by Tanya Huff
Still that did raise the question of what he’d been doing in the store for so long.
“I’m after working there, aren’t I.”
“Working?” There were any number of jobs a leprechaun’s strength and speed could be useful for. “What are you doing?”
“Selling shit.”
“Selling shit?”
“And going for coffees.”
“You’re working retail?” That was… unexpected. “Why?” He repeated the question with a little more physical emphasis when the silence extended.
“I think…” Pureblood or not, the changeling’s voice had nothing of the UnderRealm in it, sounding more young and terrified than immortal and devious. “I think she felt sorry for me.”
Pity made sense. He was starting to feel a bit uncomfortably like a bully and had to remind himself Joe O’Hallan was not Human.
He wanted to ask specifically about Alysha Gale, to see if the details of her story changed with her audience, but rumor had it that the family had an uncanny way of knowing when they were the topic of conversation, and he didn’t want to risk tipping her off.
Pressing the gun just a little harder against Joe’s head, he slid his knife blade through the ties, and freed Joe’s hands. “If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead.” Muscles tensed under his weight, a clear indication he’d been believed. “Talk about this, and I’ll want you dead.”
“I’m not going to be saying anything! I swear!”
The pendant felt warm as he dropped it into his pocket. “Count to fifty before you get up.”
—
Allie told herself that the time difference had hauled her ass out of bed at dawn, but standing at the window, hands cupped around a mug of coffee, she knew that was a lie. Mostly a lie. After the cake came out of the oven, she’d stayed up until midnight cataloging the contents of the spare room and finding nothing, so the two-hour time shift had certainly helped her haul her ass out of bed.
If the shadow returned, then yesterday’s pass over the store hadn’t been random.
And?
And then yesterday’s pass over the store hadn’t been random.
There really wasn’t a lot more information a shadow passing at that speed could impart.
Well, except for the obvious.
When the pigeons crowded back under the newspaper box, she braced herself.
There.
And gone.
And not alone.
“Great.” Allie finished her coffee in one long swallow. “We’ve got dragons.”
—
“If Catherine allowed herself to be eaten by a dragon, I have no sympathy for her at all. Unless you’re a virgin sacrifice, which she most certainly is not, they’re easy enough to avoid.”
“They know where the store is, Auntie Jane.”
“Of course they do, they can sense the power. If you follow them, you’ll probably find them acknowledging every power signature in Edmonton.”
“ Calgary.”
“What?”
“I’m in Calgary.”
“Are you asking me to join you there?”
“No!”
“Then don’t start complaining to me about geography. Dragons are not this family’s business.”
“Unless one ate Gran.”
After a long pause, Auntie Jane sighed. “Yes, unless one ate your grandmother.”
“How do I…?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Alysha, just consider it for a moment. You’ll need to examine the scat for the nasty indigestible bits.”
She was almost afraid Auntie Jane hadn’t been kidding.
When she paused in front of the mirror and murmured, “Dragons?” her reflection lifted a familiar tabloid. The headline read “Not all THUNDER LIZARDS Come out of the Ground at Drumheller.” And under it, in slightly less strident type, “Thousand-Year-Old Lizard Baby.” She was worried for a moment that the tabloid had already been reporting on the dragons when she saw that the date on the paper was closer to the end of the month.
“Trust me, I wasn’t going to tell Graham about this.” Giving the frame a quick pat, she moved on into the store figuring she could use the ninety minutes until opening to begin cataloging.
Joe sat tucked up into the small offset of the door, head against the glass, arms wrapped around his knees.
Allie dropped her laptop on the counter and hurried across the store. When she turned the lock, his head jerked back and he stared up at her with wide, terrified eyes. Then he blinked and only looked tired as he pulled himself to his feet, one palm against the door.
“Joe? What are you doing here?”
“You want me here.You do want me here?”
“Of course I do. I only meant that it’s early.”
“I don’t…”
… have anywhere else to go.
The subtext was so loud, he might as well have said it.
She stepped aside and watched how his shoulders relaxed when he crossed the threshold. Whatever had happened to him, he believed it couldn’t follow him into the store. She hated to disillusion him, but down here in the store, Gran hadn’t set things up to keep anyone out. She’d just wanted to know what was coming.
When the lock snapped into place, he raised a hand and brushed his hair back out of his eyes. He probably figured that Allie’d ignore the way his fingers were trembling.
Not likely.
“Have you eaten?”
“What?”
“Breakfast? Have you eaten? No, of course you haven’t. Come on, then, upstairs. I’ll make pancakes.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “You’ll what?”
“Make pancakes. Unless they call them flapjacks out here in the west, then I’ll make flapjacks.”
“Upstairs?”
“It’s where the kitchen is.” Hand in the small of his back, not terribly happy about the way she could feel the knobs of his spine through his sweater, she moved him across the store toward the other door.
“I can’t…” His need for sanctuary rolled off him like smoke. He wasn’t fighting her, he hadn’t even stopped walking, but he needed reassurance.
“Why can’t you?”
“Your grandmother…”
“Isn’t here. I am. Don’t look in the mirror, just keep walking.”
If he’d been Human, he wouldn’t have made it up the stairs. She could feel him trembling, forcing each leg to rise and pull himself up the next step. She didn’t help, but she made it clear she’d be there if he fell.
When he was standing, staring stupidly around the apartment’s big open room, she gave him a gentle shove toward the bathroom. “Go shower and toss your clothes out, I was going to run a load of laundry, and I can easily throw them in. If you don’t mind that it says Niko, I’ve got sweats you can wear until they’re dry.”
“Niko?”
“Misprints. There’s a couple of boxes of them in the spare room. Go on,” she added when it looked like he might be gathering enough energy to argue. “Pancakes will be ready when you are.”
He blinked at her, shook his head like he couldn’t quite believe he was doing it, and shuffled off to the bathroom.
Allie snorted as she pulled the big mixing bowl down off the shelf. Twenty-four years of handling Gale boys made handling the Fey a piece of cake. She’d been getting David to the table since she was five.
When Joe sat down, his hair tucked wet behind his ears, points exposed, she slid a plate of six steaming pancakes-nearly as big around as the plate they were on and half an inch thick-in front of him. “I’m afraid we’ve only got maple syrup,” she told him, sliding the bottle across. “There’s a bottle of blueberry syrup in the pantry, but since it probably came from Auntie Jane, it’d be safer if we didn’t open it.”
“She charmed it, then?”
“If she made it for Gran, she likely poisoned it.”
“Poisoned?” His voice rose a little on the second syllable. Not quite far enough to be called a squeak.
>
“Apples are more traditional, but Auntie Jane has a thing for blueberries.”
“You’re kidding?”
Allie smiled. “Eat up, you don’t want your pancakes to get cold.”
The first forkful dripping with butter and syrup slid tentatively between pale lips. The second forkful rose a lot more enthusiastically. “These are good!”
“Of course they are.” Allie had two smaller pancakes on her plate, mostly just to keep him company while he ate. When he finished, she smiled and said, “So what happened last night?”
While it was true that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, Gale girls tended to believe food should be more inclusive.
Joe pushed the last bit of syrup around his plate with his fingertip. “I got jumped by a guy with a gun.”
“You got jumped?” Her turn to stare in disbelief. Calgary had some hard-assed petty criminals if the Fey were getting mugged.
“He knew what I was, didn’t he? Tasered me first. Tied my hands.”
“Tied?” She took one hand in hers and gently pushed the sweatshirt cuff up. Not even the faintest residue of a binding.
“Well, it wasn’t just the ties, was it? I could have broke them, sure, but he had a gun, here.” Two stiffened fingers tapped his head just below his right ear. “Told me he had Blessed rounds, then he asked me what I knew. Asked if the UnderRealm had been in contact with me.”
“So what do you know, Joe?”
“I know about the dragons.”
“I’ve seen them.” Still holding his hand, she glanced toward the window. “Well, seen them pass, which is almost the same thing.”
“No, it’s not. They’re…”
Bigger. Scalier. Toothier. Definitely scarier in person. “It’s okay. I know. Has the UnderRealm been in contact with you?”
“No, and like I told him, I wouldn’t fucking listen if they had. Then he wanted to know what I was doing in the store. I told him I was working here.” His eyes widened as he suddenly realized what he’d been saying, and he yanked his hand free. “You enchanted me!”
“Yes.”
“He told me he’d kill me if I told anyone!”
Allie kept her tone matter-of-fact. “How will he know you told me?”
“He has a truth thing! A silver thing.You can’t lie when it’s on you! He’ll know I told you and he’ll kill me! He had Blessed rounds! True death!”
“Joe! Stop it!” When he froze, she took his hands, thumbs stroking the backs. “If he threatens you again, he’s in for a surprise.”
“What have you…” He stared at the backs of his hands, eyes wide, the charms clearly visible to him. “You can’t.”
Allie shrugged. “I just did.”
“You don’t speak for your whole family!”
“Actually, we all speak for the whole family.” She knew better than to look deep into his eyes so she stared sincerely at a freckle in the middle of his forehead. “That’s what family is, Joe, we stand by each other, no matter what.”
“You just told me your Auntie Jane was trying to poison your grandmother!”
“Doesn’t count. If I call, they’ll come. If he touches you, he’ll know that.”
“And if he shoots me from a distance?”
“Then it won’t matter if you told me or not since he clearly has his own agenda.”
Joe frowned, shifting the freckle. “That’s not particularly comforting!”
“Sorry. He didn’t happen to mention what that agenda was, did he? I mean, the level of threat does not match the level of his interrogation. We’ve got a big, big threat.” She spread their joined hands apart, then moved them closer together. “Little bitty questions.”
“He wasn’t after explaining himself, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Pity.”
“You think he had something to do with your grandmother’s disappearance, then?”
“I think my grandmother disappeared, and now there’s an armed man threatening someone who just started working at her store. My store. There’s got to be a connection. There’s the wash done.” She let go of his hands. “I’ll just toss everything in the dryer.”
He rubbed his right hand over the back of his left and had no effect on the charm. “What does it actually say?”
“It’s complicated, but basically…” Allie thought of him translucent one day and panicked the next, curled up on her doorstep terrified, and gentled her voice. “… it says, hands off.”
He seemed almost content about that, so she didn’t regret lying to him.
A more accurate translation would be mine.
—
“Someone’s watching the store.”
“Who?”
Allie rolled her eyes and glanced toward the bathroom door. Joe wouldn’t be in there much longer. “I don’t know who, Auntie Jane. But he carries a gun with Blessed rounds and has access to an artifact charmed to force the truth.”
“It’s entirely possible he bought the artifact from your grandmother,” Auntie Jane snorted. “I assume Catherine has charms in place keeping the family business from being broadcast to all and sundry?”
“Yes, but…”
“Then let him watch. If he actually wants to see something, he’ll have to come through the door.”
“And then?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Alysha Catherine, use your imagination.”
—
“A reporter?”
“For The Western Star.” Allie restacked the latest pile of saucers and added the number to the catalog. So far, she’d counted fifty-seven saucers with no cups and two cups with no saucers.
“That piece of shite.” Joe swept the dirt into the dustpan and straightened. “And he was talking to your grandmother?”
“Apparently.”
“You don’t believe him, then?”
“I believe he has his own agenda and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.”
“So you’re having coffee with him because of his eyes?”
Allie shrugged, pulled out a basket of oddly shaped candles, and put it back onto the shelf, not up to dealing with the mix of scents. “I need to know what his agenda is. How much he thinks he knows about the family.”
“He won’t know anything about the family, will he? Worst he’ll know is bits about your grandmother.”
“That’s bits about the family.”
“You lot are right clannish.”
“That’s what I keep trying to tell you.”
“I doubt she told him the truth about anything.”
“Unless she decided to do a bit of shit disturbing.”
Joe’s expression suggested that from what he knew about Catherine Gale, that was entirely possible. “So you’re doing damage control?”
“If it needs doing.”
“And if he knows too much?” Brows up, Joe drew a questioning line across his throat.
“Please, we can be much subtler than that.” They weren’t always, but they could be.
She was sorting through a box of mismatched sterling silver cutlery-Fill in your set. Priced by weight.-when Graham came through the door. She’d wanted a good look at him through the clear-sight charm but not enough to be lingering by the counter so it looked as though she’d been waiting for him. She had no intention of crossing the fine line between not playing stupid games and looking way too eager.
His eyes were just as blue in the morning.
Which was quite possibly the stupidest observation she’d ever made about anyone.
He stopped by the end of the counter, once again a little too close to that damned monkey’s paw. Shoving the box of silver to one side, Allie hurried over to him, afraid he might make another grab for the paw. It might be an old, ugly, hacked-off primate hand, yet the power it held made it remarkably seductive. But then, power was always seductive.
“Eleven o’clock, you’re right on time.”
His smile was as enthralling as she remembered. “I pride myself
on being punctual. Can you leave?” He turned a not particularly approving glance toward Joe. Since Joe still looked a bit rough, that was hardly surprising.
“I think I can handle the crowds,” Joe muttered, squaring up the box of yoyos with the edge of the counter.
“We’ll just be next door if anything happens,” Allie told him and waved Graham back toward the front of the store.
“What would be likely to happen?” Graham wondered as they emerged out onto the sidewalk.
“Could get a run of little old ladies who desperately need cat saucers.” Allie glanced up, saw that the pigeons were missing from the edge of the building and quickly checked the space under the newspaper box. Empty.
“Looking for something?”
She glanced over to find him watching her and liked the way his gaze lingered. “I thought I saw a kestrel the other day.”
Which was true. She’d been wrong, but it had been what she’d thought at the time.
“It’s possible,” he allowed as they walked to the coffee shop. “They seem to be taking to city life, and Calgary is a city where things are happening. We were named the best Canadian city to live in by the Canadian conference board,” he added, holding the door open for her. “And the third best in North America.”
“You know people keep telling me things are happening here…” She brushed up against him as she passed, almost accidentally, and spent a moment appreciating the feel of muscle under the same cheap suit he’d had on the night before. “… but so far all I’ve seen is the airport, the route in from the airport, the store, and this coffee shop. Oh, and the convenience store down the road.”
“We’ll have to do something about that,” he murmured, close behind her and the low, whiskey rasp of his voice lifted the hair off the back of her neck.
It took her a moment to realize that Kenny was staring at her expectantly from behind the counter. “Uh, two coffees please, for here, and…” She half turned and laid a hand on his forearm, just because he was up and in her personal space like an invitation. “… the Saskatoon berry muffins are great.”
He blinked, but since the new angle gave him a deliberate glimpse of lace and the swell of breasts inside the vee of her shirt, that was only to be expected. If he thought he could fluster a Gale girl by standing too close and smelling terrific, he didn’t know as much about the family as she feared he did. And he’d clearly never tried this on her grandmother.
