by Mary Hughes
“Why not? He’s friendly.”
“Friendly like a sheepdog! He even drools like one. Nixie, that’s nuts. Dirk’s clueless. He doesn’t know the first thing about being human, much less running a pageant!”
“What’s to know? Draft a bunch of women, have them wear tiny swimsuits and parade them across a stage. Instant money.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. You’re insane, you know that?”
“Does that mean you’ll reconsider?”
“Not a chance. But I will help you with the planning. It’s obvious somebody has to.”
Chapter Four
It was the best offer I’d get, so at four o’clock I hiked over to Elena’s on Seventh and Lincoln. The Strongwell apartment building was the weirdest I’d ever seen. It was right in the middle of working-class Meiers Corners, but it screamed money. A palatial entryway opened onto an elegant foyer of polished wood and cut crystal. It was an apartment building with several small units. It also had an institutional-sized kitchen, a gym, and a parlor straight out of the eighteen hundreds.
Like apartments grafted onto a Victorian manor house.
But Elena was happy there with husband Bo. So I figured the weirdness was none of my business. Especially since I wasn’t exactly June Cleaver myself.
Elena met me at the door and led me to the parlor. I spread out my Papers of Doom on a table near the window. “Most of the pre-planning has already been done by Twyla.” I pointed to the neat list of events with corresponding venues and budgets.
“So our first order of business is picking someone to run each event?” Elena skimmed the list. “How about Granny Butt for the Beauty Pageant?”
Our AARP stripper. “That’s worse than Dirk.”
“But better than me.”
“Anybody’s better than you, according to you. How about Buddy to run the Sheepshead Tournament?” Buddy slings drinks at Nieman’s Bar.
“Since the tournament’s at Nieman’s, he’ll already be there. Good idea.” She marked Buddy’s name next to the tournament. “I can’t believe the mayor picked you to run this thing. You’re not exactly Ms. Bureaucrat.”
“I know. I think the cheese ball grease must have hardened all the arteries in his brain.”
“A complete brainectomy is the only explanation I can think of.”
“Hey, I think I’ve been insulted. It’s entertainment, and I organize bands for a living. I can do this.”
“Yeah, but didn’t you even ask? Why you?”
Because the mayor knew I could, but I didn’t want to tell Elena that. “I was too busy having a heart attack at the time.” And then having an attack somewhere lower, bumping body-parts with pseudo-hubby Julian Emerson. “See anything Twyla missed, besides the porta-potties?”
“She’s done a good job planning. Except…did she get insurance?”
Insurance. Almost as bad as lawyers. “It’s just a big party. Why would we need insurance?”
Elena ticked off fingers. “Beer. Visitors. Visitors drinking beer. Expensive equipment. Expensive equipment with visitors and beer. Sidewalk ice. Beer and sidewalk ice. Kids. Expensive equipment and kids. Need I go on?”
Not unless I wanted her to take off her shoes and socks. “Doesn’t the city have insurance?”
“It won’t cover the festival.”
“Fuck. I hate being an adult. How do I get some?”
“Talk to your insurance agent.” At my blank look, Elena raised her eyebrows. “You don’t have an agent?”
“I don’t have insurance. Can I use your agent?”
She stared at me like I was insane. “Thousands of dollars’ worth of musical instruments and sound equipment and you don’t have insurance?” Elena didn’t quite squawk it.
“Insurance is expensive. I’m poor.” I shrugged. “Which reminds me. How much do you think I’ll need to budget for it?”
“I have no idea.” She was still staring.
Only Mom could stare harder. Immediate distraction was in order. Before I got Elena-sized skull piercings. “I’ll call for it tomorrow. If you tell me your agent…?”
It sort of worked. Elena went to find the name, which got her stiletto-stare off me. But it backfired, in that she felt the need to review every string and clasp of the Packet of Doom. To make sure I didn’t forget anything else.
Like I hadn’t organized bands and music for half my life.
So it was four hours before Elena let me take a break. Then she finally went to find her husband while I kicked back on the couch with a soda. I put my feet up on the coffee table and rubbed the cold can against my temples. Shut my eyes.
A whump snapped them open again. What the hell? Another whump sounded. Overhead. From the ceiling. Crystal tears on the chandelier shuddered. Another whump right on top of me.
I sprang to my feet. Dashed up the stairs. Whump, whump. The noise was coming from the room directly over the parlor. Cautiously I tiptoed down the hall and pushed open the door.
The room was all narrow lacquered floorboards and wall-to-wall mirrors. Weights and equipment were clustered in one corner.
In the center of the room, naked to the waist, was Julian Emerson.
He stood like some latter-day Goliath, his fists raised over his head. Muscles bunched and strained in his arms and chest. Loose black trousers hung low on lean hips. He slid one bare foot out, legs bent. Crossed powerful wrists in front of him. Pivoted and punched both arms up in a fluid harmony of motion.
My breath punched out as well, like I’d been hit by a truck. Julian’s body was beyond gorgeous. His abs were cut like diamonds, his chest was chiseled marble. He turned and his back…stars above. His back made me want to wrap my thighs around him and ride him like a horse.
Twin wings of pure, hard muscle flared from his narrow waist to his immense shoulders. I could see individual muscles work as his fists spun out in a ballet of power. A thin sheen of sweat slicked his skin. I wanted to lick it off.
He turned again and I was overwhelmed by color. Bronze skin, deep bronze nipples. Short black hairs feathered up the center of his abs and over his broad chest. Black glossy hair curled around his ears as his two-hundred-dollar haircut absorbed the sweat of his exertion. Laser-blue eyes, made even more startling by his black sweeping lashes, stared—
Julian Emerson was staring straight at me.
I jerked back. The door swung gently shut. I checked the corners of my mouth for drool. Okay, I hadn’t completely disgraced myself.
The door reopened. Julian stood there, a white towel draped over his broad bronzed shoulders. I took a deep, involuntary breath. The smell of a strong, well-oiled male body came like thick incense. I could practically taste it on my tongue, it was so wonderfully tangy. I nearly swooned.
“Nixie? What are you doing here?” Julian’s deep, cultured drawl caressed me like cream. I wanted to melt in its liquid tide.
Which would have been mortifying beyond words. I was drowning in a tide of mindless hormones. What the hell was I doing, lusting after Suitguy? Although he was not exactly Suitguy at the moment. He was Pumped Pecs guy. Taut Ass guy…I struggled to get myself back on some sane footing. “What kind of accent is that?”
“Bostonian.” He eyed me strangely. “Is there some problem?”
“No, no.” I backed away. “I was working with Elena and heard the thumping.” Thumping, pounding, rhythmic and hard. Like bodies pounding into the sand with the surf pounding all around—
Fuck. The guy was a lawyer! Just because he smelled like sex on a Harley didn’t make him one iota less proper and dull. “Do you ever wear leather?” I asked, and could have bit my tongue.
“My shoes,” he said, clearly confused. “My watchband.” He showed me his wrist. Black leather, but connected to a highly conservative, highly expensive timepiece.
“I thought you used a pocket watch.” I could have bit my tongue again.
That almost made him smile. “No pockets.” He indicated his naked torso.
“Ye
ah,” I breathed, and choked. “Well, I have to get back…to work. Yeah, work. Before Elena has to leave.”
Julian frowned. “How did you get here?”
“Get here? Well, I…I walked.”
“Walked.” The frown became a scowl, and I remembered his telling me not to be out alone after dark. “Well, when you’re done working, let me know. I will walk you home.”
He still thought I was a little kid! Annoyance sliced through the sensual haze. “Who died and made you my keeper?”
The scowl turned into a slight smile. “I did.”
He died and made himself my keeper. Oh, great. A bloodsucking lawyer, playing babysitter to a twenty-five-year-old. And an autocratic bloodsucking lawyer at that. “For your information, I’m not going home. I’m going to audition bands at the Kosmopolitisch.”
“Then I’ll walk you there.”
Stupid autocratic bloodsucking tenacious lawyer. “Well, be warned. I’m in charge of this extravaganza that’s paying your exorbitant fees. And I’m putting everyone I see to work. You might find yourself in charge of the cheese judging.”
“I’ll take my chances.” Julian checked his watch. Whipping the towel off his shoulders he started to rub the sweat off his chest. His pecs were really huge for such a lean man and they danced like heavyweight wrestlers. I wanted him to stop with the towel. I wanted to lick his chest dry instead.
No, no, no! I wanted to leave him strictly alone. Pristine white shirts and old school ties normally covered that chest. Delectable though said chest was.
I wondered what Julian would look like in only an old school tie…and nothing else.
I was so fucked.
Elena and I worked for another hour before she had to leave for the police station. She usually started work at nine. As a detective she had some leeway, but she couldn’t avoid going in all night. As she said, “Somebody has to keep Dirkenstein from boring the department to death.”
I got out of having Daddy Julian accompany me by dipping out with Elena. Band auditions didn’t start until ten thirty, and I needed to go to the cop shop anyway. I had to ask her partner Dirk to chair the beauty pageant.
Elena’s husband Bo walked with us, which surprised me. Apparently the threat of Big City Gangs meant not even kick-ass detectives were allowed out alone after dark.
It was so stupid. Like either Elena or I were prissy little girly girls.
If it had to be anyone, I guess I’m glad it was Bo. Elena’s husband was built like a Viking, complete with wavy blond hair. But he was easygoing and had a sense of humor. That was refreshing in a town as conservative as Meiers Corners.
Elena chafed under Bo’s watchful eye. “Why, Bo? Much as I love your company, why do you have to come? I have my gun. And my backup piece.”
Bo only shook his head. In his deep voice, which Elena says sounds like black satin, he said, “Detective. You know a gun and a knife are not enough against a gang.”
A word about being a musician.
We lived in a world filled with sound. For us, sound was information. It was as informative as sight for normal people. And in some ways sound was better than sight. You heard things the light wouldn’t reveal.
Speech was a marvel of music. Take the phrase, “You’re such an idiot”. It could be said affectionately (“You’re such an idiot”), or spitefully (“You’re such an idiot”). Or just plain hatefully (“You’re such an idiot!”). The same words could take on a wealth of different meanings, depending on the music behind the words.
Bo’s words were a symphony of meaning. Detective had a lilt that told of deep affection. Bo said detective the way another man might have said sweetheart or love.
But the word gang had deep, ominous overtones.
Strangely enough, they weren’t the usual ominous overtones. Not that any ominous overtone was usual. But Bo’s overtones didn’t say dangerous or punk or even scary. I wasn’t really sure what Bo’s overtones meant.
I only knew they were unnatural.
And Elena shivered.
Put together with Bo insisting on escorting us, I wondered if maybe snarky old Julian Emerson didn’t have a point. Maybe I should be a little more careful after dark.
Just as I had that thought, about halfway to the cop shop, the night thickened around us.
Shadows that hadn’t been there swirled and coalesced. I jerked to a stop, wondering what was going on. Wondering if I was imagining the dark pressing in on us.
A streetlamp bulb burst ahead of us. The loud pop was followed by glass tinkling to the sidewalk. Elena whipped out her gun. Bo slid fluidly in front of us both. He seemed to flare bigger.
Five men stepped from the shadows. Long leather coats swept around the ankles of three of them. The other two wore expensive-looking suits.
No overcoats, though. The suits must be freezing their heinies off.
But hell, I thought. Emerson was right. Meiers Corners did have gangs.
And here we were, five against three. Five large, very menacing males. Against a Viking, a cop, and a squirt.
We were in trouble.
One of the suits swaggered forward. The guy looked like Der Arnold—from the bodybuilding days, before he became The Governator. He was big, blond, and confident. More than confident. Contemptuous. “Fighting us won’t do any good, you know. We’ll get what we want.” His eyes, a curious red brown, drifted over Elena, then me. “Everything we want.”
A rumble came from Bo’s throat. Low and menacing, almost inhuman. “This is my territory.”
“This was your territory.” The suit shrugged. “Not anymore.”
“You have no right to be here.”
“We have every right. Why should we pay for what we need—when we can just take it?” The man’s eyes floated disconcertingly over me. I felt my heart beating hard in my throat. “In fact, maybe we should take it now.”
“That,” said a cultured voice, “would be particularly ill-considered.”
I whipped around. Julian Emerson strode from the darkness, his face a bland mask of urbanity. He wore his usual suit but at least he’d had the sense to throw a coat on over it. A very nice black cashmere coat. I followed him with my eyes as he took a stand next to Bo.
Oddly, the spokesman flinched. “You can’t stop us.” He didn’t sound nearly as confident. “There are five of us. Only two of you.”
My spine snapped straight. “Four of us.”
That dropped into the tension like a splatting bird-bomb. Bo frowned. Julian scowled. Even Elena looked a little shocked.
The gang leader laughed. I clenched my fists. How dare he? I was small, but trained. In the right place, my fists were as lethal as the next guy’s. I stalked forward.
Only to run into Julian’s arm barring my way. “Let us handle this.”
Wasn’t that just typical? “Oh, yeah. Us men?” I spat.
Startled blue eyes met mine for an instant. “Not at all.” His gaze whipped back to the gang confronting us. “This has nothing to do with gender.”
Elena sidled up to me. “Do as he says,” she murmured. “There’s more going on here than you know.”
“Numbers don’t matter, Cutter,” Julian said to the gang’s spokesman. “And you can tell that to your bosses.”
“Numbers do matter, when it’s a hundred to one.” The man called Cutter bared his teeth at Julian and Bo. His canines were strangely pronounced. “Or a thousand to one.”
“Not when the one is very old. And very powerful.” Julian seemed to swell in front of me, growing taller and broader before my very eyes.
An optical illusion. It had to be. Because of the dim light. Six-foot-something of male could not grow half a foot.
But the men facing us fell back. Cutter steeled himself. “Even an Ancient would fall beneath a thousand.”
“An ancient what?” I asked, but no one answered me.
“Would you like to test that theory?” Julian asked. And he pumped up again, so big I knew it was no illusion.
Then, in front of my shocked eyes, his hands…his strong, square hands…grew. Lengthened. Sharpened.
Became something like claws.
Julian surged forward. He moved impossibly fast, was on the gang before I could blink. As Cutter quailed before him, Julian slashed violently downward with those claw-like hands. Blood sprayed.
I screamed. My voice stuck in my throat.
Cutter howled, flailed with both fists. Julian slid just out of reach. Almost casually, he reached into his cashmere coat, swept something out. Something that doubled in length with a ka-chick. Something that looked like a really big knife…or a sword. It glinted in the moonlight like it was very sharp.
Silver flashed. Cutter fell to the sidewalk with a sick whump. The rest of the gang cowered in the shadows of the broken streetlamp.
“Take this back to your keepers.” Flicking the blade shut, Julian bent elegantly. He scooped something up and held it out to them.
It looked like a head.
“Tell the Coterie that Meiers Corners is off limits. That it will not be annexed to Chicago, not in any way. Ever.” Julian lobbed the thing toward the gang. The other suit caught it, bobbled it like a hot potato.
Julian’s cultured voice roughened. Almost growling, he said, “Now go.”
The gang ran.
“Showy.” Bo sauntered over to where Julian stood, fist clenching.
Julian’s hands appeared normal now, and I wondered at the trick of the light that had made me see claws.
“I did not intend to be quite so…theatrical.” Julian’s cultured voice was still rough.
“You can take the man out of the performer, Emerson, but—” Bo laughed. “Take the man out, get it?”
“You have a juvenile sense of humor, Strongwell. Get Elena and Nixie out of here. I’ll clean up.” Julian jerked a hand toward where Elena and I stood.
I didn’t want to go. I wanted to figure out what the hell had just happened. And find out if Julian had been hurt.
And comfort him if he had.
All right, probably a bad idea. But the body—the possibly headless body—of the gang leader looked big and fierce on the ground. Julian was a lawyer. A desk jockey. For whatever insane reason, I had to know if he was okay. “Emerson?” I reached out to touch him. “Julian?”