Page 32 of The Fantastic Fluke

“That’s so sweet. Not necessary, but sweet.”

He looked me over, and I wondered if I still looked like a petulant door-slamming teenager who’d just gotten in a fight with his father about his work ethic. “Still got the fox, I see,” he said, looking at Fluke with bemusement.

Fluke, for his part, sat down next to me and jutted his head into the air, chin high, watching David down his nose. Weirdo.

“Yeah, I guess no one has reported him missing yet.” Yet, my ass. If they hadn’t, it wasn’t likely they would. No, whoever his mage was, they were probably dead. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t just tell David that, but something about it felt wrong. “We dropped by the registration office today,” I assured him.

“Nothing on the board?” he asked, and looked Fluke over, like he was searching for obvious markings.

I didn’t point out the way his legs were a shade darker than his back and head, and that made me frown at my own selfishness. Would I really steal Fluke from the mage he was supposed to be with? What kind of mage kept someone else’s familiar? But every part of me insisted that Fluke was with me. He was my friend. He didn’t want to leave.

Next to me, he sneezed.

I grinned down at him. “You okay, buddy? How about we open up those treats?”

That got his attention. He hopped to his feet, tail swishing with excitement.

I headed for the counter, where I’d left the bag, and addressed David at the same time. “I’ll keep checking, but it kind of looks like whoever had him before isn’t going to come forward. He’s obviously tame since he doesn’t have a problem with dog food, but there hasn’t been a peep from anyone about him.”

David shrugged it off, but I could tell he was still uneasy. He probably dealt with assholes like me who stole other mage’s familiars all the time. “That wasn’t what I came down about anyway. I was just worried. The employees at the coffee shop were pretty shaken up, and they said you were the closest person to the victim.”

“Kurt,” I told him. “His name was Kurt.” I stopped, hip leaned against the counter, and scrubbed a hand down my face. “Yeah, I guess I was closest. It—it was bad.”

Fluke leaned on my leg, not whining and looking for treats, but just staring up at me. I decided to willfully misinterpret it as a demand for food and reached for the treats, opening the bag and pulling out two of them. He hadn’t been begging, but he clearly wasn’t going to turn down offered treats. Oddly, however, he didn’t eat them. He picked them up, delicately, and went over to set them on the couch, right next to Gideon, before coming back to my side. Like Gideon would protect them for him, and he could go back later.

Gideon looked like the gunslinger I’d initially taken him for. He was wearing a hat he hadn’t been before, pulled low over his eyes, and glaring at David like the guy had pissed in his coffee. For fuck’s sake, his hand was on his thigh next to his damned gun. He couldn’t shoot anyone, what with being dead, but that was ridiculous. David wasn’t going to arrest me or anything. He couldn’t even see Gideon.

I turned back, trying to come up with some reason David should go. He was usually one of my favorite customers, but I didn’t have time for it today. I had enough stress in my life without having someone around who annoyed Gideon.

“Anyway,” he said, and I wondered if he was going to do the job for me. “I was just worried about you. That guy—ah, Kurt—Kurt wasn’t the first mage that’s happened to recently. So I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

I blinked in shock. “He was a mage? I didn’t—and it’s happened to other—” I broke off, gaze falling to the floor as the thoughts raced through my head, one after another, leading to a single, inevitable conclusion. “You suspect foul play.”

David gave a tiny grimace but didn’t deny it.

The bell over the door jingled again and a woman walked in.

David’s brows shot up, and he asked, “Mrs. Merton?”

“Lina,” she corrected with a tentative smile. “I didn’t expect to find you down here, Quaesitor.”

“The young woman who works at your counter told me Sage was at the shop when the incident happened. I didn’t expect to see you here, either.” He offered her a parody of his usual smile that didn’t reach his eyes. His whole face was like a pleasant mask, bland and emotionless, and a shiver crawled down my back at the exchange.

Fucking creepy.

She returned his smile with one just as empty and fake, and motioned toward me. “I recognized him when he was in the shop this morning,” she told him, voice an octave higher than when she’d entered, then turned to me. “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I overheard you talking to your friend the other day and didn’t recognize you until this morning. You don’t leave your shop very often.”

Even more than David’s general... David-ness, she got Gideon’s attention. I caught movement from the corner of my eye and turned in time to watch him lean forward on the couch, pinning her with his sharp gaze.

“No,” I agreed, tearing my attention away from Gideon and back to her. “I don’t. Sometimes I think I spend all my time here or at home.”

She giggled, and that came back into the realm of a natural sound. “Me too. It’s the danger of owning your own business that everyone warns you about, but you never think will happen to you.”

No one had ever warned me about any such thing—or warned me about anything in general, really—but I smiled and nodded.

“Anyway, I—” she paused and glanced at David, then back at me. “Like I said, I heard you with your friend, and you mentioned wanting to sell ‘the shop.’ I didn’t realize you were the person who owned the bookstore, and that the shop wasthis shopuntil I saw you today.”

David turned to look at me, a little sad and all serious. “You’re selling the shop?”

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