Shadows lurked away from the streetlights, hiding furtive things with fangs. He shivered, remembering the fear of stepping between the worlds.
Jo lifted her head and glanced around. She grinned up at him. "Did I get anything on you? Those notes he took aren't going to be worth a hell of a lot, once he gets them cleaned up."
She seemed to be cold sober. He wondered just how much she had . . . witched . . . that cop.
* * *
Something shook him hard enough to rattle his brain. It hurt. His eyelids seemed to be stuck shut, and his hands missed their target when he tried to knuckle the glue away.
"Wake up, damn you!" The voice echoed from one ear to the other, across a cavern full of pain.
He pried one eye open. Jo. She had a pitcher of water in her hand, aimed at his face. He ducked, and the sudden move made the room spin around him. He grabbed the sofa to make the cushion hold still. His stomach heaved.
"Never again. No more booze. Done."
"Screw that. We've got problems."
He tried thinking for a moment. It didn't work. "Who cleaned the place up?"
"Maria Mendoza, you idiot. The cops let her come in after they did their thing. Just kept an eye on her while she cleaned."
The neighbor woman. Self-defense, probably could smell the garbage through the walls.
David concentrated on breathing slowly, not rushing his nose and throat and lungs. Jo looked like she'd just walked out of a beauty parlor, bright eyes and every strand of hair in place.
She waved the pitcher again. It rattled. She'd dumped ice-cubes in the fucking water.
He struggled to sit up, holding his head in his hands. He felt like he'd just been on a month-long bender, just like they'd told the cops. She backed off a step.
"Problems? That citation? For the grass? No worse than a parking ticket. And Brian doesn't give a damn about the cops."
"I played that tape from the answering machine."
David forced his eyes to focus. She looked mad. Mad and grim, with a touch of grief. "What's wrong?"
"Mom fell, she's in the hospital. That's why Dad was trying to find us. Fucking fifty years old, and she had a stroke and fell down the stairs. Can't talk, can't move her left arm or leg."
"Shit."
"And I've been fired. No job."
"Shit."
"And Dé hAoine has a new guitar man. They've played four gigs without you."
David staggered to his feet, took the pitcher of ice-water from her, and finger-danced along a wall to find the bathroom. He stood in the tub, clothes and all, and dumped the water on his head. An ice-cube slithered down the back of his shirt and hung up against his spine. It almost helped.
Of course, if he really wanted to sober up, all he had to do was think about that dragon. It haunted him.
Author Bio
James A. Hetley is also known as James A. Burton. He lives in the Maine setting of his Hetley-authored contemporary fantasy novels The Summer Country, The Winter Oak, Dragon’s Eye, and Dragon’s Teeth. His residence is an 1850s house suitable for a horror movie, with an electrical system installed while Thomas A. Edison still walked the earth, peeling lead-based paint, questionable plumbing, a furnace dating back to Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency, a roof perpetually in need of shingling, and windows that rattle in the winter gales. He's an architect. Not just any architect, but he specializes in renovation and adaptive reuse of old buildings. Go figure.
Other diverse connections to his writing include black belt rank in Kempo karate, three years in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, a ham radio license, and such jobs as an electronics instructor, auto mechanic, trash collector, and operating engineer in a refrigeration plant. He continues a life-long fascination with antique crafts and the hand-tool skills of working wood and metal.
