by R. L. Naquin
I’d never really thought about how many business owners in my part of town might have connections to the supernatural. Obviously, Jason and Lola from the bookstore and Emilia the psychic were connected, but they weren’t the only ones. It became clear when I went into the office and found Sara fretting at her desk.
“Problem?” I said, dropping my purse on my desk. She was tapping her fingernails against her coffee cup, a pensive look on her face.
“Do you know Doug from the hardware store on Bridgeway?”
“Sure. His dad used to own the place before he retired.”
“Were you aware that he spent his free time running around with a dowsing rod?”
I blinked. “I was not.”
“Apparently, he had quite the gift for finding water. People paid him to dowse for new places to dig their wells.”
“Interesting,” I said, wary. I didn’t think this was going to be a lighthearted discussion about our quirky neighbors.
“They found him this morning at the edge of his property. He’d been dowsing with a big forked stick, tripped, fell down the hill, and speared himself through the heart.” Sara’s face was pale. “Zoey, his wife said a bunch of short guys in suits had been by the shop recently.”
“Shit.” I felt queasy. I wondered how many more people were being targeted. Freebird and Jonah Washburn, the ghostbusters who’d drowned in their camper, were probably among the leprechauns’ first victims, and we hadn’t realized it. “This is getting ridiculous. They aren’t even proper bad guys. They’re thugs.”
“Thugs who leave a high body count.”
“But there’s got to be a way to stop them.”
Sara ran her fingers through her neat, blond hair. “Don’t you have somebody bigger and badder in your arsenal? A family of trolls or something? What about that bodyguard of yours?”
“It doesn’t work that way. As a group, they’re all called ‘The Hidden,’ and for good reason. They can’t just run around town where regular people can see them. That would break all the Board’s rules and endanger the whole community. But these leprechaun asshats can pass for human in public, so they’re taking advantage of it. They aren’t targeting other Hidden. They’re after humans with supernatural gifts. I guess that makes us fair game. We fall into the cracks—we aren’t protected by the Board’s strict laws because we’re neither Hidden nor regular humans.”
“That’s a little unfair.”
“You think?”
She took a sip of her coffee and made a face. “Cold.”
I grabbed her cup and went to the kitchen area to refill it for her. It didn’t take much effort. Sara’s hardcore and drinks it black. I slid it across her desk. “Hot.”
She took a sip. “There’s still more to tell you.”
I sighed and sat down. “Go ahead. Consider me braced.”
“There’s a vintage clothing boutique on Locust.”
“Sure. I’ve been in there.”
“One of the salesgirls, Christie, has a side business finding lost articles for people. She uses some kind of pendulum thing on a map.”
I gave her a doubtful look. “Does that really work?”
Sara shrugged her shoulders. “She found my diamond tennis bracelet last year. I had looked for it everywhere. She did her thing and pointed to a spot on the map where I’d had dinner a few weeks before. I found it in the bushes near where I’d parked my car.”
“Weird.”
“I know. But she pointed right to the spot.”
“No, weird that you went in for something like that and never told me. I thought you were the straight-laced one.”
“I’m more open-minded than you give me credit for. Anyway, Christie tripped over a crack on the sidewalk yesterday.”
“Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. But her mother fell down the stairs not ten minutes later. She landed on a spiked heel and it severed her spinal cord.”
My stomach flipped over. “Step on a crack...”
Sara nodded. “Break your mother’s back.”
“Holy hell. I’m guessing Christie was pushed over that crack.”
“You guess right.”
* * *
We spent the day making phone calls and taking deliveries. Neither of us felt much like leaving the office. We rescheduled the two appointments we had for the following week. Until my trial was over and we figured a way to evict the leprechauns, best to stay behind our desks or at home as much as possible.
Without the gargoyle stone, I was clumsy. I knocked things over, spilled a few drinks, even poked myself in the eye with my own finger once. Still, the bad luck seemed fairly minimal, compared to most of what had gone on earlier in the week. Apparently, the curse was losing its juice.
Losing its juice, but not entirely unjuiced. Sara and I left the office at the same time, yet she made it home fifteen minutes before I did. I was caught by lights that she skimmed through, then I got stuck behind a tractor trailer with its flashers on. On the winding road home, there was no place to pass him.
When I pulled into the driveway next to her, a rabbit darted in front of me, I swerved to miss it and hit Sara’s car. I hadn’t been going but a few miles per hour, so the damage to her car was minimal but it was enough to make me feel terrible. We decided after that I shouldn’t drive until the ink wore off. Safer for everybody that way.
Too many people had been hurt because of me.
Chapter Twenty-One
On Friday, Sara went into the office on her own to finish up arrangements for Saturday’s party. I stayed home nursing two broken nails and a gouge in my left leg from banging into the kitchen table. And it was a good thing I’d stayed home, because I had to do battle with the sudden onslaught of ants marching in through my bedroom window.
Riley called to see how I was doing.
“How do you think I’m doing? I’m covered in bruises, my best friend is having to do everything for me so I don’t get myself killed slipping on a banana peel, and we still don’t know if Milo will ever walk again. I have ants in my underwear drawer, a huge party full of old people tomorrow, and leprechauns are trying to steal my soul. I’m doing fine. Thanks for asking.”
He was quiet, letting me vent until I was done. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“You can keep Art away from me so I don’t strangle him with his own tie.”
“Would ice cream help?”
“No.” My voice came out petulant and sulky. I didn’t care.
“What if it had chocolate and peanut butter in it?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Whipped cream?”
I sniffed. “You can’t bribe me into a good mood, you know.”
“Of course not. I would never. Sprinkles?”
“I know a cheap ploy when I hear one.” I had to force the pout now. I missed him. If he came by without the ice cream, I’d be happy to see him. But I wasn’t giving up my cranky without a fight.
“Should I bring ant spray?”
“Not in the same bag. That would be gross.”
He chuckled. “See you in an hour.”
My mood improved vastly the moment Riley came through the door. He brought enough ice cream and toppings for an army. Ever thoughtful, he made sure sundaes went out to Iris, Molly and the kids, and he did his best to make Maurice a little less afraid of him by coaxing him into sitting down at the table with us to eat.
By the time I was halfway through my sundae, I was swirling the ice cream around in my dish, softening it and twirling it into artful patterns while I thought about my predicament.
“Why now?” I asked, shoveling a bite in my mouth. “The Leprechaun Mafia has never shown themselves in Sausalito before, and they waltz in now out of the blue, terrorizing the
place with their clichés and old wives’ tales.”
Riley and Maurice exchanged looks, then they each fell to on their desserts as if someone were about to snatch their bowls away.
“What?” I asked.
They looked at each other again, then at me. “Zoey, have you ever been to Vegas?” Maurice asked.
“Sure.”
“Ever noticed how luck runs in streaks, good and bad? When you lose, you keep losing, and when you win, you keep winning?”
“I guess.” I had no idea where he was going with this.
Riley took my hand and turned in his chair to face me. “Let me try. Ever had a really good day when everything goes right? Maybe you make all the lights, you find a parking spot right up front, and there’s a sale on the one thing you needed at the grocery store?”
I nodded. “I miss those days.”
He smiled. “Now, forgetting the last few weeks, have you ever had a day where everything fell apart, one thing after another?”
“Other than these last two weeks? Yeah, I guess I’ve had a few of those, too.”
“Luck is like that. It’s far more powerful than you know. Luck attracts luck, whether it’s good or bad.”
“I thought luck wasn’t cumulative.”
“It’s not. But events can follow each other, kind of like one of those toy trains where the cars are connected by magnets. They don’t meld together into one single thing like Voltron. They do form a chain of discrete cars in a longer train.”
My head was starting to hurt. It might have been the complications of magically-induced luck, or it might have been from eating my ice cream too fast.
“Okay,” I said, setting my spoon down. “If I’m understanding this correctly, my bad luck symbol attracted other bad luck to breeze into town. I’m the reason the Leprechaun Mafia is here.”
“Most likely,” Riley said, nodding.
Once again, I was the reason people were dead. I felt like I needed to go door to door apologizing to every person in Sausalito.
Maurice nudged me with his elbow. “Hey,” he said. “There’s no crying over ice cream.”
I nudged him back. “I’m not crying.”
“You look like you’re going to cry.” He nudged me again.
“Stop. I’m not crying. I feel awful. I keep getting people killed.” I pushed my bowl away. He shoved it toward me.
“The whole world isn’t your responsibility, you know. And you didn’t put that mark on yourself.”
I shrugged. “People do tend to get killed a lot around me, though.”
“People tend to live a lot around you, too.”
Riley rubbed his hand across my back. “He’s right,” he said. “You took out an incubus. If you’d never crossed paths with him, many more people would have died.”
Maurice’s head bobbed up and down in agreement. “The leprechauns would have shown up eventually, too. It’s not you, Zoey.”
I wasn’t convinced, but I did feel a little better. It was hard to stay miserable with ice cream and two guys who cared so much about me. I finished most of what was in my bowl, but it had lost a lot of its taste for me.
We spent the next hour evicting ants from my underwear drawer and fumigating my bedroom. I had to swallow my pride during the shameful process. Nothing like letting a new boyfriend rummage through your collection of everything from thongs to granny panties. Not to mention a closet monster comedian.
“This looks like it would make a good slingshot,” Maurice said, holding up a green g-string I’d acquired as a free gift at a lingerie party.
“Nice,” I said. “Shake it out and put it away, funny guy.”
“That’s what she said,” Riley said under his breath.
I turned to glare at him. He was holding up an embarrassing pair of underwear so old the elastic had died around the legs.
“You too? Really?” I swiped them from his hands.
He stared at me, the picture of wide-eyed innocence. “I’m checking to see what I’m getting into.”
I bit back a retort about how this would be his only chance to get into my panties, but Maurice was standing there, and frankly, my face was already too red to pull it off with any grace.
The front door banged open, saving me from further teasing, and we all abandoned the underwear ant farm to see what was going on. Sara struggled with bags and boxes while trying to close the door with her foot.
“Seriously,” she said, exasperated. “You’ve got all these people living on top of you, and nobody helps unload the car?” She dropped her packages on the floor.
I bent to pick up a paper bag of groceries and it ripped in my hand, scattering oranges across the floor.
“You,” she said, pointing at me. “Go sit down.” She pointed at Riley and Maurice. “You two, there’s more stuff in the car.”
It was impressive how fast they hopped to it. Sara had a way of delegating that made everyone do her bidding without thought. I sat. The guys ran out the door. Sara chased around the living room collecting oranges.
“Tough day?” she asked, smiling. I think bossing around a reaper and a monster was a special treat for her.
“Bugs, bruises, and battle scars. You?”
“The jazz quartet you booked tried to cancel. I convinced them otherwise. The caterer had the address wrong. We have about a gazillion daisies in our office because the retirement home wouldn’t let me keep them there when the florist delivered early.”
“So, nothing unusual.”
“Nope.”
“Good. Want some ice cream?”
* * *
For having the extreme bad taste to laugh at my underwear, Maurice and Riley were required to sit with us all evening putting together table decorations. Maurice surprised me with his mad calligraphy skills and set to work on place cards. Riley was pretty good-natured about the whole thing and didn’t mind much when I sprinkled glitter in his hair.
Molly brought the kids by to thank Riley for the ice cream, and they ended up staying awhile to help tie intricate little bows with their tiny hands. Shy at first, the kids warmed up to Riley fairly quickly.
“Put the yellow ones higher than that,” Sara said to Abby, pointing at a spot on the greenery. “You’re clumping them together.” She’d always been a little stiff around kids.
Abby popped her thumb in her mouth and toddled across the table toward Sara. She gazed up at her with big doe eyes, plopping down next to Sara’s arm. She grinned around her fist and grabbed a handful of Sara’s sleeve, as if they’d been friends their whole lives. Abby could melt the heart of the dourest Grinch.
I watched Sara’s eyes soften. “Maybe one or two down there wouldn’t hurt,” she said.
Molly’s sons, Fred and Aaron, went back to work, trying their best to place the bows just so. I glanced at Riley and his eyes were twinkling. He winked at me and resumed poking greenery into a round of Styrofoam.
My hands were cramping from all the gluing and weaving, so I took a break to stretch for a moment. I’d been busy, so I hadn’t paid much attention to the big picture in my warm kitchen. The brownies raced back and forth across the table, chattering and laughing. The reaper and my best friend discussed politics while they cut lengths of ribbon. The closet monster with the haunting yellow eyes squinted over card stock, dipping his calligraphy pen in a bottle of ink, and sticking his tongue out to the side for concentration.
There was love here. It circled me and held me in a velvety-soft embrace. It smelled like chocolate and raspberries and Christmas trees. It radiated warmth into every corner and magnified every beautiful feature on every beautiful face. Conversations blended together into a smooth murmur, with no single word breaking off from the rest, and humming through the room like a song that beat to the rhythm of my own heart.
&
nbsp; And this was mine. The love that I felt was coming from me. I wasn’t tapping into someone else’s experience, an outsider looking in. I wasn’t in danger of being pulled under by the overpowering love I was experiencing second hand.
These people were my family.
No matter what happened next, I was not giving this up.
And I wasn’t going to let a bunch of leprechauns ruin things either. I had an idiotic idea.
Forget Sara’s taser. What we needed were a couple of shovels.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was late when we got the last of the favors and decorations finished, and everyone headed to their respective homes. Well, not everyone. Sara was still staying with me and Maurice.
I watched them from the hallway as they moved about the kitchen, cleaning up. It still surprised me how well they were getting along. I’d underestimated Sara in a big way. She’d bounced back from the initial shock of my supernatural revelations, and kept right on moving.
Maurice grabbed the broom and moved the chairs out of the way so he could get to the glitter scattered under the table. I couldn’t quite hear what they were saying to each other, but Sara laughed in an uncharacteristic, nervous giggle, then touched Maurice’s shoulder. He looked up from his work and grinned. She brushed back her hair in a way that made my eyes narrow.
“Oh, hell no,” I said under my breath.
While I watched with suspicion welling in the pit of my stomach, Sara grabbed the dust pan and knelt on the floor. My best friend was the essence of grace. I’d once seen her pass a tray of champagne to the mother of a bride while cutting a three-tier wedding cake with her other hand. And yet, she lost her balance and went flying forward toward Maurice. He dropped the broom and caught her.
Having seen enough, I blew into the kitchen and grabbed Sara by the sleeve.
“Come on,” I said.
“Where are we going? I was helping Maurice clean up.”
“I need to show you something in my room.”
“But...” She looked from me to Maurice, but he was already sweeping again, oblivious to what was going on.
