“Oh, naturally. Adults don’t have the time to waste on bad pie or fake whipped cream.” He nodded grimly, his eyes sparkling.”
Greg leaned closer in his enthusiasm and his elbow knocked his half empty glass towards the edge just enough to overbalance it and send it tumbling over to its side. A wave of pink liquid rolled across the table and the glass rolled merrily right over the edge to tumble noisily to the floor, splattering their shoes with more of the sticky juice drink. Caroline yanked her arms back and grabbed the napkin from next to her own drink to slow the puddle’s spread.
“Oh man, I was drinking that!” Greg’s disappointment was clear in both his voice and the droop of his shoulders. “I didn’t get any on you, did I?”
“Not yet. Go get a towel or something!” She grimaced at the tacky feeling on her hand as she tried to keep the drink from pouring over the edge. Greg jumped up and whirled in place to hurry over to the bar while she kept at it, keeping her eye on the edge of the mess. She shook her head and sighed, a giggle trying to break free. This is what her life was, now.
“I don’t think it’s so funny, girlie.” A man’s voice, deep and lyrical spoke from her right. She didn’t even need to look up to know that there was an elf there.
Slightly stronger than the average human, elves possessed an innate magic and grace, and that’s what made them dangerous when they turned to violence. They could dodge attacks like dancers showing off, and when their fluidity was turned into an attack it often had devastating results.
“Accidents happen. Did any splash you? I’m sure Greg will be happy to get yo a towel, too, if it did,” she answered, flicking a glance up. He wasn’t alone, unfortunately.
“This isn’t a place for human children, girlie,” the elf growled.
“Just elven ones?” She smiled sweetly. Not keeping her mouth shut when she really shouldn’t push her luck was a real personality flaw, unfortunately.
“Bitch!” The elf said and took a step forward, but a hand landed on his shoulder.
His friend beside him leered at her. “I dunno, El. She’s kinda pretty for a human. And you know I like ‘em young.”
“You lay one finger on me and you’ll regret it.” Caroline lifted her chin and felt in her pocket with her left hand. She wasn’t terribly afraid. What she was, was full of adrenaline and very focused. She could freak out later when she had time.
“What, you’re gonna clean me into submission?” The second elf leered at her, glancing pointedly where her free hand still held the puddle at bay. “I could use some cleaning up back home.” His eyes swept down to her chest and she felt it like he’d touched her skin. She shivered and her face clearly showed her disgust.
“I’m not in the market for babysitting jobs. Now piss off before my friend comes back,” she said.
“Think that idiot jock can take us? He doesn’t look smart enough to throw a punch, let alone land one!” The first elf— El— laughed.
“Greg could take you both out and barely notice it.” Caroline shrugged. I just don’t want to bother him when he’s having a nice evening. It’s bad enough you’ve interrupted mine.”
“Come on, pretty human. Let’s get out of here. Then El can keep pretending that humans don’t exist and you and me can have some fun.” The second guy reached for her and she brought Ollie’s gadget up, letting it rest on the elf’s hip. His hand was wrapped around her left arm and their eyes met.
“Take your hand off me,” she said. “I haven’t seen what this thing can do yet, and frankly I’d rather not. A friend of mine gave it to me and some of my friends aren’t as nice as I am.”
“The hell?” he growled, glancing down. Behind him, a quiet gasp made him glance over his shoulder.
“I’d listen to her. I’m one of the less nice friends.” Greg stood with his arm across El’s back looking for all the world like he was greeting an old friend, his hand resting casually on the man’s shoulder. The blood had drained from the elf’s face, however, and the skin under each of Greg’s fingers was indented where sharp, cruel-looking claws pressed into the soft flesh by his throat. There was no blood yet, but the look in Greg’s golden eyes was clear that he had no issue changing that situation.
Caroline leaned forward and got close to her own opponent’s pointy ear. “And I don’t think we want to know what this thing does, exactly.” She jabbed it harder into his hip and his eyes widened. His throat worked and he made a strangled sound.
After a moment he found his voice. “Come on, man. Bitch isn’t worth this.” The still nameless bully yanked his hand back and rolled his shoulders like a movie thug. Greg grinned and this time it sent a chill down Caroline’s spine. There was no warmth or humor in that smile. But he stepped back, letting his claws slide gently over El’s skin, leaving faint pink lines behind.
The two elves scurried away and out of the bar. Caroline looked around and realized that nobody else had even noticed the encounter. Greg dropped the damp bar rag he held in his free hand onto the spill and turned to her with a smile that actually reached his eyes this time.
“Damn, C. I heard all about your steel from D, but it is fun to watch!” Greg laughed. “Did you see that guy’s face when you called him a child? Priceless! I would buy tickets to your show any day of the week!” He giggled through his whole clean up and was still smirking when they dropped the rag on the bar for the bartender to grab whenever he got to it, and they walked out the door.
They made their way to the rental car and Darien melted out of the shadows of the parking lot to meet them.
“Dude! Did you see that? She’s a total badass!” Greg crowed.
“I did. I told you guys.” Darien smirked. “You okay, Caroline?”
“Yeah. I think.” A shudder ran through her at the memory of the nameless elf’s leering gaze raking over her. Darien noticed and shrugged out of his leather jacket to drape it over her shoulders.
“Hop on in the car. You can go shower that sleezebag’s aura off and we’ll order another pizza or something. If nothing else, it was a fantastic distraction. Just interesting enough to draw some attention but not obvious enough to be suspicious. I can tell you what little I found out.”
8
It took Caroline a solid hour to feel comfortable again. The guys walked her to the door of her room and waited in the hallway until she shut the door behind herself, and she bet they even listened for the crummy hotel lock to be in place. She went straight into the shower and washed herself until her skin stopped crawling and the steamy water had worked its magic. Then she just stood under the stream until the tears stopped.
God, she hated crying. It always felt like such a weakness, a huge flaw in an otherwise unremarkable person. Still, once she was alone she let it all go, because she knew that trying to stop them would only end with a complete meltdown later, probably in the most embarrassing way possible. At least here, alone in the shower she could control the obviousness of it all.
She called Julia when she was out of the shower. She needed perspective and Julia was her best bet to complain about being assaulted by elves in a paranormal bar.
“Those assholes!” There was a rhythmic thudding through the phone as Julia fumed. Caroline could see her stomping around the apartment while she talked. “Do you need me to come out there and kick some ass?”
Caroline laughed, finally starting to feel warm inside. “No, I’m okay. And I think that between Ollie’s taser and Greg’s claws we scared some manners into them. Maybe.”
“Still. Honestly, you find creeps everywhere, but come on. Just because you’re human doesn’t mean you’re defenseless.” Julia grumbled. “Or just because you’re young.”
“I know. And I’ll mention it to Peaches when we get back. I’m sure he’ll show me a few good tricks to deal with your average bar creeper,” Caroline said. “I guess I just needed a female perspective and I can’t talk to my mom about this, you know? I mean, I’ve never been to a bar before, and nobody hit on me back in school,
so…. I don’t know. It was just so gross.”
“I know. God, I know. Men suck.” A soft thump sounded through the phone. Julia probably flopped onto the sofa. “I was supposed to be on a date tonight, you know? But yesterday afternoon I found the guy making out with his secretary in the break room. Men are awful.”
Caroline laughed again. “Well, at least you found him before the date, not after it? Maybe when I get back we should have a men suck party?”
“Ooooh, good idea! We can order pizza and I’ll make milkshakes and teach you how to find the good bars to hang out at!” Julia seemed to perk up.
“You know, you’re not the most responsible of house mothers. You’re more like a house big sister.” Caroline flopped back on her motel bed and smiled at the ceiling.
“Awww, you’re the sweetest!” Julia said.
“Whatever.” Caroline sighed. “I should probably head next door and see what’s up. Darien was going to get some food and we’re supposed to have some kind of meeting or something.”
“Okay, badass. You go catch some bad guys. I’ll plan our girls’ night!”
When she thumbed off her phone, Caroline just lay on the somewhat lumpy mattress and breathed. Honestly, women got harassed in bars all the time. It was just the newness of it that made her react so strongly, more than likely. She knew that there was no way Greg and Darien would have let anything actually happen to her. As it was she hadn’t really needed them…
She hadn’t, had she? Now that was a thought. It was amazing to know that they were there, ready to help if she did need it, but she’d been handling those bullies just fine, and the one that had actually touched her had been all hers to take apart. Greg had gone for the other guy. Huh.
It was with that thought in her mind that she rolled off the bed, grabbed her hoodie again, and opened the door to the covered walkway, where it was pouring down rain. Giant raindrops splattered across the pavement so fast that it sounded like a waterfall had formed in front of the motel. Just streams and torrents of water roaring down from the sky, blotting out all visibility more than about six inches from the end of the overhang. It was crashing down so hard that the droplets bouncing off the puddles were spraying her in the face, rewetting the hair she’d just dried and dampening her clothes.
“Shit!” Caroline dashed next door and knocked hard, almost falling into the room when Greg pulled it open. “Oh man, you guys, have you seen this?”
“Yeah, we heard it start about five minutes ago, just zero to sixty.” Greg shook his head and stared at the downpour for a moment before shutting the door again. “Darien got back just in time.”
“Glad I wasn’t out there when it hit. I bet there’s a ton of accidents on the roads. Man.” Darien shuddered. “Anyway, I’ve got Thai takeout and soda, and I’ve turned the AC down so we don’t freeze. Hungry?”
“Starving.”
“I got Greg the green curry chicken so it’s brutally spicy. Otherwise we’ve got drunken noodles, and something with seafood with an unpronounceable name that the guy behind the counter didn’t actually laugh at me when I mangled it but the picture looked good, and the place smelled amazing, so I’ll let it go. It’s got shrimp in it.” Darien spread the boxes out and handed around the packages of utensils.
“Mmmm, brutal spiciness, come to papa!” Greg dragged the box over and took a deep sniff, closing his eyes and smiling happily.
“So I didn’t get much at the bar, unfortunately,” Darien said. “There’s a lot of talk about a guy who’s looking into what we might gently call tenant removal,” Darien scooped some noodles onto his plate.
Caroline had to agree with him on the unnamed shrimp dish, and took a scoop for herself. “Tenant removal?”
“Yeah. He’s probably got a run down apartment that he’s trying to sell for cash, but needs the tenants out first. It’s probably near some sort of development. Not very helpful for us, but we might pass the information along if we hear something definitive.”
“So C handled a couple drunk bigots for no reason?” Greg gestured with his fork. “I mean, not that I minded running them off, but that drink wasn’t worth it.”
“Well, I did hear that there’s been a somewhat shady character asking around after available freelance mages,” Darien said. “That’s about the only useful information I got, and was the only other thing people were open to talking about aside from the eviction job.”
“Freelance mage, huh?” Greg chewed thoughtfully. His knee bounced and he pulled a fight spinner out of his pocket.
“I guess they need someone to use the horn? Is that the idea?” Caroline asked. “Because I didn’t think the captain was a mage, too. I mean, back in the day. I guess I just thought that the whole idea was you blow the horn, you get wind, right?”
“Maybe,” Darien shrugged, “We don’t know, thanks to Whitman not allowing anyone to call in a mage to investigate the thing in the first place.”
“And the thief could be looking for a mage for all sorts of reasons,” Greg said. “He could know only that the horn has an enchantment, and not what it is or how to use it. He could want to modify the enchantment. He could want to know how to put a similar enchantment on something else. Lots of reasons to hire a mage with flexible ethics.”
“Huh, there’s a lot more to think about that I knew,” Caroline frowned at her plate. “So why would—” A crack of thunder so loud it shook the room cut her off. Car alarms in the parking lot started going off and Greg’s eyes flashed gold when they all jumped. After a second to recover Darien went to the window and twitched the curtain open. The rain outside seemed to be starting to taper off, but flashes of lightning arced across the sky more frequently than Caroline had ever seen before.
“Jeez, that’s scary,” she said.
Greg reached over and hit the button on the TV remote, and found a local news channel.
“The sudden storm that hit Virginia this evening continues to cause havoc. We do not currently have a count of roads closed, but officials in Williamsburg and the surrounding areas have asked everyone to stay indoors. There is deadly lightning associated with this flash storm, and there are reports of flooding—” Greg muted the serious-looking news anchor and turned to them.
“The horn doesn’t have anything to do with rain storms, but this feels a little too coincidental.” His eyes still flashed a deeper gold than usual. “Now that I’m looking for it, there is a tiny trace of magic rolling around.”
“Like the storm was called deliberately?” Darien asked, still looking out the window.
“Something like that.” Greg tipped his head slightly, his eyes narrowing and the gold growing more pronounced for a long moment. Then he shook his head. “It’s really faint, almost background level. I only noticed because I concentrated on the storm in the first place and the energy is a little different.”
“Can you tell anything about it?” Caroline asked. “What’s it like?”
Greg grimaced and shook his head, the glow leaving his eyes as he sat down and stared at the rain. “I’m not a mage. I was largely put together by magic, from what I understand, so I’m pretty sensitive to it, but I can’t really manipulate it or anything. It’s a little like being able to smell magic, if that makes sense? I can recognize some of it because it’s really familiar like the security wards at the office, or the thermal seals on Darian’s blood packs. I have no idea what this is, though. Just that it’s a little different than the normal background magic.”
“There are people out there,” Darian said. “There’s no chance that nobody got caught out there when this hit,”
“If this was a deliberately called storm— not that I understand how that’s even possible— that sort of puts it on us to help.” Greg stood slowly and met Darien’s eyes when the man turned away from the window.
“Caroline, stay inside and call Point,” Darien said. He looked at his jacket and shook his head as he put it on. “Tell him that we suspect this storm isn’t natural, and that Greg and
I are going to check the surrounding area for whatever we can find.”
“But you heard the news! We’re all supposed to stay put. The authorities—”
“We are the authorities, remember? And if this storm is magical in nature, at all, it’s our responsibility,” he said. His voice was full of concern and determination and Caroline knew there was no use in arguing with him.
Greg put his hand on her shoulder and a ripple of warmth spread from the contact. “We’ll stick together, and we’ll be careful. But remember, we’re both stronger than we look. We’ll check back in two hours. Stay here or in your own room, though. D’s right about that.”
“And call Point. Fine, but I really don’t like it.” Caroline glared at both of them. “And I’m putting a timer on my phone. If I don’t hear from you by the time it goes off, I’m calling Point back and telling him you endangered yourselves and your case. And me! And… I’ll think of something else by then, too.”
“Yes, Mom!” Greg grinned and saluted. Darien just rolled his eyes, but gave her a quick hug on his way to the door.
“We’ll be careful. Back soon.” And the door closed, shutting out the sound of rain and the presence of the two men.
9
Caroline woke up with a stiff neck and a weird taste in her mouth. She rolled over to try to squint at the clock and realized several things at once. First, she wasn’t in a bed, she was still sitting at the table they’d eaten dinner at. Second, she wasn’t in her own room. The last thing she realized was that it was sometime before dawn.
Standing up, she stretched carefully as she stood from the chair she’d been sleeping in. There was a small puddle on the table under where her face had ben and she was fairly sure that her face had an imprint of her wrinkled sleeve where she’d apparently rested her cheek.
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