Текст книги "A Devil in the Details"

Автор книги: K. A. Stewart

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

11

Wednesday morning dawned, not with my wife in my arms and my daughter catapulting into my bed, but with the shrill clamor of the alarm clock.

“Buh? Muh . . .” I beat on it several times before I realized I was abusing the phone by mistake and corrected myself. I blinked at the offending luminescent digits for some time before they finally obeyed and became 7:00 a.m.

Why was the alarm going off so early? Where was Mira?

It finally occurred to me that it was Wednesday—truck day at the store. Mira had gone in early and no doubt taken Hurricane Annabelle with her. So why was I getting up at seven? After how late I was out last night, why was I getting up at all? On about four hours sleep, I was not even human. Someone should know this.

Zombie-me wandered to the bathroom to do all the usual morning things, and found a note taped to the mirror. Doc appointment, 10:30 a.m. Don’t forget! Work at 3 p.m.

Groaning, I knocked my head against the wall next to the sink. Of course I’d forgotten. I had intended to forget. Face it, no man wants to go to the doctor. It just isn’t bred into our DNA.

I’d only just gotten up, and already my day was jam-packed with fun and frivolity. It wasn’t like the night before involving mundane things such as demon challenges, snippy agents, and soulless baseball players. No, today I faced true terror—a doctor’s appointment and an afternoon shift at It. I suppose it says something about me that I find the banality of real life more taxing than the really freaky stuff. I often wonder whether I could function without having an adrenaline high for more than a week or two.

I actually do my doctor an injustice. She’s a really good doctor. She patches me up; she puts up with my crap. Most of the time, when I don’t have to be hospitalized, she takes what I can pay her and doesn’t fuss too much if I have to carry the bill over for a month or two. Most important, she doesn’t ask too many questions. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t buy the security consultant line, but she doesn’t know about the demons. Maybe she thinks I’m a spy or something. That’d be cool.

Hospitals, of course, are beyond her control, and those cost an arm and a leg. You can imagine that insurance companies really don’t want to take me on. Two had dropped me already, and the most recent one was charging a small fortune to insure me as a “security consultant” (I doubt they had a category for “demon slayer”). It was only a matter of time before they dumped me, too.

For the pittance they paid out on my last hospital adventure, I should have just let the docs cut the damn leg off.

Since getting up at the butt-crack of dawn meant I had some time to spare, I fumbled into my sweats and grabbed my katana. It was time for us to become reacquainted after our long separation.

As I passed the patio table, I saw that Axel had made another move, countering my knight. I paused long enough to put a rook in harm’s way, then stepped into the grass.

My usual katas, performed unarmed, I did for exercise and to keep my skills sharp. My sword katas, I did for love. There was just something so right about feeling that weight in my hand, moving with the balance point just below the guard, feeling my own reach extend to the tip of the sharp blade.

The logical part of my mind ticked off the forms as I passed through them. Upper form was to block an overhand attack or bring the blade down with force on an opponent. Lower form was to flow into an uppercut or to block across the body. Step here, step there, move, shift, turn. But my mind’s eye saw the hellhound, and each strike countered an imaginary attack or took advantage of a potential weakness.

The demon-hound outweighed me and out– massed me. I had to keep it at sword’s reach and move fast—slicing wounds, not stabbing. There was too much risk of being disarmed that way. Many small wounds would bleed as much as one big one, and that was what I needed. I had to drain away the blight, the physical embodiment of the creature’s will. Only its will kept it here. The thing had to bleed.

I fought my imaginary opponent for an hour and a half, trampling patterns in the dew-soaked grass through my phantom battle. But in the end, I felt confident that I knew how to defeat it—not certain, never certain, but confident.

And you’re probably thinking I should just take a gun and shoot the damn thing. It’s a good idea, in theory, until you realize that when you’re shooting something that doesn’t have a kill point, a vital organ to hit and incapacitate or kill it, your only recourse is to cause massive amounts of damage. Most firearms don’t cause enough damage, and you’ll run out of bullets before you poke enough holes in it. The guns that do cause enough damage—the large calibers, the huge automatics—well, you can never be sure where those bullets are going to stop, after they pass through your target. And I’m not a big fan of collateral damage, so blades are best in most cases. Though, there was the flame-thrower incident. That was a hoot.

At the appointed hour, showered and clean-shaven in honor of spring, I appeared at the office of one Dr. Bridget Smith, who happened to be sitting at her receptionist’s desk when I walked in. It was a small family practice, cozy and comfortable. The chairs, in soothing pastel colors, matched the artistic watercolor prints on the walls, which in turn complemented the delicate paisley pattern in the carpet. I had no idea why I knew what paisley was, and it vaguely disturbed me.

It was apparently my lucky day. I was the only patient there. Oh joy, glee and rapture, even. Even in my head, I have to be sarcastic.

“Hey, Jesse.” Dr. Bridget is one of those women who makes “heavy” look damn good. I didn’t know enough about fashion to figure out why the plum-colored blouse and tailored gray skirt looked so great on her. Whatever it was, her clothes accented all the right curves. She was . . . What was the word? Voluptuous. Yeah, that’s it. And if I ever said it out loud, she and Mira would both thump me right between the eyes for it. Did I mention that she’s Mira’s best friend from college? Yeah. Awkward much? Hell yeah. Especially when you consider that I dated Bridget first.

Realistically, I should have picked a different doctor. But as I said, Dr. Bridget cuts me lots of slack in important areas. I doubt another doc would have.

A lock of dark hair had come free from her neat bun, and she brushed it out of her eyes with a frazzled grin. Her white lab coat was tossed over an empty chair, and there were about fifteen files scattered about, presumably in some order unfathomable to the layman. “Nice shirt.”

The T-shirt slogan of the day, IN TOUCH WITH MY INNER PIRATE, was emblazoned across a rustic skull and crossbones.

“Rough day already?” I found a clean, and therefore safe, place to perch and observe the chaos.

“Kim’s out sick today, so I’m a little behind already.” She glanced around, looking for something, then threw up her hands in exasperation when it failed to leap to her attention. “Where did I put that file? I just had it. . . .”

Yes! “We can cancel. I can come back another time.” I edged toward the door, tasting freedom.

“No, no, you’re a quick one. Just head on back to the grape room and get the pants off. I’ll catch up in a second.”

Dammit. So near, and yet so far. And for the record, there is something very wrong about your wife’s best friend ordering you to get your pants off, doctor or no. “The grape room?”

She gave me a smirk. “I treat kids, too. It’s to make them feel comfortable.”

“I’m not saying a word.” Like a good little boy, I headed back to the examination room with the very purple door and shed my boots and jeans. That left me in an icy cold office in my SpongeBob boxer shorts (a Father’s Day present from Anna). Somewhere, there was a sheet thing she’d want me to wrap around myself for modesty. Now where was it?

“So, how’s Annabelle doing?” I could hear her shuffle papers out front as she called back to me.

“Oh fine. Y’know—too smart for her own good.”

“She excited about school this fall?”

“Oh yeah, driving us nuts about it.” Sheet, sheet . . . Where would I be, if I were a sheet? Aha! There was a cabinet under the exam table.

Of course, as I bent over to explore the cabinet, Dr. Bridget walked in behind me. “Nice boxers.”

I yelped—a manly yelp, I swear—and snatched up a sheet to hold protectively in front of me. She smirked.

“I’ve seen you naked, Jess.”

“Unconscious and bleeding does not count as naked.”

The new tattoo on my right arm caught her attention, and she turned my wrist this way and that, examining it. “New tattoo?”

“Temporary. Just trying it out to see if I like it or not before I commit.”

She rolled her eyes at me with that expression of supreme female amusement. “Hop up on the table, and let me see the calf first.”

I scooted my scrawny butt up on the crispy paper as instructed and arranged the sheet so she could get a good look at my right leg. The scars were almost perfect circles of shiny pink skin on either side of my calf, hairless and smooth. It looked like I’d tangled with a really big hole punch.

Bridget poked and prodded at me with cold fingers, making those “hmm” noises that doctors do. “Any tenderness?”

“Nope.”

“Any muscle weakness or spasm?”

“Nope.” Aside from what my workouts brought on, but she didn’t need to know that.

“It doesn’t look like the poison left any lingering tissue damage.” She shook her head thoughtfully. “I still don’t know how you managed to clear that out of your system so fast, when we couldn’t even figure out what it was.”

I knew how. The doctors in Bethesda ran every test they could think of to identify the toxin in my system, with no luck. In fact, more than half the samples were misplaced or destroyed. At first, the hospital staff joked that I was the unluckiest patient ever. When I kept getting worse, with no antidote in sight, it wasn’t so funny anymore.

Enter Mira, her herbs, and her magic. They flew her out, quietly telling her she may need to say her good-byes to me. For three days in the ICU, she snuck me her own brand of medicine and prayed to her goddess while my right calf turned dark and sent ominous red streaks up my thigh. I don’t know how high they had the morphine drip set, but I was pretty much a vegetable for the really fun parts. All I could remember of the intense fever was being so very thirsty. And just when the doctors started mumbling about amputation, the infection receded, my skin pinked up, and I started to heal. The doctors congratulated themselves for a job well done, all the while wondering what the hell they did that finally worked.

The secret of it always made me smile. It wasn’t a modern medical miracle. It was an ancient one. I always wondered what the doctors would think of that if they knew.

“You still doing the exercises?” Bridget, oblivious to my wandering thoughts, continued groping my leg.

“Yep.” She gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me. “I am, I swear! Ask Mira.”

“Okay, slide down. Let me see the hip.”

This was the tricky part. In order for her to see the hip to her satisfaction, the boxers had to go. It was an interesting dance to accomplish that without losing the sheet, and of course she wouldn’t make it easier by leaving the room. She did turn her back, though. Hurray for professionalism amongst friends.

She made me do a few runway walks across the room, and a couple deep squats, just to prove I could. “You want me to balance on one leg and juggle torches next?”

The good doctor ignored me. “Looks like your range of motion is almost back to normal. You might have some pain in cold or rainy weather, though.” She leaned against the sink and gave me that thoughtful look. I hated that look. Nothing good ever followed that look. “That’s a helluva scar collection you have going, you know.” Crap. It was this conversation.

I glanced down. My legs, aside from the most recent acquisition, were unscarred. There were, of course, the lovely claw marks down my left side from armpit to hip, a constant reminder that I was most definitely human. There were also the other minor ones I’d collected over the last few years. They were nothing grossly disfiguring, but they were probably not the kind of scars a security consultant should have. Since no one was actually sure what a security consultant did, no one called me on it. “Chicks dig scars, right?”

Bridget shook her head, the friend gone and the doctor firmly in place. “The older you get, the more your body is going to hate you. Maybe you ought to think of slowing down some, while you’re still healthy.”

“I’m thirty-two, Bridge. Not a hundred thirty-two.”

“You want to live to see thirty-five?”

Of course I wanted to. The odds of it, though? Not good. I accepted that a long time ago. The samurai fears not death, only a bad death. “You know, Cole’s a cop, and no one gives him this shit.”

“Cole doesn’t have four ICU stays under his belt.”

“I’m not going to argue this with you again, Bridge.” She was a friend, yes. But even friends have limits.

“Mira and Anna—”

“Mira and I have talked about it,” I said in my best end-of-discussion voice. In fact, we’d talked and screamed and thrown things. . . . Yeah, it had been discussed—at length. “And they will always be taken care of.”

Her jaw clenched, and I could hear her teeth grinding. I have that effect on a lot of women. “Fine. But as your doctor, I’m obligated to tell you to slow down.” She threw my pants at me, smacking me in the chest. Trying to catch them, I dropped the sheet, and there was a scramble to cover myself with something, anything. Bridget smirked. “And as your friend, I’m reminding you that Mira says not to forget your mom’s birthday present.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” I muttered, dressing after the doc left the room. Was there anyone Mira hadn’t told? This was getting ridiculous.

I wandered back out to the front to find Bridget at the receptionist’s desk again and three people in the waiting room. The doc glanced up at me once. “I’ve got you down for another checkup in a month, Jess. Keep doing the therapy; maybe get some swimming in this summer.”

That earned a grimace. I don’t swim. I do sink rather well, though. “I’ll see what I can manage.”

She grabbed my hand when I went to leave and lowered her voice. “God watches out for you, Jess. I firmly believe that. But you can’t keep testing him this way.” She had that look in her gray eyes, the one that said she truly believed. How my wife the witch and this devout Catholic became best friends, I will never know.

“You worry too much, Doc.” No doubt, she would spend her next visit with Mira detailing just what kind of a worthless sumbitch I was. There were times when I wondered if she was right.

The sun was bright when I walked out into the parking lot. There wasn’t a cloud in the steel blue sky, and it looked as if that sky went on forever. Sometimes I wondered how the world could look so cheerful, knowing what horrible things existed there. Then I thought of people like Bridget—good people, with faith in a greater power, in absolute good. I hoped I wouldn’t let them down.

12

As I was clambering into my truck, my hip buzzed. I was learning to hate my cell phone. It never brought good news. There was some wriggling involved, but I finally got it out of my pocket. “Hello?”

“Dawson.” In just that single word, I could hear defeat in the old Ukrainian’s gravelly voice. My stomach tied itself in knots in anticipation of bad news.

“Hey, Ivan. What’s the word?” I rolled the window down and got comfortable. It wasn’t like anyone needed my parking spot.

“Is there to be any chance that you are to be hearing from Archer, of late?”

I frowned at the odd question. I’d met Guy Archer only once, and we weren’t what I would call close. He was a stocky man with black hair graying at the temples, stick-straight posture, a faint French accent. Stoic didn’t even begin to describe his expression. Ex-military, I thought, or possibly Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In plaid shirts, blue jeans, and worn work boots, he looked like a lumberjack, and he bore that impression out when I saw him pin a playing card to a tree trunk with a thrown hatchet. Lumberjacks did that kind of thing, right?

We had exchanged nods and not much else. I stuck to the United States mostly, and Guy sat up there in Toronto, doing his own thing. Miguel, yeah, I kept in touch with him, but Guy—not so much. “No, not for months. Why?” There was a long silence on the other end of the line. “Ivan? You still there?”

“I was to be managing to receive one message from Grapevine. Archer was to be checking in last week. He has not.”

Ice ran down my spine, despite the rapidly warming day. “Maybe he just forgot.”

“Maybe. But I am not believing that. Neither are you.”

He was right. I didn’t believe it for an instant. You always made your check-in call. Always. Ivan drilled it into our heads from the moment he turned up on our doorsteps. “In this day of technology miracles, there is no reason we are to be fighting alone.” There was no acceptable excuse for missing a check-in.

Champions died. It was a fact of our existence. But in the last four years, we’d lost three total. To lose two, within weeks of each other? It was unthinkable. And these weren’t rookies, either. Both men were experienced fighters. “What the hell is going on, Ivan?”

“I am not to be knowing.” That baritone voice quavered. I think that was when I really knew it was bad. Ivan had seen it all. Nothing was supposed to shake him.

“Did you ever find Miguel’s weapon?”

He took a deep breath, causing static on the line. It gave us both a moment to collect ourselves. I was getting more scared by the moment. Ivan was our rock. If he was crumbling, the rest of us were in deep shit. “Ah . . . that. It is possible that mystery is to being solved. Miguel’s younger brother is to also be missing.”

That was supposed to solve the mystery? “And?”

“We are believing that Miguel’s contract was for the machete to be delivered to the brother. If Miguel has perished, perhaps he has taken it and gone in pursuit of Miguel’s soul.”

That made sense, in an incredibly stupid teenager kind of way. For Miguel’s family, demon hunting was in the blood. To hear Miguel tell it, they’d done it since before the Christians conquered the Aztecs.

Of course, the kid was also next in a family who had a history of getting eaten by demons. I might have bugged out, too, at that age.

“Shit, he’s what, thirteen?”

“Seventeen.” Easily old enough to get himself killed and have his soul stolen. Also old enough to know he didn’t want to die like that.

“And you still don’t know who Miguel worked for last?”

“There are leads I am to be tracing. It is being difficult, from here. Signals are bad, in the hills, and the power is not to being steady.”

“You gotta find that kid, Ivan. If he has gone hunting, he knows who Miguel was working for.” And he was about to be in way over his head.

“I am to be trying my best. I fear it is to be taking time we do not have.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Please, let there be something I could do. I hated sitting here, thousands of miles away, feeling useless.

“You said you were to be having a mission?”

For me, they were paying clients. For Ivan, they were missions to save worthy souls. I won’t even get into Ivan’s objections to me charging money for what I do. “Yeah, here in town.”

“Do not be taking it.”

I sighed and resisted the urge to bang my head against my steering wheel. The black marks on my skin proved it was already too late for that. “The contract’s already set. I can’t back out now. But I’ve got two weeks until the challenge. I’m in no immediate danger.”

“How powerful is it to being?”

“It’s a Skin.”

“A what?” Okay, so not everyone is up on my lexicon.

“A beast type. A wolf-hyena thing big enough that I could ride it to work.”

He said something that was undoubtedly a Ukrainian curse. “I am to be coming there, then. As soon as I am to be finished here. Things are to being very wrong.”

“Do you need me to track down any of the others, make sure they’re all accounted for?” I’d met three champions, besides myself and Ivan. I had no doubt that two of those were dead now. The rest . . . their names and contact information lay within Grapevine, and though they were only pixels on a screen for me, I’d do anything in my power to protect them.

“Tak. That would be most helpful. Do be telling them do not take on more missions until I am giving the word.”

I scratched my jaw. It itched where I’d shaved. “You think something’s taking a swipe at us?” Immediately, the blue Ford Escort leapt to mind. Yeah, something was after us.

“It is not to being possible. The contracts must be followed. They cannot to be attacking without permission.” He said it forcefully, as if sheer will would make it so.

In all honesty, it should have been true. Rule number one: A person had to consent to any harm a demon brought him. There was no such thing as an unwilling victim; unwitting, yes, but never unwilling. That rule was older than anyone’s memory, and inviolable—until now.

“Well, ’til we figure this out, you watch your own back. Nothing would cripple us faster than losing you.”

He sounded grim when he said, “Tak. I am to be realizing this more and more.” I didn’t like the sound of that. “I will to be calling you at this time tomorrow, if not to being earlier.”

“If you don’t, I’m hopping a plane to Mexico.”

He chuckled faintly, but it was forced. “God to be watching over you, Dawson. Whichever one will to be having you.”

“You, too, Ivan.”

I sat in my truck for a long time after I hung up the phone. Some random, unidentifiable birds hopped around the parking lot, picking tasty tidbits out of the asphalt. There was no breeze, but the day hadn’t yet hit that mugginess of which Missouri summers are capable. A multitude of cars drove up and down the busy street just beyond the parking lot, the drivers oblivious to the world changing right under them.

None of them knew two particular men were dead. Though an infinitely small drop in a huge bucket, those two men had fought all their lives to protect people they’d barely known. They had shed blood countless times for no other reason than it was the right thing to do.

Only last summer, Mira and I had gone to Mexico for Miguel’s wedding, and he had presented his beautiful new bride to us. His whole face glowed when he looked at her. I felt the same way when I looked at Mira. Now Rosaline was a widow, joining the growing ranks of women who were collateral damage in the battle between good and evil. Miguel also left behind his mother, three brothers, and who knew how many nieces and nephews.

Guy . . . I didn’t know Guy. Was there a Mrs. Lumberjack? Did he leave behind a family to mourn him or a child who would never know him? Or was he just one of the many nameless, faceless disappearances in the world? Would anyone have known, if Ivan didn’t keep track of us all?

Fame, glory . . . A Jedi craves not these things; a samurai doesn’t, either. But a part of me wanted to go grab some random person, shake him until his teeth rattled, and scream, “Don’t you know, don’t you care what these people have sacrificed, all for you?”

I was angry—angry at Miguel and Guy for not seeing a trap coming, because surely that’s what had to have happened; angry at the forces of Hell, for taking two good men away; angry at the forces of Heaven, too, if such a thing existed, for allowing Hell to happen in the first place; furious with myself for the black brand covering my right arm. Without that, I could have gone looking myself. But no, instead my soul was in the keeping of some metaphysical escrow agent for another two weeks. Without something to bargain with, there was nothing I could do.

I gripped my steering wheel until my knuckles went white, taking breath after breath to calm myself down. It wasn’t fair. The good guys were supposed to win. I punched the center of the steering wheel, and my dead horn gave a sad attempt at a chirp.

When I’m upset, there’s only one place I want to be.

I slammed my poor truck through the gears faster than necessary, and she shuddered and groaned as I pulled out of the parking lot. Anything less than the speed of light was too slow to get me to my desired destination, so I’d have to be content with what I could get out of the aging vehicle.

The drive gave me time to calm down. It also gave me time to watch for a blue Ford Escort that never appeared. Great, now I was pissed off, and completely paranoid. How comforting.

The Westport district, trendy and upscale, was fairly quiet on a weekday. Dotted with small shops and galleries, it easily seemed quaint, even touristy. The bars and clubs would light the night later, of course, and hordes of on-the-prowl singles would be out exploring the wonders of the opposite sex. You could find everything from Irish pubs and classy microbreweries to sports bars and actual dives, complete with sticky seats and questionable cleaning practices. But at the moment, I had very little traffic to contend with as I skirted the outer edges.

There were no open parking spaces on the street in front of Mira’s shop, so I whipped through the alley, around the back of the building, and into the tiny, oddly shaped parking lot. There was barely room back there for Mira’s car and that of her coworker, let alone any customers. Parking was at a premium in Westport, where the buildings and streets had been fitted together like puzzle pieces in all shapes and sizes.

Around front, I glanced at the sign hanging over the sidewalk—proudly proclaiming SEVENTH SENSE in green vine-covered lettering—and dodged a departing customer as I came in the door. The bamboo chimes overhead clunked together softly. The aroma of some delicate incense wafted around me, and I tried to place just what fragrance it was—something light and flowery. Freesia, maybe? Yet another thing no self-respecting man should know.

The lower floor displayed an assortment of tools, artifacts, icons, and memorabilia for almost every religion found on the planet. There were pentacles, crosses of every style imaginable, Buddhas and Egyptian deities gazing down from any and all conceivable surfaces. The south wall was a fragrant cornucopia of incense and candles, herb sachets, and . . . hell, I didn’t know what half of it was—smelly stuff. The north wall was devoted to an assortment of cheerfully bubbling aquatic hangings and displays, the gurgle of water a pleasant counterpoint to the faint Celtic music in the background.

A wrought-iron staircase spiraled up to the second floor, barely more than a railed walkway lined with shelf upon shelf of books. There were books on Christianity, books on paganism, books on ghosts and ghoulies, and books on pet psychiatry. If you wanted it, and it was slightly off-kilter, Mira probably had it or knew where to get it.

Mira herself was behind the counter, ringing up yet another customer. Her dark curls were a loose cloud around her shoulders, and she was wearing a lavender sweater over a silk skirt, tie-dyed in swirling shades of teal and green. When she moved, she almost floated across the floor. She offered me a smile, letting me know she’d seen me. “How was the appointment, honey?”

“Oh, fine. She wants me back in a month.”

“You knew she would.” She shook her head with a chuckle, returning her attention to her patron.

Annabelle was not so restrained.

“Daddy!” She came shrieking out of the back room, and I swept her into my arms, holding her tightly. “You came to see me!”

“I sure did! Are you being good for Mommy?”

She nodded solemnly, and I glanced at Mira for confirmation. Never trust a five-year-old’s interpretation of “good.” Mira chuckled as she joined us. “She’s been fine. And you shaved!” She stroked her fingers down my cheek. “You know you still have to get your mother a birthday present, right? Losing the beard isn’t enough.”

I drew my wife close and held both my girls as tightly as I could for a moment. The scent of strawberries and Play-Doh overwhelmed the incense, and I buried my face in Anna’s fiery hair, just to breathe it in. Heartbeats passed, one . . . two . . . three. . . . I held them too long, too tight.

“Daddy, you’re squishing me!”

Mira leaned back and gave me a quizzical look. “Jess?”

Anna wiggled impatiently, and I stooped to set her on her feet. “Go play, kiddo.” She scampered off obediently. Mira was still giving me that look.

“Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.” It wasn’t, though. And in a world with so many wrongs, I just wasn’t ready for things to go more wrong. “Can you do me a favor when you get home tonight?”

“Sure.”

“Ward the house again.”

She frowned at me, those little creases forming around her eyes. “Why?”

“Just . . . humor me.” I couldn’t be with her every moment of every day. I couldn’t hire armed guards to protect her in my absence. I couldn’t put her in a pretty box and keep her safe for all time. All I had were the intangible, magical protections I couldn’t even touch.

Mira eyed me thoughtfully, chewing her lower lip, then craned her neck to see the upper floor. “Hey, Dee?”

Her one and only employee, Dee, glanced down from on high. The only word to describe Dee was jolly. I believe Dee was born smiling, and someday she’ll die, jiggling all over from irrepressible giggles, the beads in her cornrows clattering merrily. And there was a lot of her to jiggle. I don’t say that to be mean, but she was a large woman. Her dark eyes were always sparkling out of her equally dark face, and she had a heart big enough to go with the rest of her. “Yeah, Mir?”

“I’m gonna duck into the back room a second. Can you keep an eye on the door?”

“Sure thing!” Dee lumbered her way toward the spiral staircase, and for a moment, I wanted to linger just to see how she navigated it. Mira never gave me the chance, holding my hand prisoner as she dragged me into their storeroom, closing the door behind us.

It was truck day, and there were boxes stacked four high, leaving barely enough room for one person, let alone two. “You know she thinks we’re ducking back here for some nookie, right?”