by Kaye Draper
It wasn't the most ringing endorsement, but said with those wide green eyes and adorable fucking freckles, it did the trick. The money probably didn't hurt either.
The guy took the bill hesitantly, as if he was waiting for Oisin to snatch it away. I ground my teeth together. People didn't act like this without reason. Someone had hurt this guy, maybe taken his stuff. Maybe multiple times. People with comfortable homes and food in their bellies tended to dismiss homeless people as lazy or worthless. They had no fucking clue how rough it was to live like this. How awful humans could be to other humans, especially when they were vulnerable. No one just up and chose this life.
"He's over there," the guy whispered, pointing a dirty finger across the street, toward the far side of the tunnel-like space.
"Thanks," I said, wanting to do something more for him, but knowing I had to move on.
Oisin followed along behind me like a wide-eyed innocent. Such bullshit.
I crossed the road and approached a small cluster of boxes with blankets and plastic bags draped over them to keep out the wind and the drizzle that was starting to blow in. A bunch of middle-aged men and one woman huddled together around a little camp stove. It must be one of their prized possessions. The smell of cheap canned beef soup drifted to me on the damp air, tinged with road smells from the highway and unwashed human.
They all glanced at me as we stopped on the sidewalk near the group. My boots made a loud scuffing sound on the concrete and I thought they might bolt. Maybe it was just me, but they seemed more skittish than was warranted.
"Hi guys," I said, offering up a small smile. "Is one of you Concord Sousa?"
Shifting eyes and darted gazes. "Maybe," said the woman, a bit of a smirk on her pale face. "Depends on what you want with him. I could be Concord Sousa for you all night long, for the right price."
I rolled my eyes. Oisin snorted with laughter.
"Look, we just want to talk to Concord."
I looked around the circle of faces. Damn it, why couldn't I be the nurturing sort, trustworthy looking and shit. Instead I probably screamed "wearing a gun and looking to slaughter."
Oisin stepped forward and took my hand. "Please? We need to talk to him real bad." Full-on puppy-dog eyes.
A couple of the men shifted uncomfortably, clearly caving under Oisin's fae trickery. Gods, I nearly hugged him myself. Poor kid with the mournful face. Ugh.
There was a scuffle back in the shadows behind the group and a couple more people came to join the camp stove ring. "Oh," Oisin said, his face lighting up. "There he is!"
I stepped around the others, headed for a grizzled old man wearing so many layers of clothing he looked like a marshmallow. But Oisin tugged my hand and dragged me around the guy. "Hey dude," he said in his best college bro voice. "Are you Concord? Jen said we should talk to you."
I had to look twice. That was how good he was at not being noticed. Concord was a younger guy, maybe mid to late twenties, though it was hard to tell under the layer of dirt. He wore jeans and a hoodie similar to Oisin's current get-up. He was medium height, somewhere between Oisin's short stature and my Amazonian height. Medium build. Medium brown skin. Curly, medium-length brown hair. Brown eyes. His hunched posture asked us not to notice him, pass on. Nothing to see here. Until you looked again.
When his eyes flicked to Oisin, and then met mine, there was something there. A sharp intelligence and a bit of fear. His aura was the same faded pastel as most humans, lacking the intensity of a supe. But there was something about it that stood out among the rest of the homeless around us. It took me a moment to figure out what it was. Hope. This guy wasn't completely sunk in hopelessness like the others around him. He still had some belief that the world wasn't out to get him.
"I'm Concord," he said in a soft, warm baritone. "Everyone here calls me Cordy, though."
Ah...hence the sense of a half-lie when I spoke with the first guy. Touché. I held out my hand. "I'm Gesa. This is my...brother, Oisin."
The guy had a firm handshake. His golden-brown eyes were questioning. "What can I do for you guys?"
I felt the eyes and ears of the others zeroing in on our conversation. "Could we maybe talk for a bit? We could buy you a coffee? Or food or something?"
I was so shit at this. Usually I had to threaten people to get them to talk to me, not ply them with food and reassurances that I wasn't going to beat their ass.
Cordy shrugged and glanced around. "I suppose. There's this noodle place just over there...." He pointed down the street. "We can walk? I'm not getting in a car with strangers." A little bit of a shudder followed that statement.
I wanted to just start firing away with questions, maybe shake the info out of the guy if I had to. But I refrained. Oisin took my hand again, giving it a squeeze. "We walked here anyway," he said with a winning smile. And I love ramen!" He turned a begging look on me.
I laughed. "Sure, bro. We'll get ramen."
The three of us probably made quite a sight, squeezed in at a tiny table at the Noodle Hut. But if I had to play nice, at least I got food out of it. Concord and I tucked into our noodle bowls like we had never seen food before. Oisin picked at his. Probably not authentic enough for his hoity-toity fae tastes. I eyed his bowl. If he didn't eat it, it was mine.
"So," Concord said around a mouthful of noodles. "What did you want to talk to me about?"
Oisin gave me a look that I guess meant I was supposed to be in charge of this shindig. "Oh, right. Work." I set my fork down, sparing a longing glance at my poor, waiting food. "I was hired to find a missing guy. We heard that you might have witnessed a kidnapping." I shrugged, as if it was no big deal. "I think the two things are related. Can you tell us about what you saw?"
Concord glanced between us, his shoulders straightening, losing his hunched, beaten-down posture. "You're not really related, are you?"
Oisin laughed. "No way. Thank the Gods for small miracles." He grinned at Concord. "She's my boss. We work together."
I arched a brow at that. Boss? As if he was a permanent employee of the business I did not run. If anything, I would have expected him to declare me his employee, in typical arrogant fae fashion.
"He's so innocent and meek, it helps people feel comfortable," I said, deadpan. "His cute little baby face comes in handy for information gathering."
Oisin batted his lashes at me to say that jab didn't hurt at all. Damned impervious jerk.
Concord glanced between us and shook his head. "I saw some guy drag a homeless kid into a car. I tried to report it to the police, but of course they won't put much effort into trying to find a nameless, faceless waste of space.
I nodded in commiseration. "Those are the types of people this guy is snatching. Whoever it is, he knows he can get away with it. Except he can't. Because I'm going to find him and I'm going to kick his ass so hard, his great-grandchildren will have bleeding hemorrhoids."
Concord blinked at me with wide brown eyes.
Oisin chuckled. "Very picturesque, Gesa."
"Why would you bother helping people who can't pay you?" Concord's question was quiet, but it sliced through the humor. "What's in it for you?"
I shrugged. "I am getting paid. One of the missing guys worked for a church, so they actually noticed him going missing."
The homeless guy looked at me, like he was looking into my soul with those searching honey-brown eyes. He had incredibly long lashes for a guy. So not fair. "A church paid you. So... like a few bucks. To find a volunteer who someone snatched because he probably didn't have any other family or people who would miss him."
Oisin put his hand over mine where it rested on the table. "Shh..." he intoned in a whisper. "Please don't question this or tough, fierce Gesa will have to admit she has a big mushy heart under those gorgeous tits."
I scowled at him, but not before seeing Concord's eyes dart to my chest and back up again like a ping-pong ball. "I'm just in it for the rent money,” I insisted.
The homeless dude laughe
d. He laughed until his eyes watered. The hint of world-weariness in the sound made me question his age. "You two are something else, you know that?"
"So, the kidnapping," I insisted. "Any more details you can give us?"
The guy frowned, and I had the sudden thought that it wasn't something he did often. He seemed...easy going and earnest. Strange for someone who must have seen so much hardship. "Well, I was kind of panicking. I tried to run over and help, but I didn't get there in time. So, my brain might be playing tricks on me."
I glanced at Oisin. "Go on," I breathed.
"Well," Concord rubbed the back of his neck and his cheeks flushed. "It sounds so dumb, but I swear the guy who dragged him off was a... hunchback."
"A hunchback?" I tried not to laugh.
"Yeah, like...he was all humped over or he had something on his back. My first thought was he looked like a turtle. Adrenaline, right? It seemed so strange to me though. How would a person with some sort of disability be strong enough to drag off a teenager? The kid he took wasn't small."
He hunched in on himself again. "And I don't even know who it was. Young guy. Someone I had seen maybe once before. I didn't know his name or anything."
I reached out and touched his hand, wanting to do that comfort thing people did, for some stupid reason. "It's not your fault. What more could you have done?" I almost said what more could a human do. But I caught myself. If I was right, this guy wasn't as blind as most humans. He could see around the edges, at least to some degree. No need to tell him the weird shit he saw from time to time was real. It would terrify him.
Supes were "out," but only in a strange, half-assed sort of way. There were humans who saw us and knew us for what we were. But after their first attempts at shouting that knowledge from the rooftops, they realized that not all humans could see. For some—the majority, really—the magic and their fear of the unknown combined to mess with their heads. If I shifted right now, Concord might see a gryphon. But if he started shouting to the others about the gryphon, most of them might only see a dog, or at best maybe a run-of-the mill lion. Early on, that had gotten a lot of humans killed or institutionalized. For some reason, glamours still worked...maybe because the human brain wanted to believe the lie.
Now, humans were more open to the thought that some people could just see things others couldn't. But the ones who could see were understandably hesitant to go around telling everyone what they saw. Having ancestors burned at the stake tended to make a person cautious.
"Thanks for talking to us," I said, sitting up and digging into my noodles. Finally. Too bad this wasn't a real Japanese place. I could use some sake right about now. My little alcohol fixation was probably a problem. But let's be honest, I had to cope somehow.
Oisin shoved his bowl toward me, eyes still on Concord. "Can we come talk to you again if we think of any other questions?"
Concord nodded. Then, to my surprise, he pulled out a cell phone. "Can I have your number? In case I think of anything else? Plus...I'm not always here. I tend to move around a bit, you know?"
I was still stuck on the cell phone part. Seeing my shocked expression, he gave a nervous laugh. "What? It is the twenty-first century. There's government programs."
I took the phone and put in my contact information, then texted myself with it so I could save his number. "Thanks again."
Then, in a move that made me question my own health and sanity, I handed him the phone and shoved Oisin's bowl of noodles his way.
The guy gave me a lopsided smile that was way too charming for a run-of-the-mill, dirt-covered human. "He’s right isn't he?" he said, digging his fork into what should have been my food. "You're just a big softie."
His eyes widened as if even he couldn't believe what he'd just said.
I narrowed my eyes at him as I stood. "Careful. You don't want to be on my shit list."
Oisin stood too, clapping a hand on Concord's shoulder in a brotherly fashion. "She's right. Much better to be on her good side, if you know what I mean." Then he gave me a creepy wink and a leer and ambled outside.
I took a deep breath and tried not to pull my gun. Shooting a supposed teenager was probably worse than the implication that I was a cradle robber. Maybe.
My fingers twitched, but I didn't go for the gun. Maybe Oisin was right. Maybe I was going soft.
Chapter 11
It was a cold day in hell.
It had to be, since I was camped out at a poser club wearing a gold sequin tank top and fending off potential one-night stands.
Long, slim fingers caressed my bare shoulder before a beer appeared on the table before me. Oh. Right, the real reason. Oisin.
The fae who wasn't my employee, and most certainly was not my boyfriend—even after another round of amazing sex, or three—had insisted that I do reconnaissance with him while he worked. And that I "at least make an effort to look like you belong there."
That way, Oisin could point out the kappa he had seen with Derek White, if the kappa even showed up again, and I could try to get some information.
It seemed like a lost cause to me. There was nothing saying the kappa would come back here. Or that we were correct, and he was the one snatching people off the street.
I worked my way through a couple more drinks and refused about half a dozen frilly, girly drinks that Oisin brought me "compliments of the gentleman at the table there."
I narrowed my eyes at him the first time he brought me the proffered token of male libido. "You just brought the chick you're sleeping with a drink from another guy," I said, wondering if his oddness could go any deeper.
He just shrugged and gave me a feral smile that did things to my insides that I'd rather not examine. "I thought you said it was just a fuck—or five. Then again, maybe I'm hoping you'll invite me along. You know, that blond bloke over there isn't half bad. Probably has the stamina of an ox."
I rolled my eyes and waved him away. Damned weird fae.
I was not intrigued. Not at all. Really. "Weirdo."
I had almost worked my way through the third beer, and I planned to leave when I finished this last round, but then I saw him.
Derek fucking town-hero-but-I-know-something's-up-with-him White.
The dark-haired hunk wore an expensive suit. Probably from the same pricey designer my birth monster bought all her suits from. He filled it out well and moved with the animal grace and authority of someone who never wore anything but suits. All the better to intimidate people and boss them around.
He and his entourage took up a couple large booths at the back of the club. He caught me staring at him, and I swear his eyes flashed in the dark. He was so not human. But I'd be damned if I could put my finger on just what the fuck he was.
"Now or never," I muttered under my breath. I raised my drink to him and gave him a small nod of acknowledgment.
He gestured at a big, beefy guy—also wearing a suit—who could only have been a body guard. I rolled my eyes. Ego much. What kind of douche bag took body guards to a club? He was a casino owner, not a freaking pop star.
White's man approached the little table where I sat, his bald head glinting under the flashing techno lights. "Mr. White would like you to sit with him, madam, if you would be so kind?"
I looked up at the bodyguard stereotype in front of me. I was tempted to tell him no thanks, just to see the guy's reaction. But I did actually want to talk to the rich dishrag. So, I smiled and stood. "Of course. I've been wanting to meet him."
The guy gave me a tolerant look, as if it was obvious that everyone wanted to meet the amazing Mr. White.
I tried to keep my pace steady and sedate as we walked across the crowded club. I had let Oisin dress me up like a "real patron," and my gold wedges were trying their best to trip me up and break my neck. Murderous fucking footwear. They also put my height over six and a half feet...which might be a little over the top. Rich men with tiny, fragile egos generally didn't like it when you looked down on them.
I think I
managed not to look like too much of a rhino on stilts as I walked over. "Mr. White?" I asked, as if I had no clue.
He leaned back in the booth seat, arms stretched along the back, face half-masked in shadows. All predator.
"Bobby, go get us a couple of drinks please. I'll have scotch. And the lady will have a Guinness."
I arched a brow at him. Both at the way he said "lady," as if that were a question, and at the fact he had paid attention to what I was drinking. Dangerous men were the ones who noticed details.
I slid into the booth. "You wanted to chat?" I said in my best bimbo impression. I might not look all delicate, but at least I was blond and... I had some boobs.
His expression never changed as he looked me over. "Miss Gesa Lionheart. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."
I blinked at that. "How do you know my name?"
He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, looking relaxed, but still coiled to strike. "How could I ignore such a nosy and... statuesque beauty."
My heart started to trip over itself as he stared me down. Oh, son of a bitch....
"Especially when someone has been doing a little illegal research on me and my business dealings," he continued.
So, maybe hacking the police database was a bad move. It was just...there was this electronics wizard who owed me a favor. Damn it. He had assured me he wouldn't get caught, and in return I agreed not to turn his asshole brother in to the cops for cooking meth and selling it to humans.
Well, looked like I wouldn't have to feel any guilt when I reneged on that whole deal, which, let's face it, I had planned to do all along. Humans were kind of like small children—they didn't need any help poisoning themselves.
"Look at the time," I said, starting to stand.
Strong fingers wrapped around my wrist and a tingle of strange magic burned against my skin. "Sit down. Enjoy your drink." He gestured at the beer Bobby had just placed on the table. What kind of thug name was that anyway? "Tell me why you were poking around where you shouldn't be."
I swallowed and shot a glance toward Oisin. He was currently hidden behind a mob of drooling fangirls—and a few boys—who were vying for his attention with the thin excuse of ordering exotic drinks that took way too long to mix.