“Yes, your majesty. I can most certainly do that. Why, I can start sketching right now.”
No doubt he was happy to work on something that wasn’t part of Katrice’s woodland animal collection. I left him to it, gushing with praise and how much it would mean to me. Girard was a nice guy, despite his ambition, and I decided I’d rather surround myself with those wanting job promotion over getting me into bed.
I returned to Tucson at last, grateful to find the house quiet. Tim was out, but he’d left me macaroni and cheese-the good homemade kind with bread crumbs on top-and a note:
Bitch receptionist called and wants to make sure you don’t forget your job tomorrow.
I hadn’t forgotten the job tomorrow, but the reminder was a good one with as much as had been going on lately. One of the cats rubbed against my leg as I microwaved my dinner, and I absentmindedly scratched her on the head, wishing it was actually Kiyo’s fox form circling my ankles. I didn’t like the way he and I had left things, even if they’d ostensibly been friendly. There was still tension between us, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he just wasn’t understanding me lately…and that Dorian was.
Argh. Dorian.
As I tossed my clothes on the bathroom floor-including that damned thong-I couldn’t help but think of him again. Stop it, Eugenie. You’re obsessing. Surely…surely I would have said no if we hadn’t been interrupted earlier, right?
Right?
And Kiyo, Kiyo…what was I going to tell Kiyo? Just because we were having friction in our relationship, it didn’t mean I had license to do what I’d done today. I had no respect for lies or any other subtle dishonesty. I didn’t like that behavior in others. I didn’t like it in myself.
But after standing in scalding water for twenty minutes, no real answers about anything came to my mind. I finally emerged, my skin sufficiently plump and pink, and toweled off. After that, it was into comfy pajamas: blue and gray flannel shorts and a white cotton tank top. It might have been raining in the Thorn Land, but here it was dry and hot. Night had cooled the air somewhat, and I’d opened all the windows to air out the house. As a light breeze blew in, it took everything in me not to start tinkering around with the air. I could sense every particle, and the thought of controlling them sent a shiver through me. No, I scolded myself. I’d done enough today. I needed to have a no-magic-in-Tucson rule, I decided.
Establishing that magic and men were issues that were not going to be solved tonight, I set out to work on another. It wasn’t quite ten yet, which meant Roland would be up. Sprawling on the couch in front of the breezy patio screen door, I dialed him on my phone.
“Eugenie,” he said with delight. “We’ve been wondering what happened to you. You haven’t been returning calls. Your mother was worried, but I told her you were probably just busy.”
I smiled. It was nice to have Roland in my life, someone who understood the ups and downs of this job. “I have been. Really busy.” I almost started to offer him the overflow of jobs I’d had Lara turn down for me and stopped myself at the last minute. If he knew I wasn’t keeping up with my work, it would only trigger an alarm for him and subject me to questions I wasn’t ready to answer.
“Did you ever talk to Art and Abigail?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, “and that’s actually why I was calling you. I think…well, I think they’re trafficking in gentry girls or something.”
There were several moments of silence.
“Trafficking? What does that mean, exactly?”
“It means I think they’re abducting girls and…I don’t know. Either pimping them out or selling them or something equally disgusting. It’s like a fairy sex trade.” One of the cats, a calico, came and made herself comfortable on my stomach.
“Eugenie…I’ve known Art for almost ten years. I’ve known Abigail longer. What you’re saying is absurd. You have to be getting bad information.”
“They’ve both been sighted in the Otherworld, right around where their gate opens! I even talked to one girl who all but identified Art! She was totally traumatized, Roland. And both Art and Abigail live better than they should be…”
“That’s not evidence,” he said. “They’re probably doing good business.”
“In a town that size? Even with a gate like that, they can’t have enough work to afford the stuff they have. You and I have a ton more jobs than they do, and we don’t live that well.”
“It’s a moot point. This whole thing is far-fetched, and your evidence is sketchy. I mean, have you seen gentry girls tied up in his house?”
“No,” I admitted. “Largely because he won’t ever let me inside. Which is also suspicious.”
“No, Eugenie, it’s really not.” Roland sounded tired. “Look, it sounds like all you’ve got is circumstantial gentry evidence. And you know how they are.”
“I know that their people are being taken against their will and possibly having horrible things done to them.”
“Key words: their people.”
“Are you saying it’s okay for girls to be sold into a sex trade? After what happened to Mom?”
“How can you ask me that?” he exclaimed. “But this isn’t the same thing. We’re not police who work both worlds. We protect humans. There must be someone over there whose job it is to protect them.”
There is, I thought. Me.
“Can you at least talk to Art?” I asked.
“And what? Ask him if he’s kidnapping gentry girls?”
“Well…maybe you could pose it a bit more delicately.” I squelched a yowl of pain as the cat leapt up off me and onto the back of the couch. Her hair puffed up, and she twitched her tail in agitation. Not surprising. Both dogs had just entered the room.
“I can’t ask him that,” said Roland. “And what if he says yes? Then what are you going to do?”
Dorian’s words came back to me. Kill them.
“Look, I don’t know yet, but I just need to find out if-”
I heard a low growl from one of the dogs and was about to yell at them to knock it off. The cats and dogs didn’t usually fight, but every once in a while, there would be a brawl. I couldn’t see the dogs, though, and the bristling calico’s attention seemed to be on the screen door, not the floor. I sat up and saw the dogs sitting right in front of the door, staring out into the night as well.
“Eugenie? Are you still there?”
“Yeah, hang on a sec.”
Balancing the phone on my shoulder, I stood up and instinctively reached for my weapons, which were on the coffee table. I shoved the wand and my silver athame under the elastic waistband of my shorts and took the gun and iron athame with my hands. One of the dogs growled again, and I slowly approached them at the door.
“Eugenie? What’s going on?” Roland’s voice was worried now.
“I’m going to have to call you back.”
I managed to disconnect the phone and drop it on the floor without losing the athame. Outside, the night was still, the only noises coming from the wind in the trees and the faint sounds of traffic on the far side of my quiet neighborhood. I closed my eyes a moment, reaching out to search for anything that didn’t feel right in this world. Some shamans had this ability, but not many. The more time I spent in the Otherworld and among gentry, the more developed my senses became.
Finally, I caught it. The sense of something Otherworldly. The animals, God love them, had noticed before me. Whatever this interloper was, it was keeping to the farthest edges of the house’s property. It had apparently been lurking for a while, which seemed odd.
“Ah,” I realized with a soft chuckle. “Stopped by the wards, huh, you son of a bitch?” I’d had a witch lay protective lines and spells all around the house when the attacks on me first started. It was kind of a magical home-security system. It wouldn’t keep out everything, but it definitely thinned out a lot of my nuisances.
I could have simply ignored whatever was out there, but the idea of Otherworldly creatures loose in my neighborhood didn’t sit well with me. Sliding open the door, I slipped outside, every nerve in my body on high alert. I walked the perimeter of my backyard, keeping inside the ward’s lines. My house was on a cul-de-sac, backing up to a small stretch of open, scrubby land before giving way to the next neighborhood over. I doubted whatever this was would be out in the front of the house, where it would be in sight of neighbors.