Page 12 of Cheater Slicks

“I’m not sure.” Sometimes there was no substitution for boots on the ground when you had to locate someone—or someones. “Do you have any better ideas?” I smacked myself in the forehead. Maybe I was more tired than I thought. My brain-to-mouth filter was clearly malfunctioning. “I didn’t intend for that to come out snarky. I really meant it. Is there a smarter way to go about this?”

“You were right to want to sweep the streets, but you might have had more luck with Josie. Spirits aren’t forthcoming with me. They often hide in my presence. Especially those here. They know me too well.”

Until his voice washed over me, I hadn’t acknowledged the anxiety plaguing me in his silence.

After my fallout with Dis Pater over the Alcheyvaha guardianship, I kept expecting the other steel-toed boot to drop. That Dis Pater would put his foot down, forbidding Kierce to see me. Or that Kierce would decide I was too much risk with too little reward. Or that we would find ourselves at cross purposes and have no choice but to end things ourselves. I had loyalties now, to the Alcheyvaha, and I bet his god was only the first of many who would take exception with Anunit passing her mantle on to me. But, if he had been allocating resources to protecting their burial grounds all these years, shouldn’t he be happy that it fell to me and not him? I had scraped a big-ticket item off his plate. Honestly, he should be thanking me.

“That’s why you’ve been quiet.” I made a thoughtful sound. “You’re worried you shouldn’t have come.”

“Yes,” he exhaled, relief coating the word. “I want to help, but I’m not sure that I can.”

Just being here was helping me more than he could know, but I sensed he wanted a different answer. As good as my rapport with spirits tended to be, he was right that he repelled them. I had built my business around supplying customer service for the dead, but Kierce had been too isolated to be easy around new people. Even dead ones.

“We’ll see how it goes, okay? We can always switch partners until we find the best fit.”

“All right.” He rolled his shoulders, standing taller when he was done. “I like that idea.”

Hand in hand, we cleared four streets, but we didn’t spot Matty or Vi or any spirit who had seen them, and I still couldn’t shake the dread whispering in the back of my mind that the worst was yet to come.

Arosy blush edged the sky overhead, golden sunlight piercing the clouds as I fished out my old brass key to let Kierce and me into Vi’s house through the much less conspicuous side door leading into the garage at street level. The elevator rattled and thumped, and then we were stepping into the living room.

A quick shake of Jean-Claude’s head when I asked him confirmed that no one else had made it back yet. Kierce and I were the first. And if Kierce minded that Badb was cuddled in a nest of blankets while Jean-Claude read to her and Vi from a book on mythology, he didn’t mention it.

“Let’s have a seat.” Kierce guided me down on the couch next to him. “The others will return soon.”

Aware I was being handled, I didn’t mind this time. I sank beside him, cuddled into his side, and drew my feet onto the cushion with me. And as the sun cut through the blinds, I closed my eyes to savor the dark for a little longer.

No sooner had my eyes shut than a paper plate stacked high with beignets was thrust beneath my nose. I breathed in, and my exhale sent powdered sugar blowing onto the quilt someone had bundled me in. Coffee, rich with the scent of chicory, came next. Then Jean-Claude’s face swam into focus.

“Well look at that.” He flashed his white teeth. “You are alive.”

A quick check of the ancient cuckoo clock on the wall told me I had slept from sunup to sundown.

The lingering withdrawals of imbibing myself with grave-dirt uppers were proving brutal.

“The jury’s still out,” I mumbled, accepting his offerings with gratitude.

“Your man here wasn’t much interested,” Jean-Claude said, sniffing, “but lovely Badb ate his portion.”

Yeah. I could tell. Her head was as white as if she had dunked it into a bag of flour.

“I did apologize.” Kierce wiped at her dusty feathers. “I meant no offense.”

“Kierce is on a special diet.” I noticed then I had fallen asleep on his shoulder and been left there all day. I didn’t mind that. Not one bit. “I should have told you before you went to so much trouble.”

“Bah.” He waved away my words. “I was over on Decatur Street anyway.”

Which meant Rollo had remained home to watch over Vi while Jean-Claude made rounds to see his other patients.

“Mmm.” I took a bite of rich, fluffy dough and moaned softly. “Why are these always so good?”

Beignets were squares of fried dough topped with powdered sugar, similar to a donut but not as dense, and I could have eaten my weight in them.

“Once on the lips,” Rollo said from his side of the hall, his room opposite Vi’s, “forever on the hips.”

“That explains it.” Josie tripped him, and when he fell, she stared at his butt for a good long while. “How many do you eat for breakfast to build a cushion like that? You must have been working on it foryears.”

A flush pinkened his dark skin as he shot to his feet, and he smoothed a hand over his flat stomach as if reassuring himself the hours he must spend in the gym to be so fit hadn’t vanished with a single insult.

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