by Audrey Faye
She waved an arm at me. “C’mon, J. Come sing with us.”
She wasn’t nearly as sober as she’d pretended to be, and I knew it wasn’t the wine that had done her in. Carly was letting loose, sloshed on starlight and rooftop-garden magic.
I wasn’t anywhere near ready to join her. I shook my head and retreated into the shadows, feeling sorry for myself and my far-too-sober licks of sadness.
Time to see if my ass would fit back in the window. Nobody wrote songs about that.
~o~0~o~
There were way too many people up sleepless tonight. I shuffled out into Lelo’s snug, well-equipped kitchen, not sure what had woken me up, but very sure my belly wasn’t going back to bed until I served it some kind of nourishment.
“Oh, hey—sorry I woke you.” Lelo backed her way out of the fridge and shrugged a shoulder at the couch. “Where’s Carly?”
“Either in the van or curled up in the swing on your rooftop.” It was one of those good, sturdy old-fashioned ones with padded cushions and springs, and my partner had looked damn comfortable up there in her sleeping bag when I’d checked on her last. “She sleeps in lots of weird places—she’ll be fine.” She’d abdicated the tiny second-bedroom space to me, knowing how much I valued privacy and a door. This was just her way of getting a little space of her own.
Either that, or she’d finished the wine and hadn’t been able to navigate her ass back in Lelo’s window.
“Want hot chocolate?” Lelo was pulling out the kind of stuff that suggested she might be making some from scratch.
My belly thought that was a fantastic idea. My brain was smarter—the kid wanted something from us, and I didn’t put it past her to bribe her way there, or at least to trade chocolate for information. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about Chad yet.”
“I didn’t ask.” A big spoon thunked down beside some sort of double-decker pot and a humungous bar of dark chocolate. Lelo added water to the bottom of the double-decker deal and started breaking hunks of chocolate into the top. “I will after you get a cup of this, though.”
My chocolate senses were already tingling. “I guess you don’t use the powdered stuff, huh?”
She looked at me slightly cross-eyed. “You’re one of those people who eats nasty microwave dinners, aren’t you?”
Not in a really long time. “I used to lead backcountry hiking trips, and powdered stuff is light. A mug of hot chocolate after dinner, watching the stars pop out over some mountaintop? Pure heaven.” I reached out and nicked a small triangle of chocolate that had escaped the pan. “Used to mix my own, though. What they charge for those single-serve mixes in the store is highway robbery.”
She handed me the spoon. “Stir. Slowly.”
I felt about as comfortable as I did when Carly handed me one of her knives. Lelo busied herself adding mysterious pinches of stuff from compact square jars.
I caught a waft of cinnamon, and something that might be pepper. And more than a waft of my own heart squiggling away from hanging out in a kitchen and sharing the simple, mundane tasks that happened there. I’d spent a long season of my life doing that, and too many of the promises stirred there had looked as rich and creamy as melting chocolate—and had turned into cheap, tasteless powder.
“Not gonna ask what the secret ingredients are?” Lelo took the spoon out of my hand. Clearly I couldn’t be trusted with the hard parts.
I shuffled my way to a skinny stool, annoyed that I somehow felt the urge to stay. Glutton for punishment, even if it came with a really good chocolate bribe.
I hadn’t realized I was avoiding kitchens.
“I like your space.” The words leaked out before my socially awkward self could lock them down. “It’s homey and kind of quirky.” Since I was already babbling, I might as well finish. “Fits you.”
“Thanks.” She looked one part disconcerted, two parts proud. “It was kind of a dump when I moved in here.” Her hands paused in the adding of milk long enough to reach out and touch some pretty glass tiles running above the tiny length of counter. “This is the last thing I put in. There’s this cool warehouse in Philly that recycles building materials. I get a lot of stuff there.” She grinned. “People give me weird looks on the train. I came back with this miniature porcelain toilet bowl once and I pretty much had the whole car to myself.”
Some people seek out moments of particular love or beauty or transcendent power. I’ve always collected the ones full of absurd whimsy. Damn her for giving me one.
I didn’t say anything, just kept my eyes on Lelo’s hands as she blended a long, slow drizzle of milk into the brown ocean below and then ladled it slowly into two deep-blue mugs.
One of them settled onto the counter by my stool. “Still not asking, huh?”
I raised an eyebrow, a little lost in the lull of chocolate trance and mystical moments of the absurd. “Asking what?”
“What you really want to know.” Her eyes twinkled as she settled onto a second stool. “Where my mini toilet lives now.”
She was right about two things. I did want to know—and it was very rare for me to ask. I picked up the mug, seeking the familiar power of an object to hide behind.
The first sip landed me at the gates of heaven, drowning in the kind of taste my mouth wanted to freeze in time and curl up in. Thick, sweet, and luscious, with just a hint of mystery and spice. Lelo could charge highway-robbing prices for this stuff and people would still line up around the block.
I sat in quiet ecstasy. Someone capable of making a cup of this kind of pleasure didn’t need to be told I liked it.
We’d have to be way cautious about what we told Lelo, and even more careful of what she saw. The kid had eyes like a hawk and weapons of the kind Carly and I didn’t know very damn much about fighting.
And most frightening of all, by the time I’d finished my cup of heaven, I might well have lost the will to care.
CHAPTER 8
Carly crawled in the fire-escape window, looking awfully well rested for someone who had slept in an oversized swinging chair all night. “Morning, sunshines.”
Lelo replied with something that sounded mostly like a growl. “Is she always this perky at the crack of dawn?”
It was ten a.m., but I sure as heck wasn’t going to point that out until a certain grump got some caffeine in her system. Lelo didn’t use instant for that, either—the coffee grinder had woken me out of a very nice dream, one that I was pretty sure involved a private island, two hunky men, and a really big mug of hot chocolate.
Okay, maybe that last part was a little weird. I figure my subconscious deserves a break or two, though—it can’t be easy living in the body of a woman who wears flannel and wishes she lived in a century when solo space travel was an acceptable occupation.
Today clearly wasn’t going to be a space capsule kind of day, however. Carly was already pulling a change of clothes out of her bag, oblivious to the very large windows at the front of the apartment overlooking Main Street. I kept quiet—if Lelo insisted on feeding and keeping us, she was going to have to get used to half-naked assassins. Carly’s modesty quotient was somewhere in the negative numbers.
“Shower runs out of hot water in eight minutes.” Lelo shoved a tray covered in cheesy blobs into the oven. “Scones will be done in nine. There are towels under the bathroom sink, and you have to do your own laundry.”
“You bake?” Carly flung a quick grin over her shoulder as she beelined for the bathroom. “If those are any good, I’ll do your laundry.”
“Awesome—I hate washing clothes.” Bad mood vanished into the ether, Lelo assembled more of her deep-blue mug collection. “So, how do you guys usually go about this assassin stuff?”
I wished she’d waited until my partner was out of the shower. We needed to draw some lines in the sand—ones that held a certain teenager at arms’ length from our more serious activities—but I wasn’t sure where those lines were. Carly might be more comfortable having Lelo around than
I was, but she’d be hard-ass on the business stuff, and with good reason. Most of the laws we broke got broken by her. My skills just happened to be the mostly law-abiding ones.
“Chatty before your morning coffee, are you?” The words were casual, but Lelo’s careful study of my face wasn’t.
Crap. “It’s more boring than you think. Research, mostly.” I tossed my morning-sunshiny partner under the bus. “You can watch Carly stare at her computer screen all day.” Basic web research on Chad—we always started there, or the part of “we” who was computer competent did, anyhow. Most of what she did today would probably be legal. She’d dig deeper eventually, crossing lines that we’d long ago made peace with, but hopefully by then we wouldn’t have a sixteen-year-old shadow.
“Research isn’t boring.” Lelo looked way too interested for my comfort. “I’m pretty good with a computer.”
Eight minutes felt like halfway to forever. “You’re staying out of our way, remember?”
“Mmmm.”
That didn’t exactly sound like chastised agreement. “Carly doesn’t need help.”
Sharp brown eyes met mine. “How about you—what do you do?”
Why couldn’t she be like ninety-nine percent of the rest of the world and assume I was a mostly useless vestigial appendage? “There’s nothing I need help with either.” Which sounded harsh, but I didn’t know how to soften it without creating a great big open door across my line in the sand.
She shrugged and didn’t meet my eyes anymore.
I felt myself shrivel a little. Damn.
Something in the kitchen let loose a drunken belch.
“Score.” The kid rapped a fist on the coffee maker. “Machine’s cranky. Almost done.”
The machine was clearly an antique, of the steel-octopus variety, but the smell coming out was most definitely coffee. It was enough to have me offering up the hermit version of an apology. “You don’t actually want to let Carly do your laundry. She hasn’t met anything she can’t kill with a washing machine.”
Lelo grinned. ”Are you always this funny in the morning?”
It took me a minute—I’m never funny on purpose before caffeine. “Just call her the laundry assassin.”
“I’ll take my chances. Everything I own is black and too big anyhow.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I watched as dark-brown happiness started to stream out of one of the octopus arms and considered just how strange a day it was when I’d had an entire conversation before my first cup.
And then the mug landed in my hands, I got the first sip, and I let go of anything besides the need to commune with the bean. I was aware, vaguely, of Lelo at her station just down the counter, doing the same thing. This coffee deserved silence.
When Carly emerged out of the bathroom unknown minutes later, we were still hanging out in that quiet cathedral of contentment. I didn’t know all that many people who knew how to be still, and I damned sure didn’t know many who could do it at sixteen.
She was sneaking under my skin, this one. I was going to have to do something about that.
~o~0~o~
“You’re hired.” Carly pushed back from the table, belly so full of cheesy breakfast scones that I was amazed she could move.
Lelo grinned. “There’s like four ingredients. I can totally teach you how to make those.”
“Teach Jane.” My partner’s eyes flashed full of mischief. “I have stuff to do this morning.”
Uh, oh. On two fronts. “I don’t do computers, and I don’t do stoves.” Firm lines. And I was smart enough to know that the best defense is a good offense. “Where are you going?”
“Out.” The eyes hooded some. Assassin-lite. “Thought I’d get the lay of the town, do a little research.” She watched me out of the corner of those hooded eyes, waiting to see how I’d react.
I was a little surprised she wanted to hit fieldwork first, but the rest of me was pretty chill. Somewhere between the rooftop stars and the awesome morning java, I’d made peace with the inevitable. We were taking this assignment, and whatever misgivings I might have about that, there was no point in adding to the stupid by skipping our usual groundwork. Assassins couldn’t afford to be sloppy. “Want me to come with, or should we split up?” Usually we did field reconnaissance separately—her version involved too much contact with actual human beings.
“You find a coffee shop and do your invisible-observer thing.” She looked out the window. “I’ll stroll around and talk to people some.”
Lelo reached for her backpack. “Which one of you am I going with?”
I cuddled my coffee and kept silent. I’d covered the eight-minute shower—it was Carly’s turn.
My partner didn’t miss a beat. “Neither of us. We work alone.”
Lelo rolled her eyes. “It’s my town and my sister. And I know stuff about Chadwick that it will take you days to find out.”
Carly looked like she was taking that into serious consideration, and I couldn’t let that happen—I needed to get them both back on my side of the sandy line. “That might be, but we’re assassins and you’re sixteen. You don’t get to hang out in alleyways with us.”
Lelo snorted. “Or all those really dangerous coffee shops you’re checking out today?”
“Coffee shops can lead to alleyways.” This was beginning to feel like a scene in a really bad B-list movie, but if I have learned one thing in my misspent life, it’s that sometimes you need to have boundaries. Ones that don’t move, even when the invader is quirky, persistent, and appealing.
Our sixteen-year-old host put one hand over her heart and the other one up in the air beside her ear. “I hereby solemnly swear to stay out of all back alleys for as long as the two of you are here in town.”
Almost—almost she pulled it off. If she’d tried it half a cup of coffee earlier, I might have missed the irrepressible glint in her eye. I backtracked through what she’d just said, looking for the loophole. “Wait. How many alleys does Lennotsville have?”
Her eyes glinted with amusement. “One or two somewhere, maybe. But the town beautification committee probably plants flowers in them and stuff.”
God. Carly was an urban creature, and I came from the land of lumberjacks and loners. Neither of us would recognize a town beautification committee if we tripped over it. Small-town America was kind of a foreign land for us. Which, unfortunately, was a pretty good argument not to throw our persistent tagalong overboard. Maybe we could keep her busy instead. “How do you feel about whiteboards? You could man Command Central here, organize all the data we track down.”
Lelo’s stare could have melted several pesky asteroids.
Carly didn’t bother swallowing her snicker. “You’re with Jane.”
Dammit, why was I getting the short end of every stick this morning? “No way. I’m just sitting like a rock in a coffee shop. She can introduce you to everyone in town, I bet.”
“I introduce myself just fine.” Carly grinned. “She can whisper in your ear about all the motley characters coming in for their caffeine fixes.”
That would either involve an entire morning of conversation, or trying to ignore one. “Maybe we should all split up. We’d cover more ground that way.”
“Nah.” Lelo wasn’t going to let me squirm off that particular hook. “I'm an assassin-in-training. You’d be nuts to let me loose on my own.”
We were training exactly zero assassins. Not now, not ever. I looked at Carly, hoping she could wave around a knife or at least do something scary enough to get us back in charge of this conversation. She has a lot of options in her duffle bag of scary behaviors.
She grinned at me and snagged another scone.
I have a pretty hard head, and if Johnny is to be believed, it’s full of slightly over-the-hill rocks. But I know when I’m beat. I reached down, grabbed my over-the-hill messenger bag, and gave Lelo the eye. “Time to head out.”
Dear Lennotsville. You owe me. I’m only doing this to keep your streets
safe, I swear.
I grabbed the door handle, hellbent on finding the noisiest coffee shop in town and hunkering down there for the duration. And realized pretty damn fast that wasn’t the next thing on our agenda. Lelo’s tiny landing was covered in the biggest bouquet of red roses I’d ever seen. A good six dozen of them, all tucked into a totally overburdened yellow basket with a little ribbon banner on a spiraled stick poking out the top.
To the lady in the blue sundress. Chad.
Oh, hell.
CHAPTER 9
I should have known we were in for trouble as soon as Carly got dressed this morning. She was wearing her shit-kicking boots. They hadn’t gotten that name by accident, and as usual when she wore them, she was leaving me and my Dockers in the dust. Lelo had given up walking and broken into a ground-eating jog. I was on the prowl with a wolf and a gamboling antelope. Or not—wolves probably eat antelope, and the kid wasn’t the item on Carly’s menu.
I hoped the florist had strong nerves.
“Where the hell are we going?” whispered Lelo. “And why are we going there so damn fast?”
“To see a guy about some flowers.”
She blinked. “Chad’s hotel is the other direction.”
Thank God. “Not that guy. Carly wants to know how the heck he knew where we were staying.” And why Chad Berrington was wasting good roses on her, but the florist probably wouldn’t know that.
“Uh, you’re kidding, right?” Lelo wasn’t gamboling anymore.
“Nope.” Not at all. Carly took privacy, hers and ours, very seriously.
The kid reached out and yanked the marauding wolf to a halt. Which was pretty impressive—Carly is hard to stop, especially when she’s on a rampage. “Wait.” Lelo sucked in a quick breath. “Half the people in town know where you’re staying by now.”
Carly looked totally mystified.
Teenager addressing idiot peons. “You sang over the edge of my freaking rooftop.”