Page 2 of Goblins Don't Count
It was time for me to go. I hit the precise joint in the old woman’s wrist that would make her grip go slack and then ducked away from her, avoiding the slash of her curved, wickedly dangerous claws. I held my hands up as I backed away.
“You took my energy. Leave it at that, otherwise, you’ll have more than the Goblin Authority to answer to. Singsong cultivates peace between the infernal and the angelic as well as the human. Balance, not dominance. If you harm anyone else, goblin or otherwise, you will serve time in a facility.” I turned to nod at the girl, whose expression was somewhere between horrified and bemused. Oh. Because I’d spoken Goblin. “Thank you,” I said in English. “I hope that the Goblin Authority cares about more than just the image of his people.”
She smirked. “Oh, he probably cares about something more than that.” Her English was as accentless as Sashimi’s, but communicated much more emotion. She wasn’t nearly as guarded as my regular Thursday customer.
Leaving the goblins, I jogged back the way I’d come, checking the time and flinching when I saw the hours that had passed in the old goblin’s grasp. Yes, she’d definitely done something to me. I’d have to neutralize all the curses and hope the exhaustion was something I could just sleep off. Or I could take a nice energizing elixir, but I’d hate myself later for that, and I had a long weekend off work ahead of me that I could use to recuperate. First, I had to check in with Brannigan.
I pulled out my phone and called him. He picked up immediately, and I got to hear Joss’s voice in the background. “You don’t leave your partner. She’s probably goblin stew right now. Is that her? Give that to me.”
I didn’t even get a chance to hear Brannigan’s voice before Lieutenant Joss was on the line. “Sato, you’d better have a good reason for dodging the pixie dust case. Brannigan ended up chasing the wrong perp. Apparently, the real one glamoured some random civ as a distraction. You could have seen through the glamour, right?”
I fought back the long sigh. On the one hand, I had a gift that the department could use, but on the other hand, it wasn’t as great a gift as Joss wanted it to be. “Sorry Lieutenant. I can’t see through glamours, I can just read auras.”
“But you didn’t stick to your assignment. You’ll have to write up a report on that.”
I flinched. Writing up reports was my usual assignment for everything, and now I had another one to do? I cleared my throat. “Of course, sir. I needed to take the old goblin out of Grand Central before she panicked and cursed everyone. She was an immediate threat, and I trust Brannigan to get the job done. Neither one of us could have realized he was a decoy, but you’re right. I didn’t follow protocol.”
He snorted, then said in his loud, blustering way, “You sound positively wan. What did the old goblin do to you?”
“I think she drained some of my energy,” I replied, trying to sound pulled-together and failing miserably.
He huffed. “Well, you’d better get that looked at. Don’t come in for the rest of the day. See you Monday.” He hung up on me like it was his phone, not Brannigan’s, dismissing me as clearly as he ever did. Joss was struggling to maintain a department that had too little manpower when a lot of our populace was super-charged with magic of various kinds. The department didn’t pay well enough to attract any serious magic users, and a lot of the specialized orders like the Gray Society didn’t see the purpose of having a local police department, so he was constantly undermined. He didn’t like being undermined, so for me to not follow the rules…If the department wasn’t so short-handed, then I probably would have just lost my job. As things were, it was better for both of us if I didn’t go in until Monday.
I felt like I could sleep that long.
I dragged myself back to the lot where I’d parked my purple hornet. It whined when I turned it on. I should take it into a shop for a tune-up, but not today. I drove home, parking in the small lot through the block from my parent’s restaurant, the Cat’s Pause. My dad did the sushi, my mom did the management, including taking people’s orders without their permission. Her magic was in knowing what a customer needed. Mine was in reading auras. My mom had managed to find a way to use her magic for her livelihood, and I’d tried to do the same. Some days, feeling like I’d had half my life sucked away, I had my doubts about whether or not I was on the right path.
I parked my car between my brother’s hot yellow motorbike and my parent’s gray sedan, locked up, and climbed the narrow iron steps to my apartment, just off my parent’s restaurant. They’d rented it out when I was little, but now I got it as partial payment for my work at the sushi piano bar. As it was Thursday, I’d be expected to cover the evening shift. I’d take a short nap and then get started on the paperwork. Brannigan would email me the pertinent details along with an excessive list of his awesome, amazing prowess that he’d want me to insert into the paperwork. I never would, because if I’m doing the paperwork, I’m not making it any longer than necessary. Brannigan had his strong points, but humility wasn’t one of them.
My nap went too long. My mom’s pounding on my door woke me up. I grabbed an apron, splashed my face, and rushed downstairs and into the piano sushi bar. My mom shot me a frown before she headed out to the local coven meeting while I covered the usually slow shift with my dad in back, cooking and singing under his breath to whatever tune Madame Granite was playing.
“Rynne! My true love!” Gabby called from the table where she sat with her mom and Libby. I grabbed their orders and headed over, pausing to refill a water on my way.
“Hi, ladies. Taking a break from the husbands tonight?” I asked, putting down the enormous sushi boat that they all stared at in wondering awe.
“Yes,” Anna, Gabby’s mother, said, stabbing a sushi roll with her chopsticks and staring at it with adoring eyes. “The men might eat some of the sushi.” She popped it into her mouth and closed her eyes in contentment.
“They’d probably also order more,” I said with a slight smile. Sushi was okay, but I wasn’t obsessive about it like some of our customers.
“But we can’t count on that,” Libby said seriously before she started stuffing her face.
Gabby grabbed my hand and tugged me down into the extra chair she’d pulled out for me. “How’s it going? Rough day at work? You know, at court?” She batted her lashes at me and I sighed. She’d ended up being the lawyer, which was great because she could help me cover up my real job.
“You’re very subtle.” I patted her head and stood back up. “Work’s good. Quiet. I’m just doing contract cases right now, so nothing very interesting.”
“Contracts? Like with demons?” she asked, raising a brow.
“Contracts like with goblins.”
“Goblins are dangerous,” Anna said soberly.
“But they do respect contracts,” Libby said, spearing a sushi roll Anna was eyeing. “What kind of contracts would you deal with? Assassination? Banking? What else do goblins do?”
I shrugged, trying to think how to put this in a way that didn’t give me or the job away. “I guess whatever they want to do. I’ve got to get back to the counter. Holler if you need anything else.”
The shift was short in that I kept dozing off, and long because I was so tired. I hugged the sushi ladies at ten when the place closed, giving Gabby one last wave as I locked the front door behind them. The sushi bar closed at nine, so almost everything was cleaned up by ten when they’d left. My dad had already gone up to his apartment, leaving me to lock up and mop.
Also, give Thursday Sashimi his sushi. I was mopping up in back near the sink when the light tap came on the alley door. I tripped on the mop, then slipped on the wet tile and hit my elbow hard on the metal counter on my way down.
