by Mel Sterling
"So you're asking me if I know what's new and hot?"
"One of the men around that burn barrel under the bridge...he mentioned something about 'the lady,' that the lady was riding my client." She colored a little, remembering the man's implication that Tess wanted to ride Aaron as well. "Have you heard anything like that?"
It took Thomas a long time to answer. He turned his cup on the table, fidgeted with his napkin, unfolding it and refolding it inside-out with deliberate precision. "You shouldn't trust what you hear in...Underbridge." The long pause before he spoke the word gave it too much emphasis. "People there are unreliable."
She found herself believing him. He simply sounded so convincing, so certain. He must have inside information. It took too long to put her thoughts in order. His words filled her brain. "I have to help him. I'm...responsible for him."
Thomas's gaze flicked up. "From what I saw, he's old enough to make his own choices. And it looked to me like he's made them."
Tess gave a loud sigh. While Thomas was pleasant company, he probably didn't have the information she was seeking. "I'm not talking about who he's dating. I'm talking about what he's taking. Maybe I should try to find her, and ask her if she knows—"
"No."
Thomas's blunt, commanding statement took her aback. Her mouth opened, but she found she had nothing to say.
Thomas grinned. "That came out wrong, and I'm sorry. What I meant to say is your client would have something to say if you got mixed up in his love life. I know I'd be...irritated, if someone started asking my girlfriend about my drug habits. What if she doesn't already know? He can kiss that relationship goodbye, and he won't thank you."
"But what if she's his supplier? A pusher?"
"You can't always save people from their own bad choices." He frowned at his cup. He popped its top, tipping the cup for the last of his latte. He replaced the top, upside down. Tess had barely sipped her own, but now it was cooler, and she swallowed a little. The sugar hit her bloodstream quickly, and the warmth soothed the knots in her stomach.
"It's...it's what I do, Thomas. I have a degree in social work and specializations in addiction and recovery. And this puzzle is making me crazy. He's too young to throw his life away like this."
His mouth quirked in a wry smile. "Where were you when I was committing my own youthful indiscretions? I'd give a lot to have been saved by someone as gorgeous as you."
There were those delicious eyes again, faint lines creasing their corners. Tess blushed. "You don't seem to have done so badly for yourself, Thomas." She gestured to his empty cup. "Would you like another?"
"Yes, but I'll get this one. You?"
"Still working on my mocha. One ought to be my limit, or like you, I'll be up all night."
Thomas leaned forward. "Come on, live a little."
She shook her head, smiling. He studied her for a moment, his gaze drifting over her face, lingering at her ears and lips, head tilting slightly to one side. "I know just the thing. Be right back."
"Thomas—"
But he was already heading for the counter.
Tess drank some more of her coffee. This was the oddest conversation she'd ever had, apart from some of the clinical sessions with addicts, where descriptions of hallucinations often took particularly weird turns. When added to the already atypical evening—chasing Aaron through the rainy streets, the daft fortuneteller declining to read her cards, the stranger-than-usual folk under the bridge, she began to wonder if the stress was finally getting to her. It took a lot of emotional energy to treat addictions, and she suspected she had never really gotten over the tragedy of her brother Stephen. I'm a dark elf. You should see it, Tess. That place. So beautiful. And her. She's like a birch girl, a birch girl, a birch girl, all white and golden and green and beautiful and I am her dark elf.
She, her. The lady. The lady, she ride him.
Stephen's drugged-out comments had never made any sense, yet they were the same sort of drifting, disjointed phrases Aaron used. Tess closed her eyes for a brief moment. Maybe she was just tapped out. She was reaching for her bag, deciding to make her excuses and her escape, when Thomas came back with another giant cup, and a plate with a single chocolate truffle on it.
"It's not the answer to your questions, but I think it could help. I hope you like dark chocolate with raspberry."
Did she ever. She put her bag back down, and when the conversation drifted from Aaron and drugs to more cheery topics, she let it. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? At least something good had come out of this bizarre evening: She had met an interesting, handsome and sensitive man. With magazine cover eyes, no less.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE BARISTAS HAD TO CHASE them out of Park Perks at closing time.
Thomas heard Tess sigh when they got to her Jeep a couple of hours and too many lattes later. A flapping ticket, damp with rain but designed to withstand the persistent wet of a Pacific Northwest autumn, adorned her windshield. "I knew it. I should've moved the car before we went for coffee."
Thomas glanced around them. They were only a block away from one of the city's homeless shelters, and less than twenty feet from the entrance of Chinatown. The fu dogs stared and growled at him, scratching their claws on their pedestals, knowing him for what he was even through the human glamour. "Not the best place in the world to leave your vehicle, but it looks like you've been lucky—just the ticket, and not a smash and grab."
Tess patted the lemon-yellow hood of the Jeep. "Nobody bothers my old girl. She looks too tough, all beat-up like this, and every panel a different color." She fumbled in her purse and found her car keys. "Are you sure I can't give you a lift back to your place, Thomas? It's really late. I can't believe we closed down that coffee shop."
He smiled. The trow-form clamored to be released. For two hours he'd held it in beneath the bright fluorescent tubes of the hole-in-the-wall coffee shop, only a foot or so away from Tess, who looked at him so earnestly as she questioned him about life in Old Town and the streetfolk and their vices and habits. She was confused by the redcaps' comments about her client and "the lady," but he felt he had skirted that delicate issue well. Tess didn't seem to connect the comments and the woman the youth had embraced in the park, except as a potential source of drugs. He was relieved she'd let it go. He would have had to walk away if she'd dug deeper. The fae compulsion to tell the truth—or as much of it as would serve the purpose and satisfy the Unseelie Court's ancient laws—was deeply ingrained after all these decades, and custom demanded that any direct question receive a response.
He could only imagine what would happen if Tess somehow managed to track down the Queen. He hoped he'd diverted her from that path.
"Thanks, but I live just a few blocks away, and I like to walk at night."
She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and Thomas realized she was about to say her good nights. He decided to save her from the awkwardness.
"I've had a great time. Thanks for the coffee and the conversation."
"I enjoyed it too. I..." For a moment, Thomas wondered if she would tell him she wanted to see him again. But then she fished in her handbag and pulled out a business card. "Here's my card. If you hear anything else that might be useful, I'd really appreciate a call."
"I don't have a telephone."
"You don't have a..." Tess gaped at him, dumbfounded. "Oh, okay. Um, listen, Thomas..."
Here it comes, the kiss-off, the thanks it was fun and I've got to run now. The trow-form nearly exploded and he had to bite hard on the inside of his lip to hold it in.
Tess spoke rapidly. "Giving you my card was my clumsy way of saying I really had a great time tonight, despite the awkward way we met, and I'd like to see you again some time if that's all right."
Thomas thought she might be blushing, but it was too dark to tell. A savage pleasure flooded him and intensified when she put out a helplessly floundering hand to touch his arm.
"God, I hate being such a dork," she said.
"How about same time next week, the coffee shop?" He held his breath, ignoring the thumping of the trow-heart in his breast. The way he felt, it might burst through his chest and thrash at her feet.
"How about an hour earlier, and we start at the coffee shop, then go for dinner? My treat."
"It's a deal." He took a step back, and her hand slid along his arm to his hand and squeezed gently. He couldn't hide the shiver of pleasure this time, though he did manage to swallow the moan that formed in his throat. How long had it been since he'd been touched except by the Queen? "Gotta run. Good night."
She gave a soft laugh. "Did you know you put your coat on inside out, Thomas? I just now noticed." She patted at the rough seam of the oilcloth.
He'd hoped she wouldn't twig to how he'd turned his coat to shed any fae pursuers. At the coffee shop, he'd had to use a little glamour on her to charm and relax her when she noticed him not touching his fork with his skin, though he felt like a traitor as he did it. He'd folded his napkin inside out as well, to turn away the fae, turned his cup, set the lid on it upside down. All to deflect the notice of the folk of Underbridge. He hoped all the little things had done the job and kept anyone from following them and running to tattle to the Queen. He hadn't seen any fae while they walked to the coffee shop and back, but there were never any guarantees.
"Dazzled by you, I guess," he said, but did not turn it right-side out again. The trow-form was emerging beneath his coat, no matter how hard he struggled to hold the glamour. Observant as she was, he didn't want her noticing his shoulders were broadening, his body thickening. Wouldn't that be the spectacular cap to an already strange evening, bursting into his full, ugly trow self right here on the dark street? He desperately wanted to keep the illusion he had built for her, an ordinary man with an ordinary life, having ordinary coffees with a beautiful woman.
The skin-hunger raged like a kelpie chasing its prey, and Thomas had to turn away hurriedly, waving without looking back, no matter how rude it was. But at the corner he paused, ever so slightly more under control, and looked back to where she was fitting her key in the lock. "One more thing?" If only he could use her name, but he didn't dare.
"Yes?" Her smile lit the entire dark city block.
"Take more care. Stay away from Underbridge. It's not safe there." Thomas didn't wait for the demurral he knew would follow. The trow-form would not be restrained any longer, so he pulled up the tall collar of the oilskin as his ears burst free from the glamour. He rushed into the darkness toward the Burnside Bridge. He could see the fu dogs prowling their perimeters only a block away. Their great lion-maned heads turned to watch as he took a corner at a lope, heading east to the concrete pier at the west end of the bridge that he called home.
He bypassed the market altogether, approaching the bridge via the old pumping station beneath it. This time there was no help for it—he had to touch the metal of the fencing as he swung himself up and over, the chain link clattering musically until he slid down the other side and used his big body to mute its vibrations. Aluminum didn't have the bite of iron, but the fence was an obstacle nevertheless. Inside the fenced station yard, he put a foot on a standpipe and launched to reach the sloping girders that formed the bulk of the Burnside's superstructure. This was iron, indeed, strong iron, thick with paint and rivets and the burning powder of rust.
It kept the fae away. It, and the current of the Willamette running strong beneath it. Only the water-fae braved the river, and even they complained of its bitter chemical taste and the human waste and other offal that tainted it with every rainstorm.
Quick and agile for all his trow size and bulk, Thomas moved along the girders to the western pier beneath the bridge operator's tower. There he hooked his claws in the gap between the concrete blocks, pulling open a hidden door and stepping in.
He was home.
He ought to have returned to the market to look for thieves. Question the regulars. Get a clue about what he was supposed to be protecting for the Queen. But instead, shedding his coat and hanging it on a hook made of peeled-up rebar he had wrapped with leather to contain its iron breath, he went to a slit window that overlooked the southern reach of the river. Rosy city night-light dappled the surface, shimmering in soothing movement. Inside, he was guarding a different treasure, the memory of Tess's smile as they said good night, and the touch of her hand on his arm.
Stupid of him, he knew. But too precious to discard so soon.
CHAPTER SIX
TESS SAT IN THE JEEP in her narrow driveway, thinking about the evening. Even though following Aaron had been a bust, she'd had an unexpectedly wonderful time over coffees with Thomas. Just Thomas. She hadn't gotten his last name—it hadn't seemed necessary. No doubt he found her too forward, but at least he'd agreed to see her again. While she had plenty of social human contact in her job at the rehabilitation center, she often lacked stimulating company, and more bluntly, decent companionship. Thomas was intelligent and good-looking, if unconventionally handsome. She liked his quiet eyes and their unusual coloring.
She had forgotten what it was like to have a rambling conversation that touched on anything and everything. Stephen had been particularly good at lightening the load of Tess's too-serious world, and oh, how she missed that. Thomas's sense of humor was shy and quirky. He spoke in a curious mix of old-fashioned courtesy and current street slang. Their conversation had kept Tess rooted in the here and now. While they talked, she hadn't once felt the need to check messages or make notes about a case at work. What a comfort and a delight, to find herself transported from the daily drudgery to a happier, warmer state of mind. Even Thomas's quirks interested her. He didn't have a phone, which could mean anything. Maybe he chose not to participate in the artificial hustle of modern life.
Tess wasn't the sort of person who had flocks of casual friends she could call at the drop of a hat. Her work used up her social energy, leaving her drained and wanting nothing more than a bubble bath or a good book. The spontaneous evening with Thomas might have begun with the deadly serious topic of Aaron and drug addiction, but by the end of the evening, she thought she might at last have made a new friend. He'd even taken her business card and the suggestion of another outing with what seemed like real pleasure.
Smiling, she turned off the ignition and gathered her handbag and the parking ticket, and went inside her half of the duplex that backed onto a greenbelt leading to Forest Park.
In the rear, she stopped at the island separating the kitchen from the living room. She dropped her purse and keys on the counter, stuffed the parking ticket into the basket for her mail, and opened the fridge. She needed a quick and easy snack before bed. The coffee had been warm and sweet, but it sat uncomfortably in her stomach. A little food would balance out the buzz from the caffeine and sugar.
While two slices of bread toasted, Tess fished in the outside pocket of her purse for the object she'd found in the market. Her fingers found the ribbon first, and tugged gently. The little thing swung free in the overhead light.
The size of a golf ball, it looked like a hazelnut still in its shell, with tracings of silver where there would otherwise have been brown markings like wood grain. The ribbon was bound tightly around its equator and its meridian, closing the two halves. Tess studied it, smiling. The fanciful knot at the top proved complicated and too tight to loosen, even when picked at with the point of a toothpick. She was tempted to snip the ribbon in two and see if the nut was made to open, but instead she took it to her curio shelf, and opened the glass door so she could tuck the newest acquisition into an empty space.
Tess was a magpie, collecting all sorts of objects that interested her, but she was most drawn to the items she'd found under the Burnside Bridge in the past year. Her count was up to fifteen, everything from a wooden thistle bristling with bronze spikes, to something like a radiometer, a clear glass bulb with a tiny bead inside that jittered back and forth whenever she held it. Some of the things were interesting enough that she'd
taken them to her office for curios. At first she'd tried to find their owners, but since nobody claimed them, she'd given up and kept them for herself. She didn't find a new prize every time she visited the market, but often enough that she kept her eyes open.
The beribboned nut made a nice addition to her collection. Perhaps at Christmastime she would hang it as an ornament on her tree. Still basking in the glow of the evening, she closed the glass door and went to scramble an egg to go with her toast.
Morning came too soon, gray light from the windows waking Tess in her small upstairs bedroom. She had left the window near the bed open an inch or two, loving the fresh air even though the October nights were growing chilly. The window looked out over the green belt into the thickness of the ivy that had escaped from countless city gardens and now threatened to subsume the local ecosystem. Trees rose from a uniform sea of saw-toothed leaves and hairy tan stems. Tess liked the look, though she knew monocultures were often harmful in the long run. It had a certain order to it, a tidy regularity that pleased her. She treasured the glimpses of wildlife—raccoons, deer, opossums, rodents and birds—that were her reward for choosing the duplex on the edge of Forest Park despite its too-high rent. Her tiny slice of country peace just blocks from the pounding mechanical pulse of the city.
"Too much coffee too late. Never again." She sat up, groaning, rubbing her eyes. Her dreams had been filled with confusion and exhausting searches for something she had never quite found. Over and over again, she saw the girl Aaron had met, but each time the girl turned to stare at dream-Tess, with a glare of such open hostility that Tess was taken aback, even in her sleep. Thomas had been there, too, a vague figure on the periphery of the dreams. She bumped into his tall, bulky form when she turned around, but each time he melted away before she could speak. Always, he held out a hand to her, beckoning. The sense of loss at his disappearances saddened her and left her with a melancholy she couldn't quite shake, even after waking.
