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I jerked back awake, which was a surprise, since I hadn’t recalled drifting off. “What?” I stared around. “What is?”
“Fish, tracks, door.”
I frowned, trying to get the brain to work when it didn’t want to. “What child? The troll child?”
She nodded.
“Just now? When he was about to—” I blinked. “What did he say, again?”
She repeated it. I sat up. The motion made me dizzy, which pissed me off. I drank some beer and told my body to deal with it already.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Olga shrugged.
“Well, it must have been important.”
“What’s important?” Claire asked, coming out of the back door.
I looked up. The sun was setting in her hair, making it almost look like it was on fire. “Fish, tracks, door.”
She frowned at me, like maybe I’d hit my head harder than she’d been told. “Are you all right?”
“More or less.”
She frowned some more, put down the crate of dishes she was carrying, and started pawing through my hair. “You have quite a bump.”
“It’ll go down by tomorrow.” If she’d stop poking at it, I didn’t add, because she was trying to help.
“I can get you an ice pack,” she began, before I held up my dripping one.
“Got it covered.”
She seemed to accept this, because she let me go. “They want to see you,” she told Olga, who sighed, but got up and lumbered inside.
That left the swing free, but Claire sat down beside me instead.
“Are we eating soon?” I asked hopefully, eyeing the dishes. They were for the picnic tables that we used far more often than the dining room, since it was nicer out here in the garden, and we couldn’t fit everybody inside anymore, anyway.
“As soon as the pizzas arrive.” She shot me a chagrined look. “No way to stretch soup that far.”
I nodded. I’d seen trolls eat. And those were what I was coming to view as normal trolls, instead of the hulks I’d been encountering lately.
“How many pizzas?” I asked, feeling like I could eat a whole one all by myself.
Claire didn’t answer.
She had one of those faces that was in turns perfectly plain and completely beautiful, all depending on her mood. When she was in a temper, the emerald eyes flashed, the ivory skin flushed, and the bright red hair, only a shade or two off from Olga’s fiery locks, seemed to have a life of its own. She was almost half human, but I swear, when she was really, truly angry, she didn’t look it.
She wasn’t angry now. Now, the eyes were a dull olive, the cheeks were pale and pinched, and the freckles on the long, thin nose stood out clearly. The hair reflected her overall mood, sagging dispiritedly around her face.
“Want a beer?” I asked, and passed one over when she nodded.
She looked like she could use a bit more than that, like maybe a shoulder to cry on for some reason. Only I didn’t know how to offer one without making things worse, because Claire could be touchy. Comes with the territory when her recent history involved almost being killed by her slimy cousin, who’d wanted to inherit the family business; being spirited away to Faerie by a handsome prince; getting pregnant; having a kid; having said kid almost killed by a murderous fey
court who didn’t like the idea of a part-human heir; and escaping back to earth, where she was now living in a crazy house with a dhampir, some adolescent trolls, and a bunch of royal guards camped out in her backyard, stepping on all the vegetables.
It was enough to make anyone cranky.
