by Tanya Huff
“Give me a break,” Allie muttered, sagging back against the counter. “You’re a leprechaun; that’s not exactly visually terrifying.”
Joe charged around the counter and stuffed a stool under her as she continued to sag. “Allie? You okay?”
“I’m fine. Adrenaline crash, that’s all.” As David had so helpfully reminded her, the family didn’t mess with the Fey. Other side of the coin, though, the Fey didn’t mess with the family. She’d just never been the one pointing that out before. The weight of Joe’s regard finally spun her far enough on the stool for her to face his concern. “What?”
“You’ve made an enemy.”
“No, I cashed in my grandmother’s debt. Him and me, we’re even now. If he comes back, I’ll make an enemy.”
“Don’t even be joking about that!”
“I’m not.”
Joe swallowed once, eyes suspiciously bright, then proved he was Human enough by heading straight past the chick flick moment and saying, “I wonder how he got in debt to your grandmother in the first place?”
“I can think of a few ways.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
They shuddered together.
Maybe word had gotten around. Maybe early May was a slow time in the antiques/junk biz. Whatever the reason, the store remained empty until Allie went upstairs to pull something out of the freezer for supper.
“Another yoyo,” Joe told her.
She set the plates of porcini mushroom tortellini on the counter with a sharp crack, the pasta sliding precariously close to the edge. “You’re kidding me.”
“Uh-uh. And this lady was asking if you’d keep an eye out for some old teapot.” He pushed a piece of paper toward her. “I wrote it down.”
Royal Albert bone china, Lady Hamilton pattern. “Did Gran do that?”
“Dunno.” Half a careful shrug. “But she’s not here.”
For the first time since Allie’d met him, he didn’t check the shadows when talking about her gran.
Neither of them spoke about how late he intended to stay.
Charlie called as they finished eating. The delay at O’Hare had screwed with her connection in Denver. “So I’ll be coming in around nine twenty.”
“Do you want me to pick you up?”
“You have something to pick me up in?”
“Gran’s car.”
“Then, yes. Please. Bring food.”
Just after dusk, Allie found a Hand of Glory in with the candles then, having accidentally touched it, spent twenty minutes washing her own hands while wondering what the hell Gran had been thinking.
At ten twenty, the current owner of mailbox number four came in. Allie had been searching through a box of costume jewelry, amusing herself by running a mood ring through its paces, so once again she missed a chance to use the clear-sight on the door. Tall and thin and of indeterminate age-at least from the back-the woman had long, almost blonde hair and wore a shapeless gray cardigan over an equally shapeless gray skirt. She had on worn sneakers and gray ankle socks and carried a grubby canvas shopping bag from a national grocery chain. It looked like she relaxed slightly when she saw Joe behind the counter, the stiff lines of back and shoulders curving into something more fluid.
Those curves snapped rigid again as Allie came forward and she thought for a terrible moment the woman, who’d spun around to face her, was going to cry.
“Hi. I’m the new… proprietor.” Until she knew what she was dealing with, it seemed safest not to hold out her hand or smile too broadly.
“I just came for my mail.” Long fingers clutched at the bundle of papers Joe had set on the counter.
“Okay.”
“I’m not doing anything wrong.”
“I didn’t think you…”
“I have the money for this month!” She reached into the canvas bag and thrust a moist envelope at Allie. “I didn’t mean to be late.”
“Don’t worry about…”
“I won’t be late again! I’m so sorry!” Before Allie could reassure her, she spun on one heel and hurried toward the door, leaving damp footprints behind her. She didn’t look a lot different through the glass although strands of long gray hair swirled about her like she was moving underwater.
“Loireag,” Joe said, wiping a few drops of water off the counter with his sleeve. “Lives in the river by the weir.”
“She seemed afraid.” The bills in the envelope were limp but appeared to be actual legal tender.
“Yeah, we got lucky. She doesn’t deal with new things very well. Once she gets to know you, she’ll talk your ear off about how depressed she is and how much her life sucks and other shit like that.”
“You think she knows about the guy with the gun?”
“Knows?”
“Just wondering how many of the Fey he’s threatened.”
Joe rolled his eyes, but Allie noticed that he was rubbing the charm on the back of his hand. “Don’t need a guy with a gun to threaten her. She’d get threatened by an old lady waving a bran muffin.”
“Don’t underestimate old ladies or muffins,” Allie told him, dropping the envelope into the cashbox. “That said, I was expecting something more dangerous to come out after dark.”
“Not her, not out of the water,” Joe snorted. “Drown you soon as look at you if you’re swimming too close to her hidey-hole, though.”
“I’ll try and remember that.”
“Yeah, well, city’s got this Bow River weir project, right? And part of it’s to deal with the…” Fingers sketched air quotes. “… extreme drowning hazard.” He shook his head, and shoved the resulting fall of hair back off his face. “Most people got no idea, do they?” Then he frowned. “You’re not going to be doing something about that, are you? I mean about her?”
“My family’s smart enough not to swim near a loireag. Or in a river that goes through a major metropolitan area. I mean, eww.”
“It’s not so bad.”
“Except for the extreme drowning hazard.”
“Well, yeah.”
Just before midnight, Joe glanced out to the empty street and sighed. “I guess I’d best be going then.”
“You can sleep on my couch if you like.”
He froze, hand on the door. “Upstairs?”
“It’s where the couch is.”
“Why? You think you can keep me safe up there.”
Allie thought about lying but not for very long. “Yes, actually.”
In spite of the fear that showed in his eyes, he shook his head. “I can’t bring that on you.”
“It’ll be fine. It’s not a big thing.”
“You can stop bullets?”
“Well…” She considered lying about that as well but didn’t. “… no.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” The fingers not wrapped around the door handle were trembling. He probably thought she couldn’t see them. “Can’t be spending my life hiding behind your skirts, can I?”
A glance down at her jeans. “I’m not wearing a skirt.”
“Don’t be so damned difficult, Allie. I need to…”
“Be a guy?” Sighing, she shelved the idea of asking just where exactly he was going.
“Maybe that. Besides…” Mouth twisted into a close approximation of a smile, Joe held up a marked hand as he stepped over the threshold. “… isn’t this supposed to keep me safe?”
“Not from bullets,” Allie said as the door closed behind him. If anything happened to him, she’d bury the city in aunties, but as sweet as revenge might be, it wouldn’t bring him back. “Stay safe,” she told his back and gave some serious thought to adding new charms that would keep him from wandering.
All things considered, chief among them the condition she’d found him in that morning, Allie wasn’t surprised when at a quarter past one, a pounding on the store door interrupted her brushing her teeth before bed. Joe couldn’t be too badly hurt, not if he still had the energy to pound, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t som
ething on his heels. She all but flew down the stairs and through the store and rocked to a sudden stop when she saw who was standing on the sidewalk.
“Michael?”
FIVE
Allie didn’t have to ask what was wrong, Michael told her as soon as she opened the door.
“I caught Brian fucking one of the guys at the construction site.”
He didn’t sound angry; he sounded weary, and that was a thousand times worse.
“Oh, sweetie.” She grabbed the strap of the duffel bag hanging from his shoulder, dragged him over the threshold, and wrapped as much of him as possible in a hug. “I’ll call Auntie Jane.”
She was mostly kidding. Calling in the aunties for a cheating boyfriend was like calling in a nuclear strike on the asshat who’d parked diagonally across two spots at the mall. This didn’t mean she wouldn’t call them if Michael wanted her to.
He laughed a little, like she’d hoped he would, and if it sounded like he was laughing to keep from crying, well, that was okay, too. They’d take that next step when they weren’t standing in an open doorway. Anger had probably got him packed and to the airport and onto the plane where he’d had nothing to do for a couple of hours but think about how his life had fallen apart. “Let’s leave the aunties out of this; you know how they overreact.”
“They salt the earth because they care. Come on.” Unwrapping herself only as far as necessary, she tugged him a little farther into the store and locked the door behind him. “Upstairs. I made cake.”
“Magic cake?” He sounded about twelve-or as much like a twelve year old as a man who’d topped out at six foot five and then put on the muscle bulk to match could sound.
“Is there any other kind?”
Arm around his waist, she steered him through the store and past the mirror…
“Is that…?”
“Don’t even look, Michael, trust me.”
… and up the stairs and into the apartment where she stepped back and took a good long look at him. He wore a shirt and blazer over jeans and work boots, the uniform for an architect visiting the site, and he’d obviously been in them since early Friday morning. His hazel eyes were shadowed, there were flecks of dried blood in the corner of his lower lip where he’d chewed off a bit of dried skin, and dark stubble buried curves where his dimples were hidden. Michael had always shown his heart on his face.
“Fuck the aunties. I’m going to kill him myself.”
“Allie… it’s just…” The duffel bag slid to the floor and he dropped into one of the kitchen chairs like his strings had been cut. “Just don’t.You know what Brian’s like. Hell, I know what Brian’s like.”
“I thought he’d changed.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
It had been Brian’s idea that Michael take the job with his father’s firm, allowing them to finish their internship together. Brian’s idea that they live together in Vancouver. Although he hadn’t stopped fucking around the first year after he and Michael had hooked up, Allie knew for a fact that the last year the three of them had been at Carleton, Brian had actually managed monogamy. Not without temptation and not without a few alcohol-fueled rants about having been neutered, but he’d kept it in his pants.
She should never have let that charm fade.
She should have given him a different one as a going away present. One that came with consequences.
“I thought you said there’d be cake?”
“Yeah, I did.” Allie bent to kiss the top his head, although given his height she didn’t bend far, then pulled the cake out of the fridge and sliced off a hefty wedge. Filling the largest glass in the cabinet with milk, she set them on the table in front of him and slid into the next chair, tucking a bare foot up under her.
“You’re not eating?” He frowned at her red boxers and over them the worn and armless remnant of one of David’s old high school football jerseys. “You were in bed.”
“One, not yet.” Tugging at the frayed hem of the jersey, she was just glad it wasn’t his; under the circumstances, just a bit creepy. “Two, it wouldn’t have mattered. And three, if I’m going to eat cake at two in the morning I might as well apply it directly to my ass. Eat.”
The left dimple made half an appearance. “You sound like your mother.”
“Could be worse.” Frowning, she watched him stuff a huge forkful of cake into his mouth. “Did you eat supper?”
“It’s worse.”
Reaching out, she smacked him lightly on the shoulder. “Just answer the question.”
“I had something at the airport. And I bought a sandwich on the plane. Two actually.”
“Good.” If he could still eat, he wasn’t completely broken. So far there’d been nothing in Michael’s life so terrible it had killed his appetite. Except, if anything, this should…
“Because I was expecting it.”
Allie blinked. Not at Michael knowing what she was thinking before she got there herself, they’d been able to do that to each other since they were kids, but at the actual words. After a moment, she managed a quiet, “Why?” her reaction waiting on his answer.
“It was too perfect, wasn’t it?”
With his stupid perfect life and his stupid perfect boyfriend.
At least she’d got the stupid boyfriend right.
“No. It wasn’t too perfect. It was exactly as perfect as you deserve.”
His mouth twisted. “Apparently.”
“Oh, sweetie, that’s not what I meant!” It was easier to hold him with him sitting down. Arms wrapped around him, head tucked into the curve of her throat, she rested her cheek on the top of his head and murmured, “Brian’s an ass, he doesn’t deserve you. And you deserve better.”
“But I still want him.”
“Yeah. I know.”
After a long moment, he sighed. “I need a shower.”
“I didn’t want to mention it.”
Both sofas opened into queen-sized beds. Allie didn’t bother setting up either of them. Michael was one of the most tactile people she knew and when he was hurting, he needed touch.
Emerging from the bathroom clean and shaved, chestnut hair damp and curling slightly over his ears, he glanced over at the sofas and then at Allie standing in the bedroom door.
“It’s a big bed,” she said softly.
A little of the tension went out of his shoulders and he almost smiled. “Promise to keep your hands to yourself?”
“Nope.”
They’d shared a bed, or certain variations of the word bed, off and on since they were five. There’d been a few rocky months in their teens before Allie had been convinced he really wasn’t interested…
“Can’t you just close your eyes and pretend I’m a guy?”
“Can you close your eyes and pretend I’m a girl?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Why would I?”
… but in the end she settled for having as much of him as she could. Charlie thought she was a little too fond of self-flagellation, but the comfort they took from each other outweighed the unrequited bits. Usually. And maybe Charlie wasn’t entirely wrong.
She wondered if it hurt more that he’d caught Brian with another guy. If maybe a girl would have hurt less. Michael might not be interested, but Brian was as firmly in the enthusiastically nondiscriminating camp as any Gale. One very cold February night after Brian had essentially moved into their student apartment, the heat had gone off and the three of them had shared a bed. Allie and Brian had held a silent and speculative conversation, then placed Michael definitively between them.
Head on Michael’s shoulder, his arm a warm, familiar weight against her back, she inhaled the scent of clean skin and fabric softener from his worn T-shirt and murmured, “What did Brian say?”
“When? Oh…” A disdainful snort in the darkness. “He didn’t see me. I saw him, went back to the apartment, packed some shit, and left.”
“So you didn’t give him a chance to explain?”
“Explain what? That he was just standing there between the trailer and the crane minding his own business when some guy in a hard hat threw himself on his dick a few dozen times?”
“It’s just…” Strange? Weird? Unlikely? None of the above, given that he’d been caught in the act. “What did you do with your phone?”
“Left it at the condo.”
“I wonder why he hasn’t called me.”
“He’s afraid of your reaction.”
“Smarter than he looks.”
“Obviously.”
She spread her fingers out over his heart, feeling it beat through muscle and bone. Feeling the ragged edges of the break rubbing against each other.
“Allie?” Something in his voice suggested she wasn’t going to be happy about the question.
“Yeah?”
“What drawer are Gran’s sex toys in?”
She couldn’t see him grinning in the dark, but she knew the dimples had reappeared. “Shut up!”
“Two more?”
He shrugged as he stripped out of his camouflage, using the movement to work the knots out of his shoulders.
“That’s all of them, then. This would be the one thing in millennia they’ve agreed on.” Heavy brows drew in. “Perhaps I should have had you deal with them as they emerged.”
He’d spent thirteen years dealing with the horrors drawn to his boss’ power-creatures that crawled and walked and flew out of nightmare, creatures that didn’t belong in this world however Human they looked-and this was the first time he’d ever heard him sound unsure. Whatever was coming had him rattled. Off his game. “If I knew what we were all waiting for…”
“You know what you need to.You know what you always have. And you know I depend on you. If this creature gets loose in the world, I will be in mortal danger.” The dark eyes narrowed. “You need to kill it. They’re watching for me now, they’ll be watching for me when it arrives, but they don’t know about you. That’s why you couldn’t deal with them as they emerged. If they find out about you…” He spread blunt-fingered hands, rings glittering under the fluorescent light. “Capture. Torture. Eventually, you’ll tell them where I am. Best to keep a low profile.”
