My breath came in anticipation as it clicked off. I had met Takata four years ago when he spotted me in the balcony at a solstice concert. I had thought I was going to be kicked out when a thick Were in a staff shirt escorted me backstage while the warm-up band played.
Turned out Takata had seen my frizzy hair and wanted to know if it was spelled or natural, and if natural, did I have a charm to get something that wild to lie flat? Starstuck and repeatedly embarrassing myself, I admitted it was natural, though I had encouraged it that night, then gave him one of the charms my mother and I spent my entire high school career perfecting to tame it. He laughed then, unwinding one of his blond dreadlocks to show me his hair was worse than mine, static making it float and stick to everything. I hadn't straightened my hair since.
My friends and I had watched the show from backstage, and afterward, Takata and I led his bodyguards on a merry chase through Cincinnati the whole night. I was sure he would remember me, but I hadn't a clue as to how to get in touch with him. It wasn't as if I could call him up and say, "Remember me? We had coffee on the solstice four years ago and discussed how to straighten curls."
A smile twitched the corner of my mouth as I fingered the answering machine. He was all right for an old guy. 'Course, anyone over the age of thirty had seemed old to me at the time.
Nick's was the only message, and I found myself pacing as I picked up the phone and punched in the Howlers' number. I plucked at my shirt as the number rang. After running from those Weres, I had to take a shower.
There was a click, and a low voice nearly growled, " 'Ello. Ya got the Howlers."
"Coach!" I exclaimed, recognizing the Were's voice. "Good news."
There was a slight pause. "Who is this?" he asked. "How did you get this number?"
I started. "This is Rachel Morgan," I said slowly. "Of Vampiric Charms?"
There was a half-heard shout directed off the phone, "Which one of you dogs called the escort service? You're athletes, for God's sake. Can't you pin your own bitches without having to buy them?"
"Wait!" I said before he could hang up. "You hired me to find your mascot."
"Oh!" There was a pause, and I heard several war whoops in the background. "Right."
I briefly weighed the trouble of changing our name against the fuss Ivy would raise: a thousand glossy black business cards, the page ad in the phone book, the matched oversized mugs she had imprinted our name on in gold foil. It wasn't going to happen.
"I recovered your fish," I said, bringing myself back. "When can someone pick it up?"
"Uh," the coach muttered. "Didn't anyone call you?"
My face went slack. "No."
"One of the guys moved her while they cleaned her tank and didn't tell anyone," he said. "She was never gone."
Her? I thought. The fish was a her? How could they tell? Then I got angry. I had broken into a Were's office for nothing? "No," I said coldly. "No one called me."
"Mmmm. Sorry about that. Thanks for your help, though."
"Whoa! Wait a moment," I cried, hearing the brush-off in his voice. "I spent three days planning this. I risked my life!"
"And we appreciate that - " the coach started.
I spun in an angry circle and stared out at the garden through the shoulder-high windows. The sun glinted on the tombstones beyond. "I don't think you do, Coach. We're talking bullets!"
"But she was never lost," the coach insisted. "You don't have our fish. I'm sorry."
"Sorry won't keep those Weres off my tail." Furious, I paced around the coffee table.
"Look," he said. "I'll send you some tickets to the exhibition game coming up."
"Tickets!" I exclaimed, astounded. "For breaking into Mr. Ray's office?"
"Simon Ray?" the coach said. "You broke into Simon's office? Damn, that's rough. 'Bye now."
"No, wait!" I shouted, but the phone clicked off. I stared at the humming receiver. Didn't they know who I was? Didn't they know I could curse their bats to crack and their pop flies to land foul? Did they think I would sit back and do nothing when they owed me my rent!
I flopped into Ivy's gray suede chair with a feeling of helplessness. "Yeah, right," I said softly. A noncontact spell required a wand. Tuition at the community college hadn't covered wand making, just potions and amulets. I didn't have the expertise, much less the recipe, for anything that complicated. I guess they knew who I was right enough.
The sound of a foot scraping linoleum came from the kitchen, and I glanced at the hall. Swell. Glenn had heard the entire thing. Embarrassed, I pulled myself up from the chair. I'd get the money from somewhere. I had almost a week.
Glenn turned as I entered the kitchen. He was standing next to that canister of useless fish. Maybe I could sell it. I put the phone beside Ivy's computer and went to the sink. "You can sit down, Detective Edden. We're going to be here a while."
"It's Glenn," he said stiffly. "It's against FIB policy to report to a member of your family, so keep it to yourself. And we're going to Mr. Smather's apartment now."
I made a scoffing bark of laughter. "Your dad just loves to bend the rules, doesn't he?"
He frowned. "Yes ma'am."
"We aren't going to Dan's apartment until Sara Jane gets off work." Then I slumped. Glenn wasn't the one I was angry with. "Look," I said, not wanting Ivy to find him while I was in the shower. "Why don't you go home and meet me back here about seven-thirty?"
"I'd prefer to stay." He scratched at the welt showing a light pink under his watchband.
"Sure," I said sourly. "Whatever. I gotta shower, though." Clearly he was concerned I'd go without him. The worry was well-founded. Leaning to the window over the sink, I shouted out into the lavish, pixy-tended garden, "Jenks!"
The pixy buzzed in through the hole in the screen so fast, I was willing to bet he'd been eavesdropping. "You bellowed, princess of stink?" he said, landing beside Mr. Fish on the sill.
I gave him a weary look. "Would you show Glenn the garden while I shower?"
Jenks's wings blurred into motion. "Yeah," he said, going to make wide wary circles around Glenn's head. "I'll baby-sit. Come on, cookie. You're going to get the five-dollar tour. Let's start in the graveyard."
"Jenks," I warned, and he gave me a grin, tossing his blond hair artfully over his eyes.
"This way, Glenn," he said, darting out into the hall. Glenn followed, clearly not happy.
I heard the back door shut, and I leaned to the window. "Jenks?"
"What!" The pixy darted back in the window, his face creased with irritation.
I crossed my arms in thought. "Would you bring in some mullein leaves and jewelweed flowers when you get the chance? And do we have any dandelions that haven't gone to seed?"
"Dandelions?" He dropped an inch in surprise, his wings clattering. "You going soft on me? You're going to make him an anti-itch spell, aren't you?"
I leaned to see Glenn standing stiffly under the oak tree, scratching his neck. He looked pitiful, and as Jenks kept telling me, I was a sucker for the underdog. "Just get them, all right?"
"Sure," he said. "He's not much good like that, is he?"
I choked back a laugh, and Jenks flew out the window to join Glenn. The pixy landed on his shoulder, and Glenn jumped in surprise. "Hey, Glenn," Jenks said loudly. "Head off toward those yellow flowers over there behind that stone angel. I want to show you to the rest of my kids. They've never met an FIB officer before."
A faint smile crossed me. Glenn would be safe with Jenks if Ivy came home early. She jealously guarded her privacy and hated surprises, especially ones in FIB uniforms. That Glenn was Edden's son wouldn't help. She was willing to let sleeping grudges lie, but if she felt her territory was being threatened, she wouldn't hesitate to act, her odd, political status of dead-vamp-in-waiting letting her get away with things that would put me in the I.S. lockup.
Turning, my eyes fell upon the fish. "What am I going to do with you - Bob?" I said around a sigh. I wasn't going to take him back to Mr. Ray's office, but I couldn't keep him in the canister. I cracked the top, finding that his gills were pumping and he was laying almost on his side. I thought perhaps I ought to put him in the tub.
Canister in hand, I went into Ivy's bathroom. "Welcome home, Bob," I murmured, dumping the canister into Ivy's black garden tub. The fish flopped in the inch of water, and I hurriedly ran the taps, jiggling the flow to try to keep it room temp. Soon Bob the fish was swimming in graceful sedate circles. I turned off the water and waited until it finished tinkling in and the surface grew smooth. He really was a pretty fish, striking against the black porcelain: all silver, with long, cream fins and that black circle decorating one side to look like a reverse full moon. I dabbled my fingertips in the water, and he darted to the other end of the tub.
Leaving him, I crossed the hall to my bathroom, got a change of clothes out of the dryer, and started the shower. As I picked the snarls out of my hair while waiting for the water to warm, my eyes fell upon the three tomatoes ripening upon the sill. I winced, glad they hadn't been anywhere for Glenn to see. A pixy had given them to me as payment for smuggling her across the city as she fled an unwanted marriage. And while tomatoes weren't illegal anymore, it was in bad taste to have them on display when one had a human guest.
It had been just over forty years since a quarter of the world's human population had been killed by a military-generated virus that had escaped and spontaneously fastened to a weak spot in a biogenetically engineered tomato. It was shipped out before anyone knew - the virus crossing oceans with the ease of an international traveler - and the Turn began.
The engineered virus had a varied effect upon the hidden Inderlanders. Witches, undead vampires, and the smaller species such as pixies and fairies, weren't affected at all. Weres, living vamps, leprechauns, and the like got the flu. Humans died by the droves, taking the elves with them as their practice of bolstering their numbers by hybridizing with humanity backfired.
The U.S. would have followed the Third World countries into chaos if the hidden Inderlanders hadn't stepped in to halt the spread of the virus, burn the dead, and keep civilization running until what was left of humanity finished mourning. Our secret was on the verge of coming out by way of the what-makes-these-people-immune question when a charismatic living vamp named Rynn Cormel pointed out that our combined numbers equaled humanity's. The decision to make our presence known, to live openly among the humans we had been mimicking to keep ourselves safe, was almost unanimous.
The Turn, as it came to be called, ushered in a nightmarish three years. Humanity took their fear of us out on the world's surviving bioengineers, murdering them in trials designed to legalize murder. Then they went further, to outlaw all genetically engineered products, along with the science that created them. A second, slower wave of death followed the first once old diseases found new life when the medicines humanity had created to battle everything from Alzheimer's to cancer no longer existed. Tomatoes are still treated like poison by humans, even though the virus is long gone. If you don't grow them yourself, you have to go to a specialty store to find them.
A frown pinched my forehead as I looked at the red fruit beading up with shower fog. If I was smart, I'd put it in the kitchen to see how Glenn would react at Piscary's. Bringing a human into an Inderland eatery wasn't a crackerjack idea. If he made a scene, we might not only get no information, we might get banned, or worse.