’s a surprise I think you’ll like.”

  Twenty minutes later, he slowed and then took the turn onto a narrow dirt road. It was steeper and winding, and a small stream ran by the road on our right.

  “This is where we come to ski,” he said. “We park down at the paved road, and this first part is really a bitch, but it levels out before too long.”

  True to his word, we topped out at a broad, open valley. The road ended in a large circle at a fence. He pulled over and stopped
next to two other cars.

  “We walk from here. I was hoping we’d be here alone, but it looks like we’ll have some company.” He grabbed a small backpack from the back seat, locked the car, and we started up a narrow trail along the stream.

  We walked for about twenty minutes. The trail was rather steep as we climbed the side of the valley. Looking down, I could imagine the valley both white in winter and green in summer. Miles ahead of us, the white peaks of the mountains could be seen past the valley.

  And then we topped a hill, and he stopped, looking down. Below us was a pool of water about ten feet across surrounded by rocks. Three young men and two women around my age or a little younger sat in the water—talking, laughing, and drinking beer. The water was crystal clear. No one was wearing any clothes, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone that we were looking at them.

  “Hot springs,” Trevor said with a grin, and began the descent into the little ravine below us.

  Although it was a sunny day, the temperature was about forty degrees Fahrenheit. I could see steam rising from the pool as well as the small stream below where the water spilled over the edge. As we drew closer, the people called out greetings to us.

  Trevor dropped the backpack on a large rock, sat down, and started taking off his shoes.

  “I forgot to ask if you’re bashful.”

  I laughed as I sat down and began to unlace my boots. “No, you didn’t. This is just a transparent ploy to get me naked, isn’t it?”

  He leaned closer. “It’s going to work, too. Isn’t it?”

  I kissed him. “Absolutely. The good part is that I get to leer at you, too.” I was disappointed that we weren’t alone, but resolved that we would go there again.

  And leer I did. Trevor was hot, but with his clothes off, he was scorching. The word Adonis came to mind. He had the build of a swordsman rather than a weightlifter. Slender and lean with broad shoulders. He obviously worked out, and I wondered if that was something else we might do together.

  The water was above body temperature, and the air over the water was warm and comfortable. There was a slight smell of sulfur. It was like slipping into the largest bathtub I’d ever seen, but with a sandy bottom. Rocks stuck up here and there, especially around the edge, and that’s what people were sitting on. I felt all the tension flow out of my body. Tension I didn’t even know was there.

  “The mountains here are all volcanic in origin,” Trevor explained. “There are hot springs all over the place. Some of them have been commercialized, but this is in a national park, and it’s hard to get to.”

  We sat in the water for a couple of hours, chatting with the university students who were playing hooky from their classes, telling stories and jokes, and enjoying the day. Although I was a little embarrassed at first, I kind of liked the way the guys looked at me, and I really liked the way Trevor looked at me.

  When Trevor reminded me that we had a date for lunch, I reluctantly climbed out—grateful for the towel he pulled out of his pack—and got dressed. We bid our new friends goodbye and hiked back to the car.

  When we got there, I backed him up against it, put my arms around his neck, and said, “If this is part of having a relationship, I approve.”

  I liked the kiss that followed a lot, too.

  CHAPTER 13

  I didn’t know what I expected to find at Killarney Village, but the reality was completely unlike anything I’d ever seen before. I was able to discern three different architectural types. The first were white asymmetric dome-like structures—like large rocks—the sort of thing that reminded me of hobbits for some reason. The second type was a cross between a large stump and a mound of dirt, and the third was a weird composite of English Tudor, Swiss Alpine, and Japanese pagoda.

  All of these structures were nestled in what appeared to be undisturbed forest. Streets wandered through it all without any pretense of having straight lines, stop signs, or traffic lights. The closest thing to normal were the traffic circles.

  There wasn’t much need for directing traffic, though. There were few cars on the street besides ours, and most of the people we saw were walking. A dark opening—a tunnel covered in foliage and vines—appeared on our right. Trevor drove in and parked the car along with a couple of hundred other cars, then we climbed up a stepped path and out onto the street.

  The feel of magic was so strong I couldn’t believe it. In late November, flowers bloomed everywhere. Although, on closer inspection, none of them were flowers I recognized. Beautiful? Yes. Unearthly? The absolute definition of the word.

  Trevor took my hand and led me along until we came to a door hanging in the air between two trees. As far as I could see, there wasn’t a building, just the door. He opened it and ushered me through.

  I found myself inside a quaint bistro with red-and-white checked table cloths. A little man with a long white beard appeared out of nowhere.

  “This way, if you please,” he said in a voice that sounded as though he had inhaled helium. He led us around a corner, and we walked through twisting tunnels, past numerous little alcoves, inside of what looked like a living tree. And then the little man disappeared.

  Lizzy’s mother sat at a table in one of the alcoves. She smiled, revealing very pointy teeth that a vamp or a shifter would have envied. Her thick pink hair surrounded her like a cloak, spilling down her back and over her shoulders to her waist. Large, strongly slanted, slit-pupiled golden eyes above sharp cheekbones gave her an alien look. Her mouth was shaped like a valentine, and her chin was pointed. I knew that she was at least a foot shorter than I was.

  “Thank you so much for coming. Please sit.” Her voice sounded like silver bells.

  As soon as we did, goblets filled with golden liquid appeared on the table. She lifted hers. Following Trevor’s lead, I lifted mine also, and we clinked the glasses together.

  After a sip of what tasted like sunshine—I had never tasted sunshine before, but really, that was the only way I could describe it—the pink-haired Fae said, “I am Roisin,” she pronounced it roe-sheen, “and I believe you are Erin.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She stared at me long enough that I started to get uncomfortable. Lizzy did that sometimes when she Saw things.

  “Shall we eat?” she finally said, and without any warning, food appeared on the table. Small cakes covered in fresh berries and thick cream, fishcakes, and some kind of cooked grain with butter and honey. I made the mistake of tasting it and realized I was ruined for human food forever. We ate in silence but for the faint music of pipes coming from the walls and ceiling.

  When we finished, Roisin said, “I told Elizabeth to warn you away from the vampires. That is still probably good advice, and you should seriously consider it. But the reason I asked you here is to urge you to be unwise. For your soul’s sake. A black woman has offered you a chance to make a difference. It is a difference only you can make, because the difference will occur within you.”

  All I could do is stare at her.

  “You see,” she continued, “it will be safer to walk away. One path is to go with Trevor. Far away. Leave this place and never look back.”

  I saw shock register on Trevor’s face.

  “Or you can do nothing. Pretend that the world doesn’t affect you. Hide. Continue to dwell in your own private hell.” She leaned forward then. “Or you can claim redemption. Fully embrace who you are, face your Light as well as your Dark, cast off the chains of your past, and become fully human for the first time in your life. You were given your Gifts for a reason, and that reason has nothing to do with what you were, only with what you might still become.”

  If she had hit me in the head with a hammer, I doubted the effect would have been much different.

  “Wh-why are you telling me this?”

  “You saved my daughter’s life. I am trying to save yours.” She smiled, showing those teeth again. “I shall never forget what you did. You can call on me any time for the rest of your days. But you can liv
e those days happily, or you can be forever ashamed and fearful, loathing yourself for a life that you didn’t choose.”

  She took a drink, then said, “Now, you have a choice. You are not using your Gifts. The Goddess intended them to be used for the Light.”

  I don’t know what happened after that. The next thing I was cognizant of was walking down the street with Trevor.

  “H-h-how d-did we get here?”

  He stopped and looked around, wonder in his face. Then he chuckled. “Remember when you asked if teleportation was possible?”

  I remembered and laughed. “I don’t know if you can feel magic, but the Fae’s magic feels completely alien to me. They really aren’t human.”

  “I would agree with that,” he said.

  We resumed walking toward the underground garage where we’d left the car, but I continued to gawk at everything around me. The temperature was far warmer than it had been at the hot springs, and I was hot wearing my coat.

  “When you were with Lizzy, did you come here often?” I asked.

  “A few times. This is the place where the Fae and humans touch. Her mom lives here because her dad can’t go into the mound. But it really isn’t a place for humans, and they don’t encourage tourists.”

  “Do you miss being with Lizzy?”

  He shook his head. “That was years ago, Erin. We had a good time, learned a lot from each other, and she’s still one of my closest friends. But you have to understand, to the Fae, Lizzy’s still a baby. Even as a halfling, she’ll probably live five or six hundred years. I’ll be dead before she’s mature and ready to settle down.”

  “Are you ready to settle down?”

  He grinned. “If you asked me that last week, I would have said no. But the right girl could convince me.”

  We walked on for a while.

  “I don’t think I’m ready to settle down,” I said. To me, that meant babies, and by all the gods, I had no concept of what it required to be a mother. “Can we just have a good time and learn a lot from each other and leave settling down for later?”