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We walked into the small alcove between exterior and interior doors. There was tile on the floor, paneling on the walls, and an old-fashioned gumball machine in a corner, topped with a pile of real estate brochures.
I arched an eyebrow. “Not that I need to prove anything, given we fought the fairies together—and won—but I’ve walked forty miles of Hadrian’s Wall, hiked Lac Blanc in the dark, spent three nights in a tent in the snow in the Pyrenees. That acceptable?”
His mouth twitched. “Yeah. That should do it.”
“Yeah,” I said, pushing through the interior door. “I thought it might.”
***
We sat down at a booth along the diner’s front glass wall and ordered black coffee, which the pinafored waitress delivered in plain stoneware mugs.
I took a sip, grimaced at the harsh bite of what tasted like liquid creosote.
“Coffee’s shit,” Alexei said, staring down into it.
“It’s pretty bad.” I looked at Connor. “I don’t suppose there’s a Leo’s in Grand Bay?” Leo’s was my favorite coffee shop in Chicago.
“Leo’s is good coffee,” Alexei said. The most words he’d said directly to me so far, and since we agreed, I considered it a good step forward.
“No Leo’s,” Connor said. “But there will almost certainly be coffee, and it will probably have ‘north’ or ‘moose’ or ‘lake’ in the name.”
Alexei grabbed a half dozen sugar packets from the condiment holder, ripped off the tops, and emptied them into his mug. He piled the leftover paper into a neat little mountain, then took a sip of the coffee-flavored sugar, swirled it around his mouth.
“Did that help?” I asked.
“No,” he said, putting down the mug and wrapping his hands around the ceramic to warm them. “Just makes it sweet.”
“Alexei has a bit of a sugar problem,” Connor said.
“Sugar isn’t a problem,” Alexei said. “It’s a solution.”
“You riding dirty?” Connor asked.
Alexei humphed.
“How much you carrying?”
Connor’s voice, dropped to a whisper, had gone so serious, I thought we’d shifted to talk about transporting contraband across state lines. Especially when Alexei reached into a small leather backpack, pulled out a wrinkled and folded paper bag.
He unfolded the top, poured the contents on the table. But where I’d been expecting to see drugs or contraband, I found a hoard of candy. There were gummi bears, sour sharks, licorice, and lemon drops. A rainbow of taffy, a sleeve of candy wafers I didn’t think they even sold anymore.
“You’re hilarious,” I said to Connor.
He smiled at Alexei. “Told you that would make her nervous.”
“I won’t apologize for being law-abiding.”
“Long as you aren’t a square,” Alexei said, tracing the shape in the air with his fingertips.
I rolled my eyes. You could take the shifters out of Chicago, but that apparently meant bringing along their inner fourteen-year-olds.
“Shifters,” I muttered, and took a square of banana taffy. “Sarcasm tax.”
Alexei almost—but not quite—smiled.
I unwrapped the taffy, read the joke on the inside of the wrapper. “‘Knock, knock.’”
“Who’s there?” Alexei asked. At least he was game enough for a bad joke.
