"Squealing like a little girl," I said.
"Shut up, you!"
124
Granna's voice came from inside the open door of her shop. "Is that you, James?"
James followed me into the dim blue of the workshop. "Uh-yup." Though the workshop was lit by three exposed lightbulbs, and light fell in through the open door, it was no match for the blazing sunlight outside. I blinked until my eyes got used to the change.
"What brings you here?" Granna looked up from her main work table. She'd pushed her paint cans, brushes, and varnish to one side to make room for her latest project; presumably, the faerie equivalent of a bug bomb. Or maybe just the equivalent of insect repellent. Whatever it was smelled sharp and unpleasant, like too much air freshener sprayed in a small room.
"A little bird told me Dee was hungry." James poked around Granna's smaller work tables, looking at the wood plaques painted with complex patterns and prodding at a large rock tumbler.
"I rode to the rescue. I know where I can find her some good saturated fats."
Granna laughed. She liked James; but then again, everybody did. "She could use a bit of looking after right now." Then she paused. I think she was waiting to see how much I'd told James before going on.
James picked up a stone with a hole in it and looked at Granna through the hole. "We wouldn't want anything unnatural to carry her away, hmm?"
Granna, satisfied, went back to mercilessly mashing an innocent plant into a green paste. "No, we wouldn't. Have you got anything iron on you?"
125
"Nope."
Granna offered him the iron band from her wrist; it was smooth and dull, with knobs on the two ends that almost met. "This is the last bit I have. Take it."
"I think you need it more than I do."
She shook her head and gestured to the pile of paste. "This stuff will work a good sight better than iron when it's done. If you're going to be going out and about with her, you'll need it."
James accepted it, reluctantly, and spread the two ends of the band to fit around his wrist.
"Thanks."
Granna gestured to me with a green-muck covered pestle. "Use your head, and remember what I told you. I'll see you later this evening. I'll bring this over. Don't tell your mother I'm coming or she'll feel compelled to make a truffle cake or slaughter a pig."
I laughed. It was too true not to.
James, at my elbow, tugged me toward the door.
"Oh." Granna frowned at me. "And watch what you say around Delia."
How interesting.
126
ten
It was always noisy at the Sticky Pig, the only real restaurant in town. It was still too hot to eat outside, though, so we joined the ranks of loud, hungry people waiting to get a table. Smelling the smoky scent of barbecue and standing behind the "Please wait to be seated" sign with the smiling pig on it, I had a momentary sense of déjà vu, or missing time or something. Something about coming here so many times over so many years made me forget how old I really was now, and what I'd been doing before I walked in. James brought me back to the present by elbowing me.
"Come away from the light," he said in a low voice.
127
"Deirdre, come back to the land of the living, come back to us--ah! There she is, folks!"
I gave him a withering look. "I was thinking."
"About outer space, I guess, if your dreamy, distant expression was anything to go by." He smiled charmingly at the hostess, who was dazzled. "Deuce, please. None of that smoking crap."
She was too smitten to respond, so I translated. "Two for non-smoking, please."
The hostess nodded mutely and led us to a booth. We slid in on opposite sides. After she'd gone, I leaned toward James. "She was cute."
James picked up the menu (as if he didn't have it memorized by now) and muttered, "Not interested." He was looking at the back of the menu; the pig on the front smiled at me from beneath its checkered apron. "Lucky day. They do have supernatural stun guns as a dinner special."
I swatted the menu down from in front of his face. "And she was dazzled."
He pulled it back up again, engrossed by the list of side dishes. "Not interested."
"Why not?" I was really pushing it too hard, but I felt guilty. I was falling for Luke like a load of books out of a truck, and if I could at least get James to flirt with someone, I wouldn't feel so much like I was betraying our best-friendship.
He lowered the menu and looked at me, eyes narrowed. "I'm interested in somebody else, for your information." He looked away. "I wasn't going to tell you."
128
Relief washed over me. Thank you, God; may she be very pretty and all-engrossing and human.
"You know, you can tell me that sort of stuff." Okay, the guilt came back a little bit right there because I hadn't told him that sort of stuff. "Do I know her?"
James shrugged. "Maybe." He brightened a bit. "She was in my science section this year." He smiled, but not with his eyes. I looked at them intently, and he seemed to feel the need to elaborate. "Her name's Tara."
Funny thing, that, but as he spoke and I looked at his eyes, I felt like I saw movement shimmer around his head, like oil floating on top of water. I blinked.
"She has red hair," James continued. The oil shimmer became more solid; juxtaposed over James' face was an indistinct female face, hair hanging choppily down on either side of her cheeks. "Wavy. And green eyes." A pair of
