Tomorrow Wendell (White Dragon Black) (14 page)

“Okay.”

Ralph pretended to be busy and Jonathan let him.

He got another cup of the confusingly good coffee, made it bourbon flavored, and leaned against the counter to sip the warm beverage while he waited.

He only got halfway through the cup of joe when Frank came in through the back door. He looked first at his boss, then gave a nod to Jonathan before turning back to Ralph.

“Sorry, boss, but I guess this time—as long as you’re good with it—I’ll be the one leaving you to lock up.”

Ralph nodded. “Don’t be a hero, Frank. Jonathan only needs a set of eyes. So, no matter what may happen, don’t get involved.

Ralph leveled a steady gaze at his right-hand man.

“Jonathan knows how to handle himself. Let him take care of his own skin. You make sure to keep yours safe.”

Jonathan smothered his grin behind the coffee cup, the matter of skins being exactly why he wanted Frank on this job instead of Ralph.

Frank looked uncomfortable for a moment but finally managed to say, “Yeah, okay. Sure thing, Ralph. Eyes only.”

“Good,” Ralph said and then he pinned Jonathan to the spot with a glare.

“If my employee comes back with a single hair out of place—”

“I got it, Ralph,” Jonathan interrupted, on the verge of laughing out loud.

If his best friend made just one more, inadvertent, shape-changing reference, Jonathan didn’t think he’d be able to smother it any longer.

“Come on, Frank, best we get going on this. I’ll see you in a couple days, Ralph.”

“Uh-huh,” the big man said.

As soon as they got to the parking lot, Jonathan gave Frank a slip of paper with the directions to Wendell’s place on it.

“Here’s where he’s at right now. I want you to go and park at least six blocks away. Transform halfway there in a back alley or something.” Jonathan added, “Someplace no one will see.”

“Oh, trust me, it will be,” Frank assured him.

“Okay. Right.” Jonathan offered the flask. Frank accepted it and took a healthy swig. Jonathan wasn’t sure if that made him relieved or more concerned.

“Remember, Ralph wasn’t wrong, Frank. No matter what goes down, you’re eyes, and eyes only. You’re not prepared, even in your other form, to tangle with something yet. I hope you never get there, actually, but promise me here and now you’ll watch and watch only.”

“Okay, I swear.”

“No matter what may be happening?”

Frank hesitated but then gave a nod. “No matter what.”

“Good.” Jonathan took back his flask and slid it into his coat pocket. “Okay, my client, Wendell Courtney, will be meeting me downtown at four o’clock. Be prepared for him to leave early. That’s just his way; he’s a Virgo.”

Jonathan walked Frank to his car. When they got there, he said, “Thanks for doing this, Frank. I know it wasn’t an easy decision. I also know this will be the longest you’ve been in your other form since it happened, but a human would be spotted.”

“Well, chasing a car all around town will at least guarantee a good night’s sleep.”

“Yeah—though that night may not be until tomorrow.”

“Right,” Frank said realizing his job might not be over so quickly.

“Last thing, Frank, I’m going to need to know if you’ve spotted anyone. So, I’ll give a wolf whistle when I need you to check in and you can meet me in the first private place I go.”

“Wolf whistle, then privacy. Got it.”

“Do be careful. Keep alert. I don’t know if anything will be around. If it is, it may be more or less than human, so use all your faculties.”

“You’re a great salesman, Mr. Alvey,” Frank sarcastically pointed out as he pulled open his car door.

Jonathan heard Frank’s car start up as he walked back to his own. He watched Frank pull out into traffic and then, feeling somewhat guilty, got in the Lincoln.

With just over an hour before he had to be at the yoga studio, Jonathan found himself at somewhat of a loss.

There really wasn’t time enough for a trip to his office to be a viable option, but he dreaded the thought of sitting in some coffee shop filled with noisy kids and wannabe writers.

The offices of The Herald weren’t far away. One thing always brought him back to their building, and it wasn’t harassing Sylvia. Jonathan thought maybe he could kill off some of the intervening time by participating in an old ritual.

Entering the front lobby of the city’s newspaper, he started off toward the one office he had visited more times over the years than he could count—the classifieds.

Walking into the room, he smiled at the one worker who’d glanced up from his desk. Jonathan picked up a clipboard with its attached pen and the man quickly looked away. Jonathan marked the box on the form labeled ‘Employment’ and began to neatly fill out the section that would appear in the paper.

It took only a few minutes to complete. He had always used the same basic words to say the same basic thing. Jonathan read it over once to make sure he’d made no obvious mistakes.

‘Wanted: Secretary for full-time position. Must be able to work flexible hours. Not a busy work environment. Some experience in accounting a plus. Paid lunches. Smoking allowed on site. Must be of strong constitution, open-minded, and able to adapt to new situations. Apply in person.’

He put in the office address and, rereading what he’d written, picked up the pen again.

He thought of the best way to phrase his addition, tapping the top of the pen lightly off his front teeth as he did so. Then with a flourish, he added the words ‘Atheists need not apply.’

He got up from the chair he’d requisitioned and brought the clipboard up to the counter. The same man who’d glanced up when he’d entered rose from behind his small desk and came over. “All set then?”

“Yup.”

“Okay, I’ll just give it a look over.”

Jonathan waited as the man read the advertisement. The employee raised his eyes to Jonathan. “And this is—um—what you want to run, is it?”

“Yes, please, just as it stands.”

“As it stands, of course.”

“There aren’t any mistakes are there?”

“Oh, no. Everything is spelled correctly and the punctuation is just fine. And how long would you like this to run for Mr.—” The man glanced to the form again. “Mr. Alvey?”

“Um, well, I guess just run it until I call to cancel it.”

“Indefinitely then,” the man clarified and checked a box. “Fine. That will be a deposit of six dollars and thirty-five cents, please.”

“Right.” Jonathan dug into his pockets and pulled out a pile of nickels from which he took seven and placed them on the counter between himself and The Herald employee. Then he took out his wallet and passed the man one of the fifties he’d taken from the suited weasel.

“Of course,” the employee said looking at the fifty.

“How about you just put this toward the ad. If I don’t use it up, then you can give me my change later.”

With a non-committal smile, the employee marked down on the form that Jonathan had paid fifty dollars and thirty-five cents towards the payment of the bill.

He separated the form into its three separate sheets and, keeping the white top layer and the pink bottom layer, passed the yellow middle layer to Jonathan.

“Keep this copy for your records,” said the man automatically then, in the same tone, he thanked Jonathan for coming in.

“That will start running . . . ?”

“In tomorrow morning’s paper, sir,” the man replied, already turning away.

“Good,” Jonathan said, but it was to the man’s back.

Jonathan looked to the clock over the door. Seeing how little time his diversion had taken, he tried to think of anything else he could do until four.

With a sigh, Jonathan accepted his fate and headed back for his car and the yoga studio.

He found a parking space two blocks from the studio. He fed the parking meter every single nickel remaining in his pocket, which gave him an only an hour and twenty-one minutes until the meter ran out.

That left a window of forty minutes until parking became free on that street. Forty minutes for a parking enforcer to locate and ticket his car.

Jonathan glanced at his watch and tried to sear the time he needed to get back into his mind. However, walking away from the Lincoln, he couldn’t help feeling that a ticket would be waiting for him on his return.

He sighed, buried his hands into his pockets to keep them from the cold, and began to walk. Jonathan looked around as he went, attempting to try to spot the large grey and black dog that would be Frank in his were-aspect.

The story of just how, exactly, Frank had become a cynanthrope was a bit vague.

Jonathan wasn’t sure if something had happened that Frank didn’t want to admit to, or if it honestly remained vague in his mind. The odds were high that Frank really did just have a poor recollection of that night. The effects of the change in the body as it mutated, becoming capable of transformation, could burn out memories better than a night of doing absinthe shots with a fever of a hundred and four.

Jonathan didn’t see any brindle hounds about and was glad of it. For Frank to be doing his part correctly, he shouldn’t be able to spot him.

When he got to the building housing the yoga studio, Jonathan found something completely different than a grey and black dog.

In the nooks and crannies of the building, and on the telephone wires around it, squabbled an enormous flock of Whip-poor-wills.

The sun had already begun heading down to bury its fire in the moist earth, but normally whip-poor-wills didn’t start their excursions until after the sun had been quenched.

Also, he couldn’t completely ignore the ornithological fact that Whip-poor-wills were not city birds. To find a flock of them in the heart of downtown could be summed up with one word—disturbing.

Jonathan couldn’t pretend, as much as he might have liked to, that he didn’t know what Whip-poor-wills were reported to be.

He wondered, while watching the animals, what kind of conjuring it would take to summon this many nocturnal birds this far from their native habitat.

He saw how it could be done in his mind’s eye, but that didn’t make him any more comfortable about them being there. The fact that the birds were, in all other ways, behaving normally made him feel much worse.

B
ecause of the birds clustered outside the building, Jonathan figured Wendell had to already be inside. He found his client sitting on a wooden bench in the hall outside the yoga studio.

A perverse part of Jonathan tempted him to ask Wendell if he’d seen the birds, too, but he didn’t bother. It didn’t matter one way or the other, really, though it did make him start to have second thoughts about the outcome of this encounter he’d arranged.

Instead of asking about the Whip-poor-wills, Jonathan sat beside Wendell and asked how he was holding up.

“Took a couple aspirin, so my head’s better. I did actually sleep, and the . . .” Wendell’s cheeks flushed. “The hang-over was my own fault because I drank the wine so quickly, see? So, don’t feel bad about it, Mr. Alvey.”

Jonathan tried to imagine just what it had been like hanging out with Wendell before this had started. He concluded the man probably wouldn’t be too bad to hang around with normally, if a bit anal.

“I meant,” Jonathan clarified, “how are you doing with the whole prediction thing.”

“Oh. Well, like you said, we still have over a day, right? So, I guess it’s best if I just don’t dwell on it.”

“I’m doing my best, Wendell; I need you to know that.”

Wendell gave him a wan smile. “Don’t worry, Mr. Alvey. I understand I have presented you with a most vexing problem. I can tell you’re an honest man, and I don’t doubt you’ll pursue every avenue.”

“I need you to believe you are not going to die—at least not anytime soon.”

“I’ll endeavor to do so,” Wendell assured him.

His client’s response had come with a smile which encouraged Jonathan. Wendell might be walking the road of hope finally. It was a shame; Jonathan had started to lose his own footing.

The studio double doors beside them opened, and a flood of fit twenty-year-olds flowed from the room into the hall. Like water seeking its own level, they quickly ran down the stairs and out of the building.

Another few minutes passed before the last fitness freak left and Mary poked her pretty, dark-haired head out the door.

She looked at him, and he knew she catalogued the signs of his fatigue and magic use. As though to block out the truth of what she saw, Mary closed her large, green eyes for a moment. When she reopened them, she smiled past him and said, “Come on, then,” with a tilt of her head.

They entered the mid-sized room with its well-polished hardwood floor and light scent of vanilla mixed with perspiration.

Mary gave Jonathan a quick embrace and said into his ear, “Keeping well, I hope?”

“As well as I do,” he replied as she stepped away.

She scoffed. “I can smell the cigs and drink, Alvey.”

“Yeah? Well, I like to think of the scent as well-preserved.”

Mary turned away from him and presented her hand to Wendell. “Hi, I’m Mary Parsons. You must be Jonathan’s client.”