by Celia Jerome
Seven. If I tried hard, I might have my hair and my clothes and my makeup passable in the five hours I had until then. Maybe I could lose those five extra pounds if I jogged the fifteen or so blocks home. Nah, Grant wouldn’t notice, not when he was looking for Fafhrd.
Toby was on his cell phone, calling his family in Connecticut, when Susan asked if it was all right if he spent the night.
I checked the timer for my hot-oil hair conditioner, then looked at my old couch. “It’s not real comfortable.”
Susan gave me a look she must have learned from Grandma, the one that said, “I wonder how an idiot like you grew on our family tree.”
Oh. “But what about Van? I know he is on duty tonight, but I thought you two . . . ?”
“Van likes you. And baseball. Yuck.”
“But are you sure?” I mean, she never mentioned Toby before.
“I can’t get pregnant, from the chemo. He can’t father a kid. Testicular cancer. Both of us have had so many blood tests, we couldn’t have any STDs, but we’ll use protection anyway. So why the hell not?”
I thought of Grant. Why not, indeed?
CHAPTER 12
GRANT BROUGHT THREE BOOKS about trolls. I think they were about trolls, but I had a hard time taking my eyes off him. Tonight he wore a black cashmere turtleneck and gray trousers. His black hair and black-rimmed blue eyes were that much more distinctive against the dark colors, not that he needed anything to make him more distinctive. Looks, power, money, intelligence—what was a poor girl to do but drool?
He smiled in appreciation of my own looks, and took a deep breath that said something better than “You clean up nice.” So now maybe I could stop holding in my stomach.
I’d finally decided on a red silk blouse and a short but not indecent black skirt with a slit up the back. I had good legs, I thought, especially in the Gian Todaro strappy high heels. I had to hope he didn’t suggest we walk any farther than the corner or I’d trip and show off my red satin thong. But it would be worth it, for that azure-eyed gaze that started at my shining hair and ended at my red-polished toenails.
While he politely asked Susan about her father, and engaged Toby in conversation about his job at Chase, I glanced at my gifts. The man has class, knowing how I love books, while not giving any secrets away to Susan and her friend.
The trolls pictured were hairy, stooped, mean-looking. That isn’t how I saw trolls. Mine were clean-cut and athletic, looking more like marble sculptures than moss-covered rock dwellers. “Fafhrd isn’t ugly,” I said, without meaning to interrupt Toby’s narrative about the banking industry and his future there. “Or mean. He’s just young.”
Toby was confused, but Susan laughed and told him: “My cousin really throws herself into her books. She’s working on one with monsters now.”
“Fafhrd isn’t a monster, not in a bad sense, anyway.” I was more resolved than ever to make him a hero. I knew from Toby’s confusion that I was going to have a hard time rehabilitating the reputation of his species. Why, those computer malware makers were called trolls now, and so were the blog bullies who relish ruining people’s lives and stealing their privacy, if not their identities. “I am going to change the opinion of trolls, I swear.”
Susan laughed again. “Willy is such a good writer, her characters come alive.”
Grant cleared his throat. I decided it was time to leave. I’d spoken to both my mother and my father in the Florida hospital, and everyone had my cell number. “You’ll call if there’s any news?”
“Of course. Go have a good time. And don’t get into any more trouble,” she warned, as if I could help myself.
A silver Beemer was waiting at the curb, and the driver got out to open the door. Lou whistled at me.
Lou? He had a suit?
“Good evening, Miss Tate. You look very fine, if his lordship hasn’t mentioned it.”
I turned to Grant. “Are you a real lord?”
He helped me into the front seat. “Lou is a joker.”
Lou had a sense of humor? He grinned and started the car as soon as Grant was seated in the back. We drove uptown and to the west side, a neighborhood I did not know well, and pulled into an alley next to a sign that proclaimed “Skip’s Fine Dining.” Lou handed the keys over to a valet and we went in through a frosted glass door.
For all I was worried about dinner with Grant, I lost my appetite when I realized Lou was eating with us. Me and Lou, on the same side of the table. I never even walked on the same side of the street as him before. This wasn’t quite the strangest thing to happen this week, but it was right up there with trolls and telepaths.
We waited at the bar for our table to be cleared. Lou ordered a beer on tap; Grant went for some micro-brewed English style ale. I had ginger ale.
After ensuring that no one was close enough to overhear the conversation, they started discussing the logistics of keeping watch out in the Hamptons. That’s why Grant invited me to dinner, I finally realized, so they could pick my brains about Paumanok Harbor. And I’d plucked my eyebrows for that?
I tried to explain that they ought to set up operations in Montauk if they wanted to remain unnoticed. Called The End because you couldn’t go any farther east, Montauk had all the motels and crowds, while much smaller Paumanok Harbor had two inns, a bunch of bed and breakfasts, and a couple of cabin colonies like my family used to own. This early in the season, with school not yet out, the summer people hadn’t even arrived. Right now the Harbor would be filled with year-rounders, returning snowbirds, second-home owners on weekends, and fishermen. Nice, ordinary, hard-working folk. The Harbor also had its share of drunks, dopers, and frontiers-men types. Either way, strangers were easily spotted, especially during the week.
“Good. I don’t need to stay undercover. I’ll be in plain sight,” Grant said, “as a friend of the family if you still won’t let me play your significant other.”
I sipped my soda without comment.
“I know a couple of others there from university,” he added, “so no one will question my presence.”
Then they wanted to know more about Rosehill, but I hadn’t been to the estate in years, so I couldn’t tell them much about it, except that it was on a hill with a view of Gardiners Bay and Block Island Sound. And it was fenced in.
My mother’s cottage, I told them, was a few blocks from the beach, down a dirt road. It was part of a summer resort my grandparents used to own, with a dozen family cabins and a big communal clubhouse. When Grandpa passed on, my grandmother decided she’d rather be an herbalist than an hotelier. She razed half the cottages, then joined the rest into houses for her two daughters and their families, and a combination potting shed, drying room, and garden center. She kept the clubhouse for her own home. We spent every summer there and long weekends when I was a kid, so I used to know a lot of the locals and some of the other summer people.
“No, I never met the man whose house I’ll be watching.” And with luck, I never would. As soon as he arrived to coddle his own pets, I’d be back in the city, even if I had to take the cranky Pomeranian with me.
Lou said he would check the security system Rosehill was bound to have. He was looking forward to playing tourist: fishing, golfing, swimming. My mind could not wrap itself around the image of Lou in a bathing suit, so I was relieved when he mentioned ogling the celebrities in East Hampton. He was a world-class ogler. He’d be arrested.
He finished his beer and got up to leave, shaking my hand. “A pleasure meeting you, miss.”
So now Grant and I were alone. I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not. I looked around, rather than at him.
“You don’t see your, ah, friend, do you?”
“No.
“You look unsettled. Is your drink all right? Do you dislike the restaurant?”
“This is a lovely place. Everything is fine.”
And soon it was. Grant opened up a little, talking about himself for once, about his family in England, his education. Y
es, he had gone to Royce Institute, but only because his father was on the board of trustees. He hadn’t studied anything more arcane than history and linguistics. Then he’d taken a master’s degree in criminology, with another in forensics in the States. Again, he had not specialized in psychic investigation.
“But you believe in it?”
“I have seen too much not to believe.”
I still didn’t believe half of what I saw.
He was going to order the fish, but I told him it likely came from Montauk and Paumanok Harbor, so he ought to wait to get it fresh. I ordered the pasta, when the waitress stopped staring at Grant enough to remember to ask me.
I felt confident enough now to ask if he had a lady friend. A fiancée, a wife?
“No, I’ve been traveling too much for any steady relationship. I suppose I’d change my ways for the right woman. What about you?”
I tried to laugh off the fact that I’d never been close to getting married, or in love. “According to my mother, I’ll wither into a cranky old maid with too many cats. My grandmother says there’s only one true love for me and I am wasting my life not going to find him. She is a great believer in destiny.”
“And you are not?”
“I think a person has to make his or her own choices.”
“But what if the choice were preordained?”
“How would we know? So we have to act as if we have options, not wait around for some extrasensory GPS system to tell us what road to take.”
“This must be hard for you.”
“Having a delicious meal with an interesting companion?”
His lips quirked up in a half smile. “Living in Harry Potter’s world.”
“Spending an evening with Merlin.”
Now one of his eyebrows rose. “You think I am a wizard?”
“Tell me, do you have anything to do with all the trouble in Paumanok Harbor? To get me there?”
“Now you are the one looking for conspiracy theories. Do you think I caused your father’s heart attack? I thought you said it was chippies?”
“No, my mother said it was chippies, not me. But you said you did not believe in coincidences. My uncle is seriously ill from a tick bite, Cousin Lily has to leave town, my mother is going to play nursemaid to a man she says she hates, and Rosehill is empty except for two needy dogs, to say nothing of Uncle Bernie’s restaurant. Don’t you think it odd that all of that happens at once?”
“When you put it that way, it does seem peculiar. But I cannot see how anyone could manipulate the varied events. The baby was going to come sooner or later. Men your father’s age do get ill. Cooks fall in love and elope.”
“And the other one slicing her finger?”
“Weird, but that places Susan at the restaurant, not you.”
“Susan needing to cook means she can’t watch the dogs. My mother won’t trust just anyone with a creature under her care.”
His blue eyes clouded as he considered the possibilities. “As they also taught in cop school, shit happens. It would take a mighty big spider to weave such a web, to draw you in.”
I shrugged. “Or a rampant persecution theory, to go with my other delusions.”
“I don’t think you are delusional. In fact, I am certain of it.”
He was staring over my shoulder. I turned to look.
“Do you see him?” I asked Grant, while I tried to shake my head and silently mouth a big “No!”
“No, but I see a Pole holding a big red candle up to the ceiling to set off the—blast it! My new jacket.”
And my silk shirt and splurged-on designer heels. That was two pairs of shoes destroyed, counting the sneakers from the toilet bowl incident, and I was getting tired of tossing my footwear in the garbage. “Stop,” I shouted.
Luckily, people thought I was trying to halt the arsonist, who was running past me through the sprinkler showers. He snatched a vase of flowers from another table and tossed the cymbidiums at me, with another handful of water.
Two waiters and a cook were hot on his trail, but he’d already disappeared. The maitre d’ and the hostess rushed around with fire extinguishers, but there was no fire, just sirens to alert the fire department. A lot of the diners had already raced for the doors, but we crawled under our table, in case Fafhrd came back.
Grant was angry, but not over his jacket. “Damn, I was hoping I could see him once I knew what to look for. I couldn’t, even knowing he was there. You are amazing, to be strong enough to overcome such a binding spell.”
I wiped my face with the dry edge of the tablecloth over my head. I was hoping I never laid eyes on Fafhrd again.
“Did he say anything to you?” Grant wanted to know.
“No. He just brought me these.” I held up the extra flowers I was still clutching, heaven knew why. They were more than a little crushed from fingers the size of my forearm. “But I think he looked a little sheepish, as if maybe he’s growing a social conscience. No one got hurt this time, did they?”
“Only the restaurant and some of the patrons’ clothes.”
“Mine, too.” What wasn’t destroyed by the water was ruined by my squatting in the puddles.
“Too bad. You looked fetching tonight. You still do, with your hair going all curly that way.”
Fetching? Who said that these days? The old-fashioned compliment almost made up for the soles on my heels coming apart and the hours I’d spent getting my hair straight. Almost. “Where do you think that devil goes when he flashes out of sight? Home? Or just elsewhere, a sphere between the two worlds?”
“I have no idea. That’s a question for the theoretical philosophers at Royce.”
Someone shut the sprinklers off while we waited, but the restaurant was in shambles. Skip himself hurried around to anyone who hadn’t fled, offering rain checks for a free dinner.
“Now I know why they call them rain checks,” Grant said, helping me up and out from under the table.
My hair must look like Medusa’s locks by now. Heaven knew what my makeup was doing, and my silk shirt was plastered to my chest—to the busboy’s delight. Grant handed over his jacket. As wet as it was, I felt better being covered. I inhaled his cologne, and admired his physique in the cashmere sweater. Now that was fetching, as in fetch me the smelling salts, Maude.
He did not have a gun at his waist, which comforted me, too. Weapons scare me. I’ve heard too many stories of the wrong person getting shot. Although I wasn’t sure about waiting for a taxi in this neighborhood.
Grant spoke to the owner, and Skip himself called for a town car to drive us home, for free. Neither of us was presentable enough for another restaurant.
We picked up pizza and took it up to my apartment. All was quiet behind Susan’s door, so I did not call out to announce our return.
She stayed in my old room, on a single mattress with a trundle bed for sleepovers. I’d moved to my parents’ bedroom when I took over the apartment. I rearranged all the furniture, got a new king-size mattress, and colorful quilts instead of my mother’s white chenille, but it still took me a long time to feel comfortable having a man in the bed where my mother and father slept.
I am not a slut. I know, morals these days aren’t the same as they were for my parents. I take that back. Mom and Dad lived through the Sixties. But I don’t sleep around; don’t bring strangers to my parents’ bedroom. No one-night stands, no morning-after hangovers, wondering who was next to me. Been there, done that. Most of all, I did not have complicated, self-destructive relationships, which explained Arlen.
So now I ate pizza with the most complicated man I’d ever met and wondered what was going to happen. There was no question that I was attracted to the point of idiocy, but he was so . . .
“You still don’t trust me, do you?”
“Are you sure you’re not a mind reader?”
He reached over to catch a string of cheese on my chin. “Sorry, I failed that course at Royce.”
“They really have courses in men
tal telepathy?”
“The curriculum is very liberal arts, including the so-called ether arts. Mostly the psionic courses offer general studies, like how to enhance existing talents, how to recognize them in others, the honor codes to prevent abuse. Royce is a huge community, you know, a whole small city of its own, not just the schools. Seminars, demonstrations, and surveys go on constantly for whoever is interested. Then there are the occasional witches’ tourneys.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, they do hold games, but again for the sake of studying, with independent, objective judges. You’d win most power contests, hands down. No one that I know of has actually been able to see a creature from Unity, except in dreams. Think of Royce as the psychic equivalent of the Mormons’ genealogy library. They keep track of births, deaths, and marriages. And inexplicable events.”
“DUE.”
He turned serious, not that he was ever a lol kind of man. “That’s where we come in, yes. I know this is hard for you, but I cannot emphasize your importance enough. I don’t know how to earn your trust, and I suppose it’s not very professional of me to even try to win your friendship, but I don’t want to see you hurt. I like you.”
“I like you, too.”
That was easy. Saying good night wasn’t. I felt as awkward as the shy, introverted geek I was in high school. Yawn as if I were tired so he’d leave? Take his hand and lead him to the bedroom so he’d stay? I wanted him, no waffling there, but did I want to mess with a wizard? No matter what he said or didn’t say, I knew Agent Grant had to have some psychic skills himself. How else could he be assigned to that department? I suppose it was impolite to ask. I did anyway.
He avoided the question by pretending to think. “Do I have paranormal talent? Hmm. Well, I’m a very good lover.”
“That’s paranormal?”
“You’ll have to see for yourself.”
I couldn’t tell if he was teasing or not. He had on the expression I was coming to think of as the lord of the manor, distant, unaffected, stiff upper—He shifted in the chair. Stiff something, anyway. So he was not quite as unaffected as he pretended. He felt the spark between us, too. From the look he was giving me, he was willing to start the fire.