“Oh,” I said, as we pulled into the nearly empty parking lot. “This is...”
“Prepare yourself for a night of enchantment,” he said, driving around behind the blocky warehouse building and parking in a pool of shadows untouched by the sparse streetlights.
“I mean, it sure looks enchanting.”
He slanted me an amused grin. “Looks can be deceiving, Glory O’Bryan.”
“I sure hope so,” I muttered. I started to open my car door, but Horst set one hand on my arm, his other moving to his shirt pocket.
“Wait. Not yet,” he said. Then he pulled out his pipes and brought them to his lips, coaxing a strange, enticing melodyfrom the instrument. For a moment, I thought this was, like last time, a romantic gesture, a swirl of sound meant to take my breath away and distract me from all my worries.
But this wasn’t the same tune he’d played before on the beach at the Enchanted Forest, guiding his kobold friends to dance over the water. The song he played now was more discordant, a jangle of notes nowhere near as gorgeous as what he’d played previously.
Distract me...
Acting on a hunch, I looked over his shoulder through the car’s back window. From that angle, I could just make out a back door into the warehouse, illuminated by a weak overhead security light. And around the edges of that door were shapes.
Dark, moving shapes.
Kobolds.
I looked back at Horst, who was still playing away. “Are you breaking into that building?”
His eyes danced, and he pulled the pipes away from his mouth for a moment. “Little bit, yeah.” Then he returned to playing the song that, as I understood it, walked the kobolds through what to do.
“Horst! If we get arrested—”
He grinned at me as movement by the building caught my eye again. A dark strip appeared as the door opened a few inches. “Believe me, Glory O’Bryan. This is worth getting arrested for.”
“Nothing is worth getting arrested for—again, I might add.”
But despite the fact that I’d already seen Horst arrested—technically twice, although since the second time was after he’d escaped from the back of a cop car during his first arrest, I’m not quite sure that counted—and certainly didn’t want this night to end with another awkward encounter with the police, there wasn’t much heat in my voice.
What can I say? It was nice to have someone to make bad decisions with.
Just before we walked into the building, Horst paused outside the door to play a brief little tune on his pipes, far louder than the one he played before. The pipes were practically screaming. When I winced, he gave me a quick wink.
“Sorry. Sometimes volume matters.” Then he played another short burst of melody, this one softer, before taking my hand and leading me inside the building.
I wasn’t really expecting anything per se—with Horst, I never knew what to expect—but I certainly wasn’t expecting it to actually be a warehouse, complete with shelving and boxes and grim industrial lighting that made the whole place look bleak and sad.
I mean, I knew Horst was capable of turning even the most mundane moment into an adventure, but not even he could transform—
A whooshing sound stopped me in my tracks. “Somebody’s here,” I whispered, squeezing Horst’s hand.
But he merely chuckled. “Don’t worry. It’s nobody human.” His golden eyes darkened for a moment, and I realized he was talking about his kobolds, who he desperately wanted to transform back into humans. But then the old sparkle was back, and he led me through the shelves to a large open area. Aside from the puddles of color at regular interval on the concrete floor, this space looked as bare and cold as the warehouse area.
But then I realized one of those pools of color was...growing. It rose up from the ground, a muddle of gray and red and black and brown filling out until I realized it was some kind of immense inflatable, a bounce house shaped like a shark looming over a pirate ship.
“What...?”
Horst pinched the bridge of his nose. “Guys, we talked about this,” he muttered, pulling out his pipes once again and playing what sounded to me like an annoyed little tune. Immediately, the whooshing stopped and the shark inflatable began to deflate with a drawn-out hiss. Then, farther down, more whooshing started up again and a different inflatable began to puff up as it inflated.
This one was a princess castle. A giant princess castle with turrets and crenellation and a slide that brought you down to a drawbridge.
“Oh,” I whispered.
Horst watched me for a moment, his face unreadable. Then he squeezed my hand. “Come on. Let’s check it out.”
