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

by Kingsolver

  I thought back to Lizzy telling me that the existence of male dhampirs was undecided. She was a seer, probably the most skeptically viewed of the magical talents. I had heard someone scoff at one of her Tarot readings, calling it ‘hocus-pocus stuff’, but as a mathematician, Lizzy was the most empirical person I knew. If you wanted her to believe something, she required proof.

  Remembering the beating I had taken from a group of vampires, and considering the warnings of hell yet to come that night, I made a decision.

  Finishing my tea, I went into my closet and opened the magically sealed and invisible box I had created. Inside was a large black book with gold trim and lettering, along with the Hunter’s weapons and Constance Gardner’s money. I took the short sword and the three knives, then re-sealed the box.

  Two of the knives would go into the empty sheaths in my boots, and the other knife I slipped inside my waistband. Satisfied that I was armed as well as I could be, I reset my wards and ran back to Rosie’s.

  CHAPTER 22

  Although I usually worked in my running shoes, I changed into my boots so I had a place for the daggers. I also took my coat with the sword inside it downstairs and hung it behind the bar, the way I did normally when I lived at home and came into work from outside. With Sam’s magically-infused bat, I felt sufficiently armed to take on anything that came through the door.

  The first thing I noticed as I started my shift was that a lot of Rosie’s employees who worked other shifts were there that night as customers. Some were sprinkled throughout the dining room, but a large group had commandeered a few tables in the back and were merrily eating, drinking, and socializing.

  “Party I wasn’t invited to? I mean, I couldn’t go because I’m working, but gee, you’d hope they would at least think of me,” I said to Jenny in a mock-aggrieved tone.

  She laughed. “Sam called around and told everyone to be careful tonight. A lot of us trust his wards more than our own. If I wasn’t on duty, I might be sitting with them. Besides, it’s kind of nice to have twenty or thirty people you can trust at your back.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. An army regiment would be in trouble if they attacked Rosie’s.

  As dark fell, the stream of people coming in the door dropped off to a trickle, but the bar got fuller. No one was leaving. Someone had tuned the TV in the back room to a news station instead of the usual basketball or football game. I was surprised that people had taken my warning so seriously, and wondered what people would think if morning came and the night had been peaceful.

  Sam had called Liam in to work even though he was supposed to have the night off. Sam was there, also, helping out behind the bar and in the kitchen, and wandering around talking to people.

  Detective Sergeant Bailey, one of Blair’s men, came in around nine o’clock.

  “Everything quiet around here?” he asked.

  About that time, I heard shouts coming from the back room.

  “It was until you showed up,” I told him. Pointing to the back, I said, “You might want to go see what they’re yelling about. They’re watching the news channel, not sports.”

  I drifted down to that end of the bar. Emily came out of the back room with an empty tray and came over to meet me. I raised an eyebrow in question.

  “It looks like something’s going on at the garbage company,” she said. “Reports of gunfire and some kind of a riot going on. Cops have the area blocked off, so the news cameras can’t get too close. The talking heads are complaining that the cops grounded their helicopter.” She laughed. “Censorship! Freedom of the press! Oh, you should hear them whine.”

  “The cops probably don’t want a rerun of the problems at The Devil’s Den,” I said.

  “You got it, sister. Two Harps, a Guinness, two Smithwick’s, and a Kilkenny. All that yelling is thirsty work.”

  I chuckled as I poured her beers, and she entered her food orders in the computer. My guess about Gallagher’s business appeared to be correct. Although Barclay had taken control of the buildings and the people, Michaela still owned the business, and she knew the place like the back of her hand. She had helped her father build it and run it for Lord Carleton.

  Lizzy came through the front door and sat down at the bar, then pulled her laptop out of her bag. I automatically made her a sloe gin fizz and took it over to her.

  “I figured you’d be heading for Killarney Village,” I said. “I’m sure it’s safer there.”

  She shrugged. “Plenty safe here, and I can’t get wi-fi in the village. Fae magic creates too much interference.” She turned the computer so I could see the screen.

  The video must have been taken before the cops shut the area off. It was only about a fifteen-second clip, shaky and probably taken from a cell phone. Two wolves leaped on a dark-haired woman with pale skin, bore her to the ground, and ravaged her. One of the wolves suddenly flew through the air toward the camera, and that was the end.

  “Holy shit!”

  “Yeah,” Lizzy said. “Pretty weird stuff.”

  She showed me a couple of other clips, one with a blonde woman—seen only from the rear—aiming a pistol and shooting a man in the head from about thirty feet away. His head exploded like a pumpkin. I might have had an overactive imagination, but the woman’s clothes were exactly like those Michaela Gallagher wore when I saw her earlier in the day.

  Sam wandered over, and Lizzy showed him the clips.

  “Damn,” he said. “Anything going on in other parts of town?”

  She tapped on the keys for a while, then turned the screen around so we could see it.

  “This is one of the indie news stations,” she said. “Internet only. It’s run by a bunch of activists who started it at the university.”

  The video showed a roadblock. The cops were turning everyone around and sending them back down the road. It sort of looked familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why.

  “Well, if something’s going on up there, then the shit has really hit the fan,” Sam said.

  “Where is that?” I asked.

  “The road to Carleton House,” Lizzy said. “A couple of the reporters who work for this station evidently circumvented the roadblock on foot. That was a couple of hours ago. About an hour ago, they stopped communicating.”

  “Our buddy Rodrick probably had them for dinner,” Sam said.

  “That may be,” Lizzy said, “but before the cops set up a second roadblock farther down the hill, the reporters interviewed a couple of local residents. They said the problem was a pack of wolves had been reported in the neighborhood.”

  Bailey came from the back room and said hello to Sam. They chatted for a few minutes, then the cop headed for the door.

  “Be careful out there,” I called.

  He turned and winked at me, then gave me a thumb’s up. “I’m keeping my shield in place all night, but thanks for the good wishes.”

  I couldn’t believe it when Jolene, Josh, and Trevor came in fifteen minutes later.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked as they sat down next to Lizzy at the bar. “I thought I told you to hunker down behind your wards and stay safe.”

  Josh laughed. “Too boring. Boy, you should see the light show out there. The cops are running lights and sirens all over the city.”

  “A little scary driving,” Trevor said, absolutely dead pan. “There’s some awfully large dogs out there, and they aren’t paying much attention to traffic.”

  “Wolves?” Lizzy asked, handing him her laptop and keying the indie report again.

  Trevor and the others watched it, then he said, “Yeah, but we weren’t anywhere near there. When we picked Jo up, we saw two packs running in downtown. They didn’t even seem to care if anyone saw them.”

  I kept hoping some shifters would come in. Rosie’s wasn’t a shifter hang out, but we had half-a-dozen who were regulars. But that night there were no shifters, no vamps, no dhampir.

  A guy came in while I was busy at the far end of the bar and took
a two-top near the door. I didn’t notice him until Jenny brought his drink order.

  “A snifter of Remy Martin XO,” she said, filling a mug with coffee.

  “Who?” I liked to keep track of those ordering top-shelf liquor.

  She pointed him out. Tall, athletic build, and exceptionally good-looking, with light brown hair falling in curls over his collar. His piercing blue eyes were remarkable even at a distance.

  “Did you ask to see his credit report?” I asked as I pulled the little ladder into place so I could reach the bottle. Jenny laughed.

  I watched as she took him the cognac and coffee. He paid with a hundred-dollar bill.

  It was an unusual night to see someone new. He didn’t seem to be waiting for anyone, just casually observing the other customers. But as time went on, I caught him watching me more than the single women customers. Considering that a lot of them were giving him a lot of attention, it seemed he could probably strike up a new friendship fairly easily. But he preferred to watch me. Red flags went up.

  Noise erupted from the TV watchers in the back room. I tried to see what they were shouting about, but too many people were standing in the way. Josh hopped off his stool and wandered back there, at first standing on his tip toes, then with his typical lack of manners, simply elbowing people out of the way.

  He came back about ten minutes later.

  “The people on TV don’t know shit,” he announced, “but they showed some film that looks like a vampire battle downtown. Cops are calling it a riot. They interviewed Frankie, and she said a few university students had too much to drink.”

  We all snorted at that. But downtown was where Flynn was hiding out.

  I rang the bell behind the bar, and when the room quieted a little, I shouted, “Has anyone heard anything about Necropolis?”

  No one volunteered anything, and I saw a lot of people shaking their heads.

  “What are you thinking?” Lizzy asked me.

  “Well, it’s kinda hard to piece things together sitting behind this bar,” I answered her, “but, it looks like Michaela Gallagher is trying to retake the Waste Disposal business, and she’s enlisted some shifters to help. Now, she also has a major beef with Rodrick Barclay, and there are reports of wolves up by Carleton House. If vamps are attacking George Flynn downtown, they are probably Barclay’s, but you guys said you saw wolves down there. To my knowledge, Flynn isn’t friendly with the shifters, and Michaela doesn’t control any vamps. So, the wild card in all this is Eileen Montgomery.”

  My friends all stared at me, waiting for me to go on. When I didn’t say anything more, Jolene prompted me. “And?”

  “I have no bloody idea,” I said, putting my hand to my head and grimacing. “I think I hurt myself. None of this makes any sense.”

  Amidst the laughter, Trevor tossed a twenty on the bar and winked at me. I poured myself a double shot of good Irish whiskey, and we all toasted each other. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Mr. Mystery was watching me more intensely than before.

  At midnight, Sam recruited Trevor and Josh to go with him and pick up the morning shift—Jill, my relief, at the university, Roberta, the morning cook, and the wait staff. The trains weren’t running at all, and the buses weren’t running downtown. I worried a little about them, but figured an aeromancer, a pyromancer, and an electrokinetic should be able to handle any problem they ran into.

  From what the TV said, the riot downtown was getting worse, and the TV was no longer reporting on what was happening out at Waste Disposal. No further word from Carleton House, either, although Lizzy said the roadblock was still in place and the reporters were still missing.

  Occasionally someone would walk in off the street, and they were immediately barraged with questions. Where did you come from? What did you see? Were you near such and such place?

  Bailey stopped in every couple of hours and gave me an update from the cops’ perspective, but they didn’t have any better idea of what was going on than those of us cooped up in Rosie’s.

  I wondered if everyone just should have stayed home, but the tips were good, so I didn’t complain.

  CHAPTER 23

  Sam and the guys returned with the morning shift, and everyone in the place wanted to hear first-hand about what was going on out in the city.

  Jolene took one look at the crowd converging on Josh and Trevor and announced, “I don’t need to watch my little brother preen and act important.” She hopped off her stool and took off in the direction of the ladies’ room.

  Jill slipped behind the bar to hang up her coat, so I got her to myself.

  “From what I saw on TV, it’s crazy in some parts of town,” she told me, “but Sam stayed away from areas with reported problems, and it was quiet. Almost no traffic on the streets, and even the bars around the university were dead. What’s been happening here?”

  I grinned and waved my hand to indicate the packed dining room. “Tips are great. People come, but they don’t leave. I’m sure the fire marshal would have a fit.”

  “I think the fire marshal has other worries tonight,” Jill said. “We could see the glow from a fire downtown, and the radio said the area around Civic Plaza was closed.”

  The area where Flynn had a restaurant. I felt a momentary twinge, hoping the restaurant survived. I’d probably never have the money to eat there again, but it was just the idea of losing a place with such wonderful food.

  Of course, the excitement made everyone thirsty, so Jill, Liam, and I were plenty busy for the next half hour. When I got a chance to catch my breath, I found Josh pushing his way close to the bar.

  “Have you seen Jolene?” he asked. “I can’t find her.”

  “She went to the head,” Lizzy told him.

  “When?”

  I thought, then said, “About the time you came back with Sam. Maybe she’s in the TV room.”

  He shook his head. “Seriously, Erin, I can’t find her anywhere, and no one has seen her in a while. She wouldn’t have gone outside, would she?”

  Lizzy said, “Maybe with a guy?”

  “Tonight?” Josh asked.

  I walked down to the waitress station and asked Jenny, “Have you seen Jolene Carpenter lately?”

  “About twenty minutes ago. She was talking to that guy who was sitting by the door.”

  I glanced back in that direction and saw someone else had taken his table.

  “Did he leave?”

  “Yes, he gathered up his cloak, went to the loo, and then I saw him talking to Jolene right over here.”

  “His cloak?”

  “Aye, he had a beautiful long, black woolen cloak. Folded it up and set it on the chair beside him. I asked him where he got it, and he said in Europe.”

  The entrance to the hallway with the restrooms was right by the kitchen door. I pushed through and found Steve Dworkin, the cook on my shift, and Roberta chatting by the grill.

  “Steve, have you seen Jolene Carpenter? Short, pretty woman with auburn hair?”

  “Yeah. She was talking to some guy. Tall.”

  “Drop-dead gorgeous,” Roberta sighed. “They were right next to the door over there.”

  “They didn’t come in here?”

  Steve’s brow furrowed. “I don’t think so. Unless they went out the back door.” He strode over to that door, then whirled around with something white in his hand. Holding it out to me, he said, “It was closed in the door.”

  A white paper napkin with a phone number and my name written on it. I got a really bad feeling. Rushing out to the bar area, I told Jill and Liam I was taking a break, then pounded up the stairs to the apartment.

  My hand was shaking a little as I punched the number into my phone.

  “Allo?”

  “This is Erin McLane.”

  “Ah, Miss McLane.” The male voice had a trace of a French accent. “I’m here with a friend of yours, and she’s hoping you can join us.”

  “And if I do?”

  “Then your friend ca
n go home.”

  “Where?”

  “I shall send a car to your apartment. How soon can you be there?”

  “An hour.”

  The phone clicked.

  I went downstairs and found Jenny. “Did that guy with the cloak have an accent?”

  “Maybe a bit, English, maybe, or just back east. New England, possibly. Very refined, educated.”

  “Not French?”

  “Oh, no. Not at all. I speak French, Erin. I would have noticed.”

  I managed to find Sam and drag him away from the people he was talking to.

  “I need to talk to you. Can you meet me upstairs in five minutes?”

  He scrutinized me, then said, “Yes.”

  Next, I gathered Trevor, Josh, and Lizzy and dragged them upstairs. When everyone was seated in the parlor, I tossed the napkin on the coffee table.

  “There was a guy in here tonight, and I think he’s been stalking me. I also think he may be connected to Constance Gardner, the woman who was running the bounty hunters. The last time anyone saw Jolene, she was talking to him by the kitchen door. Then we found this on the back door. When I called, a different man answered and said that if I agree to meet him, he’ll let Jolene go.”

  “Where does he want to meet?”

  “He said he would send a car to my apartment in an hour.”

  “Call me paranoid,” Trevor said, “but something tells me that isn’t a good idea.”

  “Got a better one?” Sam asked. “We can cover her. I can call in at least a dozen mages. We’ll put two in each car, and blanket her.”

  “Trevor, do you know how to use those tracking mirrors Jolene created?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Witch magic.”

  “I can,” Lizzy said.

  We all looked at her in surprise.

  “I’m half witch. Jolene showed me how they work, and it’s easy. Do you have any of the chips?”

  I nodded. “I still have two or three of them.”

  Lizzy nodded. “Give me one and I’ll plant it inside your cheek. That way, if they take your clothes, we’ll still be able to track you.”