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“Gild the lily?” the girl asked, shooting me an appraising glance. “You’d look great with highlights.”
“I look like a skunk with highlights.” The curse of dark hair.
“You just haven’t had them done right,” she told me. “I’m a whiz at color. As soon as I’m done here, we could—”
“Maybe later,” I told her. I’d just gotten the blue.
I sketched the problem out for Olga while the rest of the rhinestones were appliquéd. “We don’t know that he’s here to sell it, but it seems like a good guess.” The war in the supernatural community had driven up the price of all defensive wards. And this was supposed to be the grandfather of them all.
She nodded and then just sat there. Unlike humans, trolls don’t have a problem with long silences. They also aren’t big in the idle chitchat department. Since I suck at that sort of thing myself, I found it oddly refreshing.
I flipped through a few magazines, went out front and bought a soda, came back in and perused the new stock of weapons in the back room. There was enough firepower to take out half of Brooklyn shelved alongside the peroxide and bags of hair extensions. Olga had needed a cheap place to start up her business again, and the proprietor had needed some security, so they’d worked out a partnership agreement. It was currently possible to come in for a shampoo and leave with the magical equivalent of a bazooka.
Most of the stuff I already had two of, but there was a nice selection of iron weapons I’d never really bothered to look at before. They were heavy and lacked the grace and flexibility of steel. There was nothing elegant here: no mirror-bright ceremonial blades, no inlaid grips, no fine-tooled scabbards. They were ugly, brutish weapons for ugly, brutish warfare.
I hefted a short sword that was more like a club, and liked its weight in my hand. It was well balanced, with a dull, slightly pitted surface. No one would see this coming on a dark night. I also selected a couple knives and a mace that must have weighed fifty pounds, and took them back into the main room.
And found Olga watching me. “What you do?”
“I need weapons.”
“You already have.”
“Yeah, but they don’t work too well on fey. And you may have heard, we had a little visit last night. By the way, thanks for the twins.”
Olga inclined her head. “What you do with these weapons?”
I thought that was an odd question. “What do I usually do with them?”
“You not go aftersubrand.”
It had been more of a statement than a question, but I answered it anyway. “I didn’t go after him this time. And how did you know he was here?”
“People talk.”
“What else do they say?”
She shrugged. “He here to make trouble. Not know what kind. But you stay away.”
“I told you, he came after me.”
Small blue eyes narrowed on my face. “And you not go hunt?”
“What are you trying to tell me, Olga? That you won’t sell me weapons if I’m going aftersubrand?” She just looked at me. “Why?”
“You good fighter, for little woman. But you no match for him. He kill you.” It was said with such toneless conviction that it sent a chill down my spine.
“Well, cheer up. I’m not planning on searching him out. But in case he comes around again, I’d like something a little more lethal than highlights!”
We finally reached an agreement, and I took the mace over to the doorman to arrange delivery. No way was I carrying that around all day. But the other stuff I tucked into my duffel. They weighed the thing down a lot more than normal, but it couldn’t be helped. I wasn’t going to get caught flat-footed again.
I turned to find Olga levering herself to her feet. “Come.”
She led me out the back door and into a small parking lot, where a specially built van was parked. She settled herself into the passenger’s side while the van’s struts creaked and groaned. Four hundred pounds of troll is a lot of troll, although she’s considered pretty petite for her species.
The supernatural community in New York is broken into sections, much like the human city. The vamps prefer Manhattan; the mages have their East Coast base in Queens; and the Weres live mostly in rural areas upstate. Brooklyn, on the other hand, is fey territory. To be more precise, it’s a Dark Fey stronghold where the creatures who populate Earth’s nightmares hang out and attempt to make a living.
A sizable minority of these are trolls, the human term for a wide variety of Dark Fey with a few obvious similarities. In reality, “trolls” were made up of dozens of different species, many of which had been enemies back in Faerie. But in the unfamiliar landscape of the human world, they’d bonded to form a tight- knit community. Olga’s late husb
