by Lena North
“I don’t want her,” Jackson muttered and indicated Melissa with his hand.
She was being hauled up from the floor by three of her girlfriends and Bubba, and I got an unwanted crotch shot.
Loosey Moosey apparently wore really huge, beige granny-panties.
“Believe you me, I would not have been on a single date with you if I’d for a second thought you still wanted that,” I said decisively, and meant both Melissa and her unattractive undergarments.
Jackson’s face softened which sent a shiver down my spine, and the sounds from the bar seemed to fade away until it was just him and me in a bubble of happy.
“Believe you me?” he murmured and used a hand to move a few strands of hair away from my cheek in a soft caress. “You’ve been watching movies with your grandmother again?”
“Yes,” I whispered even though I hadn’t.
His eyes started laughing, and he leaned forward until I could feel his lips on my ear, which incidentally sent another shiver down my spine.
“Maybe we should –”
“Hello, my pretty-kitty,” a voice murmured in my other ear.
I twitched and unfortunately did this in a way that slammed my head into Jackson’s mouth. He grunted and reached for the stack of tissues Joel wisely had placed on our table as we sat down.
It would have been helpful of me to assist him in wiping off the blood from his lip, but I was busy staring at a skinny-muscular, black-haired woman who was smirking straight in my face.
Belinda, my lesbian vampire friend, had left her lair and joined the crowd at Bubba’s.
“What are you doing here?” I squeaked.
“Aren’t you happy to see me?” she asked in a voice full of syrupy-sweet fake concern. “I thought you loved lesbians?”
“I love lesbians,” Pen cut in with a smile. “And they love me!”
Uh, what?
“Pentagon!” Belinda said in what was disturbingly close to a squeal.
“Sugarpuff!” Pen said in what also was disturbingly close to a squeal.
They hugged as if they hadn’t seen each other since the second world war, which might actually be true considering the life spans of both vampires and unicorns.
Elsa put her beer down with considerable force. I stared at the openmouthed group around the table. Jackson started laughing and had to wipe off more blood from his split lip.
Since there were no empty chairs, Belinda sat down on Pen’s lap.
“I can help you with that,” she said and nodded toward Jack’s mouth.
“No thanks,” I said.
“Aha. I thought the angel looked sexually frustrated,” Belinda said. “Now I know why.”
“What are you doing here?” I repeated rather forcefully.
“I want to thank you, of course,” she replied as if my question was borderline stupid, which it was not. “Pimpleton is gone, profits are up. We’re grateful.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “What he did wasn’t right, and Blaïse got that immediately.”
A curious Bubba put a pitcher of free beer on the table, got himself introduced to Belinda, my lesbian vampire friend, who informed him that she wanted to be called Bellie. He left laughing. Again.
We talked for a while about Malachï, and how he’d not only helped himself to some of the profits but also to some of the girls.
Ewe.
“He carried an amulet around with him,” I said quietly, and Bellie leaned forward which made her top slide upward and her pants downward.
“Thong,” someone whispered reverently behind Pen, which made him glance down and grin happily.
“Indeed, it is,” he confirmed. “Black lace.” Elsa made a strangled sound, and he looked at her in confusion. “But you wouldn’t look good in that.” When Elsa made another rasping sound, he added, “Mauve. Sage. Or… perhaps a pale blue would suit you better. I’ll see what I can find.”
I decided to ignore the fact that one of my best pals looked a little bit like a guppy and turned back to my vampire friend.
“Did you see the amulet?” I asked Bellie.
“Amul – Oh, you mean his shiny little container. Yes, he was showing it off almost as often as his private parts.”
Ewe, again. My sister had been lucky to get out of that entanglement.
“He’s dropped it, and we don’t know where. Can you look around at Pussy-Pussy-Pussy and see if it’s lying around there somewhere?” I asked.
Bellie promised to ask Mellie who was in charge of the cleaning crew, and I was about to thank her when a loud voice from the door boomed.
“She should be here somewhere!”
Well, shit.
A very familiar troll walked in, accompanied by four other trolls. They were thankfully not naked, but they were many, and they did not look happy. Trolls actually never seemed happy, not even when they laughed, but still.
I moved slowly to place myself behind a couple of ferns hanging from the ceiling in huge pots.
“Get them out of here,” I wheezed to no one in particular.
Jackson leaned forward, and his shoulders started shaking in a way I assumed meant he was laughing. Then he straightened and, yes indeed. He was laughing.
Loudly.
The group of trolls turned and caught sight of Jack, and the others around the table.
And me.
When Mellie’s brother started toward me, I ran, but so did he.
And so did his friends.
I rounded the bar with five trolls at my tail. Everyone in Bubba’s had moved to the sides except Loosey Moosey, so one of the trolls ran into her, and they both went down. I did another lap around the bar with four trolls chasing me.
“Stop them!” I yelled, and Bubba stepped forward.
He caught another with his chest and then I kept running with three trolls at my tail. I also had to jump over Bubba every time I passed him.
“Kitty!” my troll-nemesis roared.
Oh, God. He knew my name. He might even know where I lived. He might –
I ran faster, but since a few of the trolls were in a not so good shape and had a hard time running with their big bellies, I caught up with them and consequently had to slow down.
The front door suddenly opened, Rafael walked in, caught sight of me running around the bar completely surrounded by trolls and started laughing.
I scowled at him and forgot to jump over Bubba. As I went down, one of the trolls had had enough and stopped abruptly, so I barreled straight into him.
He was sweaty.
Troll sweat is slippery.
So, I slid off him, and my speed propelled me straight into the wall.
“Kitty!” Mellie’s brother bellowed, and I tore down a framed picture and held it out in front of me as a shield.
He moved to the side.
I moved to protect myself from whatever he felt like doing.
He moved again.
This went on for a while, and I wondered why no one helped me instead of laughing; what could have gone wrong with my love song counseling session; and what the hell my grandfather, Howl and Yowl were doing in the image I held out in front of me.
Then I decided to try to reason with the distraught man-troll in front of me and stopped moving.
The troll didn’t, and his arm came toward me with alarming speed. His small fist hit me in the head, and as I went down, I heard him scream hysterically.
“Omigod, no, no no! I only wanted to thank her!”
Chapter Twenty-five
Plain sight
Janie was a fantastic step-mom. Beyond fantastic, actually.
And she was above her usual awesomeness when one of her cubs were injured.
Which I was.
It wasn’t life-threatening, and it would fade in a few days, but I had a shiner the size of Montana from Melvin-the-troll’s fist.
He was crying all over me when I came to, flat on the floor of Bubba’s, still clutching the photo of Grandpa Hunter and his cronies t
o my chest. Then I was picked up and placed on Rafael’s lap. Jackson pressed ice to my eye and wiped off goop. Neither of them men were laughing. Pen was also uncharacteristically unhappy and threw trolls around in a whirlwind of troll-mucus which didn’t stop until Elsa stepped in and got him to calm down.
“I’m so sorry,” Melvin sobbed. “I only wanted to thank you. Mellie told me what you did for my woman and me, and we are blissful.” He sniffled and added, slightly louder, “Wonderful.”
“Okay,” I murmured.
“JOYFUL,” Melvin suddenly roared and started crying again. “And I clocked you.”
It sounded mostly to me as if he was full of nothing but shit, but I decided to not share this and asked for a Jaeger, which I got. It tasted just as awful as it smelled, but it perked me up.
When the trolls had calmed down and withdrawn to a dark corner of Bubba’s, we had a surprisingly fun evening. It was slightly disturbing that both Rafael and Jackson treated me as if we were on a date, but then Loosey Moosey got rolled up paper napkins pressed up her nostrils to stem a rather persistent blood flow from hitting the floor with a troll on her back, and they made her look perfectly ridiculous.
That perked me up too.
Elsa and Pen had a heated discussion in a corner which ended with Pentagon laughing, shaking his head in apparent disbelief, and kissing Elsa’s knuckles.
Joel hooked up with one of Melissa’s friends and disappeared early, grinning wickedly.
Parker disappeared with another of the Moosey-girlfriends, grinning the same way.
Then Rafael kissed my cheek and murmured that he’d see me at Tiaso’s the next day, and Jackson took me home.
I didn’t get any kisses on the porch because Janie waited for us. Someone had called her, apparently, and she went into über-stepmom-mode immediately. Jackson was unceremoniously shoved toward his car, and I was led inside to eat large quantities of cookie-dough and lie down with an ice-pack on my face. For some reason, my troll-misfortune relieved me from chores for the next seven days, and since I hoped to be back in my apartment within that timeframe, it meant that I’d done the last dishes in a long, long time.
Eating cereal straight from the box might be pathetic, but it meant a lot fewer dirty plates.
I fell asleep with the pack of ice still over my eye, and a steady trickle of cold water over my cheek and neck woke me up the next morning.
When I’d showered, dressed and felt ready to face the day, Janie gave me a latte and told me to sit on the porch for a while. I sighed sadly, hoping this would put her in a pancake-making mood, and walked outside to watch Lulu run around in circles.
The spot where Grandma Hazel had scryed to find the whereabouts of the amulet was apparently a good place to chase mice. Grandma had seen something old and something small in her visions, and I wondered if it simply had been the mice running around her bowl.
Leaning on the wall, I thought about the evening before and had to chuckle a little at the stupidity of using a framed photograph to protect myself from a troll.
What the hell had the old geezers been doing in the picture anyway? They had done the stupid ear-thumbing at the white supremacists, and held their other hands out toward the camera, showing off some –
Then it hit me.
Malachï had borrowed the amulet but had dropped it somewhere, which could very well be at Pussy-Pussy-Pussy.
Bellie had called it a container, which really was a box of some sort.
Grandpa Hunter had told me he kept his pills in a matching pill-box.
Elsa had described the Azdjakzian amulet as a small silvery blob with a blue stone on the top.
Grandpa had been to Pussy-Pussy-Pussy a while back to ensure things were twitching and shaking, and he could have found it.
And the blue stone would match Grandpa Hunter’s small blue –
“Gramps!” I yelled.
Then I ran.
***
“I can’t believe Hunter had it all this time,” Grandma Hazel said and shook her head.
I was behind the bar at Tiaso’s again, the shiner had changed from a swollen and angry, red mess to a greenish shade around my eye, and Silenus laughed every time he looked at me.
“Gramps was quite surprised when I came running up the stairs,” I muttered.
The elderly woman next to him in his bed had been equally surprised, and her squeak matched mine.
After some confusion and loud explanations on my part, Grandpa joined me on the floor, rummaging through the old-wolf-clothes which were spread out all over. These garments included a mustard colored thong I accidentally touched, which made me squeal even louder than before.
Then Grandpa Hunter pulled a small pill box out of the pants he’d located.
It was made of silver.
Pentagon-shaped.
And had a blue stone on top.
He gave it to me, and I felt the power from it immediately.
It was indeed the Azdjakzian amulet.
“What did the wizards say when you returned it?” Jackson asked.
I grinned.
“Kitty,” Rafael said quietly. “You did return it, right?”
I grinned some more and tried to wiggle my brows but scowled, on account of shiner-induced pain.
Silenus started laughing, Grandma Hazel smirked, Jackson growled, and the front door opened with a loud crash.
My mother and stepfather marched through a bar that was suddenly quiet.
“Mom,” I said and did my regal nod.
Then I ignored the pain and raised one brow.
“Oh, stop it,” Mom snapped.
“Welcome to this humble abode,” I said calmly and moved my hand in what I thought was a fair imitation of Blaïse’s authoritative gesture. “What can I get you?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Hibiscus. Give it to me,” the Az snapped. “You have no knowledge about the power it wields, and –”
“I would be happy to give you the item you commissioned me to search for,” I drawled. “Except, there’s this teeny-tiny matter of the fee.”
The silent bar went even more silent, and while watching the two furious individuals in front of me, I wondered what the word for that would be.
Silenter? Silencious?
“Fee?” Mom asked.
“Uh-huh,” I confirmed and nodded for extra emphasis.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the Az snapped. “Hand it over.”
“Are you saying that the word of an Azdjakzian can’t be trusted?” Wee-the-weasel suddenly murmured.
I waited silently.
“I never –”
“Hello everyone,” Al called out. “Beer and a Jaeger, babe.” Then the tense atmosphere hit him, and his brows went up. “What?”
I grinned at him, poured a beer and reached for a shot-glass.
“This wizard here…” I filled the glass with Jaeger. “My stepfather,” I drawled, and pushed the glass toward Al. “He promised me a million bucks in reward for the Azdjakzian amulet. I have the Azdjakzian amulet in my possession, and we are just discussing the transfer of funds.”
“I never promised you a million,” the Az protested sourly.
“But you did?” Al said, the picture of innocent surprise. “I was here when you did. You had ugly shoes and a green ladies-tee. Kitty asked specifically if the reward was one million, and you replied,” He paused, frowned, and added, “Unequivocally.”
“Yu-hup,” Silenus said with flair. “I was here too. Three independent witnesses.”
The Az opened and closed his mouth a few times.
Then my father walked into the bar.
“Okay,” Mom snarled immediately. “We’ll transfer the reward.”
“And when you have done that, I will transfer the amulet,” I said affably.
Dad choked on nothing at all but thankfully kept quiet.
“Do you expect us to do it now?” the Az said haughtily.
“I can do it for you,” Joel offered.
&nbs
p; The looks he got from my mother and stepfather were scorching, but he just grinned. The Az’ nod was barely visible, but Joel kept smiling as he put his index finger on his phone.
“Done,” he said to me.
I hadn’t for the life of me thought they’d actually give me that amount of cash and had been perfectly prepared to negotiate. A thousand would have been fantastic, as far as I saw it, but I wasn’t going to share that and kept my cool.
Then I put a hand in my pocket, pulled out the amulet and placed it on the counter, but kept my hand over it.
“One question,” I said. “Is it silver?”
“White gold,” Mom snapped.
Aha. That explained why Grandpa had been able to handle it. We might have figured it all out a lot sooner if someone had just told me. Or not.
I pushed the small thing over the bar. The Az snatched it up immediately, and let his fingers slide over it.
“What the –” He cut himself off, unscrewed the lid and stared into the small container. “What is this?” he asked dumbfounded.
“Grandpa Hunter says you can keep them,” I shared with a smirk. “Don’t take more than one each day, or you will have problems.”
Dad choked on the beer Silenus had placed in front of him.
Joel barked out laughter.
The Az closed the box again and placed it in a purse he had hanging across his chest. The turquoise thing was decorated with small pink beads, and I wondered if he’d borrowed also this item from one of my sisters.
“I’m leaving,” he announced and walked away.
Mom stared thoughtfully at me for a while, and I let her.
“I think we might have underestimated you, Hibiscus,” she murmured. “Blaïse was very impressed.”
“Tell Blay I said hey if you see him,” I said casually and pretended that I had to pour a couple of Jaegers.
“It isn’t proper to address the Grand Wizard with a nickname.”
“He asked me to,” I retorted, and wondered if it wouldn’t be totally appropriate to throw a beer in her condescending face.
“Fuchsia,” Dad rumbled quietly. “You should leave.”
To my surprise, she did, although it could have been because the Az was holding the door open and was waving his hand in a way that looked silly.