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“I’m saving up for my own place,” the guy—Dimitri—went on, “so it’s good not to spend money on an apartment. I do some work for a landscaping company and sell my art at the farmersmarket.”
“Does my mom need the money?” I cared less about his life aspirations than the fact that my mom had felt compelled to take on a renter. “She didn’t have to get rid of her apartments, didshe?”
Was I a bad daughter because I hadn’t been sending money home? I already knew I was a bad daughter for other reasons, but guilt tramped into my heart. I’d assumed Mom did fine with finances. She’d won a settlement back in the nineties and used the money to buy an eight-unit apartment building. The last she’d told me, the rents had gone up enough to pay off the mortgage and give her enough to liveon.
“I don’t know anything about apartments, but she said the property taxes have gone up a lot.” Dimitri scratched his cheek with the corner of his phone. “Maybe if I take a picture of the deadly tiger on the bank and send it to the county, they’ll adjust the land value down a few hundred thousanddollars.”
“He’s a guard tiger. He would add to the value, not detract fromit.”
For that astute comment, I’ll spare your foot,Sindari toldme.
Thankyou.
“He does look really cool. Is it legal to have atiger?”
The rumble of a vehicle turning onto the gravel driveway saved me from having to come up with an answer. Ah ha, there was Mom’s old green Subaru. The cat yowled as it drove past. The car was parked in the shade, and it wasn’t that hot, so I was sure Maggie wasn’t in distress—especially with Sindari out of the vehicle—but I felt bad about her being cooped up. I hoped my mom would let her out in thehouse.
A furry dog head thrust out of the car window and barked. Sindari satup.
You may want to head back to your realm for a while,I told him, hoping he was listening. I had no power to project my thoughts, so he had to be monitoring me through our link for him to hearme.
Itisgetting tediously crowdedhere.
I think the geese and the squirrels feel that way, yes.I touched the charm and whispered the word to dismisshim.
Mom parked, got out of the car, and let the dog out while giving me a peculiar look. Probably a what-are-you-doing-here look. If she’d been off on her volunteer mission for more than a day, she wouldn’t have heard my phonemessage.
Rocket, a handsome golden retriever of four or five, shot into the trees to investigate the place Sindari had been lounging. I had no idea if Sindari smelled like a real tiger or not. He was warm when I petted him, and he felt real, but maybe to a creature with a better-than-human nose, he smelled like fire and brimstone. But not, thanks to his bath, like catpee.
“Hey, Mom.” I lifted a hand as she approached, a backpack slung over oneshoulder.
She wore faded blue hiking pants, a camp shirt, and nothing but dirt on her feet. Tall and rangy with blonde hair gone to gray and bound back in a braid, she was how I imagined I would look in thirty years—though I had a fondness for shoes. I’d been told my eyes were a more emerald green than was typical and that my facial features were finer, but it was hard for me to see my father’s influence. As I now knew, human genes were dominant, at least to mixed-species children born on Earth, and usually won out. That was good, I supposed. I’d seen the time-travel-to-historical-EarthStar Trekepisodes where Kirk had to explain Spock’sears.
“Val.” She stopped in front of me, and we stared at each other. “It’s good to seeyou.”
“Youtoo.”
This was the part when normal mothers and daughters hugged, but as Mom had told me long ago, there was no need to hug when a handshake would do. She always said Norwegians weren’t touchy-feely. I’d stopped pointing out that her mother had been therealNorwegian and that we had both grown up in theStates.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard my message—” I pointed a thumb toward her open door, “—but I have a problem and was hoping you couldhelp.”
“You don’t need money, doyou?”
“No.” Not unless Colonel Willard didn’t make it and the snotty lieutenant talked the army into cancelling my contract… No, even if that happened, I could get work as an independent. I was sure of it. But I liked my gig with the army, and I liked working for Willard. I had to figure out how to heal her. “Just your elvenexpertise.”
Her eyebrowsarched.
Instead of saying more, I tilted my head toward Dimitri, hoping Mom would take a hint and send him off to his van or her shop. He was watching our exchange with a curious expression—or maybe a puzzled one. Maybe his mother hugged him when they saw each other, though he looked like someone who would be easy not tohug.
“Dimitri is a quarter dwarf,” Mom said. “He knows aboutthings.” She waved ahand.
“Dwarf?” I looked him up and down. “Are yousure?”
“Grandpa was a big dwarf, I hear,” Dimitrisaid.
“Either that or the rest of your family were giants.” That put a strange image in my head, as far as how copulation would go. I pushed it aside and dug out the vial, painstakingly wrapped in papers so it wouldn’tbreak.
“What happened to your Jeep?” Momasked.
