lot?”
“Should be, I would think. Might even be better to be out in public, with lots of witnesses.”
“All right. Get the car, I’ll be down in a second.”
Tai plucked at my sleeve. “Come on, you can sweep the car or something.” Hell, why not? I followed him.
The Maori kept giving me odd looks as we rode the elevator down. “Something you want to ask, Tai?”
“You really believe in all that, don’t you? That string thing? What the hell is that, anyway?”
“Would you believe me if I told you a priest blessed it, and I’m using it to keep evil out?” I raised a brow at him, and grinned when he looked skeptical. “You don’t really believe in this whole ‘demon’ thing, do you?”
“No. Not really.” He looked a bit sheepish. “I mean, no offense, but you all sound like crackpots when you talk about stuff like that.”
“No offense taken. We do sound like crackpots.” For some reason, this amused me. Tai, of all people, with magic almost literally flowing through his veins, didn’t believe. There was some irony there. “Just remember that you can feel the ward in that doorway, Tai. Believe it or not, you know something’s there. Think about why that is, sometime.”
The big man snorted. “You sound like my grandma. She was always talking about magic and spirits and stuff. Bedtime stories.”
“All stories gotta come from somewhere.”
The lobby was dazzlingly bright as we stepped off the elevator, and it took me a moment to realize why that felt so wrong. Missouri winters were uniformly gray and overcast, punctuated only by occasional subzero temperatures or an ice storm. Here in California, the sun was shining brightly, and it wasn’t even what I’d call “cool” outside. Unnatural, I tell ya.
The Town Car was waiting outside already, and I gave a small show of giving it a once-over with my mirror. There was nothing there, that I could see, but honestly, how would I know what to look for anyway? I mean, really, what
“The heart calls to him who would listen.”
The voice startled me, and I almost smacked my head on the roof of the car as I backed up in a hurry. Somehow, the eccentric homeless guy had managed to sneak up on me. Well, that wasn’t promising. “Felix, right?”
The odd man nodded happily, pleased that I’d remembered. He looked just the same as yesterday, his layered clothing a riot of colors and…interesting odors. There was a tiny white feather tied into one of his silvery dreadlocks now, fluttering with the rest of the colorful bits of yarn and cloth as the breeze whispered by.
“I try to listen to my heart, y’know,” I told him. “It’s not the smartest thing in the world, sometimes, but I do try to listen.”
The old man’s smile grew, his weatherworn cheeks almost splitting, so wide was his grin. His teeth were half rotted, I noticed, but his eyes gleamed with a cheerfulness that was almost infectious. Up close and personal like that, I could see his eyes were an odd, pale brown color. Almost gold. Like whiskey. Considering what he smelled like, I had to wonder if maybe his liquor of choice had just filled him up that far. “Listening and obeying aren’t the same. Listen when the heart calls, then let the head roll it around a bit. Sometimes, it’s destiny. Sometimes, it’s just a plain ol’ booty call, and somebody’s gonna get screwed.”
Despite the serious turn the day had taken, that made me laugh a little, and I nodded. “That it is.” Behind me, Bobby came out of the sliding glass doors with Gretchen and Dante in tow. “Nice talkin’ to you, Felix. I gotta go now.”
But I’d lost the homeless man’s attention, his gaze fixed firmly on Gretchen as she passed. “And they cry out to be free, wailing in the silence that holds no souls…”
“Get on outta here, you freak!” Dante glared and gestured angrily at the doorman. “Can’t you do something about this loony?”
With a sigh, the doorman moved to hustle Felix along as I climbed into the Town Car, riding shotgun to Tai’s driving. I turned to watch as we pulled away, noticing that not once did Felix take his eyes off the car. It was like nothing else existed in his world but us, for that brief moment.
There was something in those whiskey-colored eyes, I decided. Something that just didn’t belong in that jovial face. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it looked like hatred.
10
Trying to get more information on Felix out of the crew in the car was worse than useless. All anyone really knew was that he’d been wandering in the neighborhood “forever” and that he was totally harmless. His origins, his current crash space, all that seemed to be shrouded in mystery. More likely, it was shrouded in “we don’t really want to see the homeless guy on the corner, so we’ll look the other way.”
“Why, do you think he’s a threat?” Bobby wanted to know.
“If I say yes, are you going to go break his kneecaps?” The look on the former soldier’s face told me everything I needed to know. “No, I don’t think he’s a threat. He’s just unusual, and in my line of business, unusual never turns out well for me.”
“Felix is just eccentric.” Gretchen dismissed my concerns with a wave of her manicured hand.
“Can we please talk about something other than the old skeezy guy?” Dante didn’t want to have the conversation at all, it seemed. “They oughta throw his rank ass in jail.”
And that was the end of that.
Did I think he was dangerous? No, not really. My advance warning system hadn’t let me down so far, and there
