Gentleman Takes a Chance

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  "Oh," Rafiel said.

  "And then I can tell you about the dire wolf. If I'm not mistaken, he's the person that Old Joe described as the executioner for the Ancient Ones."

  * * *

  "What did you mean 'executioner'?" Rafiel asked. He leaned against a heavy carved rosewood table in Tom's rented room at Spurs and Lace.

  Kyrie must have been right about the crazy idea behind the name. The suite felt like a mashup of Old West and Old Whorehouse. It was bigger than a room, consisting of a bedroom with a queen-size bed, a sofa dripping in velvet and fringe, a dresser that would take five men and a winch to transport, and a hat rack with three cowboy hats on it, and a small sitting area in a projection that was part of a tower, surrounded by windows. The sitting area was outfitted with two too-precious-for-words carved wood armchairs, whose cushions were tormented by a print featuring cowboy boots and roses in random profusion.

  Then there was the bathroom, which had a heavy rosewood table facing it. Above the table hung a gold-leaf-framed mirror and above that, on the flowered-wallpaper wall, a pair of spurs.

  Rafiel shut his eyes, because you could go nuts trying to make sense of this stuff, and said, "What could he mean by executioner? And why would anyone want to execute us?"

  "I think it was the larvae, you know, the ones who died in the fire. Old Joe says the Ancient Ones can feel . . . death on that scale. And that they're looking for the culprits."

  "The culprits!" Rafiel heard the sound that came out of his throat, derisive like a cat spitting. "What about the shifters who were being murdered before that?"

  "I don't know," Tom sounded exhausted. Rafiel heard the water go off, then the shower curtain close. "Perhaps they think that we did those too."

  "And who are they?" Rafiel asked, feeling the anger in his voice and knowing he was projecting his fear into anger and throwing it at Tom. "These Ancient Ones," Rafiel said with less force. "It's pretty absurd to be judged by people you don't know and whose rules you can't understand. Who are they? What do they want?"

  Tom came out of the bathroom, fully dressed, though it didn't seem like he'd have had time. He was limping, and his foot showed red slashes across it. Rafiel remembered the dire wolf biting at Tom's back paw.

  Tom limped to the bed, sat down, and started putting socks on. "They're a group. I think they're a group of shifters who have lived very long lives."

  "Oh?" Rafiel said. "What's very long? And should we be looking for a group then, or just one man?" Something tickled at the back of his mind, but he couldn't quite pinpoint it.

  Tom shrugged. "I honestly don't know," he said. "Because, you see . . . Old Joe . . ." He shrugged again, wincing as he stood tentatively on his wounded foot and looked about for his boot. "Old Joe, you know, is vague. He drifts in and out of reality, and it's hard to tell. He told me that the Ancient Ones were around before horses."

  "Before horses evolved? Or before they were domesticated?" Rafiel asked. "Because either way . . ."

  "It's unlikely? Yeah. I know. That's why I said he's unreliable. And he said that this creature, the dire wolf, had come to town, that he was their executioner, but he didn't say that the rest of them hadn't come too. Or how many there were. For all I know, and presuming that this story is true—and the executioner thing seems to be—then, you know, it could be that we're looking for anything between a busload of shifters as old as time, and two or three sixty-year-old shifters." He shrugged. "I couldn't tell you."

  But his words had tickled something in Rafiel's mind. Two or three shifters. "At the aquarium," he said, "Kyrie and I caught at least two different scent trails. Maybe three."

  "Oh?" Tom tensed, looking up. "Any of them our friend the wolf?"

  Rafiel shook his head. "I don't think so," he said. "At least the smell wasn't right. Though all the scents were so faded . . ." He shrugged.

  "You know," Tom said, "that's the other choice. No Ancient Ones, no conspiracy of shifters. Just Old Joe going senile, and one homicidal dire wolf shifter." He'd found his boots, and was putting them on. "Who knows how many of us are homicidal? It was always my fear that I'd go that way." Tom's boots were work boots, probably picked up second- or thirdhand at some time when Tom was doing manual labor. But even looking vaguely like weapons of mayhem, they were part of Tom.

  Rafiel had seen Tom turn back into high danger to recover them. Lacing them as tightly as that had to hurt his injured foot, but who was Rafiel to interfere with his friend's masochism?

  "Unfortunately," Tom said, "I don't think that's it. I don't think it's just Old Joe and our dire acquaintance. When has our life been that easy?"

  * * *

  Kyrie shaved broad swathes off the gyro beef roast rotating on its vertical metal spike, and turned her back to the counter and the customers, to eat with the voracious appetite a recent shift brought on.

  The diner had become packed, while she was gone—every table filled, even the table at which she'd first seated Conan. A couple was squeezed together into the too-small booth, cooing and billing and holding warm cups. Keith was working the grill like a pro, though Kyrie noted that he sometimes let things go a little too long, and the edges of omelets were often brown as Tom didn't allow them to be, and the bacon seemed full of burnt crunchy bits. And he was clearly late with the orders.

  However, to do Keith justice, that last might not be so much his fault as Conan's. The new waiter, newly returned amid the tables of the packed diner looked much like a fly that had hit the window pane once too many times. He was trying to serve everyone clamoring for his attention and seemed completely lost. That he only had one good arm to hold the serving tray didn't help, as his other arm, at best, helped stabilize things, but could not help with the weight, which meant he carried far less per trip out to the tables than she normally did. The orders were piled on the counter. As Keith turned and put another one down and called out, "Table 23," he seemed to realize the futility of it, saying, "Oh, never mind," and putting five or six orders on a tray, he rushed out to distribute the platters, far faster than Conan seemed able to.

  "That little rat you guys hired left me alone while you were gone," Keith said. "I don't know where he went but . . ."

  "Don't worry about it," Kyrie said. "He went to help us. We know where he was."

  Keith raised his shoulder sulkily, but didn't say anything for a while, till he said sheepishly, "I've kept people quiet," as he returned in what seemed like seconds, to tend to the grill, "by giving them free hot chocolate. I hope that's okay."

  "It's fine," Kyrie said.

  "Also, of course, there's nothing else open today which helped keep them here."

  Kyrie took the point, and having finished a plate of gyro meat, she put the plate with the others collected from tables, and reached under the counter for her apron, intending to go out to clear the backlog as fast as possible. Only her hands, thrust under the counter, met with something like sharp little needles. On her pulling the hands back, the needles withdrew, only to stick her again when she reached out once more, only much less further in than before. "What the—?" she said, reaching out.

  "Oh, that's Not Dinner," Keith said, flipping a burger.

  "What?" she asked, as she knelt to look in the dark shelf where they kept folded aprons to the left and the time sheets to the right. Golden eyes sparkled back at her, and she looked closer, to make out a little orange ball of fluff making his way very fast to lay possessively atop the time sheets. "It's a kitten."

  "Yeah," Keith said. "Not Dinner."

  "I don't have the slightest intention of eating him," Kyrie said, upset, as she reached in and managed to retrieve the apron before the avenging claws got her. "You know you can't have your pet here. We're not allowed to have animals, except service animals, on the premises."

  "He's not my pet."

  Kyrie took a deep breath, deciding everyone had gone mad, and Keith right now was representative of everyone. What on earth could he mean? That the diner was suffering an infesta
tion of cats, like some places had sudden infestations of rats? It didn't bear probing, not now. Grabbing a tray and filling it with orders, and picking up the coffee pot for warmups, she started among the tables, clearing up the backlog.

  Many regulars looked happy to see her, and other people just looked happy to get their orders at last. In a few minutes, she had the main of it taken care of and, having directed Conan to start bussing newly emptied tables, returned to fill the dishwasher, restart the coffee, and pursue the interesting matter of a sudden plague of kittens.

  Before she could, though, and while she was bent over the dishwasher, filling it with dirty plates, Tom and Rafiel came in, and Tom made an exclamation of distress and touched Kyrie's arm. "Kyrie, where's Old Joe?"

  She looked up. "I don't know. Where was he?"

  "I left him in booth number five."

  "Well, he wasn't here when I came in," she said.

  Tom swore under his breath and, at her startled look, said, "Not your fault. He must have gone alligator again. I hope he's not going to go after one of the customers in the parking lot. And I hope we find him, because we need to talk to him."

  As he spoke, Tom reached over the grill, as Keith pulled a stack of cooked burgers aside and said, "I made these for you. I figured you'd need them."

  "Great thought. Thanks," Tom said, grabbing the burgers and eating one after the other, like a kid with candy. "I'll take over the grill in a moment."

  "I gave Not Dinner some milk and a few pieces of hamburger," Keith added.

  "Not . . . oh. The kitten," Tom said. "Good."

  Kyrie noted that Tom seemed to know about the kitten. In fact, she would bet the kitten was Tom's. Tom and his strays! Meanwhile, Rafiel had gone out the back door. He returned in a moment, snow glinting in his hair. "He's not out back, Tom. I can't find him. There's no trail I can see."

  * * *

  Tom took over the grill. "Go attend to the tables," he told Keith. "I'll take care of cooking."

  Keith hesitated, and Tom was sure that he was hoping to hear what was going on, but he wanted to talk to Kyrie and he didn't want to leave the tables unattended. "We'll let you in on it," he said. "I promise."

  "That's not it," Keith said. "I want to talk to you." He spoke in an undertone, and looked worried. "There's someone . . ."

  "Right," Kyrie said from Tom's side. "I'll go do those two tables that just came in."

  "So?" Tom said.

  "It's this girl . . ."

  Tom choked on gurgled laughter at the idea that anyone at all would come to him for romantic advice, but he managed to stop and make his features attentive. "Yes?"

  "She's . . . she goes to school with me, and she looks really . . . I don't know how to put this, but I think she's a shifter. That was why I came by today. If I bring her, can you . . . sniff her out?"

  Tom looked at him, and felt his brow wrinkle into a frown. "Probably," he said. "Rafiel can for sure. Why do you think she's a shifter?"

  Keith shrugged. "I can't quite put my finger on it, but she looks tired in the morning, and . . . you know . . . she talks a lot about strange animals. She had a book on crypto zoology. It just seems . . ."

  "Does she change clothes a lot?"

  "Not that I've noticed, but . . ." Keith shrugged. "Just a feeling, okay? I've been around you guys enough for that."

  "Yeah," Tom said. "Fine." He returned to cooking and, remembering that Rafiel, too, would be having shift-hunger, he grabbed one of the frozen t-bones from the freezer by the grill, and threw it on. His mind was working on the problem he and Rafiel had discussed. The idea of a group or groups of shifters skulking around making decisions about their lives, that they could not possibly anticipate. Did this group have anything to do with the bones in the aquarium? And how could Tom and Kyrie defend themselves from the dire wolf, who seemed capable of teleporting?

  They spent the rest of the night watching the door and looking out back around the dumpster, but as far as Tom could tell, both any possible hostiles and the alligator shifter were miles away.

  On a normal night there were several lulls, but as the wind howled, fiercer and fiercer outside the diner, rattling gusts of snow against the broad windows and leaving them spattered as if with the spray-snow people used for decorations, customers drifted regularly in and out.

  It seemed to Tom, though he didn't look closely at anyone at the tables—kept busy with constant cook orders instead—that some people came in several times during the night. They were probably being kept awake by the wind and the snow, or perhaps the Victorians converted into apartment houses around here weren't exactly airtight and had inadequate heat. Tom remembered staying in many rental rooms and apartments where the temperature, on full-blown heat, never reached above tepid.

  The constant stream of orders changed overnight, from burgers to pies and coffee and finally to omelets, eggs and bacon, sausages and hash browns. He felt as if he would never want to smell a cooking egg again in his life, and the pain in his wounded hands—continuously rehurt by his ceaseless work—had gone from a dull throbbing to a barely-keeping-from-screaming burn. He'd sent Kyrie away to rest a couple of hours ago, afraid that if no one else came in to relieve him at the grill he'd have to let Kyrie relieve him, and give her a quick crash course on breakfast dishes on the new stove.

  He could have cried with joy when he saw Anthony come in. "It was getting cabin feverish at home," he said, sheepishly. "It's only a one-bedroom apartment. And the wind seems to have died down some, so Cecily fell asleep. You guys can go rest some."

  Tom nodded and removed his apron, shoving it under the counter. He was surprised by a sudden feel of pinpricks piercing through his bandages. Looking under the counter, he got a sudden hiss and battle scream from the orange kitten.

  He took a quick look over his shoulder at Anthony. He couldn't imagine leaving the kitten behind for Anthony to deal with, so as he grabbed his jacket from under the counter and slipped it on, Tom reached under and grabbed the protesting bundle of kitten and, ignoring the yowls of defiance, slipped it into his pocket.

  * * *

  Kyrie woke up to someone snoring on top of her. In a moment of unique confusion, she thought Tom must have decided to sleep on the bed after all, and he must be snoring, only the snore was so distant and tiny, that it couldn't be Tom. She wondered, momentarily, as she struggled with what seemed to be several tons of gravel on her eyelids, whether Tom could have shrunk, because she felt a very warm and vibrating body—if a very tiny one—laid across the space between her breasts.

  Her mind finally added up that these impressions made no sense, and brought her awake with a sudden jar. Her beginning to rise was met with sharp little needles to the chin and, opening her sleepy eyes, she saw a small orange blur. "Uh?" she said, which seemed the height of eloquence just then. She blinked and saw the sun shining fully across the room and onto the bed, and Tom blissfully asleep mostly on and partly off the sofa next to the bed. He had dark shadows under his eyes, and looked paler than usual. He'd taken his boots and socks off in his sleep, allowing her to see the bandage on his foot, and he was sleeping on his side, probably to avoid hurting his injured back.

  Kyrie blinked at the kitten on her breasts. "Hello, Not Dinner," she said in a singsong voice. "Are you one of Tom's strays?"

  The kitten purred and licked first one paw, then the other. Kyrie had to admit he was handsome, "In a conceited male feline sort of way." She put her hand out to his tiny head and petted it, feeling the curve of the cranium beneath her fingers. "Mind you, you're much cuter than Rafiel and you can tell him I said that." She cast another look at Tom. She was sure she knew how this story went. Her boyfriend had found the kitten out, somewhere, under the snow. And since he couldn't resist strays, be they human or not, he'd brought it in out of the cold.

  She wondered if Tom had thought that cats pooped or that he needed to provide himself with a litter box for the critter. "What are we going to do with him?" she asked. "He adopts the most imp
ractical creatures." But, as Not Dinner purred happily and started a kneading motion at her throat, she couldn't blame Tom. And she hoped Tom liked hapless felines. She happened to know that the bed-and-breakfast allowed pets. There was a big sign in the foyer proclaiming four-pawed guests welcome and Kyrie didn't think it meant shifters. And she was sure the lady, a great cat lover, would find her a litter box for the newest member of the family.

  Then she must find someone to fix the bathroom so they could return home. She wondered if one of Rafiel's ubiquitous and very useful relatives happened to be a plumber. If Rafiel found them help within his odd family, it would save explaining what sort of cataclysm had happened in that bathroom. Rafiel could make up whatever he wanted or nothing. His family had to know that there was something very strange about their relative, but none of them seemed to mind covering up for him.

  "Right," she said, picking up the kitten, as she slipped out of bed, and dropping him atop the sleeping Tom. "You keep the dragon company while I get decent and go about finding you a litter box."

  She fumbled in her suitcase for her robe and slipped it on, before opening the door. And then she saw the headline on the local paper laid outside the door. And shrieked.

  * * *

  Tom woke up with Kyrie shrieking, and saw Not Dinner rush towards her and the open door. "Kyrie," he said. "Not Dinner."

  Kyrie bent down just in time to stop the tiny animated projectile attempting to run out the door, and grab him in her hand, even as she scooped up the paper with her other hand. She closed the door with her foot and returned to Tom. "Look at this," she said, and turned the paper towards him so that he could read the above-the-fold headline.

  The Weekly Inquirer—which was a daily paper, a dissonance of nomenclature that bothered no one in Goldport—normally printed city news first page, relegating the national and international news to the middle sections where—it was felt in town—the rest of the world belonged, being far less important than their concerns.