Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
When I finally got to my place, thanks to the functioning bus system, my legs felt like they were about to fall off.
Between the terrified sprinting I’d done to get away from Dieter, the wading through grass, and the hike it took to find a bus stop, my poor legs had been through a more intense workout than they’d experienced in months.
I was looking forward to a long shower and a dinner of whatever frozen entrée looked most calorie-filled.
Still, as soon as I got to my apartment, I could tell something was up.
I lived in a squat four-floor building with the optimistic name Las Vistas Manor.
At one point, it had been a chic yellow, but the sun had faded the paint to a dirty off-white.
It was a remnant of a time when the Avenue was a happening place in San Amaro.
Now the Avenue means something else entirely.
San Amaro Avenue is a street stretching all the way across town, dividing the city in half.
With the ocean on one side and the fire starter hills on the other, the city of San Amaro’s borders stretch wide rather than out like Los Angeles’.
The wealthy exist on the boundaries of town, with beachfront houses and hillside mansions, leaving the rest of the city divided into neighborhoods that each have their own name and flavor.
Technically, “the Avenue” could mean anywhere along San Amaro Avenue’s long route, but the reality is it means the five blocks or so between Figueroa Street and Southwind.
It’s an area thick with crime, everything from vandalism to drugs.
It was not my ideal office location, but it was cheap enough most months I could afford rent.
My office-slash-apartment was on the second floor of my building, and, when I’d moved in I’d had enough money to add a fancy sign to my door reading, “Ferro Investigations,” but not enough to put that sign on anything more pricy than one of the cheaper apartments on the Avenue.
Because there were so many people coming and going, putting up wards of any sort would have been expensive and pointless. So instead, I used what I had on hand: a fine layer of dirt spread over my entryway. And that blessedly cheap substance was disturbed.
I bent down to look like I was tying my shoe.
Nothing quite says, “This dude is nuts” like having a conversation with the ground, but if I crouched it maybe just looked like I was furious at my shoes and did not need the cops called.
The charade probably didn’t convince my neighbors, but it gave us all a good amount of plausible deniability.
“Who was it?” I muttered.
Big. Angry. Took a lot of dirt. I noted the scuff marks and had a sinking feeling I knew who had stomped around, pounding on my door for a while before giving up.
Standing up, I rushed to put my key in the lock, but it was too late. I could hear his cheap leather shoes squeaking all the way up the hallway, even as the dirt he’d taken with him was rejoicing at coming back to its home. Before he could touch me, I spun to face him.
“Parker Ferro!” Jeffrey Jenkins’s voice was so loud it echoed off the walls, rattling the other doors in the hall. He stopped a few feet away and crossed his arms. “Your rent is late.”
“Jeffrey,” I said. “It’s only two weeks late. Give me a break. Have I ever been late before? I’ll have it.”
Jeffrey Jenkins was what you’d get if you gave a slug a cheap suit, a few run-down apartment buildings, and an inflated sense of self-importance.
He practically left a slime trail as he rocked back on his heels.
Worse, since he knew my specialty was working with paranormals, he had it in for me.
Every minor infraction was a warning letter, including things that weren’t even my fault.
“No can do, Ferro,” Jeffrey said. “Two weeks late is late. And in two more weeks, you’re going to owe me even more rent. How’re you planning on paying if you can’t pay last month’s?”
He tsked and scrunched his eyebrows together, but a giant grin blossomed on his face. After a moment, he pulled his lips down into a sympathetic frown. “Sorry.”
“Okay.” I rubbed my fingers over the rough teeth of my keys. “Just give me a couple of days to wrap some stuff up and I’ll have a check for you—”
His head was shaking before I’d even finished and he pulled out a thick envelope. He slapped it on my chest and I grabbed at it, my other hand forming a fist with the keys between my fingers.
“When you moved in here, you said you were quiet,” he said. “You said you ran a clean shop.”
“I do, I do.” I turned the envelope in my hand.
“But I see the kind of people you have visiting you.” He pointed a thick finger at me. “I know your kind, Ferro.”
“My kind.” I arched an eyebrow. “You wanna be clear what you mean by that?”
Jeffrey bowled right through the verbal landmine with a roll of his eyes.
“You work with people who should be in jail. You think I can’t smell a dog when it drags itself through my hallway?
You think I don’t know you work with broom—” Realizing his next word was going to turn his little speech into a hate crime, he put air quotes around his next words. “‘Practitioners of witchcraft’?”
“None of that is illegal,” I said. “I can have whatever guests I want over.”
“Yeah.” His eyes narrowed, grin sharkish. “But they aren’t guests, are they? They’re clients, which is against your lease.”
I exploded. “You just said you knew I was going to run my office out of my apartment! You said it was fine before I even moved in!”
Jeffrey tutted, shaking his head. “You should read your contracts, Ferro. It says in real clear print you can’t run your business out of your apartment. We’re not zoned for it, and I don’t have the insurance to cover it.”
“That’s not what’s written in the contract,” I said, my voice dropping. “I read every word.”
Jeffrey shrugged. “Maybe the old one got some water on it. Maybe the one I have says you can’t be running a business in my building.”
My blood felt like it was on fire. There’s a reason you don’t renege on a deal with a fae. Contracts, agreements, word games, they all mean something to the fae. It’s in our nature to abide by them… and to use them to trap poor suckers who think in a deal with the fae, they’ll come out on top.
“Don’t pursue that. Because I know what I signed.”
My voice was low and laced with the oldest magic there is.
I didn’t even say the words so much as they seeped out of me, deep and low, and I saw Jeffrey pause, mouth hanging open.
Something in his little lizard brain must have told him he was walking along a narrow path and another step would send him careening down into something ancient and more dangerous than he knew.
Swallowing, he shrugged his shoulders back like a bird ruffling its feathers. “That’s a pay or quit notice, Ferro.”
His voice squeaked on my name. He shrugged again and seemed to get back some of his strength, his chest expanding as he got on more solid legal ground.
“Come up with the month’s rent or I’m sending you your eviction notice on Friday.” His lip peeled back from his upper teeth in a sneer.
“That’s four days from now!” I snapped, doing the math.
“Be grateful,” Jeffrey said. “I only had to give you three days.”
“Oh, thanks for the extra four hours,” I said, sarcasm under my tone like a razor blade. “There aren’t even any banks open right now.”
“That reminds me,” Jeffrey said. “No checks. Money order or cash, only.”
“You want a thousand five hundred in cash?” I said.
“A thousand eight hundred with interest,” he corrected. “See you Friday, Parker.”
One of the doors down the hallway opened, and I saw someone poke their head out. It was Malcolm, his white hair cropped short like always. As far as I knew, he’d been living in the building since back when Las Vistas was considered somewhere you’d want to live, rather than somewhere you’d ended up.
I’d been in his apartment, and I’m not sure if he used some alchemy or if it was just what a place looked like when you’d been in it for decades, but I’d swear it was bigger than the floor plans for it were. I was pretty sure it even had a whole extra bedroom not on the blueprints.
“Jeffrey Jenkins,” he said. Stepping out into the hallway, he left his door open a bit. “Parker Ferro. Thought I heard shouting.”
Jeffrey showed his teeth and ground out, “Just a minor disagreement over the rent, Mister Pride.”
Malcolm tutted. “You know I don’t like shouting.”
He took unsteady steps towards us, his carved wooden cane moving along the hallway carpet with heavy thumps. In the hallway light, his skin looked only a shade lighter than the polished walnut of his cane. When he got to us, he looked up, eyes squinting.
“Almost called the police,” he said.
Malcolm was the other reason wards would have been wasted. Who needed expensive magic when they had a septuagenarian neighbor with the police on speed dial?
“No need for that,” Jeffrey said. “Parker and I came to an agreement. Didn’t we, Parker?”
“That I’ll pay you when I can?” I said, forced cheer coming through gritted teeth.
“That you have until Friday,” Jeffrey corrected. He nodded at Malcolm and stomped down the hallway.
“Let me see,” Malcolm said, tugging the envelope out of my fingers. He huffed as he pulled out the papers and scanned them rapidly. I noticed his eyes were a lot sharper when he wasn’t performing for Jeffrey. “Looks like it’s in order. You having trouble with your bills, son?”
I sighed down at my shoes. “Just a little cash-flow issue. Don’t worry, I’ll handle it.”
Malcolm nodded. “He’s going to serve you the eviction papers on Friday if you don’t pay. But bring them to me before you do anything. He might get sloppy.”
“Thanks, Malcolm.”
He offered me back the papers and patted my shoulder, his hand weighty.