Miss Carol was one of my favorite Rockabill characters, next to Grizzie. She had to be at least seventy and she’d been living in Rockabill, and had been old, for as long as anybody could remember. She had a thick Southern accent for absolutely no discernible reason, and she wore hideous pastel-colored suits, with matching gloves, shoes, and hat every day of the year. I would never have pictured her hanging out in the Sty.
The unknown man was very slender and strangely elongated, like he’d been stretched on a rack. He gave me a watery smile, his slightly bleary eyes rather unfocused. He had the air of someone elderly, even though he didn’t look to be more than fifty-five.
All three were greeting me like an old friend when I heard the pop of a champagne cork, an incongruous sound for the Sty. Marcus and Sarah were pouring out glasses and handing them around our little group. I wondered what they were celebrating, when Sarah held up her glass and announced, “To Jane! Welcome to the family!” They all clinked glasses while I sat stunned. Ryu clinked his glass to mine and leaned over to whisper, “You should say something.” His lips brushed my ear and I started.
“Thank you,” I said, holding up my glass. “I wasn’t expecting this. I, um, really appreciate it.” I clumsily saluted them with my champagne flute and raised the bubbly to my lips. It was delicious. I’d never tasted champagne before.
They all drank with me, and then Miss Carol gave a little cheer and hollered, “Does this mean I get a discount?” I laughed so hard I nearly snorted champagne out of my nose. Miss Carol was one of our best customers, but she read the filthiest books imaginable. She special ordered them and we had to keep them wrapped up and behind the counter till she picked them up, they were so dirty.
Everyone laughed with me, and Sarah and Marcus went back to work, each giving me another warm smile before attending to the other customers. None of whom, I noticed, had paid the slightest bit of attention to our little party in the corner.
Ryu refilled my glass and I took the opportunity to whisper, “So, what is everybody?”
He refilled his own while he answered. “Marcus and Sarah are nahuals, like Amy. They’re the most prevalent type of supernatural being at the moment, for complicated reasons. Miss Carol is actually Nell’s niece; she’s a gnome.”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “She doesn’t look like a gnome. And she’s lived in Rockabill all of her life.”
“She’s young for a gnome,” he explained. “When she gets to full power, she’ll wizen right up like Nell. And then she’ll have to find her own land; two mature gnomes can’t share the same territory. But for right now Nell protects her while she gathers her strength. And as for her residency in the village, I bet nobody ever remembers a time when ‘Miss Carol’ was young?”
“Ah,” I said, taking the hint. “She’s glamoured.”
“All the time,” he concurred.
“And what about Gus?” I asked. “Everybody in Rockabill says he’s, er, slow.”
Ryu grinned. “Gus isn’t slow,” he responded. “He’s a rock.”
I got the feeling he wasn’t making a cruel joke, so I waited for him to explain.
“Gus is a stone spirit. Somewhere around Rockabill is a boulder that Gus is attached to. He’ll spend most of his life as part of the stone, but for a few decades every couple of hundred years, he’ll emerge to try to find a mate. Stone spirits are incredibly rare, so his chances are almost nil. But he’ll give it a go.”
“And in the meantime he bags groceries?” I asked incredulously.
“Why not?” Ryu asked. “It gets him out, gets him interacting with people in a way that he can handle. We all enjoy being around humans. They’re like… fireworks. They’re brilliant and they dazzle and then they fade and die. Gus’s nature is to be a stone. He’s not going to turn around and become a race-car driver. But he can bag groceries and soak up some human vitality, so he does.”
I mulled this over before I pointed discreetly at the elastic-man. “And who’s he? He seems to know me but I don’t recognize him.”
Ryu’s grin was so big it nearly split his face. “That… is Russ.”
I blinked. “Mr. Flutie’s dachshund?”
“Yup.” He laughed. “Nahuals aren’t as long-living as others of us since they don’t have as much contact with the elements. Russ is about four hundred years old, which is ancient in nahual terms. Sometimes, when they’re that age, they retire as pets. It’s a good life, I guess. All the food you can eat and somebody to scratch your belly.” He arched his expressive brows at me and my spine tingled. “There are worse ways to spend your golden years.”
“Huh,” was all I could say, trying to still my butterflies while mulling over what Ryu had just told me. And I thought I had secrets…
“It’s all fun and games till the vet tries to put you to sleep,” I said, finally. Ryu barked like a seal.
When he’d regained his composure, I asked, “How do you know so much about everybody?”
“It’s the job, remember?” He smiled at me.
“Yeah, yeah… the job.” Smug little shit, I thought. Very hot smug little shit, I corrected myself.
Right then Miss Carol laid a hand on Ryu’s arm and asked him about his presence in Rockabill, giving me a chance to look around the Sty. There were a fair few of Rockabill’s great and good sitting around the place. Those who were just drinking were mostly sitting around the actual bar. Joel Irving was propped up in what I imagined was his usual place. He was nursing a shot and a beer.
Other patrons were eating dinner at tables. The Sty was basically an enormous rectangle. Two-thirds were made up of a huge bar, the kitchens—which served the aforementioned incredibly tasty but artery-clogging burgers and brats and things—and a little dance floor around the jukebox. The other third held tables for eating, the washrooms, and a small stage for karaoke or whatever entertainment the Vernons managed to entice out to Rockabill.
Next to me, the supernatural folk were talking about the murder. They were asking about its implications, I think, for whatever power structure existed in their world. I hadn’t the faintest clue what any of it meant.
I was distracted when I spotted Stuart and his thuggish band of brothers sitting at a table in the very far corner of the eating area, partially hidden by a couple of one-armed bandits that the Sty has “for entertainment purposes only.” I hoped he hadn’t spotted me. Or, better yet, that we were still glamoured as we must have been for what had turned out to be our rather dramatic entrance.
Sarah had come back over to hear what Ryu was saying to Miss Carol, and I watched the little group as if from a very great distance.
All this time, I thought, and right under my nose… The thought of having been surrounded by all these different creatures, and not having realized it, was overwhelming. I thought of all the humans sitting in this room, some of whom had been quite happy to brand me a freak. If they only knew what was really going on, I thought, watching as the stone spirit nodded assent at something the dachshund was saying. The young gnome, who looked like an elderly lady, flirted with the handsome vampire and I grinned.
I’m practically normal, I thought, feeling hope well up in that deep, dark place within me that was lonely and tired of feeling outside of my own life. Hell, to them I’m probably so normal I’m boring—
Someone touched my hand. It was Marcus, holding out a five-dollar bill toward me. “Why don’t you pick out some tunes on the jukebox?” he said.
I smiled back, taking the money. I didn’t feel like Marcus was getting rid of me, I just assumed he knew how lost I was by the neighboring conversation.
“Tunes it is,” I said. “Thank you.”
He returned my smile and I hopped down from my bar stool. The jukebox was on the wall behind where we were sitting, and I knew from past experience how well it was stocked, at least by my standards. It had all the classic bar anthem-type artists, like Aerosmith and AC/DC, as well as popular selections that were playing on the radio right now. But it also had a bunch of artists that were less well known whom I absolutely loved.
Five dollars bought ten songs here at the Pig Sty, and I nearly quailed at the pressure. That was a lot of songs; whatever I picked was going to be the bar’s soundtrack for well over an hour.
Lay on, Macduff, my brain intoned, solemnly accepting the challenge.
I tried to pick out a selection that included every genre and that alternated between fast and slow songs. Just like a good mix tape, I thought. Not that anyone made mix tapes anymore. I did sneak some of my favorite songs by the Indigo Girls, David Gray, and REM into the mix.
It took me about ten minutes to complete my selection, and when I got back to the bar the others were winding down their conversation. Ryu put a hand on my waist to help me up onto my bar stool, which was completely unnecessary and totally sexy. At that exact second, my first selection ripped out of the speakers: Great White’s “Once Bitten Twice Shy.”