Chapter 17
Felix picked through the racks of secondhand clothes at ReRun.
Sway was on the other side of the store rifling through the estate junk, and Cruze was somewhere by the shoes.
He smiled, pulling out a chartreuse, satin poet’s shirt.
Hello, beautiful. This had definitely come out of Old Lady Ames’s theater wardrobe.
Her loss. He added it to the pile with his other finds.
“Hey,” Cruze said, coming up beside him. Predictably, everything in her stack was over-sized and black, just like her nails.
The mani-pedis had gone over surprisingly well with both girls, aside from discovering Sway had toenails that would put a troll’s to shame and was ridiculously ticklish.
Having to watch Cruze struggle in the beginning wasn’t ideal either, but she’d come around.
He’d had no idea her fingers and toes were webbed or that she had patches of very fine, iridescent scales running up the sides of her legs like racing stripes.
It made sense, considering her father was a siren, but she was incredibly self-conscious about it.
Personally, he thought it was cool, though the webbing was a definite impediment to wearing flip flops.
“Hey, you find everything you wanted?”
“Yeah. I think so.” Her brow rose at the poet’s shirt. “You’re really getting that?”
“Absolutely.” Felix held it up against himself. “Tell me it’s not divine.”
“It’s something,” she said under her breath.
“Rude.” He snorted at her almost giggle. “You and Jena have the exact same lack of vision. Next time you can come with her—”
“Uncle Felix!” Sway tore around the aisle with something clutched against her chest. “I found what I want!”
She thrust a taxidermy squirrel posed beside a beer can at him.
He and Cruze recoiled.
“Ew! Gross, Sway, that probably has bugs!”
“It does not, and Uncle Felix said I can get whatever I want, and I want Pablo!” she yelled at her sister, hugging the furry little corpse.
Pablo. Good grief, this child…Felix’s eyelids fluttered, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. “You do realize that ‘Pablo’ used to be a real squirrel, right? Like alive?”
Sway rolled her eyes. “Duh. Why do you think I want to take him home?”
Cruze sputtered. “We are not bringing that thing back to Gran and Gramp’s—”
“Not our home, stupid, his home.” Sway glowered at her. “He doesn’t like it here and wants to go back to the woods.”
“And he told you this?” Felix asked, intrigued despite himself.
“Yes,” she said decisively, raising her pointed little chin.
Felix cocked a brow back at her. “And you’re going to leave him there?”
“Yes.”
He puffed out his cheeks. “Okay, go put him on the counter.”
Sway squealed and disappeared in that direction.
“You’re really going to let her buy a dead squirrel?” Cruze looked at him like he’d officially lost his mind.
“I did say you guys could get whatever you wanted, and if she wants to spend her money on that…” Felix shrugged. “It’s her Christmas present.”
Cruze shook her head. “You are so weird.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Felix said, flicking a curl from his eyes. “You get everything you wanted? You need to be at rehearsal in forty-five minutes.”
“Um, actually…there’s this pair of boots…”
“Ohh, show me.” Felix hadn’t made it over to the shoes yet. Cruze headed in that direction, and he followed her.
She looked back over her shoulder and chewed her lip when they got to the section. “Those,” she said, pointing to a pair of glimmery dark green shit-kickers with black and white laces. They looked like they’d been made out of wyvern hide.
“Nice find,” Felix said, picking one of them up and really hoping it’d been ethically sourced.
Whoa. They were certainly sturdy. The one in his hands had to weigh two pounds.
They also happened to be his size. Too bad those black velvet loafers with gold tassels weren’t.
“Why would you think I wouldn’t let you get them? ”
She shrugged. “They’re kind of expensive.”
He glanced at the tag. Thirty-five bucks was a steal as far as he was concerned. “Tell you what, I’ll either pay the difference for you to get these along with the rest of your stuff, or get your phone repaired. Your choice.”
“The boots,” she said without hesitation.
Felix put a hand to his heart and gasped. “There’s hope for you yet, and I get to borrow them.”
“Fine.” She forced a glower, failing to hide what looked suspiciously like a smile.
“Right, let’s settle up,” he said, working his way to the front of the store.
They dumped their finds on the counter, and Melvin Wert bellied up to the register. “This all together?” he asked, brushing crumbs off his painfully bland gray button down. Talk about lack of vision, but Felix supposed the man’s red suspenders were a titch festive.
“Yes,” he said, pulling out his wallet. “And the squirrel.”
“He’s really special,” Sway piped up, her nose barely clearing the counter.
Melvin grunted and stabbed a blunt finger at the antique register’s keys. He glanced at Felix as he rang up the poet’s shirt. “You know, I got more of this stuff in the back.”
Cruze groaned, and Felix shushed her. “Do you?”
“Yeah. There’s a whole trunkload from Old Lady Ames’s attic. I wasn’t gonna put it out until next Samhain, but if you’re in the market, you’re welcome to parse through it now.”
Felix checked the time on his phone. He’d been planning on stopping by the apartment to feed Myx before Cruze’s rehearsal, but it wasn’t like the cat was going to starve. He tucked his wallet back into his pocket. “That would be amazing.”
Forty minutes later, Felix pulled into the parking lot behind town hall, a few hundred dollars poorer, with the entire trunk shoved into the back of his car.
And a very happy tween in the front seat beside him.
Who knew Old Lady Ames was a closet goth in her youth?
Felix certainly hadn’t, but as soon as they’d opened the steamer trunk of sparkly black corsets and long shredded skirts, Cruze had been entranced, and Felix had his eye on a bunch of it as well.
They’d made a deal that she could have the lot of it, as long as he could borrow whatever he wanted.
Sway had fixated on a pointy witch’s hat and refused to take it off. Whatever, representation, right?
They hurried to the auditorium and took two seats while Cruze headed backstage.
Felix sighed. God help him if he had to suffer through that kid mangling his lines again.
At least this was the last one before the show tomorrow.
He pulled out his phone, scrolling. Jena’s last text had been suspiciously blunt, especially after giving her the CliffsNotes from last night.
Something was definitely up. He chewed his lip, sure it had to do with her and Chase going to check out that altar.
“Thank you for my hat and Pablo, Uncle Felix.” Sway piped from the seat beside him. “He’s really happy he’s going home, and so is the kinip-kinap.”
“Kinip-kinap?” The word sounded vaguely Elvish, but if it was, the translation eluded him. He raised a brow, and she rolled her eyes.
“You know, Uncle Felix, they live in the wind and sing. They said they’d come and take care of Pablo. I told you, he’s really special.”
Alrighty then. “You know where you want to leave him?”
She nodded beneath the wide brim, sending the tip of the hat bobbing. “He needs a big tree. Maybe we can find one at Meme’s house?”
Felix looked at her blankly. He knew she was speaking English, but something was definitely getting lost in the delivery. “Meme…?”
“Liam’s mom. She said Mrs. Montgomery was too much of a mouthful. Pablo will like it there. There’s lots of animals, and the trees are happy.”
“Oh? How can you tell?”
“They said so the other night. Can’t you hear them?”
His brow quirked. “Nope, can’t say that I do.”
“That’s okay,” Sway sighed. “No one else can either, but I have really good ears. Do you have any snacks?”
Felix pulled a tin of breath mints out of his jacket. “Knock yourself out.”
She sat back with them, and Felix ran a hand over his jaw, ignoring the moms filtering in and the kids gathering on stage as he pondered Sway. What kind of supe understood the wind, trees, and taxidermy animals? He shook his head. She was six. It could just be a vivid imagination.
Keep telling yourself that, Felix.
Whatever. At least that was less concerning than whatever Axle had going on. Felix blew out his cheeks and glanced around the auditorium just in time to see Jenny hustle in with Sarah.
Neither of them looked happy. Sarah tugged her arm from Jenny’s grasp, and fled backstage as her mother took a seat away from the rest of the mom squad. She didn’t quite collapse into it. Felix frowned at her unhealthy pallor. The woman obviously wasn’t well.
Serves her right, he thought uncharitably.
The inevitable whispers from the mom squad started up at the interaction, and Felix didn’t feel bad for Jenny in the slightest. Quite the opposite, actually.
Whatever was going on with her, it reeked of divine retribution—karma seeking to settle the scales.
He made an effort to breathe, dispelling it from gathering around him.
The urge to hex the duplicitous bitch was intense.
“Uncle Felix?” Sway put a hand on his arm.
He glanced down at her. “Hmm?”
“Is that blonde lady a bad person?” Sway asked, looking at Jenny, or at least he thought Sway was looking at Jenny.
It was hard to tell what was going on beneath the brim of that hat, but Jenny was the only blonde woman over there.
Sway’s hat tipped toward him. “Your face got mean when she walked in.”
It did? “Oh, um…kind of? She’s made some bad choices that are hurting Liam.”
“Then I don’t like her either,” Sway huffed, crossing her arms over her chest.
Fair enough. The mom squad abruptly started laughing, and Jenny stiffened. Felix tried not to look too interested, though it was apparent something had just gone down. Ooh, damn him for picking seats way over here—