She was a stout woman, dressed all in black. Her white hair was up in a severe bun at the back of her neck. Her disapproving mouth was buttoned over her double chin. She wore her heavy black good coat and sensible black lace-up shoes. Her eyes were black, too, and piercing. They bored into Wizard, and her second chin trembled with the strength of her indignation.
She pushed past a pool player, spoiling his shot, and stepped up to within inches of Wizard. Her raspy voice cut through me noise of the bar like a radio signal cutting through static.
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to yourself! Adding booze on top of everything else. You’re poisoning yourself! And what about the rest of us? After you go down, what happens to us?
You’ve got to pull out of this tailspin.“
“Stop bothering the customers, ma’am. This is no place for a lady like yourself. You could get into trouble here. Best you go home now.” Teddy had come out from behind the bar. He didn’t look as tall as he had when serving drinks. He tried to take the old woman’s arm, but she jerked away from him angrily. She glared at the attention she was getting and lifted her voice high.
“Alcohol is a poison. Poison, plain and simple. You can dilute it, you can flavor it, you can age it in oak casks, but it is still poison. You are ingesting poison with every sip you take and asking your body to deal with it. Your body has enough to deal with just surviving in this day and age, without your deliberately poisoning it. Some of us,” her eyes stabbed Wizard, “are less able to deal with the poisons of alcohol than others. Show yourself a man. Put down that evil drink and walk out of here. Take command of your life again!”
She shouted the last sentence as Teddy steered her toward (he door, her head swiveling on her neck to fling the message at him. “A poison!” she called as the door swung shut. “Poisonous bait in a trap for the unwary!”
He felt relieved when she was gone, yet, again, the uneasiness nibbled at him. He had missed another clue. He was sure mere was a hint at the reason for me nervousness that plagued him here. Yet it was not in the old woman’s words, which he accepted as absolute truth, but in Teddy’s. He knew he shouldn’t be here. He sipped at his coffee, weighing his bits of clues.
But just as they started to tumble into a pattern, he felt a bump of warm flesh and Lynda was back on the barstool behind him.
“Did you miss me?” she asked in a silky voice.
“No,” he replied distractedly, sipping at his drink.
“Oh, you!” Lynda gave him a friendly punch and took a healthy swallow of her drink. Her eyes flickered to Teddy, and then turned on her stool to face Wizard. Her knees were warm bumps against his thigh. She changed her face to a pout and her voice became childish as she complained, “I wish you’d talk to me more. Being out with you isn’t much different from being out alone. You act like we’re not even together. Is something wrong with me? Would you rather be alone?”
He looked at her very carefully. She sounded like a different woman than the Lynda who had fed him earlier. He wondered which question he was supposed to answer first. He had forgotten all about this kind of talking. It wasn’t like talking to Cassie or Sylvester or Euripides or Rasputin. They had things to say, important things said in deceptively simple words. Lynda had something to say, but she said everything except what she was trying to tell him. Her message to him was lost in her words, and he had no idea of how to reply.
He stared at her over the rim of his mug. The renewed warmth of the drink hit the walls of his body like waves against a breakwater. He tried for an instant to find power and focus his magic on her so he could understand what was Truth here.
But even as he groped in his darkened soul, he remembered the magic was gone. A wave of misery washed over him and he took a sip of coffee to counteract it. No wonder he could not find the right thing to say to her. He fell back on his old instincts, and picked through the bewildering array of things he could say to her for the most truthful one. She had stared at him through his long silence. Teddy was smirking as he polished a glass. Lynda’s face was pinker than Wizard had ever seen it.
“I have the feeling,” he said carefully, “that this is not the best place for us to be.” That was better. Speaking his thoughts did focus them, and she had gone from angry to rapt, leaning closer to hear his soft voice. Teddy no longer looked so amused.
“I can’t say what it is that bothers me, but this is not a good place for us.” Teddy’s words leaped into his mind and he mouthed them. “This is no place for a lady like yourself.”
Lynda was glowing in his words, her smile gone soft and gentle. Wizard felt very pleased with himself for an instant. and then the impact of his own words broke on him like a douse of cold water. This was no place for a lady. Not this bar.
This was a man’s bar, with a constant edge in the air. A certain type of man might bring his woman here, but not his lady. It was not a place for quiet talking, for the sharing of thoughts or companionable silences. It was a place for displays and competitions, challenges and threats. It was a place where misplaced men came to prod balls around a table, to drink and mutter angrily and helplessly at one another, and then to fight short, ugly fights. Not a place to bring a friend one valued. So why had Lynda brought him here? And who had brought her here before?
No answers to those questions, but a solution. Leave. He rose from his stool, feeling a strange rubberiness in his knees.
It passed and he took Lynda’s arm firmly. He was certain now of the danger here. She had tempted it, but she had fed him.
The least he could do was take her to a safer place.
“What’s wrong?” Her voice was a shade short of baby talk, her mouth a plump little pout. Charades for Teddy.
“Nothing, yet. But if you want to sit and talk with me, we have to find a place to talk where I don’t feel exposed. I like my back to a wall. When I’m with a lady, I tike to concentrate on the lady, not worry about someone behind me with a pool cue.” He listened to himself in surprise. So he did know how to do that kind of talking- It came out of his mouth too smoothly, too glibly, for it to be new talent. Even the words seemed practiced in their sentences. It poured out of him almost like a Knowing; almost.
“Well—but—let me finish my drink first, then.” She pulled gently away from him, and he saw her eyes dart to Teddy. She wanted him to notice this exchange, to see how Wizard had taken control and wanted to be alone with her. She wanted the other men in the room to see that she was desirable, that this man wanted her. He needed to follow that thought, but the sense of danger pressed against him, squeezing his mind to action. He coughed and, lifting the drink, drained it to clear his throat. The warmth spread through him anew.
“I think we should go someplace quieter, more private.”
These words came even more smoothly. Lynda turned in surprise and gave him a suddenly measuring look.
“Oh. I see. Well, keep your shirt on. The night is young; there’s no rush. Besides, I want to finish my drink.” She leaned to bump her shoulder gently against him, filling his nostrils with her scent. She was enjoying this. He wasn’t.
“I want to leave here now, and I want you to come with me,” he said bluntly. “I think you’d be stupid not to. You could get hurt.”
“Are you threatening her?” Danger spoke from behind him.
Wizard turned to it and found himself eye to eye with Booth.
The final tumbler clicked into place. From the rosy flush on Lynda’s face and the way she moistened her lips, he knew she had scored her hit. This was why she had brought him here, whether she knew it or not, to this place no man would bring a woman he cared about. Because this was Booth’s place, and this was where he had brought her. She had come here to be seen with a new man. To lay a fresh little sting on Booth’s pride in revenge for whatever he had done to her. Because she had known that Booth would come here, and the thought of their confrontation warmed her.