Chapter 5
Chapter Five
“Amara! Over here!”
“Come to us at once!”
Sure, sure. I’ll get right on that, gents.
Amara had barely crossed the Chart House’s threshold when they started hailing her.
She cursed herself for being late (the garbage collectors weren’t the only vendors her new boss hadn’t paid), hung up her coat, and trudged to the table in the farthest corner, where her only friend was getting cozy with a death god for no good reason.
“Gray.” She stopped short, stared down at him.
From this angle she could see the small white scar he got from being shoved off the swing.
One of the times he was shoved off the swing.
It was something of a miracle he’d lived long enough to meet her.
“I canceled.” Which had sucked. She loved eating with Gray. She loved doing anything with Gray.
He raised his hands, palms up, in a what-can-you-do? gesture. “Well, yeah, once I was already on my way.”
“I was delayed,” she grumped.
“Cool, cool. Anyway, I was practically in the driveway by then and remembered I could enjoy chicken parm without you. And then La Choy here—”
“La Croix,” she and La Croix corrected.
“Yeah, yeah. The French pronunciation, right? La Croix. What’d I say?”
“Not La Croix. Is what you said.”
“He spotted me and came to me,” La Croix added, looking surprised yet smug. “It was as though he knew me of old. He saw my nature at once.”
“Mostly I saw your sport coat. Is it purple? Is it black? Depends on the light. But, yeah, also your nature.” To Amara: “It’s gonna sound nuts, but he gave off death-god vibes.”
“It’s entirely sane since he is, in point of fact, a death god.” Her inner thoughts were much less calm. Fuckfuckfuck! I’m wearing off on Gray. I’m shedding paranormal sight like skin flakes!
Tomorrow’s problem. Meanwhile, La Croix was on his feet and pulling out a chair because he was a slick son of a bitch. “Join us, please. Partake in many walleye fingers and calamari. Or perhaps you wish to sample some of your dear friend Gray’s cakes of crab.”
“That rotten bitch is entitled to zero percent of my cakes of crab,” her dear friend snapped. “Any seafood, actually.”
“This?” Amara asked. “Again?”
To La Croix: “She lived in Boston for, what? Three months? Four?”
“Eleven,” she corrected. It had been fun, until it wasn’t.
To Amara: “Comes back with the accent—”
“I did not!”
“—terrible driving skills—”
“That’s fair.”
“—and seafood snobbery.”
“Walleyes aren’t seafood.” She was pretty sure. She took her seat and decided not to mention how very much cheaper and fresher calamari was in Boston.
She liked the Chart House, and not just the menu. She liked the lake views and the enormous windows and the way it seemed like you were outside by the lake but weren’t, which meant you weren’t cold in winter and didn’t have to deal with mosquitos in summer.
So she had to ask herself why she’d suggested La Croix meet her at a place she liked.
La Croix already knew far more about her than he should.
Should’ve arranged to meet him at a truck stop an hour after the bars close.
All former truck stop waitresses knew three a.m. was the witching hour, if witching meant barfing.
And she had no idea how to feel about sharing a table with the two of them. No, that was a lie. Watching Gray slap La Croix’s hand away as he tried to force a finger of walleye on her best friend was . . .
She groped for it, found it: It was the same feeling she got when someone she cared about was enjoying something she adored: Happy (this will be cool!), bewildered (worlds collide!), a little—a very little—envious (it’s not my secret anymore).
“How did you and my ‘dear friend Gray’ come to—”
“Whoa.” Gray nearly choked on his drink. “I could actually hear the air quotes.”
“Amara, darling, how could I miss the opportunity to spend time with one of your closest friends?”
“Closest and onliest friend,” Gray added, then tipped her a wink.
Discounting Gray’s utter fascination with her family’s, um, history was a mistake. She should have anticipated it; reason #2 it was dumb to meet La Croix here.
“A drink, mon coeur?”
“Stop it, La Croix. I’m not and have never been your heart.” She perused the menu, unmoved by his baritone. “I believe I’ll be drinking syrup with syrup today.”
“Don’t you kind of do that anyway?” To La Croix: “She eats her own weight in sugar at least twice a week. When she’s done fixing an iced tea, it’s got more sugar than a Coke.”
“It’s March,” she pointed out, and caught the waiter’s eye. “Cherry Coke, please.” As the waiter nodded back, she ignored the newsflash about his impending doom in fourteen months and nine days. Car crash. Drunk driver. She wondered if he had a family. She wondered if his family would die with him.
“So!” Gray said brightly, raising his virgin mojito. “What d’you guys want to drink to?”
Amara let out a snort. “Absolutely nothing.”
“Don’t let her fool you, La Choy. Somewhere under the sickly pale skin and terrible bangs lurks a sentimental romantic.”
“You needn’t tell me, friend Gray. When she was a child, she wept over even the smallest creature’s demise.”
“Yeah, well.” Amara took a gulp of syrup with syrup. “I outgrew that by the time I was in fifth grade. Besides, La Croix doesn’t toast. Nor does he—oh, yum.”
A waitress passed their waiter and handed off Gray’s entrée. “Sorry,” he said as he got ready to dig into his chicken parm. “Didn’t think you’d be here or I would’ve ordered something for you.”
“Could you tell our waiter I’d like the ribeye, medium, with mashed?” Except Gray said “the ribeye, medium, with mashed” when she did, earning a giggle from their waitress and an eye roll from Amara. “So I’m predictable. Fine.”
“And whatever this guy wants.” Gray jerked a thumb in La Croix’s direction.
Even as La Croix shook his head, Amara added, “He can’t.”
“Vegetarian? Pescatarian? Ketogenic? Gluten-free? Vegan? Flexitarian?” Gray paused. “A gluten-free flexitarian pescatarian?”
“Nothing so—what was the word, Amara? Predictable? I can eat. I do eat,” La Croix admitted. “Alas, I can only gain, ah, satisfaction if someone else eats what I want.”
Gray paused. “Okay, I need to digest that. Shit, I hate accidental puns . . . that explains why you seemed weirdly excited when I wolfed down a crab cake. Related: Please tell me ‘gain satisfaction’ doesn’t mean the deli scene from When Harry Met Sally . . .”
“I fear I don’t know your friends, nor their deli. As for satisfaction—”
“He can eat for nutrition,” Amara broke in. “But to taste anything, to get the total experience, someone else has to do the actual eating. And smoking. So he doesn’t order meals in restaurants.”
“Sure. What would be the point?” Gray’s eyebrows were so arched, they looked ready to climb off his forehead.
“Ooooookay. Have I mentioned I love being friends with you, Mara? So much cool shit going on right now.” To La Croix: “Okay, how d’you feel about Italian?
Like my chicken parm? Because I’ve got a forkful of breaded chicken here with your name on it. ”
“I feel ‘Italian’ dishes should originate in Italy.”
“So you can’t get the full feels unless someone else chows down, and you’re a picky eater?”
Amara grinned. “Nutshell.”
“Well, when Amara’s entrée comes—”
La Croix sniffed. In another moment, he would flounce. “Amara knows full well I loathe bloody meat and despise vegetables mashed into mush.”
“So you on-purpose ordered food you knew he would . . . heh.” To La Croix: “What about . . .” Gray cast about, then pointed to the nearest table, where a young couple was partaking of salmon with baby potatoes and scallop scampi.
La Croix’s eyes lit up, then narrowed. “Oh. Oh. Too much garlic, but perhaps . . . that . . . can be overlooked.” Then, as one of two women at the table on their other side forked down a mouthful of pistachio crème cake, La Croix’s eyes rolled back.
“Ummm . . . cream cheese and . . . oh, the drizzle of chocolate ganache, unexpected but quite delightful . . .”
“Okay, now I’m getting a little uncomfortable,” Gray admitted. “Also, is it a proximity thing? Because you didn’t really notice anyone else’s meals until I pointed them out.”
“It is a proximity thing,” La Croix acknowledged. “I have to have my attention on them and the closer the better. But in a pinch, so to speak, a nearby table will—ohgoodGodthat’srealwhippedcream—suffice.”
“The thing I like best about this dinner,” Amara sighed, “is how it’s not even a little bit weird. Can we just get to it, please? Why have you come? How is my father?”
La Croix’s blissful expression dropped away. “Quite ill. I confess I was startled to see his deterioration. And even more startled that he thought to summon me to his bedside. And your poor mother is beside herself.”
Amara said nothing.
“He speaks only of you.” La Croix leaned in, which was alarming. The eyes, the deep voice, the intensity . . . could be a lot. Was almost always a lot. Even Gray looked a bit dazzled. “He wishes to see you at once, Amara. As does your dear mother.”
“Oh?”
“But more: He has called the Gede.”
“Oh.”
“My strong suggestion is that you do not delay.”
He was a manipulative bastard, but knowing that didn’t help.
She could feel the force of his will pressing against her own, and fought it off while keeping her expression as close to bland/bored as she could.
“Just stop, La Croix. Death deteriorates? No bullshit, please. I know that’s an impossible request, but . . .”
Even as La Croix dipped into his pocket and placed the thing in front of her, her heart dropped. More than dropped; it felt like her heart was beating around her ankles, which was weird and dumb and . . . She should have run when she spotted the vultures.
Run where?
Anywhere. Seattle. Mexico City. Mars. Arrakis.
“What the hell is that?” Gray asked, sounding not a little tense.
“My father’s crown,” she breathed, staring at the seven-inch ring of owl feathers before her.
The crown was woven from feathers from all parts of the owl.
Not just the tail feathers, or even the greater wing coverts.
Her father had plucked from every part of his sigil creature: tail feathers, secondary wing, breast, nape . . . crown.
Death kept it close to hand at all times. Not necessarily on his person, but never far away. If La Croix had handed over her father’s kidneys, she couldn’t have been more shocked.
“Shit.” She stood, and La Croix leaped up as well. Gray looked at both of them, shrugged, and stood. “I have to pack. Right now.”
“Oh, God, packing.” To La Croix: “She is the worst packer. She brings full-sized shampoos and conditioner when she flies! Who does that when everything comes in travel size? Lotion, cotton swabs, deodorant, gasoline, probably . . .”
“I’m a great packer,” she replied without much heat. “I just . . . know what I need. And what I don’t.”