by WB McKay
Owen pulled a stack of papers out of a chair and plunked down in it. His eyes had regained the mischievous sparkle that made my stomach queasy. "I love you, too," he said. He crossed his arms over his chest and gave me a sweet smile. "You can ask me any question you want."
"Pfft." A man declares his love for you, and you pfft him. My eyes burned, blurring my vision. I opened them as wide as I could to keep the tears from falling. "Now what happens?"
"Now you should go ahead and be rude. Ask me questions. Be yourself, all the way," he said. "Because that's what you do when you love somebody."
I gave him a mocking scowl. "I'm no expert, but I don't think that's how it works."
"That's the good thing about this," said Owen. He stood and walked over to me, stopping before he entered my personal space. He had listened. "We decide how it works for us."
I nodded. I couldn't believe I was doing it, after all this time. I wasn't even sure what it meant, but eventually I said, "Okay."
He smiled so big his eyes wrinkled at the corners. "Okay."
We stood there looking into each other's eyes for a long moment. "Does that mean we made up?" I asked.
Owen chuckled. "I think so. Do you think so?"
"It seems too easy, but," I swallowed hard, and held out my hand for him to shake, "yeah."
Owen didn't hesitate. He took my hand, shook it, but then instead of letting go, turned it palm down and kissed the back. He looked up at me and I couldn't help but smile. He was good at making me do that. His answering smile was that special one I couldn't resist. The one that cut through right to my heart and made it impossible to hold myself together. He gently tugged my hand, and I stumbled closer. "Very well, m'lady. We have an accord."
Now wasn't the time for rude questions. I didn't have any of those. My mind was occupied by other things.
I pulled him close and kissed him hard. His mouth parted and his tongue met mine hesitantly at first, and then with more urgency. When we parted, both of us were panting and out of breath. "I appreciate you respecting my personal space," I said, giving him a wicked grin. "Right now, I'm feeling like I need very little of that." I pulled him in for another kiss.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Work left little time for canoodling. I called Art down to the lab. He was curiously lacking one Enid.
Owen closed the door to a room in the back of his lab. "We can't be overheard in here."
Uhh, did that mean we could have been heard in the room where I said all those things and made with all the kissing? Something I needed to make sure to ask in the future.
"Where's Enid?" I asked Art.
"She's busy right now. They have her working dispatch." He shrugged. "She said she would come hear what you have to say in a couple hours."
That was one reason I'd decided I wanted Enid on the case. I'd first talked to her when she was an intern and they had her working the phones in dispatch. She was good at it, if a little sassy. If she wasn't careful, they'd stick her in there her whole career. "Fine, let's get down to business." I turned to Owen and handed him the scroll. "You said this looked like something of importance. Do you know what it is?"
"No. I could tell that it was for some sort of quest, but it's in ancient Greek." He looked over the scroll, a glint of curiosity in his green eyes. "I don't read much ancient Greek. What are we dealing with?"
Owen was the book-wormiest dragon I'd ever met. Only he could seem disappointed in himself that he didn't know ancient Greek. His hoard, or "trove", as he liked to call it, was of rare books, mostly about the fae and magic. I was looking forward to seeing the look on his face when I told him. "We're recovering the Golden Fleece."
His mouth dropped open so far I thought his jaw might have unhinged. Then it snapped shut and he scowled at me. "I know you can't lie, but you can't be serious." He stared down at the scroll as if he'd never seen it before. His hands adjusted to hold it a little more carefully, like it was something precious. I could see the tell-tale signs of covetousness creeping in. He may have prized books above any other treasure, but a mythical object made of gold was enough to perk up anyone with any treasure hoarding tendencies. I would know. I wanted it real bad, and not just for the altruistic reasons I said out loud. I gave him a simple nod to confirm I was serious. I saw the moment shock took over. "It's not even real!"
"That scroll, a whole cave of challenges, and one ancient ghost-like person say otherwise."
"Who else is after the Fleece?" he asked.
"Well, that's the bad part," I replied. "How secure is this room?"
"My mom doesn't know what we're saying in here."
Lana Kinney had the kind of reach that she could have changed that if she wanted to. The fact that she was the first example Owen went to said a lot.
"All right." It was time for a full explanation, starting with the Scepter of Sight case. I explained my suspicions about the council member I was now referring to as Mr. Supervillain, and how I'd ended up looking for the Fleece because I'd been keeping tabs on them. For such a big mess, it took relatively little time to explain. I left out the part where I often spotted Mr. Supervillain around Owen's mother. It could have been a coincidence. They were both council members. Owen had enough issues with his mother; I'd tell him when I knew something for fact. For now, I stuck with the simple story. A fae with a lot of power was collecting dangerous objects, and I was the only one who knew or cared. It was likely he'd orchestrated the outing of the werewolves. I didn't know his end game, but he wanted the Golden Fleece, and he'd hired pirates to get it for him so no one would know.
"Damn," Owen said when I'd finished.
"That's an understatement," joked Art, earning a small chuckle from me.
Owen looked at me with narrowed eyes. "You know, when you were researching the Golden Fleece, you could have come to this giant research lab and asked me about it."
"I would now." I shrugged.
"Good enough, I guess."
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly; the weight of responsibility was heavy on my shoulders. "Owen, I'm assembling a team of five. The five of us are going on this quest against the pirates. That means we're going against Erik Bresnan, a powerful member of the fae council who has done terrible things. You're smart enough that I don't have to tell you what that means, how serious this is."
"I understand."
I believed him. "I don't want to ask you to join our team," I told him honestly. "Will you join our team?"
"I'm already on your team." He spread the scroll out over the table and began studying it. That was that, I guess.
"Good," said Art.
Yeah. Good. "I have one more person to suck into this," I said. "I have a couple hours before I can talk to Enid. It's time to recruit the last member of our team."
"Who's that?" asked Owen.
"How's your sister doing?" Owen and Ava had been talking more lately, but before that they hadn't been in contact for years. I didn't know why. It was one of those rude questions I'd avoided asking.
"She's doing a lot better," he said. "She'll be happy to see you."
"You think so?" I asked, not liking how vulnerable I sounded.
"Yeah," replied Owen. "She misses you."
"Did she say that?" I asked. "Nevermind." I didn't want to talk myself out of going to see her. "All right, Art, let's go. Owen, you do the research thing. Figure out where we're off to next."
Owen already had his nose buried in the scroll. "On it."
Art and I made the quick drive into Arcata in his Smart car. Lost in the Mist was a small shop that didn't look like anything special from the outside. When we stepped in, we were bathed in the glow of the fish tanks lining the walls.
Ava emerged from the back room, a scowl etching lines in her youthful forehead. Like many fae, she didn't show her age. She looked like she was in her early to mid twenties, but she'd told me she was seventy years old. I believed it whenever I looked into her peridot eyes. It was easy to tell that she'd seen way more
than twenty years of horrible shit. The scowl disappeared so quickly I almost wasn't certain it had been there at all. It was replaced with her usual look of cool aloofness. For being barely five feet tall, she had the I'm-above-it-all look down pat.
"Hello, Ava," said Art, surprising me.
"Hello, Art," replied Ava, her tiny nose twitching like a bunny. It took me a while to realize that nose twitch signalled amusement.
"What brings the two of you to Lost in the Mist?" she asked, turning her gaze to the tank on her right. She opened a small canister of fish food and stood on her toes so she could drop it over the lip of the glass. "I assume this is official MOD business."
She left it unsaid that the assumption was based on the lack of personal visits she'd received from me lately. I'd been trying to give her space to recover. The last time we'd talked, she was angry with me for babying her. "Yes and no," I said. "We are working a case, but it's much more of a personal interest."
"So you are here for me to consult on the job."
To humans, Lost in the Mist was an occult shop where they asked Ava to help them find lost items. They had no idea she helped by asking her network of ghosts. Since ghosts had little to do other than observing people, they were a wealth of information. I'd started off doing the same thing when I'd come to Ava's shop. I didn't know how her magic worked--I'd assumed she was a seeker--but I knew enough to know she could help. And that she intimidated the hell out of me. Recently, she'd told me how her magic worked. Talking to ghosts wasn't exactly respected as a powerful magic in the fae community, but that was because people are ignorant jacknuts.
"It's more involved than that," I said, biting my lip. "Can we sit down and talk? I'll explain what's going on and then you can decide if you're up to it."
Her eyes narrowed, but she nodded. She turned to Art, who was engrossed in his inspection of the fish tanks around the room. "Art, Sophie and I are going to go out for a little while. Would you mind keeping an eye on the shop for me? Tell anyone that happens in that I'll be back in fifteen minutes."
"Our talk may take longer than that," I said. Things couldn't be good if that's all the time she was willing to give me.
Ava gave me an unsettling smile. "That's fine. We can take all the time we need. We'll just have to return within fifteen minutes of a patron arriving at the shop. Fifteen minutes is how long a human will wait before giving up and leaving."
"How will you know when someone arrives?" asked Art, playing right into Ava's hands. "Is there a number I should call?"
"No need," she replied, waving vaguely in the air. "I'll know if someone arrives. If you want some conversation, feel free to step into the back room. Vincent is rather fond of selkies. I'm sure he'll pop out and say hello."
"You two ladies have a nice chat. Don't worry about me." Art popped into the back room. "Vincent?" I heard him say as Ava ushered me out the door.
We walked to Rita's Mexican Restaurant in silence. Ava was the one to speak first when we were seated at our table. "I refuse to believe you've come to treat me like I'm a sensitive child in need of a good coddling," she said. "You're too smart to do that again."
I swallowed hard. I wished she hadn't said that. I wasn't there to coddle her, even though I still felt like I should be. When she brought it up, it only made me feel worse that I wasn't there to coddle her. I wasn't even there as her friend, really. I was there to ask her to do something where she might get hurt again. This was definitely why my life was usually devoid of other people. I looked at Ava across the table, and accepted the reality of what I was about to do, and that it might not go well. I put on my agent hat and did what was best for my case. "I need you as the fifth member of my team. Our mission is to compete against a group of pirates in a contest to win the Golden Fleece."
"The Golden Fleece," repeated Ava, her eyebrows raising in an uncharacteristic show of facial expression. She looked around the restaurant as if she were suddenly concerned about being overheard. Her next words came out as barely as whisper. "It's real?"
"It is," I replied, not bothering to lower my voice. Rita's was about as human an establishment as they got. Ava and I were the only fae I'd ever seen in there. "I figured one of your friends would have told you about it at some point." Ava's business also doubled as a shop selling baubles and curiosities. Her ghosts told her where to find things that would make her some money. The fact that even she didn't believe the Fleece was real was profound. "The guardian of the cave where our records show it was last located was a rather wispy looking being. I thought he might have been a ghost or apparition of some kind. So, in addition to spying on the pirates, I thought you might be helpful in case there are other ghosts along the way."
"I'm in," said Ava.
"But you didn't even ask any questions. This is going to be dangerous." I went on to explain that we were actively working against a member of the fae council and all that happened on the scepter case. Then I told her about how dangerous the first trial had been, sparing no details, really emphasizing the part where I got bit by a lava snake. "So, I'd understand if you don't want to be involved."
"I'm still in," replied Ava, her green eyes taking on a steely glint. I could tell there was something more she was thinking about saying.
"But the danger part," I reminded her.
"I'm still in," she repeated.
"I appreciate that," I said, still afraid she didn't understand the danger involved. She looked better, but I didn't want to see her like she was after she'd gotten out of the pixie pocket, or worse. "I won't necessarily be able to protect you from everything that's going to happen on this quest. We're talking about life-threatening danger here."
The atmosphere of the room changed instantly. I could smell the swell of Ava's magic, ocean spray and a hint of smoke, as it filled the room. "Listen Sophie, you came here as a friend asking for my help and I've offered it. Unless you intend to rescind that request, I'm going to do this. Yes, I had a bad experience, but I'm getting over it. I don't need anyone to baby me. I've been treated like I'm weak my whole life because of my magic and I won't stand for it any longer. Especially not from you."
My mouth hung open. "Why especially not from me?"
She gave me a withering look. Or maybe it was a regular look. With Ava it was hard to tell. "Because you're a child." Yep, she was definitely upset. "I have fifty years on you, Sophie. I know how to survive. Possessing powerful magic doesn't make you stronger than I am."
I thought about that while I watched Ava get her anger under control. It was like watching lava cool. Just because it wasn't glowing any more, didn't mean it still couldn't burn you to a crisp. "You know, I find you incredibly intimidating and have been frightened of you on more than one occasion. Your magic may not be made for combat, but it is definitely a power I don't want to mess with."
"Well," she said, letting out a little sigh. "Okay then."
The lava had cooled to touchable temperatures, but it was still sharp and able to take a chunk out of your skin. Best to tread lightly. "That doesn't mean this job isn't incredibly dangerous and we shouldn't both be worried."
Her nose twitched again and one corner of her mouth hitched up into a hint of a smile "I'm your friend. If I can be of help, then I'm in."
There it was. The friend thing. Guilt washed through me, but there was nothing to do about it. Things were settled. I'd just have to make sure we both lived with it.
We tucked into our amazing burritos, and she told me all about a cuttlefish that she'd rescued the other day. It had washed up on shore and been pecked quite severely by birds. When she waxed poetic about the beauty of cephalopods, she didn't seem like the scary ghost-talker. She was a cute woman with a major nerd fixation on the ocean and its creatures.
"Well, let's go see how Art and Vincent have gotten along," said Ava, laying down her portion of the tip.
There was a lot more weight to the words than there should have been for such a casual statement. I'd seen Vincent a couple of times in
his tank. He had a very tiny human-looking torso, and the rest of his body looked like an iridescent mantis shrimp. I'd never heard of a fae like that until I'd met him. He'd never said anything to me though. "So what does Vincent think of me?" I asked.
"He thinks you're hilarious."
"What?" I asked. "Why?"
"You'll have to ask him sometime," she replied in that airy tone that meant she wouldn't say anything more on the subject.
"Hmph." I somehow doubted I'd ever get an answer from her shrimpy friend.
When we returned to Lost in the Mist, Art was laughing loudly in the back room. His laughter trailed off at the sound of the bell ringing over the door. He popped out to greet us and gave Ava his most blinding smile. "Vincent is a hoot. I've never met a mantisaur before. If they're all as fun as he is, I might have to make a trip to the south Pacific."
Ava smiled sweetly. It creeped me out enough that I slid a step away from her. "Vincent assures me that he is by far the best of his species."
"Well, that doesn't tell us much, because if even half the stories he told me are true, then he should be dead about five times over."
I watched them chatter for a few minutes with an odd fascination. It was a colliding of worlds. Art and Ava hadn't had the chance to talk much when I'd introduced them before. Who knew they'd have so many words to exchange between them? I'd thought I was their common link, but it was as if I'd gone invisible. I'd have wandered off and left them to it, but we had work to do. I did my best try at a tactful interruption. "Well, if you two are done verbally fondling each other, we should probably go find the Fleece." I said I tried, not that I was successful.
"There's the abrasive Sophie I know and love. I see you're done treating me with care."
"You misunderstand," said Art. "This is how Sophie treats people she cares for."
"Are you two done?" I asked. "We have work to do."
