Dead and Gone
lip. Now that I was definitely over the intoxication of having a living relative, I had to face the fact that Niall’s behavior was charming (mostly) but unpredictable. By his own admission, he’d inadvertently put me at great risk. Maybe I should have wondered before this what my grandfather Fintan had been like. Niall had told me he’d watched over me without ever making himself known, an image that seemed creepy but touching. Niall was creepy and touching, too. Great-uncle Dillon just seemed creepy.
The temperature was dropping with the creeping darkness, and I was shivering by the time I went in the house. The hose might freeze tonight, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. There were clothes in the dryer, and I had to eat since I’d missed eating lunch at the mall. It was getting closer to suppertime. I had to concentrate on small things.
Amelia phoned while I was folding the laundry. She told me she was about to leave work and was going to meet Tray for dinner and a movie. She asked me if I wanted to come along, but I said I was busy. Amelia and Tray didn’t need a third wheel, and I didn’t need to feel like one.
It would have been nice to have some company. But what would I have done for social chitchat? Wow, that trowel slid into his stomach like it was Jell-O .
I shuddered and tried to think of what to do next. An uncritical companion, that was who I needed. I missed the cat we’d called Bob (though he hadn’t been born a cat and wasn’t one now). Maybe I could get another cat a real one. It wasn’t the first time I’d considered going to the animal shelter. I’d better wait until this fairy crisis was over before I did that. There wasn’t any point in picking out a pet if I was liable to be abducted or killed at any moment, right? Wouldn’t be fair to the animal. I caught myself giggling, and I knew that couldn’t be good.
Time to stop brooding; time to get something done. First, I’d clean off the trowel and put it away. I carried it to the kitchen sink, and I scrubbed it and rinsed it. The dull iron seemed to have a new gloss on it, like a bush that had gotten watered after a drought. I held it to the light and stared at the old tool. I shook myself.
Okay, that had really been an unpleasant simile. I banished the idea and scrubbed. When I thought the trowel looked spotless, I washed it and dried it all over again. Then I walked quickly out the back door and through the dark to hang the damn thing back in the toolshed on its designated hook.
I wondered if I might not get a cheap new trowel at Wal-Mart after all. I wasn’t sure I could use the iron one the next time I wanted to move some jonquil bulbs. It would feel like using a gun to pry out nails. I hesitated, the trowel poised to hang from its designated hook. Then I made up my mind and carried it back to the house. I paused on the back steps, admiring the last streak of light for a few moments until my stomach growled.
What a long day it had been. I was ready to settle in front of the television with a plate of something bad for me, watching some show that wouldn’t improve my mind at all.
I heard the crunching of a car coming up the driveway as I was opening the screen door. I waited outside to see who my caller might be. Whoever it was, they knew me a little, because the car proceeded around to the back.
In a day full of shocks, here was another: my caller was Quinn, who was not supposed to stick his big toe into Area Five. He was driving a Ford Taurus, a rental car.
“Oh, great ,” I said. I’d wanted company earlier, but not this company. As much as I’d liked and admired Quinn, this conversation promised to be just as upsetting as the day had been.
He got out of his car and strode over to me, his walk graceful, as always. Quinn is a very large shaved-bald man with pansy purple eyes. He is one of the few remaining weretigers in the world and probably the only male weretiger on the North American continent. We’d broken up the last time I’d seen him. I wasn’t proud of how I’d told him or why I’d done it, but I thought I’d been pretty clear about us not being a couple.
Yet here he was, and his big warm hands were resting on my shoulders. Any pleasure I might have felt at seeing him again was drowned by the wave of anxiety that swept over me. I felt trouble in the air.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I said. “Eric turned down your request; he told me so.”
“Did he ask you first? Did you know I
Weitere Kostenlose Bücher