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They were big, strapping guys that he used for security and other things, like loading up a bunch of selkies.
They’d also brought Fin a charm, which had transformed him into a short guy with a wild shock of brown hair and a big nose. It was weird; he still looked identifiably himself, with small eyes and roughly the same shaped face, just humanized. At least enough that we weren’t likely to scare anybody else.
So things were looking up.
“Things are looking up,” I told Claire.
She bit her lip.
“Aren’t they?”
She tilted the bottle’s mouth to stop the flow, and lathered up with some soap she’d brought with her. She made her own, when she had time, and this one smelled of lavender. It was nice.
Her expression wasn’t.
“I did something,” she told me abruptly. “I was waiting up to tell you about it, because I couldn’t get you on the phone, but then—” She glanced around at a burly guy walking past with a human-sized seal over his shoulder, and sighed.
“Then things got crazy.” I grinned at her.
She didn’t grin back.
“You’re going to be angry,” she told me.
“I doubt that.” Claire and I had our differences, from time to time, but we rarely fought.
“I don’t.”
She was rinsing off, and I could almost see her steeling herself. She finished, and the thin shoulders went back, the curler-bound head came up, and the green eyes met mine head-on. Because, whatever else Claire may be, she isn’t a coward.
“I called Louis-Cesare.”
For a moment, I just blinked at her. It was the last thing I’d expected—they didn’t even talk
in person if they could avoid it, much less over the phone. I hadn’t even known she had his number.
“I didn’t even know you had his number,” I said, and it was her turn to blink.
“It . . . was in the house phone. He called once when you had your cell off.”
“Oh, yeah. Right.”
She blinked some more. “Aren’t you angry?”
I handed her some napkins to dry off with, because we didn’t have a towel. “Should I be? What did you talk about?”
She just looked at me some more. This was getting odd. “I told him I liked his suit.”
“It was a nice suit.”
“Dory!” Claire’s eyes were getting brighter, rivaling the gas station lights behind her. She tried drying off using the napkins, but they shredded and stuck to her skin. “Damn it!” She shoved the wet wad in a pocket. “This is when you yell at me for sticking my nose in your business! This is when you tell me I went too far, as usual, and trampled all over your boundaries while trying to help. This is when you tell me I’m a crap friend for hating your boyfriend like a bigoted know-it-all, because sure, I know vampires better than you, when you’ve lived with them for centuries!”
There was a pause. She seemed to be waiting for something. Which I guess she didn’t get, because the thin eyebrows drew together.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Aren’t you going to say it?”
