“Your grandmother told me once that nine out of ten people throw away the answer all unawares like.” Joe closed the trapdoor and straightened, arching his back. “She also said nine out of ten people don’t know what the fuck the question is.” He turned, cupped both hands over his corduroy-covered crotch and scowled at his reflection in the mirror, his ears suddenly redder than his hair. “I hate it when it does that!”
Allie glanced over. “That’s why it does it. For the reaction.”
“It doesn’t bother you, then?”
She shrugged. “I have a lot of cousins; if you freak at a live frog in your lunch bag, next time it’s pepper in your pompoms.”
“What in your what?”
“Pepper in your pompoms.” Allie pointed at the mirror now showing her reflection in full cheerleader rig. “Red and gold,” she corrected, and the colors changed. “Most of the Gale girls are cheerleaders in high school. Even Gran.”
“Scary thought,” Joe muttered following her back into the store.
“We’re less scary when we’re young.”
“Differently scary.”
“Fair enough. Auntie Jane says Gran was deadly with a field hockey stick.”
“Actually deadly?”
“It’s always safer not to make assumptions.” She slipped back behind the counter. “No customers while we were gone. No surprise.” Although the traffic along 9th Avenue was steady, the sidewalks were empty.
“I should go.” Joe headed for the door. “Your grandmother didn’t like me hanging around all day.”
“Gran’s not here.” When Joe turned to check the shadows, Allie managed to keep her eyes locked on him rather than join in the search. Just managed. “Listen, if you could stay just a little longer, I could get started checking this place for…” She examined and discarded a couple of descriptive phrases that would have gotten her mouth washed out with soap at a much younger age. “… less than normal merchandise.”
“Like the monkey’s paw?”
“Hopefully not.”
“There’s that velvet Elvis.” He nodded toward the box.
“I saw.”
“It’s like its eyes follow you.”
“Optical illusion.”
“If you say so. The thing creeps me the fuck out.”
“Okay, that’s…” Her phone rang before she could finish.
“Your mother says Catherine’s crucial business is a junk shop,” Auntie Jane announced without preamble.
“That’s right, but…”
“Ha!” she said, and hung up.
“Auntie Jane.” Allie slipped her phone back into her pocket. “Long-distance mocking.” His shrug suggested he didn’t care. “So, are you staying? I’ll throw in lunch.”
“Lunch?”
“The meal in the middle of the day. I’m a good cook. I was thinking grilled cheese sandwiches, a bowl of homemade tomato soup…” Gran may have gone wild, but she was still a Gale. The pantry was full of canning. “… and pie.”
He rolled his eyes. “Grilled cheese sandwiches aren’t exactly hard to cook.”
“You don’t have to stay.” She tried to sound like she didn’t care either way and suspected she’d failed dismally. Joe wasn’t just a connection to her missing grandmother, he was the only person she knew in Calgary.
“What kind of pie?”
“I don’t know yet.” She pulled another bill out of the cashbox. “We can start with more coffee.”
“I’m not staying all day, mind. I’ve got things to do.”
“Okay.”
Joe tugged the bill from her hand. “You want another muffin with that?”
The charms the old woman had put on the windows were still in effect. He could see the reflection of the street-traffic passing, the storefront directly opposite, himself in ballcap and dark glasses struggling to get a paper from the box—but nothing past the glass. His employer hadn’t liked that Joe O’Hallan had been hanging around the old woman, his concern only slightly tempered by the evidence that Catherine Gale had barely tolerated the changeling. He really wouldn’t appreciate him striking up a friendship with this new Gale and, unless Joe had snuck out the back way, he’d been in there for hours.
He’d trailed Joe for three days back after he’d first shown up, his employer suspicious of anything that might interfere with him building a power base in the city. There was a danger inherent in tracking purebloods—some of them literally had eyes in the backs of their heads, and they very much disliked interference in their business. Where disliked meant if caught, expect to be ripped limb from limb. Leprechauns like the changeling were not only nasty little sons of bitches, but they’d taken to Human weapons like cops took to Timmy’s. They might throw a curse of seven years of bad luck but were just as likely to pull a submachine gun from a convenient pocket universe and use the spray of bullets like a scythe, cutting anyone they’d caught trailing them off at the ankles, leaving them to flop around in shock, and eventually bleed to death. He figured all that attitude had something to do with them being the shortest out of the box.
The trick was not to get caught.
He was very good at what he did.
