Secret Worlds (525 page)

Staring back up at the window I was surprised to see nothing but the reflection of the restaurant and the empty street outside. No boogey men loomed beyond the glass.

“You ready to order?” the man behind the register asked, his dark brows drawn together in a disapproving frown.

Scrambling to pick up the silverware I had knocked on the floor, I was shaking so badly that I only succeeded in knocking over a glass, spilling water and ice cubes all over the table and floor.

“Shit!” I hissed, looking around frantically for something to sop up the water.

A young woman in a white apron bustled over with a rag, offering me a small, thin-lipped smile as she began mopping up my mess while the man behind the counter looked on with a scowl and my bodyguard let out a snorting chuckle.

Riley the klutz strikes again!

“Sorry,” I muttered, feeling my cheeks warm with embarrassment. The waitress just smiled again and nodded, pushing my hands out of the way as she gathered up the spilled ice in the rag. Since my help was obviously neither wanted nor needed, I straightened and took a step back.

“You ready to order?” the man at the register asked again, though the stiffness of his voice clearly stated that he’d be much happier if I just stopped making a mess and got the hell out of his restaurant.

“Ah, no. I think I lost my appetite,” I said, backing away towards the rear entrance. His scowl deepened as I backed away slowly, watching me closely as I wove my way through the tables to make sure I didn’t cause anymore destruction.

Once I was halfway to the back hallway I turned and fled, rounding the corner so fast that I slid across the floor, careening into the wall with an “Oomph!” The guard standing at the bottom of the stairs smirked at my less than graceful arrival; I had no doubt his buddy in the restaurant had already filled him in on my little panic attack. Slowing to a walk, I lifted my chin high and carried on towards the stairs, refusing to let him see just how embarrassed I was.

“…has a right to know, Darius. You have to tell her,” Alyssa was saying as I came up the stairs, slightly out of breath and still red-faced.

“No, I don’t,” Holbrook replied, his icy tone leaving no room for argument.

“Tell who what?” I asked breathlessly, resting a hand on the doorframe.

They froze for an instant and then sprang apart like a pair of teenagers caught making out.

“No one. Nothing,” he answered, avoiding my gaze.

Alyssa frowned, pursing her kissable lips disapprovingly, but didn’t say anything else about whatever they had been arguing over.

“So, what happened?” she asked instead, pressing a gauze pad over the oozing mess of his palm.

“Glamour charm exploded.”

“Must’ve been pretty powerful.”

“Where would you even find something with that much juice?” I asked, keeping my distance.

“Are you asking me? Darius would know more about that than I would,” she replied with what looked like a spiteful twitch of her lips.

He frowned, audibly grinding his teeth. “No. I wouldn’t,” he said, glaring at her.

“Well…” Alyssa said slowly, wrapping a bandage around his hand. “There are several practitioners around town putting out glamour charms, but I can only think of a couple who have the ability to make one as strong as this one must’ve been. You’re looking for one of the Grave sisters. They sell their charms out of The Sage Brush over on Colfax.”

“Sage Brush. Colfax. Got it,” I said, still puzzling over the mounting animosity between them.

“Am I good to go?” Holbrook asked stiffly once Alyssa had secured the bandage with a couple of butterfly clips.

“Yes, you should be fine,” she answered with a sigh.

Turning away from him under the guise of clearing up the pile of soiled gauze, she tried to hide her face behind the fall of her hair, but I caught a clear glimpse of the hurt and disappointment on her face, and once again wondered what the hell had passed between them. Holbrook’s earlier spitefulness hinted at some of what might have happened, but I had a feeling there was more to their story than what met the eye.

Turning towards me, still refusing to look me in the eye, Holbrook collected his jacket from the bed I had occupied just the day before, and shrugged it on over stiff shoulders. “Let’s go.”

Dazed by his brusque manner, I fell into step behind him, and was already on the threshold of the door when Alyssa rushed across the room towards me, enveloping me in her arms.

“Be careful, Riley,” she said earnestly, squeezing me hard.

“Er, sure,” I replied, wondering at the tearful edge to her voice.

Hugging her awkwardly, I waited several moments before easing myself out of her grip. Offering her a halfhearted wave, I traipsed down the stairs after Holbrook who was already halfway out the door that led to the tiny parking lot behind the building.

“What happened to the take-out?” he asked as we settled into the SUV.

“Oh, ah…you know, I think I saw a rat in the kitchen,” I replied, feigning disgust as a shudder of fear ran through me at the memory of Samson’s face superimposed over my reflection.

I DIDN’T REALIZE Loki had decided he wanted to come with us to talk to the purveyor of The Sage Brush until he had jumped down out of the SUV, and was already trotting across the sidewalk to the door. He may be a cat, but he tends to exhibit some very un-catlike behavior. Oftentimes he seems more like a dog than a cat, and other times I swear that he is looking at me with human intelligence. He’s a peculiar creature, but then again, I suppose I don’t fit into the niche society has crafted for me either.

Needless to say, I’d been taken aback when he foreswore the litter box I provided when he first entered my life, but that paled in comparison to the shock I’d experienced when he opted to use the toilet instead. I’d assumed that it was something his previous owners had trained him to do, just as they were the ones who had chosen the name Loki inscribed on the golden tag hanging from his collar. He’d ceased to wear the collar a long time ago, but maintained his refusal to use a litter box. In addition to his peculiar bathroom habits he’d made it quite clear that he wasn’t all that interested in eating kitty kibble, and was far more content to eat whatever I did. Having tried a handful of kibble out of pure curiosity, I couldn’t say that I blamed him. I wouldn’t want to eat that crap either.

Unperturbed by the noise of traffic whizzing by on Colfax, he sauntered to the bright purple door and waited for Holbrook and me to join him. In their SUV parked behind ours, Collins and Hill looked on with matching expressions of bewilderment.

“What does he think he’s doing?” Holbrook asked as he came around to my side of the SUV. From the expression on his face I figured he wasn’t sure if he should laugh or be irritated.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I replied, shrugging as I pushed away from the car to retrieve him. Despite his varied skills, as far as I knew, Loki hadn’t figured out how to work door handles. Yet. I had the feeling that if he ever did I’d be royally screwed.

Gathering him into my arms, I nuzzled the thick fur around his neck, breathing in the familiar scent of him. “Sorry, buddy. You need to wait in the car.”

I had no doubt that if cats could frown he would have been giving me the most irritated scowl possible when I cradled him against my chest and went back to the car. Usually a laid back kind of guy, I was surprised when he began to squirm like a greased pig in my arms and clawed his way up over my shoulder to jump down to the pavement. Lifting his tail high in the air he strode to the shop’s door, and once again waited for someone to obligingly open it for him.

“Looks like he’s dead set on going in,” I said to Holbrook, rubbing my shoulder where his claws had left a set of throbbing furrows in my flesh.

Sharing a baffled look, we shrugged at one another and approached the store. The door opened with a merry tinkle of bells, and we were greeted by soft Celtic music. In contrast to the steel grey clouds scudding across the sky, the inside of The Sage Brush was warm and airy. The wide, roughhewn wooden planks, worn smooth to a brilliant luster by the passage of many feet over the years, reminded me of home. But rather than filling me with a pang of longing, the familiarity of the place brought a reminiscent smile to my lips. A multitude of crystals, wind chimes, and mobiles hung from the ceiling, the lights overhead shining through them to cast fractured rainbows of light everywhere.

Just inside the door, several sticks of incense were perfuming the air with the decadent scents of sandalwood and patchouli. Brightly colored silks, saris, and tapestries adorned almost every available surface, lending the shop a lush and exotic atmosphere. Combined with the heady fragrance of the incense, I felt as though I had been transported to some faraway land where the sun was blistering hot and the air was forever perfumed with spicy aromas. All the shop needed to complete the appearance of a luxurious Bedouin tent was a mountain of silk pillows and rugs strewn across the floor.

A long wooden counter reminiscent of an old grocer’s, complete with an ancient cast iron register, ran almost the full length of the far wall. Several glass topped display cases sat on the counter with a multitude of necklaces, pendants, rings, and bracelets nestled inside on a bed of black velvet. They looked innocuous enough, but even from across the room I felt the heavy pull of their energy. There were at least two dozen charms on display, some of them quite powerful if their almost hypnotic pull was anything to go by, yet the two figures at the counter didn’t exhibit any signs that they were aware of the effect. One of them was stretched out along the counter’s surface, and was possibly the largest cat I’d ever seen.

I’d always considered Loki to be a large cat—the last time I had wrestled him to the vet he’d clocked out at 22lbs—but he looked small and delicate as a kitten compared to the creature asleep on the counter. A long and bushy pale yellow and white stripped tail twitched as the cat slept, no doubt dreaming of chasing mice. Or, more likely, elephants.

Holy crap. That’s not a cat, that’s a damn Shetland pony!

The man lounging behind the counter was equally unusual looking, appearing to have stepped straight off the set of
Gangster Squad
. Dressed in a light blue button-front shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows and a dark grey vest he looked as though he belonged in late 1940s’ Los Angeles rather than a charms shop in downtown Denver. The only aspect of his appearance that went against the gangster motif was the dark brown hair that fell well past his shoulders.

There was also a sense of something otherworldly about him, unrelated to his antiquated style of dress. Watching him lean against the counter, his stubble-covered chin resting on one hand while he flipped through a comic book, I struggled to puzzle out what it was about him that tugged at something in the back of my brain. Maybe it was that he was easily at least six foot four, or maybe it was the fine tracery of faint, almost opalescent, scars that covered his hands and forearms.

At the sound of our footsteps, eyes the color of roiling thunderheads rose to regard us, the sheer weight of his presence crashing into me like a physical blow, making me stumble. He looked to be only a few years older than me, and yet there was something lurking in the depths of his eyes that held the weight of centuries. The scent of ozone, heat, and something akin to burnt feathers flowed off him, mingling with the incense filling the air to create a heady perfume that was utterly mesmerizing.

Whatever he was, he wasn’t human, and I was sure I’d never met one of his ilk before.

“Can I help you folks find something?” he asked as he brushed a long trail of hair away from his face. The weight of his eyes passed over me as he took us in, seemingly unconcerned by Loki’s presence.

“I’m looking for some information on a couple charms,” Holbrook said, striding forward.

“We carry the usual fare you’ll find most places, and a few more specialized items. Are you looking for something in particular? Some heat charms? A stay dry spell? They’ve been our biggest sellers lately.”

“No, I actually want to know about a couple specific charms you might have sold to someone else,” Holbrook said as he fished his badge out of his jacket and laid it down on the counter.

“FBI, huh? Well, Agent, if they were bought here, I’ll be able to tell you.”

“And you are?”

“Killian Hunter,” he replied, though he didn’t offer to shake Holbrook’s hand.

“Do you own the place?”

“No, my landlady owns the joint, but I work most of the shifts now that she’s getting older,” he said, his tone sorrowful as if the thought of his boss aging was heartbreaking. “Which charms did you want to know about?”

“We’re looking for a pretty powerful glamour charm,” Holbrook said. “A woven band worn around the wrist.”

“He had to have been wearing something for pain too,” I piped up from my position just inside the door. “There was no way he was strutting around without any pain after the ass-whooping I gave him. And there was the weirdness with Santos, like he wasn’t seeing what was really there.”

Killian quirked an eyebrow at my words, but chose not to say anything. I just shrugged my shoulders in reply to the unspoken question as if to say “the bastard deserved it.” Moving to stand beside Holbrook I was glad to see that Loki was sticking close to me. I wasn’t in the mood to be scouring every inch of the place looking for him when it was time to leave.

“A persuasion charm, perhaps?” Killian offered as he reached beneath the counter and withdrew a large, leather-bound tome.

He extended a long, slender finger to prod the cat, who at some point had awoken, and was now watching us with gleaming yellow eyes, ushering him off the counter.

“Get down, Ash.”

Emitting a meow that spoke clearly of his displeasure at being roused, the large cat made a show of stretching and yawning, before stalking to the end of the counter where he sprawled out once more.

Rolling his eyes at the dramatics, Killian muttered “pain in the ass” and laid the book on the counter with a muffled thump. The massive book would have looked as at home in a museum as it did in his long-fingered hands, and I was overcome with the urge to touch its lustrous leather cover. The leather creaked as he opened it towards the middle and began flipping through the pages. Curiosity made me lean closer, eyeing the thick paper that held the almost metallic tang of ink. It was a ledger, one that looked like it had been maintained for decades, if not longer, each entry written in the same looping script. Reaching the most recent entries Killian ran a finger along the edge of the page, his eyes tracking down the columns.