Her voice penetrated where our entrance had not and the men all looked up. Courtney walked me up to them.
"This is Mr. Fideal," she said, indicating the older man.
Close up, his face looked younger than his iron gray hair made him appear. His skin was tanned and healthy and his eyes were a bright blue with the intensity of a six-year-old.
I didn't remember his scent from O'Donnell's house, but it was obvious that he was comfortable in this group—so he must be a regular attendee…
"Aiden," he corrected her kindly.
She laughed and told him, "I just can't do it." To me, she explained, "He was my econ teacher—and so he's forever enshrined upon my heart as Mr. Fideal."
If I hadn't shaken his hand, I don't know if I would have noticed anything odd about his scent. Though brine is not usually a fragrance I associate with people, he might have had a saltwater aquarium hobby or something.
But his grip made my skin buzz with the faint touch of magic. There are things other than fae that carry a feel of magic: witches, vampires, and a few others. But fae magic had a certain feel to it—I was willing to bet that Mr. Fideal was as fae as Zee…or at least as fae as Tad's bookstore guy.
I wondered what he was doing at a Bright Future meeting. It might be that he was here to keep track of what they were doing. Or maybe he was a part-breed and didn't even know what he was. A drop of fae blood could account for those young eyes in the older face and for the faintness of the magic I felt.
"Good to meet you," I told him.
"So you know what I do to earn my bread," he said in a gruffly friendly voice. "What is it that you do?"
"I'm a mechanic," I said.
"Righteous," declared Courtney. "My Mustang's been making odd noises for the last couple of days. Do you think you could take a look at it? I don't have any money right now—just paid for this semester of school."
"I do mostly VWs," I told her, taking a card out of my purse and handing it to her. "You'd be better off taking it to a Ford mechanic, but you can bring it by my shop if you want. I can't do it for free. My hourly rates are better than most places, but since I don't work on a lot of Fords, it'll probably take me longer to fix."
I heard the front door open. A moment later Tim and Austin arrived with a case of beer and a couple of white plastic grocery bags filled with chips. They were greeted with cheers and mobbed for food and beer.
Tim set his burdens down on a small table next to the door and escaped being buried by foraging young men. He looked at me for a moment without smiling. "I thought you might bring your boyfriend."
"He's not my boyfriend anymore," I said—and the relief of that made me smile.
Courtney saw my relief and misread it. "Oh, honey," she said. "One of those, eh? Better off without them. Here, have a beer."
I shook my head, softening my refusal with a smile. "I never learned to like the stuff." And I intended to keep my wits about me to catch any clues that came my way, though my already-not-high hopes of that had been falling by the minute. I'd thought I was going to infiltrate an organized hate group, not a bunch of beer-swilling college kids and their teacher.
I was willing to swear there wasn't a murdering bastard among them.
"How about a Diet Coke," Tim said in a friendly voice. "I used to have a six-pack of ginger ale and another of root beer in the fridge, but I bet these turkeys have already finished them off."
He got a bunch of denying catcalls back that seemed to please him. Good for you, I thought, and quit feeling sorry for him because he didn't have a purple wall or a statue wearing a hat. Find your own group to fit in with.
"Diet Coke would be great," I told him. "Your house is pretty impressive."
That pleased him even more than the catcalls had. "I had it built after my parents died. I couldn't stand to stay in that old empty place alone."
Since Tim stayed to talk, Courtney was actually the one who got the pop for me. She handed it over and then patted Tim on the head. "What Tim isn't telling you is that his parents were rich. They died in a freak car accident a few years back and gave Tim an estate and life insurance that left him set for life."
His face tightened in embarrassment at her rather bold announcement in front of a relative stranger. "I'd rather have had my parents," he said stiffly, though he must have gotten over whatever grief he'd felt, because all he smelled of was irritation.
She laughed. "I knew your father, honey. No one would rather have had him than money. Your mother was a sweetie, though."
He thought about getting mad, then shrugged it off. "Courtney and I are kissing cousins," he told me. "It makes her pushy—and I've learned to tolerate her."
She grinned at me and took a long pull of her beer.
Over her shoulder I could see that the others had pulled the chairs around into a loose semicircle and were starting to get settled down with munchies propped on a couple of small, strategically placed tables.
Tim took a seat that someone else had moved and motioned to me to sit beside him, while Courtney went to scrounge her own chair.
Since it was his house, I'd kind of expected him to take the lead, but it was Austin Summers who stood in front and let out a loud whistle.
I wish he'd warned me. My ears were still ringing when he began talking.
"Let's get started. Who has business to address?"
It only took a very few minutes to discern that Austin was the leader. I'd seen the possibilities of his dominance at the pizza party, but I'd been talking to Tim instead of watching Austin. Here his role was as established as Adam's was in his pack.
Aiden Fideal, the fae teacher, was either second in line or third behind Courtney. I had a hard time deciding—because so did they. From the uncertainness of their placement, I was pretty sure that O'Donnell had occupied that spot previously. A petty tyrant like O'Donnell wouldn't have accepted Austin's leadership easily. If Austin had been fae, I'd have put him on the top of my suspect list—but he was more human than I.
Tim faded into the background as the meeting continued. Not because he didn't say anything, but because no one listened to him unless his remarks were repeated by either Courtney or Austin.
After a while I started to put some things together from chance remarks.
O'Donnell might have started Bright Future in the Tri-Cities, but he hadn't had much luck until he'd found Austin. They had met in a class at the community college a couple of years earlier. O'Donnell was taking advantage of the BFA program that paid for continuing education for the reservation guards. Austin divided his time between Washington State University and CBC and was almost through with a computer degree.
Tim, who had no need to find work, was older than most of them.
"Tim has a masters in computer science from Washington State," Courtney whispered to me. "That's how he met Austin, in a computer class. Tim still takes a couple of classes from CBC or WSU every semester. It keeps him busy."
Austin, Tim, and most of the students had belonged to a college club—which seemed to have had something to do with writing computer games. Mr. Fideal had been the faculty advisor for that club. When Austin got interested in Bright Future, he'd preempted the club. CBC had dissociated itself with the group when it became obvious the nature of their business had changed—but Mr. Fideal had kept the privilege of dropping in occasionally.
The first bit of business for Bright Future this meeting was to send a bouquet to O'Donnell's funeral as soon as the time for it was arranged by his family. Tim accepted the assumption that he would pay for the flowers without comment.
Business concluded, one young man got up and presented methods sure to protect you from the fae, among them salt, steel, nails in your shoes, and putting your underwear on inside out.