Strange Brew (25 page)

“Said I would. It took long enough, what with Agnes fighting me every inch of the way.”

“You mustn’t touch it. My God, put it down before something horrible happens.”

I put it into her hand and told her how I’d played pickpocket during the tussle. Agnes must have thought I was some kind of masher since I’d had to keep my hands moving. No wonder she’d shot at me.

“She still got away with the payment—Taylor will set the police on her.”

“No, he won’t. He brought a case full of funny money to buy the gem. It’s as counterfeit as the pendant he got. Agnes had two fakes made. Maybe the jeweler cut her a deal for making two.”

That took them both a moment to digest. I used the pause to take the little box from Taylor’s coat pocket and spilled
his
fake pendant onto the table.

“But how did you know about the money?” Escott asked. “You couldn’t have gotten a close look at it.”

“It was the smell. Ever smell uncirculated cash straight from the bank? Nothing like that fresh ink, only this was just too fresh. It was strong enough that I picked up on it in the next room, but its importance didn’t click until Riordan showed up wanting to talk with Clive. When he hired Riordan to follow Mabel, he paid with counterfeit bills.”

“How did
he
get them?” she asked. “Oh—oh, it couldn’t be.”

“It could. He and Taylor are partners, working a long confidence game. Clive the gigolo marries an heiress with expectations. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s left a number of wives in his wake.”

“A bigamist?” Mabel stared at him as though he were an exotic zoo specimen.

“It’s likely. Marriage is a tool of the trade. I bet this time the deal wasn’t as sweet as he’d hoped. Agnes got the house, but it was worthless to him. A family heirloom like a rare diamond was much better. He probably put a few words in her ear about how unfair it was that you got it, unless it was her idea to start with. When the time was right, he called in Taylor to pose as a wealthy gem collector. The hard part for them was probably finding really good counterfeit cash. The printer should have let it dry longer.”

More gaping from Mabel; then she began to hoot with laughter. There was no love lost between her and her cousin. That Agnes had married a confidence man and possible bigamist bothered Mabel not at all. Tears ran down her face, and she had to blow her nose.

When she got her breath, I continued. “Neither of them knew that Agnes had her own angle, which was to drug them, switch the gems, and drive off with both brass rings. Clive would wake in the morning with no wife and no cash. Maybe Taylor would crash his car in the rain or not, but…” I let it hang.

That sobered Mabel up. “I can’t believe she’d have gone that far.”

“She might have planned to delay him long enough for the mickey she slipped to put them out. Riordan interrupted when he tried to crack my skull open.”

“You’re sure you’re not hurt?”

“It’ll take more than a crazy Irishman with a stick to do that.” I turned to Escott. “You’re going to tell me more about him, right?”

He looked pained. “Not just now.”

“I suppose I’ll have to call the police,” said Mabel about the supine mannequins on the parlor floor.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve a friend who will want to meet these jokers.”

My friend was a gang boss of no small influence who owed me a favor or three. Northside Gordy would be very interested in hearing Taylor and Clive’s life stories and why they were operating in his city without his permission, thus denying him his cut of their deal. If they were lucky, he might let them go with most of their body parts intact.

“Poor Agnes.” Mabel snickered. “When she starts spending that fake money…”

“She could go to jail,” Escott completed for her.

“It’d serve her right, but I better let the police know that she stole a car.”

Mabel put Hecate’s Eye in its little box and went to the kitchen to make the call.

Escott and I looked at the gem, neither of us disposed to get closer.

A last bit of lightning from the fading storm played hob once more with the house lights. They flickered, leaving the one candle to take up the slack for an instant before brightening again.

“Did you see that?” I asked. “Tell me you saw that.”

“Trick of the light, old man, nothing more.” But Escott looked strangely pale. “It absolutely did
not
wink at us.”

P. N. Elrod
has sold more than twenty novels, at least as many short stories, scripted comic books, and edited several collections, including
My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon
. She’s best known for her Vampire Files series, featuring undead gumshoe Jack Fleming, and would write books more quickly but for being hampered by an incurable chocolate addiction.

More about her toothy titles may be found at
www.vampwriter.com
.

Bacon
Charlaine Harris

Dahlia Lynley-Chivers looked good in black; in fact, she looked great—and normally that was extremely important to her. But tonight she wasn’t thinking about herself or about the picture she made sitting alone at the elaborately laid table in the upscale restaurant. Seeleys’ tablecloths might have been designed to set her looks off: the undercloth was black like her hair; the overcloth was snowy white like her skin.

Dahlia had been dead for a very long time. Though she was sitting motionless, her back perfectly straight, Dahlia was conscious of the passing of time. The witch was late. Under any other circumstances, she would have left Seeleys and found something more amusing to do than wait for a human: but she’d gone to considerable trouble to arrange this meeting, and she wouldn’t give up so easily.

Clifford Seeley, who’d arranged to wait tables at his dad’s restaurant this evening, put a glass of TrueBlood in front of Dahlia with a theatrical flourish. “Something to sip on while you wait, madam,” he said formally. Then he whispered, “I haven’t worked here since I was twenty. Am I doing okay?”

Dahlia didn’t exactly smile. She wasn’t in the mood. But her face looked a bit less stony as she looked up at the tall young werewolf, and she inclined her head an infinitesimal degree. She liked Clifford, had since the moment she’d met him at her friend Taffy’s wedding reception. Taffy, like Dahlia, had married into the Swiftfoot pack.

Taffy’s husband Don was the packleader. Dahlia’s husband was dead.

“Heads up,” said Clifford suddenly, and swooped off to check his other tables. Dahlia saw the headwaiter gliding toward her, a young woman stumbling along behind him. Dahlia’s attention sharpened. Since on their dullest day vampires had senses at least five times more acute than those of humans, this meant Dahlia might as well have been walking right next to the newcomer. The woman was plump, tousled, and breathing heavily, and she didn’t seem to know how to walk on high heels. Dahlia, who wore stilettos on every possible occasion, let her nostrils flare in contempt, though she made sure to repress any expression well before the young woman reached her chair. That took longer than it should have, since Dahlia’s guest was not Ms. Fitness.

When the newcomer was seated, considerable fuss ensued until she found a place for her purse, yanked at the shoulder of her dress, tossed her head so her long red hair would hang behind her shoulders, and asked the headwaiter for some water. (He replied, “I’ll send your waiter, Clifford, right over,” in a rather stiff voice.)

“I’m so sorry I’m late, Mrs. Swiftfoot. I caught the wrong bus, and after that, everything else seemed to go wrong,” the young woman said.

Dahlia studied her silently. Making people squirm was something Dahlia did very well. “You are the Circe, the witch?” Dahlia said finally, in her frostiest voice. But her tone was not as cutting as she could make it. Dahlia had gone to too much trouble setting up the meeting to go overboard with the hostility.

“Yes, oh, yes, I didn’t introduce myself!” The young witch giggled, tossed her head again. “I’m not the original Circe, of course. That was my—well, my many-times great-grandmother. But I’m the direct descendant, yes.”

“And you are a trained witch?”

“Oh, yes, I went to school and everything.” The Circe wore glasses, and she blinked anxiously at the tiny vampire across the table. “I graduated with honors.”

“I was under the impression that witches were taught by their predecessors,” Dahlia said. “I understood that the knowledge was passed along by word of mouth, and in the family grimoire. There’s no—Hogwarts in your past, I presume?” The reference to Harry Potter was a real stretch for Dahlia, who tracked current culture with some effort. Dahlia had ventured the mild pleasantry to put the panting young woman at ease, but Dahlia was not terribly adept at mild or pleasant.

The Circe recoiled. “No,” she snapped. “And I’ll thank you not to refer to those books again. Everyone thinks we’re cute now, and we’ve lost a lot of the respect we used to be accorded.”

“Some would say that any publicity is good publicity,” Dahlia said, curious about this unexpected sign of temper. No one had snapped at Dahlia in, oh, five decades. She’d caught an unexpected glimpse of the darker thing that lived inside the untidy young creature sitting across the table.

“If one more person asks me where my owl is, or how to get to Gringotts, I’ll turn them into a…”

“Pig?” Dahlia suggested.

The Circe glared at her. “That was my ancestor’s thing, not mine,” she said.

Interesting. “Let’s start again, from the beginning,” Dahlia said. “Please don’t call me Mrs. Swiftfoot. Swiftfoot was my husband’s pack name. I’ve broken my connection with his pack.”

Clifford, setting the witch’s glass of water before her and supplying both of them with menus (though Dahlia didn’t need one, of course), winked at Dahlia with his face carefully turned away from the Circe.

The Circe took several deep breaths in a visible effort to calm herself. “What shall I call you?” She smiled at her hostess, tossed the red hair again.

“You may call me Dahlia,” the vampire said. “Do you have a human name?”

“Yes. Kathy Aenidis.”

“Kathy?” Dahlia might have been saying “dead mouse.”

“Yes,” the young woman said defiantly. “I had to have one name that was easy to spell.”

Dahlia raised her black brows. She’d never in her life done anything because it would be easy for humans. She’d changed her own original name, which was hardly pronounceable by modern tongues, to keep some protective coloration. That had been eighty years ago. “And you make your living by the practice of sorcery?” Dahlia asked in a gentle voice.

“Actually, a girl can’t make a living at full-time sorcery anymore,” Kathy said with a brave smile. “Not with so many of the supernaturals trying to do things the official, human way. The only sorcerer who’s gone public is in Chicago, and I hear he’s struggling. I’m a schoolteacher.”

“You teach human children.” There was no expression at all in Dahlia’s voice.

Kathy nodded happily. “Oh, yes, third grade. They’re so cute! It’s an ideal age, I think, because they’re all well past being potty-trained and they know their basic socialization skills; standing in line, waiting their turn to speak, sharing…”

“Potty-trained,” Dahlia said, turning even whiter, if that were possible. Dahlia reflected that she herself had never learned any socialization skills, if Kathy Aenidis’s list was complete.

The witch babbled on, while Dahlia considered the possibility that she’d made a huge mistake. Could her information be at fault? This woman was a blathering fool. Dahlia was tempted to get up and walk out, leaving the witch sitting at the table. But her sheriff, Cedric, and her one remaining friend in her husband’s pack, Clifford, had worked hard to make this appointment for Dahlia, and she decided she should at least see this meeting through to the next step.

“But here I am, chattering away,” Kathy said, just when Dahlia was thinking she might lean across the table and break Kathy’s arm. The witch beamed at Dahlia. “You asked me here because you thought I might be able to do something for you. Can I ask in what way? The original Circe, the founder of the line, never got to meet a vampire, though I’m assuming there were vampires back then. I’m so excited to meet you, and I hope I can help you. And of course I can always use extra money!”

Dahlia was relieved to be getting to the point. It had been a long time since she’d dealt with a breather (however different a human a witch might be) with herself cast in the role of supplicant, and it wasn’t easy. “I am a widow.”

“Really?” Kathy looked startled.

Dahlia began to suspect Kathy was a better actress than she appeared. “Can you not see I am wearing black? Total, unrelieved black?”

“Yes, but… don’t vampires like to wear black anyway? And it’s very low-cut,” Kathy said.

Dahlia’s eyes flashed red for a second. “Do you expect me to look like a frump because my husband died?” Her voice was so cold, there were icicles hanging from every word.

“No,” Kathy said hastily. “Oh, no, of course not. Black is always appropriate.” She appeared to fumble around for a change of topic. “Excuse me for asking, but what happened to Mr. Swiftfoot?”

“He was murdered,” Dahlia said with no expression at all.

“Oh, my Gods! I’m so sorry! Did you want to contact his spirit? Because I don’t do that kind of work, but I do know a very good medium. She’s the real deal. If she can’t connect with him, no one can.” Kathy’s eyes blinked earnestly behind the lenses of her glasses.

Dahlia worked hard to suppress her instant reaction, which was to spit on Kathy. Or spit her. Either one would relieve her anger. Since Todd’s death, she’d had a hard time keeping control of her emotions. Temper control had never been her best thing, anyway. But now was not the time to break discipline. She had a goal, a plan.

“No, I don’t want to contact Todd,” Dahlia said, her voice very hushed and smooth. “What would be the point of that? He can’t come back. I went to the trouble of finding you because I want to punish those who killed him.”

“Ah.” Kathy sat back in her chair and smiled. And though nothing obvious about her had changed, she looked quite different from the messy, bumbling schoolteacher who’d followed the headwaiter to the table. Suddenly, Dahlia was convinced she was on the right track. Cedric and Clifford had been right. This Circe was the right witch. “Now, that’s much more doable,” Kathy continued. “What did you have in mind?”