by Amy Star
Elizabeth grinned. “You know, I almost wish that was what happened. I love improv.”
Yusuke’s tone turned plaintive as he informed Ambrose, “Your guest is making fun of me.”
“Yep,” Ambrose agreed. “As her host, she has my full support.”
Yusuke reached up and smacked the back of Ambrose’s head, and Elizabeth couldn’t quite hold back a snort of laughter. All things considered, she supposed it had worked out pretty well. There were probably worse ways to be barricaded out of her own house.
*
It was less surprising when another of Ambrose’s friends showed up. Or rather, the concept as a whole was less surprising, but it was startling as all hell when it happened, as his next friend was heralded by a bark that seemed to rattle the windows, as if Cerberus himself was emerging from the Underworld. Yusuke, napping on the couch up until then, woke up with such a jolt he almost fell off the couch, and Elizabeth’s magazine toppled from her hands.
Ambrose seemed unaffected, and once he realized where he was and what was going on, Yusuke didn’t seem particularly stunned. He just flopped back down and flapped an impatient hand at the door. Rolling his eyes, Ambrose got to his feet and opened the door.
A dog trotted in. Not a wolf or anything like that, just a dog with a long coat that was mostly black, but with a brown undercoat, and a tail so feathered it seemed more like a banner. It had large amber eyes and partially folded ears, and it was fairly pretty, at least as far as Elizabeth knew. (Admittedly, she didn’t know much about dogs.) It was also the size of a pony.
It looked around, coming to an abrupt halt as it looked at Elizabeth. It blinked slowly, head cocked to one side and ears partially perked up, before it shook its head abruptly and trotted out of the room. Ambrose watched her go without a comment and returned to his seat in the armchair.
A few minutes later, a young woman strolled into the room. She was nearly as tall as Ambrose and as pale as the moon, with hair nearly as pale as the rest of her styled in a short bob. Her eyes were wide and the color of amber, and she had round, elfin features and approximately no figure whatsoever. Her clothing was simple—a tunic and a pair of leggings—but it was apparent they were hers, and Elizabeth would have wondered why Ambrose didn’t just let her borrow those if they were in the house, if not for the very evident fact that her hips, ass, and breasts would have ripped all the seams.
“Hi!” the newcomer greeted as she sauntered into the room, chipper as anything, as if she had just downed a gallon of coffee before showing up. “I’m Mara,” she supplied. “I’m guessing you’re the guest Ambrose mentioned on the phone.”
Elizabeth nodded quickly, as Yusuke sulked and wondered, “Why did she get a warning?”
“I actually answer my phone occasionally,” Mara returned primly, folding her arms across her chest. She cleared her throat a second later, and her expression turned slightly more business-like as she turned to Ambrose and added, “You’re going to have a guest coming back later tonight—the guy with the wife and two kids—and I’m pretty sure this should be the last visit.” Turning to Elizabeth, she offered, “Got caught out by his neighbor’s kids, and it kind of spiraled from there, I guess.” She shrugged and ran a hand through her hair. “I think he’ll be by at around eight.”
Ambrose nodded and got back to his feet, and Elizabeth watched him disappear into the basement.
She didn’t see him again for the rest of the night, except for a brief glimpse of him around eight o’clock in the evening as he beckoned a middle-aged man to follow him into the basement. She didn’t ask any questions about it or try to creep down the stairs. If he was helping a family rebuild a disrupted life, she figured they all deserved their privacy, and Yusuke and Mara kept her entertained until they headed out at close to midnight.
She was in bed before Ambrose and his guest emerged from the basement, and she was asleep before she heard anything else.
*
Elizabeth watched Ambrose over the top of her coffee mug the next morning, until finally she asked, “So, could you help that family?”
“I supply people with the means to help themselves,” he returned, though it was followed by a beat of silence before he added, “but yes, I think so. He seemed like an honest man, and I think he’ll use what I gave him well.”
“What do you give people?” she asked, before she took a long, slow sip from her mug.
Ambrose cleared his throat delicately. “Paperwork of a not-necessarily-legal variety to make it easier to pick up and start over somewhere else, so even if whoever found them out mentions it, whatever names they bring up won’t be in use anymore.” He shrugged. “Basic stuff. I have some friends in high places who are happy to help as long as I keep doing it for a good cause.”
“Are Yusuke and Mara in high places?”
“Other than having money, no,” he replied. “They’re simply old friends who help put people who need help in touch with me.”
Elizabeth hummed in acknowledgement and let the topic drop.
On the whole, she was content with her life, as simple as it sometimes was. Even so, she couldn’t help but wish that she could help people out in some way, too, especially when Ambrose made it seem so effortless.
*
The evening was quiet after Elizabeth finished at work, and she couldn’t quite help it when her attention again drifted to the photographs strewn throughout Ambrose’s living room. Like a moth to a flame, she found herself idly trailing from one to the other, pacing across the room as she looked at them. She didn’t even hear Ambrose enter the room until he wondered, “What is it about those pictures that’s got you so fascinated?”
Elizabeth nearly jumped out of her skin, one hand flying up to her chest. Ambrose offered a brief, “Sorry,” but he didn’t sound particularly apologetic, and when she turned to face him, there was a cheeky grin on his face. She stuck her tongue out at him, but soon enough she was turning to face the nearest picture again.
“…I guess I just can’t help but to compare them all to my family,” she offered eventually, after they stood in silence for a few moments. “I mean, when I was growing up, it was just me and my dad. My mom had me in high school, and her parents basically forced her to either let my dad take me or put me up for adoption.” She slowly made her way to the next photo, as if she wasn’t quite aware of the fact that she was moving. “No siblings. I had a couple uncles, but I didn’t know them. I never met my cousins. And my dad was…” She trailed off, staring at the picture in front of her, of a younger Ambrose with a boy and a girl around his own age, all clustered around a woman who was probably a mother, though Elizabeth wasn’t sure if she was Ambrose’s or if she was his aunt. They looked like they were baking something, and there was flour everywhere in the photo, coating every visible surface. Everyone was grinning, sheepish though the expressions were. Slowly, she sighed. “My dad was…stern. What he said was the way things were going to go, and if I had other thoughts, then it was my job to keep them to myself. If I had problems, then it was my job to handle them, or else he would never let me forget that he helped me with something.”
“He was your dad,” Ambrose pointed out, sounding faintly disgusted. “His job is to help his child, not lord it over her like a loan shark.”
“You’re welcome to tell him that,” she returned wryly. “I’m not sure how well it would go. But maybe he’s changed. I wouldn’t really know; I got a teacher to vouch for me, and I was emancipated just after I turned sixteen.”
Ambrose looked distraught when Elizabeth glanced over her shoulder at him. “What?” she asked, looking around as if something in the room had changed. It hadn’t, though; it was still just the two of them and a whole host of photographs.
“Have you been living in that house the entire time?” he wondered slowly.
She cocked her head to one side. “Yeah…?” she answered slowly. “Why?”
“I’ve lived here for years,” he returned, gesturing around vaguely
with one hand. “I remember that house before anyone lived in it. It was half a step above condemned. And you were living there.”
Elizabeth shrugged. “I got the master bedroom rain proofed pretty early on, and it was only kind of winter before I finished getting the bedroom sealed up,” she argued. “And if the weather got really bad then I crashed on a friend’s couch for the night.”
Ambrose stared at her, blinking slowly once, and then twice. “You are completely failing to understand why I find that situation distressing,” he observed, tone slightly blank, as if he could not actually figure out how to articulate what he was feeling about the entire situation.
“I mean, I kind of do, don’t get me wrong,” Elizabeth replied, “but from my perspective, the entire situation was a net gain.” She shrugged and waved it off with a flippant flick of her wrist. “Anyway, it’s ancient history now. Why worry about it now, unless the werewolves knock my house down?”
Ambrose snorted out a laugh. “That seems pretty unlikely,” he conceded, “and I guess the house is perfectly fine now, even if it wasn’t then.”
Elizabeth hummed in agreement and turned back to the photographs, giving them one last glance before she turned away, her arms folded across her chest as she shifted her weight to one side. “Any plans for the night?” she wondered, head cocked to one side. “I’ve been cooped up in your house except for work and that shopping trip. You’re my host. Entertain me.”
Ambrose couldn’t quite restrain a laugh, but he seemed pretty game to take her out to dinner that night.
*
The next day at work was pretty standard. If her behavior at work had changed at all, her boss never mentioned it. Elizabeth handled the horses just as she always did, and she had the stalls cleaned and the feed and water buckets filled just as efficiently as she ever did. The sheep ignored her just as they always did, and the duo of border collies frolicked in circles around her just like always.
Maybe it was weird that she could be banned from her own house and still be in a good mood, but she supposed her circumstances were better than they could have been. In fact, she almost forgot that it was only a temporary ban, until after Ambrose picked her up from work and his car pulled to a halt in front of her house.
Elizabeth blinked out the window, and then at Ambrose, and then out the window again. He snorted out a laugh and reached past her to open the passenger side door. “The coast is clear,” he informed her. “The wolves are gone. The bears are gone, myself excluded. Everything is back to normal. You’re free to sleep in your own bed tonight.”
Slowly, Elizabeth grinned, though she found herself double-checking, “You’re positive?” just in case.
“Scout’s honor,” he replied. “But if anything comes up, you have my phone number, and you can just give me a call.”
For a moment, Elizabeth lingered in the car, her expression thoughtful. When at last she moved, it was so she could lean across the center console. One hand landed on Ambrose’s leg to keep her balance, and she leaned closer until her lips brushed his.
“You can call me too,” she informed him, her voice low, before she gave him one more brief kiss and finally climbed out of the car. As she made her way towards her front door, the car continued to idle at the top of the driveway, and she was pretty sure she had shorted out Ambrose’s brain.
Finally, as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her, she glanced back and watched the car finally begin to pull away. She grinned to herself, a private, hidden grin, impish and pleased, and she leaned back against the door for a moment before pushing herself away to walk deeper into the house.
It seemed pretty unlikely that anyone had actually been in the house in her absence, but even so, she felt like she had to make a lap through the rooms just to make sure that everything was where she had left it and that nothing was out of place.
*
Elizabeth almost didn’t expect Ambrose to keep in touch. Oh, sure, they had gotten along perfectly well while she was staying at his house, but for all she knew, he was just very good at making someone feel welcome.
That misconception lasted for about two days before her phone rang, and when she answered with a politely terse, “Elizabeth Marston,” without looking at the caller ID, she was met with a dryly amused, “Who pissed in your cereal this morning?”
“Ambrose!” she exclaimed, startled and pleased in equal measure. “I mean—no one. I didn’t look at the caller ID, and usually when my phone rings, it’s a computer talking about debt that I don’t have or trying to negotiate about a loan I never took out.”
She didn’t even have time to worry that maybe he was just calling for some ulterior motive, as he almost immediately launched into a story about a client of his who had to bring her daughter along and the havoc the toddler managed to cause in his house as Yusuke tried and failed to babysit the girl. He really was just calling because he wanted to talk to her, and Elizabeth felt a bit more touched than was probably warranted.
In return, she told him about Binky, the elderly gelding that belonged to her boss’s daughter, and his tendency to steal anything he could feasibly manage to pick up in his teeth that was not nailed down (and some things that were nailed down, if they weren’t nailed down particularly well), and how part of her job was to periodically raid his usual hiding spots and clear out everything he had stolen that day. It was not a glamorous job, and it occasionally involved climbing into the patch of roses behind the barn because Binky enjoyed throwing things into the thorns like an Olympic shot-put medalist.
By the time they both hung up, she had managed to clean almost the entirety of her kitchen without even realizing it. She had been aware she was cleaning, of course. She had been aware that she was moving. But it hadn’t felt like chores or like work. It had just happened.
She had never thought a phone call would be quite so productive, but she certainly wasn’t going to complain.
*
Elizabeth hadn’t expected to acquire other friends out of the entire mess. She had given Ambrose permission to pass her phone number on to Mara and Yusuke if he felt like it was necessary, but she hadn’t really expected anything to come of it. And then she got a text. Several texts in a row, actually, from a phone number that she didn’t recognize at all.
hey, it’s yusuke
ambrose gave me your number
do you mind if i cut through your yard real quick like?
i can go the long way, but i’d rather not
She wasn’t sure if he meant as a person or as a cat, but she supposed it wasn’t that different either way, and she texted him back after only a moment of thought.
You can, but you need to pay the toll.
The toll is nature pictures. As many as you can manage.
That is my final offer and I can’t be bargained down from there.
Her phone was buzzing again within a few minutes, and she had to snort at the reply she got.
you drive a hard bargain, but i’ll do that best i can
i wouldn’t want to be fined for skipping out on the toll, after all
She sort of expected that to be the last she heard about it, but the next day, her phone was practically flooded with pictures: flowers, birds, squirrels, glimpses of the sky through leaves, and a pair of woodchucks sitting beside the road and debating whether or not they should attempt to make their way across both lanes.
She texted him a jaunty, Your offering is satisfactory, but don’t think this means you get a free pass from here on out. You’ll still need to pay later.
Soon enough, she received, you’re a cruel and demanding slave driver, but i understand and will supply more pictures next time.
Maybe it was a bit strange, but she found herself looking forward to any exchanges in the future. She didn’t have many friends of her own—life had changed a lot after she left her dad’s house—so she wasn’t going to scoff at the idea of acquiring someone else’s friends by osmosis. As far as she was concerned, it seemed like a
perfectly valid way to handle those things, if they actually became friends, at least. She supposed she could just be getting ahead of herself, but she liked to hold out hope. It seemed like the rebellious thing to do, sometimes.
She made sure to add his number to her list of contacts after that, regardless of what it might or might not mean in the future. It could be convenient.
*
It didn’t end with Yusuke. Within a couple more days, she got another text from another number that she didn’t know.
this is Elizabeth’s number, right?
And that was it. That was the entirety of the text message. How very brief.
It is. Is this Mara?
got it in one! nice one.
It wasn’t much of a guess. Yusuke’s already been in touch, and I have Ambrose’s number. Not many options.
well that’s boring.
anyway, I need a tiny favor, if that’s alright with you.