by Devon Monk
Our local locksmith, who also happened to be both a reformed thief and an elf.
“You called Brown? You let him in my house? Brown? You do know I’m the police chief, right? And he has a record? And he’s in my house?”
“‘Thank you, my stunningly gorgeous little sister.’ Besides, this has been a long time coming.”
True. I’d put off getting better locks on my house because I never locked the house. It wasn’t because I was stupid or thought the best of people. It was simply because before a few months ago, nothing bad had ever come near my house which sat at the top of about a hundred steps, and was pretty inaccessible by any other route.
It looked out over the bluff to a tumble of salal bushes and huckleberries, below which rolled sea grass and then sand that skiffed and humped all the way out to the sea.
When we were kids, we burrowed our way like rabbits through all those bushes to create a pine needle padded, root-riddled trail between the house and the sand. We’d been clever about where the trail spilled out onto the beach, so it was nearly invisible.
That trail had long since grown over and suffered a small rockslide, so there was no sneaking up on my house from any way except the front door.
Maybe Jean had a point. Ordinary had gotten dangerous lately. A small part of me wondered if it had always been this dangerous and I just hadn’t noticed, or if, since Dad’s death, something in our happy town had been broken and was now bleeding black.
I started up the stairs. “The original locks were fine.”
“How would you know?” Jean said, behind me. “You never used them.”
“I liked them the way they were.”
“I know. But that had to change. You understand that, right? All bets are off. You’ve been attacked. Twice. What we’re up against right now–Lavius–isn’t something we can just assume won’t happen again. I need you to tell me you know that.”
“I know that.” I did. I still hated that it was messing with my house.
“I need you to tell me like you mean it.”
“Yeah, well.”
She slapped my hip. “Stop being grumpy. We’re going to keep you safe no matter what, you idiot. Accept our overly-protective, demanding love, or else we’ll threaten you.”
I threw her a finger over my shoulder and was so glad to hear her laugh.
Okay. Maybe things were still a little normal. Well, as normal as they ever were.
“Dee-laney Reed!” a male voice sang out. “Here you are!”
I stopped with three steps still ahead of me and looked up at the sneaky elf thief masquerading as a reliable business owner.
“Brown.”
Gabriel Brown was a handsome man. Like, thin and graceful runway model handsome. He had bright, soft eyes that seemed to lean toward whatever color was in his immediate environment and blond hair that was shoulder-length, artfully tousled and just begging for fingers to be dragged through it.
His face was sharp at the jaw and cheekbones, but not too much at the chin. He had a tasteful amount of stubble over his jaw and the perfect symmetry of his face made his eyes bigger, his shoulders wider, his chest firmer, his hips narrower…no, it wasn’t just his face that did all that.
His elfness did it. He was extraordinarily gorgeous. And boy-howdy did he know it and use it to his advantage.
That was the reason why he’d never served time for his string of burglaries. His victims took one look, got hit with his one-two punch—smile and dimples—and the charges, (and often panties) were dropped.
I didn’t hate the guy, but I tired of his charm pretty quickly.
“You look lovely today, Dee.”
“Still hate that nickname. What are you doing to my house, Brown?”
“Something that should have been done years ago. Making it safe. Do you have any idea how easy it would be to break into your house? I mean even blind, drunk and with one foot tied behind my back, it would have been child’s play. No, what’s easier than that? Baby play? Fetus play?”
“Go back to the part where you’re tied up and blind,” I said. “Because I was liking that.”
Dimples: pow, pow!
Like that would work on me.
“You are a treat. Why aren’t we besties?” He said it like he’d just run out of chocolate to lick off his fingers and wanted to try mine.
Like I’d ever let him.
“Hey, Delaney.” Myra stepped out and pushed Brown to one side so she could give me a brief hug.
The scowl on Brown’s face made me feel better immediately, though her sudden affection toward me was a little concerning. “You just saw me less than an hour ago. I’m okay, Mymy. Still okay.”
Myra stepped back, her lined blue eyes light under the short blunt bang haircut which gave her that amazing rock-a-billy vibe. “Are you?”
“I was gone for an hour. For sunlight. And popcorn. With Jean.”
“You looked pretty rough when you left. I told Jean I thought you needed more sleep, not popcorn.” She didn’t say it with any heat, just concern, but there was no way I was going to let her mother me.
“Stop worrying. And stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” A crease pressed between her eyebrows.
“Like you’re worried.”
“I am worried. And if you aren’t then I’m even more worried.”
“Look! Popcorn!” Jean shoved at my shoulders, forcing me up the last few steps, and then corralled both Myra and me toward the house.
Brown was inside my living room, handsoming all over the place. “What kind of popcorn?”
Jean tossed both bags at him. “Sweet and salt. How goes the install, Brown boy?”
“Just about done.” He turned the bags in his long, weirdly graceful fingers, but didn’t help himself to the contents. Elves were strange about permissions and food. That kind of hesitance didn’t seem to transfer to anything else though, like personal property, cars, safety deposit boxes, jewelry, or the town whale fountain. And seriously, did he have to leave it on the roof of the adult shop?
Elves were born to thieve and cause trouble.
Or maybe that was just Brown. We’d had a few other elves in town over the years. They all seemed to have an over-developed wanderlust and never stayed inside city limits for long. I’d wondered why Brown had settled here. But the more I got to know him, the more I was beginning to suspect it was because he delighted in annoying me.
“What installation? Locks?” I glanced at the door, which didn’t seem all that different than when I had left it.
There was, however, a discreet box mounted on the wall beside the door with a muted gray digital display.
“Yes,” Brown said. “But not just locks.” He carried the bags of popcorn to the coffee table and set them down there before dusting his hands on the back of his slacks. “So, let me walk you through this.”
“I blame you,” I said to Myra.
“Don’t care.”
That was better. I liked that she wasn’t looking at me like I might crumple at the first stir of a breeze.
“You refuse to lock the damn thing, so we decided to take that decision away from you.”
“I can lock a door.”
“Could have fooled us.” Jean dropped down in one of the chairs and propped her high tops on the edge of the coffee table, away from the popcorn. “Carry on, my good man.”
Brown gave her a double-dimple-dip and she winked at him.
“We wanted something simple but effective,” Brown said. “Myra explained that you’re not going to key in codes to disarm alarms or anything else complicated, so I made this as straightforward as possible.”
“A key is straightforward.”
“Exactly.” He handed me a key ring. On it was a slim white plastic square. “Think of this as your key. It’s digital. When you’re right in front of the door, it will automatically unlock. When you are any distance from the door, it will automatically lock. Are you following me so far?”
“Ha!” he laughed.
“What if I’m standing on one side of the door and I don’t want it unlocked?”
“You’ll attach this to your key chain. If your key chain isn’t in your hand, the door stays locked. If the key chain is in your hand, just hold this.” He pointed at a button on the white square. “It’s an override.” He pressed it and locks engaged with a weird electric hotel-door sound.
“To unlock the door, just press again.” He did so, and the locks swished and chittered. “You can tell that it’s locked by this little blue light. Open when it turns green.” He flicked between the two settings, making sure I was paying attention. “That’s it.”
“I’m going to have to unlock it every time someone comes over,” I grumped.
“The terrible inconvenience of living safely in the modern world. How you suffer,” Jean said around a mouthful. “Does the lock have any special settings for our extraordinary citizens?”
Brown nodded. “I put in a few indicators, yes. If it’s a god out there, you’ll see this light flash yellow. Human won’t make any lights go off, and since it’s impossible to find something that is common among all our other kinds, I set it to flash red if something on the other side of the door is anything but human or god.”
“Red supernatural, yellow gods, green open, blue locked, square white, pest brown. Got it.”
He flashed me a smile. “I also set up some cameras.”
“Please say you’re joking.”
“I am absolutely not joking. You can access the cameras on your phone, or it can pop on your TV like…so.” I hadn’t noticed he had stolen the remote from the side table and deposited it in his pocket until he pointed it at the small flat screen.
A split image of all four sides of my house appeared on the screen. Nothing out there right now but bushes and grass, shadow and sunlight.
“Think of the beach chickens,” I said.
Jean snorted.
“What?” Myra asked.
“This is a little overkill, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “It is exactly the right amount of overkill. You’re the police chief. You should have good security. And now you do.”
“This feed doesn’t go anywhere else does it?” I could just imagine Myra ordering Brown to send the camera feed to her phone, her house, and the station so she could Mom-eye me 24/7.
“We could do that,” he said. “What a great idea!”
“No!” I said, before Myra could open her big mouth. “This is enough. More than. What do I owe you?”
“Taken care of,” Myra said.
“It is. So.” Brown laced his fingers together in front of him I noticed a thin bracelet on his left wrist. Crocheted out of copper wire and red thread and soft orange beads. Both delicate and strong, it was eye-catching in its simplicity. I wondered where he’d gotten it. “Are you going to tell me why your sisters suddenly went all Fort Knox on your house?”
“It’s not all that sudden.” Myra moved around to sit in one of the chairs. “We’ve been on her about this since she was twelve. She’s never been a door-locker.”
“Is it because of Ben?” he asked. “The attack? I heard about it. Was it a vampire?”
“Yes,” I said. “And yes.” I gave up hoping he’d leave since his toolbox was still open and propped against the wall.
The unusually serious look in his eyes caught me by surprise.
“I felt him enter Ordinary. The vampire.” He nodded toward me, toward my neck and the twin black circles that were the only visible reminder of the bite, the attack. It was hidden under the collar of my shirt, but the elf knew it was there.
“How?” Jean asked.
He shrugged.
“Are you blushing?” she crowed. “I’ve never seen you blush before. Wow, the tops of your ears get really red.”
He puffed out a burst of self-conscious breath. “You know, I could just leave instead of trying to be helpful.”
“Leaving might do both, really.” I gave him a sweet smile.
“I’m connected to the land where I live.” He waved a hand dismissively. “It’s an elf thing, when an elf, ah, settles down. So when that vampire…does it have a name?”
“Not one you need to know,” I said.
He nodded. He knew names had power. “I felt the rot of it…the evil of it when it touched Ordinary.”
“Anything else you could sense?” Myra had a pad in her hand and was taking notes.
“He was at the north side of town. Road’s End, maybe?”
That was right. I’d been jogging up by Road’s End when Lavius had appeared on the beach.
“How precise is your sense of vampires?” I asked.
“Vampires?” He shrugged. “I can tell they’re in town, but it’s not like I know where they are at all times. But that kind of evil is pretty easy to feel. He? It’s a he, or was a he at one time, right?”
“Yes,” Jean said.
“He radiates more darkness than Death does.”
“Death’s on vacation,” I said.
“Yes, but he’s still Death.” When I didn’t argue, Brown went on. “Death is…the grim reaper. Soul collector. Shepherd of the end days. That sort of power lingers like a shadow in him, rubs off on everything he touches, even while he’s on vacation. My kind are of the light, so Death will always radiate a darkness that I can taste, feel.”
“You think Death is evil just because it’s dark?” Jean asked skeptically.
Death, or Than, as he’d taken to being called while he was vacationing as a human, was reserved, high-mannered and formal. But he was also the delighted owner of a rundown kite shack.
He’d named the place HAPPY KITES, and even though the font choice on his logo made it look more like HAPPY KILLS, it was clear he enjoyed running a business that was a lot more frivolous than his godly day job.
“Death is not exactly evil,” Brown said. “But the vampire that came into town? That’s an ancient horror.”
I felt the chill of his words and the truth that they carried.
“We don’t like him,” Jean said. “If you feel anything like that again, horror, darkness, evil, you need to give one of us a call immediately.”
“I’ll do that. If I can be of any help, you’ll let me know.”
I raised one eyebrow. I was pretty sure getting an elf involved in the fight against Lavius wasn’t on the list of good ideas. Elves were creatures of light, and exposing him to that kind of horror, face-to-face might do him permanent damage.
“We will,” Jean said with a lot more enthusiasm than I would have.
“Doors aren’t the only thing I can put locks on.” He crouched down to arrange his tools and closed the box.
“You don’t mean the town do you?” I asked.
“Lock down Ordinary? Like keep a certain vampire out of it?” He shifted his gaze just over my shoulder and lost some of the humanness that he carried around himself like a shield.
Sometimes when the creatures in town let go of whatever they used to make them appear more human, a glimpse of the monster that lingered beneath the facade was revealed. But when Brown eased off on his control there was nothing but even more beauty that shone through, the kind of beauty that left his normal handsomeness in the dust.
Everything about him became sculpted and fluid, his skin luminous, his hair rich, his mouth soft and pliant, his muscles hard, lean, graceful and strong.
Despite myself, despite knowing he was a sneaky little thief who had an ego the size of a continent, I couldn’t help but lean toward him a bit, moth yearning for that beautiful flame.
“There are too many laws set in place, at the very root of creating this town. To lock it down….” He frowned, then blinked and seemed to remember where he was. The gorgeousness dimmed bit by bit. “Well.” His dimples made an appearance while all the rest of him faded back to that ridiculous, but tolerable, handsomeness. “I’d be
willing to try it, but I’m pretty sure none of you would agree with what would have to be done to make it happen.”
“Virgin sacrifices?” Jean asked.
“Something like that. Soul of the child of the blossom of the vine of the root of the land, etc., etc. Which, yes, would mean killing someone and using their life and blood to lock the town down. There would need to be a focus, something rare and solid, like a gem or stone, and it takes some searching to find something that won’t break beneath the pressure of the task. Although…” He turned a little, his face shifting to the north, as if he had just noticed something. “Huh. Never mind.”
“Nope. Back up and explain,” Myra said.
Brown finished with the tool box and stood with it in his hand. “Naw. Let’s not.” He dazzled the shiners, but Myra didn’t back down.
“You were talking about blood sacrifice and locking down Ordinary. I’d like to know what caught your attention in the middle of all that.”
He inhaled, held it for a second, then, very carefully not looking at me, but holding Myra’s gaze, answered. “I had the weirdest feeling that Chief Reed was here.”
The chill that swept over my damp skin wasn’t pleasant. “Dad?”
Brown still didn’t look my way.
“Where?” Myra’s question was far more useful than mine.
“In town. But it was a fleeting thing. Not…real. I know he’s gone.”
Dead. What he meant to say was that our dad was dead.
“Gabriel?” Myra asked.
“It was just a feeling. Nothing solid. I was thinking about the things that had protected this place, the people who had looked after it. Children of the blossom of the vine of the town–elf talk. You Reeds all fall under that title, chosen by gods to protect this place.
“He was a good man. I expected him to be around for many more years. Not that I think you all can’t take over in his place, but he was good. Of the light.”
“Yes he was,” Myra said.
I couldn’t blame Brown for thinking about Dad. He had left a big impression on this town, and I didn’t think anyone who knew him was still comfortable with his absence.
Just a few months ago I’d thought I’d heard him haunting me. I hadn’t felt him since then, but in that early morning after a restless night of sleep, it had felt real. He had felt real.