Enchantment Emporium полностью

This changeling, though, except for pulling the old fairy gold scam, he appeared to be living Human. And living rough. Not only had trading lumps of what looked to be raw gold for cash gotten more complicated since the old days, but the cash it brought didn’t go far. If the glyphs on his scope hadn’t allowed him to see what his target truly was, he’d have dismissed him as a mutt dumped to fend for himself. His report on Joe’s pathetic existence had been enough to tag him no threat.

In retrospect, that might have been a mistake.

The Courts had to know what was going down by now. No way movement of that magnitude hadn’t been flagged. Generally, they didn’t give a crap about what happened in the MidRealm, but Joe was still of the blood, no matter how long he’d been gone, and damned near living on top of the epicenter. It was possible, however unlikely, they’d warned him.

It was possible Joe had taken that information straight to the new owner of the shop.

It would certainly explain why he’d been in there for so long.

He rattled the door of the newspaper box one last time—as an excuse to linger the damned things were near foolproof—gathered up his Herald, checked the sky, and headed west. His orders had been to find out what Alysha Gale knew, but he couldn’t do that as long as the changeling was with her. Joe was as suspicious as all hell just generally. In case the Courts hadn’t been in contact, the last thing he wanted to do was give him a reason to call home.

If it turned out Joe had told the Gale woman nothing of note, he wondered how they were going to keep it that way. The Courts were possessive of their own; taking out a pureblood would attract more unwanted attention from yet another source.

His right index finger squeezed the memory of a trigger. It was always harder when they looked Human.

The pie was rhubarb—not terribly surprising given the season. Joe devoured a second piece in spite of the two sandwiches and the large bowl of soup that came before it. They ate in the store, sitting on a pair of stools behind the counter, Allie flipping through her gran’s recipe book, wiping grease off her fingers to mark the entries that referred to the bottles in the cabinet.

All the Gale girls dabbled—there’d never been a school dance where one of them hadn’t spiked the punch—but this was on another scale entirely. Allie had a feeling it might be smartest to trade Gran’s recipes to one of the aunties for services rendered rather than risk the kind of disaster that had made her junior prom an object lesson in winging it.

“Joe, when do you start fading again?”

“Four weeks last Monday. Who wants to know?”

She tapped the page in front of her. “The person who’ll keep it from happening.”

“You?”

“What? You thought Gran was coming back from the grave to mix drinks? Metaphorically speaking, since there isn’t a grave or a body to put in one.”

He sighed and slid off the stool onto his feet. “Look, I did some stuff for her, but she didn’t even like me much, okay? So if you’re being nice to me because you think she was my friend, I should just go.”

“You should just sit.”

Looking a little surprised, he sat. The food as much as the potion had firmed up his edges. Remembering how he’d looked through the door, Allie came to a decision.

“Do you want a job?”

“What?”

“I need to find out what my grandmother is up to. That’s why I came here. If there’s a clue in the store, I’m going to have to weed through everything to try and find it. I can’t do that and deal with customers.”

“Customers?”

“We must have them,” Allie told him dryly. “Someone has to be buying all the yoyos.”

“Why don’t you just close the store while you search?”

“Because Gran left it to me to run.”

“But if it’s yours…”

“Is it?”

His gaze skittered past the shadows again.

Allie nodded. “Exactly. Minimum wage, flexible hours, one full meal a day provided. And I’ll pay you cash at the end of every shift.”

“You don’t even know me,” he sighed, and she could almost see him refusing to hope. “I could be a danger to you.”

“I trust you.”

“Because your grandmother said you could.”

“Not likely; I don’t trust her.” She nodded at his empty plate. “But you had a second piece of pie, and Aunt Ruth isn’t too happy about my being so far from home. She’s worried about me, and she’s worried I’ll give some of her girls ideas.” Allie’d been able to taste the charm with every bite. She wondered what she’d flushed with her mother’s pie.

He shifted as far from the sticky residue on the plate as the circumference of the stool would allow. “What if I had been a danger to you?”

“We wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Okay, then.” He looked like he was ready to bolt. “What if I don’t want to work for you?”

“Then don’t.”

“As simple as that, then?”

“Yes.”

“Can I think about it?”

“No.” When his eyes widened far enough to show whites all around, she sighed. “That was a joke.”