Among the Living (Tyler G Book 1) (11 page)

There were a few cute nods then,
rapid things that left him feeling excited. It was the raw energy she held all
the time, he thought.

"No problem. Ang doesn't
sleep. He's a Dragon, so he wouldn't."

Then, as if that were a good
place to leave a conversation, the girl led them back to the mall at a run.

When he got into work, a few
minutes earlier than his personal deadline of one o'clock, Tyler noticed
something odd. It wasn't
truly
bizarre, just a green spiral notepad,
with his name written on the front in rather nice calligraphy. Tyler Gartner.
Zack was talking to a young girl across the room, so he opened the thing, not
getting the idea at first.

Inside there was an inscription,
in the same nice writing that the front had on it.

"This is a place to start.
Collect the information you get here, and I'll help you with the rest when you
fill the book." There was a D. underneath it. For Darla, no doubt. Zack's
mentor. The girl hadn't said what kind of stuff he'd be learning, but it was
probably demon related, since Zack wasn't that old, and the blonde had said she
was his aunt.

Whatever was going on across the
room, near the science fiction section wasn't going that well, it seemed. At
least the little girl, who was bit freaky seeming, was raising her voice. It
wasn't about anything wholesome like finishing her collection of American Girl
novels, either.

"We should rip her head off,
defile the corpse and have gnomes shit in her mouth." That came across
really clearly, though Zack didn't seem half as worked up. In fact he was
smiling gently, even when she turned and stomped like a child having a tantrum
directly toward him.

Tyler suddenly found himself
hoping the gnomes weren't in his near future. Also, he had to wonder if those
were real. There were Vampires and Shape Shifters, Succubi and other things
too. Bigfoot worked down the way and had a really nice truck, for instance. So
it was just possible that he was about to have his corpse defiled.

"You! Tell me, what would
you do if a man stole your pet dog?" It was a strange thing to ask, but Tyler
thought first, trying to remember that being polite thing. It probably meant
not being condescending to children, for one thing. After all, for all he knew
this one was Zack's mother or something.

"Um, I guess I'd try to get
it back."

That got the girl to stop for a
second and frown at him, then she leaned in, about three feet from him. It was
meant to be intimidating, he didn't doubt. It sort of worked too, since you didn't
expect kids to act like that.

"After you killed the guy,
right?" She spoke like he'd better agree with her, but he had to shake his
head.

"For just taking my pet? No.
I'd just get it back."

Her face turned slightly shrewd
then, rather than more upset.

"What if he'd been
raping
your dog?" It seemed totally wrong, coming from a glasses wearing eleven
year old face. The kid was really pale too, but moved too much to be a Vampire.
It was a subtle thing, but he could kind of tell the difference with most of
them.

"Oh. Well, then I guess I'd
make him stop, if I could."

"You mean kill him?"

He felt bad, and Zack was looking
at him like he shouldn't be talking at all, but Ty had to shrug.

"Yeah. I mean, I'd try to do
something else first, if I could, but that would probably end up being what
happened. Not that I could do that." Well, he'd killed before, in cold
blood, so he might be able to get it done, if he had to. "Has... Someone
hurt your dog?"

The little girl her blue eyes
shining with tears, nodded.

"My pet
Elth
. Taken
by The Storm. I came to get the Line Walker to help me take her back, and
punish her for the theft and harm done. That's only fair!"

Zack rolled his eyes a bit.

"It could also start a war.
We don't really need that kind of thing right now. We never do. Have you tried
asking
for Lettle back?"

"I don't have to ask! She's
my property! I swear, help me or I'll raise an army of the dead to destroy this
world, Line Walker. All worlds, if I have to!" She stomped her little
shiny shoes foot. It was out of place and reminded him of the snotty girl from
the old Willy Wonka movie. She even crossed her arms to show how upset she was.

Zack didn't seem impressed.

"Fine, I'll make a phone
call. Let's find out about this first, before assuming the worst. The Storm
isn't a nice being, but for one of us she's relatively sane. She
could
just be protecting Lettle from you. It's not like you're always calm and
reasonable all the time."

That got another foot stomp, but
a tiny smile too.

"Do it then." Almost
grumpily she went on then, "thanks. I guess. She's my favorite toy."

Zack turned to walk to his office
in the owl room, and the girl seemed to calm down, instantly. She didn't follow
the Greater Demon though, just pushing her hand out, to shake, like an adult.

"Anne. The Rotted."

Tyler responded smoothly enough
that it probably wasn't insulting, he hoped it wasn't anyway.

"Ty, The Clerk."

He meant it to be funny, but even
after touching him, which seemed to be when the Greater Demons got their
information about you, from what he'd noticed, the girl locked eyes with him.

"Nice to meet you, Clerk. Do
you think you could help me find some things I need? I can leave a list with
you. There's no immediate rush, and I can make the purchases myself, but it
will be faster to have someone else do the work of finding the items. I'll pay
you for it. One small favor?"

He didn't know how to respond,
but didn't know what kind of favor the girl thought she could do for him.

"How long is the list? How
hard will it be to find the things on it?"

"Four items, and middling
hard, or I wouldn't suggest that you do it instead of me." She looked at
him like he was stupid, which got him to snort at her and look away. He needed
to be polite, but that didn't mean being taken advantage of, did it?

"Um, if they're
middling
hard to find, then shouldn't it be a middling favor? Really, shouldn't that be
four of them? That only seems fair. You were just talking about things being
that way, so you have the concept."

The girl smiled at him like he
could actually get something for her, which he didn't know that he could
actually pull off. If you could buy it at Wal-Mart, then even a kid wouldn't
need his help. If not, then how was he supposed to do anything about it? Unless
they were books. Then it made sense.

She didn't look away, just
crossing her arms again.

"Two medium sized favors,
but I can reject them at the time. If so, you'll have to switch to something
else, later."

"Four items, four favors.
How about two medium, one large, and one small?" There was no way he could
tell what that meant, so it made sense to go big. The girl shook her head.

"That's too much for some
shopping, Clerk. How about this. Two medium favors, but if you do a good job,
I'll recommend your services to my friends, and send more work your way? You
have the Line Walker here, which should make it all a lot easier for you to
pull off. I'd use him, if you can. Sooner or later that option will be gone,
but for now he's very nearly a nice person."

"Fine. But if I can't find
them, then I can't. I'm not betting my soul or anything here. I just do the
work, or I don't." Ty had to guess that if he didn't find them all he
wouldn't get anything, but that was just business.

The girl nodded, happily enough.

"Excellent. Let me write up
what I need and where you might find it. Again, I just need the locations, and
how to find them. I'll do the actual buying. You haggle like a little girl, you
know that? You could have gotten three medium favors out of me if you tried
harder. I expect that to change, if I send anyone to you for this kind of
thing? Otherwise people will think I work with fools."

"All right?"

"Good! Now, let me
see."

She looked at his new notebook,
but put that down after reading the inscription, and used a piece of paper off
of a yellow legal pad. Without asking if it was something allowable, she
grabbed the high stool from behind the counter, and a pen, then wrote for a
while. Seeing that he wasn't needed and no one else was on the floor, he ran
over and pasted the out of service sign on one of the reading room doors.

When he got back the list was
there, which he glanced at, then tucked away in his pocket. It might not hurt
to help out little girls, but not one of the things there was a
book
,
which meant he needed to do his real work for the time being. Nor was there any
indication that she needed some spooge cleaned up. Ty was willing to bet that
Kait however
did
need something like that.

The rest of the day was
relatively boring, and probably a lot like a regular store was. The big change
up came at a bit before six, when a man that had walked to the back without
making eye contact came to the front, wearing a nametag. He was average sized,
being about five-ten, and probably fifty pounds heavier than Ty was. Not that
he was incredibly chunky or anything. A bit maybe, but not too bad. He had a
well trimmed brown beard and a red button up shirt on. Other than that, there
was nothing particularly interesting about the man. Except of course, that he
was smiling and seemed pleasant. That was kind of a thing to remember. His name
tag said he was Ben.

"Hey! You must be the new
man here?"

That got them to shake hands,
which still felt a bit strange to him.

"Tyler. You're Ben?" He
felt stupid saying it, but this could be a Greater Demon with Ben's name tag
on. How the hell was he supposed to know things like that?

"Yep. Let me get my till set
up. Did anyone show you how to count one down yet?"

They hadn't, and while it wasn't
hard at all, there were several people standing in the front of the place when
he finally came out with his bag, twenty minutes later. The blue thing was old,
and looked to be made of blue jean material. His mother had gotten it for him
about five years before, so there were patches on it in places. No one said
anything about that.

Calley was with Ginger, Eve, and
a trim Asian guy, who he was going to guess as being Ang, the Dragon Shifter.

Before he got to them, the small
man waved to him.

"I'm out back, in the
employee parking area. We don't really have room for everyone. It isn't an
extended cab." The words held a slightly cold, but reasonable sense to
them. At first Ty wondered if they were putting the man out, but Calley patted
him on the back and shook her head.

"No, it isn't anything like
that
.
Ang isn't a bigot or anything, Dragons just hate being too crowded. To that
end, I'll go to my place."

Eve nodded then, and looked
around.

"Ginger and I will run over.
We need to see about something near there anyway. Oh, I have a report for you,
once we get inside, Batman."

The casual use of the word meant
that Ginger was pulled in to tell the story of the day before, including what
he'd said, which got Calley to laugh.

"Bats
do
rule. That's
probably why they ran off like that."

It got a polite sounding chuckle,
and Ang to take him away. The man wasn't exactly a chatterbox in the truck, but
it didn't take that long to get to his house, either. His old place, now. His
mother was gone, but Eve and Ginger were already there when they pulled up.
Sitting on the front stoop.

Because
they
were just
that fast. It was hardly fair, if he was going to even think about things like
that. Ty decided not to. It wasn't like anyone expected him to run around at
hundreds of miles per hour or anything. Plus, now that he thought about it, how
did they do that without making sonic booms?

Ang didn't get out of the truck,
which he took to be about not wanting to load up things for hours, but the
truth was, all he needed was his bed and some clothing. The rest of it could
either stay, or more likely, end up in the trash. Well, he wanted his radio.
His books too. Grinning, and trying not to act like a total moron, he jogged to
the door, and let the two girls in.

Rather than get things set up to
move instantly, Eve put her hand out, and whispered to him.

"We got most of Robs' group
last night, so they won't be around to bother Tara. He got away, with his two
top people. That probably won't be a problem for you, since they know that Bey
is in town. Most of the Vampires he goes for just die, so the rest tend to run
and hide if they can. Still, we need to move Tara tonight. Actually, I can take
her to a safe place now, after we get your things in the truck. Here, don't
help, just point." That was awkward, but he didn't have any nudie
magazines, or cool sex toys, so the truck was loaded about the same time he
actually pointed to what he was taking with him.

It left his bedroom open and
empty, with only a closet and a dresser left. That and a girl laying dead on
the floor. The pale white corpse didn't stir at all, even when Eve picked her
up.