by M. L. Ryan
I fell asleep so quickly when we took off that I neglected to exploit the single most wonderful appointment the jet provided—the fully reclining seat. Instead, I remained sitting upright and awoke a couple hours later with a stiff neck and a mouthful of what felt like a year’s supply of cotton balls. Thankfully, Alex was talking to Sebastian in the next row and was spared witnessing the drool that had pooled near my right clavicle. I didn’t care how much you adored your significant other, that was a visual no one needed.
The flight attendant arrived almost immediately with a warm, moist towel and my chilled beverage of choice, an iced tea. The attentiveness was a bit disconcerting—as though he had been watching to see when I regained consciousness—but I did appreciate the offerings.
Cleansed and refreshed, I momentarily contemplated flattening out my seat and resuming somnambulant nirvana. In the end, I opted to see what the guys were discussing so I wouldn’t be wide-awake at three o’clock in the morning. Alex could use some of his magic to help me sleep if I needed it, but it seemed bitchy to wake him up so he could administer his version of a sleeping pill. He was very skilled at such things and fixed any ailment or injury I had incurred quickly and painlessly. If the Coursodon ever decide to announce their existence and openly live side by side with humans, they would have to appease all the physicians and dentists that would be out of work once people realized the advantages of magical healing.
Instead of being embroiled in conferring about the intricacies of tracking otherworldly miscreants as I had anticipated, Alex and Sebastian were enmeshed in a somewhat less important discussion.
“I still prefer mine fluted,” Alex noted.
Sebastian winced. “That’s because you enjoy abundant carbonation. If you wanted to enhance the volatiles while supporting a large foamy head, you must use a tulip.”
Alex sat silently for a moment, apparently considering whatever it was that Sebastian had just said. “Why not just use an oversized red wine glass then?”
“Have you not listened to anything I have been saying? That would be ideal for a Braggot or an Eisbock but to really appreciate a Wee Heavy, it must be in a tulip.”
“You are debating which beer is best?” I interrupted, recognizing a few of the names as fancy brews.
Sebastian arched an imperious brow. “Of course not. We are debating what the best shape for a beer glass is.”
“This is what you talk about when I’m not around?”
“You say that as if it were a negative, my dear. The shape of the glass can elevate a merely fine brew into something akin to nectar for the gods. Even surface imperfections in the glass can alter one’s enjoyment. It’s all very scientific.”
Surprisingly, Alex didn’t seem to disagree. I expected him to mirror my incredulity at the ridiculousness of the conversation, but he didn’t even smirk. “I had no idea either of you were such beer connoisseurs,” I observed.
“You think this is bad, you should hear what goes on when we talk about single-malt scotch,” Alex added with a knowing smile.
With any luck, I’d never have to experience two seemingly intelligent men hash out which overpriced whisky tastes less like turpentine than another. “That’s okay. I think I’ll pass,” I said as I started to move back to my seat.
Sebastian spoke up before I could make my escape. “Incidentally, when we return home, I need to approve the material for the countertops. Sandra needs a decision to complete the kitchen plans to keep us on schedule.”
I accidentally burned down the guesthouse I was renting while trying to prevent a seriously wacked-out Courso from killing me. To be precise, it caught fire after I zapped the psycho, and he exploded. It was amazing how fast a structure was consumed by magically produced flames fueled by a crazy’s body parts. I thought I’d have to find a new place to live, but somewhere along the line, Sebastian had purchased the large main house and was now my landlord. Construction on the guesthouse had begun a few days before we left for the Smokey Mountains, but apparently, there were still some décor decisions that had to be made.
Sandra was the interior designer hired for the project. She was one of those women that always made me uncomfortable: rich, perfectly put together, and oh so sophisticated. Never a hair out of place, no chipped nail polish, no wrinkles in her carefully tailored clothes. It was even difficult to determine her age—her skin had that weird, shiny smoothness that usually indicates a lot of plastic surgery or at least a crap-load of pricey creams and peels—she could have been anywhere from forty to seventy.
She got along great with Sebastian. Not only did they seem to enjoy debating the relative merits of hardscapes—whatever the hell those were—but they had the same condescending attitude toward anything they deemed beneath them. Which was practically everything. The wife of the architect assigned to the rebuild, Sandra had a particularly grating habit of prefacing everything she said with, “Jeffrey and I have a vision…” The place had maybe five hundred freaking square feet tops. How much of a vision could there be? I could have tolerated all that if she wasn’t such a bitch. Anytime I offered an opinion, she would pat my arm and otherwise ignore me.
I leaned on the seat back. “Sebastian, you and Sandra have so much better taste than I do. I’m sure whatever you decide will be great.”
“Of course we do, my dear,” Sebastian chided. “That is why you aren’t involved in any of these decisions. I was merely keeping you informed of the progress.”
I shot a decidedly annoyed look Sebastian’s way. I’d have stuck out my tongue, but I was trying to curb my often-childish behavior when Sebastian bated me. Not that being seen as petulant would automatically prevent me from displaying my more juvenile side, but I knew from experience that provoking Sebastian any further would just degenerate into a snark-fest best left for another time. Fortunately, before he could launch into a lecture about my innate lack of style, the pilot announced we were getting ready to land in Tucson soon, and Alex and I returned to our seats.
The other great thing about flying on private jets was the ease of arrival. You landed, got off, grabbed your luggage, and left in the time it took to taxi to the gate on a commercial flight. Aiden and Cortez departed separately—Aiden for wherever it was that he lived, and Cortez likely to Rachel’s. It was kind of odd. As much time as I’d spent with those two, I really didn’t know much about them. They sort of appeared and disappeared as needed. I made a mental note to ask someone if that was characteristic of them specifically, or something typical of Xyzok underlings. Alex, Sebastian, Curly Dog, and I piled into an awaiting limo and thirty-five minutes later, we arrived at the big house.
Sebastian’s newly acquired abode was spacious and comfortable. In fact, Alex and I had a huge bedroom with an attached bathroom that was bigger than the entire guesthouse where I had lived for the last three years. Sebastian’s room was far enough away to have a different zip code and was considerably larger. The arrangement provided a fair amount of privacy and, so far, crashing there had been not as bad as I had feared. It wasn’t exactly home, but it was on the same beautiful piece of property I was used to, surrounded by the glorious Sonoran Desert in the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains.
I looped a rope around the dog’s neck as a makeshift collar-slash-leash and guided him away from the house to do his business. He readily complied and, all in all, seemed unfazed by his current situation. Compared to running around lost in the mountains smelling like an overused porta-potty, this had to be a step up for him.
Realizing he was probably hungry and that I was too tired to drive out to the store for some actual dog food, I scrounged up what I could find in the fridge—some grilled chicken and rice—that the dog consumed in what seemed to be one breathless gulp. He looked up at me and, if the drool dripping on the kitchen floor was any indication, with such hope for more grub that I made him some scrambled eggs. The abandon with which he ate convinced me that I had done the right thing by giving him shelter. A slightly stale ciabatta l
ater, he finally seemed sated.
For the first time, I considered where he might be allowed. I wasn’t certain he was even house broken. He hadn’t had a problem in the plane or in the limo, but I didn’t want to give Sebastian any reason to have second thoughts. I could just imagine his reaction to a big, steamy pile in the middle of the foyer. Plus, I wasn’t sure how my cat, Vinnie, would react to another animal in the house, much less a large dog.
I decided that for the time being, the inner patio would be as good a spot as any. A large portion of the house surrounded the enclosed area, and the living room, kitchen, and our bedroom had doors that opened into it. That way, he and Vinnie could get to know each other visually before being thrown together physically. There wasn’t too much for him to get into out there either, and there was plenty of shade. When I led him to the patio enclosure and unlooped him, he immediately jumped up on one of the wrought-iron benches and stretched out on the canvas cushion like he had lived there forever. “That was easy,” I mumbled, happy with the unexpected results.
The biggest downside of living in a much larger space was I didn’t see as much of Vinnie as when we bunked in the guesthouse. Normally, we’d be forced to interact all the time because there weren’t many options for feline privacy in the tiny space. Here, he’d discovered all kinds of fun places to hang out—out-of-the-way nooks and crannies that provided him a bevy of spots where he could indulge his inner misanthrope. I looked around and finally located him sleeping in one of his favorite locations, burrowed behind the extra pillows on the shelf in my walk-in closet.
“Vinnie, I’m back,” I called up to him.
He gave me what, for him, was a rousing welcome home. He opened his eyes and yawned.
“I missed you too, beast,” I sighed as I shook my head.
I didn’t take it personally. Cats weren’t known for their displays of unconditional love and devotion. In fact, it had been my experience that instead of showing how thrilled they were that you had returned, they went out of their way to demonstrate how little your absence meant to them. With Vinnie, this generally meant punishing me by using one of two feline time-honored techniques: ignoring me entirely or trying to make my life miserable until I’d suffered enough for the perceived abandonment. I was pleased Vinnie chose the former. At least I wasn’t likely to find a hairball yorked on my pillow every night for a week.
The reunion completed, I prepared for a long-anticipated shower in which I could extend my arms out more than three inches from my body. A family of four could easily fit into the marble-tiled behemoth in our bathroom. There was even a long, built-in bench, which looked more like a textured glass shelf, backlit with LED lighting. I suspected its intended purpose was to provide a place to sit while experiencing the spa-like conditions, but Alex and I found a few other uses that brought new meaning to the term “multiple shower heads.”
I missed the privacy of my own place, but on a scale of one to ten, this place was an eleven. There was even a housekeeper who kept the house so clean and organized that it was kind of like living in a hotel. I had to argue with her that it was environmentally reprehensible to change the sheets and towels every day. She finally relented, but only after I’d convinced her Sebastian would never know.
I let the warm water sluice over my body for at least a half hour. It was heavenly. The Sebast-Inn must have been equipped with one of those tankless hot water heaters because I planned to stand there until the hot water gave out, but it never did. When I finally had enough, every pore was clean and I had wrinkles in parts of my body I never knew could pucker.
Toweling off, I glanced out the big picture window opposite the bed. The scene outside made me smile. A menagerie of desert creatures—a bobcat, a couple of coyotes, three desert tortoises, and two javelina—all gathered near the house. For reasons I still didn’t completely understand, Yterixa tend to attract a kind of animal following, at least in this dimension. Critters that normally would never willingly be this close to one another regularly came to the house and just sort of sat there like a bunch of teenage groupies waiting for a glimpse of their favorite boy band. At the beginning, the gang only showed up when Sebastian wasn’t around. Eventually, my inner animal must have trumped whatever anti-Yterixa vibe he gave off, because now some assortment was outside pretty much twenty-four seven.
While the congregation was creepy at first, I was now used to it. In fact, most were repeat visitors that I recognized. I couldn’t see Maris and Ferris, the neighborhood Harris’s hawks, but the grating sound of their horse calls indicated they were not far off. Probably hunting. The thought of them tearing into a nice, plump quail briefly crossed my mind and made my stomach grumble. I shook out the mental image, which was as troubling as it was appetite inducing.
I dressed, left the bedroom, and found Alex in the living room, engrossed in something on his laptop screen. He motioned for me to come look, and I wasn’t all that surprised when I saw the object of his attention involved our killer. It was a report filed by the Xyzok that took over when we left North Carolina. There was still no magical trace, but they had discovered almost all of the hikers’ previously unaccounted-for parts.
“At least their families will have mostly complete bodies to bury,” Alex remarked. “I wish we could catch the son of a bitch.” He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hands through his hair. “Thankfully, the majority of the Courso we pursue aren’t responsible for such horrific crimes. I’m not sure how long I could do this if all we ever dealt with was murder.”
I rested my hands on Alex’s shoulders and kneaded his tight muscles. He threw his head back and groaned with pleasure at my massage efforts.
“You need to relax, Blondie,” I said as I moved my ministrations along his neck. “You’ve got knots all over the place.”
“I know, but I don’t think we’ve seen the last of this, and there is no way to predict where he might strike next.”
“Any more ideas about why he’s hacking-up his victims?”
Alex shook his head. “Not really. It is difficult to assign reason to insanity and probably a waste of time to look for motivation.” He grabbed my right arm and spun me around onto his lap. “Let’s change the subject,” he murmured into my hair. “What have you been up to?”
I filled him in on my animal husbandry efforts, and we went to check on our adoptee. The dog lifted his head as we entered the patio and wagged his tail expectantly. “Sorry, no more food,” I explained. He dropped his head back down and gazed up at us. Immediately, I felt guilty for not going out and buying some dog kibble. Geez, this animal could give my mother a run for the money when it comes to activating my latent sense of self-reproach.
As I made a mental list of provisions I needed to buy for the new pet, Sebastian stepped into the patio from the kitchen door.
“How is the creature?” he asked, sipping from a short glass filled with amber-colored liquid that I guessed was scotch.
“He’s fine. Thanks for letting me keep him here. I know you’re not an animal lover.” Sebastian and Vinnie had a definite hate-hate relationship.
“On the contrary. It is only some animals I find to be reprehensible; unlike cats, a dog has many redeemable qualities. But you are responsible for cleaning up after him.” He took another swallow and added, “If he destroys things, however, he will no longer be welcome.”
Just then, Sebastian’s pocket began to beep. “Ah, a text.” He set his glass on a side table and pulled out his phone. He glanced at it for a moment and looked up. “It’s from Aiden. Karttyx wants to meet with us to discuss the case.”
“How soon do we have to be there?” Alex asked.
“We don’t have to go to her. She’s coming here. Seems she has a taste for more of those wretched sausage concoctions you all seem to find so delectable.”
Karttyx, the Xyzok head-honcho, was a no-nonsense administrator who was apparently a force to be reckoned with in her younger days as a rank-and-file enforcer. On her last visit, s
he sampled—and loved—the quintessential Tucson culinary treat, the Sonoran hot dog. She tried to recreate the bacon-wrapped, bean, cheese, and jalapeno-loaded wiener back in Coursodon, but couldn’t find the proper ingredients. Not surprising, given that green bell peppers were considered spicy on the other side. Thank God she needed a food fix, because I really didn’t want to leave home again so soon.
“Is she staying here or at a hotel?” I inquired. There were enough bedrooms here at Casa de Kess as long as she was traveling only with her bodyguards. The last time she was here, she brought an entourage, but most of the extra folks were there to present me with my reward for helping capture the asswad who set the whole Sebastian-in-my-eBook-reader scenario in motion. If only I had taken the time to deposit the money, but it was my misfortune—literally—that the check for twenty-five grand had burned along with my house and car. A normal one from a normal bank could have just been reissued, but this was sort of like an inter-dimensional travelers check. Except it wasn’t American Express, and there was no guaranteed replacement if lost or stolen. Or incinerated, in this case. The Xyzok wanted to replace it, but since they had put me on their payroll, I felt too guilty accepting more cash. Alex said I was being silly; that much money to a Courso was like pocket change. But I wasn’t raised that way.
“She’s staying here. There are already extensive security measures in place. Commercial establishments are much more difficult to safeguard.”
I knew only about a few of the protections, a human high-tech alarm and surveillance system along with a bunch of non-human magical defenses, but Alex hinted that the list was much longer. Sebastian had purchased the property for use as a regional safe house and was sparing no expense in making it secure. It looked like a regular house, but it really was more like a fortress.
