Raised in Fire

He studied me for a moment. “You should know that the couple who got up from this seat were shifters.”

I jerked around, unable to stop myself from looking in the direction they’d gone. Unfortunately, someone was walking up the aisle at that exact moment. My sudden shift spooked the man, who flinched and took a step back, right into our waitress holding two waters. The liquid splashed up between them. When he stepped away again, the glass his back had kept pinned in place was freed. It dumped water down on the waitress’s legs.

“What the hell, Henry?” our waitress shrieked.

He flinched again. The guy was awfully jumpy.

“S-sorry. The girl scared me.” Henry gestured, probably at me, but I hardly noticed. I was watching her jeans to see if her legs would suddenly morph into a big fish tail. It didn’t seem plausible, and I’d never heard of it happening, but that Tom Hanks movie from the eighties had been pretty specific. I’d figured the writers might know something I didn’t.

The waitress jammed a half-full glass on the table in front of me. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.” I jerked my eyes up.

She scoffed and smacked Darius’s empty cup down in front of him. “Better me than you, I guess. At least I don’t smell when I get wet.”

“You smell all the time, actually. Like seaweed. It is horrible.” Darius clasped his fingers on the table and looked up at her placidly.

Shaking her head, she stomped off.

This was going well.

“You should get lost,” I mumbled to Darius. “Those shifters are going to call their friends. Why else do you think they gave up their table? They don’t want to battle right now, and probably assumed you would.”

“I am outside of their jurisdiction. I have broken no rules.”

“It’s not about trying to kill you. They can make your life hell. They hang around all the time and stick their noses in your business. Trust me, that is my life in New Orleans. The shifters there are like tape stuck to my ass.”

He ignored me and looked down at his phone screen again.

It was just as well. If the shifters here were anything like in NOLA, it wouldn’t matter if he left now. They’d track him down and stalk him like he’d been stalking me. It might just serve him right.

“Hey,” I said to the table on the other side of the aisle.

A woman with jet-black hair glanced over, confused.

“How’s it going?” I asked with a smile.

The man with her glanced at Darius, and a knot instantly formed between his eyebrows.

“I’m not with him.” I waved Darius away. “Say, listen, do you guys know of a good bar where people like me can get a little libation?”

I saw Darius shaking his head out of the corner of my eye.

“I’m just in town for a while,” I went on, studying them for clues as to what magical creatures they might be. “Yeah, I’m here to rid the place of some skin-stealing vermin, if you know what I mean.”

“They don’t. You are wasting your time,” Darius said.

The couple continued to stare at me like I was a strange art exhibit they’d found themselves at, but weren’t quite sure how or why.

I pressed on. “The locals can’t seem to get things squared away, so I’ve been called in to do it my way.” I was so used to my sword making me uncomfortable when I sat that I hadn’t thought to remove it. The woman’s eyes widened and the man scowled. “So do you guys know where I can go? Hell, maybe even where I can find the skin stealer. I can take care of it—”

“They are not magical,” Darius said softly.

I froze with my mouth open.

“As I said,” he said in an undertone, “you are wasting your time. This is a well-known spot for the whole town, not just our sort of people. I would think you could tell the magical from the mundane a little better than that.” Darius didn’t bother looking up from his phone. “Very few humans are here this late, but they do tend to come in. As you see.”

My smile didn’t smooth over the situation, so I apologized and turned back. Zero for two.

“Unless their scent is obvious, like the waitress, I can’t smell most magical species like you can,” I muttered to Darius. “I usually rely on knowing people.”

“Try the people sitting behind you,” he said, still not looking up.

“What has you so entertained on that phone?” I asked him loudly, twisting in my seat to look over the back of the booth. I saw a head with spiky hair the color of rust. I shifted to see around him and caught the brown eyes of his female companion. Her expression crumpled into one of annoyance and—what I was getting used to in this town—confusion. It seemed that people of Seattle didn’t take crazy in stride. That would greatly work against me.

“Updates,” Darius said.

I smiled at the woman, who was obscured by the seat, and gave her a thumbs-up. I’d have to rise up on my knees to chat with them, and that would look ridiculous.

I sighed and turned back around. I’d have to work harder on the waitress. If she ever came back.

“Usually you have to plug the phone in for—” I finally caught on to what Darius had meant. “Updates on our situation. Got it. Anything interesting?”

“Very.”

I waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, I leaned toward him to ask, but at that moment the largest breakfast I’d ever seen arrived in front of me. The waitress set down the side of fries next to it, and had to make a second trip for the milkshake.

“You’re a glutton,” she said.

“And you are super observant. Well done. Hey, about that bar—”

She walked away, leaving my words hanging.

“Okay then,” I mumbled. “I definitely need to try somewhere else. Somewhere I can get more physical.”

“Maybe Callie and Dizzy will have better luck, since they are mages. Other mages might be more inclined to talk with them.” Darius put his phone on the table and looked over my plate of food. He didn’t comment.

“When we were on our way here, I got a text saying they’d made contact with the inexperienced mage. Her mother apparently chased them away, so they were headed back to the hotel. I can send them out again, but they were up earlier than us and they aren’t spring chickens. They’re probably spent.”

“Each moment is precious. You’ll want to hurry.”

I paused with my fork nearly to my mouth. “This is a change from wanting to stall. What update did you get?”

He shook his head and looked away. “I have my assistant looking into a few matters. Vlad is on the move, though. He is leaving that Northern California town.”

“And heading where?”

“North.”

Which was our direction. That probably wasn’t good.

“There hasn’t been demon activity of the same caliber up here, though,” I said after I finished a bite. “Maybe he just wants to check up on you.”

“His physical presence isn’t required to monitor me, just as the opposite is true.” He clasped his hands on the table and looked at me steadily. “I will know more in a few hours.”

“Hopefully I’ll have a lead by them. So far this isn’t so good.” We fell into silence as I shoveled food into my mouth. I really should’ve cut the meal short, but I couldn’t tear myself away from it. It was just too good.

I could’ve done without Darius’s staring, though.

After I’d cleaned the plate, shocking the hell out of the mermaid—which I called a win, because mer-people were hard to shock—I grabbed our check and told Darius to make himself scarce so I could pay while talking to the hostess. It was a last-ditch effort before calling this place a loss and moving on.

“Hey,” I said as I stopped at the front counter where she was folding napkins. I laid the tab down and pulled out my wallet.

She glanced up. “Oh, you can pay at your table.”

“Oh shoot. That’s okay, it’s just cash. I wanted to talk to you anyway.”

There came that confusion again. You’d think I had suddenly started speaking a different language to these people.