I didn’t dare jokingly ask the ravens for help. The last thing I needed was a bored world spirit trickster poking at my concealment enchantment mess.
Inside the restaurant, the manager—a nondescript mundane from town with a mop of brown hair and a thinner build than most of the locals—nodded once and went back to his cleaning duties.
I sat next to the Halloween jack-o-lantern decoration on the end of the bar and held up my phone so he could look at the photo of Ellie with my dog. “Do you recognize this woman?” I asked.
He frowned. “No,” he answered. “Is she a tourist?”
So she hadn’t come in, either before or after she ran away. My notes said mundanes tended to remember her until nightfall.
I shook my head. “I have her bicycle,” I said.
“Ah,” he said. “If she comes in, I’ll let her know.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I thumbed through my phone plan while I waited for the takeout. Turned out I already had two lines. One had been used briefly around the time Dracula pulled me into Vampland, then nothing.
It must be the phone Ellie lost. I put in an order for a new phone and a reactivation of the number at our local store. If I was fast, I could pick it up before dinner got too cold.
The stool next to mine squeaked.
My peripheral vision isn’t as good as an elf’s. It’s probably a little worse overall than the average mundane’s—another of my father’s many “gifts”—but I’ve had two centuries to teach my brain to compensate. Like everything else about my piecemeal body, I’ve put in the work needed to maximize what I did have.
Or so I thought.
The small photographer in the expensive suit leaned against the bar as if he’d been there for minutes and was annoyed that I’d just now noticed him.
He scrunched up his nose and loudly inhaled. “Mr. Victorsson,” he said.
“Who are you?” I demanded more than asked. I was beginning to think he wasn’t the semi-local photographer he claimed.
He did the loud inhale again as if Raven’s Gaze, and me in particular, offended his olfactory senses. “How is it that elves can be so disorganized? It’s like a slow-motion Ragnarok around here.”
This man was a liar who knew about Alfheim’s magicals.
In the restaurant’s pools of halogen lighting I couldn’t tell if he carried the shadow, and the backlight from the bar was too diffuse for me to get a good look. “Then you need to take that up with our King and Queen.” He wouldn’t, of course. Such confrontations were the last thing a sneaky slimeball wanted.
He looked out at the handful of patrons scattered around the seating area. “I’ve been debating when I should properly introduce myself.” He looked me up and down. “There was a shift here recently.” He waved his hand at the greater universe. “A change in the air, so to speak; hence the reconnaissance.”
He could be referring to the reset the elves unleashed when my brother invaded town. Or he could mean the changes that came after the International Conclave in Las Vegas. Or he could be referring to the more mundane changes in town caused by several shifting economic factors.
Or he could be bloviating.
“What do you want?” Villains liked to talk. Perhaps he’d tell me just to see if I’d squirm.
“A voice, Mr. Victorsson,” he said. “A chance to offer Alfheim and her people clear, disciplined, better management.”
Was this little man threatening Arne and Dagrun?
He laughed. “Who runs a tighter ship, Mr. Victorsson? Elves? Vampires? The fae?” He leaned closer. “Wolves?”
The bar manager stepped up. “Would you like to order?” he asked the man.
Our interloper tapped his pointer fingers together as if trying to stop himself from steepling his hands. “I’ll try the local brew,” he said.
The manager nodded toward me. “Your order’s up.” He pointed to the end of the bar.
“Thank you,” I said.
The manager nodded again and went off to fetch a pour for the interloper, who pulled a tooled leather wallet from his jacket pocket.
He set a one hundred dollar bill on the bar. “You asked what I wanted,” he said.
I did not speak. I waited for an answer.
He looked out over the patrons again. “I want the same as you, Mr. Victorsson. I want solutions to the problems that vex me.” The manager returned and set the photographer’s glass on the bar. “Thank you,” the man said.
The manager stared at the hundred on the counter. “Would you like change for this?” he asked.
The interloper winked. “Pay for Mr. Victorsson’s meal, too, please.”
“No,” I said, forcefully enough that the manager startled a bit. “I will pay for my own food.” One should never accept gifts from unknown magicals for any reason or at any time. What if this man was a fae? I’d been stupid enough to make deals with kitsune. I wasn’t stupid enough to stumble into a tit-for-tat with a fae, especially since that food would be going home to be eaten by Akeyla and Jax.
But my gut said I wasn’t dealing with a fae. My gut said he was something closer to home.
I handed the manager my credit card. He nodded, and walked toward the register.
“I see you lack the courtesy to accept a simple gesture of good will,” the interloper said into his beer. “Mmmm… this is excellent.”
No more veiled threats from the little mobster sitting next to me. I pulled out my phone. I need you at the bar, I texted Bjorn. He’s here.
“Now, now.” He sipped his beer again, then set it on the bar. “I do not take kindly to threats.”
He knew about the magicals in town, yet showed no obvious magic himself. He dressed like a rich man who hadn’t been rich long enough to grow any sense,
