by K. F. Breene
She turned back to me in surprise. A smile flirted with her lips. “Give me two seconds. Let me clear a space.”
“She doesn’t like vampires,” I said when she bustled away. “Did you catch that? She was not excited about a nice girl such as myself being mixed up with riffraff like you.”
“You are wearing a leather outfit with a sword, gun, and fanny pack strapped to your person. What about that look says nice girl?”
I ignored the dig on my pouch. “Yes, fine. But I fit in. And you are still not liked. I win.”
He minutely shook his head and half turned toward the door, glancing at it longingly. A moment later, he pulled his phone from his back pocket and messed with the screen.
“I’ve never seen you fidget. What’s up?” I asked.
“I’m ready for you,” the hostess said before Darius could answer. I caught Darius’s apprehensive look before it cleared. His hand found the small of my back, directing me behind the hostess until we arrived at a booth some ways down. The previous occupants were headed around the bend, holding half-filled plates and not-quite-finished beers.
“You didn’t need to chase anyone out,” I said.
“They’re regulars. They don’t mind. Besides, not giving an elder what he wants can work out badly for shop owners.” She pursed her lips at Darius before setting the menus down with a slap. She grimace-smiled at me. “Janette will be right with you to take your order. And a word of advice—walk away.” Her eyes flicked toward Darius. “The benefits aren’t worth the rewards.”
Darius received another scowl before the woman moved away.
“What on earth did you do to that woman?” I took a menu.
“Her gripe is not with me. Clearly she’s had an issue with one of my kind.”
“What gave you that idea?” I asked sarcastically, perusing the items. I glanced up at his untouched menu. “Are you going to try and fit in?”
“No. No one here is under any illusions as to what I am.”
“Super.” I tapped a gigantic-looking breakfast and put the menu down.
“I can make an exception, of course, but that will ensure I need blood sooner.”
“Did I say boo? No, I did not. Your not eating is just fine by me.”
A waitress with a shock of blue hair strolled up. Her body was slight but curvy, and she had a very specific scent to her, like seaweed and salt-soaked sand baking in the sun.
Mermaid.
My eyes immediately veered to the vee of her upper thighs. The burning curiosity of how they procreated, which they could only do at sea during certain times of year, constantly tugged at me. None of them would fill me in.
She glanced at the two of us, sizing us up. To me she said, “You don’t fit in with his company. You look like a man.”
“Is it the boobs?” I asked, running my hand in front of my chest.
“Men do not have boobs,” she said in a dry tone.
“That’s my point, yes. Get it? I can’t look like a man with boobs.”
The waitress paused for a second. “Fine. Then you look like a man with boobs.”
“Touché,” I mumbled. This woman made me want to wear makeup and let down my hair.
“What do you want?” She braced her pen to her green tablet, narrowing her eyes at me. “And what is your magical scent? It’s odd.”
“Odd, awesome—tomayto, tomahto,” I said. She frowned at me. “The Sunday special, please, with a side of fries.”
She pulled her pen away. “Did you read how much food comes in that breakfast?”
“Yes. Which is why I’m ordering it with a side of fries. Oh, and a chocolate milkshake. Breakfast isn’t breakfast without a milkshake.”
She rolled her eyes and turned to Darius. “Are you going to feign normalcy?”
He stared at her with a blank face for a moment before answering. “Nothing for me, thank you.”
“Say, listen,” I said in a low voice, leaning her way. I glanced around us in the busy restaurant, making sure no one was paying attention to what was said. “You get a lot of people through here. Anything unusual going on lately? Anyone with out-of-control magic?”
Her brow settled low over her eyes and her lips tightened. “What are you, a narc?”
“Not at all. Just a very violent girl who wants to pick a fight with the most powerful members of the magical community. I’d even battle a mage—I don’t care. Just maybe not the shifters. They’re hard to shake off your leg once they latch on, hear what I’m sayin’?”
As soon she heard the word “mage,” her expression closed down even more. A spark of fear lit in her eyes. That was noteworthy. But if I pushed, I’d get no help at all. Back off, and maybe she’d warm up throughout the meal.
I shrugged. “How about a really rough bar? I could go for a good fight.”
Her expression turned quizzical, but the fear didn’t melt away. “Is something wrong with you?” she asked.
I pointed at Darius. “I’m traveling with a vampire. That should’ve been your first clue.”
Her huff turned into a laugh and she shook her head. “You won’t be fighting anyone after you eat that breakfast.” She walked away without another word.
I blew out a breath. “She knows something and it’s got her nervous. Do you think that mage is skinning magical people?”
“You would’ve heard if the victims were magical,” Darius said. “I agree, though. She seems frightened of something. The question is whether it is the same reason we were called here.”
“I was called here. You just gave me a lift and paid for my room.”
He studied me for a moment. “You should know that the couple who got up from this seat were shifters.”
I jerked around, unable to stop myself from looking in the direction they’d gone. Unfortunately, someone was walking up the aisle at that exact moment. My sudden shift spooked the man, who flinched and took a step back, right into our waitress holding two waters. The liquid splashed up between them. When he stepped away again, the glass his back had kept pinned in place was freed. It dumped water down on the waitress’s legs.
“What the hell, Henry?” our waitress shrieked.
He flinched again. The guy was awfully jumpy.
“S-sorry. The girl scared me.” Henry gestured, probably at me, but I hardly noticed. I was watching her jeans to see if her legs would suddenly morph into a big fish tail. It didn’t seem plausible, and I’d never heard of it happening, but that Tom Hanks movie from the eighties had been pretty specific. I’d figured the writers might know something I didn’t.
The waitress jammed a half-full glass on the table in front of me. “What are you looking at?”
“Nothing.” I jerked my eyes up.
She scoffed and smacked Darius’s empty cup down in front of him. “Better me than you, I guess. At least I don’t smell when I get wet.”
“You smell all the time, actually. Like seaweed. It is horrible.” Darius clasped his fingers on the table and looked up at her placidly.
Shaking her head, she stomped off.
This was going well.
“You should get lost,” I mumbled to Darius. “Those shifters are going to call their friends. Why else do you think they gave up their table? They don’t want to battle right now, and probably assumed you would.”
“I am outside of their jurisdiction. I have broken no rules.”
“It’s not about trying to kill you. They can make your life hell. They hang around all the time and stick their noses in your business. Trust me, that is my life in New Orleans. The shifters there are like tape stuck to my ass.”
He ignored me and looked down at his phone screen again.
It was just as well. If the shifters here were anything like in NOLA, it wouldn’t matter if he left now. They’d track him down and stalk him like he’d been stalking me. It might just serve him right.
“Hey,” I said to the table on the other side of the aisle.
A woman with jet-black hair glan
ced over, confused.
“How’s it going?” I asked with a smile.
The man with her glanced at Darius, and a knot instantly formed between his eyebrows.
“I’m not with him.” I waved Darius away. “Say, listen, do you guys know of a good bar where people like me can get a little libation?”
I saw Darius shaking his head out of the corner of my eye.
“I’m just in town for a while,” I went on, studying them for clues as to what magical creatures they might be. “Yeah, I’m here to rid the place of some skin-stealing vermin, if you know what I mean.”
“They don’t. You are wasting your time,” Darius said.
The couple continued to stare at me like I was a strange art exhibit they’d found themselves at, but weren’t quite sure how or why.
I pressed on. “The locals can’t seem to get things squared away, so I’ve been called in to do it my way.” I was so used to my sword making me uncomfortable when I sat that I hadn’t thought to remove it. The woman’s eyes widened and the man scowled. “So do you guys know where I can go? Hell, maybe even where I can find the skin stealer. I can take care of it—”
“They are not magical,” Darius said softly.
I froze with my mouth open.
“As I said,” he said in an undertone, “you are wasting your time. This is a well-known spot for the whole town, not just our sort of people. I would think you could tell the magical from the mundane a little better than that.” Darius didn’t bother looking up from his phone. “Very few humans are here this late, but they do tend to come in. As you see.”
My smile didn’t smooth over the situation, so I apologized and turned back. Zero for two.
“Unless their scent is obvious, like the waitress, I can’t smell most magical species like you can,” I muttered to Darius. “I usually rely on knowing people.”
“Try the people sitting behind you,” he said, still not looking up.
“What has you so entertained on that phone?” I asked him loudly, twisting in my seat to look over the back of the booth. I saw a head with spiky hair the color of rust. I shifted to see around him and caught the brown eyes of his female companion. Her expression crumpled into one of annoyance and—what I was getting used to in this town—confusion. It seemed that people of Seattle didn’t take crazy in stride. That would greatly work against me.
“Updates,” Darius said.
I smiled at the woman, who was obscured by the seat, and gave her a thumbs-up. I’d have to rise up on my knees to chat with them, and that would look ridiculous.
I sighed and turned back around. I’d have to work harder on the waitress. If she ever came back.
“Usually you have to plug the phone in for—” I finally caught on to what Darius had meant. “Updates on our situation. Got it. Anything interesting?”
“Very.”
I waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, I leaned toward him to ask, but at that moment the largest breakfast I’d ever seen arrived in front of me. The waitress set down the side of fries next to it, and had to make a second trip for the milkshake.
“You’re a glutton,” she said.
“And you are super observant. Well done. Hey, about that bar—”
She walked away, leaving my words hanging.
“Okay then,” I mumbled. “I definitely need to try somewhere else. Somewhere I can get more physical.”
“Maybe Callie and Dizzy will have better luck, since they are mages. Other mages might be more inclined to talk with them.” Darius put his phone on the table and looked over my plate of food. He didn’t comment.
“When we were on our way here, I got a text saying they’d made contact with the inexperienced mage. Her mother apparently chased them away, so they were headed back to the hotel. I can send them out again, but they were up earlier than us and they aren’t spring chickens. They’re probably spent.”
“Each moment is precious. You’ll want to hurry.”
I paused with my fork nearly to my mouth. “This is a change from wanting to stall. What update did you get?”
He shook his head and looked away. “I have my assistant looking into a few matters. Vlad is on the move, though. He is leaving that Northern California town.”
“And heading where?”
“North.”
Which was our direction. That probably wasn’t good.
“There hasn’t been demon activity of the same caliber up here, though,” I said after I finished a bite. “Maybe he just wants to check up on you.”
“His physical presence isn’t required to monitor me, just as the opposite is true.” He clasped his hands on the table and looked at me steadily. “I will know more in a few hours.”
“Hopefully I’ll have a lead by them. So far this isn’t so good.” We fell into silence as I shoveled food into my mouth. I really should’ve cut the meal short, but I couldn’t tear myself away from it. It was just too good.
I could’ve done without Darius’s staring, though.
After I’d cleaned the plate, shocking the hell out of the mermaid—which I called a win, because mer-people were hard to shock—I grabbed our check and told Darius to make himself scarce so I could pay while talking to the hostess. It was a last-ditch effort before calling this place a loss and moving on.
“Hey,” I said as I stopped at the front counter where she was folding napkins. I laid the tab down and pulled out my wallet.
She glanced up. “Oh, you can pay at your table.”
“Oh shoot. That’s okay, it’s just cash. I wanted to talk to you anyway.”
There came that confusion again. You’d think I had suddenly started speaking a different language to these people.
I peeled off some bills. “You clearly know that I am magical in nature.” I said the last out of the side of my mouth. Her eyes darted deeper into the restaurant, then to the door Darius had used to make his exit. “I’m not here on vampire business. Not even remotely. He just doesn’t take a hint, like I told you earlier. But I am in town on business. You haven’t heard of anything weird going on in this town, have you? Anything that doesn’t seem right?”
Her eyes hardened and her jaw set. That was the first sign that she didn’t want to get a narc sign hung around her neck.
Which meant she knew something, just like the mermaid.
I half lifted my hands and took a step back, quickly turning the gesture into playing with my ponytail so the patrons in the restaurant didn’t read anything into it. “I totally get you not wanting to stick your neck out, but I’m not here to bring trouble to anyone who doesn’t deserve it. I’m just helping your town out, that’s all. I have no affiliations here.”
“The Magical Law Enforcement office has been asking about mages for months. They haven’t found squat.”
“Clearly they are idiots.”
“You an idiot, too?”
“So far, yes, I am. Here’s the thing—”
“No, let me give you the thing. The Mages’ Guild has a big presence here, and despite the MLE office trying to keep their investigation quiet, the guild has caught wind of it. They like to deal with problems concerning mages themselves. They don’t like outsiders in their affairs. So their response was to lean on the MLE office so the office would clam up.” She met and held my eyes. “There’s a reason it worked.”
“And has the guild sent someone to check into it?”
“Not as far as I know. But it doesn’t matter when, or if, they ever get to it. When the guild says something is off-limits, it’s off-limits or people get hurt. Do you get what I’m saying? Something about whatever is happening stinks, and it’s not a stench I want coming near me.”
“I know exactly what you’re saying, but here’s the thing. Scare tactics don’t work on me. So you just waft that stench in my direction. If those mages want to see who really sits at the top of the power pyramid, they are free to get in my way. My friends and I have been through types like them before, and we don’t mind
charging through them again.”
Adrenaline pumped fire through my veins. I tried to calm down, but an issued challenge, even an indirect one, always fired me up. I continued, “In the meantime, I need to find the moron who’s skinning people and harnessing their energy to call demons. Calling demons is a no-no where I’m from. I mean, so is the skinning, but—” I shook my head at my slip-up and charged on. “I need to bring him in, and by bring him in, I really mean battle him and accidentally kill him, because that’s how it always seems to go down. So can you help me if I promise your name will never come up? Which is an assurance I can make, because I don’t even know your name—”
“Lily.”
“Oh. As in, the owner of Lily’s, which serves the best breakfast ever?” She nodded. “That’s okay, I’ll forget your name as soon as I leave. Names never stick. But I need your help. Please. I usually wouldn’t resort to begging, but if I don’t wrap this up and get out of town quickly, I’ll have to fulfill a promise to a shifter—one that concerns a vampire—and I don’t want to deal with either of those magical species any more than need be. Which up until two months ago was not at all. You can see my predicament.”
She looked at me for a moment, clearly indecisive. “Satisfy my curiosity on the deal and I’ll tell you what I know.”
Chapter Sixteen
Agnon once again forced the lesser demon back down below, taking the magical summons for itself. It materialized in the same place as before, within a blood-spattered chalk circle. The same black-robed humans encircled it, trusting their magic to contain Agnon.
“What news?” the being asked, hearing the echoes of their thoughts and picking up nothing of note.
“She is in town,” the human leader said. “A vampire shadows her. A powerful elder.”
“The vampire is nothing. Has the girl shown her power?”
“No. She’s had no reason to. She met with the human detective and checked out one of our dumping sites. They found nothing, of course. She is asking around, trying to find something to point her in our direction. I have advised my associates at the guild to allow her to continue investigating until you say otherwise.”