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“And it’s not luck,” Ray told me, pourin
g my beer into a glass. I usually didn’t bother, but it was nice, all frosty and chilled and stuff. He handed it to me and my fingers made little heat prints on the sides. “There’s a party in the backyard and Marlowe’s got a dozen men coming in and out, slamming doors and clomping around downstairs. Who could sleep through all that?”
“That’s smart,” I said, surprised.
“I can be smart.” He looked offended. “And I told you, don’t talk.”
I decided that might be best, and settled for watching him try to clean up the kids’ chess game. He’d set it on the floor in order to have a place to put the grub, which would have been fine if this were a normal game. But this was one Olga had enchanted for the kids, and troll magic tended to be a little…peculiar.
The pieces, which looked like miniature trolls and ogres, were fine as long as they stayed on the board. It enclosed them in their own little world, where they could stalk and ambush and whack the heck out of each other to their hearts’ content. But Ray had managed to knock a few of them off the board when he moved it, and they were now milling around in confusion.
One had wandered into one of Claire’s gardening clogs, where it was setting up what looked like a defensive position. Another was floundering around in the clutches of a mop, slashing at the gray threads with a tiny sword. And a third, a little mottled-looking fellow with wild hair, a crazed expression and just a ragged pair of pants left from his once nice uniform, was making a break for the stairs.
Ray clapped a clear plastic cup over the wild man with one hand, and grabbed the one battling the mop monster with the other. And promptly snatched that hand back. A tiny bead of blood was welling up on one finger.
He held it out to me. “What the hell is this?”
“You’ve got to keep them on the board,” I told him in between bites.
“Or what?”
“Or they get…feisty.”
“Screw that!” he said, grabbing the mop guy. “They’re going back in the box.”
I shrugged. I mostly just left them out anymore. It was easier.
But Ray managed to get two of the three back in their ogre- and troll-shaped cutouts, where the enchantment froze them in place. And then he turned to the wild man under the cup, who was making a series of familiar gestures. Ray got down on eye level and blinked at it.
A tiny face pressed against the side of the plastic, distorting tinier features for a moment, as the two of them sized each other up. Small fists were raised, and then the little creature turned around and something else was lowered. And a couple other things were pressed firmly against the plastic.
“Is that…what is he…is he mooning me?” Ray demanded.
I grinned, and then quit because it hurt. “That one’s a little weird,” I told him.
“That one’s about to be mush!” he said, grabbing it out of its temporary prison. “What’s wrong with it anyway? It looks like it’s been painted.”
“Something like that,” I said drily.
“What?”
“Stinky swallowed it a couple weeks ago.”
“Swallowed?” His lip curled. “Then how—”
“It came through okay, but it’s never been quite right since.”
Ray dropped it like it was hot. “You have a weird house,” he told me, smacking the cup back over it and wiping his hand on his pants.
I shrugged. I really couldn’t argue the point. He put a brick on the cup, got a beer and propped up on the swing, watching me stuff my face. The creak of the chain blended with the sound of music and light laughter from the garden, which I couldn’t see too well because of the glow from the house behind me. But it was nice.
“So,” he said casually, after a few minutes. “You’re, uh, you’re in a better mood now, right?”
I was, I thought, looking up suspiciously. “Why?”
“’Cause, uh, there might be some stuff we need to talk about.”
“Like what?”
