* * *
"Tom," Anthony's voice said from behind Tom, as Tom tried to see beyond the light of the diner's back window, beyond where it seemed a dazzle upon a confusion of snow. Beyond all that, he was sure now, there were two human figures. And that must mean . . . Both of them were alive, which he supposed was good.
"Tom," Anthony's voice again. "Look, I don't suppose you and Kyrie are going to stay?"
"We have to," Tom said, still intent on the two people out there in the snow. Why weren't they walking any nearer? He had no doubts that Kyrie could more than hold her own in a fight with Red Dragon, provided they were both in human shape, but all the same, he wished that they would come closer—that he could hear what they must be saying. "We need a bathroom."
It was only as the silence lengthened that Tom thought his remark might be cryptic and he was trying to figure out how to describe what had happened in their bathroom, without giving away that he shifted shapes. A daunting task. "The pipes burst," he said at last, which, of course, was true. He stared into the snow. Were they now, finally, walking towards the diner?
"Oh," Anthony said. "So you two are staying? Because, you know, my wife is alone, and we don't have groceries and if we end up not being able to . . . I mean . . . If we're snowed in for a week or . . . I know I'm supposed to work, but, you see, my wife is not used to Colorado weather, and she's nervous at all the emergency announcements on the radio and—"
Tom looked over his shoulder at Anthony's anxious face, and understood what Anthony hadn't quite said. "You want to go home," he said. "Sure. Go."
"I hate to leave you guys in the lurch, but all the prep stuff is done, and there's a pot of clam chowder and I left a large bowl of rice pudding in the freezer and—"
"Go," Tom said. He was now sure that Kyrie and Red Dragon—in human form—were coming towards him, but they were walking very slowly, and he could not figure out why. Unless Red Dragon was still naked, but Tom knew Kyrie kept a bunch of spare clothes in her car. Had she been caught short for once?
"There's . . . look, Tom, you're going to think I'm crazy, but . . ."
He had to turn around, no matter how much he wanted to keep an eye on Kyrie. And then he realized all of a sudden perhaps Kyrie was delaying coming inside because she could see Anthony there behind Tom and there was something she didn't want Anthony to notice. Like the fact that she was naked. Or the fact that she could change shapes. It was a strange part of their secretive life to know a person they trusted absolutely with their business and their local connections could not be trusted to know what they truly were. But neither Tom nor Kyrie were willing to risk the reaction.
So Tom turned, away from the door, away from the parking lot, and towards Anthony, who, looking relieved to have Tom's attention at last, held the door open, stepped aside and gestured Tom towards the inside of the diner as he said, "Tom, look. It's . . . oh, this is going to sound stupid, but . . . You see, you might have to call animal control."
"Animal control?" Tom asked, as they walked the long, slightly curving hallway that led from the back door to the diner proper. They passed the door to the two bathrooms on the left, the doors to the freezer room and the two storage rooms on the right, and then found themselves at the back of the diner, looking at the newly recovered brown vinyl booths, the five remaining green vinyl booths that Tom planned to upgrade as soon as possible, and tables newly covered in fake-marble formica. Out of habit Tom counted: five tables occupied here and, from the noise, another five or six occupied in the annex—a sort of large enclosed patio attached to the diner, which had larger tables and which was preferred by college students who arrived in huge, noisy bands.
Tom took off his leather jacket, folded it and stuffed it in the shelf under the counter, then reached to the shelf under that for an apron with The George on the chest. Then felt around again for the bandana with which he confined his hair while cooking—usually to prevent hair falling on the food, though today it would also keep the grill masonry-free, as he was sure his hair was still full of drywall, grout and tile fragments.
"Look, I don't know who deals with situations like this," Anthony said. He frowned. "For all I know it escaped from the zoo or something."
"What?"
Anthony looked embarrassed. "It's an alligator. I know you're going to think I'm completely insane, but I went out there, to throw some stuff away just a few minutes ago. Because, you know, Beth didn't come in, and we don't have anyone to bus, and the kitchen trash . . ."
"Yes." Beth was the new server, and not the most reliable of employees.
"Yeah, anyway, so, I went out there to throw the stuff away, and you . . . Oh. You're going to think I've gone nuts."
"I doubt it," Tom said flatly. He'd just noticed—sitting in his favorite table, by the front window, under a vivid scrawl advertising meatloaf dinner for $3.99—the blond and incongruously surferlike Rafiel Trall. He managed to look like a refugee beach bum, even while wrapped in a grey parka and miles from the nearest ocean. Rafiel looked up at his gaze, and raised eyebrows at Tom.
"Well . . . whatever. If you think I'm nuts, fine, but I swear there was an alligator by the dumpster, eating old fries and bits of burger."
"An alligator?"
"I know, I know, it sounds insane."
And Tom, to whom it did not sound insane at all—Tom, who, in fact, was suppressing an urge to blurt out that it was nothing but a homeless gentleman known as Old Joe, who happened to be an alligator shifter—instead shrugged and said, "No, it doesn't sound insane. You know, people buy them little as pets, then abandon them."
"In restaurant dumpsters?" Anthony asked, dubiously.
"I don't see why not," he said. "People abandon cats here all the time. Why shouldn't they abandon alligators?"
Anthony took a deep breath. "Well . . . sewers in New York, and I've heard of alligators in reservoirs here, but . . ."
"People are weird," Tom said, squirming, uncomfortable about lying to his employee and friend.
"I guess," Anthony said, frowning slightly, as though contemplating alligator-infested restaurant dumpsters were too much for him. He rallied, "Well, be careful when you go back there, all right? I beaned him with a half-rotten cantaloupe and he hid behind the dumpster but I don't think he's gone away."
"Yeah." He hoped Old Joe hadn't gone away. He was totally harmless, and mostly in need of a minder. And that minder, for the time being at least, was Tom.
"And I may go? Home?"
"Yeah." Tom saw Rafiel had stood up and approached the counter and now leaned behind Anthony, trying to catch Tom's eye. He remembered Rafiel's call had been about murder. "Yeah, go home, Anthony. I've got it covered."
He turned blindly—more on instinct than on thought—to the far end of the counter, where no customers sat, and where the two huge polished chrome coffee machines stood, probably a good twenty years out of date. They shimmered because Tom had taken steel wool to them last month, during a long, slow week, and now they managed to look retro, rather than obsolete.
On the way he grabbed still-frozen hamburger patties from a box Anthony had left beside the grill. He didn't think before he grabbed them, and he didn't think before biting into the first one. It was hard, and the cold made his teeth hurt, but he couldn't stop himself. He needed protein. He desperately needed protein, with an irrational bone-deep craving. If he ignored the craving, then there was a good chance the customers would start looking like special protein packs on two legs. Particularly since his body would be trying to heal the damage he'd caused by shifting in the cramped bathroom.
The third patty in his hand, holding it like a child holding a cookie, and hoping no one was looking too closely, he peered at the coffee machines. The caffeinated side was low, and he thought he should also bring the small backup coffee maker from the back room and use it to run hot chocolate, because on a day like this they should offer a special on hot chocolate. And doing this work at the end of the counter would allow Rafiel to approach
him and talk to him without either calling attention or risk being overheard. Which was essential if that murder truly involved shapeshifters. And it probably did, because Rafiel wasn't a fool. Impetuous sometimes and a bit too cocky, but not a fool.
Tom got the spare coffee maker from the back room, and then the good spicy hot-chocolate mix from the supplies room. He darted to the front and wrote on the window with a red dry-erase marker, hot chocolate, 99¢ a cup and was setting up the coffee maker—scrupulously cleaned—to run hot chocolate, when he heard Rafiel lean over the counter. At the same time, he heard steps down the hallway. Kyrie's steps—he'd know them anywhere—and someone else's.
Behind him, Rafiel's voice hissed, suspicious, "What is he doing here."
* * *
Kyrie should have known that Rafiel would be at The George. As she came in with Red Dragon—in the grey sweatsuit that Tom kept in the back of the car, in case of unexpected shifts—she saw Rafiel ahead and bit her tongue before she echoed his question.
Instead, she shoved Red Dragon ahead of her, hissing as she passed, "Tom, the tables."
He looked around at her, unfocused, and she realized he was holding a hamburger patty in his hand. His eyes still had that odd, semi-focused look they got when he hadn't fully recovered from a shift. She doubted he fully understood what she told him and, anyway, it didn't seem to her as if he'd know what to do with the tables, right now. Hungry dragon. Tasty customers. Perhaps this was not the best of ideas.
"Never mind," she said, and she shoved Red Dragon into a tiny booth covered in tattered green vinyl. Customers never picked it unless the rest of the place was full. It barely fit two people and those people had best be very close indeed. Also, now that Tom had started having some of the booths recovered in new brown vinyl, the older ones, with their cigarette burn marks and the scuffs on the fifties-vintage green vinyl were ignored. That Red Dragon let her just push him, and fell to sitting, like a little kid, reaching out with his shrunken arm to hold onto the table, filled Kyrie with something very close to irritation. "Sit. Stay," she told him.
She ducked behind the counter and picked up her apron—green and embroidered with The George on the chest, atop a little figure of a cartoon dragon.
The pocket still held her notebook and pen. She picked up a coffee carafe and started towards the tables, dispensing warm-ups and taking down orders for this and that, all the while thinking of what might be going on. What on Earth could the Great Sky Dragon mean by sending Red Dragon to protect Tom? What could Tom need protection against? What was all that talk of redeeming himself? And what could Red Dragon, who could barely challenge Kyrie herself, do to protect Tom?
She came back to Tom and passed along orders for half a dozen burgers and fries, a platter of souvlaki and a bowl of clam chowder, before ducking behind the counter and assembling two salads. Tom seemed to have finished bingeing on raw beef, and his eyes looked more focused. He also looked vaguely nauseated, as he usually did when he'd just realized he'd eaten something odd.
"What does Rafiel want?" she asked Tom as she worked. Rafiel had gone back to his booth. "I know he called, and said something about a murder, but then we got . . . sidetracked."
"There was a murder," Tom said, in an undertone. She noted that there was now an assembled burger near the grill, and that he was taking bites of it between flipping the burgers on the grill. This was good, because it meant Tom had become himself enough that he wanted his meat cooked, and with mustard and whole wheat buns and lettuce and pickles.
"And he thinks it involves shifters," he said, taking a bite of his burger.
"Oh," Kyrie said. "When it rains . . ."
"Yeah, apparently it pours when it snows too," he said, with a significant look at the windows, fogged with the inside heat and humidity and still being dusted with an ever-thicker snowfall.
He set the food on the counter, neatly grouped by table for her to deliver and said, still in that undertone, "I take it he poses no threat?" He gave a head gesture towards Red Dragon who sat in his booth looking forlorn and as confused as a little kid among strangers.
Kyrie frowned. "Ask me again in half an hour," she said, and delivered all the orders before making her way to Rafiel. She had left him sitting at his table, without so much as taking his order, because he was a friend and, as such, not likely to take offense if she didn't attend to him.
"I'm sorry," she said, as she approached him. "We're very shorthanded today."
He nodded, though his glance went, inevitably, to Red Dragon with his foreshortened arm, as if he suspected her of making a bad joke. "It's okay," he said. "I just came to ask you and Tom to come with me. I need your help. Well . . . I need the help of . . . people I can trust, and I don't want to . . ." He shook his head, and looked at Tom behind the counter. "I don't suppose you could get someone else in, to look after the place? While you come with me? Or could Tom manage alone?"
Kyrie looked up as the bell behind the front door tinkled, and yet another couple came in, muffled to the eyes and sliding on the coating of snow and ice that covered the soles of their shoes. They dropped into seats at a nearby table, and Kyrie said, "I don't know how Anthony managed alone, Rafiel. I don't think we can go anywhere now. Besides, how do you propose to drive in that?"
Rafiel shrugged. "Four-wheel drive and I'm used to this. I learned to drive in this."
Kyrie nodded. Rafiel, like Anthony, was local. "Well, I still don't know how I can come with you. Not with . . ." She waved around at the diner, and nodded towards the new customers, assuring them silently that she could see them and would be with them shortly. "Maybe if one of our employees shows up," she said, doubtfully.
"Yes. Get me a coffee and a piece of pie, please. I'll wait."
She frowned at him, because his willingness to wait meant he was convinced this did indeed involve shifters, and that meant there was no one else he could trust.
Looking towards the booth, she assured herself that Red Dragon was still there, now looking fixedly at Rafiel with a scared expression. Perhaps it was Rafiel that he thought he had to protect Tom from.
She took the order of the new couple—two coffees, which meant they had braved the walk just to be near other people—and went back to grab the pie for Rafiel.
"Chick-pea pie," she announced, as she set it down in front of him—a joke that had developed from the fact that Rafiel never specified what kind of pie he wanted, which led to her inventing more and more outrageous pretended contents to his food. "And your coffee."
"What does he want?" Rafiel asked, looking at Red Dragon and not even acknowledging her joke.
"He says he's come to redeem himself by protecting Tom," she said, and was gratified to watch Rafiel's eyebrows shoot up. She wasn't the only one who found this absurd.
* * *
"Kyrie says that you can't manage the diner alone," Tom heard Rafiel say, in barely more than a rumbling whisper. Tom had just moved the furthest away from customers possible, while remaining behind the counter. The sheer pileup of dishes from the tables Kyrie was cleaning demanded that he put them in the dishwasher, which was around the corner from the coffee maker, and almost to the hallway.
He looked up from slamming the dishes down. Rafiel had a slice of apple pie in one hand and his coffee in the other and was standing by the portion of the counter where Tom normally put the dishes for Kyrie to carry away. Past him, Kyrie was cleaning one last table. There remained four fully occupied ones, but everyone had been served, and had gotten their bill, and seemed to be just sitting around, talking, reluctant to face the storm again. "Maybe if it slows down now." "It might, you know?" "It's nasty out."
"I'm surprised there's anyone here," Rafiel said. "At least anyone who doesn't need to be here. What possessed you to come in?"
"I shifted," Tom said, slamming the last few plates into the dishwasher, shutting it and turning it on. "In our bathroom. There's . . . uh . . . no bathroom left."
He looked up, to see Rafiel staring at him,
as he half expected, openmouthed. "In your bathroom? Why?"
Tom shrugged. "It will sound very strange."
"Not as strange as deciding to shift in the bathroom. How could you possibly think you'd fit. Or that there would be—"
"Fine," he said. "There was a voice in my head. The Great Sky Dragon's voice."
"The . . . ?"
"Yeah."
Rafiel looked at Red Dragon. "Threatening?"
Tom shrugged. "I thought so at the time. Now I'm not so sure. He was talking about some Ancient Ones or others who were, supposedly, after me."
"I see," Rafiel said, in that way he had that made it clear he did not see at all. He ate his apple pie in quick bites.
"At the time," Tom said, "I didn't even realize the voice was in my head. It sounded like he was talking to me through the bathroom window. Considering the last time I met with him . . ."
"He almost killed you?"
"Yes. Panic had carried me halfway through the shift before I realized he was in fact in my mind, and for some reason this failed to be reassuring."
"Ancient Ones," Rafiel said. "Shifters?"
"I don't know. He didn't say. I just . . . I'd had a weird dream about . . . very old shifters. Some with shapes that . . . well . . ." He felt stupid, but had to say it. "A saber-toothed tiger and all that."
"Stands to reason," Rafiel said. "We're not easy to kill . . . so some of us would be very old."
"Well . . . we don't know if our longevity is any greater. Legends aren't exactly clear on that, are they? Vampires, sure, but shifters . . ." He shrugged. "If we lived that much longer than normal people, wouldn't the world be overrun by us? And wouldn't it be far more obvious that we exist?"
"How do we know there aren't a lot more of us than we thought? I mean, we know shifters are attracted to this place. Do you know how many of your customers are shifters?"
"Yes. You and Old Joe out back, though I'm not sure I'd call him a customer." He added at Rafiel's blank look, "The alligator." He took a quick look around the diner. "Speaking of which. I should check on him. If Kyrie asks, tell her I just went out back and will be right back."
Gentleman Takes a Chance Page 5