by Molly White
“Like someone who had learned from experience,” Brendan countered.
She smiled. “That’s a nice way to rephrase. I’ve worked for the League ever since. I’ve never looked back.”
“So, you didn’t have a real childhood.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. And his voice was so sad when he said it.
She shrugged. “Well, no, not in the traditional sense. I guess not. I mean, when you grow up with it, all the things that seem magical about a carnival when you’re a kid—the food, the lights, the rides, the music—it all becomes very ordinary. You know how worn out everything is, how cheap the prizes can be. There’s no mystery. But it wasn’t all bad. I saw a lot of the world, more than most kids. I got to ride the carousel whenever I wanted—I mean, how many kids can say that? And there were other kids living with the carnival, traveling with their families, so I had friends.”
Brendan laughed. “All right, all right, but what about school?”
“Well, I couldn’t go. I would have been miserable in a classroom setting,” she explained. “All those people and their loud thoughts touching everything. I had very little control over my shield then. Besides, we were traveling most of the year anyway. Bernadette used to hand me books she’d stolen from local libraries and tell me to look out the window and learn from the world. And I did—while wearing gloves, because I couldn’t touch library books without nightmares. I got my GED when I was seventeen.”
“But what about the usual teenager stuff? Dances? Dating?” Brendan asked.
“Oh, that’s easy. I didn’t have those things. And not just because of the touch issue, which was a consideration. But I don’t think I’ve trusted myself over the years to date or have boyfriends. I mean, I’ve wanted them. Desperately. But when you grew up in the world that I did—wait, that’s not fair, I can’t blame it on the environment. I traveled with some very decent, hard-working people, who were wonderful parents. But when you grow up with a mother like mine, in a situation like mine, you look at people differently. It’s you versus them. Cash was survival to us. It wasn’t like if we had a bad run, we had a savings account we could fall back on. And if it was between Bernadette and I eating over the winter and some family being parted with their entertainment budget for the week? I didn’t feel bad about it.
“But Bernadette was never content. She was always sure there was an even bigger score we could get. She started scouting out private consultations with the cake-eaters…uh, the locals, every time we landed in a town. And while the operators might not mind a little side gig, they didn’t want any heat with the police. Bernadette burned the lot one too many times—”
“She burned down a lot?” Brendan exclaimed.
“No, sorry, it’s slang. Burning the lot means that you cheat people and you cheat them hard, and you’re so obvious about it that you can’t ever come back to the town again because the locals remember you. Some carnivals don’t particularly care about that sort of thing, but others—they know that they depend on generations of families bringing their children to the carnival they enjoyed when they were kids. A respectable carnival spends decades trying to develop that reputation. They didn’t want my mom coming along and ruining that. Eventually, our own reputations suffered. People were fond of me, which is why we kept getting hired.
“Bernadette liked to think that it was her that got us hired. After all, we were Cantons from Candella. Never mind that no one in Candella wanted anything to do with us—” She paused and blushed. “I’m sorry, I’m just monologuing and probably boring the hell out of you. It’s just that I haven’t talked about it in such a long time. Honestly, it’s kind of a relief.”
“Are you joking? Do you know what my childhood was like? Green pastures. Green pastures. And more green pastures. And then in my teenage years, hormones and death. Tales of traveling with a carnival is fascinating by comparison,” Brendan assured her.
“But still, I’d like to take the conversational weight off of me. So what about you? Do you date?” she asked.
“Not really. There’s the risk of finding out my dinner date is going to die in the next day or two. Not to mention, what am I going to tell them if we manage to get past that first date?” he said, jerking his shoulders. “What do you do for a living? ‘I work for a shadow government full of monsters. And in my spare time, I predict people’s deaths. But I don’t tell them because that spoils the surprise.’”
“But you said that you have family, so obviously some of you date, unless there’s some spontaneous egg situation I’m unaware of,” she replied, shuddering.
Brendan smiled. “They’re lucky. They found partners who are open to what they are. My romantic future was ruined by Katie Finnerty. I was head-over-heels in love with her. I walked her home from our first date and kissed her at the door. And all of the sudden, I saw her grandmother, who was just on the other side of the door listening, dying from a fall down the stairs.”
“Oh, no!”
He nodded, settling his weight just a little closer to her on the couch. “It was the first death I’d ever seen, my first death song. And I wasn’t even supposed to be singing in the first place. It was traumatic all around. I didn’t know it was even possible for a male to become a banshee. All poor Katie knew was that some eedjit had kissed her and then started screaming like he was suffering the fires of hell.”
She patted his arm. “I’m so sorry, that must have been awful.”
“It was.”
She cleared her throat. “You can’t see when I’m going to die, can you? Because if so, I don’t want to know. Please don’t tell me.”
“No, I’m better at controlling it. In general, the vision isn’t about proximity to the person as much as how soon the death will be,” he told her. “I have sort of narrowed my ‘radar’ to only sense imminent death. But touch can trigger it, too, depending on the person. So it’s a double-edged sword.”
“I definitely know the feeling,” she said. “That’s why I’m more than a little intimidated by living in a town this small. There are so many people in such a small space. I’m going to see way too much.”
“You’ve got to open yourself up some time,” Brendan said with a shrug.
“Says the guy who closes himself off from people so he can’t see their deaths?” Cordelia noted.
“Entirely different, I don’t see your point,” he sniffed.
She burst out laughing and he pushed her hair back behind her ear.
“I wanted to kiss you before, so very badly.”
“Probably wouldn’t be good,” she told him, while she leaned close enough that she could feel his cool breath on her cheek. “It might mess up our working relationship.”
“Couldn’t have that.” His lips twitched. “Seems a shame, though, when I’ve found someone who knows what it’s like to have a gift like this. Someone who laughs at my silly jokes. And is willing to cut someone over a good piece of pie. And knows the Halloween episodes of the Simpsons.”
“They’re the best ones,” Cordelia said.
“That’s it.” He closed the small space between them and lightly pressed his lips to hers, as if he was waiting for her to push him away. But when no visions came and all she could taste was spice and the chilled sweetness of him, she pulled at his shirt to bring him flush against her. She felt a low rumbling vibration ripple through his chest into hers, making her shiver against him. He stroked a hand down her sleeve, cupping her elbow and bringing her arm around his neck. She squeezed, relishing this closeness she’d never allowed herself before, the pressure against her skin, the sensation of breathing in the same air.
Slipping his hands under her bottom, Brendan lifted her into his lap. She froze—feeling more like a deer in the headlights than actually frightened—she’d never sat in a man’s lap before. She didn’t know where to settle her weight. She didn’t know where to put her hands. Well, she had ideas where to put her hands and…oh…
She also had a good idea of where she wanted
to settle her weight. Right over that denim-covered ridge that seemed to be pressing in exactly the right place. She slid her fingers over his jawline as she pressed closer, rolling her hips against his, making that unnamable ache between her thighs flare and throb.
She was so focused on that ache that she squeaked when he bit gently at her bottom lip. He pulled away, watching her face, as if looking for signs of alarm, even as she followed his mouth.
“You kissed me,” she observed.
“Had to be done,” he insisted, making her laugh.
“I think I should go before anything else happens,” she said, and he groaned lightly, tapping his forehead against her shoulder. “Not that I would mind more happening, but we still have to work together. And with our psychic grab bag, we probably need to take things slow.”
He sighed. “I don’t want to admit that you’re right, but you’re right. Just one more quick one.”
He kissed her as she rose off the couch. “Do you want me to walk you home?”
“I think I can make it ten feet on my own,” she said, walking towards the door.
“Still, this way, I can watch you from the back,” he replied, making her roll her eyes.
Miracle of miracles, she made it across the lot to her own trailer. She waved to him before she unlocked her door and shut herself in for the night.
“I kissed a man,” she said. “And nothing horrible happened. I could get used to that.”
Sighing to herself, she crossed to her sink and got a glass of water. It felt a little silly to run off just because they’d kissed, honestly, but if she’d stayed, a lot more would have happened. It had been so long since she’d been kissed or touched, and it was all she could do not to make a fool of herself. She would definitely like more to happen eventually. She just wasn’t ready for it to happen yet. For now, she was just enjoying the possibility of more. She hadn’t had that possibility for some time.
Cordelia glanced out the window, watching the trees that surrounded the village quiver in the slight fall breeze. She saw a flash of white against the muted landscape. She squinted, trying to make out the strange oval, so alien against all the natural shapes.
It was a face. Her mother’s face, staring back at her from the trees. It was like Cordelia summoned her by speaking of her to Brendan. She gasped, dropping the cup in the sink with a crash, her eyes tracking down to the broken glass. When she looked back up, the face was gone.
6
Brendan
Unlike Cordelia, Brendan knew exactly what to do with free time.
Unfortunately, there was not a single store that carried Harp in Mystic Bayou.
Or Beamish. Or Murphy’s. Or even Smithwick’s. For a town that prided itself on the diversity of its residents, there was an alarming centrism towards German beer in the grocery store. Mrs. Berend must have driven a long distance to secure his welcome six-pack of Guinness, securing his loyalty to her even closer.
Jillian informed him that he was not expected to work when Cordelia couldn’t work, and he wasn’t expected to do random League chores to justify his pay. They were a tandem team, she said, and their work was hazardous enough. For her part, Cordelia hadn’t budged from her trailer over the past few days, and he found that he missed her more than he should. While he was certainly attracted to her, something about Cordelia Canton touched something deep inside of his cold, dead heart—which was amazing, since the girl barely touched anything. He could attribute it to her vulnerability, he supposed, and her willingness to trust him enough to kiss him, or maybe it was that they seemed to understand each other, the burden of their gifts and what it took to make a life with them. She’d had such a strange life, but had somehow made the best of it. She’d become a mostly-functional adult and he had to admire the mettle that it had taken to go through all that and remain as kind as she was.
…And he was mooning. Mooning was never an attractive quality in a man. He’d lived with enough O’Connor women to have that drummed into his head.
So without beer to properly lubricate his time off, he headed to the Mystic Bayou Public Library, braving the hostility of a cranky dragon librarian lady. The grand local book depository certainly put his own hometown library to shame, and not just because it was stocked with everything from mass-market fiction to scrolls stored in a caged-off section marked “The Wisdom of Alexandria.” Incredibly comfortable red chairs contrasted with gold-painted walls, hung with tapestries that might have come from actual medieval castles. The oak shelves, intricately carved with leaves and tiny acorns, stretched from the floor to the thirty-foot ceilings. But the stained-glass windows were the real eye-catcher, each of them hand-tinted and hand-set like enormous jewels. The windows depicted famous dragons in literature, though the stories were twisted decidedly in the dragons’ favor. The dragon stood victorious, one of his red-scaled feet firmly planted on St. George’s corpse. Alice fled Wonderland with the Jabberwocky in pursuit.
He pulled a number of delightfully worn canvas-covered tomes from the shelves and burrowed in, luxuriating in his choices for check-out. And while he was tempted by the latest James Patterson and a very old history of ancient Celtic kings, in the end, the windows influenced his selections and he checked out the entirety of the Lord of the Rings series.
“Don’t know how I feel about League personnel checking out my books,” the librarian, Bardie Boone, grumbled when he presented his League ID in lieu of a library card.
“I thought the books belonged to the library,” Brendan noted, with his cheekiest grin. Wrinkled and slightly stooped, Bardie Boone appeared to be entirely non-charmable with her iron-gray hair twisted into a tight bun and her thin lips painted an un-smiling blood-red.
“Are you trying to test me, bansidhe?” she asked, giving a pointed look to the window depicting Hobbit tartare.
“Of course not, ma’am, that would be foolish,” Brendan replied.
“You tell that nephew of mine that his interlibrary loan is here, though it pained me to even file such a silly request,” Bardie said.
“I’m sorry, who’s your nephew?” Brendan asked.
She sniffed. “You’ll find out soon enough. Dragons have a way of knowing things.”
She dismissed him with a wave of her bony hand. He walked out of the library muttering to himself, “Fecking weird.”
When he arrived at his doorstep, the burly mayor was sitting on his front stoop with Dr. Will Carmody stood on his little lawn, checking his phone. They had several six-packs of (sigh, American) beer between them.
Zed Berend, looking far more relaxed than any man should while reclining on someone else’s porch, slid his sunglasses up into his unkempt hair. He eyed the library books in Brendan’s hands, shaking his head. “You have a day off and you went to the library?”
“I like to read. Never been a Netflix guy. And I didn’t know to expect company,” he said. “Nice to see you again, Doctor.”
“I just stopped in to do a follow-up with Cordelia, and these two delinquents pulled me into a conversation on my way back. It happens more often than I care to admit.”
Brendan glanced at the bald man. “Am I in some sort of trouble?”
“Oh, no,” the sheriff said, raising his hands. “Not from me. I’m Bael Boone, local sheriff and Jillian’s mate. She thought I should stop by and say hi, since we didn’t get to meet the other night.”
“The dragon!” Brendan exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted to see one of your kind in full form. You made quite the impression at the Halloween party.”
Bael shrugged. “The kids always seem to like it.”
Brendan turned to Zed. “And you?”
“Honestly, my maman is worried about you and Cordy. She thinks you need friends,” he said, rising to his feet, towering over even Brendan’s considerable height. “And I was going to disagree with her until I saw you holding library books.”
“I don’t need your pity, but I suppose I’ll accept the beer. Come on in.”
“So,
this is what these things look like on the inside,” Zed said as they followed him into his little living room. Zed whistled as he scanned the bland interior. “Creepy.”
“You live in an actual cave,” Will reminded him.
“It’s a recreated cave. And it has cable,” Zed countered.
“I have cable,” said Brendan. “I just don’t like American TV.”
Zed clutched at his chest. “I’m going to forget you said that, for the sake of our budding friendship.”
“That’s fine, because we’re not really friends,” Brendan told him. He crossed to his kitchen and pulled a bag of crisps from his cupboard. His mother would have been ashamed of him if he didn’t offer the guests something, even if they were uninvited and brought American beer. He put a bowl of crisps on the table with some pretzels, while the others made themselves comfortable. Suddenly, the librarian’s strange comment sprung to Brendan’s mind.
“Any chance you’re related to Bardie Boone?” he asked Bael.
“I’m related to every Boone in town. She’s a sort of great-aunt, twice removed,” he said.
“Well, she said to tell you that your interlibrary loan just came in…” Brendan paused, not sure how to say the rest. “And that she was embarrassed to even file the request.”
Bael groaned and covered his face with his hands while Zed spat a portion of his beer back in the bottle.
“I thought it was a perfectly reasonable title to read, given the situation,” Will told him, patting his shoulder.
“Was it an…erotic interlibrary loan request?” Brendan asked.
Zed threw his head back and guffawed, which only made Bael groan.
“It was What to Expect When You’re Expecting an Egg,” Bael said. “It’s written for mothers of dragon shifters, and since there aren’t any books for hybrid shifter pregnancies, I thought it would be the best guide.”
“For you,” Zed said. “Because Jillian’s done all her own research and homework and has a binder that she made herself.”