Iron Night (27 page)

Looking equally relieved at having a neutral topic, she shrugged. “Oh, that's just the spot where the Ad-hene paternity is listed. If Gage had been a changeling, they would've wanted to know.”

“So Gage was actually your uncle. That's kind of weird to think about.”

Lilah gave an amused smile—apparently my reaction to the crazy family trees she dealt with every day was borderline cute. “Yeah. But so are a lot of people. The changeling who is our stock boy, Felix, is also my uncle.” She shrugged. “It kind of stops having much meaning to you. Your family is who was raised in the same house as you, not who happens to share a few extra strands of genome.”

“Except for dating purposes.” I noted, teasingly reminding her of the prom-date fiasco.

She laughed. “True. Then it starts mattering again.” Then she looked over at me, and her smile had an extra layer of nuance. “Speaking of dating, remember to try to look the part tonight.”

Well, that seemed almost certainly flirtatious, and I did my best to reciprocate. “I will launder my finest T-shirt for the occasion,” I said grandly, and she gave a very ego-reinforcing laugh as a toilet flushed loudly nearby and Suze returned, giving us a very measuring expression.

Back in the car, I confronted her about it. “Suze, are you trying to set me up with Lilah?” I asked straight out, studying her face carefully.

She had on her best poker face. “She's nice. Cute if you like redheads who hail from West Virginia levels of inbreeding.”

I pushed. “So, you think I should go out with her?”

With her keen instincts at driving me completely insane, Suze just gave a noncommittal shrug and smoothly changed the subject. “I think you should come up with better plans than undercover speed-dating. Bad cologne and desperation. You're lucky I have flexible hours, Fort. When I blow off work, it's for important shit. Like three-dollar martini night.”

I let the topic change stand, returning us to more comfortable conversational waters. “I value your sacrifices, Suze. But if a guy shows up with those tattoos, we can keep him from becoming a blood sacrifice for crazy incest hounds. I'd call that a worthwhile evening.”

“And while we're covering that end, who's going to be watching the tattoo parlor?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, surprised at how serious she'd suddenly become.

“If someone gets the tat of death, they're walking out of that shop. Someone needs to keep an eye on it, and I happen to know a person who is used to spending long hours watching front doors.”

I knew who she was talking about, and felt my temper start boiling. “Are you nuts, Suze? Matt is chasing nice, safe, ivory-tower leads today. I'd rather not reinvolve him in the real shit.”

“Your buddy isn't stupid, Fort. Eventually he's going to realize that there's nothing there and then he'll want back in. Instead of waiting for that to happen, why not give him a job now? Sitting in a coffee shop for hours at a time is pretty safe, and might actually be useful if he can spot a potential victim before we're able to shut down the whole operation.” Suze's voice was cool. When she wanted to, she could play logic like an upright bass, and I ground my teeth together and tried to ignore it, focusing on the other cars in our lane as if our commute was the only thing worthy of my attention. Maybe she'd let it go.

“You know I'm right,” she said, clearly having no intention of letting it go.

I hated it when she was right.

•   •   •

Suze and I had disagreements all the time, and about most subjects, but usually we let most conflicts die after a few sarcastic quips and a general agreement to disagree. This time it was different, and we sniped back and forth at each other for the entire drive back to my apartment and even up the stairs. I knew why she wasn't letting the subject go: everything about the plan made sense, and my only defense was that I wasn't comfortable with it. Calling Matt and pulling him back toward the real investigation scared the crap out of me.

Of course, once I'd admitted that that was my sole objection, I didn't have many options left. So after we'd cautiously made our way up the stairs and into my apartment (the caution being twofold—firstly that we'd been arguing for twenty minutes and were trying to give each other some space, but secondly that a skinwalker knew my address and we were keeping an eye out for a potential, if unlikely, ambush), I stood in my bedroom and called Matt.

It was a quick conversation, which, given how Judas-y I was feeling at the moment, was a relief. Just as Suze and I had known, there had been no activity or club link to be found at the colleges, and Matt welcomed the partial truths that I fed him and claimed were Lilah's discoveries from questioning fellow cult members, and agreed to stake out the Iron Needle and keep an eye on any customers who fit the profile.

I called my sister while I pulled on my work clothing, which was definitely overdue for a trip through the wash. I did my best with my handy bottle of Febreze while I filled Prudence in on everything we'd learned and passed along Tomas's home address, emphasizing that everyone except Soli was on a capture-alive-and-with-minimal-damage basis. She was happy to get a clear starting point, and promised that when she headed out she'd go straight there.

Once dressed, I also quickly packed up two duffel bags. The thought that Soli knew where I lived and had already climbed my fire escape once was enough to make my skin crawl, and I was planning on camping out at Suze's until everything was finally wrapped up. Into one bag went the basics of living—three days' worth of clothing, deodorant, and my
Firefly
DVDs—and into the other I packed the basics of staying alive: my Colt and the Ithaca 37, along with every round of ammo I'd accumulated.

For once, Suze had respected my privacy and stayed in the main room while I changed and packed. I'd been relieved by the decision, feeling that both of us needed a chance to decompress. As I walked out of my bedroom, carrying both duffel bags (one noticeably heavier than the other), I saw her sitting with very unusual meekness at the table. In front of her was a freshly made sandwich, and when I walked over to her, she nudged the plate forward, toward me, in an unmistakable gesture.

I paused, surprised. Suze didn't apologize often. Equally rare was her willingness to make food, and that she'd made food that was solely for me? This was blue-lobster levels of rare.

“I'm still right,” she said, looking up at me. “But I'm sorry. I know you're trying to protect him because you care about him.” I'd never seen Suze look that uncomfortable before—it was a foreign expression on someone who seemed to walk through life with the confidence and self-assurance of a small army. I felt both touched that she'd show me that face and also a little regretful that it was there.

“Thank you,” I said, picking up the sandwich and biting in. Grilled cheese. So this was what apology tasted like. I swallowed. “Suze, I—”

She cut me off quickly. “Let's not get psychological about this. Just eat the sandwich and let's forget about it.”

I looked at her until she met my eyes. “Okay,” I said, and took another bite.

Her face brightened, her shoulders straightened, and I could almost feel the force of her confidence reasserting itself, like the gravity well of a gas giant. “Okay,” she said, relaxing. “Now let's talk about this weasel-fuck speed-dating thing.”

There wasn't enough time after I'd eaten to drive Suze back to her place and still get to work on time, so we worked out a plan that she would drop me off at Peláez and drive the Fiesta the rest of the day until she came back to get me for the speed-dating.

“Do not wreck my car,” I warned her as the car idled behind the kitchen entrance of the restaurant.

“Of course not,” she promised as she shimmied bonelessly into the driver's seat.

“Or alter it in any way.”

“Well, now you're just being unreasonable.” She gave me a wholly untrustworthy smile and pulled away before I could say anything else. I watched her merge into traffic, wondering bleakly if I'd ever see the Fiesta again.

Daria was extremely displeased when I told her that I'd have to leave early that night, and spent ten minutes emphasizing to me exactly how thin the ice was beneath the feet of my continued employment. But apparently never having missed a night of work before this was enough to prevent her from openly firing me, though the look in her eyes suggested that if someone had been standing beside me with a resume in hand at that moment I would've found myself out on my ass. I swore over and over that it would never happen again—and, with my current level of expenses, I was pretty sure that I couldn't afford for it to happen again.

I gave my best hustle that afternoon, assisted by the fact that Chef Jerome was still refining the bombe fruit flowers' alcohol mix in a corner and was less interested than usual in harassing me. When five thirty rolled around I ignored Daria's death glare and slipped out the back door, where, true to her word, Suze was waiting for me in the Fiesta, which, thankfully, looked to be in the same state of disrepair that it had been six hours ago, with no new additions.

Suze hopped out of the driver's seat and tossed me the keys, which I caught only because of my increasing vampire reflexes, as the vast majority of my brain was taking in her appearance. Apparently Suze had decided to embrace our activity that night, and had gone full shock and awe in her clothing choice. High heels and a short yet swishy gold dress were definitely a change from what I usually saw her in.

“Planning on breaking hearts and crushing dreams tonight?” I finally managed to force out of my dry throat.

“You know it,” she said with a sassy smile. “If this wraps up early, we can go salsa dancing.”

“Don't count on it,” I said, watching as she strutted over to the other side of the car and poured herself into the passenger's seat. I shook my head and got in myself, slamming the door hard to make it stick. “I called Prudence half an hour ago from the bathroom. She went to the address Lilah gave us. It's definitely Tomas's house, but no one was there. Once we finish with this, we should probably swing around and help her hunt.”

“No worries,” Suze said, and flipped up the skirt of her dress, revealing not only a long, perfectly toned thigh, but also a very familiar knife strapped to that thigh. Apparently Arlene was along for the ride tonight.

“That is a textbook definition of a mixed message,” I noted. Forcing my eyes away, I turned to start backing the car up, then froze again. “Suze,” I said, impressed at how controlled my voice sounded. “Why is there a plushy Cthulhu doll staring at me from the back window?” From tentacles to wings to fuzzy green fur, never had the Elder God looked that cuddly.

She smiled at me, eyes glittering in the light from the setting sun. “I was going to give him to you for Christmas, but I didn't have much time to work with.”

I shook my head and reached back to snag it, pulling it down from my back windshield and into the backseat. It was very soft, almost asking to be squeezed. I looked around the interior of the car but couldn't see anything else out of place. The wide grin on Suze's face gave me no hints—either I was missing whatever else she'd done to my poor Fiesta or it really had just been the Cthulhu, and now she was just seeing if she could trick me into thinking that she'd pulled another prank. Those were always her favorite types of jokes anyway—no work on her part, yet months of potential dividends.

I didn't have time to examine the entire car, so I just shook my head and concentrated on the drive to the bookstore, reminding myself sternly not to try to overanalyze Suze's wicked little snicker. I discovered halfway through the drive that she had also changed all of my radio presets to synth-pop stations, and apparently figured out a new way to save the settings so that I couldn't reprogram them.

•   •   •

A few of Providence's independent bookstores had survived the massive Barnes & Noble influx of the nineties, and the ones that had lasted were managing to hold on as the big-box Goliaths closed one by one, victims of their own business model. The site of tonight's speed-dating was in my own neighborhood of College Hill, holding on through that most reliable of clientele: college students, college professors, and intellectual hangers-on. As we walked into Books on the Hill, the intensely evocative aroma of brand-new books hit me, and I sighed deeply, my eyes immediately gravitating to at least three titles that I knew I had to own. On months like this I usually avoided Books on the Hill like the plague, because it could always be relied on to ravage my budget with the virulence of Ebola-Zaire.

“Suze, can I bum a twenty?” I whispered as we passed the new arrivals table.

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” Suze said piously, speeding past me. We'd discussed the importance of not looking like we were together, but I glared at her back as she took complete advantage of the circumstances.

Books on the Hill had a small back room where author readings and signings usually took place, and tonight it had been stuffed with about two dozen small folding tables, each just large enough to accommodate a pair of chairs tucked under it. Lilah stood at a long side table covered with the tools of her trade—shiny geodes, scented candles, and the egg timer that would be dictating our romantic lives for the next two hours. Her hair was down and secured in place with another wide fabric headband that very conveniently covered the upper half of her ears. It matched her lilac-colored sweater and sensible khaki slacks—this was the most conservatively that I'd ever seen her dress, and I wondered if there was some unspoken rule about the speed-date moderator making sure not to outshine any of the participants.

“Your hair looks nice like that,” I complimented her as she checked me off of the list and handed me a pen and a gridded sheet of paper that I would apparently be using to grade all of my five-minute dates.