His face twitched under her scrutiny. “What?”
A huge smile spread across her face. “You’re glowing brighter. It’s so beautiful. I wish you could see it.”
James shook his head. “I… I’m gonna be straight with you, kid.”
Alison’s face fell. “Nothing ever good follows a sentence like that.”
He took a deep breath. “We found the place where your mom was, and we, uh—”
She interrupted him. “I listen to the news, Mr. Brownstone. I know you think I’m just a kid, but I’m not an idiot. I heard about what happened. It’s kind of a big deal, even on national news. They are calling it ‘World War G.’”
“’World War G?’” Shay asked.
She nodded. “World War Gangster.”
James rubbed the back of his neck. “A lot of that…violence…took place when we went in. We found your mom, but she was already in bad shape by then.”
He didn’t see any point in telling her that her mother had been brutally tortured. The perpetrators had been punished, and it’d do nothing more than give the girl nightmares.
Alison’s lip quivered, and she gave a curt nod. “She’s dead, right?” She swallowed.
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
The girl sighed. “I kind of knew, I guess. But I don’t understand why all this happened.”
James paused for a moment to gather his thoughts.
He leaned forward in his chair, his hands clasped together as he tried to figure out the right words. “You’re special, and she was special. More than you realize. Your mom wasn’t from around here.”
Alison retorted. “A lot of people aren’t from California.”
James managed a chuckle. “Your mom was two hundred and twelve years old, Alison. She was Oriceran; some sort of Drow princess.”
Her face scrunched. “What’s a Drow princess?”
Shay and James exchanged glances before he continued. “We’re not totally sure on that, and we’ll have to ask around, discreetly. We’re gonna keep it to ourselves for now, so no one else comes after you.”
Alison made her way to a love seat. “I guess that explains a lot of stuff, like why I can see what I can see, and my hair.”
“Your hair?” James looked at it. Looked the same as it always had: black with frosted tips. “Did it change?”
While he hadn’t had many girlfriends, he knew from his male friends that not noticing a girl had changed her hair was somehow breaking the unknown Eleventh Commandment.
Relationships with females violated the KISS principle.
“I don’t dye my hair, Mr. Brownstone, and I know there are white parts. It didn’t used to be like this. Dad told me to dye it all black when it started changing, but Mom wouldn’t let him force me. Now I get why. It must be a Drow thing.”
James thought about everything Nicole and Walt had said. He needed to tell the girl everything he knew.
“You’ll probably get darker as you age; your skin, I mean. And, yeah, your hair will get lighter. Your mom had incredible magic, so maybe you’ll get that, too. I just don’t know.”
Alison bit her lip and nodded. “What happens from here? I can’t go back with my dad even if he wanted me.”
James let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding. “I’m gonna take care of you. At least for now.”
The girl looked down, her breathing shallow. She’d gone from having a family to having no one in a very short period. She was an orphan, something James knew more than a little about.
He’d been pondering whether to tell her about the wish ever since he’d learned about it. It was her birthright, but it was also a hell of a head trip. Considering the girl had just lost her mother, she didn’t need more stress.
Nicole had suggested that James would know when the time was right. The bounty hunter was confused about the Drow people and Oriceran—let alone wishes—but something in his gut suggested the girl didn’t need to know about it yet.
“You don’t have to stay with me if you don’t want to,” James continued. “I’m not good with kids. If you have some other relatives, I can help you track them down. I’m not good with anyone, really, but I have space, and I’m clean.” He was trying to at least sell the one part he might figure she could appreciate.
“Very fastidious,” Shay muttered from the kitchen. She started filling a glass of water.
James let the verbal poke slide.
“I don’t have any relatives that I know of.” Alison smiled. “I wish to stay with you.”
He stared at her for a moment, wondering if the word choice had been coincidental, or if there was some deeper meaning.
Guess I’ll find out the hard way.
“Okay, kid, your funeral,” James told her.
Alison laughed and looked towards the kitchen and Shay. “Is she gonna be my new mom, then?”
“WHAT?” Shay choked on her water, spewing the liquid onto her countertop. “No, no, no! I’m not old enough to be a mom. Uh, I’ll be the aunt.” She nodded, wearing a satisfied look on her face. “Yeah, that sounds perfect. I’m the aunt. Or the hot older sister.”
“I like ‘aunt’ better,” Alison declared.
James shrugged. “That’s more than what I was going to ask. At least now when I ask you to babysit it’ll be your niece, so you can’t bitch too much.”
After he finished speaking, he realized he might have to try to cut down on the amount of cursing he was doing, at least in front of the kid.
Alison frowned and shook her finger at him. “I don’t need a babysitter. I’m a teenager, not a little girl.”
And so it begins. He groaned mentally.
“Whatever. We’ll figure it out later.” James shrugged. His phone buzzed, and he pulled it out. “Oh, I almost missed it. Hey, do you mind if I watch some Barbeque Wars? With all this fun we’ve had lately, I don’t even know what’s happening on my favorite show.”
“Be my guest,” Shay offered. “The voice recognition’s on for the TV.”
“Don’t you have a remote? I fuc—” James glanced at Alison and sighed. “I don’t like voice recognition systems. They always have trouble with my voice. It’s like they think I’m background noise or something.”
Shay rolled her eyes. “You have the weirdest problems, Brownstone.”
After thirty minutes of listening to James explain the finer points of sauce ingredient counterpoints and the advantages of different cooking temperatures, Alison excused herself and headed up to the guest room with a faint smile on her face.
Shay watched the girl as she walked up the stairs. The minute her back was turned, her smile had disappeared.
“I’ve got to go check on something,” Shay announced. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Sure, okay.” James barely nodded. He was too engrossed in one of the judges’ acerbic takedowns of the perceived failure of a contestant’s experimental “Divine Sauce.”
“There’s only one real God Sauce,” he muttered. “And that’s at Jessie Rae’s. Fool shouldn’t have stepped up if he couldn’t really bring it.”
Shay resisted a snort and hurried up the stairs and down the hall. When she stood in front of the guest room door, she knocked lightly.
“Come in,” Alison called.
Shay opened the door. Alison was hugging the pillow on the bed, her eyes tear-streaked.
“Thought so,” the older woman muttered. She sighed. “You don’t have to hide if you want to cry about your mother, Alison.”
The girl shook her head. “I didn’t want Mr. Brownstone to see me like this. It’ll make him feel bad, and he’s already done so much.”
Shay came in and sat next to her on the edge of the bed. “He may only have two settings when it comes to showing emotion, ‘Asshole’ or ‘Clueless,’ but that doesn’t mean he expects you to be like that, too.”
“You don’t understand, Shay.” Alison sniffled. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“The
n explain it to me. I know about pain, Alison. I can’t say I’ve always dealt with it well, but I do know what it can do to your heart and mind.”
“I don’t want to cry and make him feel worse.” The teen sucked in a deep breath. “I can tell by the way he’s talking and his energy that he blames himself. That he thinks he let me down, or something. I wanted my mom back, but it’s not Mr. Brownstone’s fault. It’s my dad’s, and those Harriken guys. I was happy when I heard about them being killed on the news.”
Shay stared at Alison, taken aback by the girl’s insight. They would have to stop underestimating her.
“Don’t worry about Brownstone. Worry about yourself. He’s the adult…” she waffled a moment. “well, adult-ish person, and you’re the teenager. No one’s gonna blame you for being sad over your mom dying. It’s what we’d expect.”
Alison nodded, but then her face twitched and she threw her arms around Shay. The girl’s restraint shattered, and she buried her face in the woman’s chest.
“Mom,” the girl sobbed.
They sat there on the bed like that for several minutes, Shay stroking Alison’s hair while the girl cried a tsunami of tears over all that she’d lost. The tsunami became a mere wave, then finally a shallow trickle.
“Sorry,” Alison sniffled out, her cheeks and eyes red. “I...I told myself that I wasn’t gonna do this. I told myself I was gonna be strong.”
Shay pulled away and smiled. “Leave the stone-faced attitude to Brownstone. You’ll have years to learn to bottle up all your emotions in a screwed-up way like the rest of us. For now, revel in the fact you’re still allowed to feel.”
The sadness vanished from Alison’s face, replaced by fiery anger.
Shay blinked, wondering if she’d said something to piss her off. Normally she wouldn’t care, but kicking a grieving kid while she was down wasn’t her style.
“I wish he hadn’t let him go,” Alison finally admitted.
Shay’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“Mr. Brownstone. He let my dad go. He’ll come back for me.”
Shay snickered. “Don’t worry about your dad. James made sure he would never come after you again.”
Alison looked up with a question on her face, but no words emerged from her mouth. The girl exhaled softly and nodded.
Be glad you’re not asking, kid. Sometimes it’s better not to know for sure.
2
James took a deep pull of his Irish Stout and shifted on his stool, looking around the Leanan Sídhe. The place wasn’t all that crowded that evening, which suited him fine.
He had come for the beer, not for drunken singing.
“Looking for Father O’Banion?” the bartender asked, as if reading his mind.
James shook his head. “Nah. Just haven’t been in for a few days. Lots of crap has happened, and it makes you think. Trying to, you know, appreciate what I have and all that shit.”
The bartender chuckled. “You need to get a few more beers in you. Then you won’t have to worry about thinking, and you’ll appreciate every second.”
James raised his glass. “Working on it. You keep ‘em coming, and we’ll go until I can’t think anymore.”
A large man sat down next to James even though most of the stools were open, and the bounty hunter turned his head to check out the new arrival. Surprise washed through him as he realized it was Sergeant Mack.
The cop was in street clothes, which suggested he wasn’t there on business.
“Sergeant Mack?” He eyed the man to make sure he had the right guy. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before.”
The cop looked around with a grin. “Yeah, this place isn’t my vibe.” He squinted for a moment as he read a sign on the wall. “Home of the Original Bard of Filth Competition.” He looked at James.
The bounty hunter shrugged.
Sergeant Mack held up a hand. “You know what? I don’t even want to know.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He tapped the screen a few times and held the phone up. Displayed on it was an image of Walt Anderson’s fake confession.
“I should care about this because…” James asked.
“Let me give you a little hint, Brownstone,” Mack told him politely. “You’re good at going after bounties, but investigating crime is different.”
James shrugged. “Not disagreeing. I’ve always said you guys have the harder job.”
Mack chuckled. “Anyway, people generally leave behind suicide notes, not murder confessions right before they…um…shoot themselves. When they do confess, they like to do that shit face to face.” He tapped his finger on the screen. “Plus, you didn’t get all your DNA off this bad boy. You’re a great bounty hunter, but a shitty criminal. Don’t quit the day job, man.”
James resisted a snort.
The cop sighed. “Next time don’t leave this shit behind, okay? It makes it difficult to not follow up.”
James locked eyes with Sergeant Mack. He’d fucked up, and the cops had caught him. There wasn’t much he could do about it. He wasn’t about to hurt a bunch of police officers.
“Just tell me that he deserved it,” the cop requested.
“Does a man who gives his wife to the Harriken to be tortured deserve it? Does a man who plans to sell them his daughter for the same deserve it?”
“Guess we now know what was going on at Belmont House.” He held up a hand to stop James from trying to explain. “The drones were conveniently jammed, so don’t say anything to make me wonder. As far as we’re concerned, a bunch of gangsters and mercs got into a shootout.”
“Someone, not saying who, told me that Nicole Anderson was there but didn’t make it. Because they tortured her for days.” James curled his hands into fists.
Sergeant Mack’s nostrils flared and anger flashed in his eyes. “Why did Anderson do it? I mean, I’ve seen wives murdered, but it’s usually just to get rid of them to avoid an expensive divorce or insurance payout—not handing them over to gangsters for torture.”
“Anderson found out his wife was Oriceran. Some other shit happened, but that seemed to be the main thing driving all this crap. He felt betrayed, and he obsessed about his daughter being a ‘half-breed,’ as he put it. Guy had issues.”
Sergeant Mack looked down, his jaw rigid. “Jesus. You see so much shit in this job, but there’s always someone ready to take it to the next level.” He looked back up. “We followed up on the note, even though we knew it was bullshit. We’ve got DNA from that Harriken torture chamber. We could have tied him to it, you know. I’m not crying that he died, but it didn’t have to go down that way.”
James gulped down some beer. “Sometimes the wheels of justice turn too slowly, and we both know that it can be hard for some of these interspecies crimes to be successfully prosecuted. Hell, there was that guy who murdered that Light Elf kid a few months back… He got off with self-defense by claiming he thought the kid was cursing him. You also have assholes like the Humanity Defense League stirring up shit now.”
“The HDL are just a bunch of loudmouths.” Mack scoffed. “There’s only so much they’ll risk. I mean, you never know if you’re dealing with some guy you can take down easily or a guy who can melt your brain, when it comes to fucking with Oricerans.”
James let a feral grin take over his face. “An armed society is a polite society, and now anybody can be armed.”
“Yep.”
“Point stands,” James continued. “The man who’d send his wife and kid to be tortured is less than a cockroach, and I don’t give a shit about his reasons.”
“Not saying I disagree, Brownstone. I’m just trying to make sure we’re both on the same page on this.”
“Whatever. We’re on the same page.” James finished his beer. “So what happens now?”
Sergeant Mack chuckled. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” James narrowed his eyes.
“I think you’ve misunderstood, or I guess I could say you’ve fo
rgotten something.”
James had no clue what the cop was getting at.
“Enlighten me,” his gravelly voice ground out.
The cop stood and pushed the stool back into place. “Sometimes people get killed during bounties. I’m sure by the time I next check, I’ll find out there was a bounty on Walt Anderson. I’ll even go so far as to guess that the bounty was originally posted a week ago. The system, you know; it’s shit, and has so many problems. It’s gotten out of sync. As far as we’re concerned at the station, Walt Anderson got killed during a retrieval gone bad.”
James nodded slowly. If the cops were willing to look the other way, he wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it. Society needed both his kind and their kind to function anymore.
“Understood.” He shrugged. “I’ll try not to make trouble for you in the future.”
“We’d appreciate it. Only one last thing before I go: what about the girl? She’s got no dad, no mom. Who is taking care of her?”
“Me. I’m watching her for now, and we’ll go from there. Probably adoption.”
It was Mack’s turn to eye James. “Damn, Brownstone! Since when have you become such a family man?”
“Since her dying mother asked me to take care of her,” He looked at Mack. “Allegedly.”
Mack nodded slowly and shrugged. “Good enough for me. Just keep her safe.” He turned to leave, then stopped and looked over his shoulder. “I’m having a little get-together this Sunday. Barbecue. Thought you might like to stop by.”
“We friends now?” James wondered.
“Something like that. I think you’re a man I want to get to know better.”
James waved. “Then I’ll be there.”
A few days later, Alison and James were sitting together on his couch and the bounty hunter handed her a document. Shay watched from a chair, her legs crossed.
The girl scanned the paper with her fingers for a couple of minutes before looking up. “I don’t understand what all this means.”
The Unbelievable Mr. Brownstone Boxed Set One (Books 1-3): Feared By Hell, Rejected By Heaven, Eye For An Eye (The Unbelievable Mr. Brownstone Boxed Sets) Page 20