Discount Armageddon: An Incryptid Novel (30 page)

“Ah.” He cleared his throat before addressing the rodent throng: “I will be going now. Thank you for your hospitality.”

“At least the man can be polite to my mice,” I muttered, pushing past him to the front door as the mice scampered back to their business, only the occasional cry of “Hail!” marking their retreat. I paused with my hand on the doorknob, a thought striking me. “By the way, I realize that Aeslin mice may not fit your high standards for what does or does not ‘deserve’ to live, but I swear, if you come back here, if you hurt them—”

“Insufferable woman,” said Dominic, tiredly. “I won’t hurt your damned demon mice.” He put his hand over mine. For a brief instant, the contact made me forget
how furious I was with him as sense memories of his body moving against mine threatened to overwhelm me. Then he clamped his fingers down, turning my hand and the knob at the same time, yanked the door open, and was gone, storming down the hallway while I stared after him.

After a moment, I realized I was standing in the apartment doorway wearing nothing but a sheet. Not exactly the sort of display I wanted to present to the neighbors I wasn’t supposed to have. I slammed the door, locking the deadbolt before spinning to press my back against the wood, like that was somehow going to be the final barricade to keep him out if he wanted to come storming back. He knew where I lived. A member of the Covenant knew where I
lived
. Worse, I’d just had
sex
with him, and now I was probably going to have to defend the last dragon in the world from him. I sank slowly into a sitting position, my knees pressing up against my chest.

“Look on the bright side, Verity,” I said sternly. “There is no possible way this night can get any worse.”

“
LET THE CELEBRATION OF THE HOLY FEAST OF KISSING THE NEXT MAN WHO WALKS THROUGH THAT DOOR COMMENCE
!” shouted the mice, with the utter glee that normally signaled the beginning of a multi-hour religious ritual.

I groaned, dropping my head forward so that my forehead rested against my knees. “My mistake,” I muttered. “It can
always
get worse.”

All around me, the mice exulted.

The penthouse of the Plaza Athenee, sometime around midnight

“T
HANKS AGAIN FOR LETTING ME STAY
.” I sank a little deeper into the overstuffed couch, pulling my knees toward my chest. A chenille bedspread was wrapped around my shoulders, and Sarah had even managed to produce a pair of pajamas in my size. They were cute, if you liked blue silk with sushi prints. Given that Sarah is six inches taller than I am and rarely wears anything with a pattern, I wasn’t sure where they’d come from, and I didn’t want to ask. There was too good a chance that her reply would involve the room’s previous occupants, who might not have had the opportunity to pack their things before they were evicted.

Sometimes having a cuckoo for a cousin can be morally troubling. (To say nothing of having a cuckoo for a grandmother. Although Grandma Baker’s ability to get into anyplace she wanted just by walking through the front gates was pretty awesome when I was a kid and she took us all to Disney World. Mom says we don’t
need to feel guilty about that, since the park still owes the family for handling that whole bug-a-boo problem they had back in the eighties.) At the moment, I was just glad to have someplace to go that didn’t involve a full-scale rodent bacchanal going on in the living room.

“It’s no problem,” said Sarah, walking back out of the penthouse kitchen with a pair of steaming mugs. “Here. Hot chocolate laced with brandy, just the way you like it.”

“And getting me drunk guarantees I won’t go running out and do something stupid, huh?” I wrapped my hands around the mug she handed me, breathing in the steam before taking a careful sip. She’d added the brandy with a generous hand. That, more than the temperature of the liquid, made it burn all the way down. “Oh, perfect.”

“I figured you needed it, after the day you’ve had.” Sarah settled into an armchair, curling her legs up under her body like a cat as she sipped from her own mug. I could smell its contents from where I sat, and hastened to take a larger gulp of my cocoa in order to cover up the scent. I like ketchup. I just don’t think of it as a beverage, especially not heated and mixed with orange juice. Cuckoo biology is not for the faint of heart. “Did he really show up at your
apartment
? How did he find out where you live?”

“I don’t know,” I said glumly, staring into the muddy depths of my hot chocolate. If it contained the secrets of the future, it wasn’t sharing them with me. “He’s Covenant. Maybe they have some sort of magical tracking device.”

“Or maybe he swiped your registration papers while he was invading the tango competition.” Sarah took another sip of her ketchup, wiping her mouth delicately with the back of her hand. “Either way, it’s not safe for you to go back there.”

“So where am I supposed to go? I can’t go back to Oregon until this whole dragon mess is sorted out.”

Sarah shrugged. “So come stay with me. It’s not like I don’t have the room.”

“That’s
a sweet offer, but what about the mice? I couldn’t bring them here. I mean, even if you could convince the staff to ignore me, all it would take is one novice getting too enthusiastic and going on pilgrimage to the kitchen for cake, and then blammo. The hotel would call the Health Department so fast even you wouldn’t be able to stop them.”

“I know, but—”

“Plus, if I vanish, he could just come looking for me.”

“See, that could be amusing.” Sarah grinned a little. “He’ll never find you here. We could watch him and take bets on his progress.”

“You mean we could watch as he tracked down every cryptid he’s encountered since he got here, looking for someone who could tell him where I was. Plus, if he hasn’t told the Covenant about me yet, disappearing completely would be a surefire way to make him do it. He’d be sure I was going for reinforcements.”

“What makes you think he hasn’t told the Covenant about you?” asked Sarah, eyebrows rising. I glanced guiltily down into the recesses of my mug, and she gasped. “You
didn’t
. Oh, no, you
did
. You so totally did!”

I looked back up to find her staring fixedly in my direction, eyes bleached a shade or two lighter than their normal arctic blue. I glared. “Hey! What happened to telepathic ethics?”

“Please, like those apply when you did
that
with a boy from the Covenant? Verity, that’s disgusting!”

“Mmm … no, it wasn’t.” I couldn’t quite prevent myself from smiling at the memory. “God, with a body like that? There was no possible way for it to be disgusting. A terrible idea, sure, but disgusting, no way. You should have seen him, Sarah. I mean, the guy is gorgeous.”

“I did see him, remember? And our standards are a little bit different. You like the dark, brooding, on-the-wrong-side type, and I—”

“Like the geeky, frustrating, you-should-tell-him-already type. Yeah, I know.”

Sarah didn’t blush—her biology doesn’t allow for it—but
she did shoot me a mortified look before clearing her throat and saying, “So what are you going to do?”

“I’m not going to sleep with him again, for starters.” No matter how much I wanted to. “First step is going to be swinging by Gingerbread Pudding to let Piyusha know that Dominic’s decided to go off on his own. I’d rather she wasn’t standing in the line of fire if he decides to start small with the cleanup. After that, I should go to the Nest, warn the dragon princesses that there’s somebody—somebody
else
, I mean, beyond the snake cult that’s making its own little army of happy homicidal lizard-men—somebody else out to hurt the dragon. And then I should go to work.” I heaved a sigh, topping it with another mouthful of cocoa. “Dave isn’t going to give me the night off just because I’m having boy troubles.”

“Poor Verity,” said Sarah, not without sympathy. “No wonder you’re all stressed out. Why don’t you go ahead and take the bedroom? You need to get some rest.”

“What about you?”

“I have homework,” she said, glancing into her mug of ketchup. I glanced at the clock. It was twenty minutes past midnight, which made it twenty past nine on the West Coast. Prime Internet chat time, if you happened to be a comic geek like Cousin Artie, or, say, a lonely mathematician like Sarah.

I smothered a smile as I stood, leaving the chenille bedspread and taking the hot cocoa. “Okay. You enjoy your homework, and I’ll get out of your hair. Thanks again for letting me stay. I really couldn’t handle another night of listening to the mice party down.”

“Hey, what else is family for?”

“So true.” I waited until I was halfway to the bedroom before calling back, casually, “Say ‘hi’ to Artie for me.”

“I will,” she replied thoughtlessly. I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see her wince. “Verity!”

“Good night!” I
chirped, and giggled all the way to bed.

Sarah was gone when I woke up in the morning. She’d left a note on the coffee table, written in her usual semi-comprehensible scrawl:

I rolled up one silk sleeve, scratching at my elbow as I considered her note. Room service sounded good. A hot shower, a chance to fix my hair, and breakfast at Gingerbread Pudding sounded even better. I could talk to Piyusha, give her a little heads-up on the situation, and score some gingerbread to bring home to the mice as a peace offering. They didn’t like it when I stayed out all night. Fortunately, their love was easily bought, and always for sale. And according to the clock, I had a little more than seven hours before I was expected at Dave’s Fish and Strips—enough time to eat a leisurely breakfast, talk to Piyusha, check in with Dad, and change into a clean uniform before I had to go to work.

“No rest for the wicked,” I said, and scribbled a quick “Gone out, thanks again, call you tonight” on the bottom of Sarah’s note before heading for the penthouse bathroom. I might not be willing to take advantage of
her room service, but the chance to shower in a full-sized tub? Oh,
Hell
, yes.

According to the hours in the window, Gingerbread Pudding was open from seven AM to nine PM every day. According to my watch, it was almost ten. So why were the doors still locked?

Usually, if I encountered a business that was closed during normal operating hours, I would assume they were having a private party or doing inventory or something. That might have been the case at Gingerbread Pudding. I just needed to talk to Piyusha too badly to take that chance. I’d already lost too much time by having a good night’s sleep—even if I was pretty sure sleep was going to be in short supply from here on out. I rapped my knuckles briskly against the café door. No one came to let me in. I waited a few minutes before rapping again, harder this time.